Free and Responsible
In a community of love
I’m going to ramble around a bit. If your need today is for something linear and direct – sorry!
We either fragment society or turn in reaction to authoritarian idolatry.
In 1942, during another war, William Temple offered his Christmas message about where we might find our hope fulfilled, when “we all submit our ambitions, our desires, and our policies to the Love which came down at Christmas.” Our self-centeredness was the problem.
Neil Dhingra wrote about Temple’s approach in Love Amid War: St. John’s Day – Covenant.
Archbishop Temple recognizes that education broadens horizons and commits us to truth and beauty. Yet, even then, the self remains “still the center and standard of reference.” So, Temple says, “complete deliverance can be effected only by the winning of my whole heart’s devotion, the total allegiance of my will — and this only the Divine Love disclosed by Christ in His Life and Death can do.” Thus, the social order may require Christ born in a stable, not Augustus Caesar and his legions, even if Temple considered Augustus relatively “merciful and gentle.”
This “whole heart’s devotion,” the “total allegiance of my will,” calls for worship. Worship through, in, and with Christ is a form of consecration — “industry and commerce no less than family and friendship,” and eucharistic. We not only offer our lives to God, who returns them to us as “agents of His purpose, limbs or a body responsive to His will,” but we specifically offer bread and wine to receive Christ’s body and blood to transform our self-centeredness into an abiding with Christ. …
The political difficulty is that we are so self-centered that we either fragment society or turn in reaction to authoritarian idolatry. Temple asks how we find a candidate to perform the “double function” of fostering both individual development and fellowship.
United in love
Dhingra’s political difficulty, I think he would agree if we said, our core human difficulty, is that our self-centeredness pushes us to equally bad choices, a fragmented society or an authoritarian society. At its heart it’s a tension between freedom and responsibility.
I keep returning to this sentence of John Macquarrie “The end, we have seen reason to believe, would be a commonwealth of free, responsible beings united in love.” I’ll return to Father Macquarrie.
Submitting self to concrete responsibility
In a comment on a New York Times article, “Screams without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7”[1], Anne from Connecticut wrote, “I am very disturbed by Israel’s actions in Gaza. Who wouldn’t be disturbed by the deaths of so many children and civilians? The truth is I am basically a pacifist. But that is an ideology which in today’s world is useless. Because can anyone doubt that if Hamas is allowed to run free through Israel that these atrocities won’t happen over and over and over again? How can the Israeli’s not react with rage and do everything in their power to prevent their country from being destroyed? Their women and children and elderly mutilated? In their minds it’s not revenge it’s self preservation. Hamas, of course, knew that Netanyahu would fight back this way. Maybe they should have asked their citizens if this is what they wanted. I have no answers. Only utter sadness.”
I was deeply moved by her honesty and sadness. There was a giving up of self in it. A submitting of abstract principal to concrete responsibility. I think I’m correct in thinking that William Temple was never so naïve as to suggest a cease-fire. In fact he spoke in defense of the bombing of German cities during the war.[2] And on this the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when we pray about evil tyrants[3], it’s probably safe to say that William Temple knew who the real tyrants were.
A commonwealth of free, responsible beings united in love
I met Father Macquarrie once in the early 1970s. I was attending a weekday morning prayer at one of the small chapels of Oxford University. There were maybe five of us. Macquarrie was the officiate that day. At the time I was a new priest in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. So, when he came to the intercessions and said that in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer “today we pray for the Diocese of Pennsylvania” – I had one of those is this coincidence or divine mystery moments.
In seminary I had to read his “Principles of Christian Theology.” It’s still on my shelf. And of course, I read his section on Cosmic and Individual Destinies.” I still return to the underlined parts.
Strictly speaking, we cannot know the ultimate destiny of the world or of man … and as St. John declares that “it does not yet appear what we shall be” .. [That said he goes on to add] … The end would be all things gathered up in God, all things, brough to the fulfillment of their potentialities, for being, at one among themselves, and at one with Being from which they have come in for which they are destined. … Rather, our belief is that the whole process only makes sense, in so far as, in the risk and struggle of creation, that which “is” is advancing in the fuller potentialities of being, and is overcoming the forces that tend toward dissolution; and that continually a richer and more fully diversified, unity is being built up … the end, we have seen reason to believe, would be a commonwealth of free, responsible beings, united in love. . … [He goes on to note one of my favorite lines from the BCP] … it is perhaps significant that the prayers for the departed seem to have moved from the thought of the attainment of static rest to that of increasing perfection. In 1549 the Book of Common Prayer besought for them “thy mercy and everlasting peace”; the current, American edition, prays for their “continual growth in thy love and service.”
Anyhow, my concern at the moment is “a commonwealth of free, responsible beings, united in love.” His “end” is a kind of resolution to Temple’s issue of self-centeredness and Dhingra’s between a fragmented society and authoritarianism. The nudging of the Holy Spirit is toward that commonwealth. A state in which there is full freedom and responsibility, possible because we are united in love.” And for Macquarrie, love is “self-giving or letting be” seen in the acceptance of the cross. “Love usually gets defined in terms of union, or the drive toward union, but such a definition is egocentric. Love does, indeed, lead to community, but to aim primarily at uniting the other person, to oneself, or oneself to him, is not the secret of love, and may even be destructive of genuine community. … the very essence of God as Being is to let-be, to sustain, to confirm, and perfect the being of the creatures.” And so all things press toward sanctification.
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
[1] We gain a deeper insight to the war by reading the article on sexual violence along with “The Day Hamas Came: on One Israeli town lost 97 people on Oct. 7. This is what happened.” From NYT December 22, 2023.
[2] See Stephen E. Lammers’ “William Temple and the Bombing of Germany: An Exploration of the Just War Tradition.” In the Journal of Religious Ethics, Spring 1991.
[3] We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.