One of the great distractions or gifts from God (depending on your outlook) with which those of us who find ourselves Anglican are blessed and saddled with is the notion of "Communion". In its broadest sense, it refers to the idea that we are "in communion" with our brothers and sisters in this appendage of the body of Christ sometimes known as the Anglican Communion. Anglicans like to talk about who is "in communion with whom", or who is "not in communion", or who is in "impaired communion" - the image comes to my mind is of someone spilling the cup of wine over your new shirt and tie as you approach the altar rail.
St Cyprian does, I think, suggest that the troublesome questions of "heresy" and "schism" are organically related, although to many modern Anglicans a division between the two can be neatly made and maintained. If I wake up in the morning to discover that, say, bishop Robert Duncan has been deposed for veering toward ecclesiastical realignment, but that bishop John Spong remains in good standing despite veering toward theological realignment, what should I think? To put it bluntly, let us say, just pretend now, that the former is veering toward schism, while the latter is veering toward heresy. I am sure the Episcopal Church has its excellent reasons for proceeding as it does, but to simple folk like myself it looks like a rather selective double standard. Or perhaps just a memory lapse about what people like St Cyprian have said in the past about the relationship between wrong teaching and the divisions within the Church.
10. Hence heresies not only have frequently been originated, but continue to be so; while the perverted mind has no peace—while a discordant faithlessness does not maintain unity. But the Lord permits and suffers these things to be, while the choice of one’s own liberty remains, so that while the discrimination of truth is testing our hearts and our minds, the sound faith of those that are approved may shine forth with manifest light. The Holy Spirit forewarns and says by the apostle, “It is needful also that there should be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” Thus the faithful are approved, thus the perfidious are detected; thus even here, before the day of judgment, the souls of the righteous and of the unrighteous are already divided, and the chaff is separated from the wheat. These are they who of their own accord, without any divine arrangement, set themselves to preside among the daring strangers assembled, who appoint themselves prelates without any law of ordination, who assume to themselves the name of bishop, although no one gives them the episcopate; whom the Holy Spirit points out in the Psalms as sitting in the seat of pestilence, plagues, and spots of the faith, deceiving with serpent’s tongue, and artful in corrupting the truth, vomiting forth deadly poisons from pestilential tongues; whose speech doth creep like a cancer, whose discourse forms a deadly poison in the heart and breast of every one.
So here we have St Cyprian looking at the divisions of his day - the Novatians who have set themselves up in opposition to the duly elected bishop of Rome, and compounded by the differing attitudes toward questions of church order and discipline. It might be troubling that "the Lord permits" such things to take place in the church. Others might delight to see that there is a process of "sifting" which separates the wheat from the chaff. Or we might simply accept that these things are so, regardless of whether we see how God's providence works "all things for good". This is perhaps the basic lesson from church history: this stuff happens.
Now how does one respond? Apart from the usual pious answers like prayer (and note that pious answers actually work), how does one respond, if one believes, with Cyprian and a host of others, that there is such a thing as a catholic (universal, world wide) Communion? It may very well be that most of us can simply carry on with business as usual; such things can either be addressed scornfully as irrelevant to our own lives as Christians, or they may be looked upon as beyond the scope of our concerns - "things too high for me", as the Psalmist says. I am sure that many of the faithful can and do adhere to either one of those positions. But as Cyprian points out, there are further questions to be answered:
12. Nor let any deceive themselves by a futile interpretation, in respect of the Lord having said, “Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Corrupters and false interpreters of the Gospel quote the last words, and lay aside the former ones, remembering part, and craftily suppressing part: as they themselves are separated from the Church, so they cut off the substance of one section.
For the Lord, when He would urge unanimity and peace upon His disciples, said, “I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be given you by my Father which is in heaven. For wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them;” showing that most is given, not to the multitude, but to the unanimity of those that pray. “If,” He says, “two of you shall agree on earth:” He placed agreement first; He has made the concord of peace a prerequisite; He taught that we should agree firmly and faithfully.
But how can he agree with any one who does not agree with the body of the Church itself, and with the universal brotherhood? How can two or three be assembled together in Christ’s name, who, it is evident, are separated from Christ and from His Gospel? For we have not withdrawn from them, but they from us; and since heresies and schisms have risen subsequently, from their establishment for themselves of diverse places of worship, they have forsaken the Head and Source of the truth.
related posts: Cyprian On the Unity of the Church
intro part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5
reactions to deposition of bishop Robert Duncan:
Statement of support from the Province of Southeast Asia on the Deposition of the Bishop of Pittsburgh
Statement on Diocese of Pittsburgh's website.
Statement from the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church found in this article
Statements of support from Archbishop Mouneer Anis of Jerusalem and the Middle East, and Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, along with a joint statement archbishops Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, Drexel Gomez of the West Indies and Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya.
Reactions from a small number other American bishops.
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