KJS: God Among Us

God is born in us as well.

Really.  She keeps using that word, “born.”  I do not think it means what she thinks it means.

Last I checked, the word is “indwelling.”  Two very different things, birth and indwelling.  But it’s just words right, who cares?

Now, who will tell the old, old story of God’s love to those so ready and eager to hear?

Oh…oh…I am, I am.  Please tell me what that old, old story is.  Lay it out for me.

I should have added that if Christmas is all about the “Wonder and Love” connected to it, then for my part I’ll skip Christmas and focus my attention on rollercoasters and their heart-pounding, g-force-a-lishous rides and worship at the feet of The Designers.

Gee, I’m glad she didn’t mention that “cross” thing.  It really would get in the way of her message

KJS says that God (Jesus) was: “born in obscurity, to a peasant refugee couple”.

I guess it depends on how one defines ‘obscurity’, ‘peasant’ and ‘refugee’.  Since Joseph is traditionally described as being a carpenter, I would be inclined to call him a tradesman, perhaps even a master woodworker, not a peasant.

And since Mary and Joseph were travelling to meet the requirement of registering for a census, I can hardly call them refugees.

And ‘born in obscurity’?  How, then, did we ever find out about Him?

So does she believe in a physical virgin birth?

“Taking on a human tent of flesh”  There’s something disturbingly gnostic about that phrase even if I can’t put my finger on it.  It seems somewhat docetic as well.  Or, is it just me?

It is quite clear that she has a very shallow theology and in spite of her attempts has no grounding in the doctrine of the Incarnation.  She was raised within a Christian home, so I wonder did she ever really believe, or did she lose it along the way, not recognizing that fact that she was no longer a believer.

TEC is filled with too many leaders who just do not believe.  I know that she doesn’t surrender to the paradox, to the mystery of the Incarnation, but when she talks about a tent of human flesh, I don’t think she even understands what it is to be human.

Actually, there’s alot that KJS has written here that I can gladly affirm.  It’s somewhat surprisingly sound in many places, and I like her encouragement to look for openings to share the “old old story”—to pick up what non-believers understand about Christmas and find ways of using that understanding as a starting point to share about Christ and God’s gift to us.

I did have trouble with some of the “birth” language:

God continues to be birthed in fragile opportunities...

present yes.  birthed, no.  I fear that by using such language she diminishes the Incarnation even though she earlier affirms its importance and centrality.  By continuing to use the metaphor of birth she could seem to equate the physical birth of Christ as a man with a spiritual metaphor.  Better to talk about the birth of Christ in Bethlehem = the Incarnation, and then to talk about other instances when Christ comes and renews our hearts, or when He is somehow specially present in a circumstance as the Catholics do when they talk about the “three comings of Christ”:

—His Birth
—His repeatedly coming to us and making Himself more known to us in our daily life
—His Second Coming

Anyway, if this were the first thing I’d read by +KJS I’d probably not be too concerned.  But in the context of so much else of what she’s preached or her interviews, etc. I still do have some serious questions about her doctrine and her tendency to get fuzzy and equate the historical Christ with a metaphorical Christ.

What I find appalling is the universalism of the following statement, ”God comes among us in human form for all humanity, not just for our co-religionists, not just for those who expect God’s appearing in the same way we do, and not just in predictable ways at the altar.”

And then to close by stating that Santa Claus is a Star pointing the way to Christ as if this jolly fat fellow were some sort of John the Baptist or something.  Oh, if only the boy on the bus were told of the true St Nicholas and that what motivated the life of St. Nicholas was a devotion to Jesus Christ.  Then this might be a star pointing to Jesus, but a jolly fat man with flying reindeer as a beacon to Christ?  Yea, right.  I suppose she thinks the Easter Bunny is the (re-) incarnation of Jesus.  Good Grief!

I’m with Karen B, with the same exception of the “birthed” language, and then with Spencer, in finding the “co-religionist” off putting.  I didn’t know I was a religionist, and, after having read her other stuff, I believe that she’s putting Christianity on the same level as any other religion, making us all “co-religionists.”  Yuck.

She didn’t talk about St. Nicholas on his feast day, or about Jesus and his birth, but she did convey a sense of the wonder and love connected to Christmas.

That is an opening for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus.

An opening for what?  To tell the story of God loving us enough to live among us?  It is not Jesus’ living among us it is His dying for our salvation that reflects His love.

Theology lite.
And does anyone really believe she ever rides a bus?????

Edwin beat me to it:

She didn’t talk about St. Nicholas on his feast day, or about Jesus and his birth, but she did convey a sense of the wonder and love connected to Christmas.

Why didn’t SHE talk to the child about Jesus - she said the opening was there - she could have mentioned Jesus’ name - at least in passing.  The “wonder and love” don’t have to do with Santa Claus!  Talk about a missed opportunity!

Then again, I guess it is the warm-fuzzy Christmas we’re looking for.  ::sighs::

Yes, I too picked up on the universalistic theme in this piece.  I didn’t comment on that explicitly because on its own I don’t find much to argue with re: this:

... God’s love extends to all, that God comes among us in human form for all humanity, not just for our co-religionists, not just for those who expect God’s appearing in the same way we do, and not just in predictable ways at the altar.

1. God’s love is for all.

John 3:16-17
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
(NIV)

2. He desires all should be saved

1 Tim 2:3-4
3This is good, and pleases God our Savior,
4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.  (NIV)

(I’ll come back to this)

3. Christ did not (and DOES not) come just for the religious.  No He came and comes for the sick and most depraved. 

Mark 2:17
17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  (NIV)

1 Cor 6:9-11
9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
(NIV)

4. Christ does come in totally surprising and unpredictable ways, both in His first coming and promised second coming:

John 1:45-46
45Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
46"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip.
(NIV)

Mark 13:32-33
32"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
33Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.
(NIV)

———

So, I can agree with all of KJS’ 4 points which hint at universalism IF I make the assumption that she doesn’t stop at this point in her theology, but that she goes on to affirm the essential truth of the Cross and Christ’s redemption and salvation through Him alone.  And I haven’t seen her do that in her writings or sermons.  I wouldn’t necessarily expect her to preach the Cross in a very short Christmas message, so I can affirm what she writes above to a large extent.  But her other writings and interviews greatly concern me, and in that context, I do fear there’s a theme of universalism in the above. 

Above I quoted John 3:16-17 about God’s love and coming for all.  But those verses are followed by John 3:18

John 3:18
18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.  (NIV)

And also above I quoted 1 Tim 2:3-4 about God’s desire that all should be saved.  But verses 4-7 are EXPLICIT in their particularity and the message that there is ONLY ONE WAY to be saved.  Only one mediator.  And in its call to Apostles to proclaim that truth!

1 Tim 2:3-7
3This is good, and pleases God our Savior,
4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
5For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
6who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.
7And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.
(NIV)

Any “decent” Christmas message has to include the cross and the resurrection.  It is the cross that is the “stumbling block” and “foolishness”.  Otherwise the message just fits into the secular celebration of Christmas and is meaningless.

Actually, the message is a lot more traditional than I would have expected. I was wondering, though, if she made the connection between the “old story” and the Scriptures that her gang frequently find irrelevant or in need of massaging by modern “intellect.”

And, yeah, I too was wondering if she was really riding a bus, lol.

Karen B. - as I read your reflection and Scriptures on point #3, the ugly side of universalism became apparent: in universalism, “God” simply affirms the “good” - those who hold the right opinions, who have good public standing, are educated and affluent and move in the same nice social circles.  I think it was Diane Knippers who pointed out the way many Episcopalians would rather hang out with non-Christian social peers than with Christian riff-raff.
Those who have defined themselves as “better” - better educated, more emotionally together, more tasteful, whatever, will find Jesus a “vehicle” to be test driven for their enjoyment, but just one vehicle in the garage, depending upon their driving mood.

Harry, an Amen to what you wrote!  See what I just posted on L&B—a great meditation from Touchstone magazine about not losing sight of the spiritual realities and the darkness that Christ had to overcome.  The author talks of “Keeping Satan in Christmas!”  Yes, the Cross is central to Christmas because it is the REASON Christ came.  I didn’t mean to undermine that in what I wrote above.

http://lent.classicalanglican.net/?p=2782

<Irenaeus and Athanasius insisted that the gift of Incarnation was that “God became human, that we might become divine.”>

Did Irenaeus and Athanasius actually teach that we humans become divine?  That just doesn’t sound right to me.  I have not studied the works of either of these church fathers, but I’m sure many other readers have.

Karen,  that is why “What Child is This” is one of my favorite Christmas Hymns:

What Child is this who, laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant, king to own Him;
The King of kings salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Raise, raise a song on high,
The virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy, joy for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

““Taking on a human tent of flesh” There’s something disturbingly gnostic about that phrase even if I can’t put my finger on it.  It seems somewhat docetic as well.  Or, is it just me?”

The echo here is to John 1:14, which in the Greek actually reads something like “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory . . .”  The allusion in John’s gospel is that just as God’s shekinah dwelt in the OT tabernacle in the wilderness, now God’s shekinah glory dwells in Jesus. 

I sincerely doubt that KJS is a docetist.  Above all, I’m certain that she affirms that Jesus was truly a human being.

However, I am not at all convinced by this that KJS believes in the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ—that God uniquely became flesh in Jesus. The first paragraph sounds orthodox, but then she quickly shifts to speaking of incarnation without the definite article—not “the incarnation,” but simply “incarnation.”  And “incarnation” applies to all of us, as it does to Jesus.  You and I “share in incarnation.”  Incarnation means that God comes “among us” in opportunities.

I am hard pressed to find orthodox Christianity here.  I’m reading the use of traditional language to convey a message that is really its contrary.  Far from the incarnation meaning that God has uniquely come among us in Jesus, God’s incarnation in Jesus simply seems to be an example of what God does everywhere all the time—if we just keep our eyes open to notice it.

Spot-on, Bill, and “gnostic” is also a word I’d use to describe this. 

My spouse came home and I asked him if he had read it yet, and his two-word response, unsolicited, was “gnostic psychobabble”. 

Anybody ever notice that she truly writes about Christianity in a very distant, “third-person” way? 

Bill could comment on this, if he likes(he knows more about world religions than I do)—to me, she sounds like a Sikh most of the time.  Nothing wrong with being Sikh; I have at least one acquaintance who is a Sikh. He’s a very nice and kind guy.  But, what’s the point in being a Sikh and calling yourself a “Christian”?

“. . . those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus.”  Well said, in her case.

suzy - Schori’s research staff that might have been tasked to “find something Christian to put in there” was probably referring to the big-O Orthodox concept of theosis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosis

No, we are not “divine.”  We are redeemed.

KJS speaks in metaphor.  And she is unitarian. 

bb

Two glaring points, one of which has already been broached, the other alluded to:

One.    What on earth is the chief operating officer of an (inter)national religious lobbying organization doing riding a bus?  (Unless she is using her limousine allowance to finance MDG’s and other worthy UN activities)

and, Two.  If she were really there, why did she not interject a bit of the Gospel story into that poor child’s consciousness?

Simple, uneducated and underprivileged, inquiring minds want to know.

Chip, I wondered the same thing.  It is an odd thing to think about,  but my guess, and it is wild speculation, is that she is talking about one of those rental-car buses that take you from the terminal to the rental car center.

I somehow doubt she takes the New York City buses to work, or whatever.

DoW

This discussion and KJS’ citing of Athanasius and Irenaeus on the Incarnation prompted me to do something I’ve been wanting to do anyway for Lent & Beyond:  Put together in one place a list of titles and links to all the great posts on the Incarnation that Will at Prydain has posted over the last several Advents.

His archive links are messed up, so I don’t think I can link individual entries, only the link for the full week of archives.  But below are all his entries on the Incarnation from 2004.  (I’ll be posting this over at L&B at some point too, and also with his 2005 and 2006 posts in this series)  It’s a great series.  Tons of food for thought and prayer from the Fathers and Saints.

Note the entries from Dec 11 and Dec 13 2004 on Athanasius and the Incarnation.  I don’t recall whether Will has posted anything by Irenaeus on the Incarnation.  I’ll keep searching.

——————
Week of December 18-24, 2004
http://www.upsaid.com/Prydain/archives.php?min=1103351189&max=1103868193

December 24 2004
Cyprian of Carthage on the Incarnation

December 23 2004
The Creed of Chalcedon on the Incarnation

December 22 2004
Ignatius of Antioch on the Incarnation

December 21 2004
Hilary of Poitiers on the Incarnation

December 20 2004
Hippolytus of Rome on the Incarnation

December 19 2004
The Thirty-Nine Articles on the Incarnation

December 18 2004
Cyril of Alexandria on the Incarnation

——————-
Week of December 11 - 17, 2004
http://www.upsaid.com/Prydain/archives.php?min=1102744949&max=1103311537

December 16 2004
John Chrysostom: Homily on Christmas Morning

December 15 2004
St. Basil the Great on the Incarnation

December 14 2004
St. Augustine on the Incarnation

December 13 2004
A link to Athanasius’ “The Incarnation”—with an intro by C S Lewis
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm

December 11 2004
From St. Athanasius’s “The Incarnation of the Word of God”

“Peasant refugee couple” probably sounded more inclusive than “hard-working taxpayers”...

This is about the dumbest Christmas message from our PB imaginable, for a simple reason; It doesn’t say anything with any clarity. I have read the message, I have read the posts, I have no idea what her message is, and even the theologically trained members of Stand Firm do not seem clear what she is getting at.

This message should be one of crystal clarity to all, Christians and non-Christians alike. Who the heck is Irenaeus and Athanasius, and what does that big word Incarnation, used twice, mean?

Why is it so difficult for her to deliver a simple message along the lines of Joy to the World, Jesus came into the world to save sinners, we are about to celebrate the birth of Christ the King, and isn’t that wonderful!

Jingel bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…

Good one, Greg!

You need the little mailbag thing, though!

Actually, the theme of deification, or theosis, is an important one for many of the church fathers, including Sts Athanasius and Irenaeus.

“In His immeasurable love, He became what we are in order to make us what He is.” -Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, Book V

“He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.” -Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Ch. 54

These statements, however, must be taken in the context of each writer’s corpus.  When the early church says that we are to become God, it is actually, in western terms, discussion of sanctification.  To “become God” means to transformed into the Image of the Image (Jesus), to enjoy a life truly in union with the Triune God.  But we will never actually become God, because God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It’s all enough to make me long for the days of Frankie’s haiku….

Karen,
Of course God’s love extends to everyone.  What got me about the universalism was the “co-religionist” phrase which certainly implies that all “religions” are on the same plane.  (What is a religionist anyway?)  The second thing was the phase about god appearing in other ways certainly implied that we see God appearing in Jesus, but other religions see God in other ways which are equally valid.  The two phrases in the same sentence combined with what else she has said makes this, shall I say, “universally” clear.  LOL!  Pun intended. 

Furthermore as a parent who made it a point to always celebrate St. Nick on Dec. 6 with my children by giving Christian gifts (from veggie tales to Bibles) and reading the stories (whether true or not) about St. Nick and then showing my children how St. Nick had changed over the years into what we now call Santa Claus so that they would know the truth, I find it appalling that she would ignore the reality and instead point solely to the virtue of giving that is embodied in the fat Claus.  It just makes me nauseous.  She exalts “giving”, but not in the Christ who gave the ultimate sacrifice.  A pagan tree hugger can do this.  Save the Whales, but don’t dare mention the Christ.

By the way, has anyone seen my roasted chestnuts!  I think the dog with horns strapped to his head must have eaten them. 

Wise ones?

I am reminded of the British aristocrat (whose name I have forgotten) who entered Her Majesty’s Government but had never ridden on public transport.  His staff arranged for him to take the bus.  He got on the bus, turned to the driver and said: “You are a good man.  Now take me to Grosvenor Square.”

BTW, in New York, buses are for elitist wimps.  If you really want to show what you’re made of, you take the subway.  (From a guy who stood on the same crack in the platform at Grand Central Station for years waiting for the Lexington Avenue Express.)

Good comment Jason!  Scripture says that we were created in God’s image and that we should and shall be like God, but not actually God himself.

Folks,

This sounds like a pretty evangelical, right on message to me. Thank God. Of course, we don’t literally become God. But, there is a real sense, that in union with Christ, our lives our hidden with Christ in God. I personally think this union with Christ is an aspect of how Jesus “saves” us that is often overlooked! And, we need to look for every opportunity to share the gospel.

Praise the Lord for this good message from the PB.  C’mon!   Doesn’t this woman deserve some credit and affirmation here??

Grace:
You don’t have a clue, do you?

Grace, she doesn’t want to share the Gospel - that might just offend someone - can’t have that.  We can offer medicine and shelter and employment for the “refugees”, but not the Good News that God loves them and that Jesus died for them. 

The little boy on the bus has had his mind and heart opened to hear the bigger story about Christmas.

How??  By hearing about Santa Claus?  I don’t think so.

<blockquote>The little boy on the bus has had his mind and heart opened to hear the bigger story about Christmas.<.blockquote>

It’s a shame that there was no one to tell it to him. What kind of Advent/Christmas message is that? More true than she intended, perhaps - that there are receptive hearts, but TEC is too politically correct to give them the good news?

Spencer:  I interpreted “co-religionist” here in its narrowest sense, i.e., “us Anglicans”.  I think that’s what she was getting at, moving from the most restrictive group to the most “inclusive”.  I took it as a comparable word to “compatriot” - i.e., a member of MY country. 

Grace, I’ll grant you that this isn’t as bad as I would have expected coming from Mrs. Schori.  It gets less clear with multiple readings, but it seems OK, and sort of anodyne and unobjectionable.  Maybe it’s just that my expectations are pretty low.  There’s worse around, such as Elizabeth Kaeton’s latest sermon asking “Do you need a savior?”  (The answer seems to be “Only you can say for sure.”)

Oh, I think I completely understand what she is trying to say. 

It’s meant to sound as if she’s talking about the Nativity, but it’s really the gospel of pluralism as opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The psuedointellectual elitists of TEC will pick up on all the nuances, and then start cheering “Hip, Hip, Hooray”!! 

There was a time when a peevish “theologian” visited the Diocese of Rhode Island and referred to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” as the “Gospel for suckers”....if anything is the Gospel for suckers, it’s that *stuff* at the top of this thread.

Karen B and Grace: I agree! There’s a lot of it I really like. I don’t like her, and I doubt she means it the way I interpret it. Doesn’t stop me from reading the parts I like, the way I believe. Praise God!

A couple of thoughts:

She talks/writes as if the Christian experience of new life is a third person, detached experience.  Incarnation is an incredibly powerful word accompanied by the definite article.  Without the definite article, it is really vapid and weak.

After she was elected to be PB she gave a message that seemed to indicate that Jesus birthed new life on the Cross, or words to that effect.  Now she is talking about God being born in us.

Now I’m confused, did Good Friday/Easter give birth to Christmas?  Or did Christmas make Good Friday/Easter possible?  If God was born in us at Christmas, what was the point of the Christ giving birth on the Cross message?

BTW Incarnation without the definite article is powdered milk.

Reading PB Schori’s comments in the article reminds me of 2 Peter and Jude’s descriptions ‘springs without water’ and ‘clouds without water’.
‘The word of truth is the water of life,which refreshes the souls that receive it;but deceivers spread and promote error,and are set forth as empty,because there is no truth in them.As clouds hinder the light of the sun,so do these darken counsel by words wherein there is no truth.’
Matthew Henry

How can she tell the “old, old story” when, as shown by her other statements, she does not believe it? This is a good political speech. It uses glittering generalities to say a lot, but tell the listener nothing that is not common knowledge already. Use the right key words, toss in a couple of good names, but say nothing that might actually mean anything. Even at that, she slips up. She comes very close to a pantheistic view in the second paragraph and she slips up in the fourth paragraph, which is blatantly universalist. She may have had the big-O orthodox doctrine of theosis in mind, but I doubt it. Nothing here about why Jesus came among us-to be the Saviour of all us sinners who believe on Him. The part about Santa Claus-unfortunately, that’s the kind of God they want, a doddering old grandfather figure who ignores what they do and keeps on serving up the goodies-not even a mention of the part about coal being given to naughty children! Schori is right about only one thing-there is a world out there eager to hear the “old, old story”-but they want the complete story, not the very expurgated one which is all they will hear in the Episcopal church.

cannyscot

To say the least, this heresiarch’s crypto docetic gnostic Arianism will not see the light of day in my parish!

Romans 1:16,try non dairy creamer for a descriptive,artificial substitute.

This is really not that bad for the PB.  Placed against the whole body of her “theological” work, this would have to be on the orthodox end.

But my impression of the revisionists is that the crafty ones are always pushing things.  Even the messages that seem like they might be OK, contain seeds to push the theology in the revisionist direction.  The best (or, rather, the most skillful) manage to keep increasing the concentration of revisionist poison until the flock has been desensitized and can take their heresy straight from the bottle.  Thus, they will use something like the phrase “tenting among us,” which is drawn from sources that are orthodox if taken in context.  Later, they will draw on that same phrase in a revisionist way.  By then, it does not raise the same alarm bells,  (I think some of this went on under the radar in the last Prayerbook revision.)

So, we’ll just have to watch where the PB is really going with this.

Dang.  Just lost a long comment.  Not sure how that happened.  It just vanished.  And there’s not even a math filter to blame!

Here’s a quick attempt to rewrite the gist of what I just tried to post:

I think “Angels we Have Heard” is onto something important with this comment:

Karen B and Grace: I agree! There’s a lot of it I really like. I don’t like her, and I doubt she means it the way I interpret it. Doesn’t stop me from reading the parts I like, the way I believe. Praise God!

That’s exactly the problem at the root of our crisis in ECUSA and even Anglicanism.  Because faith and doctrine are talked about in generalities and words and events in Scripture are assumed to be metaphors it is possible to read a text like this through the lens of one’s belief and come out in two totally different places.

I can read it as an evangelical through the lens of the Scripture passages I cited above and affirm it as a call to look for openings and opportunities to share the Good News of the message of salvation through Christ—God’s gift to humanity of Jesus in His incarnation, death and resurrection.

One of our “worthy opponents” might read it quite differently and see in it a message of God’s inclusion of all and His universal love, welcome and acceptance of all regardless of their beliefs and actions.

Remember KJS’ quote along the lines of “all language is metaphor”

“All language is metaphorical, and if we insist that particular words have only one meaning and the way we understand those words is the only possible interpretation, we have elevated that text to an idol,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m encouraging people to look beyond their favorite understandings.”

source: Washington Post article, posted on T19:
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=14032

[See also here for an interview with Australian Broadcasting:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2006/1696173.htm#
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=15775#comment-1094864  ]

What we are missing is “the scandal of particularlity”:  the focus on the Person Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, crucified and physically raised from the dead.  When you lose the focus on the Person of Christ and merely speak in generalities, the words can mean anything one wants them to be.  And that I would opine is a HUGE root of our current Anglican crisis.  We have lost the foundation of our faith, the common ground, the specifics of what we believe.  Anglicanism has become so broad and comprehensive and “inclusive” as to mean nothing.  That is why the covenant process is SO ESSENTIAL.  We need to get back to a clear statement of who we are and what we believe.

Karen, BINGO!

This message makes me think that our goob PB turns to jelly at Christmas time.

In my view, Vinnie and Karen have it right.  This is no more than manipulative, which insults others’ intelligence and is serpentine to boot.

Having read the PB’s message several times and having perused these most excellent comments, I now feel emboldened to post my thoughts on the subject.

My initial reaction on my first reading was similar to a nagging premonition that there was something not quite right about it. But then the comments and subsequent readings clarified things somewhat. Karen B nailed the source of my uneasiness when she spoke about the PB’s thoughts on “all language is metaphorical.”  I think that is the thing that bothers me most about the PB’s theology - it is symbolic, metaphorical and not specific.

The birth, life and death of Yeshua Bar Jonah was a concrete and definite historical occurrence. It was not “an event.” It was not a metaphor. It is a profound reality by which the Creator of the Universe enacted the final piece of his plan to redeem and restore his creation by sending his Son to do what the children of Israel had failed to do, despite all their best efforts. Jesus is the “light to lighten the Gentiles; and the glory of his people Israel.”  In his death and sacrifice on the cross, he has reconciled the world to God.  This is specific, not symbolic, not metaphorical, or mythological. It is a fact.

++KJS’s refusal to be specific is what bothers me most about her theology. Without the specifics, without the scandal of particularity, what she has to say is no better than the average New Age goo about living well and loving your fellow man. She might as well have done the “Barney song” in her trendy vestments during her investiture for all the theological weight she brings to the office.

Jen, I appreciate the affirmation, but I do want to clarify that I never wrote, nor do I think that KJS is being manipulative.  I don’t think she was attempting to write in such a way as to have it mean whatever one wants it to mean.  I believe this is what she truly believes and it seems to be the closest she can get (from what I’ve read of her sermons, etc.) to an orthodox presentation of Christianity.  I think she believes this IS orthodoxy.

I keep remembering how little experience she has in the church.  She has never been a rector before being a bishop.  All of her church life up until now has been in Oregon and Nevada, two of the least churched areas of the country. (There were some brilliant comments about this fact awhile back on T19).  She attended CDSP, a notoriously liberal seminary, even by ECUSA standards.  I honestly don’t think she has ever been exposed to much orthodox Christian doctrine sincerely held.

Allen, it seems she approaches faith/religion/“spirituality” in a scientific manner.  I remember my physics professor deducting points on lab reports for inserting a personal aspect to the report.  The object was observed…
It was concluded that…
Heat was applied…
Never a personal reference, no insertion of the human into the scientific process.

Thanks, Karen. 

I did not mean to imply that you said she was being manipulative.  I’m saying that in MY view, she looks manipulative in trying to make her comments seem like orthodoxy when they are not. 

I have no problem writing with a disclaimer that I could be wrong.

IC,

Jen

If Jesus is only one path to the divine, I fail to see what is exciting about this old,old story.

Now, maybe if that Cross & Resurrection thing were true…

“What on earth is the chief operating officer of an (inter)national religious lobbying organization doing riding a bus?  (Unless she is using her limousine allowance to finance MDG’s and other worthy UN activities)”

Actually, she does.

I ran into her the other day and we chatted for a bit, then went and smoked a couple of bit fat spliffers behind Church Center.

It was pretty wild.  We halucinated a bit and wrote down what we saw and called it theology.  I was very blessed by the experience.