What's your Anglo?

I've had this post in my mind for about a week; sometimes I just need awhile for it to ferment enough to be satisfying.

Once again multiple events in my life have converged to make me dwell on a subject. This time both "events" happened to be books that I was reading last week. One was one I had bought at Summer conference- A Severe Mercy, the memoirs of a husband and wife who became Christians and then had to deal with great loss; the other was an old favorite of mine that I decided needed rereading, The Wind in the Willows. What could possibly connect a spiritual autobiography with a children's book about talking animals? England, my friends, England. In A Severe Mercy Sheldon and Jean Vanauken travel to Oxford to study, where they eventually convert thanks in part to their numerous Christian friends (including C.S. Lewis). Of course, the characters of The Wind in the Willows live and breathe England.

Thoughts of England floating in my head! What is it about that tiny island off the coast of Europe that makes so many long wistfully for its shores? My theory is that anyone who truly loves literature loves England. We owe it such a great debt, of course, from Shakespeare to A.A. Milne, but it extends beyond that. It isn't just walking around imagining that you hear John Donne preaching the words of his sermons directly to you. Something about the isle strikes us as mysterious; the place where magic lives and adventure lurks.

There are two very distinct images I have of England, both of which are enticing. One stems from Tolkien and the like, and ultimately from Arthurian legend. It is the primeval England, where Romans battle with druids for supremacy. Where magic streams out of every rock. It is the England of fairies and dragons (it is fitting that the patron saint of England is St. George). Of Arthur and his knights and the quest for the grail. Or, moving back to reality, the England of the actual Middle Ages, so flavored in my mind by the Brother Cadfael mysteries. Stephen and Maude slugging it out; dark corridors and harsh conditions; savage meals of meat and mead.

The other, quite opposing view, is of a distinctly more refined England. This is the island of Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and Charles Dickens. People are refined or, if not aristocratic, still contain a certain charm. An island full of Henry Higginses. And of course the British army spreading the gospel of England across the globe. Rudyard Kipling and his ilk. And Oxford- oh, Oxford! Centuries of learning that seem to take on a life of their own. Everyone you meet literate in Chaucer and Milton, Catullus and Virgil. Where books still hold a power over the soul, and everyone is a poet.

How much of this is fiction? I suspect a great deal- my friend Matt (an English major who I think shares many of my convictions) spent a year at Oxford and was distinctly disappointed by it. Maybe that England, if it ever existed, has faded permanently from view. But maybe, just maybe, the ghosts of Swift and Orwell still dance in the moonlight with Merlin and Galahad and Richard the Lionheart. Someday I plan to go to England and find out. Perhaps I'll even share a pint with the Inklings.

Sacramentalism and the "Reformation Crisis"

Here I am, finally posting again. My computer was sick for about a week after Summer Conference, and I didn't feel like typing out long posts from the library. Thanks to my good friend Matlock, though, my darling Toshiba is back in action, and I feel obligated to provide you all with a post.

Today has been the first day I've felt fully justified in doing my summer research. Don't get me wrong- I am overjoyed to spend half my summer in Tulsa, getting paid to read books. But the actual research sort of seemed like an afterthought, an excuse to do the other things. That all changed at my meeting with Dr. Bowlin today; for the first time I feel energized to do work, stimulated by academic pursuit.

Since my research this summer is on Luther's view of baptism, Dr. Bowlin started me off on Heiko Oberman's seminal biography Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. In the course of our discussion today we spent time struggling with the idea of the radical existential crisis of the Reformation: how can one be certain of redemption? We talked about the sacramentalism of Catholicism, where participation in the sacraments ensures inclusion in God's people. Easy enough, for those who accept the transmission of grace through the Eucharist, confession, etc.

Funnily enough, Luther did not reject the sacraments per se- baptism was at least partially regenerative, and he accepted real presence in the Eucharist. These two served as assurances of redemption, along with the church.

Flash forward to modern times. Strained through the Anabaptist and Reformed traditions, not to mention old fashioned American individualism, the sacraments have in one form or another lost their efficacious nature. Modern American Evangelical Protestantism (now that's a string of adjectives) focuses almost exclusively on the believer's inner life; faith becomes only individual, not corporate. But individual activity cannot solve the existential crisis- doubts remain. For one in the sacramental mode of faith, there is no need for assurance because it is given from above. To take a naturalistic view (one we need not shrink from: natural explanations often point to supernatural providence), anthropologists recognize the vital role of ritual in religion, in the participation of community.

Because modern evangelicals have supplanted the church and the sacraments, they must substitute "homegrown" alternatives. Thus weekly altar calls offer a feeling of assurance. In radical Pentecostal settings, assurance is gained through the "works of the Spirit", usually speaking in tongues. Anyone not participating must not bear the seal of the Spirit. These heresies are why we must preserve the true sacraments of the church.

I suppose this is one reason I find Presbyterianism so attractive: the balance it acheives between the inner life of the believer and the corporate life. The more I look into Covenant theology, the more sense it makes: God is bringing together a people for himself. Paedobaptism, which I once vehemently shunned, seems more and more a viable option. Luther's explanation really stuns me: infant baptism signifies that the work is God's, not ours. Modern interpretations of baptism make it into a work we do for God, instead of a sign of the promise He made to us through Abraham.

Communion is a little stickier (and not only because we have substituted sugary juice for wine). What exactly does it mean? This is something I struggle with, but again I find myself attracted to the Presbyterian view. While I reject real presence, I cannot see it as simply something to be done and forgotten about. Christ's grace is present, if not his physical body. We must revere this great mystery, not shove it aside.

The third leg of the stool is of course the church. Sadly in Protestant circles the church is not the bride of Christ but rather the nanny of believers, catering to their every want. This is coupled with the problem of scriptural interpretation. Luther opened the word to all believers, but that means that many will distort his intentions and hold that, where exegesis is concerned, anything goes. The opposite strain is the dangerous form of fundamentalism that holds that every word of the bible is literally true, which is so preposterous that I would disbelieve its existence if I didn't know it to lurk around. Instead we should embrace Luther's view of faith informed by knowledge, recognizing that neither faith nor scholasticism alone will help us rightly divide the word of truth. Because of this individualistic approach to the Bible, the church is lessened instead of increased. We have a basic distrust of authority.

To be fair to Catholics, in modern times they have been affected by this crisis, and more and more they speak of individual faith and salvation. As Dr. Bowlin rightly pointed out, trying to fit things into definite categories is messy and usually falls apart in the face of the real world.

Still, this tension between individual assurance and robust community life (in the sacraments and word) lingers. How do we resolve it? I have the suspicion that no one has the answer entirely correct, and that we must bear all things with patience.

Life Together

Yes, it's time for another of those appropriately timed posts where life shapes what I'm saying. That seems to happen quite a bit.

I just finished (basically) packing up my room; finals ended today, and with them my freshman year of college. Seeing as I have a number of senior friends, and that I won't see most of my friends period over the summer, I thought I would reflect on the nature of friendship, and how it is affected by communal living.

Going back to Aristotle, who is a darn cool cat: he posits that true friendship involves living together, and asserts that one should have only as many close friends as may live together in close proximity. Leaving home this year has forced me to think about my friendships in light of seperation, and while I am not as despairing as The Philosopher, I see his point. Whenever I reunite with a friend I haven't seen for some time, there is a period of awkwardness which inevitably occurs as we get our bearing on our friendship again. Is this because we did not have true friendship? No, but our lack of sharing life together has caused us to lose some of what made our friendship what it was.

This aspect of living together has a bigger impact that we usually think. Our lives are formed in the day to day, not big events, and trust is built little by little. When you are around someone consistently, you build up relationship momentum that is not present when you are apart. Regaining that momentum is never instantaneous. Of course, the time it takes to get it back varies; with my closest friends the ice is normally broken very quickly.

But this raises another thought in my mind: what is it that our new relationship consists of? We can never fully have the old friendship back-- we have both changed too much for that. Do we sit around and reminisce about things past? Try to regain some of the old magic by engaging in new activities? Or do we blaze trails, hoping that the new direction is as enjoyable as the last?

The first and second options usually leave me sad. I cannot return to my high school days, through memory or imitation. I am a different person, and the old me has little resemblance to who I am now. No, I must move forward or risk being a dead shark. Hopefully my friendship survives this metamorphosis.

Back to the original point: how possible is it to maintain friendship when seperated by distance? My mother had some experience with this, having spent every year between 8th grade and the second year of college in a different school, in 6 countries on 3 continents. During that time she made friends who, at the end of her life, came to visit and rekindled past closeness. Much had changed in the intervening time, of course, but the spark of friendship remained.

Letters help, of course, which is why I am such a big fan, at least in theory (my practice often falls terribly short). But how can you capture someone's essence on paper? Very few people come across as themselves through the written word. I honestly don't have an answer to this problem. Yet I do not despair and lock myself away, refusing to engage people because I will only have to say goodbye. Knowing them, even for a short time, changes my life. As my best friend and I said as I left tearfully for college, "It doesn't seem fair that God has only given us four years together. But I'm sure glad He did." The tears are part of the gladness, and with my Christian friends at least I have the hope of reunion someday in a place where tears will not be necessary to let us know true joy.