Commitment and Communion: A Response to Monologistos

Over at Stand Firm, an interlocutor named "monologistos" has made a substantive comment on something I wrote there. You may read the entire thread here, my comment here, and monologistos' reply in full here.

Herewith, my response:

Unity is relational at its core; it is ontologically rooted in the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ, and since the Word is the Second Person of the Trinity, unity through baptism into Christ joins us to the Father and the Holy Spirit in their divine love-life (perichoresis). Theology, such as the stuff I just trotted out above, functions to serve communion. When theology ceases to serve communion, it ceases to be good theology. There is no good theology that would allow for schism, and just because one's opponents may have repugnant theology (whether in the practice of faith or morals or both), this does not absolve theology's primary task of serving communion.

I apologize for not being clear about the underpinnings of my principle of mutual (or "basic") commitment--which you can read up on (if the Spirit moves you) here. Mutual commitment is to Jesus through a recognition that we each have been validly baptized into Christ's death and resurrection and thereby incorporated into the Church which is his Body.

The baptized may gravely err, and one cannot presume that the Just Judge at the eschaton will excuse all of our sins (this would be hubris), but as long as we exist in the Pilgrim Church, our unity is an ontological-relational unity whose good theology serves communion and whose bad/defective theology cannot break it.

I hope in what I've just written to put you at ease about any confusion between Christian and Jewish identity you may have detected in the ambiguities of my writing. Such was not my intent.

I do not view the Eucharist as either the ends or the means to unity, but simply as the offering of Christ's Self to the Church, to which we have access by baptism. As we continue in lifelong catechesis, our particpation in the mystery of the Eucharist deepens, though we never fully "know" it. I am in favor of open intercommunion amongst all those who have been baptized with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not as a means to unity but because no schismatic church has custody of the Eucharist. And in conflict ecclesiology, every church is schismatic. (As you can read here.)

Worship indeed is our highest form of catechesis but Christians are to worship what they know. Worship is our Christian response, a form of theology, to God’s self revelation.

I agree entirely, though I also always try in my theology to leave room for the apophatic--that is, the notion that we cannot "know" everything about the God whom we worship. As Jesus tells the woman at the well (John 4:22-24), "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Still, this "knowing" is not an absolute/rational knowing, but a transrational participation in the Truth that is God. (Following Alexander Schmemann's reasoning in For the Life of the World.)

God is certainly capable of acting outside the Church but that He does cannot mean everything and everywhere is Church else ‘Church’ cease to mean ‘Body of Christ’. I understand some make this move claiming all Creation is the same as Christ’s Body ... they are pantheists.

I agree wholeheartedly that Church is Church and cannot be conflated or understood as coterminous with Creation, and would add that the Kingdom is the Kingdom, in which the Church participates, but the Kingdom is the eschatological hope and reality of what the New Creation will be when God is "all in all." We certainly aren't there, nor can any of our efforts make it so! Thank you for this clarification.

Intention matters. We must mean what the Church means else we do not participate in the Church’s sacraments. Sure, if we have not reached the age of reason or we ar past it, we are capable by virtue of family of particating in sacramental reality.

Yes, indeed, intention matters, and if we do not intend to mean what the Church means, we eat and drink judgment upon ourselves, which will be given at the Eschaton. Yet I also believe that no one has perfect intention, which is why your third sentence is so crucial to an orthodox ecclesiology: the family of the church itself enables true sacramental participation even for those with some defect of intent, otherwise none of us would be capable of receiving the grace mediated to us in the sacraments.

But belief is a form of behavior. Behavior matters. There is much more involved in Christian baptism than water and a basic idea of washing away spiritual dirt. Christian baptism is a sacrament. Through it, we participate in the Baptism of Jesus, in his death and resurrection. It is this one Baptism, not simply John’s baptism but John’s baptism of Jesus that is the one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. This is what the Church means. Within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, it may be sufficient to talk about baptism and confession of Jesus but that is within realized unity.

I agree with the overall tenor of this statement. I think where we differ is that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (OHCAC) is a "realized unity." My foundational claim is that schism cannot break the ontological unity of the OHCAC. When we insist that we cannot share communion until we have "realized unity" in the Pilgrim Church(es), this can tend to a sort of Pelagianism that denies that the grace of God is operative in effecting unity and communion between particular Christians and communities even when Christians as a whole persist in the sin of schism. Were it impossible to live into communion, "realized unity" of any kind would be an impossibility. So it is neither an ends nor a means, but a participation in something that already exists apart from our paltry efforts.

Finally, you sum up your position nicely when you write:

Unity with God is exclusive. We cannot have unity with God and with Mammon. Therefore, I would assert the opposite claim: schism is a reality, yes, but unity with Christ requires separation from heresy. IMHO, those who chose unity with TEC diminish their unity with Christ because within the communion of TEC are bishops who are heretics and atheists ... and some persons whom Scripture warns us will not inherit the Kingdom unless they repent. It does no one a service to give false assurance while people are working on excluding themselves from salvation and Life Eternal.

Evangelical persistence in a mixed field does not "give false assurance" if one is clear about one's proclamation of the truth as one understands it in Christ, offered in humility and love. It does no one a service to separate from heretics because such separation is ontologically impossible--you would have to separate yourself from yourself, because not only is the Church a mixed field of wheat and weeds, but each of us individually is a mixed field. This is why ongoing personal repentance and amendment of life are necessary for every Christian. I agree that we cannot have unity with "God and Mammon," but I don't see how you can equate TEC with Mammon. If by "Mammon" I correctly understand you to mean idolaters, all sin is idolatry, and we are all idolaters in the process of redemption by God's gracious loving initiative in Christ. I cannot accept that "Unity with God is exclusive," except in an eschatological sense, when the Judge of All may exercise the prerogative to respect people in their stubborn refusal to acknowledge him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, because the very purpose of the Incarnation was to draw all humanity to God's self in Christ (as John proclaims). That some of humanity may eternally reject this embrace is an eschatological probability, and there is some warrant to believe that this has been predicted in many places in Scripture (hence I am no universalist). But unity in Christ is derived not through the isolation of the "pure" orthodox from the "impure" heretics, but through participation in God's own "pure" life. (As my theses make explicit.)

We cannot diminish our unity with Christ through association with the "unpure" because nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (as these "prooftexts" so eloquently put it)--not even my or other peoples' heresies or schismatic tendencies. Absolute separation (schism) is a self-justifying reaction that has no warrant in Scripture, although temporary separation within the one differentiated Body for the purpose of discipline does. Schism is an anxious response to a temporary dilemma. Discipline, love, perseverance, these build up the Church and serve communion.

As for your last note on eschatology, I think I already clarified that the Church is not the same as Creation. My problem with your thesis that unity with Christ requires separation from heresy is that it usurps the eschatological prerogative of judgment that is Christ's alone, ignoring as it does that we are all heretical even when we don't want to be, and we are all schismatics. Of course, I am not trying to excuse my own heresy and schism--Conflict Ecclesiology includes a call to repentance as a part of the catechesis of mutual commitment to Christ--but just because I'm a repentant heretic and schismatic does not give me the right to pass judgment on the unrepentant heretics and schismatics. Were I to do so, I would be following the example of the Pharisee who prays, "God, I thank you that I am not...like this tax collector" (Luke 18:9-14), and not our Saviour, who prays, "Father, forgive them..." (Luke 23:34). (Besides which, the Pharisee of the parable assumes that the Tax Collector is "unrepentant," while the secret prayer of the Tax Collector proves otherwise. Hence it is rarely "safe" to judge who is "unrepentant," and thank God, that is rarely in our job description.)

Many thanks for an engaging dialogue.