Eatin’ Crow?

“The crow wished everything was black, the owl, that every thing was white.”
-William Blake

Good morning, Toads and Toadettes,

Looks like the Toad has riled a few friends of evangelical scholar and occasional pundit J.I. Packer. Seems as though some naughty little boy or girl published a specious article purportedly by the Pack-man jacking up Anglo-catholicism and pronouncing it deader than the proverbial door nail. It appears that someone was using the Packmeister’s name to “drive a wedge between evangelical and catholic Anglicans,” as if there weren’t one or two of those already.

Whoa! Dirty tricks? Dirty tricks in the church, perhaps perpetrated by prevaricating popinjays of the apostate variety? Could it have been….Satan!?! The Toad is shocked, simply shocked!

Scads of well-meaning folks took the opportunity to bash or defend the Packster, including the Toad who, of course, was on the side of the bashers and not the bashee. (What did you expect, bunky, kid gloves?) Even a well-known journalist-the one with the D.D. that is not quite as fake as the Toad’s-got into the act with a little A-C zinger that claimed to have antedated the Packer piece. Perhaps the Toad is technologically impaired, but the story seems to have disappeared off the website of the “global voice of orthodox Anglicanism.” Maybe the search feature doesn’t work after you drop liquor on the keyboard. (Gin, pally, it ain’t time for winter liquors yet.)

Toad himself got an earful (assuming he had ears-I am a toad, you know). Including a bit about how a photo of a lady with a blue shown with J.I. is not really a priestess, but only a lay reader. Trust Anglo-catholics to focus on the vestments and their color. Rawk, rawk, rawk!*
And, now, old J.I. denies that the story is his not his handiwork. No siree! We’re in conversation with Catholics (or would that be dialogue?), and we wouldn’t want some fraudster to cause trouble at the tea party. But, why was the story so darned believable?

Ahhhh, boys and girls, that’s because it sounded so very much like the Pack-man himself. "The Puritans answered those questions that perplexed me," he says. And more than that, they introduced him to the "whole range" of Christian truth, wrestling with aspects of the Christian life in a rational, yet spiritually enlivened and theologically grounded way. "From the Puritans," he says, "I acquired what I didn't have from the start—that is, a sense of the importance and primacy of truth. Which means theology." J.I. Packer: A Biography, by Alister McGrath.
Boy, the “whole range” of Christian truth. Darn those pesky Sacraments!

Again, from the McGrath book, Packer wanted to revive "authentic Anglicanism"—a heritage, he says, that had been "in eclipse" since 1944. "The shapers of Anglicanism were evangelicals—Cranmer, the Puritans, the Clapham sect, Wilberforce," he says. "I wanted to re-establish it in its own heritage." Okey, dokey, boys and girls, we can just forget about Keble, Pusey and…God forbid, Newman.

Make no mistake, the Toad doesn’t wish to rain on the Packster’s parade—all that exegesis is just dandy. But, one really has to suspect the motives of a guy who signs on to an Evangelical Mission to Catholics. That wouldn’t be to convert them from all that Romish superstition would it? Naw! He just wants to “dialogue”. Then, there was his off-the-cuff after-hours comment to Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus that the papacy is "a grotesque institution". Perhaps that’s why the specious article had the whiff of the real J.I.

It’s nice that he has had a critical role in Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT). Differing sides need to stand together in areas of agreement, in order to serve a larger purpose. But, he is about as Catholic in his theology as Zwingli.

On the women’s ordination question, Packer seems to be a bit incontinent on the issue. On the one hand, he appears to oppose women in the presbyterate, he nonetheless states that, "Since authority rests in the Word of God rather than in preachers and teachers of either sex, it is my opinion that a woman's preaching and teaching gifts may be used to the full in situations where a male minister of the Word has the effect of supplementing and supporting his own preaching and teaching." Say what?

This is sort of the ecclesiastic version of having an all-girl back up band. Call it the James Brown theory of ministry. “Yeow…I feel good!”

Finally, let’s not forget J.I.’s sometime role as an adjunct at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in beautiful Ambridge, Pennsylvania (although the reference seems to have gone missing these last few days. The picture from the TESM website says it all. Rawk, rawk, rawk!*

So, the Toad is eating some crow. However, bunky, I’ll be washing it down with a Chateau Montrachet ’51. It’s the Anglo-catholic way. Rawwwwwk!

Yr. Obed. Serv.,

R. Toad, DD-VS (Very Specious), LSMFT
*The sound of one Toad barking