This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Via Media Fiction

This from the Albany (NY) Via Media website:

To quote Henry McAdoo in McConnell’s essay, The Via Media as Theological Method,

Perhaps the most important thing about Hooker is that he wrote no Summa and composed no Institutes, for what he did was to outline method. What is distinctly Anglican is then not a theology but a theological method (The Anglican Moral Choice, Paul Elmen, Ed., p. 142).

Richard Hooker understood that an Anglican Church maintains as broad, inclusive, and non-judgmental a church polity and religious affirmation as possible by resisting temptation to judge and exclude those whose opinions and practices differ from ours in important but non- essential matters. The Via Media as theological method, therefore, incarnates a Godly way of treating those with whom each of us disagree. A Via Media method recognizes that the truth of one generation might be understood differently in the next. In humility, Anglicans give their theological opponents the respect that comes from reading history, knowing that one ideology’s devil is another movement’s martyr. In so doing we create room for each other, learning from each other, in communion around God’s table. We hope to keep this vision of the Via Media method alive in the Diocese of Albany and in the Episcopal Church.

A Via Media approach to the interpretation of Holy Scripture will hold that faithful Christians everywhere will interpret identical passages differently, with respect to place, history, culture, experience, education and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Differences within interpretation of Holy Scripture and the right to dialogue about those differences was won with the blood of Anglican martyrs like Cranmer, Ridley and Lattimer in the early years of the English Reformation. They read Aristotle, applying the concept of the Golden Mean that, while certainty is attainable in mathematics, it is less likely in philosophy or theology. That is why Richard Hooker held that tradition, reason and experience were so critical in Biblical interpretation: the level of hermeneutical (interpretive) certainty is reduced by our humanity. Even enhanced by the Imago Dei in each of us, we still, when trying to discern the nature of God and his will for us, "See through a glass darkly" as our first theologian, St. Paul, reminded us. We believe that God’s desire is for his church to remain in communion and dialogue, in times of conflict and disagreement over his will for us in his kingdom on earth.

There are several problems with this statement.

1. First and foremost, if all the Anglican tradition has to offer is a method and no content, then it is a sorry offering, indeed. More to the point, it denigrates the deaths of the martyrs they reference: Cranmer, Lattimer, et al. Read the martyrologies, for heaven's sake: Cranmer sure didn't understand that he was dying for a method, let alone for the right of Anglicans to have continual dialogue with one another! (I'm sorry, but if there's one pervasive vacuity in modern liberal Anglicanism's worldview is that dialogue should just go on endlessly. Blah.)

No, these martyrs were dying for the faith, not a method. If Anglicanism doesn't pass on the faith of the Fathers and Martyrs, the Apostles and Patriarchs, but only offers this method, then, let's be done with Anglicanism and get on with the Faith.

2. Next in importance is the final claim that truth in Scriptural interpretation is unattainable. Yes, yes, we all see through a glass darkly. Fine. But does that then imply that nobody knows the truth? If so, then all we are left with is raw, political power. And there's good reason to believe that the ECUSAn innovators are all about power. Read what these via media sites are saying: Is it about passing on the Faith of the Church? Is it about remaining in communion with the Anglican churches around the world? Nope. It's all about staying Episcopalian and holding the power.

3. Truth may well indeed be understood differently in different generations, but it does not make them both right. To assume that a devil may also be a martyr is sheer nonsense. Either the understanding is and remains false (or true), or it was a false understanding to begin with but now is understood truly (or vice versa). It's basic human reasoning. But it's helpful to eliminate truth claims, because then control is ceded to power and persuasion, and not truth and reason.

4. Notice the spin on Hooker: that he was about tradition, reason, and (here's the sleight of hand) experience, and applying those to Scripture. No, Hooker was about Scripture being interpreted by tradition and reason (experience folds in under reason and is not a separate category). But Scripture still held the primacy over tradition and reason. I'm sure there are plenty of credentialed Anglican scholars who want to trot out their academic pedigrees and affirm the aforementioned spin, but it's puffery.

5. "Broad, inclusive, and non-judgmental"? Puh-leeze! Tell that to Fr. Samuel Edwards, Fr. David Moyer, and note my "Gospel of Inclusion" examples of this non-judgmental inclusivity.

6. Finally, and admittedly this is a bit nit-picky, but if you're going to use Aristotle, get him right! Aristotle's so-called "Golden Mean", is not about mathematical certainty, nor about philosophical uncertainty. Aristotle understands the mean (meson) to be a range of ethical possibilities for any given circumstance. Nor is this flexible ethical norm to be understood in relativistic terms. Aristotle had a standard, after all, that was norming and authoritative: the serious or prudent man. But I need not belabor this point.

But my little critique here notwithstanding, all this does is make it absolutely clear that ECUSA is two churches. One church has held the majority power and acts unilaterally with no accountability to the greater worldwide church. The other holds minority power and is seeking to maintain the Faith in communion with the worldwide church. Which side will prevail remains to be seen. It seems almost certain that ECUSA will split, and the two sides vie for the right of recognition.

Posted by Clifton at December 19, 2003 02:08 PM | TrackBack