July 13, 2005
Way
When Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” the only answer he got was a silent one-on-one with the Word made flesh. Thomas got precious little more, but more than enough, when he asked Jesus to show him the way.
Incarnation, like democracy, is hardly the easiest access to the way, the truth, and the life, but it’s the nearest we’ve got or ever will have in this life while the glass is still dark. Trouble is, we’re always trying to improve on it with things like creeds and liturgies, even by flirting with that risky idolatry that forgets about Jesus and dares, instead, to call the Bible the Word of God.
The current fuss about all this shows up in that resurgent oxymoron we call “Anglican orthodoxy,” as if to embrace it would answer Pilate and Thomas once and for all. If they’d just had a handy Lambeth Quadrilateral or maybe even the Windsor Report.
Poor babies. If only they’d known. If only we’d been there to tell them.