+JMJ+
O Rex Gentium,
et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis,
qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.
O King of the Nations,
and the one they desired,
keystone,
who makes both peoples one,
come and save mankind,
whom you shaped from the mud.
Like many such things it posits to tell “What is really wrong with the Episcopal Church” and launches into a rant about liberal theology. There is a radically new theology being taught in ECUSA, goes the line. It’s the death knell of Christianity as we know it. There is the fully descriptive quote describing this theology:
The Episcopal sermon, at its most fulsome, begins with a statement to the effect that the incarnation is to be understood as merely a manifestation of divine love. From this starting point, several conclusions are drawn. The first is that God is love pure and simple. Thus, one is to see in Christ’s death no judgment upon the human condition. Rather, one is to see an affirmation of creation and the persons we are. The life and death of Jesus reveal the fact that God accepts and affirms us. From this revelation, we can draw a further conclusion: God wants us to love one another, and such love requires of us both acceptance and affirmation of the other. From this point we can derive yet another: Accepting love requires a form of justice that is inclusive of all people, particularly those who in some way have been marginalized by oppressive social practice. The mission of the Church is, therefore, to see that those who have been rejected are included-for justice as inclusion defines public policy. The result is a practical equivalence between the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and a particular form of social justice.
But we need to see that quote with a backdrop of light cast by today’s verse: Christ is the One “who makes both peoples one”. Saint Paul’s epistles are filled with this message of “both peoples one”. In Christ all of us are made one. It really is a message of radical inclusion such as we have no human concept of how to manifest it.
I posit that the issue is not the theology but the disconnection of the theology from its roots, its wholeness: its Catholicity. To understand the message of radical inclusion, one must hear the Full Faith without the nihilism of the reformation that occluded so much of the Truth, or with the inclusion of the the material that leaks through the cracks caused by the wresting of otherwise faithful folks from the bosom of the our faithful Mother Church. It is a message of radical inclusion such as we have no human concept of how to manifest it – outside of the Church.
The quote ably describes a sermon I preached – I confess I was in error. But the error was not in telling a lie, the error was in not telling the full truth. The “Radical justice of Inclusion” is seen outside of the bonds of the Church’s faith: yes we’re all included, we’re all invited to the Eucharistic Banquet of eternity, but the liberal Protestant often version misses the time and the place – imagining it’s here and now, a kingdom of this world. The Conservative Protestant version often misses the dress code, and the reality that it is a party to which we are invited, not a funeral. There’s a near Gnostic hatred of the flesh in the ultra-‘reformed’ traditions, puritanism, tee-totalism, “original sin” and other aspects of the West show it up. Fundamentalism in both its liberal and conservative forms ignores the truth of the Church…
There are sermons in the Fathers that offer much the same message: In Homily V on Ephesians, which touches on the “middle wall” passage, St John Chrysostom says,
What the middle wall of partition is, he interprets by saying, “the enmity having abolished in His flesh, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances.”
Some indeed affirm that he means the wall of the Jews against the Greeks, because it did not allow the Jews to hold intercourse with the Greeks. To me, however, this does not seem to be the meaning, but rather that he calls “the enmity in the flesh,” a middle wall, in that it is a common barrier, cutting us off alike from God. As the Prophet says, “Your iniquities separate between you and Me;” (Isa. lix: 2.) for that enmity which He had both against Jews and Gentiles was, as it were, a middle wall. And this, whilst the law existed, was not only not abolished, but rather was strengthened; “for the law,” saith the Apostle, “worketh wrath.” (Rom. iv: 15.) Just in the same way then as when he says in that passage, “the law worketh wrath,” he does not ascribe the whole of this effect to the law itself, but it is to be understood, that it is because we have transgressed it; so also in this place he calls it a middle wall, because through being disobeyed it wrought enmity.
The law was a hedge, but this it was made for the sake of security, and for this reason was called “a hedge,” to the intent that it might form an inclosure. For listen again to the Prophet, where he says, “I made a trench about it.” (Isa. v: 2.) And again, “Thou hast broken down her fences, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her.” (Ps. lxxx: 12.) Here therefore it means security and so again, “I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be trodden down.” (Isa. v: 5.) And again, “He gave them the law for a defence.” (Isa. viii: 20.) And again, “The Lord executeth righteous acts and made known His ways unto Israel.” (Ps. ciii: 6, Ps. ciii: 7.)
It became, however, a middle wall, no longer establishing them in security, but cutting them off from God. Such then is the middle wall of partition formed out of the hedge. And to explain what this is, he subjoins, “the enmity in His flesh having abolished, the law of commandments.”
St John, if we’re not careful, can sound like the most liberal of post-modernists.
It’s not in the content that ECUSA fails, but in the application. The truth of radical inclusion isn’t a secular one one where we can willy nilly include everyone based on their exclusion in the secular world. More importantly the truth of radical inclusion is not morality-free. The truth of radical inclusions does not over-ride the radical truth of free will: we’re all still free to make choices that put us further away from God rather than closer to Him. The Church shows us by God’s revelation the choices that are to be made to bring us closer to Him. The Church shows us the complications arising from other choices.
But knowing the consequences is not the same as making the choices: which we each must do on his own. Christ is the One that all peoples have desired: but He also must be the one you, yourself desire. When one loves Christ one seeks purity, one seeks communion, one seeks fellowship: one comes to Christ seeking to be made into the image of Christ. One brings one’s will to Christ seeking to conform that will to Christ.
The radical inclusion of the Gospel, and the radical mercy that God offers, terrifies people so much that on the liberal side they deny it by making it meaningless – they deny the changes that are made in the human heart included by God. When one has sat at their table long enough in their purely worldly party, one is horrified to find out one is not in the Church. On the conservative side they deny God’s inclusions by doing away with it legalistically: setting so many hoops and obstacles that, having jumped them all (as if it were possible) one is horrified to find one has jumped out of the Church. They turn the most joyous thing ever into “God’s difficult redemptive love” as Turner says. Sounds rather like a medical procedure, huh?
In the Church, however, God’s radical inclusion is offered to us along with all the changes it requires of us and effects in us. The salvation that is offered to us, the theosis that happens in us, the change of mind required of us waits only our choices. God’s radical inclusion is not a civil rights law, nor is it any kind of law at all. It is the revolution that changes nothing but the human heart: that makes us all one in God.
Of course, that last line about the mud… that’s not a hint that God created us in any way. Certainly it means we all evolved from the slime.
Doxos 