Standing Under the Scriptures
April 19, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our class resumes this Sunday, following our Easter recess. Our readings will be:

1 John 1.1-2.2: The writer speaks of the abstractions of light and darkness, while also coming to grips with human sin.

John 20.19-31: This is St. John’s equivalent of the Pentecost event; in it the risen Christ confers both the Spirit and authority on his disciples.

There was no class, and hence no class discussion to report, last Sunday. But I am attaching a sermon I preached at an All Saints’ funeral last month (PDF). It is bad form, I know, to circulate one’s own sermon (unless people are clamoring for it). But working this one out helped me with something I have struggled to articulate, not only in our class but long before. This is the connection between my Foreign Service career---as representative of secular careers ---and my functioning as a priest and theologian. This connection and its power excited me already when I was in seminary. But I have never known quite how to explain it.

In one class notice I went so far as to cite the applicability of my Foreign Service experience to the study of the biblical tradition, of church history, and of theology itself. Among other things, the critical analysis that reporting back to Washington on countries where I was posted obliged me to develop has strong affinities with modern biblical criticism. In both one does not stop with surface appearances but looks beneath them. Teaching and preaching are like reporting back to Washington, in that they involve discerning what is significant and making it coherent and intelligible. Going into strange and chaotic-seeming situations, like the provision of port for Saigon during the Vietnam War or the Korean government’s budget, to find their coherence and intelligibility introduced me to the a posteriori approach that we follow in our class. These weekly notices themselves resemble the memoranda of conversation that I used to write after speaking with government officials and other knowledgeable persons (I would be glad to supply a sample.).

But there is more to be said than this. The skills and disciplines which occupations like the Foreign Service generate require commitment on the part of their practitioners---which certainly the Foreign Service elicits as no doubt do others, like medicine, the law, and teaching. Further, these skills and disciplines tend to go beyond those required for the task at hand, amounting to a kind of surplus. And this surplus, for such reasons as bureaucratic constraints, may find no particular application in its generating occupation. This leads to situations of frustration, in which commitment is apparently unrewarded. But the surplus may find an application, and thus its fulfilment, in another profession. My experience suggests that theology, anciently “queen of sciences,” is eminently fitted to perform this role. Thus there is here a kind of two-way street. On the one hand we have a secular profession illuminating and enabling theology, while on the other hand theology gives the secular profession its final meaning.

This is where my sermon, a retired Foreign Service Officer, comes in. Parker Wyman’s commitment to his profession did not lead to an ambassadorship, and even if it had, this would have been of limited value in his retirement. So where was the reward for his commitment? To be sure, it was not in the study and joy of theology, as in my case. But the Scripture readings for the service, which he himself chose, told us that faithfulness such as his can expect a reward in heaven. Thus the Christian faith affords a fulfilment which the Foreign Service, like other secular occupations, cannot itself supply. And thus these occupations are not just something to be endured, as we have been given to understand. Instead they have a positive meaning.

Nor am I alone in thinking along these lines. As far back as the Reformation Luther affirmed the validity of secular occupations, against the medieval notion that only ecclesiastical vocations conferred sanctity. In our 21st century Alister McGrath has been recasting the very basis of natural theology, transferring it from the Enlightenment concept of a universal reason to the critical realism that he has adopted. In doing so he has developed the concept of ancilla theologiae, or handmaid of theology. He has applied it mainly to the natural sciences, in which he himself was trained. But it is relevant also to the Foreign Service and other secular occupations, as assisters and enhancers of theology. Just last February he stepped boldly but with impeccable logic onto the frontier between the natural sciences and theology in his Gifford Lectures, the event which for more than 150 years has been regarded as the summit of theological attainment. Truly a voyage of discovery, they can be accessed by googling “Alister McGrath Gifford Lectures.” I commend them to you for their significance and for the clarity of their exposition, even if they may be a little technical in places.

Also to be cited here is Alasdair MacIntyre, the brilliant English philosopher who teaches at Duke University. His penetrating critique of the Enlightenment concept of a universal reason has been highly influential; indeed it has largely carried the day. In developing it he has stressed the importance of formation in a craft. This has been largely with reference to theology, to show that it cannot be just free-standing but must come out of a tradition. But obviously it resonates with what we have been saying about secular occupations, in that they amount to crafts in the sense that he speaks of.

As you can see, I have made progress in articulating the connection between my Foreign Service career and my present activities that for so long has excited me. But as you can also see, I still have a way to go.

See you Sunday.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted