I really have no desire to be mean or nasty or attack Tony Jones personally. I hope my rather miniscule readership will recognize that my admittedly polemic prose is directed at ideas, not personalities. Tony, if you are reading, my tone reflects the seriousness of the topic, not a desire to call names and assault your person. Perhaps my problem is with the imprecision of language, but it would seem in Theology, precision matters, and implications of ideas matter.
Having said that, in this last post I have to take issue with the insertion of power politics into Jones’ reading of history. Of course human beings tend to assert themselves in any and every meeting. Yes, politics happen. But does it necessarily follow that one must “deconstruct” every decision and conclude that power politics played a central role in the outcome? Perhaps he was merely being hyperbolic, but Jones claims:
"The Chalcedonian creed of the two natures-one person of Jesus Christ, as well as every other theological construction from every other council, has human fingerprints all over it. These were messy meetings, rife with power and politics."
Notice the “totalizing metanarrative” Jones suggests. “Every” theological construction is “rife” with power politics. In reference to the debates regarding this or that doctrinal development, he notes that disagreements were sometimes heated – but takes it one step further…
"…Not to mention all of the brilliant voices of the ancient church who were silenced by those with bigger theological muscles… We Protestants thank God that others were not silenced, voices like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Servetus. Oops, strike that last one. To the claim of antiquity, we who are educated white males - the history writers - are today chastened by feminist historians (what did the ancient mothers believe?), and theologians of color (what did the ancient slaves believe?). These silenced voices were not a part of the Vincent’s venerated antiquity, and their silence haunts our appropriation of ancient sources."
This is simply amazing. On the one hand the “silenced voices” include less than specific references to folks that “feminist” historians or “historians of color” might find intriguing for being crushed by educated white males, but on the other, when he chooses to identify a particular “silenced voice”, he chooses Servetus. For those who don’t recall or haven’t done a quick Google search, Servetus was a part-time theologian in the Reformation era who was executed for heresy in Calvin’s Geneva. Why? Only for the minor theological novelty of denying the Trinity. Let’s leave aside the severity of the sentence against Servetus – execution is pretty severe - but the sentence itself is a separate question. His voice was silenced because most everyone at the time, Catholic and Protestant alike, found his teaching to be at odds with both scripture and the overwhelming consensus of church history. In other words his heretical standing was pretty much a matter of consensus, the kind Jones finds impossible. In identifying Servetus as one silenced by those with “bigger theological muscles”, one has to ask: is Jones saying the theological ideas of Servetus were legit and should not have been contended with? Is he saying Servetus should have been included in some sort of “generous orthodoxy?” Is Tony Jones saying the doctrine of the Trinity, long considered a central tenet of orthodoxy is negotiable? That we should not draw a distinction between those who are Trinitarian and those who are not?
Again, I assume Tony Jones is capable of saying what he means. What does he mean here? Sure he claims that under his “local hermeneutic” there won’t be pitches into the dirt called as strikes. As far as I’m concerned, bringing up Servetus in this context is strike one.
And there is a very troubling point from a quote referred to earlier…
"And our world of blogs and 24-hour news channels show us just how unreasonable Vincent’s universal vision is, for we see pictures of Anglican bishops in the global south who won’t even share the Eucharist with the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church."
Notice there is no context here, just an insinuation that the global south Anglican bishops are being unreasonable. He claims to be certain his “local hermeneutic” will not lead to notions that are "out of the strike zone", yet he apparently sides with heresy over orthodoxy in this case.
First of all, the Episcopal Church in the United States has, in the last 50 years or so, included on an exponentially increasing scale, bishops who have denied the resurrection, denied the virgin birth, even the deity of Christ, redefined the Trinity, embraced “God as Mother” language, (the presiding bishop in question referred to Jesus as mother in a sermon), have gone permissive on a variety of moral issues and often tend to equate political causes that lean toward socialism and globalism with the gospel. There has been so much “openness” in the viewpoints of the leadership that it has been impossible to bring to discipline any theological or moral error. The TEC is a case study in theological chaos. One female Episcopal priest recently decided she was both Muslim and Christian not the least bit troubled with the apparent Christological contradiction. Another Episcopal Priestess just claimed to be both male and female. Attempts to encourage sanity, repentance, and simple courtesy toward more conservative voices has been met with complete defiance and a rejection of recommendations from the wider communion.
Hence the decision by Global South bishops to refuse communion with the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church was not a matter of some trivial disagreements about obscure ecclesiological questions or liturgical forms or petty preferences for “modernist” propositions. It was about – you guessed it - orthodoxy. It was about the authority of the Apostles through the words of Scripture and not incidently the consensus of orthodox teaching in the history of Christianity. The generations old heterodoxy of many in the TEC did, of course, culminate in the consecration as Bishop of an openly gay man, a man who left his wife and daughter to engage in active homosexual relationship. Yup, many in the TEC are militantly insistent he, as a practicing homosexual, is qualified to be a bishop, which most of us who want to just read the text of the New Testament find hard to reconcile with a phrase like “husband of one wife”. His consecration was the last straw, but only the symptom of a greater malady.
So what would Tony Jones suggest the global south bishops do? Embrace a generous orthodoxy that is “non-judgmental”, “affirming”, “welcoming”, “wherever you are on the journey“? Do nothing of consequence to defend Orthodox faith? Capitulate? Look the other way? Act like nothing is wrong?
African Bishops, by the way, consider the attempt by the western church to force gay marriage and gay clergy down the throats of African churches to be rather imperialistic. Here’s a question: If truth is determined by local concerns, local hermeneutics, by what authority does one say it was wrong for Africans to stand up for their own perspectives, considering millions of Muslims would be quite happy to use the decadence of homosexuality as an excuse to throw fuel on the fire of Muslim-Christian animosities? Even under his own construct of “local hermeneutics”, Mr. Jones can’t seem to allow others to practice what he preaches. Which leads one to believe his system of thinking is flawed. Tony Jones here is reaching for a pitch way out of the strike zone, condemning Orthodox global south bishops for simply identifying and refusing to be in communion with heresy. I believe that is strike two, and he dissed some major “theologians of color” in the process.
The malady in the Episcopal church began with viewpoint that proposed that because God is “ineffable”, the words of scripture did not express “objective truths” about historical events but only grand “experiences” of “God-consciousness”. Forgive me for wondering, but how is this emphasis on experience as the basis of truth substantially different from an Emergent emphasis on experience? Jones answers my question in his paper:
“You have heard it said that the emergent church vaunts experience at the expense of rational knowledge, but I say to you that all human endeavors, including theology, are experiential. If one knows anything about phenomenology, it is obvious that what human beings do is experience and interpret those experiences. Walking a labyrinth is experiential, and so is reading a theology textbook. Praying is experiential, as is listening to a sermon. There's no such thing as a human endeavor that is not ‘experiential’. We are experiential beings, and our faith practices, be they cerebral or kinesthetic, propositional or narrative, are thus necessarily experiential, too… There is no song until it’s sung. It’s just words and notes on paper. There is no strike until it’s called by the ump."
EC advocates may protest all they want that “We are not like the old liberals”, but in light of constant statements trumpeting “local” hermeneutics, the disdain for all claims of objectivity, the exalting of experience, it would seem the burden they have is to articulate just how their approach is different from old liberalism, or what real assurance we have that the results will be different from what has happened to mainline denominations. And they can’t get away with just making claims – they need to explain it to the rest of the believing community in practical terms, terms intelligible to someone other than themselves. Ethereal references to the “perichoretic dance” are just not an example of providing clarity.
One last point. There is, in Jones' paper, which was apparently expected to be about how the Emerging Church dealt with patristic sources, very little reference to any of the church fathers, and very little direct reference to the text of scripture. He does quote one passage from Paul, which was intended to bolster his contention that orthopraxy is more practical than orthodoxy, that the “event” of orthodox experience is more important than the clarity of orthodox “propositions”. He does quote Vincent extensively, but only to “deconstruct” him as naïve. There isn’t a clear, unmistakable example of respect for or genuine interaction with the patristics anywhere in his paper. Perhaps this was just a result of focusing on other things, but it is interesting.
Instead, Tony’s main authorities seem to be Foucalt, Derrida, Stanley Fish, all hyper-modern voices, decidedly well outside the camp of orthodox Christianity. It seems fairly clear who speaks most authoritatively for him and shapes his views. It seems clear who sets the limits for his strike zone. It is postmodern philosophers, not patristic or biblical sources. Once again, I don’t see how anyone who is not part of the Emerging Church movement itself or fully committed to postmodern concepts could consider such a complete dependence on those particular sources to be “in the strike zone”.
That would, in my mind, be strike three.
But who am I to say? Even if in his heart of hearts his beliefs are orthodox, his repeated assertions and provocative excursions into novel theological speculations make it exceedingly difficult for others to sort through the debris. The net effect is destructive. The reason my tone is so "harsh" is that we are dealing with the shaping of minds, young minds quite often. His statements are strong, fairly self-assured, often disrespectful to those who have come before. I think a strong response is needed and I hope more qualified and dynamic voices than mine will contribute to that response.
Bottom line, in my lonely layman’s opinion, Wheaton was quite justified in excluding his “off topic” and “provocative but unhelpful” paper from the final published volume. In the end, Tony Jones claims loudly and proudly that “orthodoxy happens”. The problem is – he can’t, or won’t, tell us plainly what he thinks orthodoxy is – in fact he says it doesn’t exist. So how could he possibly recognize it when it happens?
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