The Diocese of Texas doesn’t derive its identity from being a member of the Anglican Communion

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13 responses to “The Diocese of Texas doesn’t derive its identity from being a member of the Anglican Communion”

1. 

   2007-06-14

   Mike Watson

   The self-identification of the Episcopal Church as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion is stated in the preamble to TEC’s Constitution, which, according to the adopting resolutions, is an integral part of that constitution. The same preamble describes the Anglican Communion not as having originated with the Lambeth Conference or Anglican Consultative Council, but as a fellowship of churches in communion with the See of Canterbury. The Anglican Communion predates the current structure of its Instruments.
   While the language of the preamble was not adopted until 1967, it described a relationship that existed from the formative years. Bishops White and Provoost were consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1786. The Preface to our Book of Common Prayer states that the Episcopal Church is indebted to the Church of England for her first foundations and a long continuance of nursing care and protection.
   In short, you would get a different answer if you considered the Anglican Communion in the same way as TEC’s own Constitution. Too, I’d like to see the results of a serious effort by you to sell the Bill White – U.S. Conference of Mayors analogy.
   And perhaps you should add cautionary language to your site saying that people who engage in the common practice of using pseudonyms for blog comments will subject to criticism by the blog host.

   Reply
2. 

   2007-06-14

   Viator

   The Anglican Communion existed long before there was a Lambeth Conference and the American Church drew its identity from that Communion through its relationships to the other Churches of the Communion.
   Our first bishop, Samuel Seabury, was consecrated by bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and when the first draft of the first American Prayer Book was drawn up in 1786, it was sent to the bishops of the Church of England for their opinon. They issued strong “remonstrances” against its departures from Anglican practice. So a second draft was drawn up by the American Church taking into account the criticism of the English bishops and this draft became our Prayer Book of 1789 from which all our Prayer Books descend.
   In the “Preface” to the 1789 book, written by the Rev. Dr. William Smith, which is printed in our present BCP, Dr. Smith writes, “In which [comparing the new American Book with the English Prayer Book] it will also appear that this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship; or further than local circumstances require.” The last phrase referred to the changes necessitated by what the late Church historian, Edward Hardy, called the “unpleasant disagreement” and which we call the American Revolution.
   The assumption behind all these actions on the part of the American Church in its earliest days was that we are in union (communion) with the English Church and Scottish Church on the essentials of what makes the Church the Church and we draw our bishops, our Prayer Book, our doctrine, discipline and worship directly from the two other Churches that comprised the Anglican Communion at the time. And if these items are not the essentials of our identity, then, pray tell, what is.
   This assumption continued down the years as new Anglican Provinces came into being and it was clearly held by the American Church in 1967 when the American Church added the present “Preamble” to the Constitution stating that the American Church is a “constituent member of the Anglican Communion. . . in communion with the see of Canterbury. . . upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.”
   Traditonal folks in the American Church continue to hold this now “formally” stated assumption of communion today as does the vast majority of the rest of the Anglican Communion. It is the violation of this assumption that has caused the present difficulties in the Communion.

   Reply
3. 

   2007-06-15

   D. C. Toedt

   Thanks for the comments, Viator and Mike Watson.
   Mike Watson, concerning the Anglican-Communion language in the preamble to the TEC constitution, let me refer you to Bishop Duncan Needs Better Lawyers for more details.
   —————
   Y’all implicitly raise some interesting questions, to which each person likely has different answers:

   • How much ‘pain’ would we experience if TEC were not part of the Anglican Communion?
   • How much effort is it worth expending to assuage that pain — and at what point to we decide the pain of expending the effort outweighs the pain we’re trying to assuage?

   We obviously have different views about the significance of the Anglican Communion in the past- and present life of TEC. This leads to our differences of opinion about when the ‘pain’ of trying to stay “in communion” (whatever that means) outweighs the pain of being excluded from it.
   My own opinion, shared by many moderate- and liberal Episcopalians, is that, whatever the hypothetical benefits of staying “in communion” might be, those benefits certainly aren’t worth telling people like Gene Robinson they either have to change their ways or be relegated to second-class citizen status.
   Nor are those benefits worth the cost of agreeing that we will always treat, as our dispositive moral and spiritual authorities, that particular selection of human authors whose collected works we call “the Bible.”
   ——————
   “Viator” writes:

   … we are in union (communion) with the English Church and Scottish Church on the essentials of what makes the Church the Church and we draw our bishops, our Prayer Book, our doctrine, discipline and worship directly from the two other Churches that comprised the Anglican Communion at the time. And if these items are not the essentials of our identity, then, pray tell, what is. [Emphasis added.]

   It won’t surprise regular readers that IMHO, “the essentials of our identity” as followers of Jesus are the two things which, according to Jesus, will bring us eternal life if we do them:

   • we seek to put God first — a corrolary to which, incidentally, is that we face the facts of his reality, including the grave factual weaknesses in the church’s “essential” doctrines, about which I’ve written extensively here (see the links toward the top of the right-hand sidebar); and
   • we seek the best for others as we do for ourselves.

   In other words, we strive to follow the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law — recall that Jesus is reported to have said, do this and you will live [eternally].
   All else is adiaphora; and in fact, anything that takes us away from these two true essentials is a negative.

   Reply
4. 

   2007-06-15

   Mike Watson

   D.C., your earlier blog entry concerning Bishop Duncan was about the legal significance of the preamble, about which I have some views but since it was not the subject of the current discussion I won’t comment on it now, nor on the other assertions you now add about whether Gene Robinson is being told he has to be a second class citizen or “all else is adiaphora”. The point I wished to address (and which Viator has now done more comprehensively) was your statement that the Diocese of Texas predates the Anglican Communion by a good bit, and arguably more than a century.

   Reply
5. 

   2007-06-15

   D. C. Toedt

   Mike Watson, I won’t object to the statement that TEC has been “in communion” with the CofE and the ABC since before the Diocese of Texas existed.
   But that immediately gives rise to the question, what does it mean to be “in communion”?
   I tend to think of being “in communion” as something like an extended-family relationship. One thing about family is that, at least at some level, they approve of you, and we all need that approval. But how much is that approval worth, and what are we willing to sacrifice to get it?
   My own extended family has one of our periodic reunions coming up in a few weeks. Suppose that, at this next reunion, some — not all — of my cousins were to take my wife and me aside and gently tell us they thought we were making a mistake by letting our son wear a beard and our daughter wear long hair. My wife and I would certainly listen carefully to what they had to say — we don’t claim to know everything, and sometimes what we think we know turns out to be wrong.
   But now suppose those particular cousins were to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that we either had to make our son shave and our daughter cut her hair, or we’d no longer be welcome at family reunions. I can’t speak for my wife, but my response would be “I don’t think so; you guys worry about raising your own families, and leave ours to us.”
   And suppose those cousins then declared that, unless we changed our ways, they would no longer attend any family reunions where my wife and I were present. My response would be “sorry to hear that, guys; we’ll miss you.”
   The rest of the cousins might blame my wife and me because our family vacations together were no longer enjoyable. My response to them would be “we’re sorry it has to come to this, but our kids’ freedom is more important to us than our periodic get-togethers, especially if those get-togethers are going to be dominated by bullies.”

   Reply
6. 

   2007-06-15

   Viator

   D.C., you state that the essentials in your opinion are: Seeking to put God first, and seeking the best for others as for ourselves.
   This is your Doctrine which is commendable, but do all other Christians agree with your doctrine, that these two items include all that God requires of us? What about salvation by grace through faith, for instance? By themselves your two doctrines read as “works righteousness”—by our own power of intellect and will, we put God first and obey the summary of the Law and, therefore gain eternal life. Where does grace fit into the Christian Life, for instance? Inevitably, you will have to enlarge your Doctrine to include grace when pressed, and it won’t stop there. When pressed, your enlargement of your Doctrine will go on and on and begin to look like most doctrinal statments. The question for us is not what each individual thinks the essentials are, but what are the essentials according to God and how do we determine them and obey them?
   If the individual is the sole determinant of the essentials, then we will have as many essentials as individuals and everyone will do “what. . . [is]. . .right in his own eyes” which is the recipe for lawlessness and disaster in the Book of Judges. That is why God through his Christ called out a Church from among the peoples of the earth.
   Who makes the decisions about what are essentials and what are nonessentials (adiaophora). It is not the individual Christian or the American Church that determines what the essentials are and what are adiaphora. It is the whole Church in its Anglican expression, called the Anglican Communion, guided by the Holy Spirit that determines the essentials from Scripture, Tradition and right Reason through Communion councils. .
   The Radial Reformers (with whom Luther and Calvin struggled) in the 16th century believed that it was the individual who determined what is essential and non-essential. The Quakers and others are their heirs. One step up are Southern Baptists and many other denominations who believe it is the local congregation that makes that decision. Most of the rest of Protestantism believes that it is some unit of the Church– local, regional, national—short of the whole Church. That is why George Barna reports that there are, at present, 20,000 Protestant denominations in America. Such a view of authority in essentials leads to a constant splintering of Christian bodies. Anglicanism has claimed to be Catholic in that we have affirmed that essentials and non-essentials are determined by the whole Church Catholic.
   We are now engaged in a great struggle over this very thing—authority—who says what is essential and what is non-essential. I infer from what you say, that you assume that some unit smaller than the whole Church (Communion) to which we belong determines what is essential and what is not. That view inevitably leads to splintering and will probably result in the Episcopal Church becoming just one more of those 20,000 Protestant bodies in America.

   Reply
7. 

   2007-06-15

   D. C. Toedt

   Wow, Viator; thanks for the long and thoughtful comment, which is a lot to chew on.
   ————————-
   Viator writes:

   What about salvation by grace through faith, for instance? By themselves your two doctrines read as “works righteousness”—by our own power of intellect and will, we put God first and obey the summary of the Law and, therefore gain eternal life. Where does grace fit into the Christian Life, for instance? [Emphasis added.]

   We may not be as far apart as you might think. I’m not at all convinced that it’s “by our own power of intellect and will” that we put God first and seek the best for others.
   Thirty years ago, I was at sea as a Navy nuclear engineering officer. Standing watch one day, it occurred to me that (in one sense) human life is an ongoing action loop:

   1. We observe: we develop an estimate of what the state of the world is like, incorporating and assigning weights to various observations and other information;
   2. we desire: it comes to mind that the world would be more to our liking if, in one or more respects, it were in a different state;
   3. we plan: we infer that, all in all, our taking Action X would move the world in the right direction, from the state it’s in now to a state we’d like better;
   4. we act, by taking Action X;
   5. we go back to step 1.

   Some key questions: How do our minds develop an estimate of the existing state of the world? Even more puzzling: How is it that we desire, that we decide we’d like State Y better than State X?
   We don’t know a whole lot about either of those questions. “Grace” might be a label in the same category as “sunrise”: it describes a real phenomenon, but it’s materially incomplete.
   Got to go to a Bible-study meeting; more later.

   Reply
8. 

   2007-06-15

   Viator

   D.C., you write “Even more puzzling: How is it that we desire, that we decide we’d like State Y better than State X?” And I am assuming that you mean that we‘d like State Y better than State X because it “would move the world in the right direction…. “as you write above.
   St. Thomas sums up how the undivided Church in the west answered that question: In our natural state as we are born into this world we cannot always see the good—that which would move the world in the right direction. We can see that good sometimes, but not consistently over time so we will inevitably get it wrong and move the world (beginning with ourselves) in the wrong or bad direction (i.e., evil).
   This is because we are born into this world separated from God, in the state of Original Sin, which simply means separated from God and his presence, power and promise of eternal life. The Church said that the “wounds” of this separation are “spiritual blindness,” the inability to consistently see the good; “spiritual malice” the inability to consistently desire the good (which means we sometimes desire the wrong); and “moral weakness” the inability always to do the good.
   Because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, the separation between God and man is overcome by God. And to those who will receive it, the Risen and Exalted Christ will give his Spirit,the Holy Spirit, to us in Baptism. Since God is Trinity, the Holy Spirit is also the presence of the Father and Son as well, dwelling in our inner world or spirit.
   This means we have the presence of God dwelling in us and can have an intimate personal relationship with him and become his children. It means we have God’s promise of eternal life (since eternal life in its final form is fully knowing and being in union with God in his Trinitarian fullness, as Father, Son and Spirit—therefore, having the Spirit dwelling within us means we have that eternal life beginning now). And having the Spirit dwelling in our spirit means that we have God’s power or grace within us (internal grace). Having these three results of the Spirit’s indwelling is what we call salvation in the present.
   Thomas said that that power or grace at work within us (in forms he called habitual and actual grace) overcomes our “spiritual blindness” and enables our intellect to see the good consistently (those acts that will lead the individual and world in the right direction) It overcomes our “spiritual malice” and gives us a good will (i.e. the desire to do the good that grace has opened our eyes to “see”). Further that grace overcomes our moral weakness and enables us to act to do the good, to move ourselves and the world in the right direction.
   Our cooperation is required for this grace to be effective in us. When the image of the good that we are called to do comes into our minds by grace, we can obstruct it by refocusing our intellect on something else, or we can cooperate and follow the image. When our will desires or is inclined toward a good, we can obstruct it and orient our desire to something else or we can follow the desire for the good. When we are given the power to act to do the good we “see” and “desire,” we can act or obstruct the whole process.
   This is the traditional Christian answer, I believe, to your question.

   Reply
9. 

   2007-06-15

   Viator

   D.C., you write “Even more puzzling: How is it that we desire, that we decide we’d like State Y better than State X?” And I am assuming that you mean that we‘d like State Y better than State X because it “would move the world in the right direction…. “as you write above.
   St. Thomas sums up how the undivided Church in the west answered that question: In our natural state as we are born into this world we cannot always see the good—that which would move the world in the right direction. We can see that good sometimes, but not consistently over time so we will inevitably get it wrong and move the world (beginning with ourselves) in the wrong or bad direction (i.e., evil).
   This is because we are born into this world separated from God, in the state of Original Sin, which simply means separated from God and his presence, power and promise of eternal life. The Church said that the “wounds” of this separation are “spiritual blindness,” the inability to consistently see the good; “spiritual malice” the inability to consistently desire the good (which means we sometimes desire the wrong); and “moral weakness” the inability always to do the good.
   Because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, the separation between God and man is overcome by God. And to those who will receive it, the Risen and Exalted Christ will give his Spirit,the Holy Spirit, to us in Baptism. Since God is Trinity, the Holy Spirit is also the presence of the Father and Son as well, dwelling in our inner world or spirit.
   This means we have the presence of God dwelling in us and can have an intimate personal relationship with him and become his children. It means we have God’s promise of eternal life (since eternal life in its final form is fully knowing and being in union with God in his Trinitarian fullness, as Father, Son and Spirit—therefore, having the Spirit dwelling within us means we have that eternal life beginning now). And having the Spirit dwelling in our spirit means that we have God’s power or grace within us (internal grace). Having these three results of the Spirit’s indwelling is what we call salvation in the present.
   Thomas said that that power or grace at work within us (in forms he called habitual and actual grace) overcomes our “spiritual blindness” and enables our intellect to see the good consistently (those acts that will lead the individual and world in the right direction) It overcomes our “spiritual malice” and gives us a good will (i.e. the desire to do the good that grace has opened our eyes to “see”). Further that grace overcomes our moral weakness and enables us to act to do the good, to move ourselves and the world in the right direction.
   Our cooperation is required for this grace to be effective in us. When the image of the good that we are called to do comes into our minds by grace, we can obstruct it by refocusing our intellect on something else, or we can cooperate and follow the image. When our will desires or is inclined toward a good, we can obstruct it and orient our desire to something else or we can follow the desire for the good. When we are given the power to act to do the good we “see” and “desire,” we can act or obstruct the whole process.
   This is the traditional Christian answer, I believe, to your question.

   Reply
10. 

    2007-06-15

    D. C. Toedt

    Viator writes:

    In our natural state as we are born into this world we cannot always see the good—that which would move the world in the right direction. We can see that good sometimes, but not consistently over time so we will inevitably get it wrong and move the world (beginning with ourselves) in the wrong or bad direction (i.e., evil).

    Agreed, we cannot always see the good. I would call that a natural limitation of our minds in our present stage of evolution.
    But I’d have to disagree that “we will inevitably get it wrong and move the world (beginning with ourselves) in the wrong or bad direction (i.e., evil).” Human history compelling demonstrates the opposite. Over time, in fits and starts (and often at terrible cost), we do indeed seem to be able to filter out the bad, and by process of elimination, to discern the good.
    Individually, each of us is severely limited. But by communicating and empathizing with each other, and using our gifts of memory, reason, and skill, we manage to make progress despite our limitations.
    (In computer terms, it’s as though our individual intelligences were part of a distributed-computing setup, whose whole is greater than the sum of the parts.)
    If you’re not convinced that humanity does indeed make progress, ask yourself Gregg Easterbrook’s thought-experiment question from his book The Progress Paradox: Would you permanently trade places with a random ancestor who lived 100 years ago, or 1,000 years ago, or 10,000 years ago? No phones, no lights, no motor cars, no antibiotics, etc., etc. Most people would quickly answer “no way!”
    And this progress is not at all limited to societies in which people even “know God,” let alone “know Jesus.”

    [Personally, I conjecture that God has indeed been, and remains, at work in this process, in way(s) we don’t begin to understand.]

    The Thomistic view strikes me as a laudable but imperfect attempt to describe and explain some very-real phenomena. Where we run into trouble is when we idolize these earlier descriptions by insisting on continuing to take them literally, no matter what the evidence might be. That’s where traditionalist Christianity has gone very wrong.
    But this doesn’t mean we reject or scorn the work of Thomas and other early Christian thinkers. By analogy, we’ve set aside the Ptolemaic model of astronomy, but we honor Ptolemy and others for their work, and still use their terminology of “sunrise” and “sunset” as convenient figures of speech. Most scientists likely would echo Newton’s dictum that, if we have been able to see a little farther than our predecessors, it’s because we’re standing on the shoulders of giants. The same should be true for our theology.
    ——————-
    Viator writes: “When our will desires or is inclined toward a good, we can obstruct it and orient our desire to something else or we can follow the desire for the good.”
    But why does our will desire X but not Y? To cite a trivial example, why do I eat the extra helping of ice cream even though I know I’ll gain weight? (Recall Paul’s lament about doing the things he doesn’t want, and not doing those he does.) More seriously, why did Andrea Yates drown her children? Why do people suffering from depression commit suicide?
    Our knowledge of such matters is only beginning to scratch the surface. Certainly the traditional Christian view can’t claim to have a good answer that satisfyingly explains and predicts. This deficiency in itself is not a problem. What is a problem is that too many traditionalists, instead of simply admitting ignorance, fill in the blanks with explanations that sprang from earlier thinkers’ imaginations, and then insist that others must accept those explanations as immutable truth.

    [This tendency to fill in the blanks is probably universal among humans, and it’s the bane of managers in all walks of life whose juniors feel compelled to provide answers to questions even when they don’t know the answers. That’s one of the appealing aspects of the scientific mindset, which insists that all explanations are provisional, and that “I don’t know — yet” is sometimes the only acceptable answer.]

    ——————–
    Viator, I appreciate your taking the time to engage in this correspondence.

    Reply
11. 

    2007-06-16

    Viator

    D.C., you write, “But I’d have to disagree that ‘we will inevitably get it wrong and move the world (beginning with ourselves) in the wrong or bad direction (i.e., evil).’ Human history compelling (sic) demonstrates the opposite.”
    I see three difficulties with your statement from a Christian standpoint:
    1). The Christian claim is that we inevitably get it wrong and move ourselves and the world in the wrong direction– without God’s grace. You seem to concede this when you say “Personally, I conjecture that God has indeed been, and remains at work in this process, in way(s) we don’t begin to understand.” Christian theology has called this way that God has been at work in “this process” with all people including those who do not know him or don’t know his Christ, the Divine concursus, and common grace.
    2). The examples of good you list are non-moral goods: phones, electric lights, motor cars, antibiotics, etc. The Christian claim isn’t that we cannot do the non-moral good without God’s grace, but that we cannot do the moral good consistently without God’s grace. Progress isn’t the test of whether we need grace or not, rather the test is moral progress.
    3). Has the world made moral progress over the centuries? The Christian claim is that (despite the ambiguity of the evidence)it has precisely because of God’s grace given to us through his Christ and because of God’s grace (Divine concursus, common grace) working upon those who don’t know him or don’t know his Christ.
    These three points press the argument for God’s grace as necessary for the doing of moral good in this life.

    Reply
12. 

    2007-06-17

    D. C. Toedt

    Viator writes: ‘The Christian claim is that we inevitably get it wrong and move ourselves and the world in the wrong direction– without God’s grace. You seem to concede this when you say “Personally, I conjecture that God has indeed been, and remains at work in this process, in way(s) we don’t begin to understand.” ‘
    Minor point: A conjecture that “something not too far from X might be true” is not the same as a concession that “X is in fact true.”
    ————–
    Viator writes: “The Christian claim isn’t that we cannot do the non-moral good without God’s grace, but that we cannot do the moral good consistently without God’s grace.”
    This may be a poTAYto-poTAHto problem. Human desires indeed are often pretty random, and they’re often harmful. I conjecture that in way(s) we don’t understand, God prevents our random / harmful desires from doing permanent damage to his creation, and he also provides way(s) for individuals to become “better” people. Conceptually, the latter isn’t too far from what you call “grace.”
    Where we seem to differ is over the mechanism by which this happens. The traditional Christian claim seems to be that of Paul, namely that Jesus’ death on the cross atoned once and for all for the sins of humanity. But this claim is pretty much untestable, and not helpful in terms of explanation or prediction who will be “saved” and who won’t.
    My own conjecture is that the grace mechanism may well involve our innate empathy for other people. I can’t swear that God has bestowed “grace” on me in the sense described in Amazing Grace,, but I certainly can attest that I’ve been taught to be a better human by the love of my wife, kids, friends, etc..
    (Empathy probably evolved through some kind of natural-selection process; it shows up in nonhuman animals as well as in us. That of course raises the question: Whence came the mutations from which empathy arose? Maybe God was at work there, even if it was just in ordaining the laws of nature that govern the natural-selection process.)

    Reply
13. 

    2007-06-19

    Mike Watson

    D. C., you write: “But this claim is pretty much untestable, and not helpful in terms of explanation or prediction who will be “saved” and who won’t.” That you’re not finding in Christian doctrine the kind of evidence that your 1960s logical positivist / verficationist approach is leading you to want doesn’t mean there’s a problem with Christian doctrine.
    It would be interesting to hear what are the laws of nature that result in the mutations and otherwise govern the process you believe is responsible for the evolution of empathy.

    Reply