THE CHURCH AS HOLY A Paper Written and Delivered by The Rev ...

supervision group who even noticed the substitution of the psychological for the
theological basis of pastoral care which was clearly in evidence.
It is crucial that orthodox Anglicanism be defined by adherence not only to
the Traditional Book of Common Prayer, but that it also has theological roots in
traditional Anglican theology. For any continuing Anglican body which is rooted in
the Catholic understanding of the Traditional Book of Common Prayer, the
theology of the neo-Thomistic theologian, Francis J. Hall, found in his ten-volume
series, Dogmatic Theology, provides a sound theological foundation. In Volume
VIII of that series, The Church and the Sacramental System, Dr. Hall addresses the
four notes of the Church. There he makes the important point that holiness and
righteousness are related but not synonymous concepts (see page 187). A righteous
person is one who does what is morally correct and who may be described as having
developed a moral character. Holiness, on the other hand, “is to be reconsecrated
and assimilated to God, such consecration and assimilation to God cannot be
completed unless [a person] becomes morally righteous. None the less, holiness is a
different thing.”
The Franciscan in my illustration, and many Christians in general, have
abandoned the understanding of holiness as separation and assimilation to God and
have either substituted moral righteousness for holiness or have abandoned moral
righteousness except as a goal of political activity or psychological development. When
a minister of a Christian body, Anglican or otherwise, substitutes psychological
wholeness for holiness leading to righteousness, a hideous change has occurred in his
ministry. The pastoral care given becomes secularized. The intellectual shift which
takes place is a post-modern deconstruction of the concept of holiness. The postmodern
minister then turns aside from healing the immortal souls of men by
making them citizens of the Kingdom of God for eternity. Instead, this unnoticed
but radical reframing of holiness turns the minister’s focus toward achieving some
version of either self-fulfillment and/or political reform. Holiness becomes wholeness.
On a spiritual level, the Christian who faces death has as his last hope either selfsatisfaction
at his righteous participation in human political and social evolution or
his pride in having achieved some advanced psychological state in the face of a nonexistent
transcendent God. Psychological maturity on one’s death bed replaces spiritual
reconciliation.
Dr. Hall points out that the God who works on earth through His Son, Jesus
Christ, has created an ecclesia, His Body on Earth, to ready men and women for an
eternal destiny through the power of the Holy Spirit. When Christian ministers
recognize that they are ordained to act in the name of such a Church, while
appreciating the value of psychological and political righteousness, they place their
personhood in the service of the Holy Spirit as instruments of holiness leading to
righteousness among God’s people. Such ministers will resist the post-modern
pressure to reduce the human psyche to simply the epiphenomenon of a time
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