ON THE BIRTHING OF ORTHODOXIES - Gary L'Hommedieu

[david at virtueonline.org]

ON THE BIRTHING OF ORTHODOXIES, by Gary L'Hommedieu

Commentary

By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu 
www.virtueonline.org 
8/29/09

I just read David Virtue's recent article, "A Summary of the State of the Anglican Church in the USA and Canada", which I found to be enormously helpful, intended as it was for people like me who, finding themselves in the thick of the Anglican culture wars, can't keep the names, places, and movements straight. 

(See David's article at http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=11083.)

I was impressed by Virtue's use of the word "orthodox", which appeared seven times in his article and then thirty-seven times in the comments that followed. He used the term reservedly as a simple designation of a broad constituency of conservative Anglicans. His present use of "orthodox" is exactly like the earlier use of the word "conservative", once commonplace among Anglicans in a less self-conscious past.

Virtue's generic use of the word touched some raw nerves among his readers. For many of these the term "orthodox" is latently pregnant with meaning, if not loaded. I thought it would be worthwhile to review the use of this term and place it in the context of the present nuanced discussions of Anglicanism as it continues to evolve in North America.

Readers' comments repeated the usual chorus of reactions to the casual use of "orthodox" as a term, and I take them to be representative. To summarize briefly, they were reading through the lens of their own assumptions of who or what is orthodox. At the same time they seemed to assume their own presuppositions to be normative, that is, truly orthodox, whereas others' might be suspect.

For example, one reader objected to the use of "orthodox" to designate conservative Anglicans remaining in TEC; another to the "absurdity" of its use in designating ACNA jurisdictions that permit female priests; still another to its misuse in describing the Reformed Episcopal Church and other evangelical groups who do not explicitly affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements, which is "a pretty clear rejection of my understanding of orthodoxy."

This last remark is the most telling: orthodoxy, whatever it is, is somehow coterminous with "my understanding". 

One reader observed that "orthodox" had regrettably devolved to the non-technical use to which Dr. Virtue had put it--as an equivalent to that embarrassing term "conservative". He and a few others found the word to be "useless" for just this reason, implying that the word ought not to be used and perhaps should simply rest in peace.

What the critics had in common was a sense that the word "orthodox" implies a claim to legitimacy, even outside the boundaries of a legitimizing institution or authorizing body. This is the psychological residue of a prior orthodox consensus after the original authorizing structure has disappeared. One of the functions of an institution with a claim to orthodoxy is that it legitimizes its members, placing them "inside" the group (tribe, clan, etc.) while delineating the social boundaries between them and those who are "outside".

But, if I may paraphrase the psalm, when the foundations are destroyed, what are the orthodox to do? Or to take it a step further: when the boundaries are eliminated, who's in, who's out, and (for that matter) who knows?

The complexity regarding the use and misuse of the word "orthodox" very meaningful at the present moment, especially for North American Anglicans. The reactions to the purported misuse of the word point to something just below the surface of consciousness. While pointing it out doesn't solve the whole problem of who or what is orthodox, it might help bring the unconscious to light and direct us to solving problems that are within our power. 

There is a generic orthodoxy that is the property of any group insofar as all groups have norms and boundaries. That, after all, is what "orthodox" means: "right thinking or opinion" in ready contrast to "wrong thinking or opinion" and expressing the limits of belief and action of a given group. I will argue in a moment that this generic character must be the explicit property of any Anglican claimants to the orthodox Christian tradition. A thoughtful use of the term, including an acknowledgment of its proper limits, may lead to a more charitable treatment of others making similar claims. It will at least preserve us from making impossible claims and showing ourselves to be fools for not recognizing our pretensions for what they are.

Let's return to the psychological reactions to the perceived misuse of the term "orthodox" and place it in a broad historical context.

What comes to light in spirited discussions about orthodoxy is the presumed legitimizing authority of the individual--"my understanding". I call this the "magisterial ego". Before the Reformation arguments about orthodox Christian belief and practice were diverse and common. Authoritative definitions were rare because the peace of a unified Christendom was seldom threatened by local chatter about religion. The boundaries, while invisible, were nonetheless durable and effective. Because the boundaries were invisible, they were naturally associated with a visible authority figure such as the pope or, later, the king.

After the Reformation differences in belief and practice proliferated, as they continue to do to this day. Confessional churches came into being, coinciding more or less with the boundaries of ethnic territories or emerging states. Here we see the proliferation of orthodoxies, or the emergence of orthodoxy as a type. Each confessional group was characterized first by religious norms of belief and practice and second by social and legal boundaries. At this time we may assume the awareness of psychological boundaries accompanying the rise of the modern individual.

One of the great contributions of the Reformation and later of the Enlightenment was the ascendency of the individual conscience. The Reformation brought back to the Christian mind the conviction that each one of us must be personally reconciled with God. This reconciliation occurs one soul at a time as each one of us acknowledges the legitimate claim of Christ and responds to his invitation to receive saving grace.

While individual confessional groups made claims upon their members to submit to the visible authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, the genie of the sovereign individual had been let out of the bottle. While limits differed according to time, place and local custom, it was the liberated Protestant conscience that ultimately became responsible to interpret the Scriptures.

Now fast forward to the modern secular era, in which the boundaries of religion have been dissolved one by one, except for the individual conscience. National churches are an anachronism. The staid old world denominations compete with exciting new faiths on a fluctuating free market. The historic confessional statements attract professional interest as studies in ethnography or, at the congregational level, as a celebration of "roots". If denominational leaders try to resurrect one of the great confessions (such as the Westminster Confession or the Thirty-Nine Articles) and to reestablish it as the normative basis for doctrine, they find themselves grasping for a basis to legitimize it, like striving to reenter a dream after waking. They are trying to build a new foundation under on old denominational building.

The Reformation contribution to individual psychology is what I am calling by the less than flattering term "the magisterial ego", based on my perception that this tendency is now a holdover from an era recently past. The insistence on clinging to the now exploded unity of a former historic period can be called "false consciousness" or "bad faith". 

The magisterial ego relegates to the individual the authority and power to make "infallible" statements--statements of a transcendent quality once relegated to God via His officially designated channels. During the medieval period no one in the West disputed the Roman Church's status as official designee to that authority, any more than anyone seriously challenged the right of the nobility to their ancestral lands. While individual peasants chafed under authority and eyed their neighbors as jealously as any modern suburbanite, the boundaries of the feudal vision held.

What I call the magisterial ego is a holdover from the integrated consciousness associated with the modern era, rooted in the religious aspirations of evangelical Protestantism and the economy of a rising entrepreneurial class. Liberty and reason, the twin themes of the Enlightenment, empowered the individual on many levels. But now at the end of the Enlightenment we are faced with a rugged individualism without the social and territorial rootedness that made it a holistic vision. Statements of religious truth stand awkwardly as abstract formulations. The certitude of a former vision, measured by a new canon of empirical science, collapsed. Christian orthodoxy was tempted to retreat to a worldly nostalgia.

"That's a pretty clear rejection of my understanding of orthodoxy," is the voice of the magisterial ego. The failure of consciousness is in this individual's apparent assumption that his personal understanding carries authority. Add to this the irony that he is innocent of any such intention. It doesn't matter which doctrine such individuals rise to promote. Christian orthodoxy as such is now a problem that many orthodox do not even know how to acknowledge. 

If I were a crypto-Romanist, I would solve the problem by deferring to the Roman Magisterium. Rome's truth claims about herself permit her adherents to beg the question of orthodoxy in a post-feudal world. Orthodoxy becomes a circular argument. Meanwhile every other Christian community, short of accepting the claims of the Magisterium, must solve the defining problem of every live community--that of articulating what it means to be in or out.

The ability to make authoritative statements is part and parcel of every social organism. Such statements are verbal expressions of the norms of that community. When removed from their social context as behavioral norms and territorial boundaries, they take on the appearance of abstract propositions, as in the case of traditional religious doctrines argued on secular campuses in the late 20th century.

I am not reducing the church's doctrines to the status of "mere" social norms, nor to make sentimental claims about the primacy of "community" over "doctrine", as if one can exist without the other. I am stressing that religious doctrine serves the practical function of delineating the norms of the church as a structured community living in history. 

The itemized declarations of the Nicene Creed consist of various propositions which Christians hold to be objectively true. But the Creed is not ultimately an assortment of theological truths but the rule of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. The text of the Creed is the prologue to a book of regulations on church behavior still in use in the churches of the East. We can stamp our feet indignantly when someone challenges the veracity of the Nicene theology, but we can't refute them with anything like empirical evidence and establish the faith to the satisfaction of modernity. The case we can make based on the present rules of history and science is that we stand in continuity with the same faith community that gave us the Creed. That Church is the church of our present baptismal covenant, which, incidentally, cannot be signed over to some new social experiment. 

Not everyone will accede to the claim that the Church of the Nicene faith is God's designee, but that is beside the point. According to that same faith, God Himself will manifest the basis of the Church's truth claims. Our job is not to prove what cannot be proven. Our job is to build a wall around that faith and inhabit the interior as a sort of bedroom community while we make a daily commute outside the walls.

If there is a relativism to be embraced by orthodox claimants to the Christian tradition, it is this. While none of us, particularly in the Reformation tradition, can lay claims to sole proprietorship of God's truth, the problem of orthodoxy remains. That problem is simply this: each jurisdiction must set clear boundaries and stand by them. Christians of good will can accept a margin of error in regarding their Christian neighbor's claims to orthodoxy. 

No Anglican covenanting body must conform to any other in all particulars. Perhaps some will not share ministries with those whose jurisdictions admit female ordinands or concelebrate with those who proclaim or deny a nuanced theology of the sacraments. It becomes a matter of "bad faith" only when an individual jurisdiction relegates to itself the status of official designee of God's truth.

It may be that some of these groups cannot covenant together and share anything like a common space. If so, then let them depart in peace.

Here's where the sexuality debate touches on the problem of orthodoxy, which is, once again, ultimately a problem of boundaries. The sexuality question poses the following challenge: "Which side are you on, the side of 2500 years of disciplined reflection rooted in Scripture and Tradition, or the side of a new experimental community with boundaries so porous that we refuse to name them? We are forcing you to choose." Back in the days of "don't ask don't tell", which some lament as an age of hypocrisy, it was possible to tolerate a level of deviation from official norms with the understanding that maybe the individuals in question were following their consciences as best they knew how. When it became an open challenge to the Church's historic norms, it became a challenge to choose one of two bounded communities. We all know Joshua's magisterial response to that challenge.

"Orthodox" is a useful word in the present unfolding of institutional cataclysm. In order to be sober and honest we must acknowledge that the present is a time between visions of social and communal reality. Here I agree with the post-modernists: the modern age is over, and it doth not yet appear what the present age shall be. There is an "orthodoxy" of nostalgic yearning for the security and position of a past era or that forms the profile of a self-proclaimed spiritual authority. As understandable as such yearnings may be, to yearn for an ecclesial reality coterminous with the world of our feudal past or the heyday of the Enlightenment is a yearning for sleep.

Archbishop Robert Duncan spoke prophetically when he testified in June to a coalescing vision among Christian conservatives--Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, non-denominational and non-affiliated--forming a great cloud of witnesses to the Great Tradition of the gospel. These all have equal claim to the term "orthodox". Or I should say, the only meaningful way to use that word--and let's go ahead and use it--is to describe such a nondescript group as this one in the process of being born.

It is this present travail that will produce the boundaries of a post-modern Christian orthodoxy. Until then we use the word with hope and for convenience.

 
---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline.

 See Peter L. Berger, "The Sacred Canopy", ch 4, pp. 81 ff.; esp. p. 93.