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Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent 2010

Posted February 21st, 2010 by Michael Erickson
In his capacity as a Priest in the Anglican Catholic Church, Michael Erickson delivers a sermon on the First Sunday in Lent 2010. As the Collect for today petitions God to subdue the flesh before the spirit, the question arises of how flesh is animate enough to require a "subduing" with which to begin; and in answering the query, Michael Erickson refutes the moral implications of Gnostic dualism.

In the Collect for this First Sunday in Lent, we pray for that divine grace by which we may subdue our flesh to the Spirit. This is a most curious choice of words, as it conjures forth the image of restraining a bucking bronco or a wild lion. Nevertheless, we are inclined to think, as it is the Spirit alone that is mighty, that wind which fills the caverns of the listless soul, or that flame which enlightens the tongue of the man otherwise lost in his own, sordid babble, the flesh by contrast must be small and in itself lifeless. It is a clay vessel, caught up in that grand, cosmic battle among unseen powers and principalities, where the Archangel Michael revokes the many wiles of Satan; but, in itself, it is too insubstantial to play a part in this drama. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. How then may we talk of subduing the flesh, when it is so weak and insubstantial in comparison to the unseen?

We first must understand that this question, in how it is being articulated here, belies a most unhelpful conceit. The inference is that Spirit alone matters; indeed, only that which cannot be seen, heard, tasted, felt, or for that matter even properly imagined is real. Our very own bodies, and by extension all things, which we may know by our senses, pass away: they die, or spoil, or erode. As they are forever victims of time, they are in comparison to the Spirit mere illusions. This conceit, that Spirit alone is real, and flesh by contrast is unreal, is at the heart of a doctrine known as Gnosticism. It is intrinsically anti-Christian, as it debases all of God’s creations as unreal or at the very least insubstantial. It implies that nothing then within this world really has any moral value. That includes you and me, since we live here as fleshly beings. For the Gnostic, as we too have no real, moral value, we do not have any real, moral responsibility to this world or in how we conduct ourselves with other men. How sad really it is to think that we do not matter, until we cease to be ourselves.

We may castigate this as anti-Christian, as is proper so to do; but, first, we must consider how often we too descend into this manner of thought. For example, when we consider how men die, we imagine some sort of phantom, or ethereal spirit, floating out of a corpse. The image is soothing, like that of winged angles with their melodious harps atop puffy, white clouds. The airy phantom then ascends softly through the proverbial tunnel towards a light, hardly, if ever, feeling the lonely sting of real, visceral death. There is no sense of the Cross in this image: no acceptance of the fact that, as moral beings, we must bare responsibility for our deeds, and take on our personal crosses, before truly we may grasp onto the redemption offered once and for all times by the Crucified Christ. In this image, we do not need to follow in the footsteps of Christ, even unto Golgotha, in order to float airily into the light. And why? Because in this Gnostic view, it is the phantom - the unseen spirit ascending from the corpse - which in the end is real, not the flesh; therefore, what any man has or has not done while living within his flesh has no lasting, moral consequence. For the Gnostic, man does not need the Crucified Christ, for he is not really responsible.

Whenever we separate Spirit from flesh in this manner, we too are trying to escape all moral implications of our own behavior. We too are endeavoring to find salvation without tasting the harsh vinegar of death on the Cross, that is to say without giving ourselves completely over to Christ Jesus. It is the very strongest of temptations: that we may live forever on our own terms, without that self-sacrifice implicit in accepting the gift of redemption. Our sins may go unnoticed, we tell ourselves. We may not die after all – merely “pass on” to another and presumably better realm of existence.

The temptation to think in this manner is so strong, that indeed it is akin to a wild animal needing to be subdued. This is what is meant by living “in the flesh” – not the Gnostic view of Spirit and flesh being intrinsically separate, but rather orienting oneself away from that eternal life, which is only possible in God. To live “in the Spirit” then is to be oriented fully toward God, in virtue of superabundance of love offered by the Crucified Christ. The one or the other is now and always our choice, as God loves too perfectly to allow for any one of us to escape responsibility for our lives.

Michael Erickson Writes a Letter to a Friend

On February 22nd, 2010 Michael Erickson says:
I hope that all is well with you. I had the occasion to provide the sermon at my parish earlier today. I have posted it onto my blog and am including the link here, in case you want to read it at some point. Because of the limitations of time, and the desire to be understood, I could not elaborate as much or as precisely as I would have desired. Nevertheless, while cursory, the sermon has been efficacious in at least one manner: In drafting it, I had then the chance to give even more thought to the interplay of Gnosticism and moral theology; and I am now thinking about how this may be relevant in discerning the contours of the "civic religion" that underlies the Declaration of Independence. In a previous email, I stated my emerging sense of how the Declaration of Independence indeed is an anti-gnostic statement. The fact that it is anti-gnostic is, in my mind, clear on its face; thus, what is more interesting is what that implies in terms of a civic polity for the Republic. [Name Omitted] mentions the importance of piety. I agree, since a man who fears God will walk forward, but prudently, and without any greater pretense than the brothers in whom he discerns his intrinsic equality. We are a free nation; independence is our right. At the same time, we are a nation among nations, and empire should remain at best only the most temporary of conditions for us, and one for which we should never specifically aspire. In my mind, that middle ground, between colony and empire, is an aspect of civic piety, to which we are called as a nation of godly men. Besides piety, I would add responsibility, not just in the legal sense of assigning liability to this or that segment of society, but in a deeper, moral sense. If our nation indeed is really anti-gnostic, then its civic and legal norms must be moral. The modern notion that the civic square should be neutral on moral questions, that it should do no more than provide a base of laws for sustaining an amoral, free market, capitalistic system, where politics gives way to economics, is just another ideological front for gnosticism. It is as morally base as that "popular sovereignty" championed by Stephen Douglas - take no stand and let the tides of history decide. When "history" decides, and not men, then men abrogate their birthrights in the Imago Dei, which is to say as moral agents; such men are then slaves of the demiurge and the elites who claim to have a "delphic channel" to its "hidden mysteries." If men are to be free, then they must rise to the occasion and choose: either slave or free, but never indefinitely half-slave and half-free. The important point is making that choice; whatever in fact the choice happens to be is of lesser consequence, though slavery and freedom truly are not moral equals. I could go on, but I believe that my point is clear enough: Only if we men are responsible moral agents, in such sense of acting in accord with what we know to be right in virtue of the laws of Nature and of Nature's God, will we be able to see what are "self-evident truths," and live as if endowed by a knowable Creator, and exercise what are truly "inalienable rights." To be free, we must first be good. That is the opposite of gnostic thought, which holds that first we must be free (freed from ignorance), in order to be "good" (having the gnosis and thus being "spiritual" and as such separable from nearly everyone else). While my thoughts remain cursory at this point, I am sensing that the Declaration of Independence accepts that as a sound view of the condition of men and, wanting to view an independency founded on pragmatic terms, thus sides with the anti-gnostics.

A Response from the Friend to Michael Erickson

On February 22nd, 2010 Michael Erickson says:
Gnosticism is a mechanism of satanic design intended to lead men away from a world of love and trust to a world of resentment and doubt. That "magic" is a feature of its message is not to be wondered at. Magic breaks the power of reason, the sentience of the human mind which is the chief characteristic of man's divine design, by teaching deference to the irrational. Aristotle demonstrated that moral teaching could be based solely on an understanding of human nature by its inherent design. Without benefit of Genesis, he set forth with crystal clarity the quality of reason as the defining element in man - that element which differentiates man from all other animals. For him, Nature and God were one, and reason was the key provided to man alone to learn from nature about the most transcendent things. He refused to theorize on the nature of God, thereby establishing a limit to reason, mirroring the Genesis account of man's creation as "in the image" of his Maker, but sustaining the Genesis grant of authority to man as having been given "dominion" over the earth because of reason's divine aspect. These parallels were best articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas and the modern thomistic teacher, Jacques Maritain. Thus, philosophy and religion are united in Aristotle and Genesis in the spirit of what is called "general revelation." The Biblical account, most particularly, the Old Testament, introduces what is called, "special revelation," as in the case of the direct giving of law in the Commandments set forth to Moses. Yet, these Commandments are in no way contrary to the discoveries of reason. The God of Nature is the God of Revelation as is recognized fully in the Declaration's fortuitous expression, "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God. All is bound together in the Creator. The Biblical and the Aristotelian teachings about man and the universe set forth both a form of liberation and a form of resignation to which are opposed the gnostic teachings of doubt and resentment. The latter teachings derive from that loss of perspective which is driven by the surrender of reason as a form of obedience and the coveting of the creative power of God as a sign of rebellion. As a sign of its error, unreason and covetousness inevitably lead to madness and self-destruction as the endpoints of following the path of delusion and discontent. The Declaration calls upon us to "pursue Happiness" not as a choice, but as the fulfillment of the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" and as a "right." Rights, it says, are "unalienable," that is they are characteristic of what we are as human beings - built in capacities that cannot be denied. The attempt to deny these does not invalidate them, it simply diverts a life designed to be lived, to be liberated from ignorant obedience through sharing, if ever so slightly, in the power of the Divine, and, by reason, to seek its ultimate connection by the hints of its own nature to the Eternal, to Divine Providence, to its own Creator, or in short, to that Happiness which is the fulfillment of our lives and the purpose of our liberty. In the struggle against Evil, we must stand ready to risk all that comes with a long life that is well-lived, or, to put it differently, we must be prepared to be martyrs to the sustainment of God's will. The Signers of the Declaration made that dedication to surrender their own Happiness that the teaching of Happiness as our "apple of gold" might be preserved. Thus, do we understand the meaning of the phrase, "sacred honor." Michael, you are right to point to gnostic teaching as, at its bottom, the antithesis of the Declaration and, indeed, the antithesis of the Old Testament's Genesis account. As I do not yet understand the New Testament, I must continue to learn from you about its meaning. As I told you before, I am a slow learner, but I love learning. In it I find the promise of Happiness. Thanks for sharing your comments and your sermon. If you bring together a bond between the Church and the Republic, you will be of great service to your people, to your nation, and to your God. Of that, I am certain.