Taking about talking about God

A correspondent was asking if the Nicaean Creed's phrase "True god of true god" implied a multiplicity of gods,

Can I post a fairly long response? There is a piece missing from this conversation. In the days of Google translator we think that there is a simple equivalency between words of different languages. That is especially true when it comes to language about God, god, gods, Greek gods, the Hebrew god of Abraham, Allah etc. They are all words that stem from a particular time and place.

The Council of Nicaea was held in 381, in a town in modern day Turkey after the emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman empire from Rome to Constantinople. It was the first council in the history of the Christian church that attempted to address the entire body of believers. It was convened by Constantine to resolve the controversy of Arianism, a doctrine that held that Christ was not divine but a created being.

So it is not about a multiplicity of gods. It is about the “essence” of god and Jesus. It was also the beginning of the move (or maybe an expression of a movement already afoot) to formulate church doctrine in terms of Greek philosophy. The council fathers (no mothers represented) were trying to formulate a statement declaring that the Lord Jesus was (and is) god by asserting that he was (and is) of the same essence as god.

The language of the Council was both Greek and Latin. The official text coming out of the Council was Greek. I don’t know Greek, and even with a dictionary I can't be precise. In Latin however, God of gods does not refer to any multiplicity of gods. I think it is probably best described as a logical tautology: “God is of the essence of God.” Deum verum de Deo vero; natum, non factum; ejusdemque substantiae qua Pater est. As a matter of fact, looking at the Latin, the elaboration of the tautology, “light from light” (light is always of the essence of light) seems to be missing, perhaps an addition or a variant text.

What we have is the answer of the council to the followers of Arius. Jesus is truly god of the truly god, he was born (as a human while still remaining god) but not made (in the same way that god made Adam). He, the Father and the son and the spirit (filioque) are substantially the same. The filioque would drive another split, but that just gets way too complicated. I vote for Unitarianism just because it’s simpler and more beautiful, but that’s a pond I don’t want to dip my toes into here.

Driving in India as Spriritual Practice

Let’s begin our journey by taking a spin around an Indian traffic circle. For rigid westerners the driving here is totally insane; thinking that the roadside altar dedicated to Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually points to an Indian Catholic church is as misdirected as believing that the road crew in charge of installing shrines had a master plan. 

I wondered if following the blue dot on Google maps could help me trace the route that the Apostle Thomas took to India. After an interesting side trip into Nestorian Christianity, and questions about the exact nature of Jesus as both divine and human, I decided to return to the original focus of my exploration. 

Continuing my madcap trip around the Indian traffic circle, I wound up in Chennai where completed an informal pilgrimage to the three basilicas dedicated to one of the Apostles of Jesus. I visited the Basilica of Apostle Thomas, and felt that it pointed to something larger than just maintaining the prevailing view of what Christianity.

I’m going to try to construct a meditation about Thomas. Let me try to rip away some of the garbage I think surrounds Thomas, and point to why I think we might pay attention to him as we meander through India, or the world.

I will posit that we don’t know much about Thomas is because he was not a church guy. I think he actually might have been the smart ass geeky kid, maybe even an obnoxious asshole.  I found this brief article about the “Gospel of Thomas” by Elaine Pagels and a talk she delivered at Stanford 17 years ago, My friend Bonnie Johnson would have loved Pagels’ work, and you might appreciate how Thomas sides with the slaves who are unwillingly forced to disrupt things trying to get a high caste lady’s sedan chair to the front of the crowd. 

After Jesus was crucified, the Apostle James and a few others stayed in Jerusalem, preached about the risen Jesus and kept kosher. Paul went off trying to translate his take on radical conversion into Greek, adopting the first non-Jewish cultural idiom. Peter traveled to Rome where he, according to legend, set the course for the Teaching of Jesus to dominate the western world. 

But Thomas apparently went in the exact opposite direction; he struck out for India, alone or with maybe a few followers. The churches, the communities he established were not as cohesive as the ones established in the Greek and Roman worlds. Maybe my speculation that the Indians were just just not going to submit to conforming beliefs way back then, like right now, is basically correct, and any communities he established disappeared or were absorbed by local cults. India in the first years of the common era was religiously similar to what I experience today, mystics and wandering sadhus.

The most famous story about Thomas, and he is only mentioned a few times in the official record, is that he did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead because he hadn’t seen him, that he would not believe until he actually placed his hands into the wounds of the torture that had killed Jesus. So Jesus appeared and held out his hands with the wounds still open. Thomas says, My Lord and my God, I believe. Then Jesus says:  "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.” Pagles says that this is the formal, or dominant church getting a recalcitrant believer to cast aside his or her doubts and enter into the fold. But something else might have been going on.

What if our Thomas was really just a stubborn guy who not only demanded a different kind of evidence when it came to belief, but insisted on an interpretation of the message of Jesus that included everyone, not just the proper ladies but also her slaves, the outcasts, even the homeless? And since the older Apostles who were in charge couldn't forbid him coming to the Lord’s table, they just sent him to India, and told stories about him, barring him from the proper European landholdings.

You don’t have to join me in India to upset the picnic table. That is not a rhetorical question.

The ride around India (or anywhere) is much better with a companion; I remember Ashish Gupta driving for the first time in India, in Goa where the traffic rules are slightly more recognizable for the likes of us. It is the main headquarters of the Jesuits in India and has been since about 1543 plus or minus so there is a bit more ingrained European sense of order in some things. But Ash still almost got us killed. My last longish trip here was twice to Amritsar where I got my Covid Vaccination. 12 hours round trip to a private hospital that would give foreigners a jab. It really did save my life, and I was scared to death on the highway across Punjab where drivers think nothing of driving against traffic on a two lane divided highway if it gets them closer to home. 

So I don't have any real question. It is more of a floating inquiry--how we open to the Spirit for more than just pinpointing a destination. My observation is that it's almost as if to thwart our good intentions, sometimes the movement of the Spirit is like barreling up the freeway in the wrong direction, or maybe to be accurate, facing that guy who needs to get back to his cows who's barreling towards us, and we know we really shouldn't trust his driving. 

And if you can't join me in India, (not a declaration or assessment but a kind of wild daydream--you, me and Rinku driving across the high Himalayan plains in Kashmir!), we still travel as spiritual companions and check out Saint Thomas. What a blessing.

Of course after all that travel--a post card!

My friendship with an Anglo-Catholic Bishop

I just learned that my friend Edward Harding "Ed" MacBurney died last year (October 30, 1927 – March 17, 2022). He’d almost reached 97 years, and I imagine that they were very good years. He had a zest of friendship. He was immensely likable, intelligent and a dedicated listener, the kind of person who loved a good conversation, especially if it opened the door to a topic close to his heart and he thought it might lead somewhere. He held clear positions with regard to matters of faith, but the term pastoral would also be a good fit and blunts any harsh doctrinal edge. 

My mother remembered that at a certain point in life my grandmother faithfully read the Sunday obituaries in the Bridgeport Post to see how many friends she’d lost. Now in the day of Google, I join my grandmother in this pursuit, but I do not consider it at all morbid. I even do it with the joy of honoring my friends by revisiting our conversations, seeing how things stand and where we would be today if we were able to continue talking. 

And it’s conversations with Ed that I want to talk about. During my college years, he and I were quite close. Then I entered the Jesuits, and Ed’s priestly life started to move towards “The Right Reverend.” Over the years we lost touch except for an infrequent exchange of long letters. He became more conservative and I gravitated towards a very secular version of liberation theology, verging on agnosticism. However when we inevitably disagreed about somethings that he considered essential, even sacred, I never felt estranged or judged. I hope I can return that favor now as I talk about our friendship. 

I met Ed during my freshman year at Dartmouth. He was the rector of the Saint Thomas Episcopal Church that stands very close to the green. I don’t think that he had that title, but he was a de facto chaplain at the College. I saw a committed Christian and a priest who was always open to talking with students. I liked him immediately. The Newman chaplain, Father Bill Nolan, was a bit crusty for my taste in the all-knowing way of immigrant Catholic seminary training, as dogmatic as the rote study of Aquinas produced. To me Nolan’s attempts to be open-minded as befit an outsider at a prestigious waspy institution seemed superficial, even shallow. Ed was far more approachable perhaps because he didn’t have the immigrant Irish hurdle of having to prove himself. He was a Dartmouth graduate as well, and although as much of a traditionalist as Nolan, he was quite relaxed about it and spelled out his line of thought in a very personal way. Our conversations were like entering a well ordered house and feeling at ease. 

There was a small chapel in the rector’s house; it even had a small foot pump harmonium. At 5:30 Ed led Evensong from the Book of Common Prayer. I liked learning to sing the psalms in plainchant, or Anglican chant, and started including it as part of my practice. Nolan also said mass at 5 in the Aquinas Chapel at the end of Webster which I attended at least once or twice a week, but I actually preferred Evensong. There was never any pressure from Ed to switch allegiance. He told me in a matter of fact way that he’d entertained the idea of becoming Catholic, and had thought about religious life, joining an Anglican Order, the Cowley Fathers. When we talked about my intention to become a Jesuit, he encouraged me. 

In1963 I decided to go to the Universite de Caen for a semester abroad. Ed was planning a trip back to England, and invited me to join him for what he called “the crawl,” following a winding path from London north to Leeds and then south to Canterbury, cramming as many Anglican cathedrals as we could into the two weeks I had before I left for France. We visited Oxford where he’d been influenced by the nostalgic practices of the Oxford Movement at St Stephen's House. We drove over a long flat plane to Ely Cathedral where he’s been ordained, and of course included Westminster and Coventry. I forget the order. He introduced me to his friends. In Leeds I met the engaging Franciscan, Brother Michael Fisher whom I kept in touch with for many years. At the Cathedral of York I did not hit it off with a rather stuffy dean and his wife. Ed was disappointed. At several points we stopped at a motel or modest roadside inn and shared a room. I recall that after he’d put on his pajamas, he knelt by the side of the bed and prayed which I found very sweet. I am pretty sure that we ended our trip in Canterbury; then Ed drove me to Dover where I continued my journey onto Paris via train and ferry.

I look back on our crawl as a kind of Anglo-Catholic pilgrimage. I’ve located various dots on a map as accurately as possible to see where I physically was on this journey. With some grace and forgiveness for the intervening years, it’s close enough. But to get back inside the mind of the 20 year old Ken might actually take a bit of magic. The hopes, dreams, and aspirations of my college years go hand and hand with acquiring experience and knowledge, questioning, experimenting, trying to find my place in the world. Retracing those steps is far more difficult. The dots are not physical, their movement influenced by the position where I stood in the moment as well as where I stand now 60 years later. 

“Follow the Money” 

I remember that Ed had just come from an Episcopal conference in the US where Bishop James Pike had been slated to give a high level talk on the ecumenism coming out of Vatican II. Ed complained that all the controversial firebrand could come up with was how efficient it would be to save money not duplicating secretarial services. He expected some encouraging words about the “big questions,” and was disappointed. Then he laughed. A missed opportunity. I don’t remember if he mentioned Pike’s championing the ordination of women, but he certainly would have been against it. 

Let me fast forward 35 years and bring my wonderful friend Bonnie Johnson into the conversation. Ed and Bonnie would have loved one another despite being theological miles apart. Bonnie was a devoted Christian as well as an astute observer of the American Episcopal church. She brought Bishop Pike’s economic analysis back into the theological conversation about the big issues. She contended that as congregations became smaller and poorer, the acceptance of women priests grew simply because they’d work for less. Women now make up 40% of working clergy in the US. Though I hesitate to state anything definitively because reading their balance sheets is confusing and beyond the intention of this paper, both membership and revenues have also decreased substantially in most parishes although contribution seems to be up overall, an anomaly that I cannot figure out.

But just a snapshot from the available data In 2022 is telling. The salary of an Episcopal priest in the US is $52,707. There is an enormous fluctuation across various dioceses and churches, salaries ranging from $10,193 to $267,214. In 2002 male clergy earned 20% more than the female counterparts. Today the wage gap has been reduced to 13.5%. Perhaps a major reason for the gap is that larger, wealthier parishes prefer men and smaller parishes rely on married women whose income supplements their husband’s. Another reason for the decrease might simply be the increase in the number of women priests and the resulting proportional distribution of overall revenues. Anglo-Catholics continue to make a strictly theological argument, but Bonnie always looked at a wider picture and included several possible factors. It might be blasphemy to classify Deep Throat as a theologian, but I think “Follow the Money” is a valid line of inquiry. Ed might have been appalled but I’m sure he would have tried to continue the conversation in a civil manner. 

When I returned to Hanover from France in January, Ed told me that he was getting married and asked if I would be an usher at the service. I said of course, I would be honored. I think that I joined at least one of his wife Anne's sons, and Gaylord Hitchcock put on his best suit. I remember being at the rectory one afternoon several weeks before the ceremony. Ed took a phone call within earshot. In his cheery voice he arranged an appointment with the caller. When he hung up--this was definitely pre-cell phone--he turned and told me that he and his friend, Dr. Someone, had arranged to talk about “the birds and bees.” He laughed, and I’m laughing now just remembering his joy and his innocence. 

When Tara Doyle, whom my partner and I knew from MacLeod, stayed with us one Christmas, she wanted to attend Christmas midnight mass. I was assigned to choose the venue. Even though we knew that we had to arrive very early to get a seat, Grace Cathedral would have the best music plus we were meditators and welcomed a half hour in silence in a magnificent church while empty pews filled behind us. It was also about as high church as I could find. When it came time to receive communion, I didn't hesitate to kneel at the rail in front of the main altar. The priest who offered me the sacrament was a beautiful African American woman. It was perfect. 

References: 

https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-episcopal-priest https://www.christiancentury.org/article/news/gender-pay-gap-among-episcopal-clergy-shrinking-persistent 

https://www.catholic.org/news/politics/story.php?id=3086

Sister Jacinta, the Reality of Women Priests

We’ve all known women priests. I am not talking about priests who attend to mysterious rites, holdovers from the ancient Roman cults that Christians adopted as they went mainstream, tripping over the anachronistic relics of a medieval culture of monarchy, lapdog aristocrats, retainers and hangers-on, making decisions from a privileged position. I am thinking more of women who’ve always done the holy work of following Jesus, holding congregations together, and performing the simple ceremonies that remind all of us about the obligations of faith. 

When Sister Jacinta got off the bus, we knew the day’s difficult work had begun. She was always prompt. I think it was the 55 that dropped her a half a block from “The Center,” formerly “The Center for Spiritual Services.” It had been founded by two of the first Brothers of Charity in the US, a congregation for men founded by Mother Theresa of Calcutta. One of the founders was a gay man who decided to leave religious life as he got more in touch with his sexuality, and with that, the Mother cut her ties with the project.

But in the mid 90’s, HIV disease had started to wreak destruction in the minority communities, especially African American sex workers and injection drug users in Oakland. The group of religious and lay volunteers who’d been inspired by the original vision decided to try to keep it open. Our congregation was as large as most urban parishes, 200-300 people. Our work included providing professional support for drug and alcohol treatment, a daycare for the infants and young children of mothers with HIV, some also infected with the disease, transportation to and from doctors appointments, a hearty lunch every day so that clients had at least one good nutritious meal a day, and perhaps the most important part of the work was simply trying to take care of one another, creating the sense of community and friendship that helped people live as they were dealing with was what still at this point in the epidemic most probably an early death.

Jacinta lived in a very modest apartment with three other religious women in the Fruitvale neighborhood. They were members of a small congregation called the Sisters of the Holy Family that had been founded in San Francisco after the Gold Rush. Her habit was a plain dress that she bought off the rack in her neighborhood K-Mart with a simple cross around her neck. She wore a modest religious veil when she traveled, I think as a kind of protection. The bus ran through some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Oakland. I don’t know for certain, but this was one time that she allowed the outward signs of her religious life to be a protection. 

Sister Alice would already be at the front desk with her cheery “Good Morning and God bless you." Alice was the oldest of the nuns, probably in her late 70’s, a member of the Dominican priory probably 20 blocks away in an upscale part of town. She always wore her full habit. She didn’t do much else but welcome everyone. Unassuming and sincere, she definitely set the tone for our work.

Another nun, a large jovial no nonsense woman, ran the day care with an African American grandmother who’d lost two of her children to the disease and was taking care of their children. I don’t remember if Sister Pat wore any identifying garments. I think that she preferred loose sweat pants as she spent most of her day chasing babies with HIV and their slightly older siblings while their mothers did what they could to prolong their lives. 

It didn’t take me long to recognize that Jacinta was the glue that held the place together. There were other people doing great work. There were two drug counselors, one of whom, an African-American woman was truly masterful. She’d been there and done the hard work of recovery. There was the driver who was as calm as God created a sunset. He was a big African American man with a powerful voice and a ready smile. He was also Catholic. If Jacinta was in the van, he began the trip by asking her, “Would you please offer a prayer for us, Sister.”  

By the time Jacinta got into her office, and closed the blinds over the window opening onto the large communal area, there were already 3 to 5 women and occasionally one of the men sitting in chairs waiting to talk. Like confession. Their situation was dire. This is how she spent every morning. She visited every client who was hospitalized which occupied most of her afternoons. At least once or twice a week, she called us into the quiet meditative room and said the simple prayers of a memorial service. She was our priest. 

My friend Jon Logan sat on the Center’s Board. He told me to never forget to mention that it was founded by Mother Theresa when I wrote any appeal for money. I followed his lead. Even if that was a stretch, it was true and helped. But it didn’t match the spiritual leadership of Sister Jacinta. 

Sister M. Jacinta Fiebig, SHF November 15, 1928 – March 24, 2016