The Rock, February 2000
In England Now
Hitting the Buffers
ANXIOUS PASSENGER: (to Ticket Inspector at remote rural West of England Station) I say, does this train stop at Paddington?
TICKET INSPECTOR: Real old smash if it don't, Sir!
[For those who don't get the point, Paddington is, and always has been, the London terminus of the Great Western Railway – once known as God's Wonderful Railway]
There is all the difference in the world between looking for new ways of presenting or explaining the "faith once delivered to the Saints" in terms which a particular nation, generation or culture can more easily understand; and on the other hand trying to modify the faith to make it fit in with "what Jones will swallow" as G.K. Chesterton so graphically expressed it.
The first of these processes is not only permissible, but our bounden duty as disciples of Jesus Christ.
To take a simple example, we can, and should, develop analogies from what we have learnt over the past two thousand years about the way the human body works to see whether, and if so how, they can be applied to the image of the Church as the Body of Christ on Earth.
However, what the second process involves, and what we are not at liberty to do, is to say that if some popular belief appears to be at variance with the truth which God has revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ, then revealed truth must be disguised, or hidden or explained away in order to help the mythical Joneses of this age the more easily to swallow what's left.
An example of this would be the popular assumption that there is not, and there never could be, such a state as Final Perdition or Hell for people to choose if they wish to do so. Whilst we may indeed have little or no idea of what such a state or place might be like, and who, if anyone would choose it in preference to the vision of God, that is quite a different matter from saying Hell does not, or could not exist. For if God has given us, and perhaps some other non-terrestrial creatures, a measure of free-will, then the only way that such a will can be said to be "free" is when freedom implies the ability to reject both gift and Giver alike.
Now the process of substituting "acceptable" or "correct" notions for that truth with which we have been entrusted has accelerated remarkably over the past five years, particularly (though by no means exclusively) in the West.
Every month, though it seems more like every week, we become aware that some credal statement or moral principle has come under attack, not from the morally dissolute or the theologically illiterate from whom one might expect such attacks, but from bishops, priests, theologians and directors of theological studies in universities.
Such substitutions may be compared to removing a rail from the permanent way some distance ahead of where a train is due to pass, or placing a pair of buffer-stops in its path. It makes no immediate difference to the running of the train. The passengers and driver may be totally unaware of its existence or significance. What is certain, however, is that unless either the train stops before the hazard, or the line is in the meanwhile repaired or the obstacle removed, then the whole caboodle, train, passengers and all is going to come to a sudden an potentially lethal stop. Hence the title of this article.
Let us take an example of a popular notion which is proliferating itself everywhere at the present moment. We often hear people talking about "achieving their Optimal Endstate", or, more frequently, how they feel they are failing to do so.
Underlying this novel soundbyte Optimal Endstate is a world-view which sees that attaining a certain sense of self-satisfaction, usually linked to job-achievement, income and security is what Life (with a capital L) is all about.
Contrast with this the statement of Irenaeus that "The glory of God is the living man; the end of man is the vision of God" or, if you prefer something more up-to-date (from the seventeenth century to be precise) "The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever"
There is simply no way in which these two different world-views can be ultimately reconciled. Of course at any given moment there will be some successful "achievers" who are glorifying God by their achievements; but alongside these there will be others who are doing nothing more than glorifying themselves; by the same token there will be those who by worldly standards appear to be wholly "unsuccessful" or "insignificant" but who, whether they realize it or not, are glorifying God nonetheless. One is reminded of the shockwave which Cardinal Newman sent reverberating through the gentility of Dublin when he stated that a dirty beggarwoman who went faithfully to Mass might be closer to the Kingdom of God than themselves. He was only echoing and localizing something which Jesus himself said about a man called Lazarus!
Moreover, "Achieving one's optimal endstate" may involve the Achiever in such evil practices as telling lies, misappropriating assets, killing unborn babies, neglecting his children or aged or infirm dependants (and perhaps in places like Holland and Oregon, hastening their death), committing adultery, lying under oath and even resorting to murder where the victim is a sufficient threat to his being able to attain that supreme desideratum as his Optimal Endstate.
But moral "derailments" such as those mentioned above, are only part of the story, and the lesser part at that. For the moment that a group of Christians begins to massage the truth in order to "make it fit" it finds that not only has it created a vast moral breach, which ultimately results in "everyone doing what is right in his own eyes", but that the whole pattern of truth which underlies the Christian faith begins to unravel.
The result? Well people who care about the truth will go elsewhere to find it, and those for whose benefit the faith was being massaged and supposedly "made easier" will decide that at that rate there's not much to truth about it anyway. It's a lose-lose situation all round. Unless the train can be brought to a halt it's bound to go off the rails or hit the buffer stops.
The Singapore ordinations of two bishops, Murphy and Rodgers, to minister to the faithful in the United States is, I believe, just such a last-ditch attempt to bring the train safely to a halt before total disaster overtakes it. Certainly the courageous (or reckless, according to your point of view) action of Tay and Kolini and their colleagues has made everybody sit bolt upright, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow primates. And getting a primate to sit bolt upright takes some doing, I can tell you!
To them will fall the unenviable task at their meeting in Oporto in a week or two's time to survey the incalculable damage that they have done to the Anglican Communion by imagining that they could have the authority to change the very nature of the sacred ministry without the agreement of the majority of Catholic Christianity, both East and West that this is the right, or even a possible, thing to do. Even the Pope himself has emphasised on more than one occasion that he does not have such authority. How much less, then, the various "provinces" of that nebulous configuration the Anglican Communion, unheard of before the middle of the nineteenth century.
Of course those who took this fatal step meant terribly well. If the popular view of the moment is that every office and role within the human ambit must be made available to anyone, regardless of their gender, and if this is truly the will of God, then it is outrageous that women should be permanently excluded from the priesthood and the episcopate. One might observe in passing that if that were the case it would then seem to have taken God an extraordinary long time to reveal his will on this matter and even longer for us to find it out.
“But why in that case stop at Holy Orders?” we ask. If, it should indeed prove to be the case that "theologically everything is up for grabs" (as Bishop Jack Spong once memorably claimed in my hearing) then it's necessary to ask what other divine precept may not prove to have become outdated as well. Perhaps, for instance, God did intend that Holy Matrimony should be a temporary union of man and woman for as long as it suits both parties but no longer.
If that is true we surely should be applying ourselves to putting asunder those whose matrimonial condition is standing in the way of their achieving their Optimal Endstate.
Certainly the current proposals before the General Synod of the Church of England for the marriage/remarriage of divorced people in church would seem to imply that such is indeed the case. Clearly some of us clergy are going to have to take seriously the need for "continuous training programmes" to qualify them to discern (for it will be their responsibility) which marriages are "alive" and which are "dead" or "dying" and perhaps to administer the coup de grace to the latter.
Come to think of it, that Organist's wife in the next-door parish is really quite attractive and she's none too happy being married to old Organ Morgan where it's organ, organ all the time, her neighbours tell me. "Oh! I'm a Martyr to Music" she once exclaimed to me after a particularly bad spell of Bach.
And then there's old Mrs Mae Rose-Cottage who's ninety-three this year and such a burden to he relations. She's always led us to understand that St Grizelda's Church would be a beneficiary under her will. I really must go and have a word with her son-in-law about her Optimal Endstate!