"Last Signal from Carpathia": A Response to Paul Zahl

by Robert Ross

Dear Dean Zahl,

During the plenary session after your address to the Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Forum, I raised a question as to why no mention of any supporting information or enlightenment had been offered by any of the speakers from the world of Science: Anthropology, Psychology, Medicine, Sociology, or from Historical or Literary sources. In spite of Dr. Hughes observation that the Anglican approach to theology certainly required an examination of current scholarship, your response was that "In terms of any of those fields of study, I am probably wrong, but I only choose to discuss this from a theological standpoint."

You had rather used theological language to undergird what appeared to be an unstated, unsupported, but pre-existing position about homosexuality, to whit: that this kind of lifestyle and practice is sinful.

I confess that I found this response quite astounding, and it led me to a re-reading of your address. This re-reading convinced me that you had not offered any real theological arguments at all. You had rather used theological language to undergird what appeared to be an unstated, unsupported, but pre-existing position about homosexuality, to whit: that this kind of lifestyle and practice is sinful. Only much later in your address did you refer to what you called the "hermenutic objection," meaning scriptural proscriptions. Meantime you led your listeners past the issue and into a "theological razzle dazzle" involving such classic theological touchstones as: Soteriology, Christology, Anthropology, Original Sin. Your launching point was as follows:

First, we believe the gay position as we hear it undermines the anthropology of the Gospel. It undermines the teaching concerning the inherent sinfulness of the creature before the Creator. It wants to exempt a particular category of persons, gay men and women, from Original Sin on the basis that they are "created" a certain way, therefore how can it be wrong?

As a theological argument this is simply sloppy unless one has already established some authority for the sinfulness of homosexuality. In other words, you simply begged the question! The conflict in the church today is over exactly that point: "Is the mono-sexual position and life style wrong, immoral, or sinful?" Certainly your stand on this question is easy enough to find between the lines, and it is that homosexual behavior is sinful and those who practice it should confess, repent and be saved. You have a right to your opinion, Paul, but you have a responsibility to state it as an opinion rather than to skip over it and then bury it, unsupported, within what appears to be a theological treatise.

This question regarding the rightness or wrongness of such lifestyles is the one to which all should be addressing themselves. I, for one, am certainly still open to a fuller understanding and felt that the House of Bishops acted precipitously. Ultimately the question cannot be circumvented. Furthermore, it cannot be resolved with reference to scripture, alone. If the Anglican Communion had been functioning that way we would still have slavery, and there would be no women priests, just to mention a couple of highlights. At any rate this religious body has, over the past several centuries at least, held to a theological standard (the three legged stool) which both constructs and revises doctrine with reference to three sources of authority: Holy Scripture, Tradition, and Current Scholarship. And no matter how loudly the cry from some quarters rises, we are not likely to ever succumb to biblical fundamentalism, even when driven that way by third world Christians who are barely removed from animism and pantheism and whose primary problems about sexuality arise from their competition for converts with the Muslims in their own back yards.

I realized that the dangling of a piece of essoteria at the beginning (Last Signal from Carpathia) was a seductive challenge to my intellect which distracted me from the fact that you had launched your "theological" dissertation with both feet planted firmly in mid-air, in other words, with no stated basic thesis at all.

Paul, when I reflected upon my initial response to your address, I kept asking myself how I missed this fatal flaw in your position in the first place. Then I realized that the dangling of a piece of essoteria at the beginning (Last Signal from Carpathia) was a seductive challenge to my intellect which distracted me from the fact that you had launched your "theological" dissertation with both feet planted firmly in mid-air, in other words, with no stated basic thesis at all.

I confess that I have had to wonder if that was a result of theological ineptitude, or if it was a clever apologetic device you commonly use to sell your ideas. I have decided, provisionally, that it is the latter. And so I intend to hear and read your future utterances alert to that possibility.

Frankly, it was necessary for me to turn to Google.com to find that the Carpathia was the ship of the Cunard Line which tried unsuccessfully to reach the Titanic before it sunk. Discovering that, I then had to ask myself who, in your analogy, is the Titanic. Is it the Episcopal Church or is it simply the rump group which you represent? I'd like to know. Meantime I have to say that your appeal for the church to give parishes whatever bishop they choose is simply bizarre and unlikely to gain a sympathetic ear. Furthermore your plaintive cry for 'safety' seems ridiculous in light of the fact that your own bishop voted against the resolution at General Convention.

And finally I want to say that if you have hopes of taking the Cathedral Church of the Advent out of the Diocese of Alabama you will be disappointed. I served as a priest associate at that parish for ten years and I know that it will not be moved.

Faithfully yours, Bob Ross

 

The Rev. Robert Ross is an Episcopal priest who is retired from active ministry. He served as an associate priest at the Cathedral Church of the Advent (the parish in Birmingham, Ala., whose current rector is Dean Zahl) for a decade, and one of his children is still a member of that congregation. Robert's entire ministry was spent in Alabama, where in addition to serving in several parishes, he worked for 20 years as a hospital chaplain and director of continuing education and outreach programs for a large faith-based health care system. He may be reached by email at rossmb@bellsouth.net.