Category Archives: Spirituality

A Monk on Climate Change, Sustainability, and Moral Theology

Go read it now!

The key to addressing sustainability, he suggests is a return to the roots of of our moral theology.

Virtue: Justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence exercised in harmony. Cultivating these and collaborating with others who seek them is the goal. The church’s distinctive touch are the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love.

Furthermore, he points to the Transition Towns initiative as a way forward, with which I heartily agree. The Transition Towns concept is not about legislation or top-down change but local networks doing what they can to spread awareness and changes. The governments, the systems, are not going to save us.

Maria Mater Ecclesiae

Answering the Scotist

The Scotist posted a reply to our ongoing discussion of Mary in a comment which I missed—I’ll now respond and move things forward.

1. The Scotist contends that my reference to his theory of “anonymous Marians” as condescending does not prove it false. He is right. However, while Rahner uses the notion of the “anonymous Christian” address the vexing issue of reconciling the Church’s proclamation of Christ as the only way to the Father with a tolerant pluralism, the Scotist’s use of his wrestles not with pluralism but with intra-Christian theological matter.

I would explain the difference thus: If Rahner asked one of his “anonymous Christians” who happened to be, say, Hindu, if he confessed Christ as his sole Lord and Savior, the only path to the Father, his anonymous Christian would deny it—that being part of the definition of an “anonymous Christian”.

If, in the second century—pre-dating the fourth century Council of Nicaea—you had asked a theologically orthodox Christian—call her an “anonymous Nicaean”—if she believed that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father and was not the first of God’s creations, she would most likely either agree or plead ignorance. I can’t imagine that she would deny it. And yet I and millions of Christians throughout history would deny that Mary is co-redemptrix. God alone redeems. Yes, Mary played a very special and very important part within the unfolding of that redemption, but she does not redeem me. God does.

Of course, this still doesn’t prove it false—because the “anonymous” notion makes it non-falsifiable. But the notion of anonymity is what I find problematic in the Scotist’s instance on defining it as dogma.

2. Then the Scotist makes this puzzling remark:

Moreover, you have not clarified the argumentative role of the distinction between dogma and doctrine. It keeps popping up, but does no apparent work. Maybe a substantive point is buried in these references; it would be nice if you could bring it to the surface. Hide not your light under a bushel, if light there be!

I say puzzling because I already addressed this here:

Moving along, the Scotist addresses my distinction between doctrine and dogma. This, as far as I’m concerned, is why this is worth fighting over. Doctrine is what may be held; dogma is what must be held. To put it another way, it’s possible to have a doctrinally minimalist Christianity and to still have it recognizable as orthodox Christianity. For example, it’s possible to lop off many of the doctrines and practices relating to the saints and the sacraments and still be “Christian” as described by the Scriptures and the Creeds.
I think it’s a lot more fulfilling and a lot more fun to have these, but I’ll recognize Reformed and Baptist folk as fellow members of the mystical Body even if they don’t sing the right antiphons on the Benedictus for the feast of St Ethelreda. But “dogma” means that it must be held in order for it to be a valid Christianity. A “dogma” is the kind of thing that if you went, in the Spirit, to an orthodox mother and father who died before its establishment and asked, “Hey, do you believe X”, they’d respond, “Well, of course—but that’s so obvious we’ve never had to say it…”

Would the great Baptist, would the great Reformed, forebearers respond this way in regard to the BVM as “co-redemptrix”—and are you prepared to cut them off from the Body of Christ if they answer in the negative on that account?

While the Scotist says: “There is no reason, as an Anglican and an Episcopalian, I have to convert him and others to belief in the fifth dogma as dogmatic, however desirable conversion would be” he is, in fact, mistaken: that’s exactly what dogma means. If he wants to talk about “co-redemptrix” as a doctrine, then he’d be absolutely correct and I’d have no problem with his decision.

Dogma is the fighting word here.

Perhaps the Scotist is having trouble understanding this. When a doctrine is defined as dogma, Christians are obligated to believe it. It is not optional. Hence the problem of allowing it to be “anonymous”. Those who deny the divinity of Christ are denying dogma; this puts them outside of the faith. Those denying the resurrection of the dead are denying dogma; this puts them outside of the faith as well. The Scotist would like us to believe the same for those who don’t consider Mary co-redemptrix.

I’m going to problematize this notion of dogma a bit further down, but the Scotist is the one who started playing with the “D” word and who won’t let it go and seems to be insisting that it means something other than what the Western Church has always understood it to mean. If you’re going to use a technical term in a technical discussion then use it properly or choose another word!

3. Then the Scotist accuses me of holding a heretical understanding of the will relying as I do on John Cassian. However in his comment and in his subsequent post he displays an utter ignorance of what Cassian holds and what I hold following him. The Scotist writes:

Semipelagianism (hence “SP”)–developed by John Cassian in response to Augustine’s polemic against Pelagius–implies that one makes a free first step toward salvation, a first step that is in the power of the individual apart from grace. That first step in itself is incomplete, and can be completed only with God’s assistance by means of grace.

It seems that SP implies

(A) there can be human actions apart from God’s grace,

and that is a proposition I wish to deny. No aspect of human action is possible apart from grace. Insofar as there is an aspect of human action–moral or otherwise–it owes its reality to God’s act of creation. But God’s act of creation is one of grace–it is a sheer gift. However, since SP implies (A), and (A) is–so far as I can tell–false, it follows SP is false.

Of course premise A is false and neither Cassian nor I would disagree. In fact, Cassian says the opposite quite explicitly. Go read Conferences 3. Here’s some of the pertinent material you’ll find…:

“Germanus [the student interlocutor who summarizes the previous discussion and moves it forward with a question]: In what does free will consist, then, and how may our efforts be considered praiseworthy if God begins and ends in us everything that pertains to our perfection?

Abba Paphnutius: It would be odd indeed if in every work and practice of discipline there were only a beginning and an end, and not also something in the middle. Accordingly, just as we know that God offers opportunities for salvation in different ways, so also it is up to us to be either more or less attentive to the opportunities that have been granted to us by God.”
(Conf. 3.11-3.12.1)

“Abba Paphnutius: By these words [of Jeremiah and Ezekiel] we are very clearly taught that the beginning of a good will is bestowed upon us at the Lord’s inspiration, when either by himself or by the encouragement of some human being or through need he draws us to the path of salvation, and also that the perfection of virtues is granted by him in the same way, but that it is up to us to pursue God’s encouragement in either a haphazard or a serious manner.”
(Conf 3.19.1)

“We ought to believe with a firm faith that nothing at all can be done in this world without God. … Let no one try to take what we have put forward in showing that nothing is accomplished without the Lord and twist it by a wicked interpretation in defense of free will in such a way that he attempts to remove from man the grace of God and his daily assistance… By what we have brought forward we do not want to remove the free will of the human being but to prove that God’s help and grace is necessary for him at every day and moment.”
(Conf. 3.20.1; 3.22.1; 3.22.3)

It’s patently obvious here that Cassian insists that God’s grace is essential throughout the process. The Scotist’s notion that Cassian holds his premise A is completely refuted here and elsewhere in Cassian’s writings. Yes, human cooperation is required, but God’s grace is always present and active.

Theologies: Scholastic vs. Ascetical

To this point I’ve been playing on the Scotist’s turf and he’s right, it doesn’t seem to have furthered the discussion much. Personally, I blame the turf. So let’s play on mine for a while…

The Scotist likes to play in the realm of Systematic Theology. As its name implies, this body of knowledge deals with seeing Christian thought as a system, as an inter-related whole that can be intellectually apprehended, questioned, and explored. As the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines it: “Its purpose is to investigate the contents of belief by means of reason enlightened by faith and to promote its deeper understanding”. When taken to an extreme, systematic theology leads to a hyper-intellectualization of the faith and faith becomes a set of ideas or propositions that can be expressed as logical syllogisms that are then affirmed or denied. I see this discussion currently on that edge—and that’s not where it belongs.

While I appreciate and sometimes rely on the insights of Systematic Theology, that’s not my turf. Rather, I prefer to play in the realm of Ascetical Theology. As we’ve discussed before, ascetical theology is:

The theological discipline which deals with the so-called ‘ordinary’ ways of Christian perfection, as distinct from Mystical Theology, whose subject is the ‘extraordinary ‘ or passive ways of the spiritual life. It is thus the science of Christian perfection in so far as this is accessible to human effort aided by grace. It also treats of the means to be employed and the dangers to be avoided if the end of the Christian life is to be attained.

Ascetical theology isn’t about investigating the contents of belief and their relation to one another; rather, it’s about how we live in light of those beliefs. It’s less about thoughts and more about habits. As Aquinas or Barth are the chief exemplars of Systematic Theology, the chief exemplars of Ascetical Theology would include Gregory of Nyssa and John Cassian. Evagrius of Pointus holds an important place there too and in mentioning him it’s worth noting that all three of these have been viewed with a certain amount of suspicion by the sysematicians, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. For instance, I think they’re wrong about Cassian. The Scotist is clearly wrong about Cassian. At issue here is perspective. The systematician works with ideas; the ascetical theology works with far more squishy stuff—life and how we live it. Ideas can be expressed in syllogisms that can be proven true or false; there’s a clarity to them that real life lacks. As a result, the systematicians with their clear-cut syllogisms that must fit together just so often find themselves at odds with those whose theological convictions come from the laboratory of human sin and stumblings towards sanctification.

For me, faith is not a body of beliefs to be held. Holding the Christian faith does not consist of checking the correct boxes on a list of dogmas. (I’m not accusing the Scotist of holding this view—but the way he argues can certainly tend in this direction.) Being a Christian is about consciously living out the relationship that Christ facilitated (through incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and his continued presence with us) and proclaimed (in both his words and works) concerning God. It’s embodying the life hid with Christ in God. Holding right beliefs is important because we make choices about how we live based on what we believe. An intellectualist view may say that ticking the right dogma box is what matters. I’d heartily disagree—that’s a beginning, not an ending. We don’t hold doctrines because they assure us of our salvation, we hold them because they ground fundamentals about the relationship that we’re living within. To hold incorrect views is to mistake the nature of the relationship and thus to err when we try to live that relationship out. This, in my view, is what’s problematic about deny Christ’s divinity or the resurrection of the dead. They’re not wrong because they’re lacking the check mark, but because the relationship will be skewed in ways that it should not be.

A Proposed Statement on The Blessed Virgin Mary

Ok—so what about Mary? What is her proper place?

For the moment I’m going to toss aside the Scotist and his “five dogmas” (whatever those actually are) and will discuss Mary as I see her. Perhaps the Scotist will find his dogmas here—perhaps not. In any case, this is a first attempt towards what I think about Mary and her place in the Christian life…

The Blessed Virgin is indeed most properly dignified with the twin titles of Theotokos (God-bearer) and Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church) and it is in relation to these that I consider her.

Christ is our great Exemplar. He is God-made-flesh, the true man (yet very God) who shows us what it is to will and to do what the Father commands. Perfect obedience, perfect holiness. Growing into the Mind of Christ is our great duty and delight as members of the Body of Christ.

Mary is our secondary exemplar. She attained most perfectly those deeds after which we strive as described in the gospels and Acts: to acquiesce to God’s invitation (Annunciation); to recognize the eschatological action of God in society and the world (the Magnificat); to grow Christ within her and give birth to him in the world (Birth narratives); to ponder all things—the Scriptures, the Tradition, our lives—in relation to Christ (Luke’s birth narrative); to intercede for Christ’s eschatological remediation of our human condition—making the eschatological reality present in our lives (wedding at Cana); to invite others to attend to and enact his words (same); to stand unflinching at the foot of his cross (all crucifixion narratives, esp. John’s); to be a witness of his resurrection (Resurrection narratives).

In light of these historical realities, the Church understood the songs of wisdom particularly in the Apocrypal books as referring to Mary—as mentioned here.

If Christ is the exemplar of our consummation (which he certainly is), then Mary is the exemplar of our method. In order to achieve the goal of being like Christ, we must follow in the footsteps of Mary.

As Theotokos, Mary is the literal God-bearer as the one who carried the embryonic Christ and gave birth to him as a child. Given the description of Mary in Scripture, the Church has understood her as God-bearer in the mystical sense as well, the mother cleaves closest to the child and most closely embodies the Mind of her Son.

If we believe the confession of the Church as the Body of Christ, our incorporation into Christ through Baptism and Eucharist, as more than a metaphor but a mystical reality, then as God-bearer, the literal mother of Christ then becomes Mater Ecclesiae as well. As the literal mother of Jesus when we are grafted into him she becomes our mystical mother. But she is the literal mother of the Church, the organization, as one of the first witness of the Resurrection and a participant at Pentecost. She is mystical mother, too, of the faithful as she serves as the exemplar for our ways of being in the world.

Perhaps once again the key to the confluence of realities represented and embodied in Mary is best represented in the Scriptures, in the Church’s interpretation of the Song of Songs. As we pass through the ages there are three enduring—and intertwining—strategies that the church has used to understand the Song as Sacred Scripture. It is a love-song between the Godhead and 1) the Church, 2) Mary, 3) the soul of the believer. It is only when we grasp the nexus of the three that we fully grasp the role of Mary in relation to both the Church and the soul.

So—in my view (subject to correction, growth, and revision, of course)—I see Mary as the second great exemplar within the Christian faith who exemplifies the means to reach the end (the End) who is the chief and greatest exemplar, Christ himself. Our imitation of the means of Mary is to attain the end that is Christ.

In light of this can Mary be considered co-redemptrix? Not in any way that accords with the fullness of redemption. That is to say, if we held a merely Abelardian view that sees Christ solely as Redeemer through serving as Moral Exemplar (no doubt a caricature of Abelard’s thought itself) then there might be grounds for that—but it’d be an uphill argument. However, the Western Church has never held that the fullness of Christ’s redemptive action is entirely subsumed in his role as exemplar. Mystical Conqueror and Spotless Victim are also facets of Christ’s redeeming work.

So if you can find co-redemptrix here, Scotist, you’re welcome to it—but I don’t see it, nor find here a warrant to make it dogma rather than doctrine.

Mass and Office Anglicanism

Christopher has a great post that sparked this one.

What he, I, and a number of us talk and dream about is a way of taking seriously the connection between spirituality and the daily grind: how does the daily grind become transported into a a day that is productive and meaningful yet grounded in the deep mysteries suffused by the love of God?

We keep fussing around the notion of Mass and Office practice that grounds our spirituality in specific daily habits that then give shape to the days, seasons, and years of our lives.

Specifically this means:

  • A grounding in the Psalms: The Book of Psalms is the most human and visceral book of Scripture that explores what it looks like to live a life in the presence of God that acknowledges joy, sorrow, pain, despair, and delight. It offers glimpses of faithful people overly certain of their own apprehension of the mind of God (“…Do I not hate them that hate thee, O Lord?…I hate them with a perfect hatred…”); it shows souls intent on God that yet languish in despair (…Thou hast caused lover and friend to shun me and darkness is my only companion.”) In short, it holds a mirror before our soul and dares us to deny our baser instincts and our capacities to transcend insisting that as realists we embrace both not only as who we are but also as what we bring to the spiritual life and with which the spiritual life must grapple. 
  • An embrace of the seasons: The seasons of the Church Year are designed to guide us through the full rota of the Christian affections—our emotional orientations and ways of being that parallel and bring depth to our intellectual and rational understanding of the faith. That is, joy, hope, repentence, expectation are to characterize our fundamental orientations and outlook, to form the fundamental syllables of our grammar of faith and our song of life. And the seasons enable the patterning process that sets these things in our bones.

Christopher notes: “Paul Bradshaw asks, ‘What is our intent for the Office?'” And I answer from my research and grounding in early medieval monastic liturgy that the function of the Office is catechetical while the function of the Mass is mystagogical. That is, the Office gives us the basic data that forms our life. In it we ceaslessless read through the psalms. In it we read through (ideally) the whole of Scripture. It forms us in the basics. The Mass excerpts and illuminates particular facets of the light of Christ as perceived through season and Scripture that illuminate the mysteries within which we live.

The Office provides the fundamental context within which we understand the Mass. The Mass gives us the moments (and means) of grace that shock our daily patterns deeper into a life hid in God with Christ. 

Without the Office the Mass offers disjointed and discontinuous vignettes offering little by way of a framework and master narrative. Without the Mass the Office becomes pedantica basic teaching repeated again and again lacking the hints that direct us to the spiritual depths therein.

Historically within the Western liturgy—and I think primarily here of my early medieval research subjects—Mass and Office have been bound to one another and to the season by four fundamental links:

  • Antiphons: both seasonal texts and materials from the Mass lectionary informed the psalm and canticle antiphons used with the psalms in the Office.
  • Hymns: The sense of each season was provided by the hymns which, placed after the psalms and the short Scripture “chapter” (usually a line or two long) sounded the key notes of the season that moved the prayer of the Office from the Psalms to the gospel canticle 
  • Preces: Particularly in major seasons the Epistle from the Sundays Mass would work its way into the preces, the systm of bids and responses that followed the gospel canticles in the major offices of the psalms in the minor ones.
  • The Collects: The collects of the major offices bound the season, Mass and Office together, uniting them in a common, brief, memorizable and memorable prayer. Snatches of Scripture from the Mass Lectionaries—both Gospel and Epistle tied (or had the potential to tie) the connections between season, Mass, and Office even tighter into a harmonioous whole. 

Looking at traditional Anglican Offices, though, the Books of Common Prayer have consistently jettisoned the first three and retained only the forth. However the combination of the ’79 American Prayer Book and the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary have, through ignorance or disregard, further eroded the ties that bound the three together in the collects.

Nothing short of a complete overhaul of the prayer-book collect system will make this pedagogical and theological vehicle operative again. 

And yet we are not without classically Anglican resources or hope. Catholic-leaning Anglicans have kept the breviary hymn tradition alive for centuries forwarding both Roman and Sarum options for the continued use of praying communities. And the 1662’s use of seasonal collects for Advent and Lent, the octave retention of the Collect for Christmas  signal an awareness and a need for the seasonal patterning in both Office and Mass.

Beginnings

Ok—that’s all very theoretical and all. So what do we do now? I’ve got a suggestion. It’s a simple one but it’s a place to start.

Can busy modern households manage full offices everyday?Can we incarnate full-on Mass and Office Anglicanism in modern family communities? Well, it’s not been our experience. Individuals in the households can pray the Offices given schedules with flexibility, but not the whole family, not together. However, what has been working for us is the use of the Brief Offices on pages 137 to 140 of your BCP. At breakfast we pray the morning one (p. 137) at night we use Compline (p. 140) for bedtime prayers. 

Lil’ G (the 5 yr old) memorized the latter when she was 3 and is the major driving force for morning prayer at breakfast.

No, it’s not immersion in the psalter but a bit of a couple of psalms everyday is surely better than none at all. Why not include a seasonal hymn in the space provided for it there and add in the collect of the day before the concluding collect of the office?

It’s basic. It’s doable. It points us towards the pattern of Mass and Office Anglicanism.

Junk Mail Catch

In clearing out my junk mail folder, I discovered a message from Liturgical Training Press. It seems they’re offering 25% off your next purchase if you’re willing to sign up on their email list. Given all the v1@gra spam I have to wade through anyway, a note from a press I actually like seems a small price to pay for a nice discount…and I thought some of you might feel the same.

Of course—I don’t know if this extends to the allied Cistercian Press or not, but if it does, it’ll make me even happier!

The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it

Hie thee over to the Byzantine Anglo-Catholic’s place for a fascinating post on the Camaldolese order and their spirituality. I’m stealing from there the entirity of the Brief Rule left by their founder.

Brief Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish.
The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of
your good will, you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God’s presence, and stand there
with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

Random MP Thought

On running across this section of Ps 103…:

For look how high the heaven is in comparison of the earth; *
so great is his mercy also toward them that fear him.
Look how wide also the east is from the west; *
so far hath he set our sins from us.
Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children; *
even so is the LORD merciful unto them that fear him.
For he knoweth whereof we are made; *
he remembereth that we are but dust.
The days of man are but as grass; *
for he flourisheth as a flower of the field.
For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone; *
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
But the merciful goodness of the LORD endureth for ever and ever upon them that fear him; *
and his righteousness upon children’s children;

…I’m reminded of something I first noticewd when studying the psalms appointed to follow the  Gen 1 reading in the Easter Vigil. I was originally puzzled about the selection of the bits of Psalms 33 and 36 when there are other psalms that seem to me more explicitly focused on creation (like, say, Ps 104!). Why these? 

In looking over these over, I noticed a feature which appears here as well. These psalms aren’t just about creation and the created world. Rather, they’re using creation as a physical model to give us a sense of the breath, height, and depth of the virtues of God.  The vast expanses of creation, the pairings of finitude and infinity are invoked in order to describe the moral characteristics of God and of God’s inordinate love.

Towards the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass…

Kind of…

I have a new post up at the Cafe. It floats around a number of recent discussions about food and meat production, but also about sacrifice and how we understand the Eucharist. There is a positive allergy to talking about the sacrificial element of the Eucharist among many protestants and post-Vatican II catholic types. Here’s a gentle nudge in that direction, positioning it in a way to help people understand the ancient concept of sacrifice and how it informs what we do and how we think.

Nativity of the BVM: Words from the “Apocrypha”

The traditional Epistle for today for well over a thousand years was one of those cases when the Epistle is not an epistle. Instead, the first, non-Gospel, reading at mass was from the multi-named Ecclessiasticus, Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach, Sirach, etc. This is one of those texts that Bible-reading Christians are not familiar with. Even if you’ve read the Apocrypha, you’ll not find this section as it appears in the Vulgate. Here it is in full from the Douay-Rheims English translation of the Vulgate:

Sirach 24:23-31  23 As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. 24 I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope.  25 In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue.  26 Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits.  27 For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb.  28 My memory is unto everlasting generations.  29 They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst.  30 He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin.  31 They that explain me shall have life everlasting.

Update:

For those playing along with the footnotes…

Here’s the KJV 1611 Apocrypha:

Sirach 24:17-22  17 As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.  18 I am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope: I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are named of him.  19 Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits.  20 For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb.  21 They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty.  22 He that obeyeth me shall never be confounded, and they that work by me shall not do amiss. 

Here’s Brenton’s version:

Sirach 24:17-22  17 As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.   19 Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits.  20 For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb.  21 They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty.  22 He that obeyeth me shall never be confounded, and they that work by me shall not do amiss. 

So Breton follows the KJV’s translation, but omits v. 18 in keeping with his base text. So, it appears that the Translators were working with one of those “pauci” texts that Rahlfs mentions which makes me wonder just what they got a hold of… It’s moments like this when I wish I had a Complutensian Polyglot in my library. That would really give us some clues…

Sed contra

And now, a response to the Scotist’s latest writing on the proper regard for the Ever-blessed Virgin Mary…

Once again, the issue at hand is whether awarding the BVM the title of “co-redemptrix” should be held dogmatically by Anglicans. He is arguing for; I am arguing against. In this latest post he starts to address my previous rebuttal in numbered sections; I shall start with him, and add section numbers as it seems appropriate.

I.
I had suggested that the notion of Mary as “co-redemptrix” might be a novelty and asked for citations from the Church Fathers (typically defined as Westerns up through Bede or Easterners up through John of Damascus, though an alternate Anglican definition is the Fathers of the first 5 centuries [yes, Bonaventure is right out…]). In reply, the Scotist provides a handful of quotes. My overall impression of them is that they tell us that great reverence was afforded the Mother of God and that she played an indispensable role in salvation history. I do not find in them, however, the notion of “co-redemptrix”. Let’s look at a few…

His first two are perhaps his best and strongest; they’re both from Irenaeus. Irenaeus was a great champion of and a well-spoken advocate for the notion of recapitulation which was a central understanding of God’s actions in salvation from the time of St Paul.

Let me break this down as best I can: Romans 5 is a key text here. In the latter half of this chapter, Paul speaks of Adam and Jesus as type and antitype. That is, Adam was the one man who sinned through disobedience. His sin of disobedience brought death to all humanity. All humanity was therefore guilty of sin and deserving of death. Jesus the Christ, the sinless, the obedient, freely gave his own life up for death—but this went against the “rules”. He did not deserve death but the gift of his death, as it were, “broke the machine” subsequently freeing humanity from the curse and condemnation of their disobedience; this is accessed through baptism which is a joining into the death and resurrection of Christ by becoming joined into his mystical body (Rom 6).

Paul thus gives us an elegant chiastic sort of structure: one pivotal man (Adam) through his action (disobedience) produces a result for all humanity (death). By embracing that result (death) out of turn, another pivotal man–yet very God–(Jesus) through his action (obedience) produces a result for all humanity (life). It’s compelling in an intellectual kind of way. (I’m open to the notion that it’s less compelling through other forms of knowledge.)

This is also seen in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s resurrection chapter, where he gives us the wondrous passage that we use liturgically in Eastertide as the last part of the Pascha Nostrum:

Christ is risen from the dead, *
and become the first fruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, *
by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, *
even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Alleluia.

Irenaeus takes up this theme which he calls “recapitulation” and makes it explicit. Another key place where the Fathers found it was in the Temptation narrative in the Gospels. As his very first public act (in the Synoptics…) Jesus is tempted by Satan in the desert–just as Adam was in the garden… John Cassian and all those after him (especially Gregory the Great who popularized it) understood the three core temptations of gluttony, pride, and avarice to be the same as before; Adam was bested by these in garden, Jesus triumphed over them in the wilderness. [I’ll have to see if they all get this from Irenaeus…] The devil’s hold suffered a fatal set-back even then—the rest of Christ’s ministry accelerated the unfolding result achieving its great climax in the crucifixion and resurrection.

So—what does all this have to do with Mary? Because as Paul sees Christ as the New Adam, Irenaeus explores the notion of Mary as the New Eve.

As Eve sinned through disobedience, refusing and ignoring the command of God, this primal disobedience in the garden was reversed by Mary in the Annunciation. In Mary’s acceptance, in her obedience to God, Eve’s initial curse was undone. As Jesus “rolls-back” Adam’s disobedience, so does Mary “roll-back” Eve’s. Thus, to the degree that both Adam and Eve were participants in humanity’s primordial sin, so both Jesus and Mary factor into its overcoming.

This notion of recapitulation, therefore, is—as I see it—the single best case for arguing the Immaculate Conception and therefore Mary as “co-redemptrix”. That having been said, I’m still not convinced that this overcoming of original sin requires an immaculate conception or necessarily makes Mary a true “co-redemptrix”. Yes, true obedience to God is an act directly contrary to original sin, but—as we believe and as the Fathers testify—God’s grace strengthens us to overcome this sin; original sin itself is cleansed in Baptism and as we cleave to the Spirit received in Baptism and open ourselves to its work in our wills and ways it nerves us to reject sin and to love, fear, and trust God as we ought.

The central question for me, then, is origin and volition: was the choice of obedience at the annunciation Mary’s free, “unaided” will, or was it her choice assisted and inspired by the Spirit already at work in her life? I can’t see it any other way than the second. To my way of thinking, even Mary’s “yes” was at God’s initiative through grace. It was surely not a coerced “yes”, but the prime mover for the action, its true origin, was in God and not Mary herself.

Moving right along…

The Jerome quote—part of a defense of virginity—is more of the same.

I believe the other two are as well, but I profess and plead my ignorance of the Later Greek Fathers.

Augustine—that one looks intriguing; I’ll have to hunt it down…

Origen—wow, this one would be a clincher—if Origen said what the Scotist said he said… He got tripped up on grammar here. The referent of the sentence is John, the beloved disciple, the one who leaned his head on the breast of Jesus and who [at the foot of the cross] received Mary as his mother from Jesus. The point that Origen is making is that this John is the one most qualified to write the deepest and most penetrating of the gospels because he was the most intimate with Jesus—not because he received the ability to understand Jesus through his mother.

So, this showing has promise particularly in the case of recapitulation but, as the Scotist admits, nothing here seals the deal.

[As a sidenote, you keep referring to the “fifth Marian dogma”. I’m assuming you are using this to refer to the “co-redemptix” notion. Where does this numbering come from—and what are the other four?]

II.
I brought up earlier the conjunction of topics found in Vatcian II’s Lumen Gentium, where it produced a statement on both the Church/ecclesial bodies and the BVM and I suggested that elevating Marian doctrines to the point of dogma without understanding the wider implications was a dangerous business. This point the Scotist concedes. I do want to say a little more about it, though…

Theologically, I’m fairly conservative. One of the reasons that I am conservative is because I fear the consequences of hasty change to any part of the Church’s central proclamation because none of it is truly independent. It’s an interconnected web, a seamless garment. This always proved to be one of the eye-opening moments for the students in my Church Year class—and we generally hit it when we got to what I affectionately refer to as the Goth Triduum—Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls. These days—and the problem of the Protestant co-opting of All Saints as All Souls—can’t be understood without understanding the Church’s theology of death, of the communion of the saints, of Baptism. For many of them, that discussion was their first glimpse of the web of theological connections that is orthodox Christian thought; playing with one part affects everything around it and linked to it by thousands of years of speculation, meditation, and life experience of the reality of the Living God.

III.
Moving along, the Scotist addresses my distinction between doctrine and dogma. This, as far as I’m concerned, is why this is worth fighting over. Doctrine is what may be held; dogma is what must be held. To put it another way, it’s possible to have a doctrinally minimalist Christianity and to still have it recognizable as orthodox Christianity. For example, it’s possible to lop off many of the doctrines and practices relating to the saints and the sacraments and still be “Christian” as described by the Scriptures and the Creeds.
I think it’s a lot more fulfilling and a lot more fun to have these, but I’ll recognize Reformed and Baptist folk as fellow members of the mystical Body even if they don’t sing the right antiphons on the Benedictus for the feast of St Ethelreda. But “dogma” means that it must be held in order for it to be a valid Christianity. A “dogma” is the kind of thing that if you went, in the Spirit, to an orthodox mother and father who died before its establishment and asked, “Hey, do you believe X”, they’d respond, “Well, of course—but that’s so obvious we’ve never had to say it…”

Would the great Baptist, would the great Reformed, forebearers respond this way in regard to the BVM as “co-redemptrix”—and are you prepared to cut them off from the Body of Christ if they answer in the negative on that account?

While the Scotist says: “There is no reason, as an Anglican and an Episcopalian, I have to convert him and others to belief in the fifth dogma as dogmatic, however desirable conversion would be” he is, in fact, mistaken: that’s exactly what dogma means. If he wants to talk about “co-redemptrix” as a doctrine, then he’d be absolutely correct and I’d have no problem with his decision.

Dogma is the fighting word here.

He closes by borrowing a notion from Rahner, the anonymous Christian, and suggests that there may be anonymous Marians. I hate to say it, but this completely rubs me the wrong way. If a roshi told me that I was an anonymous Buddhist, or if I were told by an imam that I was an anonymous Muslim, I’d thank them nicely for their complement of my character but feel a bit annoyed at their condescension. To be told that I am acceptable to the degree to which I participate in their system of belief while not knowing it strikes me as a bit patronizing.

In conclusion, then, I thank the Scotist for his latest effort. I receive with gladness his nice package of patristic quotes and commend the doctrine of recapitulation to you for your consideration. However, I find nothing here that persuades me that the BVM as “co-redemptrix” belongs at the level of dogma. Rather I am persuaded by his use of the term, that the Scotist is improperly using the term, equating doctrine with dogma, when historically and theologically dogma is not equivalent but refers to a mandatory rather than optional doctrine.