Dissident Dispatches

by Andrew Fraser

  I did and do not accept the allegation that I had rewritten the topic in the first assignment. My paper was written directly in response to the invitation to “[c]ritically evaluate William’s argument with respect to Richard Hooker and Anglicanism more generally”. According to the topic as stated, Williams “argues that Hooker is perhaps the first major historian to assume that history, corporate and individual, matters for theology”. Accordingly, I thought it reasonable to ask whether either Williams or Hooker had grasped fully the relationship between the history of the Church of England during the Anglo-Saxon period and the experience of Christian nationhood in England.

  My essay, therefore, could have been entitled “Christian Nationhood versus the Pragmatic Political Theology of the Protestant Establishment in England: Richard Hooker and Rowan Williams in the Corporate History of Anglicanism”. Rev. Douglas provided no substantive argument demonstrating that such an interpretation of the topic was illegitimate or improper.

  Instead, he simply asserted that I had rewritten the question. But I made no complaint since I was satisfied with the Distinction awarded for the first essay.

  Assignment # 2

  Rev. Douglas’ comments on the first essay, however, did lead me to take care to frame my second essay in the words of topic No. 4 precisely as stated, as a discussion of “the place of the Anglican Church in its historical context” which “critically evaluate[s] its present place in Australian society”. To achieve that objective I used Bishop Tom Frame’s book, Anglicans in Australia, as a key text and the major foil for my argument.

  No reasonable person can possibly deny that in that book Bishop Frame discusses “the place of the Anglican Church in Australia in its historical context and critically evaluate[s] its present place in Australian society”.

  In effect, my second essay was conceived as a critical evaluation of Bishop Frame’s understanding of the history of Australian Anglicanism and of its place in Australian society as revealed, inter alia, in the pastoral work of former Archbishop Peter Jensen. I supported my argument with a wide range of sources outside the subject study materials (which did not include either Frame’s book or the documents I cited in analysing the work of Archbishop Jensen).

  In particular, I drew on the seminal work on the history of Anglicanism and Australian national identity by church historian Brian Fletcher. My expectation was that such initiative would be acknowledged and rewarded. After all, the Subject Outline (p 9) states that the second assignment was designed to “encourage you to research and read as widely as possible in the literature relevant to the theme of the essay selected”.

  But neither my conscious effort to focus on the topic as set out in the Subject Outline nor my wide research and reading received recognition from Rev. Douglas. On the contrary, Rev. Douglas again alleged that I had “chosen to write your own question, loosely structured on Question 4 of Assignment 2” and that I “did not have authority to do this”. He charged further that my paper was focussed unduly on the relationship between the Anglican Church and the rise and decline of Anglo-Australian nationhood. He faulted the essay for its alleged failure to discuss “any other major issue in current Anglican life in Australia today”.

  Rev. Douglas, did not, however, specify what other major issues he had in mind. Nor, it must be said, did the topic as stated indicate that there was a specific suite of issues in the contemporary life of the Anglican Church that must be discussed or critically evaluated.

  I believe I was justified in assuming that the subject matter of both Bishop Frame’s book and Professor Brian Fletcher’s two-part article of Anglicanism and Australian nationalism is of critical significance to both the historical role and contemporary place of Anglicanism in Australia.

  In fact, the Subject Outline (p 9) specifically states the assignment was “designed to…allow you to select and carefully develop a reasonably extended treatment of a particular [emphasis added] theological theme within the range of material covered in the subject”.

  I submit that Rev. Douglas improperly over-rides that guide-line when he insists that my “approach to the question shows a particular [emphasis added] slant in [my] argument which does not adequately survey the field or the evidence”.

  At the same time, he fails to acknowledge that my essay dealt with several of the topics set out in the THL315 Study Guide; namely, the “national constitution” in Topic 11; the problem of a changing Anglican identity in Topic 12; and the subjects of public Christianity and Church, Society, and Establishment as raised in Topic 13.

  Conclusion

  I submit, therefore, that it is unfair and unreasonable simply to assert without supporting evidence or argument that I have not answered in good faith the essay question as stated. Indeed, Rev. Douglas’ criticism of my paper is self-contradictory. He convicts me both of “loosely structuring” the paper so as to go beyond the prescribed limits of the topic while faulting me for dwelling too narrowly on a “single” aspect of the topic.

  I submit further that Rev. Douglas awarded my second essay (worth 60% of the final grade) a PS grade not because I failed to address the topic as stated but rather because he disagreed with or disapproved of the substantive argument made in the paper. His comments throughout the paper suggest strongly that he was offended by the conclusions that I reached concerning the historical role and contemporary place of Anglicanism in Australia.

  Rev. Douglas says as much himself in his final comment on p 12 of the second essay where he states: “I suspect that your major conclusion is based on personal opinion alone. There seems to be little evidence to support some of your major statements and conclusions”.

  Significantly, he offers no evidence or counter-arguments of his own to justify his rejection of my argument and conclusions.

  Instead, he summarily dismisses the argument in my paper as one based on nothing more than “personal opinion” with “little evidence to support some of [my] major statements and conclusions”. If I may say so, I take such a cavalier refusal to engage substantively with my argument as little more than a gratuitous insult.

  I am confident that a fair and unbiased reader of my second essay in THL315 will conclude that the arguments developed therein are based explicitly on a careful and detailed analysis of a wide range of material including Frame’s book, various public addresses by Jensen, and the work of several Australian historians.

  I am equally confident that a reader who examines both of my essays in this subject will conclude that the second is no less worthy than the first of at least a Distinction grade.

  21 November 2013

  *

  Rev. Dr. Brian Douglas

  St Paul’s Church

  PO Box 3417

  Manuka, ACT 2603

  Dear Rev. Douglas,

  Re: Final Grade in THL315

  I enclose a copy of the memo I have submitted to CSU in support of my Application for Review of Grade in THL315. I won’t re-hash the argument I make therein beyond remarking that I take as a gratuitous insult your claim that my final essay in that subject was based on nothing more than “personal opinion”.

  In a trivial sense, of course, any academic argument also takes the form of a personal opinion. Accordingly, I do plead guilty to the charge of having personal opinions. But it so happens that my opinions on the subject matter of that essay are also based upon years of research and reflection as evidenced, for example, by the recently-published book which I enclose for your perusal.

  I hope that you will take the time to dip into The WASP Question. If you do so, I think you will find that my personal opinions on the historical role of Anglicanism and its present place in Australian society can also be characterized fairly and accurately as evidence-based professional judgments offered in good faith by an experienced scholar.

  Should you come to agree with that assessment, I trust you will communicate any such re-evaluation of the worth of my “personal opinion” to the Faculty Assessment Committee when it meets to
consider my Application for a Review of Grade.

  Regards,

  Andrew Fraser

  I received no answer from Rev Douglas. Nor did Charles Sturt University rush to review the grade I received on my essay. It was not until after I enquired in early March as to why it was taking over three months to process the grade appeal that I received a response from the University itself.

  As I had expected, the review upheld the original PS grade. The message I received by email was short and sweet:

  Dear Andrew

  I refer to your application for review of grade in the subject/s THL315 Anglican Foundations. The Charles Sturt University Faculty Assessment Committee’s decision is that your grade is to remain as a PS. The reason for the decision is as follows:

  The second marker independently confirmed the original marker’s view, by stating that the essay is well written but “only obliquely answers the question set”. He saw it as “a highly partisan piece of work that requires, for the most part, stronger justifications/warrants than those offered”, adding that he would not pass the essay as it stands. It was therefore decided that the original grade of PS stand.

  In accordance with CSU University Regulations, the Faculty Assessment Committee’s decision is final.

  Regards

  Sharee

  Client Services Team

  Student Admin

  2014: Boring from Within

  THL 245 / God, Humanity and Difference / HD

  THL 303 / Judaism and Early Christianity / HD

  THL 132 / The European Reformations / DI

  1: A Short Study on Basil of Caesarea

  Introduction

  According to Old Testament scholar John H Walton, Genesis One was never intended to provide an account of the material origins of planet Earth. Like other creation stories found throughout the ancient Near East, the first chapter of Genesis conceived the cosmos as a temple. Moreover, Genesis is not at all interested in the evolution of homo sapiens as a biological species. Instead, the seven days of creation are conceived as “the period of time devoted to the inauguration of the functions of the cosmic temple,” the sacred space in which God comes to rest. The physical temple in Jerusalem functioned as the symbolic microcosm of the heavenly place where God dwelled in the midst of his people. Creation is understood not as an impersonal material process but as a proclamation of divine purposes and direction which reveals the functions of the cosmic temple, installs its functionaries, “and, most importantly, becomes the place of God’s residence”.613

  In the fourth century AD, a leading Christian theologian, Basil of Caesarea in Asia Minor endorsed the Genesis story of the origins of humanity, most notably in a series of sermons known as the Hexaemoron.614 Many hundreds of years after the Book of Genesis took its final form, Basil still shared the functional rather than materialist cosmology of its Jewish authors. But he no longer conceived the cosmos as the temple. Nor did he believe that God dwelled with a particular people in a particular country in a physical temple made with hands. Rather, Basil viewed the whole of creation as a cosmic divinity school. In effect, he said, “the creation story is an education in human life”.615 As a teacher, therefore, Basil aimed to persuade his audience “that their natural expectations, in regard both to their inner lives and to their social experience, were part of God’s plan in creation, and best sustained and fulfilled within the framework of Christianity, presented as a historical community and a pathway to personal moral and spiritual development”.616

  In Basil’s functional cosmology, Genesis One becomes the foundation text of the Christian gospel by proclaiming that man is created in the image and according to the likeness of God. Basil takes it to be axiomatic that every human being simply by “being rational” possesses “that which is according to the image”. By contrast, we “come to be according to the likeness by undertaking kindness…For through those things by which you undertake sympathy you put on Christ, and drawing near to him is drawing near to God”.617 By our created nature, in other words, we enjoy the status of having been made in the image of God, but it is by choice that we acquire an actual likeness to God. Thus, Basil distinguishes between the power to become God-like and the “readiness to carry that power into effect”.618 As he put it, “the power exists in us but we bring it about by our activity”.619

  The Hellenization of Scripture

  The blessing bestowed by God upon mankind to “grow and multiply” pertains especially to the Church understood in functional terms as a divinely-ordained, pedagogic programme of moral transformation. Its mission is to proclaim “the Gospel of salvation…to all the earth”.620 Basil saw the Church “as a paradigm of social perfection…built upon a unity of thought mirroring that of nature itself”. By redefining conventional understandings “of fatherland and place of origin,” the “saving words” of the Gospel work to divinize those who hear them.621 Speaking of martyrs to the faith, Basil insisted that those “holy ones do not all belong to one country: each is venerated in a different place”. But they had also become something more than mere “citizens of the world”. Indeed, the job of the Church is to school people in all countries in the precepts governing the holy way of life appropriate to citizens of “the city of God”.622 But Basil’s vision of what was required to become a Christian people owed as much to the rationalist traditions of pagan philosophy in ancient Greece as it did to Jewish creation myths.

  As a young man, Basil spent several years studying philosophy in Athens. As a consequence, he “came to view the classics not as an alternative path to growth but as part and parcel of a Christian’s formation”. Basil’s Christian Platonism stressed “the importance of self-knowledge, the need for inner purification” and “the ideal of a freedom that rises above the enslavement of property and fame”.623 For Basil, the Christian way of life was to be shaped by the ascetic ethos of the Stoic tradition as confirmed by Genesis 1:28. There, God directs mankind to rule the fish in the sea, the wild beasts of the field, and the winged creatures of the air. In his sermons on the origins of humanity, Basil sums up the moral significance of this passage: “It was given to you to rule the irrational fish, thus you became ruler of irrational passion”. In other words, it was not enough for Christians to exercise dominion over the wild beasts roaming outside while leaving “ungoverned” the wild beasts within ourselves. Nothing “is more dangerous than this, when a human being is ruled by passion, when anger pushes reason aside, not consenting to remain within, and takes upon itself governance of the soul”. Basil advised his listeners, therefore, to “[r]ule the thoughts in yourself, that you may become ruler of all beings”. For “the rule we have been given over the animals trains us to rule the things belonging to ourselves”.624

  Basil clearly recognized the “pedagogical force” of the classical Greek canon. Accordingly, from very early in his life, “he was happy…to express his new sense of ascetic purpose in predominantly traditional terms”. His belief in the superior capacity of those devoted to the “philosophic” life to define and pursue moral virtue came first. Only then was a Christian vocabulary appealing to Scripture “superimposed” upon the classical tradition.625 Basil taught that the inner voice of reason lodged in the soul of every human being was of more consequence to God than the external vanities of wealth, power, and fame. Every person, no matter how lowly their station in life, bears the honour of having been created in the image of God. It is therefore “not an outrage to be born from a slave, but an honour to be born endowed with soul”.626

  Still, Basil had sufficient respect for the corporeal nature of man to avoid “any simple distinctions between soul and body, between mind, flesh, and spirit”.627 He reminded his audience that the superior status of the soul was incarnate in the very structure of the human body. “God created you upright. He gave this special structure to you as distinct from the rest of the animals”. Mankind’s drive toward moral progress was built into the created order of things. God fitted men to undertake a special sort
of activity very different from the things towards which grazing animals “aim by nature. The sheep was created to go to pasture, it has its head inclining downward, looking at the stomach and the parts below the stomach, since the fulfilment of happiness for these animals is filling the stomach”. By contrast, the human being “no longer looks towards the stomach, but his head is lifted high towards things above, that he may look up to what is akin to him”.628

  Past Fall and Future Redemption

  Basil knew, of course, that men do not always look upward. The second creation story in Genesis teaches that we have fallen from an original state of grace. At first, Adam and Eve lived at the heart of the cosmic temple in the Garden of Eden where they were in the presence of God. Basil attaches considerable significance to Genesis 1:30 in which, when “we were still reckoned to be worthy of paradise,” we, together with the wild beasts and the birds, were “granted enjoyment of fruits…and green plants and grass”. Even lions and leopards “followed the diet of swans and all grazed the meadows”. Basil was convinced that “the cause of our variety in diet was the introduction of sin”. Human beings changed their habits and “went outside the limits” prescribed by God. “[A]fter the flood, the Lord knowing the humans to be profligate, granted them the enjoyment of all foods” to console them in their banishment from the tree of life. Once “we fell away from the true delight that was in paradise, we invented adulterated delicacies for ourselves”.629

  But Basil looked forward confidently to the still-future redemption of mankind. By putting on Christ, Basil believed, “the human being will come again to his original condition, rejecting evil, this life of many troubles, the soul’s enslavement involving life’s concerns”. When man finally puts aside all worldly things, “he will return to that life in paradise unenslaved to the passions of the flesh, free, intimate with God, with the same way of life as the angels”. In the meantime, he urged his congregation “to conduct ourselves in imitation of the life of paradise,” avoiding the “excessively material enjoyment of foods…using fruits and grains and the produce of fruit trees for passing through life,” rejecting “as unnecessary” whatever “surpasses these things”.630