It is becoming increasingly common to think of faith in the Christian West as going through a time of great change. In the simile proposed by Phyllis Tickle, we have torn open the covering of the "cable" to the anchor of faith and are examining the cords/threads within. The source of our modern "predicament" has been variously conceptualized, and I am drawn to the hypothesis proposed by Karen Armstrong that, in the post-reformation period, the Christian West has abandoned too much of the "mythos" in religion, opting for a more purely "logos" approach, creating a new synthesis out of the interaction of traditional faith with the ideas of the enlightenment and the growth of modern science. This approach asserted the "understandability" of religious faith in rational terms in much the same way that the discovery of the "laws" of physics had rendered the physical world intelligible and understandable. As the discoveries of science have rapidly rendered a literal understanding of at least the cosmology of the bible untenable, however, the "cracks" in the old religious synthesis have continued to appear in ever greater number and size.
Somewhat less credited, it would seem, in Armstrong's work, has been the influence of the so-called higher biblical criticism. Shunned by conservative evangelicals who continue to espouse a "literalist" approach, it has become rather standard stuff in a modern seminary education for mainline protestants and also Roman Catholics. Although it is not frequently referred to in explicit ways in most Sunday sermons, it underlies a great deal of the public preaching in the mainline Protestant churches and lurks underneath the surface in more Catholic settings. Currently, the "debate" between radical atheism and religious faith has focused on questions such as the "existence" of God and the attacks by the atheist activists on the literalist/fundamentalist form of Christianity that has arisen as a response to the tide of the degradation of the old-paradigm, post-reformation Christian synthesis. As in any bitter divorce, there is acrimony aplenty flowing in both directions between the now-atheist scientists and the Christian fundamentalists. This has become further complicated by the "culture war" causes of civil rights for persons of color, women and GLBT persons.
One more subtle thread, however, often lost in this drama that plays out on the more public stage, has been what I might term the "Crisis of Christology." Traditional histories of Christianity relegate the great Christological debates to a long-past period of the first centuries of Christian development. The "settled question" of Christology, however, has begun to resurface following assaults on many fronts: questions about the literal/factual nature of the resurrection, "historical" Jesus research and the rediscovery of ancient "alternative" Christologies such as those found in the Nag Hammadi texts to name a few. As an Episcopalian in a church where fundamentalist biblical literalism is a decidedly minority opinion, the Christological controversy is likely to prove much more divisive and destructive, and it is something that we would be well-advised to watch very carefully. It has already surfaced in a practical sense in the recent controversy over the consent to the election of the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. It was implicit in the furor over the sermon of the Most Rev. Schori with her supposedly "universalist" comments at recent General Convention. For conservative Evangelicals, little of their faith life has been grounded in any conscious/careful understanding of traditional Christology, although it "assumes" some of the basics. For Episcopalians, however, traditionally both reformed and catholic, continuing to affirm the Nicean-Constantinopolitan Creed and possessing an historical liturgical tradition, our whole religious life "reeks" with complex Christological underpinnings. In online debates I have seen this surface in what I might call a "mining" or rediscovery of more "eastern" orthodox traditions. We find quotes trotted out from the earliest fathers of the Church: Athanasius, the Gregories, Basil and others as "defenses" in a way that has not been seen in Christian theological debate for more than a millennium. This reassertion of the complex Christologies to which they contributed has been countered by a contrary school of reaching back to more mystical traditional ideas with elements from Origen, Duns Scotus, Eckhart, pseudo-Dionysius and others revered for their works on religious experience/practice and some of them villified for their "defective" Christologies. In a more profound way than the debates that have arisen over biblical literalism, this has touched the heart of more "catholic" strains of Christianity such as exist in Anglicanism and TEC and has contributed to the present unhappy marriage of biblical-literalist evangelicals and traditionalist Anglo-catholics. We saw this earlier this year in a debate in The Episcopal Cafe in which I participated in which the "meaning" of the incarnation and its "orthodox" understanding was a topic of lively debate. It has resurfaced this past week on Dean Nicholas Knisely's Blog, Entangled States, where he was noted to have quipped, "Ugh. Who says the Christological controversies are fully behind us?"
Rather than being "fully behind us," I believe that the question of the place of Jesus in post-modern Christianity is very much an open one at present. As someone who has moved in a non-theistic and more "mystical" direction in the "understanding" of religious faith and practice but who has also absorbed a great deal of the "higher criticism," I have been trying, so far, to "let the question ride." Inasmuch as a "mystical" or "experiential" approach to the numinous requires a liturgical and ritual context, I had decided that it would be best to loosen my crossed fingers and just "do" the liturgy rather than placing each prayer, response and action under the analytical microscope. I have also been drawn, as a response to the dreaded "Anglican Covenant," to the idea advanced by the V. Rev. Knisely of the idea of the BCP as a de facto covenant and one that precludes the need for the one under present consideration. I have, therefore, been a bit "agnostic" of late in my own Christology.
It is clear, however, that the liturgical life of our branch of the church, so essential to our corporate identity, is strongly rooted in a "high" traditional Christology. The centrality of the eucharistic observation is tied up with dogmatic formulations such as the so-called doctrine of penal substitution. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the problematic "God the Son" is so pervasive that one can scarcely find a single paragraph of the prayerbook that does not touch on it- explicitly, implicitly or formulaically. In general, I think that the church will be better served by anticipating these controversies at this comparatively early stage and starting to deal with them in a conscious and considered manner rather than engaging in our usual practice of waiting for it to become an overwhelming and destructive tidal wave. We need to begin to consider that we may have to re-answer the old question from the Gospels of "Who do you say that I am?" regarding the Christ of Faith, if we are to be able to "save" Jesus for the next synthesis.
I would suggest that this has the potential to be far more divisive than the present hot-button issue of sexuality about which there is currently so much angst. Admittedly, the "Christological Crisis" has not come fully to the attention of the everyman in the pew, but it is being heard increasingly in more liberal-minded circles in the church. I find, in addition, that this type of "issue" begins to divide even the so-called "liberals" at a deep level. There are clearly those who are ready to move forward on issues of morality/sexuality but are deeply suspicious of opening the Pandora's box of re-examining our Christology. Many otherwise "liberal" and intellectual persons in the church have begun to engage in what I have tended to call "heresy cataloguing" in which the response to a "suspect" Christological statement is to "name the heresy" and slam the door shut on debate. That a middle-of-the-road clergy person such as Dean Knisely could suggest that Christological controversy is not "fully behind us" suggests that the questions are widespread and deep, even if we do not talk about them. I would hope that we could continue to exercise our Anglican/Episcopal open-mindedness in debate and discussion and allow some of this to "come out" into the open, particularly after the "sexuality storm" has settled down a bit. So far, much of the "Emergent Church" movement has come from a post-evangelical perspective, and seems little interested in resolving these issues or even discussing them, presumably as high Christology was never a strong "evangelical" concern to start with. I would hate to see, however, the development/evolution in these new churches continue without the input of those of us from more traditional "mainline" backgrounds who are better equipped to deal with the Christological questions, having historically had a "high" Christology to start with, but we shall see....
Anyone ready to debate the "two natures?" Don't be chicken!
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