Such creatures "see at the same time both above and below the surface of the water, and their brains figure out how to interpret those quite different images and make a coherent whole." One assumes she holds these to be higher evolutionary forms than their unlucky human cousins who can't "make a coherent whole" out of parts that don't naturally, or logically, go together.

The comparison is obvious. If only liberal and conservative Episcopalians had "multifocal vision", a capacity that fish and certain "social insects" share in common with the Blessed Trinity, then the wrangling of these past months and years over mutually exclusive understandings of the gospel would sink effortlessly into a noiseless abyss.

"As a body, we [TEC] are wrestling with a collection of images... but most of us assume that the image we form most easily is the only right and true one. The blesser of the gospel, however, sees more than that one, easy image. The blesser of all invites us into that deeper seeing as well."

"Deeper seeing" was mentioned, no doubt, as a balm for those still in pain over the departure of Frank Griswold and his call for us all to go to a "deeper place".

"We've lost some of our Anglican ability to look in both directions, to hold both perspectives in tension."

The Presiding Bishop and her colleagues in the House of Bishops emerged from Camp Allen this past week with their doctrinal portfolio complete. I don't mean they came away with an exposition of every Christian doctrine; but they did come away with a hermeneutical core.

Essentially it's this: two plus two equals five.

Schori demonstrated, with her dazzling combination of political adroitness and deliberate misinformation, the parody that is the Episcopal Church. In her homily she gave expositions of two classic doctrines that were just plain wrong, and emerged with a winning case for her new hermeneutic. Her episcopal colleagues rallied around the deception, most of whom knew better.

The first doctrine to be deconstructed is one native to Anglicanism - the idea of comprehensiveness -- not a theological doctrine but an ecclesiastical settlement that made a new theological vision possible. Elizabeth I insisted upon one Church in England and decreed that that Church would embody essentials of the universal Church in all times and places, while being schooled by the Reformation underway across Europe. And it would be as distinctly English as Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. Hers was a political settlement that became a theological method.

A parody of this method has become the new orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church today. For Jefferts Schori Anglican comprehensiveness is a way of embracing absurdity, the "ability to look in both directions, to hold both perspectives in tension."

For Elizabeth I those two directions might include combining the words of institution at the Eucharist, allowing the worshiper to determine whether the bread "was" the Body of Christ or merely a "remembrance." The ambiguity is genuine and also biblical. If the English Church was understating the doctrine of Christ's Presence in the Eucharist, the Roman Church had long overstated it.

For Dr. Schori the two competing points held in "tension" are as follows: first, that sexual actions between persons other than one man and one woman united in holy matrimony are immoral and unchristian; and, second, that sexual actions between persons other than one man and one woman united in holy matrimony are indeed, or certainly can be, both moral and Christian.

There are other points that could be cited as illustrations. On the one hand, conservative Episcopalians insist that Jesus is the only way to the Father. On the other hand, liberal Episcopalians insist Jesus is not the only way to the Father. For that matter we're not so sure it's a Father that we're going (or not going) too. It could well be a Mother, or something in between or altogether different.

I'm aware that Jefferts Schori does not believe the conservative side in either of these two examples. She knows she owes them a modicum of lip service. As a public gesture she acknowledges the historical character of conservative ideas and affirms the value of holding them in "tension" with their opposites which arose explicitly in open war against them.

This is how politicians wage war. They "affirm" the validity of their opponent's position until the time is right for the opponent to be destroyed.

Comprehensiveness for Elizabeth I meant something very different. It was not a combination of two mutually exclusive and contradictory worldviews, but the accommodation of two conflicting religious systems in a single emerging worldview. Whether Anglican style comprehensiveness is viable in the long term is one of the questions we are facing today, along with the survivability of something called an Anglican "Communion".

The second doctrine deconstructed in Dr. Schori's homily is that of the Holy Trinity. Here she referred to a classic iconic portrayal of the Three Persons and expounded her theory of a "social God". She wrongly describes the artist as depicting each of the Three looking at each Other as if they were looking at fellow creatures and hence "images" of God, and not divine Persons. Her conclusion:

"If we are created in the image of that social God, we too are invited to look as God does, toward another image of God, to turn our eyes upon Jesus - and also on the many images of God all around us."

Like most of us trained in seminaries over the past fifty years, she probably shouldn't have mentioned the Trinity just to save herself embarrassment. For starters, she expounds what theologians call the "economic Trinity" when what the Orthodox painting portrays is the "ontological Trinity" - the interior life of the Godhead. Each of the three Persons is portrayed as identical - what we would call clones of each other. They sit in a closed circle, each staring at one of the others. The identical appearance of the human (or angelic) figures represents the co-equality of the divine Persons, distinct though each One is. The closed circle of mutual contemplation represents the Unity of the divine Substance which they share.

This is hardly a well chosen proof for a "social God", and certainly not the "socialist god" of the limousine left, created in the image of the latest chic politics.

Schori is looking to the paradox of the Trinity as her analogy for reconciling contradiction in the created order, which is precisely what the Trinity is not. In the life of the Godhead the Trinitarian logic holds, but nowhere in creation. As Aquinas pointed out, there is no analogy of the Holy Trinity in nature. St. Patrick may have used the shamrock as a device to illustrate the three-in-oneness of the Godhead, but this was more a mnemonic device than a straight analogy.

For Jefferts Schori, Trinitarian doctrine is a form of swaggering illogic -- not really logic at all, but verbal sleight of hand. It's all part of a con. Claiming to see beyond contradiction -- beyond two plus two equals four -- is the conceit of pampered academia, the world where somebody else has to remember to turn out the lights and call the fire department if they smell smoke.

There's something Clintonesque in Dr. Schori's theatrics. When questions of fact came up, Clinton's responses were never evaluated on the basis of their veracity, but on the basis of sheer chutzpah. The public was trained not to look for facts but only to determine whether Bubba had "pulled it off" -- performed his street theater interpretation of what truth telling might look like when every last person knew he was lying. After a while the facts became irrelevant; only the performance mattered.

The Presiding Bishop is making a case for "two plus two equals five" as the new orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church. Her bishops call it "the generous orthodoxy of our Prayer Book tradition" - reconciling the irreconcilable.

Make no mistake: the new orthodoxy will seek out new heresies, which will be purged by new inquisitions. This latest round of "affirming the tension" is only a phase in the Episcopal Church's ongoing politics of personal destruction.

-- The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of Saint Luke, Orlando, Florida. He is a regular VOL columnist.