May 22, 2006

Foolishness

If there is not some old axiom that says that ecclesiology is not an exact
science, there should be.

Surely it is easier to understand quantum mechanics than it is the church, albeit they have some things in common. Like the quantum notion might imply, one can neither locate the church’s position nor determine its direction at one and the same time. Which is to say that like the light which calls the church and the light which it is commissioned to follow and to reveal is neither wave nor particle all at the once, neither is the church institution nor congregation.

Perhaps this is why Anglicanism’s ordered freedom is both so winsome and coincidentally so frustrating. On the other hand, an oxymoron, according to and thanks to the Greeks, is something that is keenly foolish, and that on the face of it should be a delightful place to be and to be preferred over some others.

We’ve been led this way and that through the centuries tripping over our authoritative three-legged stool of Bible, tradition, and reason as if we had some idea, howbeit focussedly vague, of where we were and where we might be going. Heisenberg surely could have learned from us, and maybe he did. Anyhow, I’m glad old Richard Hooker did it first, for with a name like that, how could anyone resist a little foolishness now and then?

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