Timothy Stoner

A Ticklish Convergence: Part Two

Posted on 02. Nov, 2010 by Tim Stoner in Blog, Emergent Theology, Essays

Watching a YouTube interview with Phyllis Tickle filmed at Cornerstone Festival 2009 I learn a few more things about her. Besides being a member of the Episcopal Church, she has been assigned by her bishop to be a lector and Eucharistic minister at Holy Trinity Community Church. She has been there 10 years. She describes it as an ”all-inclusive church” in which 80% are either gay, bisexual or lesbian.

She is asked by Andrew Marin, “What would you like to say to the church about the broader gay and lesbian community?” Before answering she describes this issue as the “last puck in a deadly game.” In The Great Emergence, she states that the conflict over this issue is, “the battle to the death.”

Tickle tells Marin that despite its ferocity and vital importance, she is confident that, for all intents and purposes, it is now “a dead issue.” It is only a matter of time before the church recognizes (as it did over similar controversial issues like slavery, the role of women, and divorce) that “our times and our ways are different” from those of Bible times and adjust accordingly.

What is so helpful about Tickle is how she helps clarify the bottom line. At least, there is no misdirection or ambiguity, she lays it out in one simple phrase: “What is really at issue is the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura and Scriptura Sola.” And the big question is “whether God put a period at the end of Scripture or did he put a comma?”

She has already given her answer. Authority is not fixed in a time-bound book. And Protestant history is on her side. As illustrated by the above three ethical “adjustments” that have progressively eroded the role of Scriptural authority, and will culminate, in her view, in the full acceptance of homosexuality by the church.

She minces no words. This issue is the “the only tool left in sola scriptura‘s war chest.” When this issue is ultimately decided, “the Reformation’s understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead. . . or in mortal need of reconfiguration. Of all the fights, the gay one must be—has to be—the bitterest, because once it is lost, there are no more fights to be had. It is finished” (GE 100-101).

When it is no longer sufficient to declare, “it is written,” and when pointing to the biblical text is no longer conclusive, Tickle properly asks, “where then is the authority?” This is the white elephant in the room that Protestantism has dodged as it split, splintered and fragmented into fractious divisions following the Reformation. Tickle does the church a service by pointing out what should have been obvious for a long time.

I suspect Tickle is right, upon this rock the Protestant enterprise is almost sure to founder. At some point there had to come a reckoning—a sober examination of the incessant fracturing into smaller and smaller subsets of protestants protesting yet another point of dogma, of practice or ecclesiology. And maybe we will concede that the Catholic Church was right all along: it was never to be Sola Scriptura, or even Scriptura et traditio (Scripture and Tradition), but Scriptura traditionem (Scripture with Tradition).

The Bible was never meant to be interpreted in a vacuum by independent Lone Rangers being led through solitary communion with the Holy Spirit. Not even Luther or Calvin believed that though their followers eventually did. We see the fruits of that error in the 20,000 competing denominations that litter the globe like bushels of scattered confetti.

As Tickle notes, this radical perspective came to full flower in the Pentecostal movement and its various tributaries. It encouraged solitary saints to boldly assert, “God told me” and dismiss any criticism as evidence of unbelief certain to lead to the “quenching of the Spirit.”  However, she regards this as a positive development since it helped put an explanation mark on the gradual retreat from biblical authority. As she appropriately asks: Given the current reality, where is the authority? Where indeed.

Though I disagree with Tickle’s rejection of 2,000 years of church history with its consistent denunciation of homosexuality, and the 4,000 years preceding it, I agree that Protestant exegesis and praxis has helped dig its own grave. If compassion leads you to reject the clear words of Jesus with regards to divorce, along with Paul’s instructions regarding the role of women in church, then nothing should prevent evangelicals from choosing compassion over obedience with regards to homosexuality. Tickle is absolutely right on that score. If fairness is the benchmark for Christian ethics then the sooner the injunctions against homosexuality are dismantled the better.

But getting back to her talk at Mars Hill, she is intent on establishing that the Holy Spirit is the divine feminine. She claims that from the beginning Judaism and the Early Church conceived of a part of the Trinity as feminine and over time, this was lost or obscured. She bases this assertion on a Jewish mystical tradition arising during the inter-testamental period (after Malacki and before the birth of Jesus). It taught that during those silent years God’s voice (a feminine thing) mourned for humanity and expressed this love by sending her daughter the Bath Kol (“the daughter voice”, or “the voice of the daughter”).

As support she references the voice at the baptismal of Jesus that declared from heaven, “this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased” which she says was “understood to be the voice of the daughter of wisdom.” As further evidence she refers to Jn. 14:23(b) where Jesus tells the disciples, “we will come to [those who love me] and make our home with him.” Tickle comments that this is the “most feminine of gestures” since it is the mother who makes the home. As further proof of femininity she states that the descriptive word Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit— paraklytos, is not a masculine noun. “It is a verbal which means ‘that which goes beside us’—like a mother holding our hand.”

So, is all this true? First, if you look up paraklytos in a Greek Lexicon you will find that it is a masculine, singular noun. Second, it can also be translated as advocate, advisor, or defense counsel, none of which are particularly feminine roles. Third, Jn. 14:23(b) is preceded by 14:23(a) which explains that Jesus and “My Father” will be doing this work, not the Bath Kol. Fourth, making a home is a metaphor for living within man—nothing singularly feminine there. Fifth, in Jewish culture it was the groom who went off to build a home for his betrothed—not the task of the female. Sixth, every article that refers to the Holy Spirit is masculine singular. Finally, the voice from heaven was always understood to be that of the Father, never the Bath Kol. It is impossible, in other words, to establish any divine feminine role of the Holy Spirit from the Biblical proof that Tickle offers. 

What weight is to be given to the extra-biblical evidence about the wide acceptance of the mystical tradition connected to the Bath Kol? It is worth noting that this idea arose when true prophecy had ceased, creating an excessive desire for divine manifestations. So strong was the desire that Rabbi Joshua (c. 11CE) fiercely opposed it and began calling for a return to the supremacy and sufficiency of the Torah. 

Humphrey Prideaux in The Old and New Testament Connected, shows that where the Bath Kol is mentioned in the Talmud it is actually a reference to “a fantastical way of divination.” For example, in order to clear up a disputed matter it would be arbitrarily decided that the very next words one would hear would determine the issue. These words would then be designated as the Bath Kol. This, of course, is more accurately described as superstition instead of divine revelation. Compared to the primary modes of divine revelation in ancient Judaism, the Bath Kol was decidedly “of a secondary dignity, and inferior to it. The grand and primary voice of revelation is “the mother in precedence both of time and dignity.”

Keeping in mind that this is a patriarchal culture, when the term “daughter” is assigned to something, this is by definition a lowering rather than an elevation of its status. Thus, in its very name, Tickle’s argument is defeated. Its designation as “daughter” proves it was lesser than God and could not have been regarded by the primitive church as the third (co-equal) member of the Trinity.See: The Old and New Testament Connected In the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations; from the Declension of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, to the Time of Christ, Humphrey Prideaux, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836) 215-216.

Tickle concluded her talk by stating that, since Pentecost, this feminine component of the Trinity ”has came to live in us and we are the container thereof. It is an erotic relationship. And that too is the feminine nature of it. It is the most intimate one a human being can ever have.” Leaving aside the reckless use of language that begs for serious confusion, she proceeds to say something that exceeds all bounds. Referring to the Eucharist the congregation is preparing to celebrate she says, “by eating the body and the blood of our God we are feeding the God within us. For as we take those elements the Spirit also feeds within us and is re-invigorated as he or she or it is by our faith.”

Her malleable use of pronouns to refer to the Holy Spirit is telling but even more so is her overt use of the language of mystery cults. When pagans ate their idol food at their cultic ceremonies this is precisely what they thought they were doing. This is not what Christians believed–ever. They were taught that they were the recipients of grace imparted mysteriously through elements infused with the real presence of their God. He was doing the feeding and they were the ones being fed. None of the respected teachers of the church support any conception of God needing to be “re-invigorated.”

To use this word in reference to the Triune Godhead is to utterly disregard the biblical narrative. It betrays a commitment to the mythology of Greece and Rome whose gods (both masculine and feminine) needed constant replenishment through sacrifice, secret rituals, incantations, and cultic rites many of which are too shameful even to speak.

Thus, the real question for Tickle is not, where is the authority, but, which God do you worship? The answer seems to be a God who emerges from the heady smoke of esoteric mystery religions and mystical spiritualities, not the Majestic God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— to whom our ancestors prayed in powerful, sturdy and beautiful words:  “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.”.  

Tags: apostolic tradition and the protestant reformation, Bath Koll, GLBT and the Bible, Homosexual Christians, homosexuality and sola scriptura, Jewish Mysticism and Christian Feminism, Phyllis Tickle, the authority of the Bible, the Great Emergence