Michael+

Strangely, in spite of his skepticism about the groups
formed in rebellion to TEC, Ephraim Radner may find
his "Hope Among the Fragments."  

In three of his less opaque paragraphs under the
heading 'The Figural Discipline of the Hopeful Church'
Radner wrote the following.


BEGINNING OF LONG QUOTE
". . .the issue at stake in assuming the stance of
hope that constitutes the fruit of apprehending
scriptural providence in the first place -- a stance
whose power to transform lives into the figure of
God's redemptive will would place us in the form of
Christ's own mind (Phil 2:5-8).  Such subjection to
the subject servant, obedient to a deathly judgment
because of the hope that was in him, is the very end
of the Church's faithful self-perception within the
unfolding of history's scriptural identity.  All of
Scripture --because all is Christ's -- becomes the
life of the Church, its form, its destiny, its
meaning.  And the proper way to look at the Church, in
this providential context, is a form-taker and
form-giver within the breadth of Scripture itself,
whose meaning is always receptive of the words that
Christ himself enunciates within the echoing chambers
of time's divinely collected objects."

"Such a context of ecclesial life ought to attenuate
radically the enormous anxieties that so consistently
drive the Church and its members into historical
spasms of desperation -- anxieties over material
stability and personal moral congruence and doctrinal
coherence.  While the concerns themselves are usually
well founded, their ability to engender decisions of
disorder represents a failure of witness to the
providential character of the Church's connoted life
in Christ.  It is his form that draws all forms of
ecclesial existence into a unity of purpose.  And both
the singular nature of that form and its scriptural
diversity of meaning, gathered together in his cross
and resurrection, create the patience by which the
Church's identity gains its integrity in suffering
time and time's objects, rather than manipulating
them."

"In our day the realities of church disunity, of
disputed moral disciplines or ecclesial
decision-making, of confused scriptural reading or
even missionary purposes, drive Christians into
postures of competing aggressions and exhausted
surrenders, as individuals and groups seek to
reformulate and apply the criterion of quantified
integrity to their common life and ministry.  Yet as a
connoted sign of Christ's own form the Church cannot
be an instrumental tool, but only a revelatory form of
its own. The Church’s witness of hope, and indeed the
hopefulness of its promised future, is given in its
disclosure of Christ in time; and Christian
faithfulness is revealed in the subjection of life to
this inescapable sway of the Church's disclosive
work."
END QUOTE FROM "Hope among the Fragments" p. 17,18,

Taking his words and extrapolating them into the
future, Ephraim Radner's premises would view the death
of the Church as Providential as the death of our
Lord.

We all know there have been many dyings and risings
again of the Body of Christ in the past two millennia.

I don't like the schismatic doings of Christians since
the Reformation and the proliferation of "Anglican"
communions in our country in our time.

However, I see FACA and those in such federations as
being in the succession of Ezekiel, repeating God's
question,” Can these bones live?"  It doesn't take
much to make me happy.  I'm ecstatic that brothers
from CANA, from Frank Lyon's jurisdiction and others
in Indiana are willing to meet and talk about what we
can do as pastors to "bind up the broken hearted."  I
think, as a result of the responses, that
jurisdictions and guarding one's turf are not the main
considerations of my brothers.  

It may be that the proliferation of jurisdictions and
bishops is not a bad thing. It may be the
proliferation of communions in the Providence of God
is akin to the lifeboats on the Titanic just as our
bishops said in the 1970's.  Radner suggests we have
the virtue of patience.  I think he is right.

Charles+




--- Michael Ward <mward@...> wrote:

> Charles+
> 
> I believe you've hit the nail on the head when you
> said that there will be
> few orthodox left in TEC to even attempt any
> last-minute efforts to stem the
> tide.  That's always the problem when there is mass
> migration out of a
> church that's lost her moorings: there's no one left
> to return her to her
> course.  TEC is now a classic example.  The sad
> thing is that there is no
> unified orthodox front either.   The alphabet soup
> of
> continuing/schismatic/whatever-you-want-to-call-it
> groups simply continues
> to multiply and, aside from a few efforts like FACA
> to try to bring them
> back together, few of them want to seriously sit
> down at an intra-mural
> ecumenical table to try to knit themselves
> (ourselves?) into one cohesive
> orthodox whole.  The best we've been able to do is
> forge alliances while
> maintaining our independent provinces.  If that's as
> good as it's ever going
> to get, what are we going to pass to the next
> generation? ... assuming
> there's anything to pass.
> 
> MLW+
> 
> ==================
> Five years ago, some of our brothers wondered aloud
> whether it was better for the orthodox to stay in
> TEC
> and work for reform or to come out and build anew. 
> That was before the Titanic entered its final plunge
> into the depths.  Now it appears there will be few
> conservatives remaining to sing "Nearer my God to
> Thee."
> 
> --
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