WORKS AND PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
The other day, former TEO presiding bishop and friend of this site Frank Griswold knocked back a few with Duke Divinity School’s Faith & Leadership. Edited highlights follow. Tell us something, Frank. How in the world did you manage during all those years when Episcopalians were basically at each other’s throats?
I’ve always felt that truth is embodied partially in us. Therefore, divergent points of view — even fiercely held and seemingly contradictory points of view — probably have some legitimacy.
So how do you bring divergent points of view into some kind of relationship?
My focus was the House of Bishops — trying to say, “OK, you come with your perspective and you come with your perspective, and since we are baptized into one body, we are called to engage in deep conversation.”
To a certain extent, Frank’s absolutely right. I can’t understand your point of view until I know what it is. And I can never know what it is unless, one way or another, you tell me. And I can never really understand what you think and why you think it until I tell you why I think you’re wrong, you answer my objections, I respond to your answers and so on. Thus Frank’s “deep conversation.”
But Frank’s suggestion that truth can contradict itself is patently absurd. If Frank and I hold two not only different but mutually-exclusive opinions, we are not both partially right. One of us is wrong and all the “deep conversation” in the world will not change that. But, says Frank, the purpose of conversation is most emphatically not to make us all hold the same opinions.
If you see conversation as an ascetical discipline — not just chitchat but a costly entering into and an openness to another who may have a very different and threatening point of view — then you may find that convergence is not that I agree with you or you with me but that I no longer see you as a threat and alien. Instead, I see you as a brother or sister in the Lord, even though there is this terrible divide between us.
Depends on the nature of “this terrible divide between us,” Frank. For example, I have serious and profound doctrinal disagreements with Roman Catholics and they with me. But I recognize Catholics as brothers and sisters in Christ even though, at this particular time, I must emulate Churchill and become not a pillar of the Roman Catholic Church but a flying buttress, supporting it from the outside.
But that’s not what’s at issue here and Frank knows it. If I say X is a sin while Frank claims that X is not a sin, then he and I have something much more profoundly serious than a “terrible divide between us.”
Do we believe that the Bible is the Word of the living God, inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, or do we not? Or with the help of “Christian scholarship” finding loopholes for us, can we safely disregard those parts of the Bible that upset or anger the secular culture?
Søren Kierkegaard:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
One of the reasons why Roman Catholics, officially anyway, don’t let just anyone take the Eucharist in Catholic churches has absolutely nothing to do with Rome being all sectarian and exclusionary and one-true-churchy and stuff.
Roman Catholics and other Christians have completely different views about what’s going on during the Eucharist. Or if other Christians say that they agree with Rome about the Real Presence, they have no problem taking Communion with others who think that it’s all just another Christian ceremony.
The matter, says Kierkegaard, is quite simple. If we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, we are obliged, as best we can, to conform our lives to its teachings. But if we believe that the Bible must conform itself to our teachings, then we might as well read Aristotle in our churches for all the good it will do us.
I often found in my relations with bishops in other parts of the Anglican world that ultimately we came together in Christ even though there was this profound division. There was an affection that wasn’t broken by virtue of “I can’t understand how your church could have done this or that.”
I tried to draw people into larger, more costly conversations in hopes that they might find a level of communion or mutual affection that left the divisions intact but didn’t leave them despising one another as fellow Christians.
Frank may be projecting there. But I’ll grant the former Presiding Bishop this much. I really think he wanted all that to be true.
I think it’s safe to say that Frank never had the animosity toward conservative Episcopal opinion that his successor does. I can’t begin to conceive of Frank ordering the Diocese of Virginia to episcopalian on the separation agreement that it had worked out with Virginia parishes which could no longer accept TEO’s spiritual innovations.
In this era of increasingly-scarce financial resources, I certainly can’t see Frank ordering a diocese to sell a former conservative parish’s property to Muslims for significantly less money than that conservative parish was willing to pay for it. Indeed, I can’t see Frank devoting anywhere near the amount of money or time to the lawsuits that Mrs. Schori seems to think constitute “good stewardship.”
Moving on, Frank couldn’t be more enthusiastic about mainline Christianity’s potential these days. Because of the Young People, of course.
If I can judge by young people in seminary these days, I’m extremely hopeful. I find them much more grounded, much more faith-based, much more able to deal with a “both-and” world rather than an “either-or” world. They’re better able to make room for contrary points of view.
On both sides of the sexuality debates — and even in some instances on both sides of the ordination of women — I find that they can get along. They’ve lived in a pluralistic world. It’s much more familiar to them.
The mainline death spiral just got a whole lot faster.
I also think that ecclesial bodies — just as in our own life cycle — go through a paschal pattern again and again. There’s a dying and a rising, a dying and a rising.
Except that we’re not really talking about dying of heart disease or cancer or Lou Gehrig’s Disease or being nailed to a Cross, Frank. We’re talking about suicide. Does that affect your theological view any?
Take the Washington Cathedral.
Since not much of anybody else is using it.
It’s the icon of a certain self-assurance in an earlier time, when many people in government were Episcopalians, and Episcopalians were at the top of the main banks, and J.P. Morgan was building the St. Paul’s School chapel. Here’s this great monument to Episcopal ego, you might say, though it is a church for all, and now here it is suffering $25 million worth of damage in an earthquake.
Not really sure how this fits in, Frank, since you’re comparing being injured by an act of nature to willingly jumping off the Empire State Building.
What might be the symbolic significance of this in terms of mainline ego being shattered and dislodged by events? I’m not happy that the Washington Cathedral is damaged, but is it a bad thing to be in some way forced into exile and becoming a remnant?
You’ve just begun to find out.
To use an image from the Old Testament, maybe this is the desert time.
It’s also an image from the New Testament, Frank.
The desert was a period of purification and self-knowledge in order that they were prepared to enter the promised land. All the things that happened in the wilderness, the struggle and the suffering, were part of being shaped and formed and being made ready to enter the promised land, especially where they could receive it as gift rather than acquisition.
Correct me if I’m wrong but desert , spiritually speaking, seem to be something that a person is driven into. Going into one deliberately and expecting some some of spiritual benefit to result therefrom seems a trifle presumptuous to me. See James Pike.
Maybe we’re obese. Maybe it’s ecclesial obesity, and we have to go through a training program or a weight-loss program. These things are painful but necessary.
Considering that there are entire Episcopal dioceses with fewer members than some individual churches of other denominations, Frank may be on to something.
I think the struggles of the Anglican Communion are a gift, because they’ve really raised the question, “What does it mean to be in communion? What does it mean to be limbs and members of Christ’s risen body?”
Paul says clearly that if all the body parts were the same, there’d be no coherence to the body — “the eye cannot say of the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’” Distinction is part of the mystery of the body of Christ. How do we live with those distinctions gracefully?
We finally stop our incessant yammering and have the honesty to admit that “those distinctions” of ours are fundamental, serious and irreconcilable. Then we go our seperate ways. Glad I could help, Frank.
I’ve always felt that truth is embodied partially in us. Therefore, divergent points of view — even fiercely held and seemingly contradictory points of view — probably have some legitimacy.
So how do you bring divergent points of view into some kind of relationship?
My focus was the House of Bishops — trying to say, “OK, you come with your perspective and you come with your perspective, and since we are baptized into one body, we are called to engage in deep conversation.”
To a certain extent, Frank’s absolutely right. I can’t understand your point of view until I know what it is. And I can never know what it is unless, one way or another, you tell me. And I can never really understand what you think and why you think it until I tell you why I think you’re wrong, you answer my objections, I respond to your answers and so on. Thus Frank’s “deep conversation.”
But Frank’s suggestion that truth can contradict itself is patently absurd. If Frank and I hold two not only different but mutually-exclusive opinions, we are not both partially right. One of us is wrong and all the “deep conversation” in the world will not change that. But, says Frank, the purpose of conversation is most emphatically not to make us all hold the same opinions.
If you see conversation as an ascetical discipline — not just chitchat but a costly entering into and an openness to another who may have a very different and threatening point of view — then you may find that convergence is not that I agree with you or you with me but that I no longer see you as a threat and alien. Instead, I see you as a brother or sister in the Lord, even though there is this terrible divide between us.
Depends on the nature of “this terrible divide between us,” Frank. For example, I have serious and profound doctrinal disagreements with Roman Catholics and they with me. But I recognize Catholics as brothers and sisters in Christ even though, at this particular time, I must emulate Churchill and become not a pillar of the Roman Catholic Church but a flying buttress, supporting it from the outside.
But that’s not what’s at issue here and Frank knows it. If I say X is a sin while Frank claims that X is not a sin, then he and I have something much more profoundly serious than a “terrible divide between us.”
Do we believe that the Bible is the Word of the living God, inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, or do we not? Or with the help of “Christian scholarship” finding loopholes for us, can we safely disregard those parts of the Bible that upset or anger the secular culture?
Søren Kierkegaard:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
One of the reasons why Roman Catholics, officially anyway, don’t let just anyone take the Eucharist in Catholic churches has absolutely nothing to do with Rome being all sectarian and exclusionary and one-true-churchy and stuff.
Roman Catholics and other Christians have completely different views about what’s going on during the Eucharist. Or if other Christians say that they agree with Rome about the Real Presence, they have no problem taking Communion with others who think that it’s all just another Christian ceremony.
The matter, says Kierkegaard, is quite simple. If we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, we are obliged, as best we can, to conform our lives to its teachings. But if we believe that the Bible must conform itself to our teachings, then we might as well read Aristotle in our churches for all the good it will do us.
I often found in my relations with bishops in other parts of the Anglican world that ultimately we came together in Christ even though there was this profound division. There was an affection that wasn’t broken by virtue of “I can’t understand how your church could have done this or that.”
I tried to draw people into larger, more costly conversations in hopes that they might find a level of communion or mutual affection that left the divisions intact but didn’t leave them despising one another as fellow Christians.
Frank may be projecting there. But I’ll grant the former Presiding Bishop this much. I really think he wanted all that to be true.
I think it’s safe to say that Frank never had the animosity toward conservative Episcopal opinion that his successor does. I can’t begin to conceive of Frank ordering the Diocese of Virginia to episcopalian on the separation agreement that it had worked out with Virginia parishes which could no longer accept TEO’s spiritual innovations.
In this era of increasingly-scarce financial resources, I certainly can’t see Frank ordering a diocese to sell a former conservative parish’s property to Muslims for significantly less money than that conservative parish was willing to pay for it. Indeed, I can’t see Frank devoting anywhere near the amount of money or time to the lawsuits that Mrs. Schori seems to think constitute “good stewardship.”
Moving on, Frank couldn’t be more enthusiastic about mainline Christianity’s potential these days. Because of the Young People, of course.
If I can judge by young people in seminary these days, I’m extremely hopeful. I find them much more grounded, much more faith-based, much more able to deal with a “both-and” world rather than an “either-or” world. They’re better able to make room for contrary points of view.
On both sides of the sexuality debates — and even in some instances on both sides of the ordination of women — I find that they can get along. They’ve lived in a pluralistic world. It’s much more familiar to them.
The mainline death spiral just got a whole lot faster.
I also think that ecclesial bodies — just as in our own life cycle — go through a paschal pattern again and again. There’s a dying and a rising, a dying and a rising.
Except that we’re not really talking about dying of heart disease or cancer or Lou Gehrig’s Disease or being nailed to a Cross, Frank. We’re talking about suicide. Does that affect your theological view any?
Take the Washington Cathedral.
Since not much of anybody else is using it.
It’s the icon of a certain self-assurance in an earlier time, when many people in government were Episcopalians, and Episcopalians were at the top of the main banks, and J.P. Morgan was building the St. Paul’s School chapel. Here’s this great monument to Episcopal ego, you might say, though it is a church for all, and now here it is suffering $25 million worth of damage in an earthquake.
Not really sure how this fits in, Frank, since you’re comparing being injured by an act of nature to willingly jumping off the Empire State Building.
What might be the symbolic significance of this in terms of mainline ego being shattered and dislodged by events? I’m not happy that the Washington Cathedral is damaged, but is it a bad thing to be in some way forced into exile and becoming a remnant?
You’ve just begun to find out.
To use an image from the Old Testament, maybe this is the desert time.
It’s also an image from the New Testament, Frank.
The desert was a period of purification and self-knowledge in order that they were prepared to enter the promised land. All the things that happened in the wilderness, the struggle and the suffering, were part of being shaped and formed and being made ready to enter the promised land, especially where they could receive it as gift rather than acquisition.
Correct me if I’m wrong but desert , spiritually speaking, seem to be something that a person is driven into. Going into one deliberately and expecting some some of spiritual benefit to result therefrom seems a trifle presumptuous to me. See James Pike.
Maybe we’re obese. Maybe it’s ecclesial obesity, and we have to go through a training program or a weight-loss program. These things are painful but necessary.
Considering that there are entire Episcopal dioceses with fewer members than some individual churches of other denominations, Frank may be on to something.
I think the struggles of the Anglican Communion are a gift, because they’ve really raised the question, “What does it mean to be in communion? What does it mean to be limbs and members of Christ’s risen body?”
Paul says clearly that if all the body parts were the same, there’d be no coherence to the body — “the eye cannot say of the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’” Distinction is part of the mystery of the body of Christ. How do we live with those distinctions gracefully?
We finally stop our incessant yammering and have the honesty to admit that “those distinctions” of ours are fundamental, serious and irreconcilable. Then we go our seperate ways. Glad I could help, Frank.
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