A Fit Vehicle for Salvation

A FIT VEHICLE FOR SALVATION

The Episcopal clergy who call themselves “orthodox” do not accept the oversight, or even the sacramental ministry, of their bishops who disagree with them on matters such as the ordination of women or gays. Or the manner in which scripture is understood. Or the “right” views of certain doctrines such as Atonement or Salvation. (The reasons given keep evolving in response to arguments against them.) While they claim to be traditionalists, they take the radical step of inviting like-minded outside bishops to visit their congregations for confirmations, dis-inviting their own bishops, in violation of all Episcopal tradition.

There are odd anomalies in reasoning. In some dioceses, alternative Episcopal oversight has been requested on the grounds that the Ordinary has voted wrongly on key issues. Yet, my own bishop, Mike Klusmeyer, has voted “rightly” on those key issues, but been branded a “revisionist” anyway, for no discernable cause whatsoever, other than non-membership in the breakaway party ranks. Katherine Jefferts Schori cannot be accepted by several dioceses as Presiding Bishop, and “alternative Primatial oversight,” whatever that is, is being sought. It is not because she is a woman, oh no. It is because she holds those pesky “revisionist” views. Yet all the dioceses accepted Frank Griswold as Presiding Bishop, none bothering the Archbishop of Canterbury for an alternative—and he harbors those very same views!

I have begun to wonder if some people are so deep in denial that they really do not notice or realize how different their behavior is toward a woman in authority than toward a man. Or if they imagine that others will not notice.

If holding all the right opinions, or even personal righteousness, were to be requisite to the efficacy of any ordained person’s celebration of Eucharist, baptism, confirmation, or ordination, how could anyone ever count on receiving valid communion, baptism, confirmation, or ordination, anytime, anywhere? The Church decided close to two millennia ago against any such assumption, when it condemned that view, called Donatism, as a heresy. It is an important and necessary claim of the Church that sacramental acts are gifts from God, not from the human minister who celebrates the sacrament. Yet in our church, we have reached the sad state of affairs in which, for many, doctrinal purity is the test of sacramental validity. Having arrived there, it is no wonder we should break apart. How can people live in communion with others they think so badly of?

There is another matter that has importance to me, that has its origins in the aftermath of the Reformation as it occurred in England. Even the staunchest “orthodox” Episcopalian is, of necessity, in favor of the Reformation. Yet the original fracture of the unity of the church catholic left some weighty questions to be considered. The undivided Roman Catholic Church was seen as the Ark of Salvation. Its authority lay in the throne of St. Peter. What if the church should err? What if it should depart from the teaching of Jesus in some unrecoverable way? The Holy Spirit will not allow that to happen, assured the Petrine Theory. The Pontiff, acting by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may be a human being, subject to human failings, but he would not be allowed to err in such a way as to prevent the church from being a “fit vehicle for salvation.” Since our departure from the fold, that notion has developed in Catholicism into the larger doctrine of Papal Infallibility. A Pope may err, but not ex cathedra. And not in a way that would render the church unfit to ferry souls to paradise.

What were the pope-less Anglicans to do? Somehow, a mere Archbishop did not seem to have quite the clout to pull off a stunt so enormous as infallibility. It took a while, but Anglo-catholic apologists came up with a solution that I like even better than the Petrine Theory. Well, much better. This idea is the Infallibility of the Church. (What I like better is that it is about what we decide as a whole group, rather than the decision that one individual makes. That makes it not only more modern, with a democratic appeal, but even more statistically likely, by my view.) The gist of it is that, even as a council, or House of Bishops, or General Convention, or whatever governing body we may devise, we are quite capable of making mistakes. In fact, because we are human, it is inevitable that we will make mistakes. We might as well count on it. But because of Christ’s love for the church, and his intention to bring salvation to the world until he returns through the ministry of the church, the Spirit will not allow the church to make so grievous an error that it could no longer be a fit vehicle for salvation. The deck chairs of the Ark of our Salvation are a safe refuge from the storms of doctrine that throw spray across our bow on so regular a basis.

Must this not be true? For otherwise, there would be no sanctuary, no safe conveyance through a sinful world, other than the pure, dumb luck of happening to be aboard the right conveyance, among many, at the right moment in history. If we can’t be saved aboard all of the flotilla of craft which make up the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Fleet, then how can we hope to be saved aboard any?

In this latest round of self-inflicted wounding going on in our church, the Puritans of a few years ago have become the Separatists of the present. They consider the Episcopal Church too corrupt to be purified any longer. It must be abandoned for a body free from all taint of modernism, revisionism, accommodation. They’d better hope they are right in all of their doctrine! Otherwise, setting up doctrinal perfection as the key to entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, they risk facing a lock none of us can open, including themselves. Of course, they may be mistaken about their other premise, about the fitness, or lack of it, of the errant church in an errant world. Perhaps “while we were yet sinners” is precisely the state in which Christ came to save us after all.