Moving

No, not physically, just moving electronic presence.

As a part of my Lenten Discipline I am working on a new site:  theologicalhumidor.com

This site will stay fallow for a month, before being deleted.

Visual Heresy

A little intellectual stimulation for a dull grey Tuesday afternoon in Advent:


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C. B. Moss on General Councils

The following is from Fr. Claude Beaufort Moss' short tract The Church of England and the Seventh Council (1957).

But who is to decide whether the definition of a particular Council is a necessary conclusion from Scripture rightly interpreted?  The English Church has no doubt at all about this. 'The Church hat authority in controversies of faith' (Article 20). The Church has no right to enforce what cannot be proved by Scripture, but it has the right ot give judgment on the interpretation of Scripture, and to require its membesr to accept its judgment. 'No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation' (2 Peter 1.20). For the Church is not an academic society for theological research; it is an army marching to win the human race for Christ.  There are some questions which, once they have been asked, must be answered, and answered finally. Is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, a created being as Arius taught?  If He is, we out not to worship Him as God. Was His Manhood swalowed up in His Godhead 'like a drop of vinegar in the ocean,' as Eutyches taught? Then it is not true that a man like us is on the throne of God, and knows what our sufferings are because he has felt them.  Such questions must be setted, and only the Church can settle them.  If local councils cannot, a General Council must be held.  But its decisions require to be accepted by the Universal Church, which is the final judge.  Councils can be misled: no assembly of men is immune from the possibility of error, as history abundantly shows.  When the decrees of a Council have been accepted by the whole Church, or practically the whole Church, the question is settled.  It ought not to be opened again unless new knowledge turns up, which in the nature of the case, if the subject is the revealed truth of the Incarnation, is unlikely. (Emphasis added)

Back in the Saddle Again

It's more than a great song sung by one of America's finest cowboy singers, it means I plan on going live here at "triple b".



Yes, I still have a bit of old-timey nostalgia in my veins.

Does this mean anything?

I used the collect for Proper 28 at the Prayers of the People today, since my sermon focused on having an encounter with the Word of the Lord (Jesus) in the word of the Lord (Scripture).  As I set my BCP for the Rite II Mass, I found that the same collect is significantly different in terms of its content.

The bold portion of the Rite I collect is not contained in the Rite II collect.  Does this lack change the meaning?

First Rite I:
Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be 
written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise
hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that,
by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace 
and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which 
thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and 
reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and 
ever. Amen

Rite II:
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for
our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn,
and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever
hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have
given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I doubt the change is accidental, yet I wonder why the language was changed?  Is something being communicated here?

Can anyone enlighten me?

Hitting Pause

or otherwise known as a hiatus.

I am going dark on these pages for a significant period of time.  How long, I do not know, but I have way too many other projects in the hopper that must take priority.  The largest of these is a proposal for my Doctor of Ministry program.

I ask that you keep me, my family, and the parish of St. Matthew's in prayer.

Dave

I Wonder

in light of the much publicized sermon (see here, here, and here), delivered by our Presiding Bishop last month in Curacao, how last Sunday's Gospel passage would be interpreted following the same hermeneutical  (interpretive) principles.  I expect that consistency in interpreting similar texts is to be desired.

Since the texts are indeed similar, I think we should compare them.  First the text from Acts 16:16-34 on which the Presiding Bishop's sermon in Curacao was based:

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’ The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God. (Emphasis added)

In the aforementioned sermon's take on this passage, Paul is the unenlightened one for having the temerity to cast out a demon, in the name of Jesus Christ, from a demon possessed slave girl.  Paul's error, under this interpretation (which is without precedent in the tradition of interpretion), is that he did not recognize "her gift of spiritual awareness" and thus cast out what he could not understand, quod est interpretatum not adequately embracing diversity.  This latter is apparently the actual hermeneutical principle at play in the preparation of the homily delivered.

So using the prior sermon as a guide, or as a principal for interpretation, I wonder how this reading from Sunday's service (Luke 8:26-39) could be preached:

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. (Emphasis added)

I believe it would be fair to say that, according to the new interpretive tradition, the slave girl was only saying what Paul was saying in referencing God, and here the demon also only states the truth about Jesus.  Why did Jesus not embrace the spiritual understanding of the Gerasene?  The Geresene "demoniac" did not ask Jesus to cast out the demon, and in fact under the control of the demon specifically asked Jesus not to torment him.

So, is Jesus to be accused of not embracing the divine and spiritual self-understanding of the Gerasene?  Is Jesus intolerant of what he could not understand?  Does Jesus stand accused of a failure to embrace diversity here?  Would this not make Jesus a sinner, like Paul was above, and in need of God's corrective? I am not saying that the Presiding Bishop would preach this, but it is the logical conclusion to the hermeneutic embraced in the first passage, and we would be incredibly dismissive if we argued that the laity would never put these two together.

Please note that Luke, the author of this Gospel and Acts, has the demon possessed utter almost the same exact title for God.  Also note that the result of the exorcism, in both cases, is a move to have the "troublemaker(s)" removed from the area. This is not accidental, and frankly should guide our exegesis by using scripture to interpret scripture.  This, it seems to me, would be in line with the tradition.

Do you see the danger of using an idiosyncratic hermeneutic to develop a one time homily?  In the tradition this idiosyncratic hermeneutic is also known as eisegesis, or reading into the text what we want to say/see, and it is a temptation for all of us who are called to deliver homilies.  I am certain that I have fallen prey to this temptation more than once, and wish I could have those homilies back, but it is a temptation that we who preach must strive to conquer.  One of the tools at our disposal, particularly as Anglicans, is our emphasis on Tradition as a guide for interpreting the Scripture.  When we are out on a creative limb, we must constantly ask whether we are supported by the tradition, and whether the branch will bear our interpretive weight.  If we choose to go forward, without support, on a thin limb, we should not be surprised if we fall.  We clergy are under authority, and do not have the right to "make it up as we go along".

This is not a critique of the Presiding Bishop, per se, but a call to solid preparatory work for all who are called to deliver the Word of the Lord.  It is a tremendous responsibility, and we need reminding, as  Dr. Alan Ross, a former instructor of mine, says: "God has promised to bless his word, not yours".