Where art thou, O liturgical beauty and holiness?

Back in February of 2003, a Catholic Long Islander who calls himself a "Generation X Revert" wrote a brilliant poem entitled "Catholic Howel," patterned after Allen Ginsberg's classic "Howl." The Catholic poem opens with the lines:

"I saw the best Catholics of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving,
hysterically naked
dragging themselves through the streets at dawn looking
for beautiful Liturgy ..."

The sentiment is one with which I'm sure many of us can identify. In any case, it got me thinking again about liturgy. I used to be rather indifferent to liturgy at one time. But I've come to see more clearly over the last decade of my life how liturgy impacts the practical lives of people and what they believe. In other words, I've come to a better understanding the law: lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). That is to say, how we pray will have an impact on what we believe and ultimately on how we live.

It's funny how out liturgical sensibilities are conditioned by our experience. My immediate background before becoming a Catholic was in the Episcopal Church. I was familiar with the restrained decorum, reverence, and beauty of Anglican liturgy and hymnody before crossing over to Rome. Whatever one thinks of Thomas Cranmer and Miles Coverdale, I think all will agree that there is some truth in the remark of those who speak of their beautiful cadences and unsurpassable use of English in the Book of Common Prayer. So you may understand it when I say that it was with an aesthetic sense of having "married down" that I found myself as a new Catholic assaulted by a new liturgy of 1970 vintage, hastily cobbled together after the Second Vatican Council, ineptly translated, freighted with banalities, and serenaded by guitar-strumming song leaders crooning Marty Haugen ditties into staticky microphones. From our point of view in the American Catholic Church today, the Anglican liturgical legacy we experienced in the Episcopal Church compares quite favorably, to say the least. Many of us would probably jump at the opportunity to assist at Mass at an "Anglican Use" parish, where the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer has been slightly modified to bring its most basic points of doctrinal divergence into conformity with Catholic teaching.

The irony is that many of us forget the multitudes of English, Welsh, and Irish Catholics who laid down their lives rather than accept the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer by Cranmer (pictured right), the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury and apostate Catholic who fiercely hated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and by means of his liturgical revolution in England robbed generations of their Eurcharistic patrimony. The Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, we may tend to forget, did not consider Anglicanism to be a slightly deficient form of Christianity, but, in fact, an entirely different religion. The Book of Common Prayer refers to the Sacrifice of the Mass as a blasphemy, denies five of the seven sacraments, denies the intercession of the saints and prayers for the dead, forbids any notion of reservation or adoration of "communion bread," and substitutes the authority of the English Crown for that of the Holy See.

Does this mean that the new Catholic Mass, even if its implementation is usually aesthetically deficient, is at least doctrinally better? Well, yes and no. Yes, it is better in that the Sacrifice of the Mass is not declared a blasphemy and there is no denial of the seven sacraments, intercession of the saints, prayers for the dead, reservation or adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, or denial of Rome's authority. Not, at least, in principle. But the ironies multiply when, upon examining the origin of the new Catholic Mass, we see that a committee of Protestants was given an advisory role in its composition, that many of the central and distinctive elements of Catholic Eucharistic theology are played down, such as the Sacrifice and Real Bodily Presence at the heart of the liturgy. Many of the other changes introduced in the new Catholic Mass have had the effect of undermining these traditional Catholic teachings, such as the elimination of the Communion Rail, the introduction of standing instead of kneeling to receive Communion, the reception of Communion in the hand instead of on the tongue, the use of altar girls and female lectors, and the regular use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, so that the altar looks like a common kitchen table being set for a covered dish dinner.

What the Second Vatican Council called for in its Constitution on Divine Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) was a "reform" of the traditional Roman Rite, not a replacement of it by the creation of a new Catholic Mass as a substitute for it. What we have now, however, is a hastily imposed substitute for the traditional Mass, a substitute that is quickly becoming a forum for seemingly perpetual experimentation, which in the experience of the younger generations is the only Mass that they have known. That the new Mass represents what Cardinal Ratzinger calls a "rupture" in liturgical tradition is clear even from the remarks of the most ardent defenders of the new Mass who were responsible for cobbling it together. Fr. Joseph Gelineau, S.J., for example, who was described by the architect of the new Mass, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, as one of the "great masters of the international liturgical world," declares with apparent satisfaction:

"Let those who like myself have known and sung a Latin-Gregorian High Mass remember it if they can. Let them compare it with the Mass we now have. Not only the words, the melodies, and some of the gestures are different. To tell the truth it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed."

On the other side of the fence, those who are most critical of the new Mass find themselves in complete agreement with this description of liturgical rupture and dislocation, but find the condition utterly devastating and lamentable. Monsignor Klaus Gamber, for example, sums up the result of the post-Vatican II liturgical innovations thus: "Today we are standing before the ruins of almost 2,000 years of Church tradition." Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger likewise sums up the liturgical aftermath of the Council in close-to-apocalyptic terms: "The result has been not an animation but a devastation."

Since the liturgical reforms mandated by Vatican II have not yet even begun to be implemented, and since the widely available liturgical options are far from good, where is a Catholic to look? In his concluding address at a liturgical conference at the Abbey of Fontgombault in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger significantly declared that it is "indispensable to continue to offer the opportunity to celebrate according to the old Missal, as a sign of the enduring identity of the Church.... [T]his Missal of the Church should offer a point of reference, and should become a refuge for those faithful who, in their own parish, no longer find a liturgy genuinely celebrated in accordance with the texts authorized by the Church.... What we previously knew only in theory has become for us a practical experience: the Church stands and falls with the liturgy. When the adoration of the divine Trinity declines, when the Faith no longer appears in its fullness in the liturgy of the Church ... then faith will have lost the place where it is expressed and where it dwells."

[All quotations from Cardinal Ratzinger are from Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, edited by Alcuin Reid, OSB (Farnborough, Hampshire, UK: St. Michael's Abbey Press, 2003)]

On the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum and the institutionalization of abuses in the Novus Ordo Mass

On April 23, 2004, the Vatican released its latest Instruction on the Eucharist, Redemptionis Sacramentum, an instruction on certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist. The Adoremus Bulletin, which reprinted the entire Instruction in it's Special Documentary Edition of July-August, 2004, called it "unprecedented and highly important."

My question, however, is whether we have not reached the point of such gaping discrepancies between the word and deed that it must be seriously asked whether any such instruction from the Vatican can be taken seriously. Take the comparatively "small" matter of "Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion," where members of the laity are permitted to assist in the distribution of Communion. Here is what the instruction states:

"[157.] If there is usually present a sufficient number of sacred ministers [priests and deacons] for the distribution of Holy Communion, extraordinary inisters of Holy Communion may not be appointed. Indeed, in such circumstances, those who may have already been appointed to this ministry should not exercise it. The practice of those Priests is reprobated who, even though present at the celebration, abstain from distributing Communion and hand this function over to laypersons.

"[158.] Indeed, the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion may administer Communion only when the Priest and Deacon are lacking, when the Priest is prevented by weakness or advanced age or some other genuine reason, or when the number of faithful coming to Communion is so great that the very celebration of Mass would be unduly prolonged. This, however, is to be understood in such a way that a brief prolongation, considering the circumstances and culture of the place, is not at all a sufficient reason....

"[160.] Let the diocesan Bishop give renewed consideration to the practice in recent years regarding this matter, and if circumstances call for it, let him correct it or define it more precisely...." [emphasis added]

My experience suggests that little will be done to bring the ordinary practice of most parishes in conformity with these norms. Certainly most individual priests lack the fortitude to carry out such reforms in the context of parishes and dioceses where the practice -- as in most parishes -- has been quite otherwise. Need I explain this to anyone? Is there any Catholic, even one who considers himself lucky enough to be in a generally "good" parish, who does not witness two or three or even half-a-dozen "Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion" (usually called "Eucharistic Ministers," and usually middle-aged women) gathering around the altar after the recitation or singing of the Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God ...")?

This practice is a comparatively minor abuse. It involves no priest preaching open heresy or trying to consecrate a Dominos Pizza. But it is still a serious abuse: it's effect is desacralizing -- that is, it detracts from the sacredness of the Sanctuary -- the Holy space around the altar that used to be separated from the congregation by the Communion Rail, or, before that, the Rood Screen. In fact, so much of our experience has been anomalous that the irregular has come to seem regular and one could speak of the institutionalization of abuse in the experience of Novus Ordo parishes. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments admitted as much in its official journal Notitiae (Oct. 1992), in which an editorial laments:

"Thirty years are too many for an incorrect praxis, which in and of itself tends to be already fixed in place. The malformations born in the first years of the application still endure, and gradually, as new generations follow one another, could almost become the rule."

The problem, of course, is that these abuses have "become the rule." Most Catholics today couldn't recognize a liturgical abuse if it slapped them in the face. All they have ever experienced in church, virtually, has been liturgical abuse.

The trouble with focusing on abuses in the Novus Ordo Mass is that it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Here we've focused on abuse involved in the role of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. This may lead one to think that the problems with the Novus Ordo are therefore minor, since this isn't a truly grave abuse. But the problem is that the abuses are cumulative and epidemic. When you look into the history of the development of what constitutes current liturgical practice, what at first appear to be minor blemishes begin to take on a more serious cast.

Take Communion in the hand. Nobody considers that an "abuse" anymore. Even Cardinal Ratzinger has recently made light of it and suggested that people not make an issue of it. It is true that Communion had been given in the hand in the early Church. But as German liturgist Fr. Joseph Jungmann has explained, as reverance for the Blessed Sacrement deepened in the life of the Church over the centuries, the tradition developmed that only that which was consecrated could touch the Host, and this exceptional privilege as reserved for the consecrated hands of the priest, which had been anointed for this purpose at his ordination. There was a similar reverance for the Holy of Holies and Ark of the Covenant in the Tabernacle of the ancient Hebrews, and the privilege of entering its precincts was reserved to the High Priest alone on certain specified occasions. Today in many parishes all barriers have been seemingly removed, and unconsecrated laymen and laywomen can waltz up to the Altar or Tabernacle and handle the consecrated Hosts as though they were going to the kitchen for a common snack.

The practice of Communion in the hand was first resurrected by Protestants in the 16th century as an expression of their belief that the bread received at Communion is merely ordinary bread and that the person distributing it is an ordinary person. In our own time, the practice of Communion in the hand began shortly after the Second Vatican Council among "progressive" parishes in the Netherlands, whence it spread to neighboring countries. When Pope Paul VI subsequently polled the bishops of the world as to the acceptability of the practice, the overwhelming majority replied that it was not, and the Instruction Memoriale Domini, published in 1969, gave a clear exposition of the reasons for the traditional practice and the threat to reverance posed by the abuse of Communion in the hand. Pope Paul made the following direct appeal to the bishops of the world:

"The Supreme Pontiff judged that the long received manner of ministering Holy Communion to the faithful should not be changed. The Apostolic See therefore strongly urges bishops, priests and people to observe zealously this law, valid and again confirmed, according to the judgment of the majority of the Catholic episcopate, in the form which the present rite of the sacred liturgy employs, and out of concern for the common good of the Church." (Memoriale Domini, the Instruction on the Manner of Administering Holy Communion, The Congregation for Divine Worship, May 29, 1969)

This was the Church's instruction. Was it implimented by the bishops? On the contrary, in country after country, it was ignored by the very bishops who had voted to uphold the traditional practice, as the Holy See, following the lead of these bishops, yielded in abject surrender to the disobedience of the rebels.

The same is true with other practices, now commonplace, like Communion in the hand, that were originally proscribed by the Conciliar Church, then later legitimated under pressure -- practices such as the ordinary use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, Communion under both kinds, altar girls, the regular use of female lectors, the ideologically tendentious mistranslations of the New Mass by the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL) -- for example, translating pro multis ("for many") as "for all" -- liturgical dancing, balloons and clowns, slipshod or heretical catechesis, the promotion of heterodox literature as though it represented orthodox Catholicism, etc.

At present, there are few places in the world where one can find a Novus Ordo Mass celebrated without abuse, with dignity and reverance. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, is one example, as is the Brompton Oratory or Westminster Cathedral in London. But examples are few. The Church seems to have effectively abandoned the task of carrying out the reform of the traditional Roman Rite mandated by Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Fr. Joseph Fessio's Adoremus Society seems to be about the only organization devoted to carrying out the concerns of the Council Fathers, but its monthly Adoremus Bulletin seems almost wholly devoted to pointing out abuses in the Novus Ordo Mass and pointing out the instructions of the Vatican on how these abuses are to be corrected, rather than with any substantial concern on how the traditional Roman Rite might be reformed. This leaves Catholics who desire to be faithful in the worship in a pinch. The Novus Ordo is so far from being an established 'rite' that it constitutes what Msgr. Klaus Gamber described as a "liturgical destruction of startling proportions -- a debacle worsening with each passing year," a "dismantling of the traditinal values and piety," a "destruction of the forms of the Mass which had developed organically during the course of many centuries" (The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, 1993, p. 5). Meanwhile, the only truly established Western 'rite' is one that comes with excellent credentials and has served the Church well for centuries: the traditional Roman Rite, the oldest Christian liturgical rite in the world, whose Roman Canon stems from the fourth century. The only problem is that nearly all bishops and priests seem so threatened by it that, as with so many other things, they are reluctant to implement the provisions for its continued use guaranteed by Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia Dei adflicta. So what's a wanna-be-good Catholic to do?

On divine right of kings & questioning authority

Foster: I've already tracked down some sources in my personal library and they back what you say. Here again, you must keep in mind that I was posing a question and doing so because of what I read in Hilary Putnam's book. Referring to his earlier study, Reason, Truth, and History, Putnam states:

"I also pointed out that even believing Catholics now concede that the Church's support for monarchy [in connection with the Divine Right of Kings] was based as much on political considerations as on revelation or sound theology. In short, the belief in the Divine Right of Kings lacks, and, I claim, always lacked, a rational justification" (Ethics without Ontology, p. 114-115).

Blosser: The "Divine right of Kings," as I've said, is not and never has been a Catholic doctrine, despite the fact that one may find individual Catholic writers who have, reasoning from St. Paul's injunction to submit to all governing authority as from God in Rom. 13, defended it. Not only that, but it may well be argued that the notion of the Divine Right of Kings is a Protestant invention, as does Hilaire Belloc in Characters of the Reformation, where he argues that James I of England was the first to inaugurate its full and undisputed practice. Belloc writes:

"Here it may be objected that the launching of this new doctrine (the first name of which was 'The Divine Right of Kings') and the attempt to practice it was much older. For we must always remember that whether it is called 'The Divine Right of Kings' or 'The Full Independence of the Nation' it comes, as we shall see in a moment, to exactly the same thing, expressing the same idea and having the same consequences.

"The first official and public statement of this sort was made by [Thomas] Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, at the coronation of little Edward VI, as early as 1547, fifty-six years before James I came to the English throne. The doctrine had been formally enunciated in a loud voice from the altar steps of Westminster Abbey, in the sermon which Cranmer addressed to the little boy-King on his enthronement. Cranmer reminded him that no power on earth could claim any rights over the King of England, and he said this, of course, as a direct challenge
to the Papacy.

"Hitherto, it had been admitted throughout Christendom that quarrels between Christian nations were subject to the general moral authority of the Church, and to ultimate appeal to the Papacy in cases of specific dispute. In other words, Christendom had been regarded as one realm, of which the particular nations were only provinces; and a certain moral law and a certain visible organization were accepted as having common authority throughout....

"At this point it is important to understand how this phrase, which souns to us so quaint, 'The Divine Right of Kings,' is really identical with our most modern nationalist doctrine.... The operative word in the sentence is not 'King' but 'Divine' -- and when people talked of 'Divine Right' they meant the
right to govern with private responsibility to God alone, and not to any general organizatin of Christendom here on earth." (Hilaire Belloc, Characters of the Reformation, ch. 15: "James I of England," pp. 135-137, emphasis added)

Foster: So if it is "defined dogma," then its veracity cannot be questioned. Defined dogmas cannot be "tested" or "examined" in order to make sure they really orobjectively *are* revealed truths or ecclesiastically binding for the faithful. We've talked about this point before, but I still think that Catholics have not provided a satisfactory answer to the question, "How do you [i.e. Catholics] know that the dogmas defined by the Church are objectively true and beyond being questioned or contested?" Maybe what you write below addresses this issue.

Blosser: Well, of course there is nothing wrong in, say, my puzzling over what the Church's dogma of the Holy Trinity means, or examining the historical sources to see whether the Church Fathers accepted the doctrine, etc. One can certainly do this. I suppose one is encouraged to do this, since it can only strengthen his faith.

But questioning the Church and her teachings from the standpoint of unfaith or bad faith is another mater. Perhaps an analogy may help. Once a Catholic trusts the Church as Mater et Magister, to question or test her teaching would be a little like growing up in a home where at dinner time every day you scrupulously interrogate your mother to make sure that what she's served up for the family meal isn't contaminated or tainted with poison.

You raise the question how Catholics can know that what their Church teaches is objectively true and beyond being questioned or contested. That's a fair question. But the thing to see is that there's nothing particularly unique about the position of the Church here, for one could ask the same question of a good JW's faith in God's existence and unicity. I would certainly imagine that you would say that you are free to "examine" or "test" these doctrines (which Catholics share with JWs), as we have done in some of our classes while reading the likes of St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas and the counter-arguments of Hume and Kant. But to seriously doubt these truths, or to cast them into the category of claims that are continually debatable, would make one a poor JW or Catholic, would they not? So how do we know that God exists and that He is one? Well, I suppose we'd say because we've come to trust the teaching of our religious instructors, or the veracity of the Bible, etc. Is our conviction that God exists and is one "beyond being questioned"? Well, it depends what that means. In one sense, we'd likely respond: yes, it's something we consider established, which we don't bother to seriously question. It's a conviction so basic it occupies the level of a properly basic assumption. But in another sense, we'd probably both admit that these convictions are not beyond question -- particularly in the sense that there are other people who seriously question them, and we recognize the existence of various arguments that might be mounted in support of their truth, etc. Catholic dogma, while not always derived directly from Scripture, are all of a similar order, I would argue.

Foster: No matter how much I trust another human being, I always reserve the right to question or contest propositions that are uttered or written by him/her. I believe that the same principle applies to those taking the lead in the Christian congregation. Seeing that all teachers in Christ's EKKLHSIA are fallible with respect to action and speech, I must always "make sure of all things" and test the "spirits" to determine whether they are from God (James 3:1-2; 1 Thess 5:21; 1 Jn 4:1).

Blosser: Starting with the latter assertions first, I would agree with most of what you say here. All things must be tested. Particularly the opinions of fallible human beings. However the case is complicated when we come to the opinions of those fallible human beings who, as Apostles, wrote the Gospels and Epistles that comprise the New Testament. For though they, as human beings, are properly described as fallible, we generally acknowledge that God somehow in His own miraculous way supernaturally guided them in their teaching and writing to express infallibly those truths that He wished us to know for our salvation. So should we question the opinions of the biblical writers? Well, in one sense, I think we'd agree that we ought to. We ought to examine, test, and scrutinize them so that we can know their veracity and be able to demonstrate this veracity as best we can. But in another sense, I think we would both agree that there would be something a trifle perverse about a religious believer who indefinitely continued to seriously question whether this verse or that chapter or this epistle is truly part of God's revelation to us. And, as you know, those of us who are Catholic would regard in the same light the declarations of our college of bishops in union with the Holy Father when these are directed to the universal Church, address a serious matter of faith and morals, and are expressly intended as an exercise of the Church's magisterial((or prophetic) office.

The matter can be further complicated by the fact that a defined dogma may itself come under disputation as to its proper interpretation over time. When this happens, it may require the Church once more to step in and offer a further clarification or refinement in her definition of the issue. This has happened on such issues as the reservation of priestly ordination to men alone, or the sinfulness of contraception, etc. So one could say there is an ongoing dialectical relationship between the Church's (1) dogmatic office of defining doctrine and (2) her members' questioning, puzzling over, and examining of those dogmas.

God & Gender language

Edgar Foster: I know you'll disagree, but I find instances in the OT especially, of God relating to us in ways that highlight His "feminine" side. In short, I believe that the metaphors in Scripture depicting God as feminine and/or masculine are just that. Terence Fretheim and George Caird have both produced excellent works dealing with the metaphorical imagery contained in Holy Writ. I think that is what we have going on when we read texts referring to God as Father or as a caring mother.

Philip Blosser: Perhaps one source of the difference between us on this score is that your [Jehovah's Witness] theology has no divine Incarnation in Jesus. If I were a unitarian, I might also feel inclined to say, with the contemporary feminists and others, that all of this in the Bible is mere "metaphor." But Jesus was/is a MAN, and that ain't no "metaphor." And while the OT says that God is LIKE a mother, I'm not sure it says that God IS a mother, in the way that it says that God IS a Father. But that's secondary. I think the whole scenario which describes our language of God as "anthropomorphic" is absolutely upside down. Who do we think WE are, anyway, making ourselves the "archetype" by which to describe God?! Rather, I think the human language of the Bible is "theomorphic," in that God is, as Calvin says, "lisping" to us as infants, using language that we may have some 'pale' understanding of, but that the "Fatherhood" of God in Himself is something that far exceeds our human capacity to fathom. But He IS certainly FATHER, despite the occasional feminine similie by which we say he may be "like" a mother (much in the way we describe some fathers a "gentle"); but he IS not a mother.

Foster: The incarnation is an issue that I have purposely tried to avoid in this discussion. Granted, if Christ was really God incarnate, then I think you would have a point about the masculine issue. However, I do not affirm the incarnation and, what is more, yours truly does not believe that Christ (the Messiah) had to be a man. If the Edenic Fall had transpired differently, it is quite plausible that Messiah could have been a woman. There certainly is no functional or ontological reason why God's anointed could not have been a woman. This is my opinion and does not represent the official view of the JW organization.

Blosser: I suppose it's hypothetically possible that God could have saved the world without an Incarnation or Messiah at all, or that he Messiah could have been a particularly intelligent frog. But in the order of divine Providence, the Almighty has chosen to mirror His own nature in His plan of redemption, so that the whole cosmic mystery of creation and redemption is mirrored in the pale echtype of our gendered relationship to one another as human men and women.

Foster: As for the holy spirit, I've always found it interesting that Scripture uses masculine, feminine and neuter pronouns to refer to "it."

Blosser: Even in English, one could refer to the Godhead as "it," though it wouldn't eviscerate God's "personal" nature.

Foster: I'll check out Leon Podles' book soon, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. But I must confess that I do not understand what you mean when you say that religion is losing its "manly" nature. Why should religion be exclusively or primarily manly? What is wrong with a little muliebrity in religion?

Blosser: It's become soft and feminine in a disgusting, touchy-feely sort of way. It's not that the masculine cannot be compassionate or merciful. Rather, it's what many religious groups have been shying away from confrontational issues such as truth, sin, apologetics, asceticism, repentance, sanctification, etc., and concentrating, instead, on such things as "inclusiveness," "fellowship," "belonging," "self-esteem," "self-empowerment," "overcoming depression," "self-acceptance," etc. Kneeling on a hard marble floor has been replaced by sitting on soft padded pews, and gregorian chant has been replaced by guitar-strumming 'feel-good' ditties. This is the kind of thing I mean.

Foster: I am not comfortable with calling the Judaic or Christian account of God's dealings a "myth" or "fable." Yes, one could define MUQOS in a way that vitiates the pejorative connotations often associated with MUQOI. However, I feel much safer following the lead of the apostles, who went to great lengths showing that Christianity is neither a myth nor is it based on myths or fables. Story may be better, though NT Wright's NTPG illustrates difficulties, I think, that may result from this usage. There may be a place for mythology in the life of the Christian. I just do not think that a Christian should categorize the Christian account of Jesus Christ as a true myth. According to Mayhan and Campbell, myths are true anyway!

Blosser: I agree, as a matter of tactical prudence, that using "myth" or "fable" is fraught with hazards. But I think that part of your hesitation may also stem from what I mentioned before, namely an inclination to see
truth as conveyed only through raw empirical description, a preference for historiography over poetry, etc.

Foster: Granted, there are stories (myths) that serve as indirect testimony to the truth revealed through Christ Jesus and the OT prophets. But why spend a lot of time with imperfect images of the truth when one can have the real thing?

Blosser: Perhaps this was what I was trying to say about philosophy. Why spend a lot of time with Heidy and Hegelly when one can have Augustine, Thomas, the Bible, and the Magisterium? ;-) Don't get me wrong. You know I don't regret spending my life studying apostate philosophy!! Someone's got to take out the garbage. ;-)

Foster: . . . Besides, the Christian and Judaic God cannot die or rise again. He is incapable of dying, being the immortal and self-existent one (Hab 1:12).

Blosser: That's the SCANDALON of Christ crucified, ain't it!

Foster: Mutatis mutandis, I would say that you've hit the nail on the head. I do believe that prose (in general) more reliably and profoundly communicates truth. I am not so trusting of myths.

Blosser: This is where I disagree, and may seem to be more inclined towards K, thought that doesn't mean mere "subjectivism," as I've tried to make clear above. I think prose is good for communicating some things. But not others. Bringing your wife a bouquet of 12 red Roses surrounded by Baby's Breath says something than no number of repeated "I love you's" can communicate. Further, if what you said were true, there'd never be any need to make love to your wife. You could simply exchange "I love you's." In fact, if you've exchanged the words ONCE, there'd really be no need to ever repeat yourself. If your wife said to you tomorrow, "Edgar, I love you," you might reply, "What? You've already told me that back when we were first dating. Whazzamatta? You think I don't TRUST you or somethin'?" But such "prosaic truths" don't cut it. It's not that propositions aren't "true." They are. But what they communicate is something shadowy and etherial, confined to the tangle of abstractions we call ideas in our minds. Something far deeper than that is communicated by Jesus submitting to death on the tree ("He loved us and He gave Himself for us," we say; but our SAYING it only skims the surface), or by Jesus handing a bit of bread to us and saying, "Take, eat this is my Body, given for you."

The rationalistic positivist would doubtless see this as a potentially confusing gesture capable of being clarified and crystalized in a well-formed proposition; whereas, in fact, IMHO, he's just pinning a superficial label to something whose reality his intellect can't begin to fathom, though his soul, if opened to the reality, might "know" something here of the profundity in a way analogous to the manner after which Adam "knew" his wife Eve, fruitfully.

Foster: I don't find the "he or she" usage awkward at all. If one finds this usage awkward, just use "she."

Blosser: That's even more awkward, as anyone who stumbles across the Plantinga-type usage at first senses. It sounds 'affected.'

Besides, it soon creates other problems. I once tried to illustrate this by submitting an article in which I alternately used "he" and "she" in different
paragraphs, but pointed out that feminists would hardly be satisfied with this if I used "he" to refer to all those individuals who were virtuous and "she" to refer to all those who were vicious.

Foster: Traditionally, Bible translators including the NWTTC, have utilized the generic pronoun "he" without the faithful imputing chauvinism to the OT or NT writers.

Blosser: The English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church first was rendered by a 'pc' group in "inclusive" language, but rejected by the Vatican. The current translation uses the traditional "he." The Church's
reason for insisting upon this is that it claims that the change in gender language represents more often than not also an illicit change in theology.

Foster: Yes, some have accused the Bible of patriarchalism. But one does not necessary have to conclude that the Bible or Shakespeare are prime examples of male dominance literature. On the other hand, a bunch of literature that preceded us has been guilty of relegating women and other groups to the margins of society.

Blosser: I'm skeptical about this as a blanket assertion. I don't think that the literature has "relegated women" and "other groups" to the margins of society. I think it simply reflected the state of affairs at those times. And while you may not like this, I'm not willing to insist that everything about women's traditional roles as, say, "homemakers," as opposed to, say, "corporate executives," was a bad thing. I think some of the problems we have in society today may be due to confusions about roles of men and women in society, whch reflect, in turn, confusions about our 'being' as gendered creatures. I do not think that we're doing anyone a tremendous and praise-worthy favor by tossing a few more feminine pronouns into our language. In fact, I'd be willing to argue that we're confusing the order
of things.

Foster: JWs, whether they perfectly live by these words, often
talk about the importance of being "reasonable" or "yielding." See Phil 4:5; James 3:17. The point I wish to make here is that while the consequences that you are referring to COULD come about as a result of the "he or she" usage, it does not necessarily follow that one who employs "she or he" or "she" and those who are exposed to this usage, will become anti-traditional, anti-Christian or anti-Jewish.

Blosser: I agree. And a diet of violent TV won't necessarily
make one violent.

Foster: . . . What we need here is the JW notion of being "reasonable." Without reasonableness, a feminine entity would take offense at being called a "woman," "female" or "human being." And if you remember, even Heidegger avoids the term "human being." He only speaks of being-in-the-world sans the "human" part.

Blosser: Yeah, "Da-sein." "Being there." Which reminds me of the fantastic Peter Sellers movie by that name, "Being There." It's a wonderful parody of Heideggarianism gone to seed with Shirley McLaine.

Owen Thomas on "sin" & "neurosis"

A philosophical interlocutor writes:

Owen Thomas, in Theological Questions: Analysis and Argument, defines sin as "estrangement from God resulting in estrangement from neighbor, self, and the world." He defines neurosis as "an unconscious emotional conflict arising from repression which inhibits the functioning of the persona-lity" (page 63). Lastly, Thomas depicts complementarity as that logical relation which deals with two different aspects of a unitary reality (e. g., essence and existence). With these definitions in mind, it is not difficult to see how neurosis could be a complement (i.e., another aspect) of the phenomenon that Christians label "sin." It is logically possible to suffer from neurosis and sin simultaneously. They are possibly two aspects of one reality.

Reply: I see your point, and I think there's truth in it. I also see this as an area of hazardously subjective and speculative proposition. It's just as possible that neurosis exists apart from sin, as the blindness of the man in John 9, according to Jesus, had nothing to do with sin. And I've read enough psychology to see an extremely dangerous tendency to REDUCE sin to a psychological disorder. Remind me that I have a photocopy of an article by a Rogerian psychoanalyst for you, someone who was instrumental in destroying (through his therapeutic treatment) a whole religious order of nuns in California, as well as many individual Jesuits and others.

Interlocutor:

I do not think that neurosis vitiates human responsibility for "trangressions." As Owen Thomas expresses matters: "Since sin is a matter of the will, it cannot be caused by something else without ceasing to be sin. Something similar is usually asserted about neurosis, namely that it cannot be externally caused and still be neurosis, that a neurosis is always caused by repression which is in some sense an act of the person and not anyone else" (page 65).

Reply: But Freud himself wouldn't necessarily accept that, being the biopsychic determinist that he was. For him, as I think I said, "repression" is distinct from "suppression" in being an unwitting defense mechanism of the mind, something distinct from an "act" (in the Aristotelian sense) which one "performs."

Interlocutor:

In other words, neurosis is still compatible with a view that places the locus of control within the individual. Remember that we're also talking complementarity and not identicalness.

Reply: What you've been saying here about neurosis I have no quarrel with. But it's all been "cleaned up." It's not what you find in Freud. Freud would not accept the kind of characterization of neurosis you're giving here, at least if I've understood him correctly. He's a DETERMINIST, after all.

I think what brought this all up was your insistence that, like Heidegger and others, Freud had many profound insights from which we can stand to benefit. Maybe so. But I'm not sure I agree that these were "insights" simply as he stated them. I think they involve profound distortions and what Herman Dooyeweerd would call "antinomies."

If these thinkers are useful when "cleaned up," then we must have some other sets of criteria by reference to which we do the cleaning, which can't be found within their theories.

The Church & the birth of modern science

As it turns out, the birth of modern science depended heavily on the discoveries of Catholic scientists, as Thomas Woods points out in his article, "The Church and the Birth of Modern Science," in Latin Mass magazine (Spring 2004). Writes Wood:

"The Catholic Church has been unjustly attacked over the years on more grounds than many of us care to recall, but her alleged hostility toward science may be her greatest debit in the popular mind. The caricatured and cartoonish version of the Galileo affair with which most people are familiar is very largely to blame for the widespread belief that the Church has obstructed the advance of scientific inquiry. But even if the Galileo incident had been every bit as bad as people think it was, Cardinal Newman found it revealing that this is the only example that ever comes to anyone's mind.

"Now it is certainly useful to point out, against those who criticize the Church for its alleged opposition to science, that certain important scientists were them-selves Catholic. But it is still more revealing that so many priests were accomplished scien-tists. It would doubtless come as a surprise to most people to learn that the man often identi-fied as the father of geology was Father Nicholas Steno (pictured right), a Lutheran convert who became a Catholic priest. Father Athanasius Kircher (pictured below), one of the last true polymaths of European intellectual history, has been called the father of Egyptology. The fist person to measure the rate of accele-ration of a freely falling body was yet another priest, Father Giambattista Ricciolli. Father Rober Boscovich has often been cited as the father of modern atomic theory. In the twentieth century, the study of earth-quakes, or seismology, was so dominated by Jesuits that it became known as "the Jesuit science."

"And that is far from all. Some thirty-five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists and mathemati-cisans. Indeed the Church's contributions to astronomy are all but unknown despite the fact that, as Professor J.L. Heilbron of the University of California at Berkeley points out, 'the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enligh-tenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.' The Church's true role in the development of modern science remains one of the best-kept secrets of modern history."

It was not coincidental, Wood notes, that the birth of science as a self-perpetuating field of intellectual endeavor should have occurred within a Catholic cultural milieu. Certain fundamental Christian ideas have been indispensable in making possible the emergence of scientific thought. (Read the rest of this article in Latin Mass magazine [Spring 2004], pp. 66-71. Unfortunately this article is not yet available online.)

Meyendorff on the Primacy of Peter

One of my students, Sean Fagan, is working on two related independent studies this summer, one with me on Cardinal Newman's theory of the development of Christian doctrine, another with Prof. Andrew Weisner on the conception of Petrine Primacy in Eastern Orthodoxy. Fagan recently presented me with a summary of the principal Eastern Orthodox arguments from John Meyendorff's chapter in The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church. Meyendorff's chapter, entitled "St. Peter in Byzantine Theology," is one of the more balanced essays in the volume, as Fagan notes. Meyendorff divides the Byzantine tradition of reflection on Petrine primacy into three periods:

1. The exegetical teachings (mostly of Origen, but a few others) of the Patristics/Byzanines
2. The polemics of the 12th and 13th centuries
3. "Theologians" of the 14th and 15th centuries.

What follows is a series of Eastern Orthodox arguments from each of these periods, summarized by Fagan, along with my replies:

I. The exegetical teachings:

A. Peter's confession in Matthew is the basis on which Christ makes his "Rock" statement. In this sense, all Christians are Peter because we confess the Faith of Christ.

Reply:

First, this is exegetically unsound, for the "Rock" can only refer to Peter without doing violence to it. In Aramaic, "Rock" is "Kepha." Jesus would have said to Peter, "You are Kepha and on this Kepha I will build my Church."

Second, the statement that all Christians are Peter because all confess faith in Christ is a little like the common Protestant argument that the priesthood of all believers rules out the need or possibility of a unique priesthood of ordained clergy. But the fact that every believer is a priest in some sense doesn't mean that licitly ordained clergy are not priests in a uniquely proper sense. Likewise, the fact that all Christians believe and confess what Peter believed and confessed hardly means that we share in his ecclesiastical primacy or in that of his successors.

B. All Bishops share in Peter's Confession because it was at that moment that Christ conferred the Keys; the bishops share in the "Cathedra Petri" (St. Cyprian) because of Peter's Confession.

Reply:

First, while it may be true that bishops share in the power of binding and loosing that is symbolized by the Keys in Matthew, this no more removes the distinction between bishops and the Pope than the fact that priests have the power to grant absolution removes the distinction between priests and bishops.

Second, this assertion shares in the common exegetical confusion/conflation implicit in the Evangelical Protestant interpretation of "presbyteros" and "episkopos." Presbyterians, for example, reduces each to an "elder," even though they may distinguish between "teaching" and "ruling" elders. But while an "episkopos" (literally "overseer," in Catholic tradition, "bishop") is ALSO a "presbyteros" (from which etymologically derives the early English "prester" and the later contraction, "priest"), not all priests are bishops, any more than all bishops are Popes.

Third, while it may be true that the bishops share in the common Faith professed by Peter and in the apostolic authority of his episcopal office, this hardly means that every bishop is a successor to Peter in the sense of sharing in his primacy. What dies it mean to have "primacy" if everybody has it? Just try imagining all those Eastern Orthodox bishops trying to squeeze their butts into the "Cathedra Petri" alongside the Pope! What insanity!

C. Peter is most definitely the "Coryphaeus" and he is the head of the Apostles in this regard, as at least being the head of the Apostles.

Reply: This, of course, goes without saying.

II. 12th and 13th century polemic arguments:

A. Canon 28 of Chalcedon conferred secondary primacy to Constantinople; because "old Rome" is no longer the imperial capital, it has lost its primacy and it has been transferred to "New Rome."

Reply:

"Secondary primacy" doesn't mean "primary primacy." What else needs be said?! Furthermore, the de facto primacy attaches not to the city in which the Holy See is located but to the office of the Pontiff. Thus when the Papacy was moved to Avignon during the "Babylonian Captivity," so was the primacy, in the person of the Pope. In principle, Constantinople has no more primacy than, say, Alexandria or Jerusalem, even if it had a secondary importance during the transfer of the IMPERIAL capital in the Eastern Empire.

B. The powers given to Peter were also give to the other Apostles; Meyendorff sasys that this argument is both weak, and runs counter to the fairly uniform patristic tradition of the headship of Peter.

Reply:

Amen to Meyendorff's remark. Again, that the "powers" given to Peter (like priestly or even episcopal ordination) were given to the other Apostles, doesn't mean that the primacy of Peter was given to them as well.

Just in terms of circumstantial evidence, it's interesting that the second most frequently cited Apostle in the NT is St. John, whose name appears 30 times (in the Gospels and in Acts), whereas Peter's name appears a total of 179 times! Furthermore, in every NT listing of the apostles' names (whether small or large), Peter's name always heads the list! (scroll down at same link)

C. In what Meyendorff says is a broader argument that anticipates future ecclesiological issues is that the succession of Peter does not belong to Rome alone; the primacies of Rome and Constantinople is of imperial origin, and they are conditioned upon confession of the true faith. (Meyendorff mentions that the filioque addition dissolved Rome's primacy, in view of the Byzantine polemicists.)

Reply:

This, of course, is nonsense. Even if Papal succession is a species of apostolic succession, it does not follow that apostolic succession is a species of Papal succession. Neither does the fact that the imperial governments of Rome and Constantinople, respectively, had a hand in the episcopal activities of each city (e.g., Constantine's calling of the Council of Nicea) mean that the episcopal or Papal offices are imperially constituted. They were constituted by Christ while upon earth when he called the Apostles as the first bishops of the Church and made Peter the first head (or 'papa' or Pope) of the other bishops. Nor does the fact that the confession of the true Faith is essential to the episcopate mean that the Faith can serve to determine who the true bishops are. Theoretically one could have a bishop who believes every article of the Catholic Faith yet be out of communion with the Church, like Archbishop Lefebvre, for example. Furthermore, one has to address the principle of authority by which the true Faith is determined, and that is something that can't be divorced from the apostolic succession and the Papacy.

As for the filioque, I find it irrelevant. If one uses THAT as an excuse to reject the Pope's authority, then he's thrown back on his own resources to define what the criterion for authority is going to be, which pretty much leaves him as much adrift at sea as the Protestant who says "the Bible" is his only standard. Um ... yeah. Sure.

Parenthetically, Nicholas Mesarites, a Byzantine theologian of the time, mentions that there is an old tradition of the Roman Pramacy before the 4th century, but this primacy was only given that the Bishop of Rome may defend the Church against Pagan Emperors; in short, Meyendorff says that Mesarites' idea is that the Primacy of Rome, though practical and useful, depends on its adherence to the Faith.

Reply:

Again, this is a way of trying to avoid the proper authority of the Roman Pontiff. If the Pope's authority can be made subservient to the goal of combating Pagan Emperors, then it can be avoided in venues where there are no Pagan Emperors, as in Byzantium, where the emperors were Christian or after 1543 when there were no more emperors at all. And making the primacy of Rome dependent upon adherence to the Faith again ties the authority of the Papacy to a body of beliefs whose content it is his prerogative to judge as to its orthodoxy. But it's rubbish to think you can define the orthodoxy of content apart from the Prophetic Office which furnishes the standard of orthodoxy.

III. The Theologians of the 14th/15th centuries:

A. Many of these theologians teach that the function of primacy is this: pramacy exists within the episcopal college as it existed within the apostolic college, but it implies the unity of faith in the truth.

Reply:

This is something like saying that a monarchy is really a parliamentary democracy, and then doing away even with the parliament. "The primacy exists within the episcopal college": that means -- using the analogy -- that there is no real monarch; ultimate authority exists within the parliamentary representatives of the people. "... but it implies the unity of faith in the truth": that means that the ultimate criterion is not even the elected representatives but the people electing them. How otherwise does one determine what is true? You're not willing to listen to the Pope. So, then whom? The bishops? But bishops can fall from the Faith. So, then where do you turn? The Faith? But who knows that? The consensus of the faithful? But the majority can be wrong too, after all.

B. Only the Church is infallible, not Peter.

Reply: How does one define "Church" without "Peter"? No Peter, no Church. Do those Eastern Orthodox who teach the permissibility of contraception participate in the Church's infallibility? Of course not.

In summation, the fault of Rome is to distort the analogy between the apostolic college and the episcopal college; the ecclesiastical order is detemined by both Councils and secular rulers, not the succession of the Bishop of Rome.

Reply:

What distortion? The ecclesiastical order is and was determined by Christ who founded the Church upon Peter and his successors. All distinctions between the apostolic college and episcopal college that found themselves upon criteria such as the fact that the apostles were "eyewitnesses of the resurrection" while later bishops were not, are grasping at straws. For Peter himself supervised the selection of a successor to Judas, beginning the process of episcopal
succession, which would continue down to our own day. The process is seamless from Christ to Peter to Bishop Peter Jugis of the Diocese of Charlotte, NC.

What do they mean, "the ecclesiastical order is determined by both Councils and secular rulers"? This is tanamout to Erastianism. The fact that Constantine had a major hand in convening the Council of Nicea doesn't make him an authoritative successor of the apostles any more than you or I. His interest at Nicea was primary political, not theological; it was the bishops' business to settle the theological controversy under the aegis of the Pope who ratified their decision with the seal of ecclesiastical authority.

How do we know the meaning of biblical texts?

Edgar Foster, a Jehovah's Witness (JW) wrote to me today, saying that another JW friend of his asked how one can possibly know what the sentence, "I never said you stole money" means. The intent of his question, he said, was to show that just as this sentence is somewhat ambiguous, so the Bible is ambiguous in certain places. How do we arrive at an understanding of what Paul, John or Luke wrote? What follows is Foster's reply to his JW friend (in blue), and my comments (in black):

Foster: One distinctive and prominent characteristic of human language is ambiguity. For example, what if we're sitting down for a meal, and I ask you: "Can you please pass the salt?" How would you interpret the utterance, whether you were right or wrong in how you interpreted it?

Most persons would probably think I was requesting that the salt be passed to me in order that I might season my food. But I could "mean" something totally different by the question. Maybe I meant, "Do you have the power or ability to pick up the salt and give it to me?" However, most will probably not interpret my question as a query about your ability to pick up and pass a salt shaker. The context or situation no doubt helps you to figure out my intent. I think understanding the Bible is similar. Besides God's holy spirit, we can also use "ordinary methods" to discern what Scripture means, including taking the context of ambiguous passages into consideration.

Blosser: I agree that context is utterly crucial to determining meaning, which is inseparably identified with authorial intent. Any number of hypothetical possibilities is possible, as your illustration suggests. The speaker could be insane, or even just trying to confuse you, or even speaking metaphorically, or otherwise cryptically, etc. If the author weren't present, but his words were just being reported to you, it would also be helpful to know somebody you trust who said they knew what the author's intention was.

Foster: The Roman Catholic Church says that the only way we can understand Scripture is by means of ascertaining the authorial intention of the Bible. The only way that we can know what the author of the Bible intended, they say, is by listening to the infallible Magisterium of the Church. However, besides other difficulties that attend this view, I wonder how the Magisterium is able to cut the Gordian knot of ambiguity. Furthermore, as I've asked Catholics before, how can I ever be certain that the Magisterium is infallible or that it is a continuation of the Primitive EKKLHSIA? In other words, how can I ever come to know beyond a peradventure of a doubt that the Church knows what John, Paul or Luke meant when they wrote thus-and-so?

Blosser: Well, here I would say that not only is the context important (which would here include all of history and lower-case "tradition"), but, a fortiori, trust. Because the context doesn't furnish enough information of itself to quite determine the meaning, as conflicting denominational readings demonstrate. Thus having an interpreter whose authority one can trust becomes all-important. Of course one can put this interpreter to the test to a certain extent. But ultimately that testing will run up against limitations, especially where the data furnished by the context is itself contradictory. The case of the underground resistance fighter (Anthony Flew?) is a case in point, because the data of the context seems to contradict his words at times, when he seems a collaborator with the enemy. Or take C.S. Lewis's examples:

"There are times when we can do all that a fellow creature needs if only he will trust us. In getting a dog out of a trap, in extracting a thorn from a child's finger, in teaching a boy to swim or rescuing one who can't, in getting a frightened beginner over a nasty place on a mountain, the one fatal obstacle may be their distrust. We are asking them to trust us in the teeth of their senses, their imagination, and their intelligence.... Wee ask them to accept apparent impossibilities: that moving the paw farther back into the trap is the way to get it out -- that hurting the finger very much more will stop the finger hurting -- that water which is obviously permeable will resist and support the body -- that holding onto the only support within reach is not the way to avoid sinking -- that to go higher and onto a more exposed ledge is the way not to fall." (C.S. Lewis, "The Obstinacy of Belief," The World's Last Night, and other essays, p. 23)

So why do I trust the Catholic Church, especially when there is all this seemingly contrary evidence of corrupt popes, sexually predatory priests, the crusades, the inquisition, the "Donation of Constantine" forgery, thousands of faithless Catholics who apparently don't know the first thing about Christianity? Did I begin by trusting her blindly? No, of course not. I began by discovering several, and then many more, reasons for finding her trustworthy. Answers to the troubling questions became apparent. Many things, even if not everything, began falling into place. The more I "tested" her, digging into Scripture and history, the more answers to such questions became apparent. Is my understanding now complete? Far from it. But I've found for myself sufficient reasons for trusting her, and this conviction is reinforced by the evidence of holiness in the lives of numerous Catholic saints
whose lives are open books, as well as inward truths and movements of God in my own life, which I take to be not only compatible with this trust, but take by faith to be supportive of it. I have no apodictic certitude of the sort Descartes sought. But I have surely as much certitude as I do in my wife's fidelity, or, at times, my own conviction that I am awake and perceive the real world around me.

Foster: Yet, John tells us: "And YOU have an anointing from the holy one; all of YOU have knowledge" (1 Jn 2:20). See also 1 Cor 2:10-12 and 1 Jn 2:26-27; 3:24.

Blosser: Here I would again caution against a reading of New Testament epistles that presupposes the immediatistic, atomistic outlook of contemporary Western individualism found in Protestantism, particularly in Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. I would caution, in particular, against the assumption that the capitalized "YOU" in the verse you quote above is directed at the contemporary individual reading St. John's letter as part of what we today call "the Bible." In fact, the assumption is easily refutable based on the fact that we know of individuals who have read that passage who would be hard to judge as being among the "anointed" or "holy," or possessed of spiritual "knowledge," such as Joseph Stalin, who is said to have memorized the entire New Testament in his early life.

But as soon as we see this, we note a degree of ambiguity that exists in the question of whom St. John had in mind when he made this declaration. We may say it is those who love God, or those whose lives are "regenerated" by God's Spirit, or the like. But then, how do we know that what we mean by such statements corresponds with what John meant? Certainly not every person who is godly or spiritually wise in his own eyes, or even that of others, can be said to "have knowledge," if is believed by many such individuals contradicts one another.

Is gender language a matter of indifference? (Part 2)

[This is a continuation of a discussion whose last entry is posted in Philosophia Perennis.] Edgar Foster's words are in blue, mine in black:

Foster: We're discussing, at least I thought we were discussing, the use of generic pronouns. Therefore, my contention is that (depending on what one means by "natural") the generic pronoun "he" is no more "natural" than the generic "one." My contention was not that we should neuter common or proper *nouns* in a quest for political correctness or some such agenda. Rather, my argument is that I see no overarching reason why an author should not use "he," "one," or "she" generically as well as "he/she." I certainly am not suggesting that we should make the signifier "God" in Jn 3:16 "One," KAI TO LOIPON.

Blosser: My example ["For One so loved the world that One gave One's only Son that whosoever should believe in One ..."] may not have been a good one. But don't you think that you're trying to duck the issue here? Look: I don't care whether it's "she" or "it" or "one" or "h'or'sh'it" [as a contraction of "he-or-she-or-it"] -- if you try to use ANY of those terms generically and repeat it often enough in a sentence or paragraph, like Putnam did, it's going to just sound loopy. Wouldn't you agree? Perhaps we could, empirically speaking, condition ourselves psychologically to get accustomed to using "she" generically. Perhaps so. But culturally it's not been understood as a generic term, and that's why it's going to sound goofy. Beyond that, of course, is my contention that we SHOULDN'T use it thus. We have a perfectly appropriate term that has functioned in that capacity without any misunderstanding for nearly two millennia. If it's grammatically correct and not semiotically broken, don't try to "fix" it, I say.

Foster: For the record, I prefer to use the generic pronominals "he/she" rather than Putnam's "one," though I'm not averse to employing that generic term either.

Blosser: "One" should do so only if "he" doesn't go ape (and grammatically silly) by (1) repeating the term "one" (it's supposed to stand only in the original subject space, or (2) confusing the generic "he" with the generic "she" (which doesn't work without callingattention to oneself as a "PC" ass [not in Balaam's sense either]!).

Foster: Why do I take this approach when it comes to employing generic pronominals? First, because that is the way that "the Academy" taught me how to write college essays.

Blosser: The orthodox Christian academy has taught you, my Jehovah's Witness friend, that God is not only One but also Triune.  So do you accept that?  Q.E.D.

Foster: Second, the apostle Paul wrote that he made himself a "slave" to all persons, so that he could "gain the most persons" (NWT) in his ministry (1 Cor 9:19-23). I feel the same way. If the utilization of the generic "he" offends a significant segment of the population, why use it? To eschew the singular use of "he" (when it is possible) certainly does not seem unbiblical or unChristian to me. Maybe you have reason to feel differently.

Blosser: You may have a point here. But the message you're going to give people (and certainly the one a Catholic is going to give people -- the scandal of Christ's sacrificial crucifixion) is going to offend anyway, and there's no way around that.

The bigger issue, as far as I'm concerned, is that we are involved in a culture war whose lines are rapidly becoming quite clear. And as far as I can see, the gender issues involved in our society -- from grammar to same-sex partnerships -- are close to the heart of things, like sex generally. (Sex and Holy Communion are two of the most intimately related analogical covenants in Catholic tradition.)

Foster: Finally, since generic pronouns refer to both men and women anyway, what is wrong with making what is implicit more explicit?

Blosser: What's wrong with "making it explicit," as you put it, is that it alters the meaning of the male terms. If I say only "man and woman" or "he and she," then "man" and "he" are no longer signed as generic: and this, in my view, is to take a metaphysical and anthropological position vis-a-vis contemporary feminist/postmodernist ideology.

Foster: I could really care less what the PC movement thinks.

Blosser: Baloney. It seems to me that that is the ONLY reason you'd want to bend with the prevailing winds.  But why should anyone want to do that? 

Foster: My reasons for conscripting "he/she" generica have to do with the Gospel and my view of God's wondrous creature, woman (ISH-SHAH).

Blosser: Oh, c'mon, Edgar! Now you're sounding like Karlstadt in the 16th century, who, in his discourses attendant to his breaking his Catholic vows to marry a Catholic nun who had broken her vows (along with Luther and others), made it sound as thought Protestantism had discovered for the first time the joys of matrimony and sex!  But that's beastly, when we can see that of all the religious traditions it is only the most ancient (the Catholic) that elevated married sex to the level of a Sacrament!

Foster: Does "inclusive language" make women feel more included? It depends on the women in question and their background, both religiously and socially. I certainly know not a few non-JW women who appreciate the generica that I often--but not always-- see fit to employ.

Blosser: Well, I suppose even JW women are influenced by the prevailing "pc" culture, like everyone else. Perhaps that can't be helped. But why one should indulge those prejudices rather than seek to correct them, I can't quite understand. (I suppose that would require you to come to the conviction -- which alone has the power to animate the will -- that the current "pc" usage is inimical to the Christian Faith and Sacramental worldview.)

Foster: This is not about what JWs believe or whether one is culturally dependent or independent, IMO.

Blosser: It's not about the former; it is about the latter, in my opinion.

Foster: The motivating factor for using generica in this case is my desire to avoid perpetuating tempests in teapots. Ergo, the Weltanschauung of yours truly is "be flexible where possible, rigid where necessary." Alternatively, a good Catholic might say: DE GUSTIBUS NON DISPUTANDUM (EST).

Blosser: Yes, I understand; and I agree in principle. However, I've moved to the position in the last year that this is a place where I need to be lex flexible.

Imagine that our language was influenced by contemporary culture to move in the direction of using the term "marriage" for genital-homosexually active partnerships. Imagine that! Would you bow to the trend and call homosexually "married" couples "married"? That's the way we're headed, aren't we. The pressure is already on. I will do my best to resist it, as I will also endeavor to resist the obliteration of the generic use of masuline pronouns, which in my view offers the only accurate reflection of the "nature of things" (the order of Creation, which, as Yoder would say, makes this a "First Article" issue, meaning the first article of the Creed, which pertains to God's creation of all things, not to the second article of Fall/Redemption).

Foster: Sorry if I do not share your concern for what inclusive language might bring in the future. Is there a necessary connection between the literary or lingustic use of "he/she" or "one" and Derridean "absence of presence," or same-sex marriage, etc. At this point in time, I certainly unaware of any evidence supporting a necessary connection (i.e. entailment) between the respecting phenomena hitherto mentioned. This is not to say that a necessary connection might not be discovered one day. But, for JWs, the world has long been in a state of devolution (i.e. going downhill because of perverse practices and heinous ungodliness). Therefore, the call for same-sex marriages or the advocation of anti-foundationalism is only the "latest" form of rebellion against the Creator. As the apostle foretold in the power of the Spirit: "wicked men and impostors will advance from bad to worse, misleading and being misled" (2 Tim 3:13 NWT).

Blosser: I won't call the day or the hour of the Lord's return, since it's not mine to know; and there have been many periods of judgment and revival throughout the history of Israel and the Church, as we know. But it may well be that we are approaching That Day. If that were the case, isn't it even more important that we be circumspect about our following worldly trends, whether they are linguistic or social? The phenomenon of "d-a-t-i-n-g," for example, is something of an abomination, in my view, verging towards a consistent pattern of recreational sex. Whatever became of courtship? It's practically as dead as Nietzsche's God, as far as culture is concerned. Derridian presence/absence is only indirectly related to the issue, though there's a relation: the deconstruction of any metaphysical presence of gender. This is a long quote, but Judith Butler attempts to deconstruct gender thus:

["Here is something like a confession which is meant merely to thematize the impossibility of confession: as a young person, I suffered for a long time, and I suspect many people have, from being told, explicitly or implicitly, that what I "am" is a copy, an imitation, a derivative example, a shadow of the real. Compulsory heterosexuality sets itself up as the original, the true, the authentic; the norm that determines the real implies that "being" a lesbian is always a kind of miming, a vain effort to participate in the phantasmatic plenitude of naturalized heterosexuality which will always and only fail. And yet, I remember quite distinctly when I first read in Esther Newton's Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America that drag is not an imitation or copy of some prior and true gender; according to Newton, drag enacts the very structure of impersonation by which any gender is assumed. Drag is not the putting on of a gender that belongs properly to some other group, i.e. an act of expropriation or appropriation that assumes that gender is the rightful property of sex, that "masculine" belongs to "male" and "feminine" belongs to "female." There is no "proper" gender, a gender proper to one sex rather than another, which is in some sense that sex's cultural property. Where that notion of the "proper" operates, it is always and only improperly installed as the effect of a compulsory system. Drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated, theatricalized, worn, and done; it implies that all gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation. If this is true, it seems, there is no original or primary gender that drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself. In other words, the naturalistic effects of heterosexualized genders are produced through imitative strategies; what they imitate is a phantasmatic ideal of heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect. In this sense, the "reality" of heterosexual identities is performatively constituted through an imitation that sets itself up as the origin and ground of all imitations. In other words, heterosexuality is always in the process of imitating and approximating its own phantasmatic idealization of itself—and failing. Precisely because it is bound to fail, and yet endeavors to succeed, the project of heterosexuality is propelled into an endless repetition of itself. Indeed, in its efforts to naturalize itself as the original, heterosexuality must be understood as a compulsive and compulsory repetition that can only produce the effect of its own originality; in other words, compulsory heterosexual identities, those ontologically consolidated phantasms of "man" and "woman," are theatrically produced effects that posture as grounds, origins, the normative measure of the real. (Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," in David H. Richter, ed., The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford, 1998): 1519-20)."]

This is the kind of self-indulgent hooey that contemporary academe not only lets people get away with, but for which it elevates them to positions of FAME and HONOR! I'm not making the further connections that your questioning calls for at this point, but I assure you of my confidence that they can be made. In a nutshell, what we have here is an extreme expression of atomistic autonomianism (not antinomianism, though related), in open defiance against the thought that God should have made us according to some definite (in this case gendered) nature.

Foster: (1) I believe the ancients were generally mistaken in their views of human nature, especially with respect to their emphasis on the exalted state of males ...

Blosser: I believe the ancients shame us by their overwhelming insight into the fact that, first of all, we actually do have such a thing as a nature. Secondly, whatever their errors (like that of Aristotle) in viewing slaves and women as 'inferior' to free men, I believe their view errs more closely in the direction of the metaphysical-anthropological truths attested to in Scripture than in the direction of our contemporary anti-essentialist atomism.

Foster: (2) I do not believe that the Bible commits us to any particular linguistic convention when it comes to the use of generic pronouns for men and women. That is to say that while God should be called "He" or "Father" and Christ should be accorded the NOMEN "Son," the "biblical worldview" does not seem to commit us to always using "he" generically or "brothers" when we mean "he/she" or "brothers/sisters."

Blosser: First, as you recognize, we both believe that he Bible (I would say "Sacred Tradition," since I don't think the "Bible" "teaches" anything of itself) commits us to a linguistic convention when it comes to referring to God and Jesus Christ.

Second, whether we commit to accepting it, the Bible does in fact employ a traditional pattern of masculine language throughout nearly all of its books. Thus, Paul uses the term "bre-thren," even where today we may wish he had said "brothers and sisters."

Third, the reason why Paul (and others) used the term "brethren" (etc.) is that he simply assumed the traditional view that this generically included any women addressed as well. And I believe this assumption is grounded in a truth that connects #1 and #2 above, even if I can't quite spell that out for you at the moment.

Fourth, while I admit that "brothers and sisters" works just about as well in communicating the messages of Paul's letters, etc., I think that bowing to the cultural pressures in that direction are not necessarily a good or healthy thing, for reasons I've suggested already.

Foster: Granted, God is never called "she" by the Hebrews and I'd never talk about Him with feminine generic pronouns either. Nevertheless, the Bible writers do avail themselves of feminine imagery to describe the Most High God. This indicates that they were aware of the highly metaphorical or imagistic nature of masculine nomenclature for God.

Blosser: Here I would want you to be very cautious in avoiding a Tillichian-type of usage where you refer to "imagery" and "metaphor." For Tillich, if I recall him correctly, "symbols" don't have ontologically real referents. Here Tillich falls within the large nominalistic tradition stemming from the time of Berengar of Tours (ca. 1000) but surfacing decisively in the time William of Ockham (14th century). By contrast, within Catholic tradition symbols and metaphors refer to a reality beyond themselves, even if, as St. Thomas argues, the signification grasped is analogical. (Here, by the way, I'd love it if you had a copy of a book I'm reviewing by Gregory P. Rocca, O.P. (=Dominican), Speaking the Incomprehensible God (The Catholic University of America Press, 2004) because he offers one of the clearest and most sustained arguments against the typical nominalistic misunder-standings by Scotus, Suarez, Cajetan, etc., and nominalistic objections offered by Barth, Pannenberg, William L. Craig, William Alston (the latter two argue that analogical predication can't occur without an element of univocity; whereas Rocca, in my view, soundly trounces their objections).

Is the Trinitarian tradition "pro-slavery"? (Part II)

Catholicism, let it be clear, condemned the enslavement of Africans from the inception of the practice in the 1400s. Yet there is a continuing discussion of slavery of various kinds, including slavery in ancient and Biblical times, which continues unabated. Responding to communication received from Edgar Foster along these lines (continued from an earlier discussion), the following dialogue ensued:

Foster: "I do not view all forms of slavery as "inherently sinful," though [Kevin] Giles seems to lean in that direction; in fact, he makes some pretty explicit statements that indicate his avowed opposition to enslaving human persons in any way whatsoever. However, his words must also be interpreted in their proper context."

Blosser: Discussions of this type I find exceedingly troublesome, not only because of the disturbing nature of many kinds of slavery and because of the inflammatory connotations that arise in such discussions, but because of the frequent lack -- as in Giles' case, apparently -- of defining "slavery" before discussing it.

[Blosser's earlier statement to which Foster responds below]

In that sense, I think the issue of slavery is much like three other classic issues in terms of their relationship to the Bible: (1) monagomous marriage, (2) the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, (3) the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. My hunch is that it would be very difficult to make a conclusive case for any of these from Scripture alone.

Foster: "I take exception with you concerning (1) and (2). The Bible seems to present a pretty coherent and compelling story when it comes to monogamy and the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. What makes you tend to doubt that a "conclusive case" can be made for (1) or (2) by means of Scripture alone? Would this not depend on the presuppositions,temperament as well as the volitive and cognitive functional abilities of one's interlocutor."

Blosser: I felt pretty sure you might take exception to ## 1 & 2, the reason being that you BELIEVE them and assume that your religious beliefs are derived straightforwardly from Scripture. What makes me doubt that a "conclusive case" could be made from Scripture alone? Try it. I don't think it can be done, any more than a conclusive case can be made for for exclusive adult baptism or for infant baptism from the Bible alone. If you want to really test yourself, I would again encourage you to read Mark Shea's By What Authority? which makes a strong case, in my opinion, for the claim that such beliefs can't be conclusively devended by Scripture alone, and, furthermore, mounts a case for the hypothesis that those who adhere to such beliefs are always ALREADY presupposing Catholic "Tradition" or something like it.

Foster: "Giles is a trinitarian. He is the theologian trying to make a connection -- not necessarily essential -- between slavery and the Trinity doctrine. Giles argues that Evangelicals have altered their view of the Trinity based on certain cultural presuppositions. In other words, he contends that a Christian's reading of the Bible or a Christian's formulation of doctrine is always historically conditioned. Thus, Giles maintains, orthodox Christians once thought that the three Persons of the Godhead were all ontologically and functionally equal (i.e. not subordinate with respect to the AD INTRA works of the Trinity). However, after the suffrage movement or the advent of the birth control (INTER ALIA), evangelicals began to insist that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father, yet equal to Him as respects the one nature that they either share with the Father or are with Him. The analogy used to support such thinking, Giles points out, was the husband and wife relationship, which Giles believes is theologically innovative and not rooted in historical Trinitarian orthodoxy. The upshot of his analysis is that Christians tend to read the Bible or formulate doctrine through certain cultural lenses. Just as they changed their views on the social, familial or ecclesiastical role of women, so Christians (whether evangelicals or Catholics) have altered their beliefs or views on slavery and, by implication, the Trinity doctrine.

Blosser: Granted, the connections are being made in the first place by Giles (and that the uses to which you might put such connections are secondary); but that makes the connections no less far fetched, in my opinion. It's a truism that "cultural lenses" affect our interpretations of things. But isn't it preposterous to suggest that modern Evangelicals are behind the advent of inter-Trinitarian subordination of Persons when subordinationist battles were fought among the Patristics? Granted, it may be the case that Evangelicals have come up with new metaphors for illustrating the matter -- though I'm not at all certain of that either (nuptial imagery has a long Catholic tradition) -- but I would find any notion absurd that suggested, say, that a conception of the Trinity was responsible for slavery in America, or vice versa.

Foster: "Granted, we should avoid conflating the variegated senses of "slavery." Nevertheless, regardless of what Murray meant by "slavery," it seems clear that he lumped "black slavery" in with his comemnts about servitude being a "divine institution." And it also seems quite evident that he believed "slavery" was a result of the divine curse on Ham (See John Murray. Principles of Conduct. London: InterVarsity Press, 1957. Page 96. I am willing to revise my views of Murray, however, in the light of evidence to the contrary."

Blosser: In fairness to Murray, it would probably be charitable to clarify what is meant by "divine institution," since that expression is often used in Protestant circles for things that are often called "sacraments" by Catholics and "creation ordinances" by Calvinists. Murray clearly does not have that in mind, since he sees slavery as
an institution emanating from the fall. Like all human government, he seems to be saying, slavery is something capable of abuse, but not intrinsically wrong. That is, just as there can be just governments, there can be just and charitable slave owners -- a claim which, you will agree, is empirically testable through historical research.

Floster: "Giles particularly has in mind Greco-Roman and "black" slavery that involved no "dollars under the table" but a determination to "break" the slave by any means necessary."

Blosser: "Breaking" also needs definition. The mother of John and Charles Wesley, as a philosophy of child rearing, recommended "breaking" a child's will early in his life, without "destroying" his will, so as to
make him docile, teachable, and capable of being trained in virtue. Clearly (I hope), that's not what Giles has in mind. Perhaps something closer to "breaking a horse."

Foster: "Giles does take issue with Murray here, writing:

'Murray accepts that Scripture endorses slavery, but to safeguard himself he takes up the argument popularized by Thornwell that slavery is only the property of one man in the labor of another, not the property of man in man. This is special pleading. Slavery by definition involves owning the person and his labor.' (Giles, 221)

"That is, Giles defines slavery in terms of legal ownership; it is not simply being a nannie or servant for nobility."

Blosser: Then I think what requires further definition is "person" and "owenership." For even if one purchases a slave at the slavemarket for benifit of his work, there is a profound sense in which no man can "own" (possess, purchase, have as property) another "person" (rational soul), for a person is not a thing. That would seem to be tacitly conceded in contexts where slave owners concerned themselves with evangelizing their slaves (at least in some cases).

None of this, be it noted, makes such slavery acceptable from my point of view as a Catholic. I would even have difficulty with the idea of a servant, I'm afraid.

Foster: "Thanks for the links. I admittedly need to do more work in terms of examining the Catholic perspective on slavery, though Giles says that it too changed during the post-Enlightenment era."

Blosser: Giles may say one thing. History may say another. Centuries before the Enlightenment, the Catholic Church condemned "black slavery" as soon as it began. In 1435, six decades before Columbus sailed, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the Canary Islands, and ordered their European masters to manumit the enslaved within 15 days, under pain of excommunication. In 1537, Pope Paul III condemned the enslavement of West Indian and South American natives, and explicitly attributed that evil, "unheard of before now," to "the enemy of the human race," Satan. The commencement of the Enlightenment is often placed in the mid-17th century with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia.