Bishop James Jones and the challenge to unity

“ ... it is rather the force of custom, whereby the Church having so long found it good to continue under the regiment of her virtuous bishops, doth still uphold, maintain, and honour them in that respect, than that any such true and heavenly law can be shewed, by the evidence whereof it may of a truth appear that the Lord himself hath appointed presbyters for ever to be under the regiment of bishops, in what sort soever they behave themselves. Let this consideration be a bridle unto them, let it teach them not to disdain the advice of their presbyters ...”

Before he composed his recent address to the Liverpool Diocesan Synod, Bishop James Jones would have done well to have considered the above words of Richard Hooker, found in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (VII.v.8).

One wonders, for example, from how many of his presbyters Bishop Jones sought advice before advancing the opinions he has presented in his speech. One wonders also how his presbyters now feel, given that Bishop Jones has clearly decided that ‘his’ diocese will henceforth adopt a more liberal position on the question of homosexuality.

Earlier signs
Sadly, Bishop Jones signalled his changing views (dare one say his ‘changing attitude’?) on this matter two years ago with an essay entitled ‘Making Space for Truth and Grace’, published in A Fallible Church (Darton, Longman and Todd, edited by Kenneth Stevenson). In this, he defined four ‘walls’ within which he believed debate about human sexuality ought to take place in his diocese.

The first was, in his words, “the authoritative Biblical emphasis upon the uniqueness of marriage as a divine ordinance for the ordering of human society and the nurture of children.”

The second, however, was what he also claimed to be “authoritative Biblical examples of love between two people of the same gender.” Those he gave were “Jesus and his beloved and David and Jonathan,” but I have noted elsewhere the contentious nature of Jones’s exegesis in applying the latter case to modern same-sex relationships.

His third ‘wall’ was “the role of conscience in the Anglican moral tradition,” which, he argued, trumped even the oath of canonical obedience in that, “should you be pressed to do something which in good conscience you deem not to be honest then conscience would demand that you dissent.” That point may yet come back to haunt him.

His fourth ‘wall’, meanwhile, was the need for unity, on the basis that, “disunity saps the energy of the church.”

The last theme is very much to the fore in his speech to his Synod:

As Bishop called to “maintain the spirit of unity in the bond of peace” in the Diocese of Liverpool where we have the full spectrum of moral opinion on human sexuality I believe that to have “diversity without enmity” ... provides a safe and a spiritually and emotionally healthy place for Christians of differing convictions to discern the will of God for our lives.

A plea for ‘ethical variety’
In short, Bishop Jones believes that Christians can, within the Church of England, accept varying views on homosexual practice, just as they have long accepted varying views on pacifism:

Just as the church over the last 2000 years has come to allow a variety of ethical conviction about the taking of life and the application of the sixth Commandment so I believe that in this period it is also moving towards allowing a variety of ethical conviction about people of the same gender loving each other fully.

(For which latter phrase read, ‘having sex with each other physically’.)

One of the most peculiar things in his whole argument, however, is precisely the Bishop’s choice of the “sixth Commandment”, for he certainly could not have pulled off the same approach with the first, second, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth. Thus there are, one imagines, very few ‘pro-adultery’ Christians, even within Anglicanism, and, in all probability, just as few (apart from the odd eccentric) who support stealing, lying, idolatry, and so on.

Actually, the Bishop could have made a much better case with the fourth commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” particularly since the word translated “kill” in the sixth commandment generally applies to murder or accidental slaying, and thus has no real bearing on the issue of pacifism, which (given the rest of the Old Testament) has surely been argued on other grounds than that the Commandments absolutely prohibit killing anyone ever.

Once again, the Bishop’s biblical exegesis is contorted on a subject where the need is for clarity. Doubtless he has his reasons for choosing pacifism as the ‘test case’. But as I have indicated, a quick comparison with the other commandments shows that it is in danger of being ‘special pleading’ rather than convincing proof.

The reality of division
But that is not the real problem. The real problem is that the, precisely on the basis of a plea for unity, the Bishop has committed his diocese to a position which will exacerbate division because it is not the adopted position of the Church of England. This is clear even within his own pronouncements. Thus he says,

I bring it to you today to say that this is where I now am, and where I believe the Diocese of Liverpool now is and where I hope that the Church of England and the Anglican Communion might also move. (emphasis added)

He is not where he once was, he believes he has positioned his Diocese where he now is, and he hopes the rest of the Church may catch up! And that position is thus:

... we do already as a Diocese accept a diversity of ethical convictions about human sexuality in the same way that the church has always allowed a diversity of ethical opinion on taking human life.

In other words, some say this, and some say that, and who is to say who is wrong? Yet this is not a recipe for unity but for disaster. Bishop Jones needs to read Richard John Neuhaus on ‘The Unhappy Fate of Optional Orthodoxy’, and to look at what the revisionist lobby is saying. The midway position on this topic is not one that can be sustained, not least because it is not one that the key protagonists wish to hold.

A divergence from Issues
Yet we should be in no doubt that Bishop Jones himself has already adopted the view that there is little if anything wrong with the sexual expression of same-sex attraction:

If on this subject of sexuality the traditionalists are ultimately right and those who advocate the acceptance of stable and faithful gay relationships are wrong what will their sin be? That in a world of such little love two people sought to express a love that no other relationship could offer them? And if those advocating the acceptance of gay relationship are right and the traditionalists are wrong what will their sin be? That in a church that has forever wrestled with interpreting and applying Scripture they missed the principle in the application of the literal text?

In this, Bishop Jones is at odds with the House of Bishops, especially as that House expressed itself in the very substantial 2003 document Some Issues in Human Sexuality: A guide to the debate. There we read this:

The teaching of Issues in Human Sexuality ... does not have legally binding authority in the Church of England [...].

However, because it reflects the current collective position of the House of Bishops, and because the Church of England is an episcopally led Church in which bishops have a particular responsibility for guiding the Church in matters of faith and morals, it should be accepted by those in the Church as possessing considerable theological and pastoral authority.

Bishop Jones clearly now regards the teaching of Issues in Human Sexuality as a matter, fundamentally, of indifference — as something on which we ought simply to agree to differ:

... I believe the day is coming when Christians who equally profoundly disagree about the consonancy of same gender love with the discipleship of Christ will in spite of their disagreement drink openly from the same cup of salvation.

He must, therefore, be somewhat out of step with the other bishops, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to his attempts to reposition the Diocese of Liverpool — not least in the international arena when he refers to,

... a partnership between an African Diocese taking a traditional stance on gay relationships and a Church of England Diocese which is moving toward embracing a range of ethical convictions on this issue and which is also in partnership with a Diocese in the Episcopal Church of America. (emphasis added)

Note again, it is clear from his language that he regards the Diocese of Liverpool as no longer being where it was (where the rest of England is), and now nearer to the position of TEC!

Conscience and obedience
But in closing we must return to the question of conscience and canonical obedience, raised by Bishop Jones himself. The number of traditionalist clergy in the Diocese of Liverpool may be large or small, but they must surely be waking up this morning with troubled consciences. The Bishop has declared not only his own position but, ostensibly, that of his diocese as being one which accepts diversity on sexuality. Is this a position which his ‘presbyters’ would advise him (following Hooker) to adopt?

If not, then they might like to consider the rest of what Hooker said to the bishops,

Let this consideration be a bridle unto them, let it teach them not to disdain the advice of their presbyters, but to use their authority with so much the greater humility and moderation, as a sword which the Church hath power to take from them.

Of course the Bishop of Liverpool may not be deposed by his presbyters — not under the present arrangements of establishment. But he may be disobeyed on the basis of conscience, and it is Bishop Jones himself who has advocated this.

Sadly, Bishop Jones has not merely strained his own credentials, he has challenged the unity of his diocese and his national church. The situation is tragic, not least because this has been done in the name of unity. The question now is what the other bishops, and his own priests, will do in response.

John P Richardson
March 7, 2010

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FCA unity and Anglican 'communion'

Just a thought, but one of the objections being levelled against the FCA is that it is an ‘unholy alliance’ of Catholics and Evangelicals, sharing a widespread opposition to ordained women and homosexual practice, but divided on almost everything else that matters, such as ecclesiology, theology of priesthood and ministry, doctrine and use of scripture, sacrifice of the mass, praying to the saints and for the dead, lay presidency at the eucharist, episcopal authority, Mary, etc (I quote from elsewhere).

Now maybe I’m missing something here, but isn’t this almost exactly what the opponents of the FCA think the Anglican Communion ought to be —a church which unites people who can disagree completely about absolutely all the above, but who are united in their commitment to the purposes of the Church?

So what is the difference? Isn’t unity in disagreement just what they want from the Anglican Communion? Why does FCA attract the ire of Anglican ‘inclusivists’ for forming an alliance which embraces exactly the kind of breadth they think Anglicanism should include?

My guess is because they can see that FCA types are different from themselves, in that in the different ‘wings’ present at the FCA launch, these things have been seen as issues of what Francis Schaeffer used to call ‘true truth’ —issues on which there is a right or a wrong —whereas for themselves they are a matter, ultimately, of ‘opinion’, where I am entitled to mine and you are entitled to yours.

What annoys them is what they (rightly) see as a possible inconsistency —people who ought to disagree acting as if they agree. And as I have said already, there are deep and serious issues here.

But what they fail to see is their own ‘beam’, that this is just the kind of Church they want: one where we can all ‘disagree in unity’ —with maybe a bit more prominence for women priests and a bit more acceptance of homosexuality, but without even (in some cases) insisting on these. That, after all, would be the Open Evangelical position, would it not?

Perhaps the real difference then is the understanding of truth —that, and the view of what are the purposes of the Church. The real problem is surely that the unity of the FCA is seen as a threat to the unity of those who dislike the FCA. Both want unity, but it is the kind of unity, and the issues of unity, which are creating the hostility.

Revd John P Richardson
11 July 2009

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Richard Holloway and the limits of Anglicanism

Ed: I'm reproducing this article from Geoffrey Kirk as it sits very well with my own series on unity and Anglicanism.

Just when you thought it was safe…Richard Holloway is back! The white hope of the Loughborough Conferences, founder member of Affirming Catholicism and former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church has come a long way. The campaigner for women’s ordination who once described opponents as ‘seeking to sweep back the tide of God’ has now taken leave of the deity to whom he once appealed. Holloway no longer believes in God – but he continues to function as a bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church, celebrating the sacraments and preaching the word (not, of course of God; but presumably of …Richard Holloway).

Like Jack Spong before him, Holloway is making a splash on the lecture circuit. ‘A bishop rethinks…’ ‘Agnostic bishop challenges churchmen…’

However offensive it may be to the rest of us, Holloway has grasped that there is money to be made from being an unbelieving prelate; a notoriety not readily available to a private individual. Richard Holloway ‘the Voltaire of Morningside’ would be nowhere near as marketable a commodity as an atheistical bishop of the Episcopal Church. And so he hangs on to the mitre he once cast into the Thames; to the eternal shame of the Church to which he belongs.

Vain and self-serving though this atheistical posturing is, Holloway has characteristically touched a raw nerve. ‘The worldwide Anglican Church has made room for "happy clapping" evangelicals, bells-and-smells Catholics, women priests and, in the United States, openly gay clergy and even practitioners of other faiths,’ he is reported as saying. ‘So surely, he argues, it can find room for people like him - Christians who don't believe in God.’ The challenge is to define and justify the limits of Anglican comprehensiveness; and he knows that it will be no mean task.

Outsiders might well conclude that Anglicans can only get agitated about second order issues – women’s ordination, same sex marriages and gay bishops. When it comes to dogma (even at the most fundamental level) they exhibit a culpable coyness. Why does the appointment of an openly gay bishop result in threats of schism and actual infringements of provincial boundaries and the continuance in episcopal orders of a Spong or a Holloway do nothing of the sort? It is a good question.

The answer (as Richard Holloway has astutely grasped) is that there is, and always has been, a strain of theological levity at the heart of Anglicanism. The price of being a comprehensive (or as they now say ‘inclusive’) church has been to come dangerously close to not being a church at all.

This theological levity is most readily apparent in two related areas: the Eucharist and Holy Orders.

Anglicans believe (or have said that they believe) that orders are an effective sign of communion in the Church. In particular they have maintained that episcopacy operates to enhance koinonia in three modes: geographically (from diocese to diocese), historically (down the ages) and locally (within each diocese). At the same time they have maintained a doctrine of provincial autonomy such that orders are thought to be at the disposal of each local church, without reference to others or to the Church Universal.

It does not take a genius to see that these understandings are mutually exclusive. Nor is it difficult to grasp the ecumenical consequences of such confusion. Anglicans have traditionally sought to establish with other churches what has been called ‘full visible unity’, a unity necessarily involving full recognition and interchangeability of orders. They have sought, in other words, in relationship with other churches, what they will not and cannot establish amongst themselves!

Things are no better with regard to the Holy Communion. What is the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist? The honest answer must be that no such thing exists (as the studied and self-conscious ambiguity of Anglican liturgies serves to demonstrate). The ‘family meal of Christians’ is for Anglicans a battleground of incompatible theologies, from Transubstantiation to Zwinglianism with all the cosy ambiguities between. One party has it monstrances and the other pours the leftovers back into the bottle. The very best that can be said is that on a matter that should unite them, Anglicans agree to be divided.

Richard Holloway has seen all this. Here is his Eucharistic theology as recently reported in an Australian newspaper:

‘It very much depends on the interpretation you put on it,’ he explained. ‘I still very much believe in the community of the church. One of the most fundamental strengths of the church, or any religious community, is that it is still an expression of the human family. The eucharist [communion], in my understanding, is the family meal. It is the way you express your identity and membership of that body. I happen to believe that it is a beautiful art form as well.’

What, he wants you to ask yourself, could be more Anglican than that - where institutional loyalty replaces doctrinal certainty, and the aesthetic takes precedence over the theological?

The tragedy of those who are seeking to defend some sort of orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion is that Holloway has unerringly identified the wound of Anglicanism, and that no one seems capable of cauterizing it. GAFCON, FoCA, the Anglican Province of North America: all embrace the mixed economy of orders and the brand of theological fudge which has precipitated the present crisis. And - which is further grist to the Holloway mill - they all seem to be held together, not by doctrinal agreement but by mere prurience.

Against such a background it is all too easy for the likes of him to preen themselves as ‘courageous’, ‘open’, ‘inclusive’, ‘Christian’ even.

Geoffrey Kirk+ (FiFUK)

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Overcoming schism - the nettle Protestantism must grasp

Recently I spent an hour looking at (as it happens) the Ship of Fools discussion forums —but the same would be true of numerous Protestant blogs and websites —and I have come to the conclusion that what we see represented there is not Christianity, in the strict sense, at all. Rather, what Cardinal Newman said in the 19^th century is undoubtedly true of many modern believers who think of themselves as Christian:

“Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word ...”

The problem is, we do not see ‘faith’ as trusting in a received tradition passed on to us through others, as it originally was. Instead, ‘faith’ has come to mean a completely individualistic, ‘pick and mix’, self-made religion. It is ‘my faith’, not ‘the Church’s faith’, around which I organize my life. Pretending to be disciples —learners —of Christ, we have enthroned ourselves as the final aribiters of what is true.

The result is chaos, at the individual and corporate level. The present-day struggles of Anglicanism are simply the logical outcome of allowing everyone, doctrinally, to do ‘what is right in his or her own eyes’.

In this post I’m going to try to sum up my thoughts about the causes, and possible cure, of this disunity within Protestantism. Here are the key points so far:

1. The gospel demands unity. There is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.’

2. Christian unity is, however, ‘unity in the truth’, not in ‘structures’. It is possible to be baptized and enjoying fellowship in the Lord’s supper, yet outside the truth (1 Cor 10:1-6).

3. Historically, Protestantism is inherently divisive. This is clear evidence that something is wrong, since the gospel is inherently unifying.

4. This divisiveness is due not to the principle of sola scriptura, as some have suggested, but to an overestimation of ‘private judgement’.

5. The individual is not the author of doctrine.

6. The Christian is, first and foremost a learner.

7. Christ himself instituted the office of teachers in the Church, from whom Christians should learn the faith.

8. The task of the teacher is faithfully to hand on, and defend, the Apostolic tradition.

9. Teachers therefore need to be as fully aware as possible of the history of the Church and its established doctrines.

10. Theological history helps us discern ‘dead ends’ and ‘positive trends’ (the ‘Gamaliel’ principle). Theological history favours contemporary conservatism.

11. Creeds and confessions represent the past work of the Church in attempting to establish sound doctrine in accordance with the Apostolic tradition.

12. Churches may rightly expect their members to have due regard to their own formularies.

13. A Church (denomination) which does not have proper regard for its formularies will become authoritarian since, in the face of doctrinal division, it will use its disciplinary measures to enforce structural unity.

These things are true, I would suggest, for most Protestant churches, but from here on I’m going to be very ‘Anglican’ in suggesting how things might be improved.

Since the unity of the gospel is ‘unity in the truth’, and since the truth of the gospel is, by Christ’s own devising, entrusted to and imparted by the teaching ministry of the Church, the Church which wishes to prevent internal disunity must look first to the quality of its teaching ministers. In the case of the Church of England, this should mean looking to the bishops, above all, as the ‘gate keepers’ of the ordained ministry.

Unfortunately, the bishops have largely bought into the idea that their role is not to define and defend doctrine, but to ‘referee’ the various doctrinal positions within their dioceses. In others words, they are actually upholding Protestantism’s divisiveness. Far from making things better, they are, in most cases, actively making them worse.

This is not, I must emphasise, because they are bad people. For the most part, they are good people and well-intentioned. But the well-intentioned maintenance of structures which are antithetical to the unity of the gospel is not a Christian action. Nor can it be depicted as the fulfilment of episcopal ministry.

Now this is not to introduce some alien notion into Anglicanism. Rather it is to recall the Church to its founding principles. It is well known that in the Ordinal which forms part of the Church’s formularies, both bishops and priests are required to teach sound doctrine and contradict error. The bishop or the priest who therefore takes a laissez faire attitude at this point is the true ‘alien’ to the Church of England.

Moreover, the parameters of true doctrine are also clearly established within the formularies. The Thirty-nine Articles and the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer include some doctrines and exclude others. And whilst it is undoubtedly true that this is widely disregarded in the Church, that does not make such disregard ‘Anglican’ —rather, it is itself a disregard of Anglicanism.

There would, moreover, be little that could stand in a bishop’s way should he decide to urge both his ministers and the people in his diocese to take these doctrinal boundaries more seriously. There is surely no-one who could claim he was exceeding his episcopal prerogatives by doing so!

It would thus, for example, be entirely appropriate for the bishop to demand from potential candidates for ordination some demonstration of an awareness of, and engagement with, the Anglican theological heritage. At present, many such candidates are required to write an essay on their understanding of the priesthood. It might be rather more challenging to them, and more useful to both them and the Church in the long term, if they were required to write a similar essay on their responses to the Thirty-nine Articles. Certainly, every training course ought to include a section devoted to their consideration.

Similarly, it would be extremely valuable if the standard liturgy at theological colleges, on training courses, and for Continuing Ministerial Education events were the Book of Common Prayer. The reason is simple: on the one hand, there are many parishes where the BCP is hardly used (sometimes for good, missiological, reasons), and yet, on the other hand, the BCP enshrines (in a way that later liturgies often deliberately do not) the fundamental reformed Anglican understanding of divine service.

Many ordination candidates have almost no experience of this. It is not in their bloodstream, nor will it ever be through their normal liturgical usage. Therefore the college or course ought to make up for this deficit by giving them as much exposure as possible to this heritage.

These three suggestions —that bishops should call their clergy and people back to the Anglican heritage, that ministerial candidates should have engaged with the theology of the Articles, and that those candidates should also be made practically familiar with the Prayer Book —would go some considerable way to establishing that Anglicanism is a confessional faith. The denial of this is surely one of the great myths of our time. Indeed, the suggestion that Anglicanism is not a confessional faith, and specifically a Protestant confession, would have come as a surprise to the compilers of the Articles and the Prayer Book, the Marian martyrs and, not least, to John Henry Newman, who once wrote,

... it is notorious that the Articles were drawn up by Protestants and intended for the establishment of Protestantism ...

This is why the establishment of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is so important. It is not just about ‘politics’, it is about theology —or rather two theologies, one that sees the individual as the final judge in matters of faith and doctrine, to be decided privately between himself and God, the other that sees the individual as the recipient of both faith and doctrine through means instituted by Christ, but reliant on others.

This, I suggest, is the nettle Protestantism needs to grasp if it is to overcome its schismatic nature and regain one of the true marks of the Church —that we are united in the truth of God’s holy Word.

Revd John P Richardson
1 June 2009

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Unity, the Church and denominations

What is to prevent the fissiparation from which Protestantism has historically suffered? What is to provide the way back into that unity which is the essence of the gospel and the subject of so many urgings from Christ and the Apostles?

To quote a traditional Irish saying, “If I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here.” But here is where we are, so how might we get there?

I have suggested in previous posts that we need to be very careful about ‘private judgement’. Though this is much beloved of Protestants (linked as it often is to the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture), it is a grave error to suppose that the individual should be encouraged to make decisions about doctrine —especially the untrained and inexperienced individual.

As history has shown, sometimes individuals —Athanasius or Luther —must indeed take a stand, and some individuals —Augustine, Calvin, etc —have made massive contributions to doctrinal understanding. But history has given us the chance to sift their contributions and generally doctrine is something for us to receive, not to discern.

To move from our divided ‘here’, to a united ‘there’, then, our first need is humility and our second need is historical awareness. We need to know what the Church has said in the past and learned from the past. And in this respect, if the ‘Gamaliel principle’ has any validity at all it must suggest that history is on the side of the theological conservatives.

A classic example of theological history in action would be our acceptance of the Creeds —particularly the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds, which are the most widely known and used. The issues they addressed were deeply controverted at the time, and the conclusions they reached on the nature of the Trinity do not follow immediately from a ‘plain’ reading of Scripture. Yet they have stood the test of time and resisted efforts to reject or recast them, and we now expect Christians to understand doctrine and read Scripture in the light of them.

This is not to set the Creeds above Scripture. The Anglican Articles, for example, say they are only to be believed because they may be proved from Scripture. But they do set aside alternative —for example, non-Trinitarian —readings of Scripture. And they do this with the general agreement of the vast majority of Western Churches and Christians.

This brings us, however, to a third ‘stepping stone’ from here to there, which is the recognition for many of us that we also stand in a denominational tradition which ought to provide an agreed theological basis for unity.

Historically, denominations have generally arisen over differences in our understanding of the truth —what it is, and how it should be applied. When these differences have become too great for an institution to cope with them, a split has taken place. That being the case, however, we would expect to find within the denomination a substantial agreement on the truth and thus a high degree of unity. We must, therefore, take very seriously the fact that this is observably not the case in many Protestant denominations, including, of course, the Church of England. Indeed, Robbie Low writes,

Anglicans have no common doctrine, no common liturgy and no common orders. In short, Anglicanism lacks the fundamental qualifications to make the bold claim that it is a Church.

Gerald Bray has similarly written in the same vein:

Incompatible beliefs about the ministry, the sacraments and almost anything one cares to name can and do co-exist under the Anglican umbrella, and nobody seems to be able to say what the boundaries of the church’s faith are.

This situation is, frankly, ridiculous! What is the point of being a denomination if the disagreements amongst ourselves are greater than our differences with those outside our supposed ‘boundaries’?

And there is another insidious factor arising out of this. For if unity is not maintained ‘in the truth’, then it must be maintained, ultimately, by force. The denomination which tolerates an ‘anything goes’ approach to belief must, in the end, use its institutional rules, regulations and sanctions to preserve its unity despite disagreements.

We need to remind ourselves —certainly Anglicans need to remind themselves —that our denominations do, for the most part, have confessional origins. In the case of the Church of England, this produced not only the Thirty-nine Articles but also the Book of Common Prayer which expressed a theology in sharp contradistinction to what had gone before.

In short, in denominations with a confessional basis, we are entitled reassert the importance of the confessional statements in the interests of gospel unity. Anglicans should be especially glad that the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement and Declaration reassert doctrinal significance of the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, and those of us in the Church of England with a concern for the gospel should do all we can to align ourselves with this, because they give a clear signal both that we do not embrace unlimited theological diversity and also that we do not regard such diversity as inherently Anglican.

GAFCON, however, also reminds us that provided the boundaries of the Church have some substance and definition, you can actually work with a diversity of expressions of the faith. So, to the annoyance of many of its critics, GAFCON saw Anglo-Catholic Africans sharing the same platform as Puritan Australians.

Some saw this as a betrayal of principle. I would want to argue, rather, that it is entirely principled, provided there is a common acceptance of a shared confessional heritage. In the same way, evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in this country can work together —albeit in a sometimes-limited way —provided we do so as confessionally committed Anglicans.

Unity in the truth, however, does not come automatically. It has to be deliberately sought and systematically maintained through the structural provisions of the institution, and ultimately the responsibility for it rests with those who are empowered to be the doctrinal ‘gatekeepers’.

In short, the clergy of a denomination are the first line of defence regarding the unity of the Church. Or at least they should be! Yet in some denominations —sadly including Anglicanism —the clergy are the last people to whom one would look for an understanding of the historic confessions and formularies. Indeed, ordination seems to be regarded as an official license to believe and teach whatever takes your fancy.

This is the ‘elephant in the living room’ for liberal Protestantism. Disunity is fostered and caused by the very body charged with establishing unity in the faith through the teaching office. What might be done about this will be the subject of a later post.

John P Richardson
28 May 2009

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Unity, schism and private judgement

I’ve not touched the blog for the past couple of weeks as, between other commitments, I’ve been preparing a paper for the Oak Hill School of Theology, which this year was on the subject of ‘Truth, Unity and Schism’.

My brief was to look at some of the practical issues from a ‘grass-roots’ level. What I presented in the end was an attempt to look at the issue of unity and schism from an ecclesiological perspective. How we live the life of the Church, I suggested, affects fundamentally how we handle and, if possible prevent, division.

My starting point, however, was an acknowledgement of the divided nature of Protestantism, observed by my old friend Robbie Low in an article he wrote for New Directions, back in 2004. “The curse of Protestantism,” he declared then, “is division.” And this is because, according to him,

The very nature of [Protestantism’s] origins, self-understanding and approach to the Word of God are inherently schismatic.

And this he blamed on Protestantism’s problem with authority:

In rejecting the authority of the Pope the Western reformers did not abolish autocracy but rather set in train a process the logical end of which is that every man is a pope in his own parish or in his own front room.

The chaos resulting from this is familiar to many:

The upshot is hundreds of ‘churches’, most of them with their own bizarre subdivisions (low, strict and particular, Southern, open etc, etc). In addition, there are thousands upon thousands of one-man band conventicles brought about by the falling out of Brother Smith with Pastor Jones. Pastor Smith, as he has now appointed himself, has the ‘real’ truth and hopes shortly to be needing to rent a bigger Scout Hut than the gravely misled Pastor Jones, his former guru.

Robbie blamed this on the principle of ‘sola scriptura’ —the Bible alone as the Church’s authority. I’m sure this is one reason why he and his wife Sara have now become Roman Catholics. Whilst his criticisms are fair, however, I find myself disagreeing with this part of his analysis. I am sure the problem has to do with our understanding of the truth. However, I find myself rather more drawn at this point to the critique of another Anglican turned Roman, namely John Henry Newman.

In 1849 Newman had published a collection of Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (‘mixed’, in this context, meaning ‘made up of Catholics and Protestants’). In one of these, ‘Faith and Private Judgement’, he made this stark assessment:

Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word ... and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change.

But, as Newman observed, people (or at least Protestants) undoubtedly do change their beliefs, and this he attributed directly to the combination of Scripture and private judgement:

Since men now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher, you may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their own deductions more strongly at one time than at another, they will change their minds about them, or perhaps deny them altogether; whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is, belief that what a preacher says to him comes from God.

Once again, the criticism seems fair enough —and not least when it comes to evangelical Protestants, who fancy themselves to be completely committed to the ‘authority’ of Scripture, but who seem to be rather prone to change their minds about what Scripture ‘authoritatively’ says. Now it teaches penal substitution, now it doesn’t. Now it is anti-homosexuality, now it isn’t, and so on.

By contrast, according to Newman, the primitive Apostolic preaching called for obedient faith:

Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgement.

Compare this, Newman argues, with the person who goes by their own estimation of the Bible:

Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or acts of mind quite distinct from each other; —to believe simply what a living authority tells you, and to take a book such as Scripture, and to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you choose to see in it, and nothing more?

Is this not exactly what we see in many Protestant churches and amongst many evangelical individuals? Previously ‘received truths’ about what Scripture says have been in overturned as a person has ‘seen the (new) light’ and decides they can no longer believe as they once did.

There is much about Newman’s approach which may be criticized, but there is something in it, and particularly in what he wrote about the attitude of new converts and the rôle of the Church in relation to them:

... when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them.

This is not, frankly, an attitude much in evidence today. Instead, we have taken as our guiding principle that advocated by J C Ryle, writing at almost the same time as Newman:

Reader, this is private judgment. This is the right you are to exercise if you love your soul. You are not to believe things in religion merely because they are said by Popes or Cardinals, —by Bishops or Priests, —by Presbyters or Deacons, —by Churches, Councils, or Synods, —by Fathers, Puritans, or Reformers. You are not to argue, “Such and such things must be true, because these men say so.” You are not to do so. You are to prove all things by the Word of God.

Now I am much more a fan (and a reader) of Ryle than Newman, but I think Ryle is mistaken. It is true that we mustn’t believe something just because someone ‘in authority’ says so —the Apostle Paul gives the same caution in Galatians 1. And it is also true that we must “prove all things by the Word of God.” But we cannot always and invariably look, finally, to our own private judgement for a verdict.

On the contrary, as Gerald Bray has recently written,

What is easy to overlook in the history of Christian doctrine, though it becomes clear once it is pointed out, is that no individual has ever been given the authority to determine what orthodoxy is.

That being the case, we must surely check our private judgement against the authority of the wider Church, rather than the other way round.

Our problem, in other words, is not that we give too much credence to the Bible, nor is it (as Newman and Low both suggest) that we don’t give enough to the Pope. It is rather that we give too much to our own opinions. After all, if not just those naughty popes and cardinals, but bishops, priests, presbyters, deacons, churches, councils, synods, the Fathers, the Puritans and the Reformers all come down one way, and I come down another, where does the balance of probability lie?

I hope to post later on what I went on to say this means in practice.

John Richardson
21 May 2009

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