Chaotic Cosmos

There is a crying need for good popular science programing on TV. PBS still manages to come up with it on a regular basis (Nova, Nature) and there are some excellent series out there (Blue Planet, Planet Earth). But much of the cable world -- and you know who I mean -- seems more interested in hot-ticket alien abductions or exoticism of the Mondo Cane sort. When I heard that Neil deGrasse Tyson was involved in a reboot of the old Carl Sagan series, Cosmos, I was optimistic.

Too optiimistic. Tyson has done some good work in the past, and he has an engaging personality and enthusiasm. However, on viewing, I found the first episode chaotic and misdirected, with too many different sub-segments in no apparent logical order. Even Tyson seemed to have lost some of his infectious enthusiasm. Sadly that is the least of its problems. At base, it lost focus on its primary theme as an introductory episode, by getting sidetracked into a polemical cul de sac.

This was in the form of an over-long section on Giordano Bruno, which was deeply flawed for several reasons, most importantly in that it did not present a case for the conflict between the scientific method — which Tyson laid out briefly at one point: observation, experiment, testing, rejection of disproved hypotheses — and religious dogma.

It failed in being a helpful contribution because — as Tyson also briefly and somewhat off-handedly acknowledged — Bruno was not a scientist. He came to his views about the universe on the basis of theological and philosophical reflection (on Lucretius) and an ecstatic vision. The fact that he got a couple of details sort of correct on this basis is of no more import to the history of science than that Hinduism, for example, has had a better sense of the age of the cosmos than the Judeo-Christian tradition does.

Moreover, Bruno was not persecuted primarily on account of his cosmology, but on account of his peculiar doctrinal positions on almost every article of the Creed. He denied the Incarnation, for example, a detail somewhat (though likely unintentionally) reflected in the animated account of his trials by his repulsed turning away from the cross at his execution, an accurate detail based on eye-witness evidence. His reliance on private revelation was also deeply problematical and, of course, he could offer no scientific evidence for his views, since they did not arise from science, but pure speculation.

This was a conflict within a religious context, not one between dogma and reason. Bruno was as much a dogmatic religious ideologue as those who persecuted him. This was not about the scientific method running into conflict with a dogmatic religious institution. So why Bruno was chosen to be highlighted in this first diffuse episode -- rather than the one of the real scientists who ran into conflict not only with the church but other scientists (who can also be very dogmatic) — escapes me. Unless, that is, it was just meant as a cheap and dramatic shot against "religion." In which case, it missed, since Bruno was as "religious" as the church.

Oh, and speaking of religious, he was a friar (Dominican) and not a monk.

I'll return to see the second episode, but I hope it is better than the first, on all counts. Focus, people, focus!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Comprehension Requires Contention

Saint Paul observed, in an almost Hegelian way, that controversy and party-spirit, however deplorable in themselves, were almost necessary to the discernment of truth (1 Cor 11:19) There is nothing new in seeking, or at least pining after, an end to all controversy. I would suggest that the current press for an Anglican Covenant stems in part from this desire.

That this should happen within Anglicanism is natural, but to be regarded with some suspicion, as a desire for an end to contentions may merely conceal a desire for the peace of the world rather than the peace of God, which is not achieved by compromise but comprehension. I was perusing the pages of the work of the eminent Mr. Trollope the other day, and came upon a relevant passage. Here the Anglo-Catholic Mr. Arabin discourses with the Widow Bold on the subject of contention in the church, chiefly the Church of England, and dissuades from the easy solution of a governing head to put an end to controversy.

“Do not such contentions bring scandal on the church?”

“More scandal would fall on the church if there were no such contentions. We have but one way to avoid them—by that of acknowledging a common head of our church, whose word on all points of doctrine shall be authoritative. Such a termination of our difficulties is alluring enough. It has charms which are irresistible to many, and all but irresistible, I own, to me.”

“You speak now of the Church of Rome?” said Eleanor.

“No,” said he, “not necessarily of the Church of Rome; but of a church with a head. Had it pleased God to vouchsafe to us such a church our path would have been easy. But easy paths have not been thought good for us.” He paused and stood silent for awhile, thinking of the time when he had so nearly sacrificed all he had, his powers of mind, his free agency, the fresh running waters of his mind’s fountain, his very inner self, for an easy path in which no fighting would be needed; and then he continued: “What you say is partly true: our contentions do bring on us some scandal. The outer world, though it constantly reviles us for our human infirmities and throws in our teeth the fact that being clergymen we are still no more than men, demands of us that we should do our work with godlike perfection. There is nothing god-like about us: we differ from each other with the acerbity common to man; we triumph over each other with human frailty; we allow differences on subjects of divine origin to produce among us antipathies and enmities which are anything but divine. This is all true. But what would you have in place of it? There is no infallible head for a church on earth. This dream of believing man has been tried, and we see in Italy and in Spain what has come of it. Grant that there are and have been no bickerings within the pale of the Pope’s Church. Such an assumption would be utterly untrue, but let us grant it, and then let us say which church has incurred the heavier scandals.”

Barchester Towers, Chapter 21

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Thought from retreat 01.21.10

Bubbles don't look like bubbles from the inside.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 03.08.09

Inspired by seeing the film Goya's Ghosts with Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgård. A well-made but rather unpleasant film — not unlike some of Goya's grostesqueries — telling a tragic story of futility and abuse of power. It is a story of extremes and tyranny, and what people do to those with whom they disagree when unlimited power is placed in their hands. Anyway, here's the thought:

The Holy Office of the Inquisition through the years did more harm to the church and to the world than any of the heresies it sought to suppress.

One thing I learned in the film, of which I had been unaware, is that as late as the late 18th century the Church (which still hadn't officially come to terms with Galileo) was also combating atomic theory as heretical, as it contradicted Aristotle and his Christian agent Aquinas, and made transubstantiation difficult to explain. The motto, "Whatever the cost, hold to your illusions," could have been written for the Inquisition. Their failure to test ideology against reality was costly to the world and to themselves.

But this also set me on a train of further Lenten reflection, for it came to mind in conjunction with thinking about how it is that things in themselves good can be misused or misapplied to bad ends. Sometimes this is the fault of the true believer pressing a point beyond its legitimate logical limits — one of the definitions of heresy, and ironically one of the sins of the Inquisition.

Even worse is the cynical manipulator who knows what he or she is doing is a distortion of some true good, but has twisted it to personal advantage. Such distortion need not be so extreme as the Inquisitor who tortures and rapes to feed his own need for reassurance or power; or the Revolutionary whose persecution of the church is guided primarily by the need for vengeance. In the film, Bardem plays both — a tour de force, a dark portrait of power run amok.

So be watchful of those who trumpet democracy and equality, but set up their private fiefdoms all the while. Democracy and equality are, I think, good things -- but in certain hands they can become paradoxical tools for domination, as when some become "more equal than others." Ideals make excellent building material for labor camps -- and the charmer who can lord it over people to his own advantage while making them think they are acting freely in a great cause has achieved a sublimely wicked work of smoke and mirrors.

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Tested with Fire

a sermon for the feast of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, first delivered by Tobias Haller BSG at the Convent of Saint Helena at Vails Gate New York on October 16, 2004

The Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.+

It is never a pleasant thing to hear about Christians persecuting other Christians: How dissonant and jarring to hear of such behavior by disciples of Christ: followers of the one who gave himself as a ransom for the many, whose end was engineered in large part by those so sure in their religious certitude they were willing to see him done to death.

And church history ever since has been replete with such continued internecine struggles. Those with the power to do so have marginalized, exiled, persecuted — and at the most extreme, executed — those they saw as heretics or sinners, traitors to the cause of Christ, even though they too bore his name.

I will not dwell on recent events in the Anglican Communion — if we dare still call it either Anglican or a Communion — except to note that those who expect a final solution to all our disagreements with next week’s Windsor Report will, I think, be sadly disappointed. Those who see the Episcopal Church as a cancer to be surgically excised will be content with nothing less. Intolerance will not be satisfied with compromise now, as it never has been, by its very nature. And history shows us that the will so to impose one’s vision on others, leads inevitably to division or the scaffold.

Which is where it led the trio of churchmen we commemorate today. Now, none of these were tolerant men — they were as bound to the rightness of their views as were those who condemned them. Cranmer (though he wavered), Latimer and Ridley were no shrinking violets. They were as fierce in their opposition to the Papists when they were in the ascendency as were the Papists when Mary regained the throne.

Which only adds more sorrow to the tragedy. For whoever was right or wrong in their theology — and how many of the questions so hotly debated in those days, and capable of bringing one to the stake, are of much importance either in the light of history or of the Gospel? — surely it was the Church that suffered in this. This was no watering with the blood of martyrs, witnessing to the faith in and of Christ. No, this was theological intransigence armed with the power of the state.

And isn’t that why and how Christ himself died? As he told the disciples, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” The tragedy is that “they” were true believers too. The pious and righteous religious leaders thought they had cause to bring Jesus to trial, but they were wrong — as religious leaders so often seem to be.

The lesson in all of this is that tolerance itself may be the ultimate touchstone of religious truth: and the willingness to persecute or kill others because their religious belief differs from one’s own may be the surest sign of error. For hatred is not the sign of God’s presence. Above all, to see and yet reject the signs of grace in those with whom one disagrees is to reject the source of that grace.

So what are we to do when we ourselves are faced with such opposition? As I said, in the events we commemorate today (perhaps as a timely reminder) hands were bloody on all sides. No amount of flame could cleanse the hands of either those who died or those who lived in those troubled times — all were partners in the dance of death. Those who selected the readings for this day no doubt would like to see the eventual survival of the Church in England over against Rome as a sign of divine favor — or at least a kind of felix culpa — that though the building was burnt (and in this case even the builders), still vindication came. Yet surely the eventual emergence of Anglicanism owes more to Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s succession and Hooker’s genius at comprehension than to Hugh, Nicholas and Thomas having been objectively right, or having witnessed boldly at the stake. In the long run weariness at bloodshed played a greater part in this eventual settlement than any who perished in the strife leading up to it would care to admit.

For ultimately, pace Saint Paul, it isn’t the building that matters, how well or from what it is built, but the foundation alone. And the foundation for any Christian’s building must be Christ. No building will survive — that is the truth. I don’t care how soundly we think we’ve built our fortress of security and truth, or what we’ve made it of — gold, stone or straw. It is not through our works that we will be justified. The gold melts, the straw burns, and the stone is smashed by the hammer. Any builders’ reward, when all buildings fall and burn, will not be based on having built, or how one built, or from what one built, but only where one built. As the poet said, “For none can guess its grace, till he become the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes her dwelling.”

And the Holy Spirit, the love divine, beloved, does not build fortresses to start with, nor does she build on the shifting and unstable sand of human perceptions of truth. Love does not seek its own way, does not punish or exile or kill those who reject it. Love keeps on loving, loving and forgiving even when nailed to the cross. Love is the opposite of hate, hate which must not only have its own way, but demand its way of others, hating and destroying those who will not yield to its tyranny.

Love does not build fortresses for truth — which cannot contain the truth in any case, finite as they are in the light of the surpassing and infinite Truth of God. No, love builds accessibly and openly, long since knowing our disabilities and infirmities, love builds an open avenue for all to follow. And though the door be narrow when we reach it, yet all can enter as we graciously say to each other, “No, please, after you.”

I hope and trust that Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley find equal rest with Wolsey, Pole and More, that the Tudor half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth have made their peace — the peace which passes understanding — and that when the present fires of controversy are long past that threaten the tottering edifice of our Anglican Communion — which we would be most foolish to mistake for the kingdom of God — that the foundation, cleared and level, will be prepared for the new Jerusalem to be built, in which all of us will, not through our possession of the truth, but through the Truth’s possession of us, through the grace and love of God, be pleased to dwell forever.+

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Ghost in the Machine

It came as no surprise to me to see that, according to a report in The Church Times, Archbishop Akinola’s recent agonized public letter was apparently ghosted, or at least very heavily edited, by someone other than the Archbishop. That it seems to have been Martyn Minns also comes as no surprise. (He is, after all, the Archbishop’s North American Representative.)

The reason I was not surprised lies in the text itself. Anyone who has heard the Archbishop speak or read transcripts of interviews with him, or any of his doubtlessly authentic writings, could see the difference in style between those texts and the agonized letter immediately. One could easily say the same concerning Archbishop Orombi, whose ghost writer is probably much closer to him than Abuja is to Fairfax. It does not take computer analysis to recognize such differences or similarities in style.

However, it would be quite wrong to suggest that these archbishops are no more than sock puppets for an American conservative point of view. It may be that the holy ghost writers, far from putting words into the mouths of those for whom they perform this not-so-unusual editorial function, are helping to restrain some of the more exuberant language in which the archbishops have been known to indulge, and to help frame their ideas in a form more palatable to a broader audience. So there is no need to raise the specter of colonial imperialism to join the ghost of authorship. Doubtless Akinola and Orombi both agree with the sentiments and ideas expressed above their names, whether the words are their own or not. Theories of verbal inspiration aside, it is ultimately the meaning that counts.

And it is the meaning that is wrong. As I said in my previous post, The Episcopal Church is not going to hell in a handbasket. Erroneous or heretical views may be expressed by individuals from time to time — and this happens among self-styled reasserters at least as often as it does among reappraisers, and in churches other than The Episcopal Church. But in spite of the publicity — and book sales — attendant on these fringe episodes, they remain precisely that — the reflections of a “heretic fringe.” There is no doubt some overlap between those who favor a revised understanding of the moral status of same-sexuality with those who embrace the odd heretical view; but there is also significant overlap between those who are opposed to such a revision and those who embrace heretical views.

For example, some years ago in the early stages of discussion on sexuality, the House of Bishops Theology Committee issued a document that stated that the divine image in humanity is incomplete without both male and female. (Karl Barth and John Paul II both made similar statements in their arguments against same-sexuality.) This erroneous idea contradicts the doctrine of the Incarnation, which asserts that the divine image in humanity is complete in Jesus Christ, and present in every human being. (The Angelic Doctor addressed this error at I.Q93.6.) It should serve as a warning to all concerned to see how far from orthodoxy some can wander — apparently without noticing it — in their efforts to “reassert” the church’s tradition on sexuality.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me where bad ideas come from — or good ones for that matter. Whether the words come from Abuja or Alexandria, from the Vatican or Cape Town — or even from the Bronx! — their meaning and significance must be weighed for their concordance with the heart of the gospel as revealed in Jesus Christ, and in accordance with his teaching. He is the standard of Truth against which all our theories must be tested.

Tobias Haller BSG

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Idealist and Realist

It has been said that there are two groups of people in the world: those who divide people into two groups and those who don’t. I’ve been reflecting for a time on some of the issues facing The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, and it seems to me that it is possible to group the responses to these issues under convenient — if inaccurate — headings.

Many who favor the development of a covenant for the Anglican Communion appear to me to be taking an idealist approach: they are describing a church structure that does not yet exist but which they feel sure should exist for the good of the Church. Many, who are concerned about the development of such a covenant, if not entirely opposed to it, seem to be taking a more realist approach: describing present church structures in an effort to determine where the difficulties have arisen. As my friend *Christopher describes it, it is a difference between prescription and description.

It occurred to me that while it is hard to define these categories in definitive ways, it might be possible to cast a broader net to communicate the kinds of differences in approach I am trying to describe.

[Added note: My effort here is not to create categories into which individuals might fit, but rather look at how idealism and realism are expressed in many and various ways in different contexts. An individual person might be very idealistic about her politics, but intensely pragmatic about childrearing. More importantly, I do not mean the following categories to reflect directly the categories "liberal" and "conservative." People on both sides of the ecclesiastical divide can be equally idealistic or realistic in various ways.]

Let me begin with a specific example and then provide an attempt at a “cloud of witnesses” in which I might hope to surround the area in which I think the categories might become clearer.

Measures Taken

Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Measures Taken, charts the course of a Communist cell working in prerevolutionary China. I composed music for a production of this play when I was in college, and what fascinated me about the play was its objectivity: both ardent socialists and fervent Republicans could point to it and say: yes, that’s what communism is all about. [In keeping with my comment above, note that the play is about Communism, and the tension between idealism and realism in that context. An idealist Christian is very different from an idealist Communist!]

The play describes the problems that arise when one of the cell members, the Young Comrade, can’t seem to grasp the point of the cell’s purpose: to promote the revolution. The Young Comrade instead spends his time trying to help individual people in their misery. For example, in one scene set on the banks of the canal, the cell is sent in to agitate the barge-pullers into forming a union to demand better wages and, more importantly, shoes that will help them keep their footing better in the muddy banks. The Young Comrade, taking pity on the workers, instead of agitating them, gathers up rocks from the hillside and runs about putting them under the feet of the barge-pullers to keep them from slipping and falling. This completely undercuts the cell’s efforts and they are forced to move on to their next effort.

It is interesting to reflect on this in light of the issues before us. In the following chart I’ve attempted to list some “off the top of my head” reactions. Others may think I have listed things exactly opposite to the way they should be. Some may find this a frivolous exercise; but I hope it might hold a mirror up both for myself and others in the present discussions to assist in seeing why it may be that we can come to such different conclusions when faced with the same situation. And so, in no particular order, here are some various distinctions between idealism and realism in a number of different areas of human endeavor.

topic	idealist	realist
scripture	inerrant	sufficient
ecclesiastical structure	hierarchical, oligarchic	communitarian, conciliar
epistemology	certain	incomplete
eschatology	realized	expectant
hermeneutic	literal revelation	contextual reception
origins	creation	evolution
socialism	maoist	fabian
mood	subjunctive	indicative
historical method	retrojection of present onto past	explanation of present from past
physicist	newton	einstein
ethics	deontological	situational or utilitarian
worldview	fixed	fluid
social model	conformity	cooperation
goal	uniformity	unity
reason	inductive	deductive
prevailing fault	ignoring evidence	misinterpreting evidence
opt/pessimism test	“Glass is half empty”	“This is a glass containing half of its capacity.”
chief virtues	fortitude, hope	prudence, charity
notable vice	pride	sloth
heretical tendency	donatism	pelagianism
pedagogy	pre/proscriptive	descriptive
mode of operation	rules-based	needs-based
mathematics	euclid	gödel
k-harmonian category	reasserter	reappraiser
gospel	john	mark
ecclesia	semper	reformanda
metaphorical stance	allegory	simile
theological school	thomism	augustinianism
the church	“founded on a rock”	“a pilgrim people”
worldview	big picture	details
murals	fresco	mosaic
creation story	genesis 1	genesis 2
christ event	resurrrection	incarnation
new testament book	revelation	acts
spanish painter	el greco	goya
engineering	designer	mechanic

With a very large FWIW...

Tobias Haller BSG

The Way

on the feast of S Irenaeus of Lyons
preached at the Finger Lakes Conference • June 28 1999
Tobias Haller BSG

Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies... — 2 Timothy 2:23

The Apostle Paul warned his young protege Timothy, “Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” Like most advice, this bit of avuncular Pauline wisdom has largely been ignored. An agnostic viewer of the church’s history — or an honest Christian — might be tempted to say that the church’s history consists of little else besides stupid and senseless controversies.

Christ went to the cross to save the world, but the proximate cause of his predicament was violent controversy about the sabbath, the Temple, and various fine points of Jewish dietary law, and the precarious balance of power between Rome and the tetrarchs. Peter and Paul faced the problems of what we’d now call a pluralistic society, and the question of whether, and how far, Gentiles should be let in on the Christian thing — and whether, in the case of men at least, such an entry required parting with a nonvital portion of their anatomy. Later Irenaeus wrote a big, fat book about heresies, most of them now long forgotten. The Holy Fathers who hammered out the Nicene creed argued on and on about the difference between “same as” and “similar to” — and their successors in the Reformation argued about double predestination and allowing the chalice to the laity. The list goes on and on…

And please don’t mistake me: I do not say these matters were of no importance. Although the burning issues of one age are the cold ashes of the next, while they burn, they do give some light, and as the Gospel appointed for the feast of Saint Irenaeus has it, giving light is a large part of what we are to be about. (Luke 11:33-36) It is out of these conflicts — some of them now seeming so trivial and pointless — that the church took shape, defining itself in these tensions. As Saint Paul himself once observed, with a flash of Hegelian insight, it is through controversies and factions that the genuine truth is eventually discerned. (1 Cor. 11:19)

The downside of all of this is the hurt and harm that happens in the process. As parties form around various positions, mutual anathemas are issued, and where the power of the sword falls into its hand, orthodoxy can be a terrible thing indeed, mowing down those it considers heretics — which is just a fancy Greek word applied to members of the opposite party.

But if we look closely at our church, the church that survived the controversies, that was formed out of these tensions, the strange thing is that our surviving church quite often represents the forces of change and development, not the orthodox defenders of what they think of as the faith once given. Yesterday’s heresies become today’s orthodoxies, and presto chango: who is the heretic? If nothing else, none of us Gentiles would be here if the Circumcision Party had had their way. Even though they had scripture and tradition on their side, the church moved on.

As it has a way of doing. Because the church is not so much about taking up a position as in being a way. The Spirit moves where it wills, leading a pilgrim people. And to follow the Spirit, and to follow Christ, means pulling that cross from the ground and carrying it every day of your life, not knowing where it will be planted next. If the church is to be true to its own best self, it must always be on the move, and follow the One who is the Way.

+ + +

The other thing about heretics — the orthodox kind, the kind who get left behind when the church moves on, the kind who think they have God in their pocket next to their zipper-flap bibles — the thing about heretics is that they are always so sure of the truth. Their truth, that is. Now, as Professor Indiana Jones told his class in archeology, “I’m here to teach you about facts. If you want to talk about truth you’d better check the philosophy department.” But the orthodox heretics have forgotten that: they treat the truth like facts. They think it’s all clear and self-evident, printed in black and white, with words of Christ in red. In doing so, they neglect the living Truth who is not a fact but a Person; who is a Word that is always being spoken in our hearts, not set in stone or printed on india paper in red ink. Christ, the living Word is also the living Truth, the Truth that reveals itself not in static (and therefore dead) absolutes but in the relatedness that binds all things in one. The real Truth is about relationships, for it is out of relationships that reality itself is constituted, from the Holy Trinity on down.

+ + +

We are, like it or not, in the midst of another Reformation. The parties are formed up, taking their positions, marshaling their data. Out of this turmoil new life will arise, but many will suffer in the process. Is there a better way? Is there a nobler truth? You know there is. And you know who he is. Only Christ, whose mother hen wings stretch out and over the universe of human fallibility can gently rustle us together so none of us gets lost. Only Christ whose naked Truth was a scandal to Jews and a folly to Greeks can embarrass us into setting down our dog-eared Bibles with a blush of shame, as we realize who it is we have been arguing with, demeaning and demonizing. He is the Way, he is the Truth, and he is Life. And before him all our controversies, no matter how deeply convinced we are of their importance, become senseless and stupid. He is the Way, and the Truth, and Life. May we always walk in that Way, rejoice in that Truth, live in that Life.+

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Enough of hate

Recently some of my friends have started posting a bumper-sticker that says, “Love the bigot, hate the bigotry.” This is a response to the oft-repeated, “Jesus taught us to hate the sin but love the sinner”? But I’d like to offer a better response. I’d like to say, “Enough with the hate, already.” After all, Jesus didn’t say anything about hating sin or sinners, did he? Not in my Bible! Luke alone preserves the saying about hating one’s family (a strange twist on ‘family values’) and one’s life (14:26) and John the instruction to hate one’s own life in order to gain eternal life (12:25).

So this floating quotation seems not to be an authentic logion. But suppose one wants to argue that it is in keeping with what Jesus would have said; well, let’s take a look at that possibility.

First of all we have to ask, What is sin? (If that’s what we’re supposed to hate.) Wrong actions? Would Jesus have said that? No, because defining behavior alone as being sinful is not only non-Christian, but non-Jewish. The Tenth Commandment (“Thou shalt not covet”) and the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:20-48) have confounded jurists and agnostics for centuries. In Judaism and Christianity, ethics, which forbids certain acts, is augmented by a higher moral law in which it is not enough just “not to kill, not to commit adultery...” but in which one must not hate, must not lust, must not desire (possessions or actions) wrongly. For the Christian and the Jew, there may be victimless crimes, but there are no victimless sins.

Jesus recognized, in his critique of the Pharisees, how by categorizing certain actions as sins it becomes very simple to justify oneself. When behavior alone is the criterion, it becomes painfully easy to stand in judgment: “I thank God I’m not one of them!” is a cry of self-justification through the judgment of others who do “what I don’t do.”

So it would seem on the first count, the very nature of sin, that Jesus would not have said, “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”

But there is a further difficulty. How does one separate the two, if sin involves more than behavior, as both the Law and Jesus maintain? Jesus does not deal with sin apart from sinners. Without a word about hatred, Christ on the contrary tells us that we should love the sinner and forgive the sin. Be hated — yes, you will be — but do not return that hatred with hatred.

It is impossible to “hate the sin” apart from the sinner, as if sin had some reality apart from the desires and actions of fallen human beings, as if you could somehow extract the sin from a person and vent your purifying fury upon it. Such a notion is very far from the Gospel. What is worse, those who begin by “hating the sin” in this abstract way soon will come to hating the sinner in a concrete way, as indeed they must, since the one cannot exist apart from the other. And when those who legislate what is sinful have sufficient power, we have seen what results: the auto da fé was intended to save the souls of those repentant heretics being burned alive.

There have been enough burnings. There have been enough crosses on the hillside. No more hate, brothers and sisters. Please; no more hate.

— Tobias Haller BSG

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The Monotonist Liturgy

a satire

I would like to report on a liturgical discovery made quite by chance recently. In a dusty copy of an old liturgical book, I came across what appear to be fragments of an early liturgy from a little-known heretical movement, Monotonism. The heresy takes its name from its originator Monotonus of Crete, who, among other things, was intent on unifying the concepts of kairos and chronos, and proclaiming that the eschaton had both already happened and yet was to be postponed indefinitely by a two-thirds vote of the Synod, motion undebatable. He appears to have been unduly influenced by the thought of Zeno (or Xeno) of Elea.

It appears that Monotonus produced little else apart from this Liturgy, though there are scattered references in later sources to a very detailed Monotonus’ Rules of Order, now lost.

The concerns of this heretical group are reflected in the fragmentary liturgy, which survives only in this very damaged manuscript copy. It is very late, probably dating to the last half of the last century, as it is written in ball-point on the bottom halves of what appear to be leaves of a legal pad. I provide here a transcript in translation.

The Liturgy of SS. Stasis and Perpetua

The Deacon goes to the Royal Doors, the subdeacons all the while shaking their sistrums and looking at the Wonder-Working Icon of the Clock Made With No Hands. The Deacon prostrates, and asks

Deacon: Are you done in there yet?

Celebrant: Not yet. [Lit., "It is not yet the time."]

. . . . . . .

. . . as the Procession takes two steps forward in honor of the divine and human natures and one step backwards in honor of the unity of persons....

. . . . . . .

[Dea]con:Have you anything to add?

Celebrant:Yea, verily.

Deacon:Silence. The Divine speaks. Again.

. . . . . . .

[The] Gospel book is moved from the right hand of the altar to the left and then back again.

. . . . . . .

Deacon:Could you please repeat that.

Celebrant:God willing and the people consenting.

People:He is worthy to be heard!

Celebrant:You are too kind.

People:No, really. Please continue.

A period of silence follows....

[The ms. breaks off here.]

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