Some Basic Presuppositions of this paper:
1. God's world mission is the Bible's big story
2. God's covenant with creation is God's commitment to mission and his invitation to humanity is to communion (participation) in his mission
3. God is Covenantal, binding himself in the Missional life, death and resurrection of Jesus to be known in the Scriptural witness inspired by the Holy Spirit for our transformation
4. God's mission in the world - revealed and established in the Lord Jesus Christ - is for the blessing in Christ of all peoples of all places with the life and hope of new creation in the Spirit
Outline of the Paper
In the following ten sections I argue for a remaking of Anglicanism around a renewal of our understanding of the relationship between covenant, mission and Scripture. In part A. Some Ecumenical and Missional Reflections on the Windsor Report (sections 1-3) I explore how we can learn what this looks like in another tradition (the Baptist one) and then reflect on what implications this has for the Anglican Communion in relation to the Windsor process. I argue that this will require a remaking of Anglicanism around a new understanding of covenant, mission and scripture that will address the unresolved question of authority in Anglicanism.
In part B. A Covenant for Communion in Mission (sections 4-7) I suggest that this remaking can itself be rooted in a pattern of covenant found in Scripture which is shown to be missional. Specifically this is the pattern of the Sinai Covenant. I then explore how such an understanding must then rest on theology of a Covenantal, Missional and Scriptural God. This highlights the connection between the process of developing an Anglican Covenant and the need to provide a theological framework that will entail an adequate form of Anglican Theological Education to inform and explore its significance in mission practice.
In part C. Covenant as Generative Centre for Mission (sections 8-10) I consider an approach to Covenant, which sees it as a resource for generating missional capital. This is modelled on the an interpretation of the-Great-Commission-as-Covenant. I then briefly outline how mission capital has been developed and expended in the planting and nurturing of Anglican Churches worldwide. And how it is essential that any Anglican Covenant in remaking Anglicanism resonate, sustain and shape the Communion in a way that does not deny the mission origins of the Church in the British Isles and then more widely in the Anglican Communion.
A. Some Ecumenical and Missional Reflections in the Windsor Report
"A missionary God is always opening up the communion of the divine life for relationships with creation, so that covenant is an open offer and not a privilege confined to a limited number of the elect." Paul Fiddes (2003 p.257)
1. Baptists, Covenant and Mission
When you're in difficulties it's sometimes helpful to look at how other people do things - to see if they've got any better ideas! For various reasons I've been reading about Baptists recently. One of the things I've discovered, particularly about the British Baptist movement, is an emphasis on covenant. Anglicans who are thinking about the crisis in their Communion, and about the proposal to draw up an Anglican Covenant, may therefore find it helpful to read a bit more about the Baptists. (I've found Paul Fiddes' book Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Paternoster 2003) very helpful, especially chapters 2, 3, 4, 10 and 11.)
Baptist covenants predate their confessions. Baptist life and mission is shaped by the vision and values of covenant: relationships with other Christians are rooted in God's new covenantal relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ. Like Anglicans, Baptists have no single theologian to whom they look as their founding father. So no one theologian has provided Baptists with a confessional basis for what it means to be Baptist (not even Calvin); for them, it is the covenantal way of being church that is most significant - what they call "walking together".
For Baptists a covenant is first of all with God and then with fellow believers: "It was an early Baptist, John Smyth, who made the creative theological step of linking together the horizontal covenant and the vertical covenant; so in 1607 he defined the church as a visible community of saints where 'two or three or more saints join together by covenant with God and themselves.'" (P. Fiddes: Tracks and Traces, 76)
Of course, English Baptists were deeply influenced by Calvin and by the subsequent restrictions of hyper-Calvinism. But, later on, theologians like Andrew Fuller reworked Baptist theology, leading to a rediscovery of world mission through a more evangelistic expression of covenant; and hence the establishing of the Baptist Mission Society and the sending of missionaries like the pioneering William Carey.
Reflecting on Andrew Fuller's significance, for how Baptist thought and mission has developed, Paul Fiddes accepts that Fuller was obviously limited by the Particular Baptist thought of this time, yet in "his missionary thinking, a theology of the divine image and all sufficient atonement is being placed alongside a theology of covenant to prevent an appeal to covenant in a restrictive way. I suggest that a true understanding of the mission of God needs to combine them. A missionary God is always opening up the communion of the divine life for relationships with creation, so that covenant is an open offer and not a privilege confined to a limited number of the elect." (Tracks and Traces p.257) For Baptists "walking together" includes the horizontal of world mission as participation in the vertical of God's mission.
2. Anglicans, Covenant and Mission
As we struggle through this phase of change in the Anglican Communion we can learn a few things from the Baptists:
First, their ecclesiology is framed by an understanding of covenant in which the relationship with God is inseparable from the relationship with others. The NT metaphor of the Body of Christ, used extensively in the Windsor Report (WR) clearly reflects this, but perhaps an understanding of the church as a covenantal community would make explicit the intentionality implied and needed in the Body metaphor?
Secondly it seems that in the Baptist's evolution a world mission perspective was integrated into their ecclesiology in a more coherent way than it was in Anglicanism. Though there clearly were ecclesiological commitments and strategies in Anglican mission (eg the three-self church and missionary bishop models of CMS and UMCA) perhaps the over-hierarchical and Established nature of the Church of England was an inhibiter to the development of a coherent new missional Anglican ecclesiology?
For these reasons I would argue that the Covenant provides an opportunity for the remaking of Anglicanism by developing a covenantal ecclesiology. This would fundamentally affect the historical, 'accidental', way in which Anglican identity has emerged and significantly changed our understanding of the nature of episcopacy. But before considering what this might look like there is a deeper issue to which the Baptist tradition point us: that the church in being covenantal is primarily missional. For a covenantal Anglican Communion to become primarily missional, in a way that includes our historical development, would I suggest, amount to the conscious integration of the modern missionary movement into Anglican ecclesiology.
3. Making Anglicanism Missional
"mission ... is prior to the church, and constitutive of its very existence" (Bevans&Schroeder 2004 p13)
The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced the members of the group that will design the Covenant proposed in the Windsor Report (WR). The significance of this Covenant has been variously interpreted. For some it is just a measure for the current crisis, for others it offers a pragmatic chance to sort out long unresolved issues. For yet more this an opportunity for an intentional remaking of Anglicanism, eg Darren Marks suggests WR articulates: "a new emerging Anglican ecclesiology" ("The Windsor Report: A Theological Commentary" Journal of Anglican Studies 4.2. Dec 2006, pp 157-76, p.158). This, he says, is found first in WR's vision of the Church, and secondly in its two disjunctions with previous Anglican ecclesiology, ie the rediscovery of the Protestant Voice and the de-historicising of Anglicanism (ie taking Anglicanism out of England). In both these there's a distinction from Catholic ecclesiology and yet WR resonates with aspects of the Catholic understanding of faithful discernment in a community of disciples, ie in discipleship the church community discerns the divine community revealed in the missio Dei of Jesus.
If Marks is right, then the Covenant is a unique opportunity for the remaking of Anglicanism in which mission is both prior to the church and, through the Covenant, mission becomes intentionally constitutive of its very existence. For those of us involved in the Mission Societies this implies and requires that there is now a need for a conscious integration of the modern missionary movement into Anglicanism.
That mission is prior to the church is affirmed by WR, when, as Marks says, it recognises the prior reality for the Church of the One who is the Lord of mission: "The Church is the place that participates in the Gospel story of the Triune Lord" (p.159). Yet when WR sets outs its Biblical vision of the Church I would argue that this vision has the interpretative power it has precisely because the Anglican Communion already reflects something of this vision; and that this reality is as a result of the modern missionary movement in which the gospel was shared around the world, churches were planted and supported in different contexts, and local cultures and societies were offered educational, medical and agricultural development, etc.
So if the vision of the Church in WR is that it is "transtemporal and trans-cultural, the place or people enabled to confess Christ and to continue the Gospel mission, which is nothing more than a declaration on the nature and work of the Triune God" (p159), then the route through to this vision for Anglicans is, I think, via the Biblical vision that inspired the modern missionary movement - this included taking Anglicanism out of England and vice-versa! So de-historicising does not mean being a-historical.
In Marks' judgement the Windsor Report only partially answers "the only primary question, in Anglican ecclesiology, which is the issue of authority" (p.163). It is this primary question which the Covenant must address if it is to be successful and it should do so following the same trajectory established in Windsor, ie with the clear vision of the Church, and with the two disjunctions mentioned above. Crucial here is the Protestant Voice. Fundamentally this means accepting the authority of Scripture's 'big story' about the world; whilst also recognising that the gospel is interpreted contextually. Re-establishing a theology of the Bible as Scripture, in which there is missional hermeneutic, is the most important way of addressing the authority issue. A missional hermeneutic explores the nature of Biblical authority in relation to God's mission, and to the participation of humanity in God's mission, as seen in the Bible.
Here Scripture is not just one of the four things a Church must accept to be a Church, as in the Anglican Quadrilateral; rather Scripture is the world that the Church inhabits: the grand narrative of God's mission in which the Church participates. The problem with the Anglican Quadrilateral is that the four elements (the Bible, Two Sacraments, Creeds and historic Episcopate) are not held together by a Biblical vision of God's mission providing a scriptural basis for authority. What the Covenant must not do is to replicate the proto-Covenant of the Quadrilateral: it must be scriptural.
B. A Covenant for Communion in Mission
4. Designing the Covenant
If Anglicanism is to be covenantal, missional and scriptural (cms!) then we might look for a design of a missional covenant in Scripture. The Sinai Covenant and its reinterpretation in Christ could be used as a pattern. In simple terms, six things are found in the Sinai Covenant: preamble about God's mission, the historical Biblical narrative of mission, the commands and stipulations of the Covenant, the preservation and propagation of the Covenant, the witnesses to the Covenant, and the warnings to, and responsibilities of, those who make the covenant.
Using this pattern we could outline the New Covenant God made with us in Jesus:
1. Preamble about who God is: the God whose mission is to reconcile all things in Christ and whose wisdom in doing this will be revealed in the Church, his Body;
2. Historical Biblical Narrative describing what God has done with Israel, in Christ and through his Church to establish his Kingdom and to show what it looks like;
3. Commandments/Stipulations: those things which all parties agree reflect the Kingdom way of life, its criteria and identity as envisaged in Preamble & Narrative;
4. Preservation & Propagation: how God's covenant with humanity is preserved within the covenant community and also shared with all peoples through mission;
5. Witnesses to the covenant: the parties concerned and those who support the covenant from other covenantal communities already having their own covenants;
6. Responsibilities and Warnings: implications for living out the covenant, warnings about breaking the covenant, and processes for restoring the covenant.
Based on the argument so far and we can now show how these six aspects relate to what would be essential to an Anglican Covenant that had evolved from WR:
1. A statement about the prior given reality of the revealed mission of the Triune God, with an exploration of how God's intention to covenant with humanity reveals both his freedom and ours in the formation, salvation and completion of creation.
2. An affirmation of scripture's authoritative narration of God's mission with Israel, in Jesus, and through the apostolic Church and how scripture continues to form the covenantal community of God in its mission, teaching, morals and social engagement.
3. An interpretation of the Church as a covenantal "community of disciples" whose vision is of an every-member participation in the worldwide missio Dei emerging out of a gospel mission that was first brought to the British Isles and was subsequently intentionally shared with other peoples resulting in the formation of the Communion;
4. An outline of how leadership, particularly Episcopacy, relates to these first three elements, clarifying how bishops are to be the covenantal persons who bind the local congregations and its leaders to the Covenant and who also connect with the wider Covenanting church through Episcopal fellowship. This includes the place of Biblical teaching, the Sacraments and the tradition of the Church encapsulated in the creeds.
5. A proposal for how the Anglican Covenant would be witnessed not just amongst its own in the Anglican Communion but also with those Churches who have a similar or sympathetic perspective to the Covenant and who would support the Communion.
6. A memorandum that can be canonically binding that states the responsibilities and accountabilities of the covenanting churches, including the implications of breaking the covenant and the means by which churches can be restored.
5. A Covenantal God
"For Barth, salvation is the fulfilment of a covenant, an eternal covenant, according to which God purposes to bring the human race into reconciled relation with himself. Salvation is the reconciliation between God and the human creation whom he loves in Christ:
reconciliation in the Christian sense of the world ... is the history in which God concludes and confirms his covenant with man, ..." (C. Gunton: "Salvation " in John Webster (ed): The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth CUP 2000 p.144
For Barth the relationship between God and humanity is covenantal. This covenant is expressed through creation, history, salvation, and also in the ongoing work of reconciliation as recreation: the promised new creation which fulfils God's covenant. God is the covenantal God who has determined to reconcile the world to himself; this is supremely expressed and achieved in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is God's covenantal relationship with humanity and humanity's covenantal relationship with God. The covenant is the relationship that God has with humanity revealed in Christ.
When Jesus makes 'the new covenant' through his blood he is bringing to completion the process by which God has revealed his commitment to humanity, even to the point of reconciling humanity to himself at the supreme cost of his own self-offering in order to fore-give. Such an offering is also the response that a created humanity makes to the God of all creation through worship and service, as expressed in the relationship with neighbour, and with the stranger and enemy. In Jesus the long exile of humanity from God is broken and the new reconciled relationships have begun.
6. A Missional God
It is as we reflect on God's mission that we begin to understand the nature of God's covenantal relations. Fundamentally, these are God's own relationships as Trinity opened out and revealed as the way that God relates to creation, particularly humanity. The covenants that God makes with Israel are missional in purpose: they are intended to reconcile the individual, the people, the nations, and the creation to himself; with the successive failures of these covenants emerges the hope for a new covenant. It is this new covenant that the prophets foretold and which Jesus fulfilled. In this new covenant it is God in relation to himself in, through and with humanity, who establishes the new covenant that cannot be broken because it is the embodied expression of God's covenant with himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When Christ gives the disciples the commission to take the good news to all nations there is a covenantal shape to his command that echoes the Sinai covenant but therefore also interprets the nature of that covenant in terms of mission. So the key elements are found: there is the element of who God is, the one who has all authority of heaven and earth; there is command and response and the need to teach in the manner that is of, and like, that of Christ; and there is the promise of blessing.
The great climatic vision of what this means in terms of God's ultimate purpose, his mission and his intention for creation, is found in Revelation where we are given a vision of all peoples, nations and tongues surrounding God's throne and worshipping "the Lamb". This is, of course, the Lamb whose sacrifice reconstitutes the old covenant in a new covenant secured through the blood of Christ. As Chris Wright says: "the mission of God is as integral to the sequence of the covenants as they are to the overarching grand narrative of the whole Bible" He explains this in relation to the Revelation vision:
"Noah is there in the vision of the new creation, a new heavens and a new earth after judgement. Abraham is there in the ingathering and blessing of all nations from every tongue and language. Moses is there in the covenantal assertion that 'they will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God' and 'the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them'. David is there in the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, and in the identity of Jesus as the Lion of Judah and root of David. And the New Covenant is there in the fact that all of this will be accomplished by the blood of the Lamb who was slain." (The Mission of God IVP 2006 p.356).
7. A Scriptural God
In the Christian tradition we are not saved by a revelation of written truth, we are saved by the loving relationship of the enacted sacrifice of Christ, which he requires us to remember through the practice of the new covenant meal. Having said that, and having also acknowledged the importance of the oral culture from which the Christian faith emerged, there is nevertheless a special place for Scripture in the way that Christians come to believe and worship God through Jesus in the Spirit. The way of Scripture reading is the way of Christian living and vice-versa. In other words, as we read Scripture so we come to understand the covenantal God in whose mission we are invited to participate. And as we do mission so we come to understand more of the God who is revealed in the Scriptures as the covenantal God.
This puts Scripture in central place in the outworking of God's covenantal relationship with humanity in mission. Reading Scripture therefore places us in the force-field of the covenantal God, and exposes us to the purposes of God's mission. We hear God as Word. As we read scripture and are changed so we become more of who we are called to be as God's creators and so we become participants in God's covenant and begin to live out his mission. The authority and clarity of Scripture is therefore known as we are reconciled, sanctified and participate in mission. As John Webster says:
"Scripture's clarity is neither an intrinsic element of the text as text nor simply a fruit of exegetical labour; it is that which the text becomes as it functions in the Spirit-governed encounter between the self-presenting saviour and the faithful reader. To read is to be caught up by the truth-bestowing Spirit of God." (op cit p95)
The primary significance in mission of translating the scripture is the best illustration of what it means for Christians to believe in the Scriptural God who bestows the truth to humanity through his Spirit in the reading of Scripture. It is as the Scriptures have been translated that the Spirit has bestowed the good news and enabled people to be reconciled to God in the new covenant in Christ. The outcome of this, as authors like Lamin Sanneh have argued, has been the releasing of renewing powers within the cultural life of many people groups as local languages are given new significance and become the means by which self-identity is built up and sustained - even within the wider context of colonialism. That Scripture is translatable into any language points to the God whose fullness is seen as every tongue comes to confess Jesus as Lord.
C. Covenant as Generative Centre for Mission
8. Generating Missional Capital: Great Commission as Covenant
The purpose of any Anglican Covenant must be to release the economy of God's grace: to be the means by which people are blessed, in the fellowship of the covenant, to know more of the Covenantal, Missional and Scriptural God. The Anglican Covenant is therefore a way of generating and shaping missional capital. In simple terms the Anglican Covenant should be seen as following in the tradition of the Great Commission, Jesus's own re-expression of the Covenant. As Chris Wright argues: "What is not so often noticed is how thoroughly covenantal and indeed Deuteronomic is the form and content of Matthew's record" (op cit p.354) The three core elements of the Covenant (as suggested earlier) are found in the Great Commission: the self introduction of God as King (Jesus has all authority), the imperative demands of the covenant relationship (to disciple, baptise and teach),the promise of blessing (Jesus will be with his followers for ever). Wright concludes:
The Great Commission is nothing less than a universalised covenant proclamation. It could even be regarded as the promulgation of the new covenant by the risen Jesus, just as his words at the Last Supper were the institution of the new covenant in relation to his death. (p355)
Covenant in the tradition of the Old Testament is often seen in terms of restriction: it applies to, and benefits, only those who can show that they are members of the family to whom God has chosen to reveal himself. This is a particular family, the family of Abraham. So even when this family is expanded the restrictions seem to remain. But if we take a missional interpretation and understand God's intention that his Covenants should be the generative centre for people to discover the blessing of living life in his image and reflecting his place as Lord, then Covenant becomes much more of a missional resource rather than a defining circumference of God's presence. The Old Testament is then seen as the story of God's mission and his attempt to encourage the people of Israel to share the blessing of the Covenant with others.
To re-read and to enact this interpretation of covenant requires entrepreneurs who see the potential and can release the missional capital of covenant. The Anglican Covenant should be written in such a way that the possibility of missional capital being released be the highest priority. As Professor Bill Bolton puts it: "All through Scripture we can see God using the talents of entrepreneurs, not least in the rapid spread of the early church. But the tendency of all organizations is to become fixed and settled and to forget their entrepreneurial heritage, and the church is no exception. In an age of change and uncertainty the church needs to rediscover its original dynamic by releasing the entrepreneurial talent in its midst. This is the greatest task facing the church today." (Entrepreneurs in the Church Nottingham: Grove, Pastoral Series 107, 2006). The Anglican Covenant needs to be seen as a resource for entrepreneurs who want to make a difference through mission.
9. The Development of Missional Capital in Anglicanism
A prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral once told his fellow clergy that "we have, in truth (I am sorry to observe it) a sufficient share of this duty of Preaching Christ to the Gentiles, without looking beyond the Bounds of our Country. We have among ourselves a certain Leaven of Paganism, that is working upon the vitals of Christianity." (quoted by Jeremy Gregory: "The Eighteen-century Reformation: The pastoral task of Anglican clergy after 1689" in J. Walsh, C. Haydon & S. Taylor: The Church of England c1689-1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism Cambridge: CUP, 1993/2002, p.69). Fortunately, the attitude of this prebendary did not prevail in the Church of England and the gospel was spread and the church was planted abroad.
Thus, although Anglicanism beyond Britain initially began with chaplaincy to colonial and commercial expansion from the late 16th C (in India, Far East and Middle East), Anglicanism was primarily spread abroad intentionally. Churches were planted as part of an evangelistic mission that included both the sharing of the gospel and the development of society. This began with the Virginia Company, chartered in 1606, to propagate "Christian Religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance ... and may in time bring infidels and savages to human civility" (W.M. Jacobs: The Making of the Anglican Church Worldwide 1997, p.38).
This first expression of voluntary mission soon developed into a wider movement with the establishment of a variety of mission societies including SPCK in 1699, SPG in 1701 and CMS in 1799 followed by CMJ and SAMS. These Societies, and others, all made significant contributions to the planting and development of Anglican churches around the world. In CMS's case, using current provincial designations, the Society was involved in over 20 Provinces. (See the appendix prepared by John Martin). CMS therefore has a keen interest in the development of a Covenant that will put mission right at the heart of Anglican identity and recognise this historical Anglican priority.
10. Mission and the Communion
The first use of the term Anglican Communion was in 1847 by an American Bishop, Horatio Southgate. This 'Missionary Bishop in the Dominions and Dependencies of the Sultan of Turkey' recalls that to the Eastern Church leaders "I spoke of each of the three branches of the Anglican Communion separately, namely, the English, the Scotch, and the American". (C. Podmore: Aspects of Anglican Identity 2005, p.36)
What we cannot afford to do in the development of the Covenant is to separate the mission spirituality which generated the Communion from that which may be present in situations where the Communion is well established, ie a 'churchy' spirituality. For three reasons, at least, this must be resisted. First, as I have indicated, the Church is rooted in God's mission, which is prior and shapes the mission of the church and therefore shapes the church which serves God's mission as its first priority.
Secondly, Christianity is a religion which is constantly growing and dying in successive waves of expansion and contraction. So where the church was once strong, it can now be seen to be weak and vice versa. The church therefore always needs to be mission-orientated - with the weakest related to the strongest in a constant interchange of resources. This gives a new impetus to the mutual responsibility and interdependence that an Anglican Covenant could embody.
Thirdly, the modern missionary movement, by which much of the Communion was established, reflects the earlier missionary movement that planted the church in Britain. Christianity was planted by missionaries from the undivided early church: from the desert monks of North Africa. This inculturated missionary Christianity, that became Celtic Christianity, evangelised throughout Northern Europe. It had a rhythm of life with God that was rooted in the land and resonated with local people. A second wave of mission to Britain, from the Roman church, also saw another kind of mission initiative in which the see of Canterbury was set up as a missionary diocese. Anglicanism combines the missional streams of both Celtic and Roman Christianity.
For these three reasons, the Communion cannot be interpreted as territorial religion. Though the Reformation did not directly lead to the launch of world mission, its affirmation of the ultimate significance of Jesus as Lord and Saviour, was the latent spiritual resource for what was to come later. The 'yawning gap' (as Barth called it) in Reformation thought and practice, ie world mission, is what the modern Anglican missionary movement filled in partnership with other European mission movements. By echoing the earlier Celtic missionary movement, that networked rather than territorialized communities, Mission Societies like CMS thus moved beyond expansionist, military and cultural imposition, to explore inculturated faith.
In the Anglican Covenant this needs to be clearly stated and understood - not just as background but as fundamental to Christian identity in the Anglican Communion. What the Covenant offers is the opportunity for the fundamental reworking of Anglicanism in a way that is as significant as the Reformation and the subsequent Faith and Order developments in the Church of England. We are, on a global scale, at as a significant point as the Council of Whitby was for the development of the church in England. I think we should not go the Roman way this time, but the Celtic way.
We need to be less churchy and more culturally engaging in terms of showing how our leaders are effective spiritual people and not just tied or titled to their symbolic or institutional significance. Above all, significance should be given to the honour and significance of the everyday mission of the Christian in their life and witness. Let us take this opportunity to find our unity around the kind of Covenant Christ himself made with us and to hold to that as the centre of our Communion.
1. God's world mission is the Bible's big story
2. God's covenant with creation is God's commitment to mission and his invitation to humanity is to communion (participation) in his mission
3. God is Covenantal, binding himself in the Missional life, death and resurrection of Jesus to be known in the Scriptural witness inspired by the Holy Spirit for our transformation
4. God's mission in the world - revealed and established in the Lord Jesus Christ - is for the blessing in Christ of all peoples of all places with the life and hope of new creation in the Spirit
Outline of the Paper
In the following ten sections I argue for a remaking of Anglicanism around a renewal of our understanding of the relationship between covenant, mission and Scripture. In part A. Some Ecumenical and Missional Reflections on the Windsor Report (sections 1-3) I explore how we can learn what this looks like in another tradition (the Baptist one) and then reflect on what implications this has for the Anglican Communion in relation to the Windsor process. I argue that this will require a remaking of Anglicanism around a new understanding of covenant, mission and scripture that will address the unresolved question of authority in Anglicanism.
In part B. A Covenant for Communion in Mission (sections 4-7) I suggest that this remaking can itself be rooted in a pattern of covenant found in Scripture which is shown to be missional. Specifically this is the pattern of the Sinai Covenant. I then explore how such an understanding must then rest on theology of a Covenantal, Missional and Scriptural God. This highlights the connection between the process of developing an Anglican Covenant and the need to provide a theological framework that will entail an adequate form of Anglican Theological Education to inform and explore its significance in mission practice.
In part C. Covenant as Generative Centre for Mission (sections 8-10) I consider an approach to Covenant, which sees it as a resource for generating missional capital. This is modelled on the an interpretation of the-Great-Commission-as-Covenant. I then briefly outline how mission capital has been developed and expended in the planting and nurturing of Anglican Churches worldwide. And how it is essential that any Anglican Covenant in remaking Anglicanism resonate, sustain and shape the Communion in a way that does not deny the mission origins of the Church in the British Isles and then more widely in the Anglican Communion.
A. Some Ecumenical and Missional Reflections in the Windsor Report
"A missionary God is always opening up the communion of the divine life for relationships with creation, so that covenant is an open offer and not a privilege confined to a limited number of the elect." Paul Fiddes (2003 p.257)
1. Baptists, Covenant and Mission
When you're in difficulties it's sometimes helpful to look at how other people do things - to see if they've got any better ideas! For various reasons I've been reading about Baptists recently. One of the things I've discovered, particularly about the British Baptist movement, is an emphasis on covenant. Anglicans who are thinking about the crisis in their Communion, and about the proposal to draw up an Anglican Covenant, may therefore find it helpful to read a bit more about the Baptists. (I've found Paul Fiddes' book Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Paternoster 2003) very helpful, especially chapters 2, 3, 4, 10 and 11.)
Baptist covenants predate their confessions. Baptist life and mission is shaped by the vision and values of covenant: relationships with other Christians are rooted in God's new covenantal relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ. Like Anglicans, Baptists have no single theologian to whom they look as their founding father. So no one theologian has provided Baptists with a confessional basis for what it means to be Baptist (not even Calvin); for them, it is the covenantal way of being church that is most significant - what they call "walking together".
For Baptists a covenant is first of all with God and then with fellow believers: "It was an early Baptist, John Smyth, who made the creative theological step of linking together the horizontal covenant and the vertical covenant; so in 1607 he defined the church as a visible community of saints where 'two or three or more saints join together by covenant with God and themselves.'" (P. Fiddes: Tracks and Traces, 76)
Of course, English Baptists were deeply influenced by Calvin and by the subsequent restrictions of hyper-Calvinism. But, later on, theologians like Andrew Fuller reworked Baptist theology, leading to a rediscovery of world mission through a more evangelistic expression of covenant; and hence the establishing of the Baptist Mission Society and the sending of missionaries like the pioneering William Carey.
Reflecting on Andrew Fuller's significance, for how Baptist thought and mission has developed, Paul Fiddes accepts that Fuller was obviously limited by the Particular Baptist thought of this time, yet in "his missionary thinking, a theology of the divine image and all sufficient atonement is being placed alongside a theology of covenant to prevent an appeal to covenant in a restrictive way. I suggest that a true understanding of the mission of God needs to combine them. A missionary God is always opening up the communion of the divine life for relationships with creation, so that covenant is an open offer and not a privilege confined to a limited number of the elect." (Tracks and Traces p.257) For Baptists "walking together" includes the horizontal of world mission as participation in the vertical of God's mission.
2. Anglicans, Covenant and Mission
As we struggle through this phase of change in the Anglican Communion we can learn a few things from the Baptists:
First, their ecclesiology is framed by an understanding of covenant in which the relationship with God is inseparable from the relationship with others. The NT metaphor of the Body of Christ, used extensively in the Windsor Report (WR) clearly reflects this, but perhaps an understanding of the church as a covenantal community would make explicit the intentionality implied and needed in the Body metaphor?
Secondly it seems that in the Baptist's evolution a world mission perspective was integrated into their ecclesiology in a more coherent way than it was in Anglicanism. Though there clearly were ecclesiological commitments and strategies in Anglican mission (eg the three-self church and missionary bishop models of CMS and UMCA) perhaps the over-hierarchical and Established nature of the Church of England was an inhibiter to the development of a coherent new missional Anglican ecclesiology?
For these reasons I would argue that the Covenant provides an opportunity for the remaking of Anglicanism by developing a covenantal ecclesiology. This would fundamentally affect the historical, 'accidental', way in which Anglican identity has emerged and significantly changed our understanding of the nature of episcopacy. But before considering what this might look like there is a deeper issue to which the Baptist tradition point us: that the church in being covenantal is primarily missional. For a covenantal Anglican Communion to become primarily missional, in a way that includes our historical development, would I suggest, amount to the conscious integration of the modern missionary movement into Anglican ecclesiology.
3. Making Anglicanism Missional
"mission ... is prior to the church, and constitutive of its very existence" (Bevans&Schroeder 2004 p13)
The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced the members of the group that will design the Covenant proposed in the Windsor Report (WR). The significance of this Covenant has been variously interpreted. For some it is just a measure for the current crisis, for others it offers a pragmatic chance to sort out long unresolved issues. For yet more this an opportunity for an intentional remaking of Anglicanism, eg Darren Marks suggests WR articulates: "a new emerging Anglican ecclesiology" ("The Windsor Report: A Theological Commentary" Journal of Anglican Studies 4.2. Dec 2006, pp 157-76, p.158). This, he says, is found first in WR's vision of the Church, and secondly in its two disjunctions with previous Anglican ecclesiology, ie the rediscovery of the Protestant Voice and the de-historicising of Anglicanism (ie taking Anglicanism out of England). In both these there's a distinction from Catholic ecclesiology and yet WR resonates with aspects of the Catholic understanding of faithful discernment in a community of disciples, ie in discipleship the church community discerns the divine community revealed in the missio Dei of Jesus.
If Marks is right, then the Covenant is a unique opportunity for the remaking of Anglicanism in which mission is both prior to the church and, through the Covenant, mission becomes intentionally constitutive of its very existence. For those of us involved in the Mission Societies this implies and requires that there is now a need for a conscious integration of the modern missionary movement into Anglicanism.
That mission is prior to the church is affirmed by WR, when, as Marks says, it recognises the prior reality for the Church of the One who is the Lord of mission: "The Church is the place that participates in the Gospel story of the Triune Lord" (p.159). Yet when WR sets outs its Biblical vision of the Church I would argue that this vision has the interpretative power it has precisely because the Anglican Communion already reflects something of this vision; and that this reality is as a result of the modern missionary movement in which the gospel was shared around the world, churches were planted and supported in different contexts, and local cultures and societies were offered educational, medical and agricultural development, etc.
So if the vision of the Church in WR is that it is "transtemporal and trans-cultural, the place or people enabled to confess Christ and to continue the Gospel mission, which is nothing more than a declaration on the nature and work of the Triune God" (p159), then the route through to this vision for Anglicans is, I think, via the Biblical vision that inspired the modern missionary movement - this included taking Anglicanism out of England and vice-versa! So de-historicising does not mean being a-historical.
In Marks' judgement the Windsor Report only partially answers "the only primary question, in Anglican ecclesiology, which is the issue of authority" (p.163). It is this primary question which the Covenant must address if it is to be successful and it should do so following the same trajectory established in Windsor, ie with the clear vision of the Church, and with the two disjunctions mentioned above. Crucial here is the Protestant Voice. Fundamentally this means accepting the authority of Scripture's 'big story' about the world; whilst also recognising that the gospel is interpreted contextually. Re-establishing a theology of the Bible as Scripture, in which there is missional hermeneutic, is the most important way of addressing the authority issue. A missional hermeneutic explores the nature of Biblical authority in relation to God's mission, and to the participation of humanity in God's mission, as seen in the Bible.
Here Scripture is not just one of the four things a Church must accept to be a Church, as in the Anglican Quadrilateral; rather Scripture is the world that the Church inhabits: the grand narrative of God's mission in which the Church participates. The problem with the Anglican Quadrilateral is that the four elements (the Bible, Two Sacraments, Creeds and historic Episcopate) are not held together by a Biblical vision of God's mission providing a scriptural basis for authority. What the Covenant must not do is to replicate the proto-Covenant of the Quadrilateral: it must be scriptural.
B. A Covenant for Communion in Mission
4. Designing the Covenant
If Anglicanism is to be covenantal, missional and scriptural (cms!) then we might look for a design of a missional covenant in Scripture. The Sinai Covenant and its reinterpretation in Christ could be used as a pattern. In simple terms, six things are found in the Sinai Covenant: preamble about God's mission, the historical Biblical narrative of mission, the commands and stipulations of the Covenant, the preservation and propagation of the Covenant, the witnesses to the Covenant, and the warnings to, and responsibilities of, those who make the covenant.
Using this pattern we could outline the New Covenant God made with us in Jesus:
1. Preamble about who God is: the God whose mission is to reconcile all things in Christ and whose wisdom in doing this will be revealed in the Church, his Body;
2. Historical Biblical Narrative describing what God has done with Israel, in Christ and through his Church to establish his Kingdom and to show what it looks like;
3. Commandments/Stipulations: those things which all parties agree reflect the Kingdom way of life, its criteria and identity as envisaged in Preamble & Narrative;
4. Preservation & Propagation: how God's covenant with humanity is preserved within the covenant community and also shared with all peoples through mission;
5. Witnesses to the covenant: the parties concerned and those who support the covenant from other covenantal communities already having their own covenants;
6. Responsibilities and Warnings: implications for living out the covenant, warnings about breaking the covenant, and processes for restoring the covenant.
Based on the argument so far and we can now show how these six aspects relate to what would be essential to an Anglican Covenant that had evolved from WR:
1. A statement about the prior given reality of the revealed mission of the Triune God, with an exploration of how God's intention to covenant with humanity reveals both his freedom and ours in the formation, salvation and completion of creation.
2. An affirmation of scripture's authoritative narration of God's mission with Israel, in Jesus, and through the apostolic Church and how scripture continues to form the covenantal community of God in its mission, teaching, morals and social engagement.
3. An interpretation of the Church as a covenantal "community of disciples" whose vision is of an every-member participation in the worldwide missio Dei emerging out of a gospel mission that was first brought to the British Isles and was subsequently intentionally shared with other peoples resulting in the formation of the Communion;
4. An outline of how leadership, particularly Episcopacy, relates to these first three elements, clarifying how bishops are to be the covenantal persons who bind the local congregations and its leaders to the Covenant and who also connect with the wider Covenanting church through Episcopal fellowship. This includes the place of Biblical teaching, the Sacraments and the tradition of the Church encapsulated in the creeds.
5. A proposal for how the Anglican Covenant would be witnessed not just amongst its own in the Anglican Communion but also with those Churches who have a similar or sympathetic perspective to the Covenant and who would support the Communion.
6. A memorandum that can be canonically binding that states the responsibilities and accountabilities of the covenanting churches, including the implications of breaking the covenant and the means by which churches can be restored.
5. A Covenantal God
"For Barth, salvation is the fulfilment of a covenant, an eternal covenant, according to which God purposes to bring the human race into reconciled relation with himself. Salvation is the reconciliation between God and the human creation whom he loves in Christ:
reconciliation in the Christian sense of the world ... is the history in which God concludes and confirms his covenant with man, ..." (C. Gunton: "Salvation " in John Webster (ed): The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth CUP 2000 p.144
For Barth the relationship between God and humanity is covenantal. This covenant is expressed through creation, history, salvation, and also in the ongoing work of reconciliation as recreation: the promised new creation which fulfils God's covenant. God is the covenantal God who has determined to reconcile the world to himself; this is supremely expressed and achieved in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is God's covenantal relationship with humanity and humanity's covenantal relationship with God. The covenant is the relationship that God has with humanity revealed in Christ.
When Jesus makes 'the new covenant' through his blood he is bringing to completion the process by which God has revealed his commitment to humanity, even to the point of reconciling humanity to himself at the supreme cost of his own self-offering in order to fore-give. Such an offering is also the response that a created humanity makes to the God of all creation through worship and service, as expressed in the relationship with neighbour, and with the stranger and enemy. In Jesus the long exile of humanity from God is broken and the new reconciled relationships have begun.
6. A Missional God
It is as we reflect on God's mission that we begin to understand the nature of God's covenantal relations. Fundamentally, these are God's own relationships as Trinity opened out and revealed as the way that God relates to creation, particularly humanity. The covenants that God makes with Israel are missional in purpose: they are intended to reconcile the individual, the people, the nations, and the creation to himself; with the successive failures of these covenants emerges the hope for a new covenant. It is this new covenant that the prophets foretold and which Jesus fulfilled. In this new covenant it is God in relation to himself in, through and with humanity, who establishes the new covenant that cannot be broken because it is the embodied expression of God's covenant with himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When Christ gives the disciples the commission to take the good news to all nations there is a covenantal shape to his command that echoes the Sinai covenant but therefore also interprets the nature of that covenant in terms of mission. So the key elements are found: there is the element of who God is, the one who has all authority of heaven and earth; there is command and response and the need to teach in the manner that is of, and like, that of Christ; and there is the promise of blessing.
The great climatic vision of what this means in terms of God's ultimate purpose, his mission and his intention for creation, is found in Revelation where we are given a vision of all peoples, nations and tongues surrounding God's throne and worshipping "the Lamb". This is, of course, the Lamb whose sacrifice reconstitutes the old covenant in a new covenant secured through the blood of Christ. As Chris Wright says: "the mission of God is as integral to the sequence of the covenants as they are to the overarching grand narrative of the whole Bible" He explains this in relation to the Revelation vision:
"Noah is there in the vision of the new creation, a new heavens and a new earth after judgement. Abraham is there in the ingathering and blessing of all nations from every tongue and language. Moses is there in the covenantal assertion that 'they will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God' and 'the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them'. David is there in the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, and in the identity of Jesus as the Lion of Judah and root of David. And the New Covenant is there in the fact that all of this will be accomplished by the blood of the Lamb who was slain." (The Mission of God IVP 2006 p.356).
7. A Scriptural God
In the Christian tradition we are not saved by a revelation of written truth, we are saved by the loving relationship of the enacted sacrifice of Christ, which he requires us to remember through the practice of the new covenant meal. Having said that, and having also acknowledged the importance of the oral culture from which the Christian faith emerged, there is nevertheless a special place for Scripture in the way that Christians come to believe and worship God through Jesus in the Spirit. The way of Scripture reading is the way of Christian living and vice-versa. In other words, as we read Scripture so we come to understand the covenantal God in whose mission we are invited to participate. And as we do mission so we come to understand more of the God who is revealed in the Scriptures as the covenantal God.
This puts Scripture in central place in the outworking of God's covenantal relationship with humanity in mission. Reading Scripture therefore places us in the force-field of the covenantal God, and exposes us to the purposes of God's mission. We hear God as Word. As we read scripture and are changed so we become more of who we are called to be as God's creators and so we become participants in God's covenant and begin to live out his mission. The authority and clarity of Scripture is therefore known as we are reconciled, sanctified and participate in mission. As John Webster says:
"Scripture's clarity is neither an intrinsic element of the text as text nor simply a fruit of exegetical labour; it is that which the text becomes as it functions in the Spirit-governed encounter between the self-presenting saviour and the faithful reader. To read is to be caught up by the truth-bestowing Spirit of God." (op cit p95)
The primary significance in mission of translating the scripture is the best illustration of what it means for Christians to believe in the Scriptural God who bestows the truth to humanity through his Spirit in the reading of Scripture. It is as the Scriptures have been translated that the Spirit has bestowed the good news and enabled people to be reconciled to God in the new covenant in Christ. The outcome of this, as authors like Lamin Sanneh have argued, has been the releasing of renewing powers within the cultural life of many people groups as local languages are given new significance and become the means by which self-identity is built up and sustained - even within the wider context of colonialism. That Scripture is translatable into any language points to the God whose fullness is seen as every tongue comes to confess Jesus as Lord.
C. Covenant as Generative Centre for Mission
8. Generating Missional Capital: Great Commission as Covenant
The purpose of any Anglican Covenant must be to release the economy of God's grace: to be the means by which people are blessed, in the fellowship of the covenant, to know more of the Covenantal, Missional and Scriptural God. The Anglican Covenant is therefore a way of generating and shaping missional capital. In simple terms the Anglican Covenant should be seen as following in the tradition of the Great Commission, Jesus's own re-expression of the Covenant. As Chris Wright argues: "What is not so often noticed is how thoroughly covenantal and indeed Deuteronomic is the form and content of Matthew's record" (op cit p.354) The three core elements of the Covenant (as suggested earlier) are found in the Great Commission: the self introduction of God as King (Jesus has all authority), the imperative demands of the covenant relationship (to disciple, baptise and teach),the promise of blessing (Jesus will be with his followers for ever). Wright concludes:
The Great Commission is nothing less than a universalised covenant proclamation. It could even be regarded as the promulgation of the new covenant by the risen Jesus, just as his words at the Last Supper were the institution of the new covenant in relation to his death. (p355)
Covenant in the tradition of the Old Testament is often seen in terms of restriction: it applies to, and benefits, only those who can show that they are members of the family to whom God has chosen to reveal himself. This is a particular family, the family of Abraham. So even when this family is expanded the restrictions seem to remain. But if we take a missional interpretation and understand God's intention that his Covenants should be the generative centre for people to discover the blessing of living life in his image and reflecting his place as Lord, then Covenant becomes much more of a missional resource rather than a defining circumference of God's presence. The Old Testament is then seen as the story of God's mission and his attempt to encourage the people of Israel to share the blessing of the Covenant with others.
To re-read and to enact this interpretation of covenant requires entrepreneurs who see the potential and can release the missional capital of covenant. The Anglican Covenant should be written in such a way that the possibility of missional capital being released be the highest priority. As Professor Bill Bolton puts it: "All through Scripture we can see God using the talents of entrepreneurs, not least in the rapid spread of the early church. But the tendency of all organizations is to become fixed and settled and to forget their entrepreneurial heritage, and the church is no exception. In an age of change and uncertainty the church needs to rediscover its original dynamic by releasing the entrepreneurial talent in its midst. This is the greatest task facing the church today." (Entrepreneurs in the Church Nottingham: Grove, Pastoral Series 107, 2006). The Anglican Covenant needs to be seen as a resource for entrepreneurs who want to make a difference through mission.
9. The Development of Missional Capital in Anglicanism
A prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral once told his fellow clergy that "we have, in truth (I am sorry to observe it) a sufficient share of this duty of Preaching Christ to the Gentiles, without looking beyond the Bounds of our Country. We have among ourselves a certain Leaven of Paganism, that is working upon the vitals of Christianity." (quoted by Jeremy Gregory: "The Eighteen-century Reformation: The pastoral task of Anglican clergy after 1689" in J. Walsh, C. Haydon & S. Taylor: The Church of England c1689-1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism Cambridge: CUP, 1993/2002, p.69). Fortunately, the attitude of this prebendary did not prevail in the Church of England and the gospel was spread and the church was planted abroad.
Thus, although Anglicanism beyond Britain initially began with chaplaincy to colonial and commercial expansion from the late 16th C (in India, Far East and Middle East), Anglicanism was primarily spread abroad intentionally. Churches were planted as part of an evangelistic mission that included both the sharing of the gospel and the development of society. This began with the Virginia Company, chartered in 1606, to propagate "Christian Religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance ... and may in time bring infidels and savages to human civility" (W.M. Jacobs: The Making of the Anglican Church Worldwide 1997, p.38).
This first expression of voluntary mission soon developed into a wider movement with the establishment of a variety of mission societies including SPCK in 1699, SPG in 1701 and CMS in 1799 followed by CMJ and SAMS. These Societies, and others, all made significant contributions to the planting and development of Anglican churches around the world. In CMS's case, using current provincial designations, the Society was involved in over 20 Provinces. (See the appendix prepared by John Martin). CMS therefore has a keen interest in the development of a Covenant that will put mission right at the heart of Anglican identity and recognise this historical Anglican priority.
10. Mission and the Communion
The first use of the term Anglican Communion was in 1847 by an American Bishop, Horatio Southgate. This 'Missionary Bishop in the Dominions and Dependencies of the Sultan of Turkey' recalls that to the Eastern Church leaders "I spoke of each of the three branches of the Anglican Communion separately, namely, the English, the Scotch, and the American". (C. Podmore: Aspects of Anglican Identity 2005, p.36)
What we cannot afford to do in the development of the Covenant is to separate the mission spirituality which generated the Communion from that which may be present in situations where the Communion is well established, ie a 'churchy' spirituality. For three reasons, at least, this must be resisted. First, as I have indicated, the Church is rooted in God's mission, which is prior and shapes the mission of the church and therefore shapes the church which serves God's mission as its first priority.
Secondly, Christianity is a religion which is constantly growing and dying in successive waves of expansion and contraction. So where the church was once strong, it can now be seen to be weak and vice versa. The church therefore always needs to be mission-orientated - with the weakest related to the strongest in a constant interchange of resources. This gives a new impetus to the mutual responsibility and interdependence that an Anglican Covenant could embody.
Thirdly, the modern missionary movement, by which much of the Communion was established, reflects the earlier missionary movement that planted the church in Britain. Christianity was planted by missionaries from the undivided early church: from the desert monks of North Africa. This inculturated missionary Christianity, that became Celtic Christianity, evangelised throughout Northern Europe. It had a rhythm of life with God that was rooted in the land and resonated with local people. A second wave of mission to Britain, from the Roman church, also saw another kind of mission initiative in which the see of Canterbury was set up as a missionary diocese. Anglicanism combines the missional streams of both Celtic and Roman Christianity.
For these three reasons, the Communion cannot be interpreted as territorial religion. Though the Reformation did not directly lead to the launch of world mission, its affirmation of the ultimate significance of Jesus as Lord and Saviour, was the latent spiritual resource for what was to come later. The 'yawning gap' (as Barth called it) in Reformation thought and practice, ie world mission, is what the modern Anglican missionary movement filled in partnership with other European mission movements. By echoing the earlier Celtic missionary movement, that networked rather than territorialized communities, Mission Societies like CMS thus moved beyond expansionist, military and cultural imposition, to explore inculturated faith.
In the Anglican Covenant this needs to be clearly stated and understood - not just as background but as fundamental to Christian identity in the Anglican Communion. What the Covenant offers is the opportunity for the fundamental reworking of Anglicanism in a way that is as significant as the Reformation and the subsequent Faith and Order developments in the Church of England. We are, on a global scale, at as a significant point as the Council of Whitby was for the development of the church in England. I think we should not go the Roman way this time, but the Celtic way.
We need to be less churchy and more culturally engaging in terms of showing how our leaders are effective spiritual people and not just tied or titled to their symbolic or institutional significance. Above all, significance should be given to the honour and significance of the everyday mission of the Christian in their life and witness. Let us take this opportunity to find our unity around the kind of Covenant Christ himself made with us and to hold to that as the centre of our Communion.
