Merry Christmas

Forward in Christ Vol. 6 No. 2 FC December, 2013 The magazine of Forward in Faith North America.

Also in this Issue: Signatures of Love $30 annual subscription Revelation and Moral Order $200 p/a for bundles of ten TEC Sues Quincy, Again Forward in Christ The magazine of Forward in Faith North America. Contents 4 Merry Christmas! 15 Signatures of Sanctification Fr. Michael Heidt is Editor of Forward in Christ The Very Rev. Donald Richmond is a priest of the and a priest in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Reformed Episcopal Church and a Benedictine Oblate. He lives in California. 5 In The News Fr. Michael Heidt. 17 Parish Highlight Fr. Shawn Rainey, Vicar of Holy Trinity Anglican 6 GAFCON II Church, Hurst, Texas. The Rt. Rev. Jack Iker is Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth. 18 Allergic to Church? Fr. Peter Geromel is a priest in The Diocese of the 7 Bishop John-David Schofield Holy Cross. He serves on staff at Reformed Obituary statements by Bishop Keith Ackerman, Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. President of Forward in Faith North America and Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church 19 Parish Growth and Evangelism in North America. Canon Nalls is the Rector of Saint Alban’s Parish, 8 TEC Sues Quincy, Again Richmond, Virginia and Executive Director of the Canon Law Institute, Washington D.C.. A.S. Haley is a lawyer, living in California. He blogs at www.anglicancurmudgeon.blogspot.com. 21 The Healing Nature of Confession

10 Revelation and Moral Order Fr. Gene Geromel of Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church, Michigan, in the Diocese of the David Lyle Jeffrey is Distinguished Professor of Holy Cross.. Literature and the Humanities at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. 23 Reviews 14 Thinking Out Loud The Very Rev. Donald Richmond. Bill Murchison is an author and journalist, living in This month’s cover is Correggio’s Adoration Dallas, Texas. of the Child, 1526.

Subscribe to Forward in Christ Today! Only $30 per year for six issues. Pay online at www. fifna.org Or call: 1-800-225-3661, we accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover and personal checks. Checks should be made out to Forward in Faith and mailed to P.O. Box 210248, Bedford, TX 76095-7248. Full Forward in Faith membership, including magazine subscription: Individual $50, Family $75, email

julia. [email protected], or call 1-800 225-3661 for details.

Forward in Christ December 2013 3 Revelation and Moral Order David Lyle Jeffrey reflects on Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad In the recently concluded television and the cost of dealing with them has through our ethical evolution to the series, , people who do steadily increased. Licentiousness colonial period now requires a willing bad things seem ultimately to get metastacizes. suspension of disbelief -- just to re- what they deserve. Surprisingly, as One wonders if a representative imagine how Revelation worked. reviewers have noted, moral reality is narrative for American social history Yet at bottom it isn’t all that not presumed to be entirely a social now, in 2013, might not be “what complicated. The basic difference construct. Rather, as one reviewer happened to Detroit.” There have between Revelation and secular reason notes, “metaphysical truth exists— been many attempts at retrospective in ethics has been aptly summarized good and evil, moral and immoral, analysis. Yet from a biblical by Sören Kierkegaard. “It is just not the action and consequence... This is the perspective, the epidemiology of same thing to say to somebody, ‘you stuff of the Old Testament.” America’s unraveling is insufficiently should live responsibly,’” he quipped, VinceBreaking Gilligan, Bad the show’s creator, explained merely in economic, social, or “as to say, ‘you should live responsibly goes farther: “If there’s a larger lesson legal terms.One More wonders than a few thoughtful if because there is a Last Judgment to ,” he says, “it’s that coming’.” Kierkegaard, an astute actions have consequence,” adding, reader of the Bible, reminds us that “I feel some sort of need for biblical a representative one of the first truths of revealed atonement, or justice, or something.” moral order is the inevitable reality To appeal to biblical revelation in narrative for of consequences. Garrison Keillor, such an overt way is, at the least, in one of his radio monologues, counter-cultural. The entire history American social remarks that allusions to this of modernity, as Hannah Arendt principle were stock-in-trade of his has famously argued, has been history now, in 2013, mother’s philosophy of child-rearing. characterized by challenges to Reminders of how the Lord smote his authority of all kinds; and we might might not be “what adversaries, “hip and thigh,” weighed add that in western culture now, no on his youthful mind. aura of authority, be it of pope or happened to Detroit.” “It occurred to me,” Keillor says, emperor, congress or church, goes “that when the Lord smote you, you uncontested. Scripture is just one stayed smitten.” Kierkegaard and item on a long list. Keillor, each in their way, articulate While I was finishing my PhD at an axiom of revealed rather than Princeton in 1968, the buzz was about observers have looked at the ruins of merely socially constructed moral “what happened at Berkeley”; some of Mo-town, and quietly wondered if, in vision. Moral order on the biblical the placards carried by the chanting a holistic analysis, “the wages of sin” model is neither a construction nor crowds surrounding Jerry Rubin and isn’t about as good a diagnosis as any. an abstraction; it is an ontological Abby Hoffman spelled it out: “Question Not many, I think, expect biblical ‘given,’ bearing, in effect, the stamp Authority.” The placards might better revelation to return to the public of the manufacturer, and as we might have read “Abolish Consequences,” for square. Association of the Bible with expect in lesser circumstances, the that is what many in my generation restraint upon sexual appetite is surely manufacturer has stipulated abuses really meant. Much of liberal activism a part of this, but the resentment of that will invalidate his warranty. since then bears witness to the actual the idea of transcendentAmerican Zion: authority The It is often claimed that the demand: one need think only of the isOld more Testament general. as Political Eran Shalev, Text from for behavioral constraints of biblical sexual revolution, in whichcogito a whole ergo example,the Revolution in his to the Civil War commandments have led most of those generationsum. seemed to have struck out who have rejected it to do so. Let’s the first ‘g’ in Descartes’ (2013), be candid; they have also led many But the wider health-care crisis, has offered a catalogue of reminders who do not admit to having rejected not unrelated, and the credit collapse of the enormous role that the Old biblical revelation to soft-pedal or likewise, confirm the anti-realism of Testament had as a moral authority in eschew the topic of revealed morality, our bizarre yet persistent demand for the founding years of this country, yet even in sermons. The idea that there a consequence-free social order. The his readers will be struck by the almost might be an actual divine law, at one rhetoric of Berkeley in 1968, in which complete absence of this framework in time grounding with first principles the dominant noun was “rights” and contemporary discussions of moral the formation of our common law – the favorite verb then still unprintable, dis-order. Unfortunately, intervening an idea assumed and even cherished has become more sophisticated frameworks (in Kantian and post- from Constantine to Charlemagne and, and self-assured. Unfortunately, Kantian ethics) have had less evident in the laws of the English-speaking consequences have not been abolished, success in practice. To think back peoples from Henri de Bracton’s

10 Forward in Christ www.fifna.org Institutes Commentaries History Laws of England to the of Edward Coke, William ethical monotheism, encumbered as it has become with Blackstone’s , and F.W. Maitland’s , has Kantian baggage, has failed to prevent ethical incoherence by now largely been abandoned. The idea of divine justice is within Jewish theology itself because it has overlooked not only treated as an anachronism, it has become politically the distinctive reason for Jewish law. Kepnes goes back offensive to our elites. Visual reminders of Revelation, such to the text, and makes what seems to me to be an entirely as tables of the Ten Commandments, Bibles, crosses and warrantable conclusion. “The purpose of Jewish law,” he the like, have now to be taken from public view, precisely says, “is precisely to map out a path through which the people because they might suggest to somebody somewhere that [of] Israel can follow the commandment of God to be holy.” It there is a higher, universal source of authority by which our is erosion of the imperative to holiness, he argues, that has own authority and actions might be judged. The outrage of diminished with drastic consequences our appreciation of the offended makes sense, of course, for anyone who rejects the most basic fact about God – not just that he is a Personal the idea that there is a God to whom all are accountable, and Being, but qadoshim that he is tihiyu Holy. God’s prescription for human believes it is pernicious to social wellbeing - not to mention flourishing, if understood in Torah terms, can thus be stated the authority of the state - when people entertain such succinctly: , “You shall be holy, for I the Lord backward ideas. your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). The balance of this chapter of Latter day debates between authoritarian secularists Leviticus shows how everything else in the moral order is, and those who still believe in a to this basic commandment, transcendent moral order have a dependent clause. Social clearly begun to lose quorum. health is made dependent This has come about largely on a more orimago less dei conscious through seismic shifts in the acknowledgment that we present balance of political were made , in the power. Slogans with calculated image of God; embodiment double-entendres, such as, “We of that understanding in can. Yes we can. And we will.” the practices of life is what Or, less subtly, “We’re here. holiness is about. We’re queer. Get used to it,” This principle is like the frat-boy chants outside reiterated in Christian calls sorority houses they echo, toimitatio reformation Christi of personal are markers of the triumph of and social life through confident political power over . It turns defensive, uncertain moral out to be the case that authority. I have a wonderful everything about the Judeo- “Non-Sequitur” cartoon on the Christian high definition of door of my office which shows the meaning and dignity of Moses standing at the foot of persons has its source in this the mountain, tablets in hand, most basic aspect of Israel’s evidently just having read Revelation; because human them to the crowd, now adding beings are in the image of a caveat: “unless, of course, God, they possess inherent you happen to live in a state in dignity and the right to which all of this stuff is already respect. This is the seminal legal.” I tend to prefer the sly whimsy of the cartoonist to the form of later notions of rights, though in fact Jewish moral stridency of political slogans, but in fact both tell us pretty law itself speaks in this context not of “rights” but rather, much the same thing: the culture wars are effectively over, characteristically, of “obligations.” and conservatives—in particular religious conservatives— What a focus on holiness/wholeness does is to bring the have lost. In such a situation as we find ourselves, what value of the Other – the person of the neighbor, and of persons possible value can there be for us to advert to the Judeo- in relation – into a more charitable view. The comparative Christian foundation? Well, I want to suggest here, very limits of Kantian and post-Kantian de-ontologicalJust and ethics Unjust in little if we are thinking primarily about the public square. thisPeace: regard An Ethic have of been Reconciliation a recent subject of analysis in many But perhaps it is worth thinking instead about the way quarters. In one critique, Daniel Philpott’s Revelation invites those of us who accept it as such into (2013) points out that one other modes for life and witness than sloganeering of our of these limitations is the inevitable lack of a consensus own. on truth, truth not only in regard to events but truth as a It may help to begin by asking whatThe Future the purpose of Jewish of matter of “right relation.” “It is not enough,” Philpott says, revealedTheology law was in the first place. Here, I am happy to refer fordikaiosyne, an ethic to identify, adopt, or assert rights; it must also to a recent book by Steven Kepnes on justify them. What groundsqedushah, human rights?” His answer is (2013). Kepnes assumes that the culture wars, righteousness, which he finds in the letters of St. having become unproductive and incoherent, are marginal Paul as a clear equivalent for holiness, in Torah, and for a useful articulation of religious values in the public he regards it properly, I think, as in effect “right relationship” square. He argues that even the modern Jewish legacy of with God – a biblical principle evident also in Paul’s use of Forward in Christ December 2013 11 ideal has thus political implications, and this is precisely the point in contention for successors of Paine and Rousseau, who wish to substitute another source of absolute obligation, namely government. Here, needless to say, we are on the brink of an abyss for philosophers and politicians alike. Boogeyman nightmares of Puritan roundheads and other ghosts of ‘theocracy’ readily rise in the defense of extreme ethical pluralism, even if it risks anarchy. In a culture in which the kindergarten ethic begins with the commandment, “Thou shalt not criticize thy neighbor” – “indeed, thou shalt affirm thy neighbor even or perhaps especially when he or she is doing something that might seem ‘wrong’ to you,” it is not that hard to see why the moral legacy of Israel can seem offensive. It is not surprising that even religious philosophers have tried to find a common ground elsewhere than in a Torah obligation to communal holiness and its corollary, the obligation to hand down the moral law within the home and religious community of the faithful. sine qua nonNatural law theory seems to many to have made the best of the modern elevation of tolerance as the virtue, not least because, as Rousseau noted long ago, natural law theory forgoes any necessary attachmentLetter to RevelationBeaumont and thus can claim to Lettersbe tolerant from inthe a Mountain way that an ethic based upon divine obligation cannot ( ). In his ironically titled , Rousseau jests that in his new order there might be some hope for Protestantism as the basis for a completely tolerant civil religion, because each person seems to be entitled to interpret Scripture for himself. This is a species of ‘toleration,’ Rousseau observes, for the result of individualized interpretation is that Protestant clergy have the term in its sense of “justification.” To state this another no real authority—a point in which, according to Karl Barth, way: typically, those whose worldview includes Revelation Rousseau has effectively anticipated the entire modern are conscious of their own need for right relationship with history of Protestantism. Catholics, meanwhile, for whom both God and neighbor, and strive to achieve it; deprived of natural law theory has to this point appealed as more this sacred ontology, secularized “rights” are by contrast advantageous in debate with secularists, having gone so often demanded and received as an entitlement, requiring long with the ontological warrant of Revelation on ‘mute’, neither gratitude nor real relationship. are now pressed to give essentially secular answers to anti- On the biblical view, a durable account of “rights” religious interrogation. requires something more than is provided by Thomas Paine It may be that no theory of ethics can remain coherent or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Succinctly, pace their successors, without a source of transcendent authority. Secular including John Rawls, a transcendent authority is necessary, alternatives, each in their own fashion trying to ground an eternally dependable Giver of moral law, not least because ethics in something higher than subjectivity and self- merely human authority cannot provide the security of interest, have embraced Kant’s notion of willed rational right relationship except in shifting, transient terms. The assent to intuited or normative ethical obligations. Kant’s answer that Israel’s Revelation gives to questions about deontological stance led him to regard divine command how to achieve a flourishing life is not merely, “God said theory—essentially the Jewish as well as Christian biblical it,” but rather, if I may paraphrase, that God has disclosed view—as not really ethics at all. Consequentialism, of which something profound about his own nature in the Torah, utilitarianism is a version, has influenced the fissiparous namely that he is Holy, and he wills our participation in his field called ‘virtue ethics’, which attempts to derive all health. His call to us to imitate him is detailed as it is because the moral concepts from the concept of a virtue, just as holiness of life – as distinct from knowledge of a right or Kant tried to derive all morality from the notion of an definition of meaningful agency – must be a matter of unconditional imperative or a universal law of practical sustained living practice. Moreover, and for the entire Judeo- reason. Consequentialists are those who try to derive all Christian tradition this cannot be stressed too strongly, the morality from some idea of maximized welfare that can commandment to be holy applies not just to individuals, but be distributed in a population—a version of Bentham’s also to covenant communities. Biblical revelation offers no ‘greatest good for the greatest number.’ My colleague Robert blueprint for political order, but something without which C. Roberts describes ethical theory on these models as “a no political structure can be sustained, namely the moral hopeless conceptual mess,” adding, rather soberly, “such authority of a higher ideal. Its perseverance as a minority theories tend to be morally detrimental to those who take 12 Forward in Christ www.fifna.org them seriously.” Consequences are thus private imitations of the unholy, ad – merits at the very least a review, an issue at many levels. nauseum et ad infinitum. both by ourselves and others. Faithful Construing the goal of ethical Whether we consider the Christians must love their neighbors in standards as nothing more than an disappearance of moral authority such ways as conduce to health –and adequation of normative behavior, as Hannah Arendt construed it, or ultimately holiness - for all concerned. a kind of hyper-Baconianism, has believe the issue of moral authority to Reason without Revelation hasn’t become de facto the reflex of our be inherently problematic, we cannot been working all that well for us— current legal as well as political culture. evade the evidence that consequences either at the cultural or religious level. If Hollywood is what most people attend not only upon ideas, but follow It seems to me that those of us who appear to want, the Court will ensure in real time from actual moral choices continue to cherish reason as well as that’s what all will get. If insufficient made by cultures as well as individuals. Revelation ought now to move beyond numbers want it, we will be scolded. It may be that our wider culture has serial post-mortem analyses of our Ironically, we have created thus a new made choices that we can do little to cultural demise to a fresh consideration absolute authority, effective not least alter; our own choices, if we respond of the legacies, ideals and prescriptions because daily proclaimed by its own in repentance to biblical prescriptions, of Revelation that have formed and prophets, the media and entertainment will to that degree be counter-cultural. sustained us in the past and surely can industry. This oracular voice from It would seem that “breaking bad” form and sustain us in the future. We the sky includes of course the “news,” implies the possibility of the good, of might begin by acknowledging that no which we consult each morning in a return to health, even of “breaking higher ideal for moral order exists than order to learn what we are supposed good.” And something else, perhaps: that which asks us to regard both self to think. And do. And then encourage unacknowledged exhaustion with and neighbor as made in the image of others to do. Nor is that enough; we the ‘conceptual morass’ of an ethic God—and to ponder, in that light, our are prompted almost daily to join in an whose highest principle is ‘thou shalt call to be holy, even as He is Holy. obligatory chorus, celebrating those as not criticize thy neighbor.’ What if a courageous, even “heroic” who invent gesture of fraternal correction might a new, perhaps previously unthinkable be the only life-line we have to offer “norm.” Defense of notorious in-your- our neighbor in the hope he or she This article is adapted from an address face performance vulgarities by third- may avoid self-destruction? Keep your given to the Philadelphia Society wave feminists as “body-positivity” opinion to yourself, say the courts and earlier this year. David Lyle Jeffrey is exemplify increasing social pressures the media. Yet even in this paralyzing Distinguished Professor of Literature to approve public behaviors such as context, the ideal of holiness – namely and the Humanities at Baylor University, might repel a wart- hog in rut. Other, that the most whole and healthy way of Texas. less vulgar displays, attempt to seduce life available to us is by way of imitation by behavior re-enforcement into of something far higher than ourselves

Forward in Christ December 2013 13