Standing Under the Scriptures
April 27, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this week are:

Acts 17.22-28a: Paul on the Areopagus addresses the sophisticated Athenians.

John 14.15-17: Jesus distinguishes between his followers and the world concerning access to the Spirit.

This Notice comes early on account of my trip to New York. Also to be noted is the archive of our Weekly Notices now on the All Saints’ web site. I hope to have the title changed to Weekly Discoveries; our voyage is one of (biblical) discovery.

Regarding last Sunday, our first reading (Acts 7.54-60) was the climax of the story of Stephen, the church’s first martyr. For us it raised two central questions: firstly, the significance of martyrdom in the early church and, secondly, the reason for Stephen’s martyrdom. (The underlying Greek word, martyrein, means simply to bear witness. It came to mean martyr in our sense because bearing witness to Christianity often resulted in death.)

Stephen’s martyrdom was the precursor of many, many more in the early church, the “noble [= candidatus or white-robed] army of martyrs” of the Te Deum, the “great multitude… standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes… “ of Revelation 7.9. These martyrdoms came about mainly through the Roman persecution of the church starting in the latter 1st century and continuing until Constantine and the Edict of Toleration in the year 312. For the Roman state did its utmost to wipe the church out, inflicting the most horrible tortures and death to bring this about. The pressures applied were psychological as well as physical. The touchstone was willingness to offer sacrifice the emperor as a god, as demanded by the official cult of emperor-worship. Someone who when accused of Christianity would do this was let off scot free. We might have been inclined to comply, with mental reservations. But the early church understood that it was impossible to do so and remain a Christian, despite the awful penalties entailed by refusal. It is notable that despite the violence inflicted on it, the church’s response was unfailing non-violent, over a period of more than two centuries. It is notable also that in the end the church rather than the state prevailed, the state being obliged to accept what it had tried so hard to wipe out.

As for why the Romans were so intent on wiping the church out, the reason may be similar to that for Stephen’s martyrdom. We saw how his defense before the council paralleled Peter’s explanation to the bystanding crowd of the Pentecost event (Acts 2.14-36) event, to the point even of holding them responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. But in the interval the church had attracted a considerable following, so that the religious establishment could perceive it as a threat to their position. And the council, which Stephen addressed, would have consisted of religious authorities and their adherents, not just the crowd that was Peter’s audience. Similarly with the Roman state. It has many notable achievements to its credit but, particularly in the imperial era, the elite relied ultimately on force to maintain their position. (Relying on constraint rather than on the “consent of the governed” may be regarded as the chief manifestation of original sin among wielders of political power.) And the underlying insecurity arising from their reliance led them to look askance on any entity which they could not bring under their control. Such an entity was the church which, while not only peaceable but fully law-abiding, professed allegiance to a higher authority. And its ability to operate without force relativized the Roman elite’s reliance on force. We may ask ourselves where we stand on these issues today, with regard not only to refusing to compromise our faith but also to the use of force in national and international relations.

Turning now to our Gospel passage (John 14.1-6), it was a shift from our previous readings in John. In these Jesus was concerned with opponents or at least outsiders: Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, the Pharisees. Here, though, he is speaking to his own disciples. On the eve of his crucifixion he is concerned to assure them, and us, about his physical departure.

The passage is most notable for its concluding verse: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This verse is of cardinal importance in itself. But it is of historical relevance as well. We took cognizance of the prominence of this verse in the Barmen Declaration, how it was the first of the three by which the Declaration was launched (the other two having come from our John reading of the previous Sunday). The Declaration, of June 1934, was attached to last week’s Class Notice. It was the vehicle by which the Confessing Churches, virtually the only ones to do so at the time, spoke out against the Nazi regime and its attempts to enlist German Christians in its cause.

And the verse is of more than antiquarian interest. It figured again significantly in the Episcopal Church’s 2006 General Convention, as related in the report made to the congregation at that time. The relevant portion of it is appended below. If, as following Santayana we affirmed last week, those who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat it, then those who derive from it the very opposite of what it teaches must be in a bad way indeed.

The verse includes not only a positive statement of Jesus’ significance but also a negative one: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” We had some discussion of this, as to whether it might be exclusionary, in the sense of leaving non-Christians beyond the pale. A class member was able to point out that it need not be taken that way, in that Jesus died for all mankind. This in fact accords with a thesis of Karl Barth which I came across in my reading that very afternoon. Barth’s way of putting it (which I can convey only very inadequately) is that Jesus not only died for all mankind but in so doing saved all mankind, as confirmed by his resurrection. So this latter half of the verse could also be put positively: “Everyone has come to the Father through me.” The distinctiveness of non-Christians then lies in their not having recognized this. And their non-recognition confers an overwhelming missionary imperative on Christians, including ourselves.

See you, the Lord willing, on Sunday.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted

(From a report to the congregation on the 2006 General Convention)

The House of Deputies refused even to consider following resolution proposed by a member of its Evangelism Committee.

“Resolved... that the 75th General Convention declares its unchanging commitment to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only name by which any person may be saved (Article XVIII [of the Articles of Religion]); and be it further Resolved, that we acknowledge the solemn responsibility placed upon us to share Christ with all persons when we hear His words, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14.6)... “

Disconcerting as this refusal is, the reason given for refusal is still more disconcerting. According to the Rev. Eugene McDowell, Canon Theologian for the Diocese of North Carolina, “This type of language was used in the 1920s and 1930s to alienate the type of people who were executed. It was called the Holocaust.”

In saying this he turned the actual history of the period exactly on its head. The Holocaust was not going on in 1920s; that was time of the democratic Weimar Republic; Hitler came to power only in 1933. And despite Kristallnacht in 1938, it was only in 1941 that the Holocaust really got going. Further, it was carried out in the name not of Jesus but of the German Volk and its racial purity, which the Nazis proclaimed to be the way, the truth, and the life in place of Jesus. Most tellingly, the German Confessing Church was virtually the only entity to speak out against Hitler. They did this in 1934, in the form of the Barmen Declaration, of which Karl Barth, the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century was the principal author. And the Declaration drew on precisely the wording that McDowell so stridently decries in its denial that Hitler could be the savior that he claimed to be.