MetaCatholic

There’ve been a fair few reactions to the vote of the Church of England’s General Synod to move forward towards the ordination of women as bishops. One of the tendencies I’ve noted in more than the odd report, however, is that this is a liberal development, and one that largely overturns the Church’s tradition. It seems to me worth recalling what could be described as the biblical and Catholic case for seeing this as a faithful and proper development of the tradition.

The evidence of the biblical period is mixed. However, one has to note

• The description of Junia as “outstanding among the apostles” (Rom 16:7 – ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις).
• The description of Phoebe as not simply a servant or deacon of the church (Rom 16:1 – διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας) but also as Paul’s patron (Rom 16:2 – αὐτὴ προστάτις πολλῶν ἐγενήθη καὶ ἐμοῦ αὐτοῦ). Patron – προστάτις – is a term that would normally connote a form of what many today mean by “headship” whatever Paul meant by that term then.
• There are Euodia and Syntyche who have not only struggled alongside Paul in the work of the gospel (Phil 4:2-3 – ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ συνήθλησάν μοι) and these two women are named ahead not only of other generic fellow-workers but also of Clement, who in Catholic tradition is identified with the third Bishop of Rome.
• In John’s gospel Mary Magdalene is entrusted with the first proclamation of the resurrection, which led tradition to call her “apostle of the apostles” (John 20:11-18).
• In Luke’s gospel Jesus defends Mary’s choice to sit at his feet as a disciple, instead of being about women’s work (Luke 10:38-42). The cultural implication is not only radical about roles (possibly in terms like the gospel of Thomas of becoming male – Saying 114) that she could be entrusted with the passing on of his teaching.

There are other instances that one can adduce, but it seems to me these are the most significant. They represent a spread across the width of the early Christian movement which seems at least strong enough to counter any facile quotation of Pauline texts. The Pauline examples seem to show that Paul’s practice is to accept women as apostles, and accord them significant honour for their ministry in the churches. And even if the idea of a bishop of Rome is a tad anachronistic in the first century, I rather like the idea of the third Pope learning ministry as a junior partner to a couple of women.

The early centuries are problematic. There is patchy evidence both from apocryphal writings and from inscriptions for women exercising ministry, but we have no idea how mainstream much of this is, nor exactly what is being described. There is also the evidence of women’s prominence and leadership in early martyrology – Perpetua, for example. There is also evidence from attempts to ban women from various forms of ministry, such as this one: “Presbytides, as they are called, or female presidents, are not to be appointed in the Church. (Canon 11 of the Council of Laodicea). Exactly what is being referred to is not fully clear, except that some form of public ministry appears to be in view. The cumulative effect of this, however, is to undercut any simple appeal to the idea that the church has only ever known one practice. There is no simple continuity but rather a more complex picture. Evaluating these precedents is a matter for theological reflection, and not historical excavation.

An outline of the “traditional” argument for women as bishops and priests might include the following points. (I note that this is not an argument which will appeal to evangelicals, who may have to content themselves with the biblical material summarised above. Saying that, however, does remind us that some of those who are arguing that women can’t be priests, don’t believe that men can be priests either!)

All Christian priesthood, whether that of the people of God, or the ordained ministry, is a participation in the priesthood of Christ in diverse ways. Essential to Jesus’ qualification to be a priest, and therefore to be able to offer himself as the sacrifice for humanity, is that, according to Hebrews, he must be made like his brothers and sisters in every way (Heb 2:17). The inclusive translation is demanded by the argument of the text. Only by sharing our flesh and blood can he share our death so as to redeem us from death. The whole argument of Hebrews, summarised in this key text, is that the efficacy of Jesus’ priesthood not only depends on his sharing humanity, but that if it was, instead, a function of his masculinity, then he could not be the Saviour of women, only of men. In short, any argument that there is something inherently masculine in priesthood contradicts the way in which Hebrews develops the argument for the priesthood of Christ. An essentially masculine priesthood is a different type of priesthood from that of Christ, and therefore cannot be a Christian priesthood at the most profound and fundamental level. As St Gregory remarks, “What he did not assume, he cannot heal.” If Jesus is the Saviour of men and women, then the qualification is the human nature he shares with men and women.

Now in terms of some forms of ancient biology which held that women are pretty much defective men, it would have been possible to affirm that men could represent men and women, and women could only represent other women, and still maintain that Christ shared our common humanity. I do not believe that understanding of humanity is biologically, philosophically or socially tenable in any respect. Furthermore, most coherent readings of biblical anthropology give little support for accepting that kind of Aristotelian biology.

Therefore, it seems to me that, given our understandings of humanity, psychological, social, biblical and biological, we must today insist that priesthood should be open to women (and if priesthood, then episcopacy). Unless we do so we will (however inadvertently) be calling into question either the full humanity of Christ, or the salvation of half of humankind. It is, in the end, a biblically informed catholic theology of priesthood as rooted in, and representative of, Christ our priest, which demands that the episcopate and priesthood be open to women as well as men.

This is what I mean when I say that ordaining women is actually traditional and conservative, because it is expressing the essential heart of the gospel. Maintaining an essentially masculine character to the priesthood is, given the rest of our understanding, increasingly running the risk of conveying not orthodoxy, but heresy, that Christ is neither fully human, nor the Saviour of all. By contrast, at least some of us who argue for the ordination of women are doing so in order to proclaim and defend the incarnation of Christ as one like us in every respect save sin, and to announce and receive the ministry of our great high priest for all humanity.

A tremendously appealing statue from the Church of the Visitation at Ein Kerem. The many tablets around the wall show the opening words of the Magnifcat in different languages. Today, for those outside the liturgical tradition of the Church, marks the feast of the Visitation.

Kevin Sam posts with some questions on the pericope adulterae (John 7:53-8:11)and Tim Ricchuiti offers a firm opinion.

While I fully agree on its lack of authenticity as a part of the fourth gospel, I entirely disagree with Tim (and note some evidence of early retellings of this story) on its canonicity, since as far as I’m concerned there is ample evidence of the church having read it as scripture for a very long time. Then again, I’m all for fuzzy edges to the Bible. (Not for nothing are the top two Google hits on fuzzy-edged bible from this blog.)  However, that’s not the point of this post.

No, what I find baffling is the obsession with “originality”. Let’s work with the reasonably common article of faith that our texts of the Old and New Testament are inspired, without enquiring too precisely into the nature of inspiration, or the precise texts to be included in the term “Old Testament”. It must be noted that the ways in which some of those texts use other of those texts pay very little attention to whether it is original. Rather, out of the available options, the most convenient or appropriate text is chosen. Paul, whom we may safely judge to know the texts in both their Hebrew and Greek version, is a serial offender.

The inspired use of texts is thus uncaring of original form. The scriptures that inform, shape and guide our faith rewrite and use rewritten versions and translations of earlier scriptures. Where then, especially among those who are most concerned to put the Bible first, does this insistence on the original text (even assuming we know what it is) as the only inspired text come from?

Come to think of it, when we are discussing the canonicity of a text that has, actually, inspired people, challenged and changed them and been a vehicle for God’s speaking to them words of both forgiveness and rebuke … what do we think “inspired” means when we talking about texts anyway. If (according to one inspired text, which is a heavily revised version of an earlier inspired text ) God could deliver a prophecy to Josiah through Pharaoh Neco (2 Chronicles 35:21) how bothered is he likely to be about which texts he can and can’t use.

I have noted before that there is a good case to be made for saying John’s gospel reflects a far stronger anti-James polemic than anything in Paul. In a fairly interactive sermon today (which in the UK is Mothering Sunday – and was long before the corruption of it into Mothers’ Day) we looked at and discussed these two paintings for different perspectives on Mary as mother, leading onto to a discussion of mothering.

The first is by Orazio Gentileschi, and is the sort of image Christmas has made us very comfortable with.

The second is by Konrad Witz, and (outside certain Catholic devotions such as the Stations of the Cross, or the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary) is the kind of image that we rarely contemplate. Taking both images together leads to some powerful reflections.

The comment that really caught me by surprise (I suppose because I’m so used to reading the symbolism and ambiguity in John that I sometimes miss the surface) was this question: “Why did Jesus hand his mother to the care of beloved disciple (and, one could add, vice versa) instead of to James?”

Is this another hint, I wonder, that John’s earlier polemical showing of James continues. Does he  see his community, and not the Jerusalem one, as the true family of Jesus?

I had nearly decided not to comment on John Hobbins’ embrace of theopaschite ways, when I received an email encouraging me to respond. I offer a handful of comments, and invite John and others to reply.

It seems to me there are strong and weak versions of theopaschitism. The weak asserts that God truly suffered in the flesh by drawing on the exchange of predicates: whatever may be said about Christ in his human nature may also truly be asserted about God. (Hence the insistence that Mary is properly called Mother of God.) This weak form is fully compatible with the idea of God’s impassibility, although it can easily seem to the modern mind to be playing language games. John, however, appears to assert a strong version of the doctrine and identify theopaschitism with the passibility of God, fully and completely. It is this latter position I am commenting on here.

Any discussion of questions like this easily sounds as though we are making more certain and clear claims about God than we actually can, and can also come across to others as debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Despite these dangers, I think there is something important here in defending the idea of what we might call the “Godness” of God: his otherness and above all his absolute freedom and lack of external and un-chosen constraints. Impassibility defends the very definition of God, and his power to act in creation and redemption.

The debate is not one, as it is often popularly put, of philosophical ideas versus biblical ideas, or Hebrew versus Greek, or Athens versus Jerusalem. All of these are entirely false antitheses. Perhaps the most “Greek” statement of the New Testament comes in perhaps the most “Jewish” book: that God is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17). The question is, rather, when we talk in more abstract concepts, which better maintains the picture of God’s character as found in the Scriptures, passibility or impassibility.

There is no doubt that there is a strong argument to be made from the narrative form and the language for the passibility of God. The Hebrew Bible in particular is full of anthropomorphisms attributing changes of mind and a whole range of feelings to God. Yet it also contains powerful statements of God’s absolute freedom and transcendence, most particularly in Job and verses like this from Second Isaiah: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). Impassibility takes and builds on this latter kind of statement as the essential revelation, and deals with the mutable metaphors at the level of language and condescension.

To this point I have said nothing about Jesus, nor him crucified. However, this is usually the focus of most modern rejections of impassibility. In a long roll-call of modern theologians who reject the patristic formulations, Moltmann perhaps stands out as the most impassioned: a true theologia crucis demands that we speak of the suffering of the Crucified God. Against this I would suggest that one of the unifying features of the gospels is their portrayal of Jesus as the one in charge: whether he is responding or initiating, he acts freely and of his own volition. This is extended to his death as a destiny he walks towards, often to the bafflement of his disciples. In Luke’s narrative and exemplary model we find Jesus acting in continuation of his ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation throughout his passion. In Matthew’s comes the insistence that he has legions of angels who could avert the passion (Matt 26:53). in John’s theological portrayal we find the statement that “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” (John 10:18) In all of these Jesus is not made to suffer, but he chooses to suffer. The problem with Moltmann’s theology in this regard is the privilege it gives to the Markan word of dereliction over and above these other testimonies, yet even Mark too shows Jesus freely embracing the way of the cross.

This, it seems to me, is of the essence of why we affirm impassibility. It is nothing to do with “feelings” of suffering, but about the powerlessness of suffering. No-one can do anything to God that God does not choose to let be done. God is, fundamentally THE agent, the one who acts. The mystery of the cross is that God’s free choice and action is to be done to, to be made the recipient of human action and hostility, to be made passive and to suffer. But if this is not a free choice, above all in his divine nature yet also in his human, but is instead a consequence forced upon him by others and their actions, then it loses, I think, its real power. That God is done ill to and suffers is cold comfort, but not gospel. That the impassible God chooses to be the recipient of human ill and suffer actively for the world’s redemption: that is the real good news. Impassibility, far from being a strange idea imposed on the gospel, is what underwrites the cross as gospel, a free act of love, not a necessary consequence of human sin.

I want to come back to the relationship between exegesis, systematic theology and ecclesial and individual Christian praxis. In an earlier post I picked up on a debate between Mike Bird and Ben Myers. Now Phil Sumpter has found one of his many choice quotes from Childs. This too stresses the inseparability of exegesis and theology,

I continue to register a concern that talking of this relationship easily slips into discussing the relationship simply of academic disciplines. The whole web of reading scripture, and developing coherent and systematic reflections is indeed a dialectic, but it is not really the case that these activities are the only or even the primary factors involved. Both occur not only at the desk, but in the world as the church lives out its mission and engages in worship.

At the risk of a gross over-simplification, I want to suggest that what we might call “primary” theology takes two forms: what the church “says” to God in worship, and what the church “says” about God in mission. I put “says” in inverted commas because I intend it to include non-verbal “saying”: the attitudes, space, gesture, ritual and music of worship also speak, as do the acts of charity, outreach, and engagement in mission, along with the living out of the gospel in ordinary.

By designating this primary theology, I am speaking of it as part of the raw stuff of our speech to and about God. It includes traditional readings of scripture, images, inherited ways of thinking and the patterns of intellectual and practical organisation. But it also generates new expressions, as new prayers are uttered, new hymns written, and fresh circumstances and contexts are encountered. There are obvious historical examples. One early one is the way in which the worship of Christ was entwined with the thinking that led to the affirmation of his full and co-eternal divinity. (It is, I think, no accident that the one possible place in the Pauline corpus where Paul may refer to Jesus as God comes in an expression of praise.) A little later, and in the West, the development of the doctrine of original sin, for better or worse, is tied up with the baptismal practice of the Church. More recently, until pulled back by Vatican II, it was mariological devotion leading mariological doctrine within the RC Church. Even more recently, not least under the praxis of liberation, the Lucan text of Jesus setting out his mission at the start of its ministry has displaced the Great Commission as the foundation text of Christian mission.

The more “academic” disciplines (though they may also take place in non-academic contexts) of exegesis and systematics may also be expressions of this primary theology. Certainly, they are invaluable and essential practices of “secondary” theology. That is, they may themselves generate fresh speech about God, but they equally (perhaps essentially) need to be concerned with asking whether the new ways of speaking about God that appear in worship and mission are, actually, true to the story of Jesus. The exegete reflects on the readings of scripture prompted by these fresh expressions and draws them into relationship with the historical meaning and context, the theologian teases out their implications for the whole corpus of Christian teaching, seeking out either coherence or inconsistency. Are the implications helpful or harmful, provoking new appreciations of truth, or generating serious conflict with older appreciations? Do these new ways of speaking fit the biblical and gospel story, or squeeze it out of shape?

This secondary theology may in turn become primary, as on the basis of the more developed reflections, fresh apprehensions of God are grasped, new ways of speaking opened up, and a clearer vision of the work of the Spirit in the contemporary world obtained. But it is never only a dialectic between biblical exegesis and systematic theology, but an ongoing engagement with the whole life of the scripture-reading and theologically-reflecting church in its worship and mission. This is, I think, what we mean by a living tradition: it is never simply the repetition of what has been received, but its creative, worshipful and missionary restatement.

I want to go back to my earlier discussion of the translation of μυστήριον (secret, later mystery) in the New Testament. This was a response to Rich Rhodes’ stimulating post at Better Bibles. Continuing the conversation, he left a helpful comment on my response:

We come to use pseudo-Greek terms in English to refer to things that theologians have worked out over the last two millennia. The problem is that none of those understandings were present in any but a seminal form at the time the Scripture was written. (I’ll have to post on this sometime soon.)

Moreover, μυστήριον is a technical term in Roman era Greek culture, but it doesn’t refer to anything like valid Christian mysticism. (Things to be believed/lived rather than to be simply understood.)

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not denying that such things are important by any means. It’s one of my main complaints about the evangelical church today is that is is too much about knowing and doing and too little about being. However, I still think that it is a mistake of the most serious kind to read our theology back into Scripture and use that to govern our translation. I have yet to read a translation that doesn’t somewhere do exactly that.

I’m not sure I find the matter quite so straightforward. A large part of me agrees with Rich: translation should work with the meaning of the original text in its original context. There is a nagging voice at the back of mind, however, that wants to raise some other questions about this.

It’s not just about the word μυστήριον obviously. There are many other fine candidates. Some have been controversial for centuries, largely because of theological controversies at the time, such as ἐκκλησία (assembly, church, congregation) or ἐπίσκοπος (overseer, supervisor, bishop). Others seem to be freshly raised: should βαπτίζω be “dip, immerse” or “baptise”?

This is not just a question of translation. Orthodox Christians reading the Greek text will be reading the later time-hallowed ecclesial meanings into these texts without any translation being involved. The text both helped create these meanings, and then is re-conceived with them present. It is the problem with a living text which is used in so many diverse ways within the ongoing life of the community that authored it, and one might also wish to say, theologically, under the guidance of the Spirit who inspired it. Some of the developments of textual criticism also point to the nature of the Scriptures as a living text, that is continuously reread and has, as it were, a biography behind it.

There are also various intra-canonical examples of which Matthew’s use of a translation of Isaiah 7:14 is just one of the more hotly debated. The LXX and NT authors did not follow Rich’s prescription for what makes a good translation. The church increasingly followed this scriptural example in its christological reading, especially of the psalms. It was above all Christology that popularised the reading “kiss the Son” in Psalm 2. Interestingly, the Church of England’s recent debates about the translation of the Psalter for use in worship covered this same debate. Did one pick a translation which, while harder to defend as a strict translation of the Hebrew, nonetheless picked up the rich echoes of that psalm’s uses in the developing spiritual tradition of the church?

I have no answers to these questions: I merely observe that they are there, and they are there because the Scriptures have belonged not solely to the generation of the more-or-less apostolic authors, but to every generation since. Perhaps reading with the church has some implications for translations that make more room for customary readings. I sense a further need of translation footnotes coming on.

A joyful Christmas to all my readers.

I’ve noted before that one of my favourite carols is Adam lay y-bounden.At the risk of increasing some Protestants’ blood-pressure, here are the words in full:

Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took,
As clerkës finden written
In their book.

Nor had one apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Then had never Our Lady
A-been heaven’s queen.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was.
Therefore we may singen
Deo gratias!

This carol is the Christmas equivalent of the Exsultet’s felix culpa – “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, that gained for us so great a Redeemer.” The primal sin of the Genesis narrative leads to a redemption that goes beyond restoring what was lost.

There are, I believe, various theological speculations from the early mediaeval period on that develop this line of thought quite daringly. The reason that Satan rebelled, according to this way of thinking, is that he saw God lifting up physical bodily humankind above the pure spiritual beings of the angels. Heaven’s royal line would embrace human beings through adoption, and the angels would gain a human Queen. This mariological image should be read as a type for redeemed humanity, rather than an exclusively Marian idea. It typifies in one individual the destiny of humanity in Christ as a royal line and priesthood.

The Christmas story should stretch our theological imaginations. Too often, the way we talk about God’s future for the world and for humanity is simply not ambitious or daring enough. It is too ready to stay at the level of a return to Eden, or to moral perfection. It is too quick to dispose of the material world in favour of some vaguely spiritual destiny. The bold imagination of this carol takes us way beyond that, even for those who dislike its Marian focus. God’s grace to heal and redeem far outweighs human capacity to sin. God’s gift in Christ is about more than God’s gift in creation. At Christmas we do not simply sing about creation restored, but creation transcended.

Oh blessed be the time that apple taken was.

Happy Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago I disagreed with Michael Halcomb about dismissing the early extra-canonical tradition that Jesus was born in a cave. (His response is here, and my further one here.) I still wish to take the cave tradition seriously as possible historical evidence. I was therefore intrigued to come across (HT Jim West) this argument from Jerome Murphy O’Connor, which makes a detailed historical and archaeological argument from the cave tradition for Bethlehem as Jesus’ birthplace. (He is arguing against this piece by Steve Mason.) All power to his elbow.

The unfamiliarity of the NRSV’s rendition of 2 Timothy 3 caught me off balance in thinking about today’s lectionary readings.

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,  so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 my emphasis)

That emphasized phrase is intended as an inclusive rendering of the traditional “man of God” (ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος). But I think here it’s a mistake. Versions of that phrase often occur as a title of dignity, if not office, in the Greek Bible. (NB In the following not exhaustive list of references Hebrew / English verse numbers are in brackets where they differ) In Deuteronomy 33:1, Joshua 14:6 and the ascription to Psalm 89 (90), Moses is “the man of God.” In Nehemiah 12:24, 36 it is David. In 1 Samuel 9:6,10 the initially anonymous “man of God” is referred to as a “seer” (v11) and turns out to be Samuel (v14). In 2 Kings 6 & 7 it is used for Elisha. In 1 Kings 13 “the man of God” is anonymous and does the work of a prophet. and similarly in 1 Kings 21:28 (20:28). Judges 13:6 is anomalous in referring it to “the angel of the LORD” but all other references are to men who perform a particular and usually significant role.

Given both the scriptural resonances, and implied context of 2 Timothy where Paul is stiffening his protégé’s sinews to exercise authority, it seems we need to retain that phrase “man of God” and see it emphasizing the importance of Timothy’s instructional role. It is, in context, specifically for the duly appointed teacher, that Scripture is useful, and that interpretation is borne out by the fact that it is “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”, that is, teaching, reproving, correcting and training others primarily, though also, implicitly, himself.

If this is correct, then is it not also correct to say that this much quoted verse in support of the authority of scripture actually commends it first and foremost as a tool in the hands of the Church’s called and appointed teachers? It’s usefulness to individuals studying it for their own teaching and training must then be worked out as a secondary and subordinate application of this verse. But its primary contextual meaning does not give clear such clear support to this most common individualist use.