Do you believe in miracles?

Being a retired philosophy professor, I have to say "What do you mean by 'miracle'?" If you mean an occasion where God sets aside the laws of nature to bring about an outcome impossible or improbable under those laws at the bidding of some person in deep concern about this outcome, then, no, I don't believe in that. If you mean only that a person praying for an outcome that is improbable or impossible under the known laws of nature brings about that outcome, then I have to go at least to litotes: I don't disbelieve.

The known laws of nature are known to be wrong in at least some of their details, though just where and how has been a matter of dispute for the last century, after a very hopeful beginning in the early 1900s. With a significant part of the universe missing and while chasing a particle that some have said (at least partly seriously) is trying to prevent its own discovery, scientists are coming to a point where they must look for new paradigms for investigation. And many have been offered. I find not incredible one that has not been suggested in scientific circles: that psychic energy (for want of a better term) exists undetected and has effects in the physical world.

I am well aware of the debunking of such a notion: the erroneous reports, incorrect interpretations, conscious and unconscious misdirections, coincidences and what not. But there still seems to be a core of cases that resist explanation from current science and have not been dealt with otherwise because we don't know what else to do. Nor do I have any suggestions what else to do except observe and record carefully and keep an open mind.

So I can imagine a force, springing perhaps from human though, which humans could learn to manipulate to cause effects in the physical world. And one that humans have occasionally actually manipulated, either by accident or by esoteric techniques. The trick in research would be to isolate cases of this sort from those that fall under one or more of the debunking rubrics. Attempts to this so far have been fairly unsuccessful: the best case presented have often been found to be flawed in areas where the researcher had a particular blind spot. But the effort ought to continue.

One hope for improvement is that I do not take this quest as a spiritual one, as a move toward liberation or ascension to a higher plane or absorption into the All, or whatever. Yet it does have a religious base of a sort. If you believe there is a God who laid down natural laws which He will not violate (slipping back into a common mode here) and you allow the possibility of miracles, then you are led to the possibility of (undiscovered) natural laws that explain what appears miraculous given the currently know natural laws.

To clarify one thing, no one (or almost no one and no one we know of) knows how to manipulate this force. If someone happens to hit upon it at one time, lucky for them. If another, in as deep anguish and with as much faith, does not happen to hit on it, bad luck. Not lack of faith or inadequate trying, just not hitting on the right moves, whatever they are (and the successful one appears to be no clearer about that than anyone else -- possibly because they have been pointed in the wrong direction). Something more is required than faith the size of a mustard seed (which, come to look at it, is not all that small a seed after all) and apparently than some rituals, with or without faith. What that more is has yet to be found (or demonstrated not to exist) and we apparently do not know where to look.

This seems very flimsy ground for even just not disbelieving in miracles, but it is a reason which satisfies some sort of rational base, given the postulates of faith.

A Liberal says the Creed

"How can you recite the Creed every week, when you don't believe a word of it?"
Most liberals have been asked that question. And most have replied (if at all) by explaining that they take the words to be understood in some non-literal sense and that they believe the underlying claims. And they do believe some of the words, too.

A stronger response would be to ask how the questioner manages. The question suggests the the asker takes the words of the Creed literally and bearing all the baggage of traditional Christianity, but, in the modern world, even the most profoundly ignorant must have heard enough to have occasional doubts.

"We believe in God the Father Almighty" Big guy, with a white beard and a penis, or stern but loving Being who is always there to help you? The first is blasphemous, the second unlike most fathers we know and demonstrably not true. What is God really like?

"Creator of Heaven and Earth" In six days plus a break, but this specimen, this rock, this.... the more particular reasons to doubt are calmed by inventing special acts of nature, the more doubts arise.

A lot of stuff I don't understand but which must be right since its in the Creed. But what am I really committed to by this? "begotten not made" "of one Being with the Father" "True God from True God"?

"Through him all things were made" But didn't the Father make everything. To be sure, He does say "We" and "Us" a lot while He is doing it, so maybe Jesus was there too. But how "through," For the most part, we don't get a notion of what tools God used, if any; a couple of times He speaks things into existence and one time He seems use His hands to mold a body, but not other person seems to be involved.

"For us and our salvation" Substitutionary redemption makes God a pretty horrible Person, setting things up so that his only Son has to die and excruciating (literally, no less) death to fix a mess that an all-knowing God should have foreseen (come to that, setting things up so that such a minor act of disobedience should have such eternal consequences).

"He came down from Heaven" Does everybody pre-exist in Heaven or is Jesus a special case? And if Jesus is a special case, being God, how can God all fit in one tiny body and who is minding the universal store while Jesus is on Earth (Ahhah! that's why there has to be at least two Persons)? And where is Heaven in a universe without up and down?

"Conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary" Wait, a male child born without a male gene getting in there somehow -- the Holy Spirit can do that: create a male gamete without a male? And Virgin Mary -- my daughter better not try that one on me. Not even if she claims to have seen the Angel Gabriel.

"He rose again on the third day, according to Scripture" Now, I really have trouble with a three- day-dead body getting up and walking around, even without the walking through walls bit and the disappearing and reappearing. (I have trouble with "buried" too -- who would ask for the body of a convicted insurrectionist? And who would give it up to be made a center for further insurrection?)

"He ascended into Heaven" Even if He traveled at the speed of light, He is still in this galaxy, wherever Heaven is.

"I believe in the Holy Spirit" and another load of stuff I don't understand, but that people seem to argue about. But the whole Trinity thing is not terribly clear to begin with.

"the resurrection of the dead" I don't know about that.

Even if the asker does not meet with all some of these questions (and there are others, of course) every time he says the Creed (and listens to what he is saying -- which may be rarely), he surely does some times. But a person who believes what the Creed says, ratherthan the words it uses to say it, can get through the whole thing without a qualm.

Apology

This blog got off on a limited theme, about homosexuality in the Bible (or absence thereof) and marriage equality. I still don't have my mind completely around some of the matters in this area, but the urgency in getting straight (oops!) on these has dissipated in the rush of events. I want to get back (on?) to the central questions here, trying to work out my theology in a satisfying (to me, maybe to someone else) way. So I am scrapping a pile of drafts that went over old material of sex and the Bible and beeps and hypocrisy and the foolishness of GAFCON and the like, to return to issues in my own faith. I welcome, indeed, seek, comments of any sort on these musings. I apologize for presenting them often as finished ideas when they are very tentative and shaky.

The next ABC (come quickly)

Perhaps the next Pope o' Rome will have more trouble than the next ABC repairing his church from the actions of his predecessor, but it'll be a near thing. If, as his recent hagiography implies, Rowan was groomed for the See of Canterbury almost from grammar school, then the groomers must be mightily disappointed or even shamed. If his earlier actions and writings were taken as indications of what he was to do when he reached his fulfillment, then the watchers and readers were sadly disillusioned. If he was thought to be the one to repair the damage done by Peggy Thatcher's dithering revenge on the C of E for its weak support (at best) of Tory bellicosity and mammonolatry, the thinkers got it wrong.

Everything known suggest that Rowan was picked to do a number of fairly specific jobs to drag the C of E into at least the 1990s, if not the 21st century. These tasks included

Getting the chancel prancing Papist and the noisome and noisy Roundheads back into the Elizabethan settlement "Freedom of conscience within uniformity of worship*."

Getting women first and, almost immediately, unclosetted sexual minorities** into full participation in the church: as priests and bishops without restrictions and in all other roles as well.

Restoring the C of E's reputation as a leader in support of human right and the MDG.

Encouraging the North American Anglican communion churches to proceed on their trajectory of inclusion but to do so in a way that would help the C of E to catch up and stimulate some other churches to at least get started on this road.

On these tasks, at least, his score is a perfect zero.

The Papists are either looking to flee cross the Tiber or to build a church within the church, free from some off the usual rules (like subservience to your bishop). The Roundheads want to take over the church and force their uniformity on conscience as well as worship and form an alliance with the Papists (that is some progress, I suppose) to thwart the rest of the reform program. The great middle is largely ignored -- except briefly in General Synod, when it tries to enact the program as much as it can (to be subverted at the next step, with the ABC's covert support).

This last is, of course, about the matter, most openly, of women bishops, where the General synod passed -- over the ABC's pleas to the contrary -- a motion to make women bishops with full rights and duties, objectors to be handled more informally rather than by statute. In perfecting the legislation called for, the committee changed that to giving statutory restrictions on women bishops and statutory extraordinary rights to those who objected. General Synod may well reject this change, but that is, obviously, no guarantee that it will not end up being the final legislation. And the whole process has now been slowed down by at least another year.

At Lambeth, the Communion put on a big display for MDG, led by the C of E and Rowan his own self. Very little of this seems to have been cashed out by C of E, though other provinces, including some much poorer ones, have done quite a bit. Organizations around the C of E, but not part of it in any official way, have also done quite a bit.

The case for human rights is even more bleak. Groups around the church have done what they could; the church -- and Rowan in particular -- has mouthed general platitudes and refused to speak out about particular situations, even when -- maybe even especially when -- they involved churches in the Communion and the actions of their heads. This is back to the matter of sexual minorities, of course, since the most egregious of these non-pronouncements has been about the new, stricter --even lethal -- laws against homosexuality introduced in several African countries with the loud support of the heads of their Anglican churches. Of course, this path was already apparent in the home church with the debishoping of Jeffrey John early in Rowan's tenure and a variety of (generally unsuccessful) moves to prevent the blessing secular same-sex unions or even full wedding style ceremonies. And, in addition, the C of E repeatedly appealed for exemptions from non-discrimination laws for even positions most remote from religious purpose, matching or even beating the RCs. Theological musing and practices as a bishop of lesser standing would not bind the embodiment of the Anglican Communion.

And, since the C of E was not moving forward (or was even going backward a bit) and nothing was happening to jump-start the African churches, the appeal to North American to not get too far ahead had little force. The appeal was made, at least, but it was framed less in terms of not getting too far ahead and more in terms of not doing something totally wrong (maybe sinful, certainly discomforting to some and possibly a liability in some mission fields). Further, the framework of the appeal quickly came to be the framework for a structure new to the Communion (which isn't that old to begin with) which would change the appeal into a command -- never a good approach to the USA and Canada and something foreign to (indeed, against a foundational document of) Anglicanism.

In all of these failures, Rowan has had the opportunity to do the right thing, the thing he was trained up to do and promised to do, by word and deed, in his earlier career (though, to be fair, he did show signs of the power center idea of the ABC from early on). He took none of these opportunities and -- perhaps worse -- undercut those who tried to make what he did look like doing the right thing (++Katherine's appeal for B033 at GC2006 comes to mind).

May the next ABC come soon, while there is still a C of E or an Anglican Communion to serve.

*"uniformity of worship" is a sort of Anglican joke, since, at least in the older churches of the Communion, the official BCP and Hymnal are supplemented by a variety of more or less official improvements, trial usages, local usages, borrowed BCPs from elsewhere (and from elsewhen as well) so that quite possibly no two Anglican services are ever the same. And this doesn't even consider the pomp and circumstance bits that range from Byzantine elaboration to po' chapel minimalism (three hours to 25 minutes, say).

** Well, except for necrophiliacs, bestialists, pederasts and ephebophiles, the promiscuous, sadists, masochists, fetishists and so on. It basically means LGBT and even then probably with some exceptions, varying from place to place. In fairness, when this commitment is working, all are welcome and treated much the same outside considerations for ordination or certain occupations, like Sunday School teachers and choir directors.

Episcopocracy

I'm kinda slow. This didn't occur to me until I read some remarks by +Mark SC and Mimi's report of +ND's remarks.

Bishops in TEC don't have a lot of power in the church nor influence outside it. Almost all their actions have to be filtered through committees of priests and (brrr!) laity (even though they get to pick many of them). I don't know about Canada, though it sounds similar, but England is frustratingly different: their are still committees with some laity and the whole national government (virtually all lay, most not even in the church, some several not even Christian), but some of them do get a role in the actual national government (though a rather minor one) and all or more or less lords. And their opinions are sought outby the papers. And in Africa and other third (and lower) worlds, they are among the elite: cars when most have only bicycles, if that, mansions (not to say palaces), and other conspicuous signs of wealth. And their opinions -- even their support -- are sought out by the governments. No messy lay committee with any power, few messy priestly committees with any power.

It is not merely personal glorification that the Others want (to be a bishop, to be an Archbishop), it is power. The ACNA has so far only a College of Bishops and does not appear to be making much progress toward even a grammar school of laity or priests. The bishops who stole away from TEC had displayed an autocratic form within their dioceses and mean to continue and expand it. Before they had only the power of licensing and committee appointments to sway the events in their church, now they will be absolute.

Of course, this is all very unChristian (citation of contrasts between rulers of this world and rulers among Christians), as is attributing these motives to others, even if I had clear evidence, but it does help me see how little this all has to do with homosexuality or Biblical interpretation or creedal fidelity or any of the other things being tossed about. It's just like politics (than which it is hard to say a natier thing).

I know, I know

I should stop writing about same-sex marriage and talk about health care. But it is clear that the people who are screaming about the actual proposals in health care, are not going to listen to facts or the actual text of the bills (unless they misread it like McCaughey), so it seems pointless to add another unheard voice to the many clearly heard ones. Of course, one could the same about same-sex marriage and homosexual inclusion. My only defense is that, until recently, no one seemed to me to being agood job in sorting out the various sense of marriage and what was peculiar to each. I don't suppose that the antis ever will, but hopefully (and, indeed, apparently) some of the pros are getting better at it.

Trans

The problems of a very good runner in a women's race the other day brings to the fore the problems I am having understanding transgender (etc.) within the lgbt spectrum. Her problem seems to be (if she really has a problem other than being too good a runner) with the apparently simple question of sex: plugs and sockets, right? But then chromosomes don't always match up, folks with a y chromosome, may be sockets because they can't process testosterone (another athlete's case). I suppose in some possible realm a double x is a plug because s/he is overly sensitive to testosterone or overproduces it or radically misuses estrogen or the details of organ development just got screwed up in the womb. This latter event accounts for a certain number of babies every year being born intersex, with plumbing not clearly one way or the other. Chromosome checks and hormone checks can give some sense of what was intended and surgery can recreate that result, but not always completely, giving a fully functional person of the apparent sex. And some people who pass initial inspection still turn out to be intersex in later life, with some characteristic of each sex -- stereotypically penis and breasts as a hermaphrodite, but other combinations occur. On the other side, we find men who have two y chromosomes (and one x) and women with three xs, who tend to give exaggerated versions of their sex's (stereo)typical behavior (which raises the question of what a double x + y would be like). And, in the end, some one has to decide -- separately for each situation, probably -- how much of what is enough to assign a person to a particular sex. If matters are so confusing for prima facie objective questions of sex, what chance have more subjective questions to be simple or straightforward?

Gender roles are social constructions; society determines how a person of a given sex is supposed to behave and dress and talk in various circumstances. In some societies these are very restrictive, basically one pattern allowed, at least in public. Other societies offer a number of options, though usually with a core of common measures (even executive women in custom suits don't wear boxers, say). People who violate these patterns are thought odd (though possibly in a good way, but usually not -- at least patronizing), people who behave more in the pattern of the other sex are thought queer (definitely in a pejorative sense, sometimes a criminal one). But again much depends on context: Eddie Izzard or Dame Edna or Chantilly on stage is at most slightly discomforting, one of them in the same get-up (well, down a bit for Chantilly) in the checkout line at Wal-mart is something else again. Age, status, occupation and a whole range of socially defined differentia play a role in setting the limits. And. as there is intersex in sex, so there is androgyny is roles -- people who do not conform to either set of patterns but pick some from each.

The corresponding intermediate position in gender identity is gender queer or gender nonconforming. Gender identity is what the person thinks themself to be: male, female, neutral or both, regardless of their body and the roles they play in society. In many respects this seems to be the most important factor for transgendered people. They have this sense of gender identity that is at variance with their bodies often long before they can act out the other roles and may keep it in their core self-identification even it they do not act out the corresponding roles. But when possible, maybe only occasionally and briefly, maybe as a new life, they will live as their identity, obeying the patterns of their self-identified gender ( and perhaps eventually reshaping their bodies to conform). This, a real chosen life-style, still -- in a society where it is possible at all -- carries a load of burdens, even if fairly "successful:" official identification papers (though these are getting easier to change), rest room choices, the constant threat of original socialization popping up in a wrong move, and so on. Notice that, while coming to live with a gender identity not of your body is a choice, the gender identity itself does not seem to be, although its sources are less well understood or even explored than even sexual orientation, which is another, separate factor and the one that gets the most press (perhaps confusedly).

Sexual orientation has to do with what sort of person you can/do become romantically and sexually involved with. The choices are men, women, both, either (and whatever else there might be) or none. But, given what has gone before, this is not as clear cut a choice as it might seem: is the desire for a body structure or a way of living or some combination. Biologically speaking, the answer has to be that the quest is for body structure, with roles coming in only as a clue to that. But that still leaves many combinations to be sorted out: neither man oblivious to the successful transrole of his partner nor the partner, fully self-identified as female, thinks of themself as being a homosexual, even when the situation is revealed. Contrarywise, a body male who self identifies as female though takes on none of the female roles may have sex with a body-and-self-identified female and think of its as a homosexual encounter, regardless of what the partner or the rest of the world would think.

So now I am getting closer to my question, which might now be put as something like "How much of physical homosexuality is covert identity heterosexuality (and tother way round, of course)? One of the gender roles is clearly attraction to the opposite gender, but this is separate from the other roles, so it may be the only cross role one plays. Or the other parts of the cross role one uses may be minor or occasional. The gay and lesbian people I have talked to seem to be quite comfortable in their bodies, but they may not be totally frank or they may not be representative of a significant group. None of this has anything to do with the right of every person to be who they want to be and to be united with the one they love, with at least the state's blessing and without hassles, but it raises a lot of questions about research and scientific understanding of human sexuality.