November 2, 2024

Justice, Truth, Reconciliation: A Sermon

Filed under: Sermons — William Witt @ 10:57 pm

Isaiah 59:9-20
Psalm 13
Hebrews 5:11-6:12
Mark 10:46-52

St. George

The Old Testament reading and the epistle reading this morning seem made to order to make both the preacher and the congregation uncomfortable. In the Old Testament passage, the prophet focuses on the problem of injustice and puts the blame squarely on his hearers: “For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities” (Is. 59:12).

The Hebrews passage threatens about the dangers of apostasy. The apostle warns that in the case of those who have fallen away “it is impossible to restore them to repentance . . . since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt” (Heb. 6:4, 6). Should I preach a sermon to a chapel full of seminarians in which I accuse you of injustice whose “transgressions are multiplied” before God? Or rather should I go down the path of suggesting that you might be apostates who are guilty of crucifying the Son of God to your own harm? Best to stick to the Gospel story of Jesus giving sight to Blind Bartimaeus.

However, I think that both the Old Testament passage and the epistle are on target for where we find ourselves in contemporary culture. The problem of injustice is a concern that plagues not only the culture but the church. We approach a political election in a matter of days in the midst of what feels like the most politically divided period in my lifetime. And the rabid disagreements between both political parties are primarily moral. The resentment of both sides of the electorate against one another stems out of a kind of moral outrage that is rooted in mutual accusations of injustice.

And of course, the church itself has had to deal with issues of injustice in the past couple of decades, particularly connected to issues of clerical abuse, primarily sexual abuse but also leadership abuse that has led to the scandals of clergy being defrocked, but also disagreement about the nature of Christian morality that has led to denominational splits among the mainline churches.

Concerning apostasy, we are living in the midst of an abandonment of Christian faith in the last several decades that seems unprecedented. The brief religious revival of the Jesus Movement and the charismatic renewal of the 1970s was followed almost immediately by the rise of the New Age phenomena in the following decades, of the cultural popularity of the New Atheists in the early twenty-first century, and the recent phenomenon of Christian Deconstruction in the last decade.

If you are hoping that I will resolve any of these problems this morning, you are expecting far more than a seminary professor can offer in a chapel sermon. I am not going to tell you how to vote next week, how to resolve the disagreements that have divided the mainline churches in the last two decades, or how we can reverse the numbers of people who are leaving the church.

I do think however that the lectionary passages from Isaiah and Hebrews can tell us something about what the Bible has to offer concerning the issues of injustice and apostasy. (more…)

August 15, 2024

Follow the Bouncing Ball or Why We Disagree About Women’s Ordination (Part Two)

Filed under: Women's Ordination — William Witt @ 2:03 am

Angelus

Some Historical Background

I

did not write my book Icons of Christ with the intention of changing the minds of those opposed to women’s ordination, although from time to time I have heard from people who have told me that the book changed their minds Rather, I wrote for three different groups:

First, for those within my own tradition (Anglican/Episcopal) who were disappointed at what seemed to be an upsurge of those opposed to women’s ordination within theologically conservative Anglicanism. Women’s ordination had not been an issue of contention at the beginnings of the founding of the Anglican Church of North America in distinction from the Episcopal Church in the mid 2000s. Those of us who had been members of TEC before the split did not leave TEC over either WO or the 1979 BCP. Many of us were members of dioceses and congregations that supported WO before the split. I myself was confirmed as an Episcopalian on May 15, 1982 by Bishop William Frey of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. Bishop Frey supported women’s ordination as well as the 1979 BCP, and afterwards moved from Colorado to Ambridge, Pennsylvania, where he became the Dean President (1990-1996) of what was then Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, where I have taught Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics since fall 2007.

Trinity School for Ministry/now Trinity Anglican Seminary has had a policy since its founding that there could be disagreement on the issue of women’s ordination. While there have always been members of the faculty who opposed WO (including my dear friend the late Rev. Dr. Rod Whitacre), since its beginnings the majority of the faculty have favored WO, and there have always been women serving on the faculty, including my dear friend the late Rev. Dr. Martha Giltinan. And, yes, despite their disagreements about women’s ordination, Rod and Martha were good friends, and Rod entirely supported Martha as a member of the faculty, although he did not receive communion if she presided at the Eucharist. Rod taught women who were seeking ordination, and he treated them no differently than he did his male students. Bob Duncan, the first archbishop of the ACNA, was the bishop of Pittsburgh, a diocese that supports the ordination of women. I myself have served on the Commission On Ministry in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and we approved both men and women for ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood.

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July 31, 2024

Follow the Bouncing Ball or Why Christological Subversion is Central to the Gospel (Part One)

Filed under: Atonement,Theology,Women's Ordination — William Witt @ 2:20 am
Lamb of God

The negative review of my book Icons of Christ: A Biblical And Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination continues at The North American Anglican. It is tempting to reply with a point by point response. However, a reading of the most recent criticism makes clear that where the author really disagrees with me concerns issues of basic theological methodology. In particular, the author objects first to my advocacy of a narrative interpretation of Scripture, and, second, to my use of the principle of what I call “Christological Subversion.” Before addressing these specific criticisms, I think it would be more helpful to explain how I do theology. I have published two recent books – the first in favor of women’s ordination1 and the second (with my colleague Joel Scandrett) about the history and doctrine of the atonement.2 Both books have been favorably reviewed by competent peers in the fields of biblical and systematic theology, and both follow the same basic methodology. Although it was published later, I began the atonement book first, so the principles of narrative interpretation and “Christological Subversion” were first developed in that book. And the atonement book itself developed out of one of the first essays I published over two decades ago.3

Narrative interpretation and Christological subversion are subordinate to a third principle, which is more basic, the principle of the priority of the object over the subject in theological methodology, what Karl Barth calls nachfolgen or “following after,” what in Thomas Aquinas is the principle of an a posteriori approach to theology, and a citation from Hillary of Poitier that provides the motto for my blog: Non sermoni res, sed rei sermo subjectus est: “The word is subject to the reality, not the reality is subject to the word.” It is what I call in the title of this post “follow the bouncing ball.”

A major theme in both books is the problem of incommensurable theological systems. This is even more evident concerning the doctrine of the atonement than it is concerning women’s ordination. For women’s ordination, there are basically four options: Protestant complementarian (hierarchical) opposition; Catholic sacramental (non-hiererarchical) opposition; liberal Protestant/Catholic modernist affirmation; critically orthodox or evangelical catholic egalitarian affirmation. Gustaf Aulén’s book Christus Victor discussed three atonement models: satisfaction/substitution, exemplarism, Christus Victor. In the book on atonement I wrote with Joel Scandrett, we discuss eight historic models and finish with a comparison of contemporary discussion. Even then, for space reasons, we had to omit several other approaches. So there is actually more disagreement about atonement theology than there is about women’s ordination.

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July 16, 2024

Yet Another Review of a Book I Did Not Write Or Why Disagreements Concerning Women’s Orders Are Intractable

Filed under: Women's Ordination — William Witt @ 10:40 pm

Gargoyle

 

 

 

In a recent post, I looked back on the reception of my book Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination three years after its publication. In that essay, I focused on why I had given the book its title:

The single argument that appears repeatedly in these several chapters is that Christians resemble (are “Icons” of) Jesus Christ not through physical likeness or through exercising hierarchical authority over one another, but in the same way that Paul makes clear in both Phillippians 2 and 2 Corinthians 2-4, first, by pointing away from ourselves and our own authority and accomplishments to the saving work of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, and, second, by imitating Jesus Christ’s own kenotic cruciformity in service to one another.

However, I also noted:

My book received quite a few positive reviews, and the positive reviews consistently have recognized this key argument about what it means for Christians to resemble Christ. My book has received a fair amount of criticism as well, but almost none of this has acknowledged or addressed the central argument. Rather, the negative reviews have focused on defending the traditional arguments against women’s ordination – whether complementarian Protestant or Catholic sacramentalist.”

A recent reviewer claims to have read this essay: “Witt declares what he believes is the most important part of his book.” In that light I had thought that the author would address what I have claimed is the key issue of the book – how it is that all Christians (not just men) resemble Christ — through cruciform discipleship. He did not do that, however, but instead followed the predictable pattern – not at all addressing the key point of the book but rather (once again) offering a defense of the hierarchical complementarian position – beginning with an interpretation of the account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis 2.

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June 21, 2024

Deconstruction (and Reconstruction) on the Road to Emmaus

Filed under: Deconstruction,Sermons — William Witt @ 6:57 pm

Acts 3:1-10
Ps 105:1-8
Luke 24:13-35

DeconstructionI hope you will forgive me this morning if my topic is not exactly what you might expect for an Easter week sermon. As I understood until about a year ago, deconstruction is a kind of post-modern rejection of the notion that literary texts have any inherent meaning in themselves, but rather that meaning is imposed by readers. This was a philosophical movement associated with the French writer Jacques Derrida. However, in the last few years,“Deconstructing Christianity” has become a kind of movement among mostly former evangelical young people to describe their process of re-examining and usually abandoning their Christian faith. Just in the last couple of weeks, a book entitled Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church has become a runaway best-seller.

Some have suggested that a kind of reverse “Great Awakening” is taking place in American culture, and this movement is being compared in significance to the revival movements of the nineteenth century or the Jesus Movement of my own generation – except, again, in reverse. Given the sheer scope and influence of this movement, I think that it is something that Christians, especially those of you who are going to be ordained clergy, and seminary professors like myself, need to be aware of. To ignore it would be like a missionary setting out for India who knew nothing about Hinduism or Islam or Sikhism.

What I know about deconstruction at this point is sketchy, and largely derived from YouTube videos supplied by young people – former evangelicals – who have deconstructed their faith. There seems to be a pattern: they are young (usually in their twenties or early thirties), they describe growing up within the culture of American Evangelicalism. They were members of youth groups; they were home schooled; they went on mission trips. The churches they describe seem to be mostly Baptistic or Pentecostal, and the theology they left seems conservative or traditionalist to the point of being Fundamentalist. They understand Christian faith to be in conflict with modern science, with modern historical method, and with modern psychology.

And they regularly describe a conflict between faith and reason, in which Christian faith seems to be opposed to rationality rather than the traditional Christian understanding of theology as faith seeking understanding. They seem largely ignorant of historic Christian theology or serious contemporary biblical scholarship. I have yet to come across one of these young people who claimed that they deconstructed their faith because they had read Augustine or the Cappadocians, Aquinas, Luther or Calvin, Karl Barth or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, N. T. Wright or Brevard Childs.

We might be tempted to dismiss deconstruction as a cultural movement specific to North American revivalism and pietism that has nothing to do with the kind of historic Reformation Christianity represented here at Trinity: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism. We may call ourselves Evangelicals, but we’re not that kind of Evangelical! I think that would be a mistake. (more…)

March 8, 2024

Concerning Women’s Ordination: What About 1 Timothy 2:12?

Filed under: Women's Ordination — William Witt @ 2:38 am

AngelusI have addressed and responded to several criticisms of and challenges to my book Icons of Christ and its arguments in favor or women’s ordination and women’s equality through several essays on my blog. However, there is one crucial passage that I have not yet addressed at length – Paul’s assertion in 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (ESV). I have made occasional references to this passage, particularly in addressing hermeneutical issues, but I have not discussed it in detail. So with apologies for a lengthy delay, I now turn to this passage.

Preliminary Reflections

Before examining the passage, some initial issues need to be addressed.

First, the disagreements about this passage are not primarily about exegesis, but about hermeneutics. I had addressed this in previous essays. For example, in a previous essay, I made a crucial distinction between “master passages” or “master stories” and “paradigms.” A “master passage” is a passage of Scripture that is crucial for one’s own understanding of an issue, and a “paradigm” is the interpretive key to the interpretation of the “master passage.” My previous essay to this makes clear the master passages that are central to my understanding of what Scripture teaches about what it means for not only men but also women to resemble Jesus Christ, and the corresponding “paradigm” is one of cruciformity, mutual service, and mutual submission.

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Icons of Christ: Reflections Three Years Later

Filed under: Women's Ordination — William Witt @ 12:58 am

Holy GrailSince publishing two books recently, I have learned that the only thing that I can be certain of as an author is that the things that I spend the most time worrying about when writing the book will largely be ignored, and the things that I think relatively unimportant, and on which I spend less time, are the things that others will think are the most important, and will devote all of their time to when reviewing the book.

In the book I recently published (with my colleague Joel Scandrett) on the doctrine of the Atonement, the chapter on Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction was, for me, one of the least interesting chapters. I wrote that there are currently two very different (and conflicting) interpretations of Anselm, but concluded that Anselm’s real significance was as a transitional figure. Anselm was more important for what later writers did with his views, and I ended up focusing more on successors like Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Thomas Torrance on the one hand, and John Calvin and Charles Hodge on the other. I was surprised when an otherwise generally positive reviewer complained that our book had not paid sufficient attention to Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction, and that the reviewer really did not seem all that interested in those later writers to whom we had devoted much more attention. Of course, the reviewer’s own understanding of the atonement largely coincided with Anselm’s satisfaction theory.

Similarly, when I wrote my book Icons of Christ on women’s ordination,1 I included as an illustration in what I regarded as the least significant chapter in the entire book, an informal logical syllogism which I knew at the time was not a formal syllogism, but whose point I assumed was self-evident, and which, regardless, was nothing more than an illustration along the way to making a point that was not directly related to the formal validity of the syllogism (15-16). To my surprise (and frustration), a reviewer focused on that syllogism almost as if it were the most important point in the book, with the consequence that a social media flurry broke out, the point of which seemed to be that my book could be disregarded because I had based my entire argument on an invalid syllogism. To the contrary, that illustration took up a paragraph, could have been entirely removed from the book, and nothing in my argument would have been affected.

If one were to ask me what was the point of giving the title Icons of Christ to a book arguing in favor of ordaining women to church office, what were the key biblical passages that supported my argument, and what were the most important chapters in the book, I would have responded that the key issue of the book has to do with how it is that not only ordained officers of the church, but all Christians, resemble Jesus Christ – thus the title Icons of Christ.

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October 19, 2023

Luke’s Guide for Christians Living in a Divided Culture

Filed under: Sermons — William Witt @ 3:25 am

Sirach 38
Psalm 147
2 Timothy 4:1-12
Luke 4:14-19

Christ EnthronedII would be surprised if I were the only one here this morning who has found the last few weeks to be particularly discouraging. As of last week, there are now two major wars going on in the world – one in Ukraine, and one in the Middle East. The attack on Israel last week deliberately and cruelly targeted non-combatants, including women, children, and old people. Those who did this certainly should have realized that Israel would respond in kind, and Israel’s response has already resulted in the death of over two thousand Palestinians, many of whom were themselves women, children, and old people. The United Nations estimates that 4,200 people have been killed, and over a million displaced in the last ten days. Meanwhile, here in the United States, political division is so intractable that one of the major parties cannot even agree among themselves to elect a leader, let alone work with the other party, and, at a time when strong US leadership is certainly needed, there is no functioning Congress.

Christians also experience these divisions in our own churches. A former student of mine recently posted on Facebook that his church had been able to purchase some land to build a new building after they had lost their old building in the church wars. A well-known older combatant in the church wars commented in response that this was a waste of time because when the Baby Boomers in the congregation die in the next few years, the new building would be empty, and Generation Z are all abandoning the church. There will not be any need for church buildings in the future.

Any sober description of the world today would have to acknowledge that human beings are divided from one another. Indeed, various groups hate one another. And the only solutions we seem to be able to come up with are attempts to settle disagreements through coercion. If one side wins, the other has to lose.

The lectionary readings for today are for the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist. Commentators regard Luke 4:14-30 – the story of Jesus reading from the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue in Nazareth followed by a short sermon – as the key to Luke’s entire Gospel. The passage contains all of the themes that Luke will develop, not only in his Gospel, but also in his sequel, the Book of Acts. I am going to focus this morning not simply on this Gospel passage, but on how these themes fit together in both Luke and Acts. Since I cannot talk about everything in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, I intend to focus on one issue, what Luke says about the role of the church within a hostile culture. To make it a sermon rather than a Bible study, my title will be “Luke’s Guide for Christians living in a divided culture.”

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July 14, 2023

Appreciation for Professor and Bishop Grant LeMarquand

Filed under: Trinity School for Ministry — William Witt @ 9:57 pm

There are people who don’t make a lot of noise, who don’t put themselves forward, who do not deliberately call attention to their expertise, but just get things done. In the years I have taught at Trinity School for Ministry, I have learned that (now retired) Bishop Grant LeMarquand is that kind of person.

Grant has officially worn two hats at Trinity. He taught both New Testament and Missions. I first learned about the latter when I was interviewing at Trinity and was introduced to Grant. I mentioned that I liked the theology of Karl Barth, and Grant mentioned that Barth is not much read in Africa because of his negative views on religion. Africans, he pointed out, are a very religious people, and any approach to missions that simply disregarded religion would not be an effective mission strategy in Africa.

Trinity has a unique focus on missions, and during my first few years here, I learned that missions is one of Grant’s major concerns. Grant regularly went on short trips to teach in Africa, and I was surprised a few years after I arrived when Grant announced that he would be leaving Trinity because he had been asked by Bishop Mouneer Anis of Alexandria, Egypt to serve as Anglican Bishop of the Horn of Africa. Grant had initially thought that he and his wife Wendy would be serving a few thousand local Ethiopians, but because of a war in South Sudan, Gambela became the center of a crisis involving hundreds of thousands of refugees, and Grant and Wendy found themselves in the middle of that crisis. During their time in Ethiopia, Grant and Wendy served growing congregations, ministered to refugees, began a seminary, and Wendy used her skills as a physician to teach basic health care to mothers of children, which contributed to a significant lowering of infant deaths. Because of Wendy’s health problems, Grant and Wendy had to return to the US after five years, and Grant once again wore both his NT hat as well as his missions hat at TSM.

During the time we overlapped at Trinity, Grant was Academic Dean, he started and edited a Trinity Journal for Theology and Ministry, he was the Anglican member of a Roman Catholic group of African biblical scholars, he published numerous essays on African biblical exegesis, he began The Marjorie Stanway Collection of African Bibles, Prayer Books and Hymnals, one of the largest collections of African Bibles in the world, he was Director of the Stanway Institute for Mission and Evangelism, he was actively involved in the triennial New Wineskins for Global Mission Conference, and he served as a bishop in the ACNA College of Bishops.

Most people who know about Trinity School for Ministry are probably not aware of what a significant role Grant played in Trinity’s life while he was here, and specifically how central he has been for Trinity’s focus on Global Mission. Yet for those of who worked with him, he was simply Grant, our colleague and friend who was always glad to spend a few minutes in conversation if you passed him on the way to the copy machine outside his small office.

A week before Grant and Wendy moved back to Canada, my wife Jennie and I had them over for dinner, and we talked about what Grant would be doing during his retirement. During that conversation he mentioned casually that although he would not be teaching full time, he would still have plenty of work to do as an Anglican bishop. Afterwards, I thought about how I had just had dinner with someone who had been an Anglican Bishop in the Horn of Africa, was an important contributor to the relatively unknown field of African biblical studies, and had played such an important role in the global mission of Trinity School for Ministry. But for me, he will always be “Grant.”

July 12, 2023

I Get Mail: Christianity and History

Filed under: History,Theology — William Witt @ 2:07 am

MosesOccasionally, I get mail. The following are a couple of questions sent to me on behalf of someone asking about the historical reliability of Scripture. I am a systematic theologian, and not primarily a biblical scholar or a historian, and people trained in these areas could no doubt address these issues with more sophistication. At the same time, one of the things that theologians do is to try to address the questions that ordinary people ask, and this notion that the Bible is historically unreliable, closer to “fairy tales” than history, seems to be common in contemporary secular culture these days.

I am not a biblical scholar myself, but I read people who are, and, at the least, I can pull together what others who are more competent than myself have said about this topic. Perhaps ordinary lay people will find this helpful. The footnotes and bibliography will provide some guidance for further exploration.

If the Bible contains some truths and some stories, how do you determine which is which and who is the arbitrator of that “truth”? What is the evidence? I understand from a religious standpoint, this is a very dangerous and slippery slope that you may not want to explore, but I believe there are significantly more stories and embellishments in the Bible that render it essentially more philosophical or historically unreliable rather than factual.

Can Christianity exist if Judaism is proven false? In my mind, it seems I have a near-logical proof (at least to a degree of reasonableness) developing that indicates that the basis for Judaism is not valid (not dissimilar to the origin of Mormonism). If true, what are the implications?

History or “Story”?

The question needs to be more carefully put.

As stated, the question seems to equate “truth” with “factual” or “philosophical,” and “stories” with “historically unreliable.”

The real concern seems to be about the historical reliability of the Biblical narratives specifically as historical accounts. To address that question, it is necessary to provide some preliminary clarification. “Narrative” is probably a better word in this regard than “stories” because “stories” (as used here) seems to be equated with non-factual fiction. However, it is even misleading to equate “fiction” with “untrue.” Fiction can be “unhistorical,” and yet, in its own way, address issues of “truth.” For example, Aesop’s Fables are fictional accounts that communicate moral truths.

Narrative covers several possible categories.

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