Reflections of the presiding Bishop and Primate

The Presiding Bishop did not speak from a text. The following was prepared from an audio recording.

Thank you. Thank you for that very generous introduction. I thought I would offer some ruminations and then allow you to move the conversation wherever you wish. Several of you have indicated there are questions that you are most anxious to pose about recent events in the life of our Communion and I don't want to constrain you in any way nor do I wish to enter into those areas unless provoked by your questions.

I started the day in Baltimore as the opening speaker at a conference on evangelism geared to Gen-X. One thing I said this morning was that a characteristic of orthodoxy is a capacity for paradox. And if you cannot live with paradox, you cannot be orthodox. In fact, most of the early Christological heresies had to do with the inability to deal with paradox-the paradox of divinity and humanity coexisting without one being subsumed into the other. And indeed, I trotted out for the benefit of those gathered in Baltimore the Chalcedonian definition of 451 which says that there is no merging of the divine and human natures, that both coexist with full integrity. And so, I observed, even though we may not think of it in these terms, our very theological life begins with a capacity for paradox. It was others who couldn't deal with that paradox, who had to say, "either he is substantially human or divine, masquerading or appearing as one or the other." That seemed to be an interesting insight for many in this group.

I start there because the whole theological enterprise is so profoundly important to the life of the Church, and a reclaiming of the depth of our own tradition is absolutely crucial to our ability to move forward in such a way that we read the signs of the times accurately and truthfully and in concert with the divine imagination, if I may put it that way.

I'm so glad that you are here together with one another. As I've moved around the Episcopal Church, one thing that has struck me over and over again is that the Episcopal Church is a study in monumental disconnection. There are so many freestanding pieces of the Episcopal Church that if they were conjoined they would produce incredible fruits that would benefit all of us. But, because they exist in separation or isolation-in some instances by preference, in other instances by accident-my sense is that if these separations can be overcome, there is an amazing potential that exists for us in the future. I recognize that those of you in this room who have been fellows now come together. Having pursued your studies, obviously in academic communities, but in isolation from one another, there is now an amazing opportunity for you to enter into a common conversation that will benefit all of us. And so, I'm very grateful that you are all here and have made adjustments in your own schedules and lives to be part of this conversation. I'm only sorry that I cannot be with you. My life is a life of cameo appearances and I dart around and show up here and there. Tomorrow morning, I have to head to Washington to preside tomorrow evening at a dinner that precedes on the next day the ordination of the new Bishop for the Armed Services Prison Ministries and Hospital Chaplaincies. But your being here is a consolation and I look forward to reading the Anglican Theological Review, which will contain the wisdom that you will share with one another.

I'm also mindful of the fact that if you take the world of quantum physics seriously as an accurate commentary upon the structures of reality, then you'll know that reality is constituted by webs of relationship. And so, the possibility for you to come together in a new pattern of relationship means that something real can happen more fully as a result of your engaging one another in conversation.

Of course, conversation, as I've said in other contexts, is an ascetical discipline that opens you to the possibility of being changed by what you hear from someone else, just as they can be changed by what they hear from you. And the root of conversation and conversion is exactly the same root: the Latin word that has to do with turning and being turned. We are turned by one another as we encounter the gift that the other brings, the dimensions of truth that are present in each of us through the working of the Holy Spirit. So my hope is that out of your coming together, there will be a rich gift to be given to the Church, not just because of this conversation over the next two days, but out of relationships that will be formed that can be carried forward in ways to be revealed that will continue to inform and enrich us all.

Having been in Chicago for some years, I have benefited from an occasional lunch with David Tracy. Certain of his basic points have been extremely helpful to me, and one that I go back to again and again is that truth is pluriform. The truth is multifaceted, which doesn't mean there is no truth, but it means that truth is garnered from a variety of sources and we, as we live the gospel and attend to the motions of the spirit in our lives, become bearers of some piece of that larger truth. It is through conversation that the different dimensions of truth have a chance of connecting with one another and becoming the larger truth which is an expression of what I would call God's fullness, as described in the letter to the Colossians.