The Culture of Missouri's Zion?

Thanks to Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con blog, I came across this description of Fort Wayne, by Amy Welborn, who really prefers her new home of Birmingham, Alabama, thank you very much. Here's a bit of it:

A story: The job Michael had up there was previously held by a fellow who, when he first had the job, commuted, in a way, on a weekly basis, from a town about two hours away. At one point he decided that this was silly and that he would just move to Fort Wayne. He and his family lasted a year and then went back to the university town where they had originally lived. He spoke of the parochialism of the area. I wondered if he was just being a snob. (Sorry, Jim!)

After about a year myself, I got it.

Although in a way, I still don’t get it.

I’ve visited most, if not all of the major cities in the Midwest. Trust me, Fort Wayne is…different. I don’t know how you characterize a town. I don’t know on what basis you can generalize or describe a gestalt, an identity for a collection of 250,000 people.

I’ll try. There is just this very settled, inward-looking sensibility. From year to year (and we lived there 8), nothing much changed. A few more chain restaurants came into town, a couple left. Noises were made about downtown redevelopment, but nothing much happened (until this past year when a development centered on a new baseball stadium for the town’s AA team was constructed downtown - Harrison Square - I wish it well.) During the summer there are festivals in Headwaters Park, close to downtown, almost every week, but even they bear a certain stasis. I’ve been to GermanFest every year for seven years, and every single year, the 6 or 7 vendors of Teutonic Trinkets were arrayed in the exact same L-shaped arrangement on the west end of the grounds. Unchanging. Nothing new.

She goes on to describe it as a close-knit community where close-knit has come to be clannishness.

Now, Amy Welborn doesn't mention that Ft. Wayne is the Zion of "confessional Lutheranism" (I'm putting quotes around that, because I've known far too many great vicars from St. Louis who are 100% in accord with the Book of Concord to take "confessionalism" as something only in Ft. Wayne). Perhaps she doesn't know. Perhaps she's being polite. (Although a commenter on the blog did know and was not polite.) Mostly likely it was one of those unimportant facts about a different part of town and a different sub-community that no one she knew was curious about.

So here's my question, for any readers who might have spent time in Ft. Wayne (like, maybe, Josh?): does this description ring true? And if it does ring true, does it influence the environment at the Ft. Wayne Seminary? Is this part of the Ft. Wayne seminary culture? It would seem to me that any institution of higher education (whether traditional or modern in the approach to learning) would tend to mitigate these tendencies to parochialism. Does it? Or is what she calls parochialism a good thing? (One commenter on her blog argues exactly that.)

I'm genuinely asking, and I don't know the answers. I am curious. But I can't say that it would shock me if Amy Welborn's description was accurate.

Symbol and Reality

Here's another both/and explication from Alexander Schmemann's The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. In analyzing the liturgy and the Eucharist, he notes two malign tendencies in Orthodox theology (ones he attributes to Latin influence): 1) the focus on "illustrative symbolism" in the explication of the liturgy; and 2) the reduction of the Eucharist to the question of the precise moment, and liturgical action, that makes the bread and wine into Body and Blood. In his view the two are connected: illustrative symbolism (this or that action in the liturgy symbolizes this or that in the life of Christ, etc.) assumes an understanding of symbolism that isn't real. Thus the reality of the Eucharist as Christ's body is in question, which makes the precise moment and magical formula (yes, he uses that phrase as a critique of what this frame of mind can lead to) for transformation of the Eucharist central.

He writes:

And this is precisely the heart of the matter: the primary meaning of "symbol" is in no way equivalent to "illustration." In fact, it is possible for the symbol not to illustrate, i.e. can be devoid of any external similarity with that which it symbolizes.

The history of religions shows us that the more ancient, the deeper, the more "organic" a symbol, the less it will be composed of such "illustrative" qualities. This is because the purpose and function of the symbol is not to illustrate (this would presume the absence of what is illustrated) but rather to manifest and to communicate what is manifested. We might say that the symbol does not so much "resemble" the reality that it symbolizes as it participates in it, and therefore it is capable of communicating it in reality. In other words, the difference (and it is a radical one) between our contemporary [and I think you could say he means, such as, the last 1,000 years] understanding of the symbol and the original one consists in the fact tht while today we understand the symbol as the representation or sign of an absent reality, something that is not really in the sign itself (just as there is no real, actual water in the chemical symbol H2O), in the original understanding it is the manifestation and presence of the other reality -- but precisely as other, which, under given circumstances, cannot be manifested and made present in any other way than as a symbol.

This means that in the final analysis the true and original symbol is inseparable from faith, for faith is "the evidence of things unseen" (Heb 11:1), the knowledge that there is another reality different from the "empirical" one, and that this reality can be entered, can be communicated, can in truth become "the most real of realities." Therefore, if the symbol presupposes faith, faith of necessity requires the symbol. For unlike "convictions," philosophical "points of view," etc., faith certainly is contact and a thirst for contact, embodiment and a thirst for embodiment: it is the manifestation, the presence, the operation of one reality within the other. All of this is the symbol (from symbállō, "unite," "hold together"). In it -- unlike in a simple "illustration," simple sign, and even in the sacrament in its scholastic-rationalistic "reduction" -- the empirical (or "visible") and the spiritual (or "invisible") are united not logically (this "stands for" that), not analogically (this "illustrates" that), nor yet by cause and effect (this is the "means" or "generator" of that), but epiphanically. One reality manifests (epiphaínō) and communicates the other, but -- and this is immensely important -- only to the degree to which the symbol itself is a participant in the spiritual reality and is able or called upon to embody it. In other words, in the symbol everything manifests the spiritual reality, but not everything pertaining to the spiritual reality appears embodied in the symbol. The symbol is always partial, always imperfect: "for our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect" (1 Co 13:9). By its very nature the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other always remaining "absolutely other." However real a symbol may be, however successfully it may communicate to us that other reality, its function is not to quench our thirst but to intensify it: "Grant us that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never ending day of Thy Kingdom." It is not that this or that part of "this world" -- space, time, or matter -- be made sacred, but rather that everything in it be seen and comprehended as expectation and thirst for its complete spiritualization: "that God may be all in all."

Must we then demonstrate that only this ontological and "epiphanic" meaning of the word "symbol" is applicable to Christian worship? And not only is it applicable -- it is inseparable. For the essence of the symbol lies in the fact that in it the dichotomy between reality and symbolism (as unreality) is overcome: reality is experienced above all as the fulfillment of the symbol, and the symbol is comprehended as the fulfillment of the reality. Christian worship is symbolic not because it contains various "symbolical" depictions. It may indeed include them, but chiefly in the imagination of various "commentators" and not in its own ordo and rites. Christian worship is symbolic because, first of all, the world itself, God's own creation, is symbolic, is sacramental; and second of all because it is the Church's nature, her task in "this world," to fulfill this symbol, to realize it as the "most real of realities." We can therefore say that the symbol reveals the world, mankind, and all creation as the "matter" of a single, all-embracing sacrament (pp. 38-40).

Here I have two comments to make:

1) Did you notice that striking aphorism?

Therefore, if the symbol presupposes faith, faith of necessity requires the symbol. For unlike "convictions," philosophical "points of view," etc., faith certainly is contact and a thirst for contact, embodiment and a thirst for embodiment: it is the manifestation, the presence, the operation of one reality within the other.

What would Luther say? He would affirm the negative: faith can have nothing to do with "convictions" or "points of view" as Schmemann says. But Luther would say -- did say -- that faith of necessity requires the promise. Thus where Schmemann sees the liturgy, and Holy Communion at its heart, as the symbol set forth for faith, Luther sees it as the promise set forth for faith. But here is another both/and. In Luther's own work, the idea of the Eucharist as a visible sign of the promise always seemed to me to be somewhat inadequate. Why is it so important, if it is only a sign of the promise? (That it is so important is of course not in doubt.) So let us combine them and say faith demands a symbol, yes, but one that is benevolent toward us. The bread and wine are the symbol of Jesus; but does He love us? That is the promise -- that He is friendly to us and heartily wishes to forgive us. This possibility, that Communion may be a symbol of wrath and anger is not considered by Schmemann, but absent the promise delivered to faith it is a possibility. But all the symbols of the Church are accompanied by such a promise and hence are such objects of faith in God's mercy.

2) And I am pretty sure that in his mind Schmemann was going further and saying that just as the Eucharist is the symbol (=enduring corporeal epiphany) of Jesus, in the same way Jesus is the symbol (=enduring corporeal epiphany) of God. Indeed this is a good test of whether you understand symbol in Schmemann's sense. OK, you say the Eucharist is the symbol of Christ, well and good. But do you also agree that Jesus is, in the same way, the symbol of God the Father? If suddenly that sounds heretical, then you are not using symbol in the sense that Schmemann did.* Read that last sentence again: We can therefore say that the symbol reveals the world, mankind, and all creation as the "matter" of a single, all-embracing sacrament. Isn't this exactly what Colossians 1 is saying Christ reveals? By its very nature the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other always remaining "absolutely other." Isn't this a restatement in "symbolic" language of the two natures in Christ? But then he adds something: that even the experience of Jesus as the epiphany, the symbol, the reality of God, is not meant to satisfy us, but to go beyond, to create a thirst for the Kingdom. It is not that this or that part of "this world" -- space, time, or matter -- be made sacred, but rather that everything in it be seen and comprehended as expectation and thirst for its complete spiritualization: "that God may be all in all."

*Of course, a real heretic may affirm both, seeing in Jesus only an illustration of the absent God, and the Eucharist an illustration of the absent Jesus. But to diagnose this problem one need only ask of this two-stage epiphany as of the epiphanies of the Old Testament: is this a symbol such that refusal to believe in it when it is physically before you, to experience it without faith in the promise, is fatal? To say no, that it is only offered for us to take it or leave it, without harm either way, is to be back in the realm of illustrative symbolism.

Scripture and Tradition

It's been a long time, hasn't it? But talking to Jeremy, as I was waxing enthusiastic about Alexander Schmemann's "The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom" (another gift from the amazing Bill Tighe), he told me he'd never read it for two reasons: 1) he probably doesn't have time; and 2) he got the feeling that people who start reading Orthodox books always end up converting, and he was not in the market for a new church. OK, I said, then I'll have to blog the best passages, otherwise he'll never have a chance to read them.

What makes Schmemann special is his ability to do the "not either/or, but both/and" trick and not have it be simply a flabby refusal to think clearly (as it too often is), but a real insight. Here he is writing about Scripture and Tradition:

Here we see why all church theology, all tradition, grows precisely out of the "assembly as the Church," out of this sacrament of proclamation of the good news. Here we see why in it is comprehended the living, and not abstract, meaning of the classic Orthodox affirmation that only the Church is given custody of the scriptures and their interpretation. For tradition is not another source of faith, "complementary" to the scriptures. It is the very same source: the living word of God, always heard and received by the Church. Tradition is the interpretation of the word of God as the source of life itself, and not of any "constructions" or "deductions." When St. Athanasius the Great said that "the holy and God-inspired scriptures are sufficient for the exposition of truth," he was not rejecting tradition, and still less preaching any specifically "biblical" method of theology -- as a formal, terminological faithfulness to the scriptural "text" -- for as everyone knows, in expounding the faith of the Church he himself daringly introduced the nonbiblical term homoousios. He was affirming precisely the living, and not formal or terminological, link between scripture and tradition, tradition as the reading and hearing of scripture in the Holy Spirit. The Church along knows and keeps the meaning of scripture, because in the sacrament of the word, accomplished in the church assembly, the Holy Spirit eternally gives life to the "flesh" of scripture, transforming it into "spirit and life." Any genuine theology is rooted in this sacrament of the word, in the church assembly, in which the Spirit of God exhorts the Church herself -- and not simply her individual members -- into all truth. Thus, any "private" reading of scripture must be rooted in the Church: outside of the mind of the Church, outside of the divine-human life of the Church it can neither be heard nor truly interpreted. So the sacrament of the word, accomplished in the church gathering in a twofold act -- reading and proclaiming -- is the source of the growth of each and all together into the fulness of the mind of truth (pp. 78-79).

Adding my own banal prose translation into this rapturous hymn, tradition is the word we use for the use of scripture, specifically its gospel use, to call sinners to repentance, to believe in Jesus, and to be saved in the Church from the wrath to come. Only when the scripture is used in that way is the Bible being used in accordance with tradition. Any preaching that diminishes the need for repentance is against the tradition. Any preaching that leads to complacency and mere historical faith is against the tradition. Any preaching that leads to self-righteousness and Phariseeism is against the tradition. Any preaching that misleads sinners into a Christianity without the Church is against the tradition.

For this reason the speculations of theologians are not and never can be traditions, until they find their way into preaching, whether evangelistic on the street corner or liturgical on Sunday. This tradition is St. Irenaeus's rule of faith, the creed, understood in itself as bringing salvation -- by saying "I believe . . ." in faith I am saved apart from all the works of the law. The Church holds tradition, not by having bits of knowledge not in Scripture, but by holding the use of scripture and its proclamation to salvation.

More crunchy both/and goodness later on!