Dormant

This blog will be dormant for a while, I reckon.

The Many Moods of Emmanuelle Pearce

Here are some pictures that capture the mood of Emmanuelle at our Easter Feast. Thanks to Vinni Ramm for the expert photography.

Haldane on Conscience

Recently I listened to a talk given by Professor John Haldane to students at the University of St Andrews, entitled The Philosophical Legacy of Pope John Paul II. It’s well worth listening to, especially if you want to hear what Suggs’ cousin in law has to say about the previous pope’s philosophical strengths and limitations.  Anyhow, at the end of his talk was a question time, and one of the students asked him about the teaching on conscience presented in John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. In his response Haldane made some off the cuff remarks I found so stimulating that I decided to make a more or less accurate typescript (which captures the feel of his rhythms of speech). Here it is:

 

 

[A]cting in conscience is acting authentically. It is acting in accord with your own encounter with self. But compatible with that is false conscience. Your conscience can be badly formed, because you might be the subject, I suppose you might say the victim, of bad education. Or the world in which you grew up may have been a brutalized world. So the only values that you encountered were disvalues, negative values, as a result of which you might have formed a view of the world that was a very dark view of the world; or you might have been subject to various psychological pressures or influences and so on, as a result of which your understanding of what it is to be a self is perverse. It’s authentic, but it’s false. So you’re acting in conscience, i.e. in authenticity to the discovered subject, but the discovered subject is a malformed subject as a result of these influences and such like.

 

Now that’s the counterpart, where Thomas Aquinas says you’re obliged to act according to conscience, but you’re guilty if your conscience is a bad conscience. So you can be in the following dilemma: Whatever you do, you’ll have done the wrong thing, because if you act according to conscience, and your conscience is a badly formed conscience you’ll do the wrong thing. If you don’t act according to your conscience you’ll act inauthentically, and so you’ll do the wrong thing. So there’s an obligation to be authentic, or to act according to conscience, but your conscience isn’t bound to be a good conscience.

 

Now it’s extremely important, for example, in the debates of the 1960’s, particularly in the area of sexual ethics, but not exclusively there, where people said things like: ‘Well the Church teaches that you should act in accordance with your conscience, so this is a matter for conscience’, whether it be a matter of contraception, or whatever else it might be, ‘it’s a matter for conscience’. That’s true. But everything is a matter for conscience. All ethical action is ultimately a matter for conscience. When people say ‘It’s a matter for conscience’, what they meant was ‘if I feel it’s right, it’s right’. That’s not what the doctrine of conscience is. The doctrine of conscience is: You are obliged to act out of your reflective best self-understanding of what it is right to do. You’re obliged to do what you believe is right to do. But that doesn’t mean that what you do is right. So you can be acting fully in accord with your conscience and doing the wrong thing. And that was Aquinas’ great…he thought that was part of the tragedy of sin, that actually the great effect of sin is that it creates more sin, because actually when you get into sin then whatever you do you’ll do wrong, because your conscience is corrupted and so on...so acting in accordance with conscience doesn’t mean that what you do is right.

 

I mean conscience isn’t some sort of funny voice in your head. I mean it means your best reflective understanding of what you ought to do. It’s, as it were, reflecting upon what you believe, what you understand about the situation, and so on…acting authentically with your best reflective understanding. But this why false moral theology, if I can put it that way, false teaching in general, is particularly pernicious. Because in the name of the teaching authority that would guide and govern people’s lives it promulgates false understandings. People have a duty…it is certainly reasonable for people to defer to what they recognize as authorities, but now this authority is corrupting you effectively by telling you the wrong thing, then look what position they put you in: whatever you do, you’ll do the wrong thing. Because if you don’t act in accordance with your best understanding, your conscience, you’ll have done the wrong thing, and if you do act in accord with a falsely informed conscience you’ll do the wrong thing.

 

Now what I would say, however, in case this seems too depressing, is that what would be said here is this: If you act in accord with a false conscience, a badly formed conscience, for which you are not yourself culpable, I mean you’re not responsible for having a badly formed conscience, you’re badly brought up, badly taught, people told you false things at school, then the subjective culpability is diminished.

 

Conscience does not constitute the rightness of an act, conscience is meant to reveal the rightness of an act. If it tells you that something is right which as it turns out is not right, that just shows that it is a false conscience. So it is not the teaching of the church that something is right if it’s done in accord with conscience. The teaching of the church is that it is wrong to act at odds with your conscience, but acting in accord with conscience doesn’t make what you do right.

 

Haldane’s off the cuff remarks present, as far as I can tell, a similar approach to that St Paul takes in 1 Corinthians 4:4 ‘My conscience is clear (RSV: I am not aware of anything against myself), but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me’. Haldane’s exposition certainly makes me think about my pastoral responsibility to keep my teaching pure.

 

Any comments?

 

Back Again

Meg and I recently went to a wedding where the groom and half the guests were Brits. The best man, a Brit, the brother of the groom, recounted, in his speech, his experience in customs:

‘When I arrived in Australia I was handed a form to complete that included the following question, “Do you have a criminal record?” This concerned me: I had no idea that having a criminal record was still a requirement.’

This was followed by some chuckles, and then some boos.

He said, ‘I anticipated a mixed response’.

Lent

Not that it makes much difference, but I won't be writing anything on this blog during Lent.

I'm sure you all will be able to cope with the disappointment!

Meilaender

Recently my good friend (and Godfather to Francesca) Thomas Pietsch paid a visit to us with his ever-charming wife Chelsea. Thom, who is now going into his third year at ALC (the Australian Lutheran Seminary) spent some time talking theology with me, and we together read a chapter ('Hearts set to obey') from Lutheran theologian Gilbert Meilaender's The Freedom of a Christian). I wish I could reproduce the text here, as it gives a very concise overview (and rightly critical) of the sort of Lutheran ethical thinking that is as popular as it is disconnected from the Lutheran Confessions.

Anyhow, since I can't give a link to Meilaender's essay I will give a link to a wonderful essay by Fr Bernhard Blankenhorn, a Dominican from the US. It's a nice summary of what I understand is called 'Virtue Ethics'. I came across it through a link on the Lutheran - Roman Catholic dialog in the US. Apparently David Yeago - who seems to me to be one of the best theologians in the ELCA - recently spoke at Blankenhorn's parish on the progress of the dialog in the US. I'm hoping for an mp3 of the talk to be put on the web soon. 

Bach

A little while ago I came across a link to these wonderful, free, and legal recordings of Bach's organ works.

If it's your thing, they're worth a listen.

A Test Blog

Today I have the good fortune to have the inimitable Schutz staying with me [that's SCHÜTZ, Fraser!]. He has been teaching me how to do a few things on my blog, like add a blog roll (see right hand side). I'm now also going to put in my first hyperlink like this (see here). 

And my first YouTube link: 

That's not me playing, unfortunately. 

Well, a real blog soon.

Emmanuelle is Emmanuwell

Sorry about the title.

Just a note to let you know that E's treatment appears to be going very well. She's even been in my study tearing up paper. This is a good sign.

Thank you for your prayers,

Fraser

Update on Emmanuelle

I've just got back from the hospital with Meg and Emmanuelle. The tests didn't turn anything up, and the diagnosis is that whatE has is viral; which is, I assume, good news. Anyhow, E is home, and her face is looking so sweet that I'm concerned some bees will try to shove her in their hive.

After not getting much sleep in the hospital last night, M and E are looking forward to some decent rest.

Thanks for your prayers.

The hospital stay proved beyond doubt (if there ever was any) that E is Feisty with a capital F. The staff couldn't stick needles in her, of poke her abdomen, or attach her to various pieces of apparatus without her cracking it.

Emmanuelle

Little Emmanuelle is in hospital undergoing tests. The doctors don't know what is wrong. Margaret is with her. Please pray for her. She'll be there overnight at least.

The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility

Having been inspired by William Weedon's 'Homeltical Aphorisms' http://weedon.blogspot.com/2007/11/homiletical-aphorisms.html#comments, I hereby submit 'The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility'. I've ripped this off straight from George Rutler's 'The Cure D'Ars Today', and he ripped it straight from John Vianney himself. So:

The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility

1. To think that what one says or does is better than what others say and do.
2. To always want to get your own way.
3. To argue with stubbornness and bad manners whether you are right or wrong.
4. To give your opinion when it has not been requested or when charity does not demand it.
5. To look down on another’s point of view.
6. Not to look on your own gifts and abilities as lent.
7. Not to recognize that you are unworthy of all honours and esteem, not even the earth you walk on and things you possess.
8. To use yourself as an example in conversation.
9. To speak badly of yourself so that others will think well of you or contradict you.
10. To excuse yourself when you are corrected.
11. To hide humiliating faults from your spiritual director, so that he will not change the impression that he has of you.
12. To take pleasure in praise and compliments.
13. To be saddened because others are held in higher esteem.
14. To refuse to perform inferior tasks.
15. To seek to stand out.
16. To refer in conversation to your honesty, genius, dexterity, or professional prestige.
17. To be ashamed because you lack certain goods.

Nolite Confidere in Principibus

That is, ‘Do not put your trust in princes’ –Psalm 146:3 (145:2 in the Vulgate). ‘Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish’.

These words were going through my mind on Saturday night as I saw the election results. One of our ‘princes’ – John Howard – has left the scene to be replaced by our new ‘prince’ - Kevin Rudd. The prayers of our little congregation are with our new Prime Minister, of course, just as they were with our old one. But neither man, thank God, has been or will be the Saviour of our Nation.

On Saturday night, as I heard the crowds cheering, I got to thinking about changes in my experience - and in my understanding - of political debate. In recent years I’ve grown less eager to hear (from myself and others) politicians (of any political stripe) vilified. I welcome (and enjoy) vigorous discussion on the merits (or otherwise) of political policy and ideas, but when conversation descends into name-calling and personal attacks on politicians it gets me down. I can’t help feel that such conversation is a display of a lack of faith in God – that is, I can't help feeling that when faith in God weakens then we have to find scapegoats other than the Lamb of God - and so I hear vilification of politicians, from myself or others, as reluctance to take our anger and frustration to the One who is ultimately responsible: God.

But on Saturday night I heard the crowds not simply cheering, but chanting the name of at least one politician. And this disturbed me more than any of the abuse I have heard poured on any politician. Personal attacks on politicians I can understand, even if it gets me down. But chanting the name of a politician?

Nolite confidere in principibus. It's my suggested motto for election nights.

For Charles

Charles, my brother in law, wants less theology and more pics of his nieces and nephew. So, here's a picture of Emmanuelle, looking as cute as a bug's ear.

The Word and the Church

In the last few weeks, in preparation for the next round of the national Lutheran / Roman Catholic dialogue, I’ve been reading on the place of Scripture in the life of the Church. One key passage from Vatican II sums it up this way:
“It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” (DV II 10)
As the dialogue process proceeds, I look forward to hearing what the Catholic participants have to say in their understanding and explanation of these words. It seems to me that one could accept this teaching while at the same time holding that the Church is ‘under’ Scripture. We’ll see.
In looking through the Book of Concord, I’ve been surprised to find how few references there are to the place of Scripture in determining doctrine. There are, however, some important passages that deal directly with the issue, including this one form the beginning of the Formula:
“1. We believe, teach, and confess that the sole rule and standard according to which all dogmas together with [all] teachers should be estimated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testament alone, as it is written Ps. 119, 105: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And St. Paul: Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed, Gal. 1, 8.” (FC Ep. I 1)
What interests me about this passage is the use of the passives ‘should be estimated and judged’. Estimated and judged by whom?
A typically protestant answer might be ‘estimated and judged by each individual Christian’. But is this the way that Lutherans, at least as we expound our confessional teaching, would rightly answer?
It seems to me that the next round of dialogue will be interesting.

The Body as an Obstacle to Human Freedom

Over the last 13 years I have enjoyed a close friendship with Lutheran Pastor Adam Cooper. Apart from the similarity of our age and cultural background, one of the things that has bonded us as friends is the similarity of the questions that we bring to the Lutheran Confessions. In particular, we have enjoyed hours of conversation thinking through the role of the human body in salvation, and how the reality of the salvation of human beings as embodied creatures is addressed (or left unaddressed – because not a point of contention in the 16th century) in the Lutheran Confessions. While Adam has pursued theological questions regarding the body in an academically rigorous way (see, for example http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/HistoryofChristianity/EarlyChurch/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5OTI3NTcwMA==) I’ve plodded along in my own rather undisciplined (and less intellectually powerful) way, reading a fair range of theology, history, and philosophy, and dragging into conversation whomsoever I can on the role of body in our destiny as human beings.

Now I’ve just this afternoon finished talking through with Adam a draft of a paper that he is preparing for our next district pastors’ conference. We’ve gone over a number of familiar issues, and one in particular that I want to blog about is the way that, in our contemporary culture, the body seems to be seen as an obstacle to human freedom.

It seems to me that in western society there has for the past two millennia been a basic (although waning) assumption that bodily existence is a given, and that human flourishing and happiness (and even beatitude) is the result of submitting to the bodily limitations that we enjoy as created beings. From the point of view of theology, confessing the reality of the resurrection of the body has been a way of understanding that our existence as creatures with bodies is not an obstacle to us seeing the face of God – to us finding our eternal completion in the gracious presence of the holy angels around the throne of the Lord of hosts. In fact, Lutherans have confessed (with the whole of catholic Christianity) that our salvation will not happen without our bodies, and that our bodies, that are the result of God’s creative power, that are baptized into Christ, that feed on the body and blood of the Lord, will somehow be resurrected in glory.

But it seems that something has been happening in our culture so that this understanding of the destiny of embodied humanity has receded into obscurity, and that the human body, so far from being seen as the place in which our salvation is worked out with fear and trembling, is seen as an obstacle to the desires the human spirit.

I’ll give one example of what I’m talking about. Consider discussion on the meaning of marriage. Catholic Christianity would see the given-ness of the distinction between the sexes as the foundation to what makes marriage what it is – a lifelong union between a man and a woman established by God through which God, in addition to giving his human creatures comfort and love, desires to transmit new human life. In a catholic Christian understanding of marriage sexual differentiation is not an imposition on human freedom, but the very way in which human beings, created as men or women, freely find a significant (even sacramental) completion of their statuses as human beings made male or female.

In our contemporary western society, however, there seems to be a repudiation of the given-ness of human beings as male and female. Rather than reading the language that God, the author of the body, has inscribed upon it, postmodern western people seem to read the body as a text without any meaning except that which the disembodied human spirit gives it. The body, though the means by which the human spirit exerts its will, is also an obstacle to the limitless desires that are part of the human spirit. In terms of marriage, this attitude plays itself out in an apparent variety of ways: male to male and female to female ‘marriage’; ‘marriage’ between three and more persons; ‘marriage’ between siblings; ‘marriage’ between humans and non-humans (I don’t know of any actual legally binding cases of the last form of ‘marriage’ on this list, but presumably it’s only a matter of time). In all this there seems to be a desire somehow to escape the limitations of embodied life, or at the very least to treat bodily existence as presenting a problem to be overcome by the application of new techniques say, for example, in this context, of a lesbian couple using technology to create a child (or, in the future, of a cross species pair creating a hybrid).

Of course much of this way of seeing contemporary western society will be familiar to readers of C S Lewis. Back in mid 40s Lewis was able to discern the very different way of viewing reality that began to emerge in western society during the renaissance. In the Abolition of Man, he wrote: “There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating them from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…”

But Lewis, the professor of English, didn’t live to see Derrida. As far as I can tell, Derrida did a Nietzsche on texts, insofar as he presented a way of reading literature in which authorial intention recedes, and interpretation is all (Roger Scruton, as it happens, sees this as a form of idolatry, and I think he is right). It seems to me that our contemporary culture as a whole is now in the throes of ‘doing a Nietzsche’ on the ‘text’ of the body – in talking, legislating, and acting with the understanding that there is no authoritative intention for the body (that there is no God who gives salvation to embodied human beings).

(I could also add that it seems to me that western culture is slowly coming to terms with its‘doing a Nietzsche’ on creation, but that it is trying to overcome this apparent disaster by deifying creation. This does not bode well, I fear. The gods, traditionally, desire human sacrifice, and Moloch desires child sacrifice.)

In my opinion widespread acceptance of the supposed obstacle of bodily existence reveals itself bodily in the form of tyranny by the bodies of the powerful over the bodies of the weak. I think that it was at work already in the ‘Total War’ of (especially) the Eastern front in WWII, and I can’t help thinking that it was at work in -a powerful irony here - the dialectical materialism that found political expression in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China, and is still alive and sick in North Korea. These days, it seems to have a specially technological twist: Embryo experimentation, abortion, cloning, contraception; creating hybrids; sex-selection; a renewed eugenic enterprise not dissimilar in spirit – but far more sophisticated in technique - to that of the Nazis; all this seem to me to be the fruit of an exaltation of the disembodied spirit. And it seems to be working itself out in a willed sterility that is apparently sweeping across most of the western world.

Well…this is a bit far from interpreting the role of the body in salvation in a Lutheran Confessional context, I grant. But what else is a Blog for, if not to express such opinions!

Continuity and Discontinuity

I’ve recently been reading the seminary’s copy of ‘Catholic Matters’ – the new book by Richard John Neuhaus (editor-in-chief of First Things http://www.firstthings.com/). I’ve been an RJN fan for some time – in fact I was pleased to attend a lunch with him in Melbourne a couple of years back (thanks Schutz http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/), and I have fond memories of myself, Pastor Adam Cooper, and Lutheran seminarian (but then Classics student) Tom Pietsch (http://tom.untothislast.net/) engaged in conversation with RJN in St Patrick’s presbytery later that night. We’d got RJN talking on the topic of private opinion in the thought of John Henry Newman. But that’s for another post.

Anyhow, back to the book. In it, RJN proposes a way of looking at the life of the Catholic Church since Vatican II that makes a lot of sense to me. Rather than seeing the aftermath of Vatican II in the Catholic Church through a left/ right, progressive/ conservative filter, RJN suggests making a distinction between those who see the council as a great break with the past and those who see it in continuity with the past (he calls the two groups ‘the party of discontinuity and the party of continuity’). Viewed through this filter, he suggest that both the radical progressive theologians and the schismatic traditionalists are both in the party of discontinuity – they are united in the common conviction that the council brought into being a new church – one that is radically discontinuous with what went before.

It got me thinking that a ‘party of discontinuity’ and a ‘party of continuity’ exists outside the Catholic Church, and is an ecumenical reality. At least, these different parties seem to have a life in the LCA. Consider: How are we to receive the Book of Concord? As confessions of faith that are to be read as radically discontinuous with the Catholic Church (and I’ll be specific – with the church that was in communion with the pope – yes, even the ‘antichrist’ papacy), or continuous with it?

The Confessions, in their plain sense (if I may put it that way), invite the conclusion that Lutherans should be committed to the party of continuity. The Augsburg Confession states: “Only those things have been recounted whereof we thought that it was necessary to speak, in order that it might be understood that in doctrine and ceremonies nothing has been received on our part against Scripture or the Church Catholic. For it is manifest that we have taken most diligent care that no new and ungodly doctrine should creep into our churches.”

Now before Schutz accuses me of wanting to do a Tract 90 on the Book of Concord, I’d like to say that here the Augsburg Confession specifically invites us to do a Tract 90 on it. So there.

But more importantly: Ecumenically speaking, isn’t a commitment to being of the party of continuity – no matter to which ecclesial body one may belong- the sine qua non of movement toward the goal of outward, visible unity?

Bendigo Cathederal

In the last week we've had a couple of friends up to stay (Athanasius Stambolidis and Vinni Ramm), and so have been doing a bit of sightseeing. For the first time I've got 'round to taking pictures of the local Catholic cathederal, which, as you will see, is pretty special (especially for a city of 100,000 people).

David Preus and Sara Butler

In the last week attended a talk given by LCMS theologian Daniel Preus on the JDDJ. I am grateful to have had the chance to hear a Missouri theologian make informed comment on the JDDJ. In due course I'll put up a post on aspects of the talk (and my own response to it).

In the last week I've also been reading Sara Butler's 'The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church'. This is a very impressive (and wonderfully concise) book that gives a clear presentation of magisterial teaching on this controversial issue. Since Schutz has done a great post on this (and since I can't be bothered writing any more tonight), if you're interested check out what he says http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/search?q=butler

This isn't much of a post, is it?

Snow

Last week we had some great weather 'round here. More ice and frost in Bendigo, but down the road was snow, and miles of it (I should know since I drove through it). Beautiful.