The Society for the Propagation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine (SPREAD) recently issued an appeal that the Anglican Communion be split. In particular, the appeal, entitled "Counterfeit Communion and the Truth that Sets Us Free", has urged that all those committed to the "Anglican Faith" which is "defined by the Church of England's Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal" , "separate from" the Archbishop of Canterbury and form a new and properly orthodox Anglican Communion. This "urgent call to action", the appeal says, will be presented to the assembled gathering at the upcoming meeting of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) to be held in and near Jerusalem.
The SPREAD website provides no names as to its board, members, and supporters. And although the appeal mentions a number of people positively in passing – Stephen Noll, Abp. Henry Orombi, Abp. Peter Jensen, and others – it is unclear as to whether any of these persons themselves are in favor of breaking up the Anglican Communion in the way the appeal urges. One news report listed, as SPREAD's "convener" and the presenter at GAFCON of the call to break up the Communion, John Rodgers, one of the leaders of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), former Dean and recently Acting Dean of Trinity School for Ministry, in Ambridge, PA. This is apparently false, although Rodgers signed a previous "Petition" from SPREAD, as the organization's Chairman, that covered pretty much the same ground. {NOTE: In an original version of this paper, I accepted the news report of Rogers' "presenting" of this Appeal to GAFCON, and responded on that basis. I apologize for that mistake. The Petition, which dates from late 2005, can be found at the SPREAD website.} I shall therefore refer simply to "The Author" here, for lack of any other stated names on the document, and respond on that basis. In many ways I regret having to make this response at all. People associated with SPREAD, like Bishop Rodgers, have served the Church of Christ with vigor, intelligence, and faith for many years; and although I have always disagreed with central strategic choices and behaviors pursued by the AMiA in their founding, I have continued to admire their evangelistic zeal and sacrifice. However, in this case, The Author has gone over the line with respect to charity, truthfulness, and wisdom. It is important that Anglicans be aware of the fact that there are many Scriptural Christians like myself, committed to the witness and struggles of the world-wide Church, who strongly resist and are indeed dismayed by the spirit and content of his proposals. It is not only a very serious charge indeed to associate the name of "anti-Christ" with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as The Author has done in his proposal (pp.6f.); it is also false, and because the charge derives from a conclusion to incomplete, unfair, and distorted interpretations of Rowan Williams' own testimony, it is scurrilous.
And thus my response is this: the "Urgent Call", in its substance and in its implications, is founded on such errors of judgment, lapses in personal responsibility, and failures of Scriptural perception, that it deserves to be rejected by all those in attendance at GAFCON and beyond. On one level, its claims are so brazenly misplaced and the website to which it is connected is mired in an odium theologicum so deep, that one might think it best not to respond at all, lest one draw attention to what is intrinsically unedifying. However, I am not naïve in thinking that The Author will not be making an energetic case at GAFCON and that, despite his lone name being made public, there will be others present who will support this terribly misguided and irresponsible project, seemingly and pointlessly aimed at further destroying an already weakened Communion whose reform and healing are otherwise the object of prayer of popes and patriarchs as well as of simple Christians from the Arctic north to the African south to the Asian East.
Much of the "Urgent Call", in line with other documents on the SPREAD website, amounts to a sustained, if generally dishonest, attack on the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Indeed, it is the personal hostility towards Williams that seems to be the main motivating thread of coherence in SPREAD's public profile. There is nothing positive about "propagating" the Gospel otherwise mentioned in the documents it has made available. And even in these documents there is some inconsistency – one paper argues that the 2007 Dar es Salaam Primates' Communiqué was itself a critical act of doctrinal betrayal ("The Danger to the Anglican Faith Posed by the 2007 Dar Es Salaam Primates' Meeting Communiqué"), although the meeting is appealed to elsewhere as a foil for Williams' own betrayals – the betrayer betrays the betrayers seems to be the theme. I am not sure what the Primates themselves, many of whom have worked tirelessly to steer the Communion towards healing in faith and witness, must think of this linkage. Still and on the whole, were it not for Williams, it is unclear if the drastic splitting of the Communion recommended by The Author would, in his mind, need to be pursued. It is obviously critical, therefore, to know whether the charges laid against the Archbishop are close to being accurate.
I shall respond in a moment to some of the particular arguments The Author makes regarding Williams' "heresies" and his unfitness to lead the Anglican Communion, not to mention the threat of spiritual gangrene he poses to those who remain in the Anglican Communion as now constituted. But I need first to point out that The Author has his own reasons to dislike a Canterbury-led Communion that have nothing to do with doctrine, and everything to do with political pique. (The Author lengthily accuses of Williams of a lack of "disinterestedness" and "impartiality" in his theological teaching ["Rowan Williams and Romans 1"]; it is a warning all of us should heed! [And, in the context, is should be pointed out that I have had my own deeply disillusioning experiences dealing with the formation of the AMiA in Colorado in 2000 – so I do not speak "disinterestedly" either.])
Rodgers, who chaired and signed the original Petition that seems to be the basis for the Urgent Call, is, after all, a founding member of a group that, since its inception almost a decade ago, has never been recognized by Canterbury as being an integral part of the Anglican Communion. Although working under the auspices of the Province of Rwanda – and in this way, much as the Church of England in South Africa is in communion with the Diocese of Sydney in Australia but with no one else in the Communion – the AMiA was never granted full status in the Communion. But this refusal to recognize Communion status for the AMiA, it needs to remembered, originally came, not at the hands of Williams but of his evangelically-scripturally "sound" predecessor, Abp. George Carey (whom Rodgers, in the Petition, accuses nonetheless of being an enemy of Scriptural truth), Williams merely upholding a decision he inherited. Nor did Rodgers and the AMiA ever seem to care much about whether they were a part of the Anglican Communion in this sense anyway – they ignored Communion practice at every turn in their episcopal consecrations, ordinations, and missionary endeavors, sued (conservative) Communion bishops like Ed Salmon of S. Carolina in order to hold on to church property, refused to respond even to positive formal correspondence from Communion bishops and so on. It must be understood, in other words, that The Author, who I assume is within this AMiA matrix, is not advocating the destruction of the Anglican Communion as a reformer from within the Communion; he is urging Anglicans simply to leave the Communion and be a part of something that was never bound to Communion life in the first place. SPREAD's address is associated with a non-Communion congregation.) Of course, The Author is free to make such appeals. But shall we say that, one small church in America having troubled a global Communion, it makes sense for an even smaller group of conservative American Christians, in reaction, to raze it altogether and remake it in its own image?
But on to his arguments. I will respond under three categories: Anglican Faith; Williams the Scriptural heretic; the Communion as Leper.
1. Anglican Faith:
The Author uses as his touchstone for his proposed new orthodox Communion something he bizarrely calls "the Anglican Faith". It is bizarre to use this term because there is no such thing, and he is simply making it up, although using it now as the basis for overthrowing an entire Communion of which he is not an integral part. There is, to be sure, a Christian Faith; there is also something – more or less equivalent in traditional usage – called "the Catholic" or "Apostolic Faith", that faith that the entire ("catholic") Church has always rightly held, as an apostolic gift or deposit (Cf. Lambeth 1930, Resolution 49). There is also something that Anglicans themselves call "the Historic faith" or "historic belief" (Lambeth 1920, Resolution 65) – this phraseology was combined with other Lambeth language and adopted by many Anglican constitutions, like the Episcopal Church in 1967. This phrase is again more or less equivalent to the first two. Anglicanism, as a movement of ecclesial expansion and formation, bound to the character of the Church of England and her reformational self-understanding, has sought to adapt this one faith to the local needs and customs of a given people –- originally the people of England – in a way that did not subvert the substance of the bequest. This is all very clearly laid out in something like the 39 Articles that The Author keeps referring to as the authoritative "definition" of the "Anglican Faith" (cf. Article 34) as well as in the Prayer Book Prefaces of Cranmer and subsequent revisions. And the terminology here is not irrelevant, because the issue has to do with how Anglicans organize themselves to interpret the Christian Scriptures, not with the nature of a "faith" that is peculiar to these "Anglicans".
The issue of how local adaptations can be evaluated in terms of their legitimacy in this regard is, of course, contentious. Scripture, according to the 39 Articles, is the basic touchstone in this process: articulated faith must be "warranted by" Scripture and cannot be "against" or "repugnant to" Scripture (cf. aa. 8 and 34). But Scripture itself is not a "method" of study, discernment, or decision-making. Nor are the 39 Articles themselves. One has to read the Scriptures, understand them, agree upon such understandings, and apply them properly and adequately to given situations in question. Indeed, Anglicans have never had a clear definition of how decisions about interpretation are made – by the individual? The local priest? The local bishop? A group of scholars? A local or larger or more general synod? And, in any of these, what process should be followed for reading, understanding, persuading, agreeing, and applying? Richard Hooker wrote pages and pages about this, and in doing so, helped clarify some of the issues and principles that might and should govern how the Church of England or any national church goes about this business. But his writings, and those of others, have hardly clarified all matters, nor been commonly understood, nor even been accepted as authoritative directives.
One of the items that so riles The Author is the fact that the Windsor Report speaks of a "consensus" as being the measure for such decision-making. The Author seems to think that saying such a thing amounts, quite concretely, to replacing the foundational authority of Scripture with the authority of human design. Of course, any church consensus on some matter could well end up doing so, as the 39 Articles say is quite possible (cf. aa. 19 and 21.). But such a replacement of Scriptural authority by human authority is not at all what the Windsor Report was either claiming or implying. Rather, it was claiming that people cannot simply go off, interpret the Scriptures (with whatever due respect to the Scriptures' purported authority) and impose this interpretation on the rest of the Church. Rather, the Church cannot act upon the Scriptures, as Church, unless there is common agreement as to what the Scriptures mean and how they apply; nor should members of the Church attempt to preempt this agreement in ways that destroy the common life. And, of course, the 39 Articles say the same thing (a. 34 on "offending against the common order of the Church" through "private judgment" put into practice). Theologians have and do attempt to explain why, in Christian terms, these limitations make sense. But that they make sense is a presupposition of Anglican practice.
As it happens, the Anglican churches themselves – much as the 39 Articles said they might in the Articles' acceptance of "adaptation" of forms – decided that the 39 Articles themselves were not the explicit defining standard of the Christian Faith or the Catholic Faith or the Historic Faith, not because the 39 Articles are in error, but because their forms were limited to time and place, and could not themselves prove eternally sufficient to the explication of Scripture. Anglican churches dislodged the Articles, in this sense, sometimes individually through their own synods, and they did this as a whole at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 (Resolution 19; cf. Lambeth 1968, resolution 43). This obviously still leaves open the question: what do Anglicans say "defines" their faith? The answer, given in the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888, is clear enough, although precisely not the answer of the "the Anglican Faith", but of the Christian Faith: The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as "containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being "the rule and ultimate standard of faith" (Lambeth 1888, Resolution 11).
This answer, alas, does not simply solve the debates among our churches over sexual ethics. Nonetheless the Windsor Report itself upholds this "standard" of Scripture's ultimate rule (Sec. 53, where it is also called "the Church's supreme authority") and it is a falsehood to claim otherwise. And it is a pernicious falsehood, in the context of the life of the Anglican Communion, precisely because it ignores the problem – how we shall discern and abide by the true meaning of the Scriptures as God's word – in favor of an easy slogan, that has, will, and must fail the Christian Church as a means of faithful decision-making.
The Author, of course, knows that the Church must engage such decision-making with respect to and under Scripture's authority in a way that takes deliberative time and follows some kind of process that goes beyond individual fiat – AMiA did just this with regard to the ordination of women (and in a way, finally, that was only tentative in its conclusions). He may well think, by contrast, that the matter of homosexuality has already been so discerned, and needs no further discussion and therefore any attempt to engage in discussions regarding the proper interpretation of Scripture in this regard is immoral obfuscation on the part of libertines: the matter is "closed", and merits no further public reflection. But in this, his personal judgment (which I share) does not in fact close the matter at all, although he and I might wish it did. It is true that the Anglican Communion's "instruments" of council have indeed affirmed the judgment contained in Lambeth 1998 Resolution I.10; but a glance at the surrounding cultures of the West, and including within them many young "evangelical" Christians, should alert him to the fact that, like the reality of "justification" lifted up by St. Paul, the question of what in fact and how in fact the Bible teaches us about sexual behavior as Christians is still open in the minds of many, and requires constant and engaged efforts to clarify and explain. Rightly or wrongly, Anglican churches are continually caught up in this ongoing debate, and a decision by Lambeth, upheld by Canterbury, the ACC, and the Primates – not to mention upheld by many individual synods, bishops, and parishes – has not been able to stem a discussion that keeps getting thrust upon the churches (plural) from around the world and from within the societies in which they are planted. Not only is it not up to The Author to close down reflection upon this matter; it is simply perilous for the Gospel's credibility and responsibility in the hands of the Church to do this. The church, of course, needs peace over this matter; and The Author and I and the councils of the Communion are agreed on what ought to be the teaching and discipline to which we adhere. But to achieve that peace is a labor, by God's grace; it cannot be a demand.
2. Williams the Scriptural heretic:
This fantasy about an Anglican Faith – which is really just a version of The Author's personal faith, bound to a set of evangelical traditions that, integral in their own right, are by no means synonymous with what many "orthodox" Anglicans believe – informs his inability to deal with Rowan Williams fairly. I will state up front that I myself was uneasy about Williams' appointment as Archbishop for just some of the reasons The Author lists: for instance, his engagement with pro-gay groups in the 1980's and beyond, and his (it must be said) rather occasional writings in favor of this movement that were not terribly interested in Scriptural arguments and their inner logic, let alone their place in the Christian tradition ("The Body's Grace" was an egregious example here). But there are several factors with respect to Williams' views that ought to mitigate significantly taking these early pieces as definitive of the Archbishop's theological and ethical commitments and that The Author refuses to acknowledge. Indeed, he seems to prefer to read Williams in a truncated and distorted fashion. He even stoops so far, in other SPREAD papers (e.g. "An Unsafe place"), to link Williams rhetorically to people like John Spong – with whom Williams shares virtually nothing in common theologically or ecclesially, and whom he has openly criticized – as if putting the two in the same sentence were as good as demonstrating Williams' apostasy.
First, and not irrelevantly, The Author judges Williams as if he were not a man of evident and proven love of God in Christ, gentle in spirit, and charitable in his relations with others. Apart from the personal danger of treating him in a way that so evidently denies him the visible gift of Christ's Spirit, this refusal to read according the "fruits" of a person's soul must necessarily cloud The Author's judgment regarding the very meaning of what he apprehends.
Second, The Author fails to take seriously the deep, abiding, and passionately engaged Trinitarian orthodoxy of Williams' theology, something that has run consistently through his writing and teaching. His early interests in Russian Orthodoxy and Western mystical traditions, as well as his interest in von Balthasar and Barth and his own appropriation of his teacher Donald Mackinnon's somewhat tragic view of human culture, have always located his thinking within a substantive place of Christian understanding that simply has nothing to do with "liberal" sensibilities or presuppositions. Whatever one may think of the way Williams has approached the specific matter of homosexuality, it is not a way that has anything to do with standard appeals to universal rights nor does it accept the liberal cultural demotion of Scriptural orthodoxy's central claims about the self-revelation and self-giving of God in the divinely personal flesh of Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified, risen, and ascended. These claims have always been the center and basis of Williams' theological interests, and to claim, as The Author does, that Williams has "devoted much of his clerical career" to "achieve" gay inclusion instead of noting the direction of a devotion that has gone insistently and predominantly towards God and a glimpse at His most wonderful and profound nature, is a wild distortion of the facts. Proportion is critical to understanding a person's thinking.
Third, within this set of commitments, Williams has understood his early reflections on sexuality, that did indeed open up the possibility of the Church's acceptance of homosexual unions, as permitted and careful theological experimentations, bound to the discussions then going on in his church. ("That was when I was a professor, to stimulate debate... It did not generate much support and a lot of criticism – quite fairly on a number of points", Nederlands Daglad, 8.19.06; "the questions I raised were worth making as part of the ongoing discussion… those were ideas put forward as part of a theological discussion", Time Magazine, 6.7.07. ) These reflections were not manifestos, and did not call for the destruction of the Church's moral teachings and discipline or for the rejection of Scripture's authority. They did indeed, as The Author notes, raise questions as to whether Scripture could be exclusively applied to the discernment of the topic as a whole. But these were questions, often articulated forcefully, but questions nonetheless that were not intended to claim decided resolution, but rather invited engagement and, if necessary, refutation. It is clear that Williams, at the time, was personally in favor of re-thinking the traditional teaching on sexuality and challenged the Church – e.g. at Lambeth 1998 – not to foreclose the discussion preemptively (as he saw it). And I too believe that the negative effects of these kinds of experiments and challenges were wrongly minimized (as well as improperly founded) by Williams and his colleagues at the time. But poor judgment in this case does not amount to wholescale assault upon the Church, and it is wrong to make that equation, one that runs through The Author's treatment of Williams.
Fourthly, when Williams became Archbishop, he made it clear from the beginning that the time for these kinds of theological experiments and questions was over from his point of view. This position, which he noted publicly in his first year at Canterbury, is one that he has reiterated over and over: "My role is not just keeping the Communion together… When I teach as a bishop I teach what the church teaches. In controverted areas it is my responsibility to teach what the church has said and why" (Church of England Newspaper, 5.8.08). The Author may think this appeal to his Episcopal duties either not enough or simply disingenuous. But given that Williams has lost much of his support from liberal Anglicans because of this commitment, it is hard and indeed quite unfair to dismiss it as lightly as The Author does.
Fifthly, although Williams hardly comes from an "evangelical" tradition of reading Scripture, and although he did indeed make careless remarks about "fundamentalists" in the past, he does so no longer. The Author has claimed that Williams continues to promote the "agenda" of gay inclusion in the church, using the talk of "safety" for homosexuals in the church, in the context of 1998 Lambeth I.10's call for "listening" to the "experience" of gay Christians, as a code-word for permission of gay sex and for exclusion of conservatives ("An Unsafe Place"). These accusations are simply baseless, however, and they fly in the face of explicit things Williams has said numerous times, e.g. as when he writes, chiding liberal attacks on those Anglicans who have maintained the traditional teaching and interpretation of the Bible on this matter, that "if other churches have said, in the wake of the events of 2003 that they cannot remain fully in communion with the American Church, this should not be automatically seen as some kind of blind bigotry against gay people" ("Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today", June, 2006). Indeed, Williams knows full well and accepts as such that that the claims of the larger Communion articulated at Lambeth 1998 and reiterated since in her councils are not fundamentally about "hatred" at all: "It's not just about 'nice people' who want to include gay and lesbian Christians and 'nasty people' who want not to include them…. It's about the question, 'What are the forms of behaviour that the Church has the freedom to bless if it wants to be faithful to scripture?" (April 2006 Interview in Toronto with the Canadian press).
Finally, Williams' views have developed. This appears to be something The Author cannot fathom, nor certainly believe. For instance, at the end of the SPREAD essay on "Rowan Williams and Romans 1", The Author claims that Williams "says essentially the same thing" in a 2006 Dutch interview as he did in an essay from the 1990's with respect to the positive character of homosexuals' "longing" as a means of joining one to Christ. But Williams says nothing of the kind. In the 2006 Dutch interview, which distressed many liberals and was suggestively entitled "The Church is Not Inclusive", what he does say is that there is very little "room" to "maneuver" in the Scriptures to get around the prohibition of homosexual sex. He then goes on to say:
"therefore Christians ought to be distinguished by their willingness to repent. A Christian will always be ready to revise his actions and his own image of them, to make peace, to ask for forgiveness from God and other people. You find a living Christian community mostly where people help each other in their failings. Because everybody knows their lives are open to God. That means for example a greater willingness than is shown in our culture today, to reconsider what you perceive as your needs, emotions, instincts, and bring them under the scrutiny of Christ" (Nederlands Dagblad, 8.19.06).
These kinds of remarks are not isolated, nor do they represent a break with his previous understandings of Scripture. Rather, what we have seen over the past 6-7 years, presumably as Williams himself has had to live and serve within a much larger community than his British and academic settings of the past, is a deepening appreciation of the way that the Word of God does indeed challenge, and not only or even primarily affirm, the "desires" of this or that individual of group. He says that he remains uncertain as to how best to understand homosexual "identity"; but he has become clearer and clearer that his own previous intuitions, including those of "inclusion" are themselves rightly brought under the judgment of God's Scriptures; and he has made this clear in his discussion, not only of the Anglican controversy over sexuality, but in his discussions of the relation of Church and secular state, the character of marriage, family, and childhood, and on the nature of Scripture itself.
This isn't good enough, The Author exclaims; he hasn't "recanted", he hasn't "repented" of his earlier commitment to upholding the debate regarding gay inclusion. We must know exactly what Williams thinks and feels about all these things today. But must we? I do not even know my own mind about many important matters, and am uncertain about others. God alone shall "disclose the purposes of the heart" (1 Cor. 4:4-5). Until then, I can indeed – and so I ought – to judge, if I judge at all, by what a person does (Mt. 21:31). And, far more than most Christian leaders I have seen, Williams has been open in asking for prayers, seeking forgiveness, recognizing publicly his own weaknesses and failings, and deepening his own thinking about matters that he once perhaps regarded more narrowly. And through it all, yes, he has upheld clearly and in the face of much opposition, the teaching of the Church.
We need to read Williams with all this in mind, rather than according to some intransigent prejudice against his ability to serve and to think through things and be led and be formed. If The Author had paid more sensitive attention to the above points – which are simply a matter of taking seriously the person and words of another Christian through time – he might have better understood the Scriptural commitments of Williams more fairly.
And what are these commitments? It appears that Williams' 2007 Stuart-Larkin Lecture in Toronto represents the greatest indication of Scriptural heresy for The Author. This is so largely because, in the course of this lecture Williams argues that homosexuality is not the main point of Paul's argument in Romans 1, and that Paul's negative mention of it cannot be used in an obvious way as the primary basis for understanding homosexuality's Scriptural prohibition. (That is, if there is a Scriptural prohibition, which Williams agrees there is, Romans 1 does not provide the first entryway into understanding the character and meaning of that prohibition.) Taken in context, it is hard to understand the weight The Author places on this discussion and Williams' argument. Williams does not contradict or minimize Paul's rejection of homosexual sex; Williams does not contradict or minimize the Scriptures' prohibition of homosexual sex as a whole. Williams simply argues that the purpose of Paul's deployment in Romans 1 of this accepted prohibition, as it were, is to emphasize the universal reach of human sin that implicates all hearers of the Scriptural text. And while Williams' interpretation here is open to debate – as someone like Robert Gagnon has engaged (to my mind unconvincingly) – it is an interpretive debate that thus far has not been settled decisively, but whose lack of closure here does nothing to undercut the overall reality of the Scriptural prohibition itself.
In any case, the Lecture is about "hearing" the Scriptures, where this happens, and what happens when we do. The lecture is not about homosexuality. "My aim is a very modest one, to examine the practice of reading the Bible so as to tease out some of what it tells us about the nature of Christian identity itself." Why cannot The Author respect the "aim" of the author and listen to him on those terms? As it is, the question of "hearing" the Bible has been a persistent theme for Williams over the past few years. In "Historical Criticism and Sacred Text" (in D. Ford and G. Stanton eds. Reading Texts, Seeking eisdom" [2003]), for instance, Williams attempts to describe how it is that the Bible is not simply or only or even primarily a "historical document" but rather something that comes from God in an essential way, and that thereby offers a kind of "excess of grace" in its reading that goes beyond (but not necessarily in contradiction to) the text's propositional content, so as to effect a kind of transformative encounter with its creating subject, God himself in Christ. In "Anglican Approaches to St. John's Gospel" (in his Anglican Identities, 2003 and also printed elsewhere), Williams' survey of some influential Anglican readings of John's Gospel in the last century leads him to stress the otherness of God's address and judgment of us in and through the text of Scripture, that is effective and true because of Jesus' presence there.
Most of his sermons engage the Bible just here, as the very God speaking to us in the words of the Scriptural text, living, confronting, judging, drawing us forward, and empowering. This emphasis may not seem adequate for some Christians, and if overdrawn, it may appear to be too untethered to describable content. But it is hardly heretical, and what Christian would wish to deny that, in Williams' words, "Christians read the Bible not as a document from history, but as a world into which they enter so that God may meet them. ("Risen Today", Feb. 2008)? And the reason the words of the Bible constitute this encountering divine world is because they are the words of Christ himself, crucified and risen (that is, historically true, if also transcendent of history), taken up by him and offered as the vehicle of his coming near, with all the power and imperative he embodies.
In a recent talk, Williams makes this point within the context of a forceful (and theologically rich) testimony to the centrality of Christ Jesus as the giver and interpreter of Scripture in such a way as to redeem:
"For the Christian, this is why the narrative of Jesus' death and resurrection are central to the whole of the Bible. Here is unity tested to the limit: the unity of God with God's people is challenged by the rejection of Jesus by religious and political authority and by the desertion of his own disciples; the unity of Scripture is challenged by the question of how the suffering and failure of the Anointed One can be reconciled with type and foreshadowing in the history of the Covenant; the unity of God himself is challenged by the gulf opened up on the cross between the Father and the one who perfectly receives and embodies his gift of love. So the Christian believer reads Hebrew and Christian Scripture together as focused upon the moment of Calvary and Easter in which God enters uniquely into the fragmentedness of the sinful world and brings the promise of radical healing by re-establishing all these challenged unities. The horizons of God's people are decisively enlarged to universal proportions; the record of Scripture is read afresh so as to bring into central place the pattern of human rejection and the divine overcoming of that rejection; and the unity of God is re-figured as the unity of the Father's giving love, the Son's receiving love and the Spirit's 'adopting' love." ("Scripture in Monotheistic Faith", in Naples, Oct. 2007)
But "fresh" reading, he makes clear in his Toronto lecture, has nothing to do with going beyond the text as given in time: there are no" new" revelations and,
"[…] the form of our twofold canon itself warns against any readings that seek to sidestep the tracing of connections and movement. This is not at all to subscribe to the easy formula that as Jesus or Paul can apparently overturn the plain meaning of the texts they handle, so the contemporary reader has the liberty to determine what is the most fruitful reading simply on the grounds of what is now purportedly suggested by the Holy Spirit for the health of the present community. This would dissolve the real otherness and integrity of the text. […] The closed canon establishes the same texts as the material for public reading for indefinite time; these texts have the indisputably 'closed' character of the historical past, pointing to an act already definitively enacted, an act to which future reception must respond."
Much of the Toronto talk was focused on this claim about the nature of Scriptural texts, and therefore the lecture attempted to lay out some of the ways in which we ought properly, as Christians, to grasp faithfully the encountering presence of Christ in the Bible as we read it: together, as the "body of Christ"; eucharistically, as receiving together that Body; repentantly, as being brought into judgment and redeemed by the sacrifice of that Body which, in itself, orders the whole of creation and reality. Williams' argument here is that the Scripture's power for truth is communicated here, not in the abstract or through abstracted and privatized readings. There must be a coherence between the Scripture's own internal witness to and communication of Christ Jesus and the effective reception of this truth in the ordered lives of the Christian church.
And it is just here that we are to apprehend Williams' own sense that whatever he may once have thought regarding the possibility of homosexual affirmation must itself be acknowledged as relativized under the power of God's Word: whoever we are, our inner selves do not have power or legitimacy to order the world around us; we are subjects of God, and hence "what you perceive as your needs, emotions, instincts" are liable to Christ's "scrutiny" and finally judgment and transformation. The notion that Williams thinks Scripture can be trumped by human desires is patently untrue. And it is precisely because our desires not only should not, but do not have the power to trump the Scriptures, that Williams has dared to speak of the human authors of Scripture as sometimes not understanding their own messages, a suggestion that offends The Author. But is not the very power of Scripture something that must necessarily go beyond its human tellers (as is evidently the case, on Scripture's own terms, with prophets like Jeremiah, or Jonah, not to mention Job)? The nature of "prophecy" itself demands this likelihood. We hear the Scriptures, therefore, only as members of a Church that is together subject to the power of Christ Jesus, on the Cross and in Resurrection judgment and redemption, and it is this common subjection that we are called to maintain.
None of these themes are innovative or novel to Williams, it must be said: they form a part of the standard description of Scripture's power provided not only by more "catholic" elements of the Christian tradition, and not only more recently, but (at least arguably) by the very Anglican notions of Scripture reading and hearing organized and presented in the Book of Common Prayer. If there is something pertinent to the "Anglican Faith" in all of this, it lies, quite positively, in this vision of Scripture's effective presence within and over the coherence of common prayer and ecclesial self-ordering in penitence and obedience.
Returning to the Toronto lecture, let us be clear how The Author has insistently misrepresented Williams. Contra The Author's accusation, Williams affirms that the text functions upon the presupposition of Paul's negative judgment regarding homosexuality. He does not question that presupposition, either on its own terms, or as it functions within the text. But his purpose is to help hearers grasp how the deployment of this presupposition by Paul is not, in this case, geared towards an elucidation of the nature itself of sexuality (although it must inform this question) but towards the exposure of a common and universal sinfulness among all hearers – that is, hearers together in the Church -- which itself is aimed at the purpose of indicating Christ Jesus and permitting us to receive His transformative presence.
If Williams had sought to reflect Scripturally upon the nature of human sexuality, he most certainly would have addressed texts like Leviticus; and so would Paul! That is partly Williams' point: the Romans text is not primarily about the nature of sexuality, and needs to be heard on its own terms first. And no doubt Williams would need to discuss just this text in Romans as well, were he to seek an elucidation of the nature of sexuality; but, again according to his point, he would have to do this in a less straightforward way than someone like The Author seems to want, by attempting to get at the presuppositional prohibition of homosexual sex with which Paul works, through the careful task of seeking connection and coherence within the canon as a whole, and in light of the organizing power of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God, God in the flesh. To take Williams to task for writing a lecture on a topic The Author is not interested in, and coming to conclusions that are therefore to the side of the conclusions The Author would have wished Williams came to in a lecture he never gave on a topic he never addressed is, frankly, like arguing against the weather – just plain silly in the nature of the case.
3. The Leprous Communion
In this light, the bare claim The Author makes that the Anglican Communion as it now exists in connection with the See of Canterbury, and with Rowan Williams in particular, must be judged a pestilential contagion, to be avoided at all costs, is highly problematic. If the Communion's gangrene derives primarily from one man, Rowan Williams, one had better get the diagnosis right in that one man's case. The Author has got it wrong. But even more pertinent, the model applied is false as well. The Communion's common life does not depend on Williams' integrity, just as it does not depend on this or that bishop's or this or that priest's, or this or that synod's. It depends – we are speaking from a human perspective, of course, since it is God's church, not ours -- on some kind of ordered act of seeking the truth of God in and through the Scriptures together (in this I heartily agree with Williams' Toronto talk). And it simply won't do to claim that this has been done already, and that therefore the case is now closed. The case is not closed because the order of our common deliberations has been upset – upset in the first instance and provocatively and utterly irresponsibly and destructively so by the actions of TEC's General Convention and many of her bishops and diocesan conventions, and increasingly by those of a number of Canadian bishops and diocesan synods, and, in response, by a host of reactive disavowals of common practice, order, and expectation (of which the "Urgent Call to Action" would represent one obvious example, now with a long history behind it).
I, along with many others ("bewitched" or not according to The Author) recognize our sad failure as a Communion to make decisions about Scripture well, in the sense of carefully, communally, persuasively, and consensually. These decisions have not happened. TEC didn't make any, the AMiA didn't contribute to any, the Global South has not yet accomplished any in a widely persuasive manner. But why should this surprise us and why hold it against Williams in a particular way? Such careful, communal, persuasive, and consensual decisions regarding the meaning of Scripture's direction of the Christian Church's life is a rare gift, ever since the Jerusalem Council. Orientals and Catholics failed over centuries; Catholics and Greeks have failed; Lutherans and Roman Catholics on justification failed for years (and recent breakthroughs have not exactly changed the playing field); Anglicans and Presbyterians and Methodists have failed, and all to the rending of the Church's integrity and subversion of her witness. And yet all these failed efforts engaged the minds, hearts, and labors of saints and theologians far greater than, I dare say, those active in most of our Anglican churches today. Still, for all this, The Author's response to this is "separate!", as if this will bring health, to anyone involved. It should be instead, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on us!"
But the Scripture is clear about all the contentious topic of sexuality, The Author would surely say. And I agree with him there; the problem is that not all in the church are persuaded by his or my assertions and arguments. Yes, but the church has already made its decision about this, e.g. at Lambeth. Again, I agree; but she has not made a clear decision about how to deal with those who have rejected Lambeth's teaching. Yes, but in the meantime (even before!) we must separate from those who are either not persuaded, or have not decided, or who have rejected decision, or who do not yet know how to respond to the rejecters… And why is that? Because the Scriptures are clear on the matter.
In part, this regressive dynamic seems driven by the fundamental belief The Author has that the Scriptures need no considered reflection and consensual interpretation in order to govern the Church effectively. For it would appear that the logic of The Author's reasoning leads inexorably, not just to a "church of the like-minded" – that would be fine, if there were such a thing (I am not afraid of agreeing with people; indeed I long for it!) – but to the reduction of "church" to the passing moments of individual certainties where in fact like-mindedness has little chance of solidly emerging. Invitation-only conferences like GAFCON can serve a useful purpose; but not a decision-making one. For there are only some Christians among the Anglican family who are currently persuaded by the claim that the "Scriptures tell us we must separate from Canterbury and split the Communion". If this were not the case, there would be no "urgent call" and pages of accusation. By definition, The Author and his colleagues have not persuaded; and by definition, those they will persuade (and they will, no doubt) will not themselves "be" the Anglican church in any integral way.
But why has he not persuaded? In part because he does not do exactly what Williams, properly as I believe, encourages us to do with the Scriptures: read them coherently, as Two Testaments, contextually, and together. He lists a number of New Testament texts that call for separation -- e.g. Romans 16, 1 Cor. 6, 2 John – and places them all under the banner of Joshua 24:15, "Choose this day whom you will serve!". These texts, or aspects of them, may indeed be pertinent to the present situation. But no argument is offered in support of such a supposition. Does Rowan Williams represent a Christian leader who is "serving his own appetites" and "by smooth talk and flattery deceiving the hearts of the naïve?" (Rom. 16:18). Nothing The Author has said convinces me of this; just the opposite. And who does Paul have in mind here, then? And under what circumstances? And how does this translate into our present conflicts within the Communion? Does the newly proposed orthodox Communion of the Anglican Faith represent freedom from "revilers", the "greedy" and "swindlers", more so than the present fallen Communion (1 Cor. 6:10)? Why should anybody expect it would? There is, frankly, evidence that it does not. And what do these words of Paul have to do with the order of the Anglican Church in terms of the actual way we must make decisions and will continue to have to make decisions? Is the Archbishop of Canterbury really the "antichrist" (2 Jn.. 7) who no longer "abides in the teaching of Christ", along with his evilly enchanted minions? (These kinds of accusations, even if only implied, are not to be taken lightly; but they are not to be made facilely either. Indeed, I am astonished and saddened in this context that they are made at all.) Which teaching and how "abiding"? And in what way exactly are the "gods our fathers served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites" (Josh. 24:15) related to the struggle to reach an ordered consensus within the (current) Anglican Communion over how to deal with disorderly, and even heretical, churches and bishops?
"Separation" in all these biblical verses is real; but a truthful application of its conception to the Anglicanism of 2008 requires far more than these verses' bare iteration or robust assertion. The Author clearly has no patience for including in his Scriptural lexicon of ecclesial direction the struggles of Israel and her prophets, or the dynamics of Galatians and 2 Corinthians, or the very ministry of Jesus himself in relation to his erring and rebellious people and her leaders, all of which provide slightly and sometimes significantly different ways of describing the necessary and practical relation of truth to falsehood within a people or church. There has been much debate – mostly on blogs -- among conservative Anglicans especially over how to understand the Scriptural direction God would offer us as to our response to falsehood in the Church, but little careful, sustained, and common counsel about this: people assert, argue a bit, and go their own ways. The calling to discern and articulate a persuasive means of bringing these kinds of instructions and examples into coherence as God's direction for this part of Christ's Church is not just challenging; it clearly has not yet been accomplished. And although the dangers to the church of overextending the process of such Scriptural discernment, articulation, and persuasion are real enough, they cannot certainly be avoided by rejecting the process itself.
If, as some have objected (and I agree with them to a degree) the upcoming Lambeth Conference has not been structured so as to further this work as it might, then the duty of Christian leaders who understand the work's centrality is to do all in their power to put in place the means to pursue it, somehow. The Author's own unwillingness to follow through with, engage, and support the hard work that this calling demands, dismissing one after another every effort made by people of good will, and to which he has not been a contributor -- the Windsor Report, Primates' Meetings, the ACC, the Covenant and more – ends by demeaning the service of people he even claims to admire and by invalidating the prayers of countless faithful Christians in the Communion and beyond. Is this what his "urgent call" amounts to in the end? Is this the great offering he brings to GAFCON – to nullify the hopes and service of the faithful?
There is certainly room and perhaps need in the coming years to discuss and reframe the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury's role within the Communion. Indeed, various proposals around this, involving alternating primatial presidencies and so on have been put forward by many, and deserve our attention, especially as we face into the challenges of our global common life, where the depth and numerical breadth of Anglican life and witness has seen a reordering over the past decades. Nonetheless, that is a discussion, discernment, and decision for all to make, accountable as widely as possible one to another, not for a few to make, accountable only to those with whom they already agree. The claim that the Anglican Communion is a "counterfeit" Christian community is false. The Anglican Communion as it is currently ordered is indeed troubled; perhaps it is even unraveling. But it is constituted by persons who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, which, we are told by the Scriptures, they can do only by the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 12:3). The reforming, strengthening, and nourishing of this confession, the great gift of the Holy Ghost, so that its meaning and power can be used by God for the reordering of the world, is indeed an imperative thrust upon us in these days in a special way. But it demands of us enormous labors in response. The "replacement theory" of the Church – and, in this case, of the Anglican Communion – is, by contrast, a mirage, and represents a thin gruel indeed, theologically and morally, held out to the nations.
The "Urgent Call" of SPREAD should be clearly, if quietly, set aside for a greater and more immediate purpose. Archbishop Williams has himself, among others, indicated what that purpose is, straightforwardly and practically, and in a way that seeks not to subvert but to uphold the authority of the Scriptures in a credible fashion before the eyes of believers and unbelievers. And in all the political maneuvering, and casting aside of charity and focus, it is a purpose to which we are still called, for the sake, not of the Anglican Communion only, but of the world. I would hope that those assembled at GAFCON, including The Author and SPREAD's Chairman, will rededicate themselves to this task, one, to be sure, of "drawing up arguments on the common basis of Bible and historic teaching"; but also and more deeply one of discerning and persuading, through these arguments, a faithfully consensual answer to the "question, agonisingly difficult for many, as to what kinds of behaviour a Church that seeks to be loyal to the Bible can bless, and what kinds of behaviour it must warn against", a question, that is, "about how we make decisions corporately with other Christians, looking together for the mind of Christ as we share the study of the Scriptures." ("Challenge and Hope of Being Anglican", June, 2006). The path of breaking apart the Communion is no way towards the accomplishment of this still unrealized goal.
