Posted on 10/14/2004 5:55:33 PM PDT by xzins
The Ecstatic Heresy
Seeking a superficial unity, some denominational leaders opt for feelings over facts.
| posted 10/08/2004 9:00 a.m.
The conflict in the mainline churches is ostensibly about sexuality—specifically, homosexuality. But more than sexuality is at stake. The faith itself, the Christian faith, is being invaded by false teaching. Theologically, this heresy is rarely articulated. Rather, it works by feeling, an ecstatic sense that transcends petty verbal differences. Consider these three quotations:
The Dammann case does reveal continuing differences in the United Methodist Church concerning the issue of homosexuality. The Council of Bishops is painfully aware of this disagreement. In such moments as this, we remember that our unity in Christ does not depend on unanimity of opinion. Rather, in Jesus Christ we are bound together by love that transcends our differences and calls us to stay at the table with one another.
When they finished, all of us stood up and applauded, with a lump in our throats and a tear in our eyes, as we watched them embrace one another. Convictions were not reconciled that day, but two people who held different convictions were reconciled in Christ.
How we all fit together, how our singularities are made sense of, how our divergent views and different understandings of God's intent are reconciled, passes all understanding. All that we can do is to travel on in faith and trust, knowing that all contradictions and paradoxes and seemingly irreconcilable truths—which seem both consistent and inconsistent with Scripture—are brought together in the larger and all- embracing truth of Christ, which, by Christ's own words, has yet to be fully drawn forth and known.
The first quotation is from a March 25, 2004, statement by the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church in response to the trial of a lesbian Methodist minister. This trial reflected the deep divisions within that church. The bishops are "painfully aware" of these disagreements. Nevertheless, they feel that these differences are a matter of "opinion." These opinions, however, cannot negate our "unity in Christ" because "in Jesus Christ we are bound together by love that transcends our differences and calls us to stay at the table with one another." In other words, we can be in verbal disagreement, yet be unified at a higher level in Christ.
The second quotation is from an address by Douglas W. Oldenburg, moderator of the 1998 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly. In the climax of his speech, he portrayed two men who also addressed the assembly. The first was a homosexual Presbyterian pastor who passionately affirmed his sexuality, his call to ministry, and his understanding of Scripture. His speech was followed by an equally passionate address by a man who held utterly contrary views. Once these two speeches had been delivered, the two men embraced each other. At that point, the assembly applauded with tears in their eyes and lumps in their throats. Although these two men held different convictions, convictions resulting in starkly different behaviors, they "were reconciled in Christ."
The third quotation is from Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. Like the others, he believes that verbal disagreements, different conceptions of truth—even truths inconsistent with Scripture—are unified in the "larger and all-embracing truth of Christ."
These men do not speak in a vacuum. They are influenced by a tradition, a powerful theological perspective that resonates in our culture and is taught in our universities, graduate schools of religion, and seminaries. I call this the "ecstatic" perspective, a term taken from theologian Paul Tillich. Essentially, this perspective claims that God can only be known in feeling, in ways that transcend the language of God or about God.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is the grandfather of the ecstatic tradition. For Schleiermacher, the essence of the Christian faith is a mystical sense of the Divine. This feeling is beyond language since language refers to objects in space and time. God is not an object like other objects. He cannot be described as if he were an electron, a tree, or a cat. To do so would be to profane God.
Compare and Contrast
Let me give three examples of the ecstatic perspective, contrasting it with what I consider to be an orthodox understanding of Christianity. (I am speaking, of course, of theological tendencies, as rarely do people fall consistently into one group or another; the contrast is meant to illustrate two theological trajectories that are found in the mainline churches.)
Consider Isaiah 6. According to orthodoxy, Isaiah literally heard God say the words, "Whom shall I send?" Isaiah replied, "Send me." God spoke again, in language accessible to Isaiah, giving him a message that he then proclaimed to the people. In this event, some things were beyond Isaiah's understanding. He could not, for example, comprehend the intense holiness of God, so holy that the Seraphim hid their eyes and Isaiah cried out, "Woe is me! For I am lost." Yet even though God remained a deep mystery, Isaiah nonetheless heard the transcendent God speak.
According to the ecstatic perspective, the divine utterance "Whom shall I send?" is a poetic metaphor. Rather than literally hearing a particular message from God, Isaiah merely had a profound sense of God the transcendent Holy One. As a result, his imagination created a dialogue between God and himself. The mystical feeling that gave rise to the dialogue came from God, but Isaiah—as formed by his psychological, social, and historical context—created its verbal expression.
Both views, orthodox and ecstatic, understand that God is transcendent. But for the orthodox, the transcendent God speaks actual words. The supreme example of God's speech is the Incarnation of the Word, who reveals God in concrete deeds and words. These two ways of being God, transcendent and holy yet present and speaking, correspond to God the Father and God the Word (or Son), while God the Holy Spirit enables human beings to hear and obey God's spoken words. This view requires the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. John 1:18 (RSV) states it this way: "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known."
The ecstatic view robs the Incarnation of its objective, concrete character by making the revelation in Jesus ineffable. From there, the Trinity is debased since ultimately there is no God the Word who comes from God to verbally reveal the Father.
Consider a further example, the Resurrection. If Jesus was bodily raised by God, then God acted physically at a specific time and place. This would make God an agent, as if God—like an electron, a tree, or a cat—was literally affecting matter. Ecstatics would not understand God in such a "crude" fashion. As a result, many ecstatics deny the bodily Resurrection. Many also deny biblical miracles, which they consider creations of primitive peoples who took felt experiences of the Holy and clothed them in language normally used for objects. By contrast, an orthodox perspective would trust in the biblical miracles, especially that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, that the tomb was indeed empty.
Finally, consider ethics. Ecstatics do not believe that specific biblical commands were literally uttered by God. Rather, biblical people had a mystical sense of divine obligation that they expressed in the thought forms of their day. Since these thought forms are constantly changing, the ethical sense takes new forms under new circumstances. As a result, ethics changes as culture changes. From an orthodox perspective, however, God literally spoke biblical commands. Some of them were specific to the time and situation of the original hearers, but many of them, certainly the words of Jesus, are eternally valid.
Ten Differences
These two ways of understanding God—the ecstatic and the orthodox—underlie the theological division in mainline Protestant churches. These differences are not always clearly articulated, and many persons have vaguely adapted portions of each. When the matter is thought through, however, these two views differ in virtually every dimension of the Christian faith.
In addition to the examples given above, let me list ten principal differences.
A Church of Both/And
Ecstatics do not deny Scripture, the creeds, or the great documents of their traditions. They consider the Scriptures to be the foundation of faith, their liturgies resonate with the Ineffable, and the various confessions are a cultural treasure. They simply revise these sources along ecstatic lines. That is why it is appropriate to call them "revisionists." They revise Scripture, creeds, and the faith in terms of a non-Trinitarian perspective that has no real sense of the Incarnation.
Since the revisionists "honor" Scripture and tradition, they can worship, study, pray, teach, and promote their agenda shoulder to shoulder with the orthodox while holding utterly different conceptions of the faith. Conflict only arises when the church must deal with concrete issues such as revision of our language for God, sexual norms, evangelism to those of other faiths, or who is welcome to take Communion. At that point, real differences emerge.
As a result, it is not enough for orthodox Christians to simply say that Jesus called God "Father," or that Scripture condemns homosexuality, or that Jesus commands us to evangelize, or that the universal tradition of the church requires baptism prior to Eucharist. Ecstatics know all this. They relativize these claims by viewing them as outmoded expressions of an evolving faith that progressively expresses the Indescribable.
The ecstatic approach is ideal for denominational leaders seeking to maintain institutional harmony in the face of profound theological and moral divisions. It allows them to affirm a transcendent unity while affirming the contradictory beliefs and actions of their constituents. Such leaders may or may not have studied Schleiermacher, but their theology articulates the deepest values of our pluralistic culture—diversity, tolerance, and unity. Once these values assume theological expression and legitimacy, they function perfectly in the North American religious context.
But for the orthodox, it isn't feeling that brings life. It is a God who spoke his living words to them in Jesus Christ. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." (Mt. 24:35)
Robert Sanders is associate rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He received his Ph.D. in theology from the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California Graduate School in Berkeley, California. More of his writings can be found at http://users.iglide.net/rjsanders.
Those who deny the incarnation are of the spirit of antichrist, so you are exactly correct: Satan would be welcome in antichrist's midst.
Patrick, Columba, and Aiden would have done something Henry didn't, which is put himself under his patriarch, which in this case is the Pope.
Also, the power of God is not dependent on any king; it is first dependent upon the Holy Spirit who does work through any of his faithful ministers....of which there were many in Henry VIII's day.
The only bishop who was truly faithful to God, and not to man was one named John Fisher.
=== The Eucharist consists of fully believing that our Lord was telling us the plain truth that day in the temple (John 6) when He lost much of His following and scandalized the Pharisees. He reemphasized how important this was to Him at the very first mass on His very last night alive as a man on this earth.
I'm quitting the choir. News at 11.
Why? Women don't go through puberty when it comes to the voice </frog>
And didn't Christ die for ALL sinners?
There is nothing "orthodox" about a murderous heretic who chops off the heads of his wives and founds a church because he couldn't get around the fact that Christ wouldn't allow him a divorce. The third person of the HolyTrinity doesn't work through such evil.
Sorry, you're wrong.
Columba intentionally chose NOT to put himself under the Pope. It's a fact. That's why Augustine came to visit. Columba refused the request. Aiden & Patrick were also out of the Celtic Church.
Just to put a finer point on what xzins said, you should also be educated to the fact that the Church of England was RETURNED to Roman Catholicism under Queen Mary and did not separate again until Elizabeth I (and not because she wanted a divorce). It is simplistic to say that the Church of England came to be because Henry VIII wanted a divorce. At issue was the "divine right of kings" and Henry's assertion that his kingship was divinely given and, therefore, he answered directly to God - not to a Pope. We'll save THAT theological debate for another time.
Now - to your denigration of every other Christian's practice of the Eucharistic Feast as somehow sacreligious, I must tell you that you are not only uncharitable in saying so, you are also offensive and ignorant. I reprint Articles XXVII and XXX from the Protestant Episcopal Church in the US Articles of Religion written in 1801 (which is a statement of what most Anglicans [worldwide] believe and why).
Article XXVII Of the Lord's Supper:
The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death; insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is the Blood of Christ.
Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and have given occasion to many superstitions.
The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith.
The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordination reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.
Article XXX Of Both Kinds:
The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people; for both the parts of the Lord's Sacrament, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike. (As you know, Roman Catholic laypeople do not partake of the Lord's Cup)
When I partake of the Eucharist, I BELIEVE that I am doing all that Jesus commanded that I do. It's called Faith. You may think it's "unholy," but it doesn't matter what YOU think. The only thing that matters is what Jesus thinks. Scripture tells us that Jesus holds FAITH in high regard...to the womon who reached out to touch the hem of his robes he said, "your FAITH has healed you..." and to the leper he said, "your FAITH has made you whole." My justification is my FAITH in Jesus - not my church affiliation and the distinct practices therein.
No. He had the same authority that William the Conqueror had in 1066 in chopping off heads and imposing a church.
It wasn't chosen willingly in England in the first place.
Excellent.
The sad thing is that this is a reasonable discussion but it has nothing to do with the thread. It's an educational article worthy of discussion.
Please refer to post 29 in response to your statement to me under another thread which read:
"Of course, for a Roman Catholic, there's one very big difference between the Catholic Mass and the 1979 BCP Rite II: the round white thing on the altar in the Episcopalian church is a piece of bread; the round white thing on the altar in the Catholic church is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ."
I do owe you an apology for not sticking to the topic of your thread. Forgive me.
The subject of the Eucharist is a sore spot, because so few take part in it in actuality. What really hurts is that the reason why they don't is because they've been led astray by certain historic figures who've turned their personal philosophy into their follower's liability.
Thanks for the ping. Funny, I had no trouble understanding the point of this article. BTW ecstaticism (?) is not unique to mainline Protestant churches. It's just another form of fuzzy, man-made truth that helps people feel better about their sinfulness.
Thanks, Opus. I thought maybe it was me. Then I just realized that some of the posters simply weren't reading the article.
Too bad the thread got off-topic, but it was a great article on what not to look for in a church. The touchy-feely movement in relation to orthodoxy was clearly articulated.
Do you think it sounds like what "New Ager Christianity" would look like if there were such a thing?
I think there is a definite link between the Ecstatic-ism and feminism.
Good thoughts....heavily feminist & gay friendly seminaries are peddling this trash.
"The culture changes" whenever "ecstatics" get in the saddle. For it seems to me that, at bottom, ecstatics are really saying that (1), the reality of God is contingent on human experience; and (2) thus the foundation of ethics or morality similarly devolves to human experience, to the view that "man is the measure," not God.
But it seems when man fails to recognize the sovereign, absolute authority of God, when he no longer recognizes that God's Word is the ultimate, eternal foundation of reality of which mortal man is contingent part and participant, then man can say he becomes his own authority by virtue of his imaginative experiences. And this, not because God is speaking His Word to him directly, but because he "feels God."
Which seems to be already a falsification of the divine-human relationship. For it denigrates God, and puts Him in second place to the authority of one's own direct perceptions and unaided sense of what is "right." Unhitched from the Word of God, man is less man, and human cultures increasingly become less humane.
In short, man is "under God"; it doesn't work, the other way around, without distorting life and natural reality -- which is God-given, after all, according to the Word of God, the Son, the Alpha and Omega.
RE: the statement "ethics changes as culture changes": I would say the reverse is more likely true. When ethics come off their mooring in God's Logos, then culture changes, and usually in ways that are not conducive to genuine human well-being.
FWIW
Very interesting post, xzins. Thanks so much!
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