I'm No Oceanographer, But . . .

. . . of the making of false dichotomies there is, it seems, no end. The latest from, ahem, Katherine Jefferts Schori:

Indeed, asked about her critics, Jefferts Schori doesn't blink. She leans in, drops her voice even lower and cuts to the chase.

She sees two strands of faith: One is "most concerned with atonement, that Jesus died for our sins and our most important task is to repent." But the other is "the more gracious strand," says the bishop who dresses like a sunrise.

It "is to talk about life, to claim the joy and the blessings for good that it offers, to look forward.

"God became human in order that we may become divine. That's our task."

Jesus on the cross for me and for you - not very gracious, was it? Here's the whole thing from USA Today.

And here is John the Baptist, and here is Jesus. And as to some supposed tension between a robust theology of atonement (as, for instance, enshrined in the traditional Anglican eucharistic liturgy) and KJS's "more gracious" way, here again is Jesus and, for good measure, here is St. John.

And, as it happens, S.M. Hutchens has an unrelated but completely relevant rumination of the theological disasters that come by elevating one truth at the expense of another; because it is so apposite, I'll quote it in full (emphasis mine):

I gave the last word in my dissertation to G. K. Chesterton. Part of the borrowed inscription was: “The ordinary man . . . has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them.” I have always believed this; one cannot believe the Bible otherwise, nor can he be a Christian, for our faith is built upon the ultimate contradiction: the God-Man, and many others besides. But churches and theological schools, as John Williamson Nevin observed long ago, are not founded or maintained by ordinary men, but by Great Ones, who make their ways and their names in the world by emphasizing one truth at the expense of others, enthralling lesser men by giving them many infallible proofs that the truth upon which they stand apart from others is indubitably true.

Believing this describes an actual state of affairs, one’s view of the world of theological letters, including, and perhaps most especially, the intentionally conservative, is radically changed, those worlds becoming filled to the brink with sophism and superfluity, a great, long chronicle of wasted time in which for every true word that is spoken, ten false or useless ones are, where one word from a true master, when finally heard, will overrule a lifetime of deep, expert lucubration. How many oceans of ink have been spilled, how many shelves have been filled, how many sects and parties have taken their rise, how many reputations for deep scholarship and wisdom have been made among the intelligent and ambitious, because they have taken extra-ordinary measures to avoid taking two truths from the Holy Tradition that seem to contradict each other, and the contradiction along with them--avoiding the Mystery, the doxology, and most particularly, the fear of God that comes when we step into the realm where we no longer have the mastery of him?