Dear Stephen,
Thank you for your gracious reply to my response to your open letter calling for a "full and final separation" between those whom you term a "faithful remnant" and The Episcopal Church (TEC). Knowing you as I do I was certain there would be a reply, but I nonetheless hoped against hope that none would be forthcoming. I say this not because I am not open to theological exchange, but because the medium (blogs) now used for such exchanges encourages hasty and ill tempered response and counter response. I have no desire to be involved in such a back and forth and I presume you do not either.
It is this observation that leads to my first response to your response. You and others have questioned my reluctance to use the word "heretic" to refer to those we jointly oppose. I have no desire to enter into an argument about the correct use of the terms "apostate" (which you did not use) and "heretic"(which you do). I believe that my observation that these terms are not being accurately applied is correct. However, my major concern was and is not their correct meaning. Rather, my concern is the way in which they are being used in our present conflict. Both terms are used (more often than not) in anger simply to dismiss those with whom one disagrees. My point concerns a culture of anger, condemnation, and dismissal that makes it unnecessary to address one's opponent as a brother or sister who has gone astray or as a false teacher who needs correction. Rather, the terms are used to reduce one's adversaries to a category-one that places them among "outsiders" about whom one's spirit need not be in agony until Christ be adequately formed in them. So my first hope remains that you might join me in cautioning those who share our view of the sad state of TEC that we, the critics of TEC, stand in grave danger of misreading our circumstances because so many of us have been taken over by one of the seven deadly sins. We cannot possibly hope that God's agents for reform and renewal will be those who themselves suffer from such a serious spiritual disease.
While I am on the subject of the problems to be addressed in our own house, in your response to me you have changed the way in which I expressed a serious concern in a way that misses altogether what I said. I in no way suggested a moral equivalence between Bishops Duncan and Jefferts-Schori. I have no way of knowing their relative moral states, and would not presume to pronounce upon them even if I did. What I suggested is that those of us involved in resistance to the present ruling elite of TEC have become the mirror image of those we oppose. Why? Because the energies of both parties have been poured into the construction of political strategies that have been devised without adequate theological justification. Both exhibit a thoroughly American characteristic. Both seek practical, workable solutions to problems that in the end cannot be addressed by practicality alone. Again, as one reads the blogs, theological issues are addressed with ill-considered slogans so as to move on as quickly as possible to a strategy designed to bring about an outcome that has not been adequately justified. My hope was and remains that you will join me in pointing out that both TEC and its critics have in fact marginalized the importance of rigorous theological investigation and debate.
Since I have called for theological rigor within our own camp even if we cannot expect it from our opponents, allow me to make a remark made necessary simply by the fact that I have asserted the importance within our struggle of rigorous theological work and debate. I have been accused, not by you but by someone as intimately involved in theological education as Robert Munday (Dean of Nashotah House), of simply living in my head-of having no real appreciation for the pain and suffering that characterizes the life of the church at the grass roots. I regret that a charge of this sort would be lodged against a person as intimately involved in the daily life of TEC as I. I regret even more that this sort of dismissal serves as confirmation that, like the liberals, many within our own camp see a great divide between theology and the real life of the church. I fear that any hope of renewal and reform that so disvalues the place of theology in the life of the Church has little chance within divine providence. I can only hope that you will join me in pointing out the dangerous spiritual state that accompanies the sort of divide between theology and life we see daily expressed by many of those closest to us.
It is this remark that brings me to the primary point I wish to make. I stated clearly in my original open letter "the basic point of division between us is theological" yet you insist, "the main difference between us...is the matter of contingency planning." You go on to suggest that such planning is simply prudent. I was relieved to hear that your call for "Full and final separation" is not tied to a time certain. It was not clear to me from your open letter that such was the case. That said I do believe that the difference between us has more to do with theology than prudence. Chief among these differences is the way in which to address false teaching in the Church. This is a question of grave theological concern, and the answer given by our compatriots has taken the form more of assertion than careful and considered argument. My question is do we have a place for such an argument within our common struggle for renewal and reform, or in fact do most of those who agree with us about the spiritual state of TEC hold, as it seems to me they do, that it is necessary and right to act immediately, and that a call such as mine simply weakens resolve and increases the harm done by our opponents.
I fear that the answer may be that we (the "traditionalists" or "re-asserters") do not have place for anything like rigorous theological investigation of disputed issues. Like our opponents we are bent on a practical solution to an immediate problem. However, I would ask further in response to your incorrect statement that the difference between us is prudential rather than theological if we in fact actually can be prudent apart from the hard theological work to which I am calling us. You are right that prudence plays a very significant role in moral theology as I have taught it. However, prudence cannot be prudence apart from an adequate grasp of the nature of God's work in Christ Jesus and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity that are among the fruits of that work. Further, this theological and moral foundation must be accompanied by subsidiary virtues if prudence is in fact to be prudent.
Listen to the list of ancillary virtues that must be present if prudence is to be prudent, and then ask if indeed they are present among those now working out contingency plans for our future. Thomas Aquinas lists them as careful cultivation of experience; right memory of the past; openness to instruction; the ability to respond to unexpected circumstances in a cool and measured way; and the ability to assess the likely consequences of one's action. Thomas is anxious to point out that none of these little virtues function properly apart from charity and so apart from charity prudence does not do what it is supposed to do, namely, present one with what really is true about the circumstances in which one finds oneself. In fact, apart from this panoply of virtue, prudence, says Thomas, becomes its opposite-imprudence. He further notes that imprudence is expressed as thoughtlessness that in turn expresses itself either in rashness or irresolution (states characteristic of many of those who share our view of the state of TEC). The terrifying conclusion he provides to this phenomenology of prudence, however, is that in extreme forms a lack of charity leads to a form of imprudence that expresses itself as "cunning."
We are certainly presented with cunning in the machinations of our opponents. My fear is that this particular devil may lurk just outside our own house, and that it may indeed already have a foot in the door. Consequently, I beg us to consider our own theological and moral inadequacies lest we fail to be faithful witnesses to the truth made known to us in Christ Jesus and so become imprudent.
Your response to my response prompts me to say one more thing about theology, prudence, and our future as a Communion of Churches. You are right to say that I believe that September 30 provides an horizon. It is one beyond which I cannot see. I can only say that I am not sanguine about what lies there. What I am asking is not that we turn a blind eye to the destructive possibilities that lie before us. Rather I am asking that, when the time comes that we know what lies there, those of us who have resisted the direction of TEC do not dismiss one another with sweeping charges like "lukewarm"; but that we embrace one another with charity and ask what godly prudence now demands of us. Do we, for example, seek a structure of some sort that is an alternative to TEC; or do we simply declare that we are TEC; that the TEC that was has violated its constitution; and that we will meet as TEC until such time as our opponents clearly "walk apart" or renounce their error and return? Until that time, however, we struggle with our opponents and ourselves so that Christ might be truly formed among us.
These are but two of the questions that I see we ought to face. I worry that the present degree of anger and suspicion will prevent us from addressing them in a truly prudent manner. I hope you appreciate my concerns, and it would be a source of great joy to me if you were to work in your place as I will in mine to bring about the sort of rapprochement that might open for those of us who believe the leadership of our Church is in error an opportunity to find together a prudent way forward under God.
Yours in Christ
Philip Turner
