Generous Orthodoxy - Anglican style

2007-05-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

Anglican Generous Orthodoxy

This blog has at its head a panel quoting Queen Elizabeth I:

Elizabeth I,"not liking to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts", is famous for her refusal to pry into the private beliefs of her subjects, even in regard to that most vexed of Reformation issues, the "Real Presence" in the eucharist.

On this blog we have essays by two very distinguished Anglicans, Rev. Dr. Martyn Percy, Principle of Cuddesdon College Oxford, and Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both contributions are reprinted here by permission of the authors but should not be reproduced elsewhere except by permission of the authors.

I do not know whether Martyn Percy or the Archbishop would wish to be associated with the position I have taken in this blog in regard to Anglicanism. Indeed, it may seem eccentric to preface what I have to say with a quotation from Queen Elizabeth I! But please read on.

First of all, what is "Generous Orthodoxy"?

Generous Orthodoxy is a concept first identified by the distinguished theologian Hans Frei,and now also the title of a best-selling book by Brian D. McClaren, A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic,
Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational,
Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN.

There is a Generous Orthodoxy blog http://www.generousorthodoxy.net/thinktank/, and sometimes Anglican concerns surface there.

Historically, Anglicanism emerged as a Generous Orthodoxy in that it rejected controversial views not common to all Christians. Thus the Anglican Settlement involved the rejection of the specific views which differentiated the warring parties, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist etc. in favour of a middle ground common to all.

I have always been irritated by the lazy comment, so frequently echoed in the media, that Anglicanism was founded by Henry VIII. Henry forbade the bishops to appeal to the Pope, seized the monasteries, and so gained a great deal of wealth for himself and his cronies. But the life of the church in England at the end the reign of Henry VIII was otherwise virtually unchanged from what it had been in the Middle Ages.

It was only in the reign of Edward VI that the common people of England began to notice - and sometimes to object strongly to - dramatic changes in their parish churches. Mary turned the clock back, was greeted with great acclaim, and promptly set about making herself, and also the church newly restored to the Papal obedience, catastrophically unpopular.

For those who are interested, the detailed historical course of events was as follows:

In 1529 HENRY CUTS TIES WITH ROME. Henry VIII repudiates the Papacy to prevent the Pope blocking the annulment of his marriage.
Services, however, remain essentially the same, the Latin Mass as before. In 1534 the "Act of Succession" is promulgated. Everyone must swear
allegiance to Henry VIII as head of the English church - whatever that
means!
In 1539 HENRY REJECTS BOTH LUTHERANS AND PAPISTS. The Six Articles, against Lutheranism, are published. Henry VIII is
occasionally burning Lutherans and hanging Roman Catholics.In Henry VIII's last speech to Parliament (1545), he says Papist, Lutheran, Anabaptist are names devised by the devil to
sunder one man's heart from another.
In 1549 THE FIRST ENGLISH PRAYER BOOK IS LAUNCHED. In the reign of the new king Edward VI, the First Book of Common Prayer is introduced. It is written in English, emphasizes
the people's participation in the eucharist, and requires the Bible to be read from cover to cover.
In 1552 THE SECOND - MORE CLEARLY PROTESTANT - PRAYER BOOK IS AUTHORISED. The Book of Common Prayer was revised to suit Protestants. No vestments, no signing of the cross at confirmation, no holy oil, no
reserved sacrament, no prayers for the departed, are permitted. In 1552 the 42 Articles with a noticeable Calvinist bias are published.
In 1553 MARY TAKES THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND BACK TO ROME. Edward VI dies, and Mary succeeds to the throne. People are tired of Protestant looting of churches. Mary Tudor, a militant
Roman Catholic, is popular at first, but she soon marries the hated Philip II of Spain. Persecution of
Protestants begins. Mary appoints new bishops and fires all married priests. Within a short time she manages to alienate almost everybody.
In 1558 ELIZABETH REINTRODUCES THE PRAYER BOOK. Elizabeth I, a Protestant, becomes queen, and in 1559 the Book of Common Prayer is revised, with one or two "catholic" additions. Elizabeth I reintroduces the surplice, explaining that it is a clergyman's uniform. In 1560 saints' days are reintroduced.
In 1563 THE 42 ARTICLES OF 1552 ARE REDRAFTED TO EXCLUDE SPECIFICALLY CALVINIST DOCTRINES.
In 1603 JAMES 1 SUCCEEDS TO THE THRONE, AND MAKES FURTHER MOVES BACK TOWARDS CATHOLICISM. In 1604 The Book of Common Prayer is revised to include an expanded catechism, according to which the sacraments are "an outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace". At the eucharist, "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily
and indeed taken and received by the faithful".
In 1625 Charles 1 succeeded James, and Civil War follows.
In 1643 ANGLICANISM IS OUTLAWED. The Presbyterian Westminster Confession replaces the 39 Articles, and the established church is no longer Anglican but presbyterian and Calvinistic.
ANGLICANISM RESTORED AND ITS CATHOLIC HERITAGE STRENGTHENED. After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, in 1662 the "Act of Uniformity" makes rejects ministers who lack the apostolic succession. A revised Book of Common Prayer reintroduces
many saints' days, and although the text of the Prayer Book is little changed from that left by Elizabeth, the rubrics - stage directionscatholic direction. instructing those leading the services - were considerably augmented, and generally in a
What emerged after the Restoration as Anglicanism had therefore a historical inheritance in which the distinctive features of Roman Catholicism (adherence to the Papacy), of Calvinism (double predestination of both the saved and the damned), and of the more extreme views of Zwingli (a "memorialist" view of the eucharist and the anabaptists (baptism as a public profession of faith for adults with no infant baptism, and baptism as having no sacramental efficacy) were all in turn rejected.

No doubt the Anglican econ0omy with doctrine was largely attributable to the confused history of the Church in 16th and 17th Century England, but it had the happy result of making Anglicanism Mere Christianity (the title of a book by C. S. Lewis). Anglicanism aimed to be "just Christianity", nothing more, nothing less.

Thus it was in Elizabeth I's time that England opted for something that we might recognise as Anglicanism - a kind of reformed catholicism. The spirit which characterised Elizabeth's restoration of a reformed church may be fittingly described as a kind of "generous orthodoxy".

Elizabeth was much too sensible to attempt to interfere too much in the life of the Church of England of her day. But obviously one thing was clear to her - namely that it was much better to "travel light" where religion was concerned. Her life, previous to her accession, like that of most English people, had been profoundly disturbed by quarrels about religion. It seemed to he better to opt for what she and her advisers thought was a kind of back-to-basics Christianity, and to steer clear as far as possible of contentious quarrels about further matters which were the cause of constant disputes - and even wars, in the Europe of her day.

There were of course further hiccups on the way. In the next century the established church was for some years presbyterian and bishops had to submit or flee. But the extremes of the Protectorate were not to England's liking, and with the restoration of the monarchy came the restoration of a (very slightly more Catholic) version of Elizabeth's Anglicanism.

In an age with a much stronger sense of historical development, and after the rediscovery of many ancient documents previously lost, we will want to set about the task of building a back-to-basics church with quite a different style of worship and spirituality from that embraced by Elizabethan Anglicans. But I at least would strongly argue that "back-to-basics" defines our task now just as it did in the sixteenth century.

And Elizabeth's unwillingness to pry too much into too many obscure theological issues finds an echo in surprising places.

Generous Orthodoxy, as outlined by Brian D McClaren in his recent book A Generous Orthodoxy comes to us, surprisingly enough, from the evangelical “Emergent” movement. Ian A. Mcfarland, another American Evangelical, has gone on as an admirer of the "apophatic christocentrism" of the late Patristic Eastern theologian, Maximus the Confessor (see http://god-lite.org/page8a.html and the link to "apophatic - i.e., not able to be put into words - theology" on that page). Peter Rollins' How (not) to Speak of God (SPCK, London 2006) in another important contribution to this debate, and has an enthusiastic forward by Brian McClaren ('I am a raving fan of the book you are holding").

Historically, Anglican orthodoxy may not seem very generous. Indeed, since parliament, like the authorities of other nations at the time, imposed it on all within its jurisdiction, it was bitterly resented by some. Even the Anglican reduction of Christianity to the basics was not likely to be welcomed if it was imposed on all Englishmen by law. But Anglicans may need now to be reminded where they come from if they are to make a contribution to the renewed debate about essentials and - to use another Anglican phrase - "things indifferent" - in the search for a renewed Christianity today.

The spirit of Anglicanism first began to manifest itself in the time of Elizabeth. She it was who (according to Sir Francis Bacon) established the principle that what people do is what matters, not our assumptions about their opinions. Bacon sets out her views as follows: Her Majesty, not liking to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into overt express acts and affirmations, tempered her law so as it restraineth only manifest disobedience in impugning and impeaching advisedly and ambitiously her Majesty's supreme power, and maintaining foreign jurisdiction.See: http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLTnoframes/ideas/viamedia.html

Elizabeth is also famous for her refusal to pry into the private beliefs of her subjects. So long as they took part in the Common Prayer of the ordinary people of England, she would ask no more questions.So long as they took part in the Common Prayer of the ordinary people of England, she would ask no more questions, even in regard to a matter so central to Reformation controversy as the eucharist:

'Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the bread and break it;
And what the word did make it;
That I believe and take it.

The most important first step in the search for Generous Orthodoxy is to make room for legitimate diversity by not claiming to know too much!

So long as Anglicansm sticks to the spirit of Elizabeth's reformation, it is always a kind of Generous Orthodoxy. It is odd, to say the least, that just when the avant garde of non-Anglican theologians are rediscovering the virtues of generous orthodoxy, there is such a determined effort to tear the Anglican Communion apart by various groups of the theological right and theological left by trying to force Anglicans to sign up for or against same-sex unions. Many of is are not clear that we know the mind of God on this issue - and we very much doubt that either of the the contending parties does either.

What we do know is that it is profoundly unAnglican to tear ourselves apart on the basis of what we assume to be people's opinions.

Furthermore, even if there may have been an element of political expediency in Elizabeth's approach to doctrinal matters, in fact there is support for this kind of "economical" approach in some surprising places. I have already mentioned Brian McClaren and Peter Rollins of the Emerging Church movement and the "apophatic": strand in Eastern theology. In recent years bith Anglican and Roman Catholic Thomists have gone on record as claiming that Thomas' so-called "doctrine of analogy", rightly understyood, is a way of coming to terms with the fact that we actually know very little about God as he is in himself. What we do know is simply where to look for the best clues in our own earthly experience to the glorious mysteries of God.

The very best of our clues to the actuality of the divine are to be found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Elizabeth 1 would no doubt have been mightily astonished - and gratified -to know that she could claim the kind of heavyweight support afforded , in their diffferent ways, by Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas!

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Engagement, Diversity and Distinctiveness, by Martyn Percy

2007-05-25T04:01:00.000-07:00

Engagement, Diversity and Distinctiveness:

Anglicanism in Contemporary Culture

Rev. Prof. Canon Martyn Percy

Principal, Cuddesdon College, Oxford

Introduction:

Let me, if I may, try and capture something of the issues we might face as a church and as a Communion in a single vignette that might begin to illustrate something of the nature of cultural shifts with which we are engaging. As I drove purposefully down the road on a wet, April evening in 2003, I was already slightly late (as usual) for picking up my son from Cubs. But there was no need to panic, I mused, since the ever-enthusiastic Cub leader normally overran the meetings by at least 10-15 minutes. Sure enough, I arrived at the entrance to the church hall to discover a group of parents waiting somewhat tardily for their offspring to come out.

But as I joined the small throng to show solidarity in patience, I realised I had walked into a reasonably terse discussion. Each parent was clutching a letter from Akela, which reminded parents and Cubs that Sunday was St.George’s Day, and that Cubs were expected (indeed, the letter stated that it was ‘compulsory’) to attend church parade. Smart kit and clean shoes were also recommended. The parents stood around, discussing the word ‘compulsory’. One looked bewildered, and cast around for empathy as he explained that his son played soccer on Sunday, so attendance was doubtful. Another mused that the family were all due to be away for the weekend, and that changing plans for a church parade was neither possible nor desirable. Another looked less than pleased that a ‘voluntary’ organisation such as the Cubs, which she added her son went to by choice, should now be using words like ‘compulsory’. There was no question of obligation; attendance and belonging was a matter of preference.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, a small vignette such as this would not be untypical in Western Europe. In the post-war era, a nascent culture of obligation has rapidly given way to one of consumerism. Duty, and the desire to participate in aspects of civic society where steadfast obligatory support was once cherished, has been rapidly eroded by choice, individualism and reflexivity. Granted, this is not the place to debate such a cultural turn. But its’ undoubted appearance on the landscape of late modernity has posed some interesting questions for voluntary organisations, chief of which might be religious establishments. Increasingly, churches find themselves with worshippers who come less out of duty and more out of choice. There is, arguably, nothing wrong with that. But under these new cultural conditions, churches have discovered that they need to have much more savvy about how they shape and market themselves in the public sphere. There is no escaping the reality: the churches are in competition: for people’s time, energy, attention, money and commitment.

But it is that last word, ‘commitment’ that has become such a slippery term in recent times. Few regular or frequent church-goers now attend church twice on a Sunday, which was once normal practice. For most, once is enough. Many who do attend on a regular basis are now attending less frequently. Even allowing for holidays and other absences, even the most dedicated church-goer may only be present in church for 70% of the Sundays in any given year. Many clergy now remark on the decline in attendance at Days of Obligation (i.e., major saints days, or feast days such as the Ascension). The Committed, it seems, are also the busy. The response to this from amongst the more liturgical churches has been to subtly and quietly adapt their practice, whilst preserving the core tradition. For example, the celebration of Epiphany may now take place on the Sunday nearest to January 6^th, and not on the day itself. A number of Roman Catholic churches now offer Sunday Mass on Saturday evenings, in order for Sunday to be left as a family day, or for whatever other commitments or consumerist choices that might now fall on the once hallowed day of rest. The phrase ‘our duty and our joy’ has been, arguably, replaced in our consciousness with ‘our choice, and at our pleasure - time permitting’.

In such a context, religion undoubtedly lives – but no longer as a metanarrative. It is, rather, one of the many ideologies and activities that compete for time and interest in an increasingly ephemeral public sphere. Under such conditions, churches and theology have at least three tasks. First, to be able to ‘higgle’ – the old English (agricultural) word that describes the process of continuing to affect things by degrees. Second, to be able to ‘thole’ – an old Irish word that describes the process of survival under adverse conditions (i.e., ‘tholing’ through bad times at work, or perhaps through a difficult relationship). Third, to be engaged in renewal. Now, renewal can be read in two senses here. Renewal can mean a process of recovery and restoration; but it can also mean replacement. Here I want to suggest that both senses are implied for the churches and theology today. The Christian tradition must face the present and the future with courage, but it cannot neglect its past. There is scope for exploring radical diversity; but this must be pursued with a heed to maintain continuity.

Put another way, we might say that Christianity has to pursue its engagement with the world through a combination of resistance and accommodation. In a quite fundamental and deep way, this is something that Jesus draws our attention to through his telling analogy, found in the gospels:

‘You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its strength, by what shall it be salted? It will be strong for nothing except to be cast away and trodden underfoot by men.’ (Matt. 5: 13)

In interpreting this text, a majority of bible commentators work with a false assumption, namely that the ‘salt’ in this text is the white granular chemical we know as sodium chloride, where its purpose is to add flavour to foods, or occasionally to act as a purifier or preservative. But the ‘salt’ that Jesus is referring to here is actually a salt-like material or mineral such as potash or phosphate. These halas elements were available in abundance in and around the Dead Sea area of Palestine, and were used for fertilising the land and enriching the manure pile, which was then spread on the land.

This way of understanding the halas of the metaphor changes the sense of the text significantly. The ‘salt’ is not to be kept apart from society, and neither is it to be used as a purifier or as an additive stabiliser. The ‘salt’ of Jesus’ metaphor is a mutating but coherent agent that is both distinct yet diffusive in its self-expenditure. As a result of individuals, communities, values, witness and presence - the halas - being literally dug into society, the earth or soil will benefit, and many forms of life can then flourish. There is a temporal dimension here: what must begin as distinct and powerful to be useful ends up being absorbed and lost. Of course, this reading of the metaphor makes sense of Jesus’ own self-understanding, which in turn is reflected in his parables, teachings and other activities. So, if the church or the disciples of Jesus are the salt of the earth, they will begin by being a distinct yet essential component within society, but who will ultimately fulfill their vocation through engaging self-expenditure. The power of salt is that it is pervasive, and nourishing – it expends itself by giving life to others.

About Being, Not Just Doing:

I realize that the salt metaphor in relation to culture might sound a little too passive, but let me press this a little further with a different but related analogy. I have recently been enjoying a new book called What Mothers Do, by Naomi Stadlen. Intriguingly, the book is subtitled: ‘especially when it looks like nothing’. What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing? Her argument is beautifully simple. She says that contemporary culture is mesmerisingly gripped by formulae and recipes, which seldom correspond to the reality of the ingredients. So-called ‘Mother and Baby’ books are a good example: they offer step-by-step advice, which appears to be simple and effective. But, argues Stadlen, most of these kinds of books infantalise the mother. What happens if I have a baby that doesn’t do what the book says? Guilt, frustration and anger can quickly set in. Or try another book: but then, what happens if that also fails to mould the child in the image of the author? The ‘how to’ books, says Stadlen, reduce motherhood to a series of tasks, instead of concentrating on the relationship between mother and child. (Most mother and baby books are, by the way, written by men – about 75% of them). She argues that mothers rarely need to be told how to care; it is learned and developed in and through relationships, not through advice-lines and programmatic books.

The heart of the book suggests that mothers are always doing something with their offspring, and most especially when it looks like nothing. They are engaged with their child. They are relating. They are being with and being for the child. So the question ‘what have you done today’ – often asked of a young mother – needs no obvious reply, even though it often prompts guilt and embarrassment. To simply have been with the child is ample; to have discovered a song or a sound that comforts him; or something visual that simply amuses and stimulates her. This is enough.

It seems to me that one of the most pressing problems that beset the church today is that it too is gripped by a culture of formulae. Many ecclesial recipe books have appeared in recent times: How to Grow your Church; How to Manage your Congregation; Mission Shaped Church; The Purpose-Driven Church; or Alpha Courses; and who can forget ‘the decade of evangelism’? Each of these initiatives is well-meaning, but also deeply in the thrall of the formulaic; but it can sometimes look like a kind of panacea for panickers. Clergy are easily seduced by such things. Many wince at Christmas when someone sidles up to them at a drinks party and says: ‘So Vicar, your busy time then’. Because the flip side of the question often asked of clergy is also implied by this remark: ‘what exactly do you do all day, Vicar?’

Clergy are often stumped for an answer. Communion in a residential home for five elderly people, a couple of visits, some paperwork, morning and evening prayer, one meeting, and perhaps a bit of time for thinking doesn’t sound like a very productive day. But here clergy are at one with mothers. They have been doing a lot: it just seems like nothing. They have deepened and kindled relationships. They have related to many people for whom dependency is a fact of life, concentrating deeply on being, not just doing. They have made somebody’s day, simply by dropping by, or by smiling.

In reflecting on this sense of achieving nothing, despite having expended a great deal of effort caring for the baby, Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the difference between labour and work is particularly helpful. In her Human Condition (1958) she describes labour as being driven by the necessity to sustain life. It is, by definition, repetitive; and its effort is consumed because it is not about producing things, but is directed towards maintaining life. Work, on the other hand, is driven by ideas and aims towards making things that are tangible and durable; the effort is put into the making of an end.

The work of mothering is labour. It is a repetitive cycle of effort driven by the desire and necessity of sustaining the life of the child. Our present culture is deeply committed to valuing work over labour, even when the ‘products’ of work are in fact made for our consumption. We speak (all too easily) of ‘working mothers’, and in so doing send a message that while a mother is engaged in full-time childcare, she is not, per se, ‘working’. We do not have the words to affirm the effort that goes into the being with and caring of, that is central to a baby’s wellbeing. As Stadlen says: ‘when they look at a mother sitting quietly with her baby, they cannot see much going on. It’s not most people’s idea of doing a mother’s work’ (p.83).

Similarly, and in the past when clergy had a certain status, there was rarely a need to justify what it was that a priest did beyond the provision of services. Yet in today’s climate, clergy can often feel a desire to produce some tangible sign of the effort they are putting in to ministry. This is particularly difficult for clergy who see a significant part of ministry being about building relationships, and being available to the needy. How do you quantify the value of visiting the housebound, or sitting in the toddler group and talking to new mums? How do you quantify time spent with the bereaved or the dying? Anecdotally, time spent is affirmed by assurance that one’s presence has been of inestimable help; but rarely is there anything tangible to show. Good pastorally-orientated clergy tend to be very busy, but the busyness doesn’t always look like ‘work’.

So formulas, like recipes, anticipate success: and churches are usually too tempted to worship both the rubric and the outcome. But unlike recipe books, courses and books that address the apparent malaise of the church forget that just every child is different, so is every congregation: a uniquely constituted set of ingredients. What works in one place probably won’t in another. So, the moral of this analogy is simple. Don’t impose formulae or strategies for growth on children or churches; and don’t try and cook up congregations or dioceses in the same way that you might try and cook up some food. Respect what has come naturally, and work with that. Even if that simply means just being, and apparently doing nothing: there is something to be said for having confidence in being, not just doing.

It would, of course, take some confidence to concentrate on being rather than doing, and yes, I know they can’t be easily divided: being is its own kind of doing, to be sure. But Stadlen’s cultural theory suggests to me, at least, that there is merit in focussing less on what we do and more on what we are actually about. And support for this idea comes from two unlikely sources: one a theologian (Karl Barth) and the other a sociologist (David Martin). Taking Barth first, he writes that:

The true growth which is the secret of the up-building of the community is not extensive but intensive; its vertical growth in height and depth..... It is not the case that its intensive increase necessarily involves an extensive. We cannot, therefore, strive for vertical renewal merely to produce greater horizontal extension and a wider audience.... If it [the Church and its mission] is used only as a means of extensive renewal, the internal will at once lose its meaning and power. It can be fulfilled only for its own sake, and then - unplanned and unarranged - it will bear its own fruits.

Here Barth is saying something very simple: true growth can only come through the quality of our relationship with God. And sometimes, in terms of extensive growth, that will appear to be fruitless. But this is precisely the point where we are called to contemplative persistence rather than pragmatism, and to question ourselves before we embark on a headlong rush into a search for new formulae or another strategy for our churches or diocese. Barth steers us away from this, quite rightly in my view, by reminding us that first and foremost we are to be for God, before we are busy for clarity, success and ambition for the kingdom.

In a similar vein, David Martin reminds us that the division between maintenance and mission is essentially a false one. As any Dean knows, a beautifully kept cathedral (or greater parish church) is, de facto, a sign of mission and a pointer to the kingdom. Active maintenance through gradual renewal is a form of mission, just as letting church buildings decline, collapse or simply appear shabby in the public sphere constitutes a very poor advert, suggesting that the church cannot take care of itself. Churches, in other words, can represent our being before God. Martin writes:

‘Not only are they [i.e. churches] markers and anchors, but also the only repositories of all-embracing meanings pointing beyond the immediate to the ultimate. They are the only institutions that deal in tears and concern themselves with the breaking points of human existence. They provide frames of reference and narratives and signs to live by and offer persistent points of reference’.

This, of course, raises some fascinating questions for us as a church. How are we to continue being ‘a persistent point of reference’? How do we adapt and survive as a Church or Communion? How are we to manage ourselves, and can we really afford to concentrate more on being and less on doing? Can we really risk a focus that looks more on our identity and less on our activity? How are we to engage with difference and disagreement? I don’t have all the answers to these questions, as you’d expect; but here are three modest proposals in the first instance.

First, it is probably the case that Anglicanism is easier to identify through persons rather than systems: examples of faith and polity rather than theories of it. In view of this, I’d be inclined to say that the practice of our faith is more of an art than a science, and most especially in relation to problem-solving. Here, the ‘management’ of the church within the context of the challenges of contemporary culture is much more like a ‘knack’ than a skill; organizing or shaping the church is about learned habits of wisdom more than it is about rules and theories (c.f., Donald Schon, 1983/1991).

Second, those charged with the ministry of oversight – in both sacred and secular spheres – often speak of intuition rather than extended calculation or analysis when dealing with ‘unique situations to which they must respond under conditions of stress and limited time’ (Schon, p.239). This ‘knack’ or ‘wisdom’ depends, as Polanyi might say, on ‘tacit knowing’, where over-seers seldom turn to theories or methods in managing situations, but instead realize that their own effectiveness depends on having learnt (and continuing to learn) through the ‘long and varied practice in the analysis of…problems, which builds up a generic, essentially un-analyzable capacity for problem-solving’. In other words, we learn by experience in the field,

Third, I’d suggest that the outcome of this has important implications for the collegiality of those engaged in the task of oversight. It is in sharing – quite deeply, I think, and at quite a personal level – how problems are addressed and resolved, and how individuals and organizations fare in this, and what reflections or analysis one may have about, that ‘tacit knowledge’ is built up – within relationships based on trust – such that the organization may then experience both stability and a degree of transcendence. What I think does not work, is the devolving of more power and authority to semi-detached ‘systems’ of governance or theories of leadership, no matter how worthy or novel. Granted, these may have their uses, but I would remind us that the Anglicanism remains stubbornly identifiable through persons not systems. Correspondingly, it is how we ‘hold’ issues, the character we exhibit under pressure, and how we continue to embody being the very best kinds of ‘reflective practitioner’ that may help the church most as it seeks to address the multiple complexities of being within contemporary culture. Put simply: I’d suggest we need a little more collegiality and the communion of shared wisdom; and perhaps a little less emphasis on science and formulae.

Anglican Distinctiveness and Cultural Diversity

With these comments in mind, let me say something about Anglican distinctiveness in the midst of cultural diversity. It would be quite possible here to talk at length about our explicit theological identity. But I prefer instead to address a few aspects of what I take to be our anthropological identity, which in turn suggests a nascent value-based implicit theological shape. It is said that Henry Scott Holland once stood on the hill at Garsington shortly before his death, and gazed over the valley to Cuddesdon College and parish church, where he had asked to be buried. He noticed a flock of starlings flying past, and remarked how like the Anglican Church they were. Nothing, it seemed, kept the flock together – and yet the birds moved as one, even though they were all apart and retained their individual identity. In an increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan world, of which the Anglican Communion is a part, birds of a feather still need to flock together, even though each creature is individual.

Holland’s observation allows us to develop another analogy here, centered on the identity of the species. The Anglicanism of the twenty-first century is recognisably different from that of the end of the nineteenth century. The flock, if you like, is no longer one type of bird. Evolution – through cultural and theological diversity – has meant that many Anglican provinces have evolved to ‘fit’ their contexts, and the ultimate diversity of the species clearly threatens its unity. But to extend the analogy just a little further, is it possible to still speak of a connecting DNA – some of the deep, core but hidden constituents of our identity which relate us, even though they may not be immediately apparent?

It was Jeremy Paxman who once quipped that the Church of England is the kind of body that believes that there was no issue that could not be eventually solved over a cup of tea in the Vicar’s study. This waspish compliment directed towards Anglican polity serves to remind us that many regard its ecclesial praxis as being quintessentially peaceable and polite, in which matters never really get to out of hand. For similar reasons, Robert Runcie once described Anglican polity as a matter of ‘passionate coolness’. In the past, and in my own reflections on Anglican polity, these are sentiments with which I have tended to concur:

‘In some of my conversations with Anglican theologians…I have been struck by how much of the coherence of Anglicanism depends on good manners. This sounds, at face value, like an extraordinarily elitist statement. It is clearly not meant to be that. What I mean by manners is learning to speak well, behave well, and be able to conduct yourself with integrity in the midst of an argument…It is often the case that in Anglicans’ disputes about doctrine, order or faith, it is actually the means that matter more than the ends…politeness, integrity, restraint, diplomacy, patience, a willingness to listen, and above all, not to be ill-mannered – these are the things that enable the Anglican Communion to cohere…’

In macro-theological disputes, such as those over the ordination of women, part of the strategy that enables unity can be centred on containing some of the more passionate voices in the debate. Extreme feelings, when voiced, can lead to extreme reactions. And extreme reactions, when allowed full vent, can make situations unstable. Nations fall apart; Communions fracture; families divide. Things said briefly in the heat of a moment can cause wounds that may take years to heal. What is uttered is not easily retracted. Good manners, then, is not a bad analogy for ‘ideal’ Anglican polity. In a church that sets out to accommodate many different peoples of every theological hue, there has to be a foundation – no matter how implicit – that enables the Communion to cohere across party lines, tribal borders and doctrinal differences. And just as this is true for macro-theological disputes, so is it also true for micro-ecclesial squabbles. Often, congregational unity in the midst of disputes can only be secured by finding a middle open way, in which the voices of moderation and tolerance occupy the central ground and enable a church to move forwards. This is something that the Windsor Report understands, and it is interesting to note how much attention the Report gives to the virtues of patience and restraint, whilst also acknowledging the place of passions and emotions in the sexuality debate. Clearly, there is a tension between these polarities (the polite-passionate axis), which is partly why the cultivation of ‘mannered-ness’ in ecclesial polity can be seen as being essential as it is beguiling.

This means, of course, continually listening to the experiences that lead to anger, and seeing them as far as possible from the perspective of those with less power. It means humility on the part of those who hold power, and an acknowledgment of the fear of losing power and control. It means a new way of looking at power relationships that takes the gospel seriously in their equalising and levelling. I am aware that this is one of the most demanding aspects of oversight, namely having the emotional intelligence, patience and empathy to hold feelings, anger, disappointment and frustration – other people’s, as well as your own. Episcopacy, it seems to me, is less about strategy and more about (deeply learnt) poise, especially in holding together competing convictions and trying to resolve deep conflicts.

But before conflicts can be resolved, they must first of all be held. And here we find another of the most demanding aspects of oversight within the context of considerable theological and cultural diversity. Because one of the tasks of the church is to soak up sharp and contested issues, in such a way as to limit and blunt the possibility of deep intra and inter-personal damage being caused, as well as further dislocation in people’s sense of faithful identity. Retaining composure, and somehow holding people together who would otherwise divide (due to the nature of their intense and competing convictions), is a stretching vocation. Anyone exercising a ministry of oversight will understand the costly nature of this vocation – a kind of servant leadership – that understands that much of Anglican polity is ‘open’ in its texture; and although it has a shape, is nonetheless unresolved and incomplete. Therefore, issues that cannot be determined often require being held; a deliberate postponement of resolution. Put another way, there is a tension between being an identifiable community with creeds and fundaments; and yet also being a body that recognises that some issues are essentially un-decidable in the church. Indeed, ‘Anglican un-decidability’ (a phrase coined by Stephen Pickard), may turn out to be one of the chief counter-cultural Anglican virtues; it is very far from being a problem, as some appear to believe.

The desire and need to sometimes reach settlements that do not achieve closure, is itself part of the deep ‘habit of wisdom’ that has helped to form Anglican polity down the centuries. It is embodied liturgically in the Book of Common Prayer, but can also be traced in pastoral, parish and synodical resolutions that cover a significant range of issues. Essentially, this ‘calling’ is about inhabiting the gap between vocation, ideals, praxis and action. No neutral or universally affirmed final settlements can be reached on a considerable number of issues within the church. But provisional settlements have to be reached that allow for the possibility of continuing openness, adjustment and innovation. Inevitably, therefore, any consensus is a slow and painful moment to arrive at, and even when achieved, will usually involve a degree of provisionality and more open-endedness. This is, of course, a typical Anglican habit, embodying a necessary humility and holiness in relation to matters of truth, but without losing sight of the fact that difficult decisions still need to be made.

In this respect, the scriptures are of course helpful and vital in guiding the church through this complex dimension of its polity. Decisions often involve an irrevocable commitment to the future, which in turn can require obedience rather than dissent. This, of course, places a further and heightened value on un-decidability, since this allows for the continuance of courtesy and hospitality, which is essential in a Communion that embodies so much diversity. Paula Nesbitt, in her reflections on the Lambeth Conference of 1998, shows how the Anglican Communion has been unable to avoid being gradually split: caught between increasing cultural diversity and the conflicts this produces on the one hand, and the need to provide coherence and identity on the other.

She notes how successive Lambeth conferences have moved sequentially from being grounded on traditional authority (i.e., the establishment of churches and provinces during the colonial era), to rational authority (which presupposes negotiation through representative constituencies for dominance over meeting outcomes), to (finally) negotiated authority (but which normally lacks the power to stem the momentum of change). She notes that these kinds of authority, when pursued through the four ‘instruments’ of unity in the Anglican Communion, are usually capable of resolving deep disputes. They enable complex inter-action and conversation, but they do not lead to clear and firm resolutions. Correspondingly, Nesbitt argues that a new, fourth authoritative form has emerged within the Anglican Communion, which has in some senses been present from the very beginning, and is now tied-up with the identity of scripture. She writes of this authority:

‘[it] could be used to countervail the relativism of cross-cultural alliances without affecting their strategic utility: symbolic authority. The symbol, as a locus of authority, has a tangible and timeless nature. Where the symbol is an authoritative part of the institutional milieu, either traditional or rational authority must acknowledge its legitimacy…scripture is [that] authoritative symbol…’.

Nesbitt points out that the symbolic authority of sacraments may create shared bonds and enhance communal cohesion, but they are normally unable to regulate or negotiate conflict. But in contrast,

‘Scripture, when canonized as complete or absolute, becomes symbolic of a particular era or set of teachings and beliefs. However, unlike sacraments, the use of scripture as symbolic authority can be constructed and constituted according to selecting those aspects or passages that address an issue at hand. Furthermore, scripture as symbolic authority can be objectified or absolutized, which transcends cultural boundaries in a way that other forms of authority can less easily do. The appeal of scriptural literalism provides an objectification of authority that is independent of the influence or control of dominant perspectives, social locations, and circumstances. As symbolic authority, it can be leveraged against cultural dominance as well as provide common ground for cross-cultural alliances…’.

In other words, with scripture raised almost to the level of apotheosis, a cross-cultural foundation for authority exists that can challenge the dominance of rational authority, which is normally associated with highly-educated elite groups from the West or First World. Scripture, given symbolic authority, becomes an important tool in the hands of Southern (non-elite) Christians who are seeking to counter-legitimate more Conservative perspectives.

As Nesbitt notes, ‘scriptural literalism as symbolic authority represents the easiest and most accessible form of counter-legitimation across educational or cross-cultural divides’. And as Lambeth Conferences, like the Anglican Communion itself, have become increasingly diverse in their cultural expression, symbolic authority has risen to the fore. So at present, and from one perspective, the only contender for being a focus of symbolic authority is the Bible, since cross-cultural negotiation only leads to sterile relativism. We should note that the only other alternative to the Bible – the Communion itself becoming or attaining the status of symbolic authority – has so far struggled to assert itself, mainly because the very resourcing of that requires a looser, more elastic view of truth-claims, and a necessary tolerance towards competing convictions.

This is a pity, because one of the chief virtues of living within a Communion is learning to be patient. Churches, each with their distinctive own intra-denominational familial identity, all have to learn how to negotiate the differences they find within themselves. For some churches in recent history, the discovery of such differences – perhaps on matters of authority, praxis or interpretation – has been too much to bear: lines have been drawn in the sand, with the sand itself serving only as a metaphor for the subsequent atomisation. Yet where some new churches, faced with internal disagreement, have quickly experienced fragmentation, most historic denominations have been reflexive enough to experience little more than a process of elastication: they have been stretched, but they have not broken. This is perhaps inevitable, when one considers the global nature of most mainstream historic denominations. Their very expanse will have involved a process of stretching (missiological, moral, conversational, hermeneutical, etc), and this in turn has led directly to their (often inchoate) sense of accommodation. However, this process itself has led to two very different versions of the Communion and its future.

The first sees Anglicanism in concrete terms. The polity will be governed by law, and scripture will be its ultimate arbiter. Here, Anglicanism will become a tightly-defined denomination in which intra-dependence is carefully policed. Diversity of belief, behaviour and practice will continue, but they will be subject to scrutiny and challenge. The second sees Anglicanism as a more reflexive polity; one that has a shape, but is able to stretch and accommodate considerable diversity. Here the polity will be governed by grace, not law, and the Communion itself will continue to operate as both a sign and instrument of unity. Anglicanism will continue to be a defined form of ecclesial polity, but one that tolerates and respects the differences it finds within itself.

Personally, I pray and hope for option two. But I also pray that I will not be divided from my sisters and brothers who favour the first option. I pray that in the midst of our common and diverse struggles, we will discover ourselves afresh in the learning church, within that community of peace we still know as the Anglican Communion. I believe that this may well stretch the Communion to its limits, and test its viability vigorously. But I believe the stretch will ultimately be worth it. For in reaching out just beyond ourselves, and moving outside our normal boundaries and comfort zones, God’s own hand is already waiting to clasp at our feeble groping.

Summary:

If part of the problem that Anglicans are currently facing – namely a searching examination of our ‘deep identity’ (manners, civility, tolerance, diversity, fluidity, etc) – is itself being tested to the limits by cultural and theological diversity, then what might we say about our identity and ministry by way of a brief conclusion? The synergy between salt and motherhood, to which I alluded earlier, might now be said to come into its own. Both of those metaphors invite us contemplate our future: how the process of attending to otherness is both necessary and enriching; that patient higgling and tholing is worth the effort; that the labour of being together might be worth more than the immediate and tangible fruits of clarity and certainty; and that what we offer and give to the world is costly and demanding; we nourish through our being and by our example.

Of course, both metaphors also suggest something else, namely that what is given in salting, fertilizing or in mothering cannot guarantee any kind of uniform outcome. The cost of being a disciple is to recognize that although we may sow, tend and water, it is God who gives the growth. And this growth is, at least in some ways, likely to be potentially problematic for any global denomination, because it invariably leads to difference and diversity. The Caribbean theologian Kortright Davis expresses this moment of epiphany simply enough:

‘Western theologians are [now] attempting to educate themselves about the new theological surges emanating from the Third World. They have finally realized that there is no universal theology; that theological norms arise out of the context in which one is called to live out one’s faith; that theology is therefore not culture free; that the foundations on which theological structures are built are actually not transferable from one context to another. Thus, although the Gospel remains the same from place to place, the means by which the Gospel is understood and articulated will differ considerably through circumstances no less valid and no less authentic…’ (1990, p. 70).

But to concretize this just a little more, let me offer three brief remarks. First, Anglicanism is something that is formed by worship, praying the scriptures and through an ecclesial practice that is, at one, local and catholic. A Communion is a complex body immersed in the complexity of the world, in which all seek to participate in God’s purposes for a wide range of reasons. Anglicanism is, then, a kind of practical and mystical idea that embodies how people might be together. It is not a confessional church in which membership is conditional upon precise agreement with articles or statements. In spite of the internal difficulties that global Anglicanism encounters, its strength may still lie in its apparent weaknesses: its unity in its diversity; its coherence in its difference; its shape in its diffusiveness; its hope in a degree of faithful doubt; its energy in passionate coolness. It embodies ‘feint conviction’; it practices ‘truthful duplicity’; it is Protestant and Catholic; it is synodical and Episcopal; it allows for ‘troubled commitment’; or, as one commentator notes (Urban Holmes), it can hardly ever resist the pairing of two three letter words: ‘Yes, but…’.

Second, maintaining unity in the midst of considerable cultural diversity will lie in developing our poise and capacity to hold together intensely held competing convictions. In the past, this rhetoric of ‘holding’ has been treated with jocularity or even cynicism by the church and the public (including the media); it has been a kind of code for saying that no decisions can or will be made, (or the bishop doesn’t like to make decisions, and prefers to sit on the fence). But increasingly, I think, the language and business of ‘holding’ will need to come to the fore, and this work and vocation is very far from being vapid or neutral. ‘Holding’ together intensely held competing convictions is, to my mind, one of the most demanding and costly tasks in episcopacy; a ministry of oversight that presides over conflicts of belief and interests. Under such conditions, the demand for a serious emotional and organizational intelligence (or wisdom) in dealing with passionately held beliefs is becoming increasingly vital.

Third, we may need to learn to celebrate the gift of our ‘un-decidability’ a little more. In being able to sustain a community of intense difference and competing convictions, we are actually offering a form of witness rather than a lack of unity. As the American theologian Urban Holmes notes, ‘I have never known two Episcopalians agree totally…[but] the fact that we can admit our disagreements is indicative of our Anglican freedom to acknowledge the polymorphous nature of all human knowing – something that not every Christian body is comfortable admitting’ (1982). Holmes realizes that Anglicanism, although a system of a kind, is more identifiable through persons than articles of faith. It models itself through examples of faith. It is a ‘mode of making sense of the experience of God – a particular approach to the social and sacred construction of reality, and to the building of the world’. Anglicans occasionally write great theology; but they are better known for poetry, hymnody, liturgy, music and spirituality. When we do get round to theology, we remain absorbed, interestingly, with the incarnation, ethics and ecclesiology: all of these being person-centred and systematic attempts to concretize our witness within the world.

In summary, we can say that it is partly for this reason that our deep desire for Anglican comprehensiveness is so manifest. It is not the case, I think, that Anglican consciousness is essentially accommodating – especially in its more vapid forms. It is, rather, that comprehensiveness prioritizes conversation and quest over precision and absolute resolutions; at its best, Anglicanism is a community of being, love, thought and worship, rather than being a definitive body that has achieved mutually agreeable confessional closure. In other words, we remain open because we see ourselves as incomplete; we are constantly caught between innovation and stability; the possibility of new patterns of being, and faithfulness to what has been revealed; between loyalty to what has gone before and still is, and what might or shall be.

Furthermore, the embodiment of this accommodation is, strangely, a person-centered ecclesial polity rather than being system-driven. This is hardly surprising when one considers the historic Anglican affection for the doctrine of the incarnation: salvation comes through embodiment, example, sacrifice and inclusiveness. Anglicans know – through their deep tacit knowledge and instinct, I think – that systems or formulae do not redeem us. Nor do they make our church. We re called, held and saved by a person, and our polity seems to know that our being together (even with our differences) is a primarily human and relational. This is why being together in some kind of ‘centre’, where we can face one another with our different perspectives, and be in a place of conversation, is so vital for our future polity.

And this now means, of course, that the centre ground is becoming the radical ground: ironic and oxymoronic, I know – but holding to some kind of centre is, to a large extent, evolving into a task and role which makes the hardest demands upon those charged with oversight. All the more so, because as those who work and study in the field of international conflict resolution remind us, the most difficult and demanding battles are those which involve our own allies or close relationships: what one scholar rather tamely terms ‘cooperative disputes’.

So, our future life together as Anglicans is probably dependent on appreciating those implicit charisms and virtues that have shaped us for so long, and beginning to make them more explicit. Of having confidence in our un-decidability and elasticity. And in holding the church together, and keeping it open, remembering that we are first and foremost, held by God in his open hands, who knows our weaknesses and differences only too well; but will still cling to us, and not let us go. As we try to hold our people and ourselves together, so shall we be held. Urban Holmes ends his meditation on Anglican polity, written twenty-five years ago, with these words:

‘…[our] course leads to living in the world as God sees the world. We can debate the trivial points, but the vision is largely clear. To love God is to relieve the burden of all who suffer. The rest is a question of tactics’ (1982).

Revd. Canon Professor Martyn Percy

Principal, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford

Discussion: Anglicanism in Contemporary Culture

‘[Leadership]…means, of course, continually listening to the experiences that lead to anger, and seeing them as far as possible from the perspective of those with less power. It means humility on the part of those who hold power, and an acknowledgment of the fear of losing power and control. It means a new way of looking at power relationships that takes the gospel seriously in their equalising and levelling. I am aware that this is one of the most demanding aspects of oversight, namely having the emotional intelligence, patience and empathy to hold feelings, anger, disappointment and frustration – other people’s, as well as your own. Episcopacy, it seems to me, is less about strategy and more about (deeply learnt) poise, especially in holding together competing convictions and trying to resolve deep conflicts….’

How can the holding together of complex competing convictions and passionately held emotions be enabled and taught in the ministry of oversight?

In what ways can ‘holding’ suffice as a means for maintaining ecclesial unity in the midst of increasing cultural diversity?

‘…we may need to learn to celebrate the gift of our ‘un-decidability’ a little more. A number of commentators…have commented on how valuable a political and cultural model Anglicanism is for today’s society. In being able to sustain a community of intense difference and competing convictions, we are actually offering a form of witness rather than a lack of unity. As the American theologian Urban Holmes notes, ‘I have never known two Episcopalians agree totally…[but] the fact that we can admit our disagreements is indicative of our Anglican freedom to acknowledge the polymorphous nature of all human knowing – something that not every Christian body is comfortable admitting’ (1982).

Is ‘un-decidability’ a sustainable and attractive ecclesial charism within contemporary culture?

What kinds of engagement and mission might this require?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Bible: Reading and Hearing,

2007-05-02T07:47:00.002-07:00

"The Bible: Reading and Hearing"
A Special Larkin-Stuart Lecture delivered by the Most. Rev. and Rt. Hon. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Co-sponsored by Trinity College and St. Thomas's Anglican Church, Monday, April 16

At a special joint Convocation of Trinity and Wycliffe colleges in Toronto on Monday, April 16,2007, the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a special Larkin-Stuart lecture. The text of the lecture follows:
One of the things that most clearly and universally identifies Christians as Christians is that they habitually read the Bible – or have the Bible read to them. From the most liberal to the most conservative, from Pentecostalists in Venezuela to Orthodox in Albania, those who call themselves Christians are engaged in a complex and a varied set of relationships with this written text, relationships which shape the patterns of worship, teaching and ethical discourse. Not even the most tradition-bound and hierarchical Christian community has ever seriously argued that the authority of the contemporary hierarchy can wholly displace the reading of Scripture, or that the language of scripture is anything but finally normative in some sense for the community. And even the most ideologically insistent liberal is unlikely to argue that Scripture can be relegated entirely to the level of illustrative historical material about the remote beginnings of the faith (though the last century has seen a repeated swing in that direction, even if it has never quite got to that point of blunt denial). In what follows, I don’t intend to offer a novel theory of inspiration, or a set of tools that will finally settle the current debates over interpretation within and between the churches; 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. Because some of our present difficulties are, at the very least, compounded by the collision of theologically inept or rootless accounts of Scripture, and it seems imperative to work at a genuine theology of the Bible as the sacred literature of the Church. Popular appeals to the obvious leave us battling in the dark; and the obvious – not surprisingly – looks radically different to different people. For many, it is obvious that a claim to the effect that Scripture is ‘God’s Word written’ implies a particular set of beliefs about the Bible’s inerrancy. For others, it is equally obvious that, if you are not that savage and menacing beast called a ‘fundamentalist’, you are bound to see the Bible as a text of its time, instructive, even sporadically inspiring, but subject to rethinking in the light of our more advanced position. As I hope will become evident, I regard such positions as examples of the rootlessness that afflicts our use of the Bible; and I hope that these reflections may suggest a few ways of reconnecting with a more serious theological grasp of the Church’s relation with Scripture.
To begin with the simplest point: before Scripture is read in private, it is heard in public. Those of us who assume that the normative image of Scripture reading is the solitary individual poring over a bound volume, one of the great icons of classical Protestantism, may need to be reminded that for most Christians throughout the ages and probably most in the world at present, the norm is listening. Very few early or mediaeval Christians could possibly have owned a Bible; not many in the rapidly growing churches of the developing world today are likely to either. And this underlines the fact that the Church’s public use of the Bible represents the Church as defined in some important way by listening: the community when it comes together doesn’t only break bread and reflect together and intercede, it silences itself to hear something. It represents itself in that moment as a community existing in response to a word of summons or invitation, to an act of communication that requires to be heard and answered.
So the Church in reading Scripture publicly says both (i) that it is not a self-generated reality, created simply out of human reflection and ideals, and (ii) that what is read needs to be read as a communicative act, - that is, not as information, not as just instruction, but as a summons to assemble together as a certain sort of community, one that understands itself as called and created ‘out of nothing’. Whatever we do in private with our reading of Scripture, we must do in awareness of this public character. The Church – a familiar enough point – is in the language of the Bible itself an ‘assembly’, a ‘convocation’: an ekklesia. It declares its basic character when it represents itself as listening to the act of ‘convoking’, calling together. From one (crucially important) point of view, the celebration of the Eucharist is that representation, the moment when all are equally and unequivocally designated as guests, responding to invitation. But, since the authoritative and defining patterns of Christian practice never reduce themselves to single and simple models, from another point of view, the hearing of the Bible is that representation. As I hope to suggest later, these two basic ways in which the Church says what it is cast a lot of light on each other.
Now this already implies a certain challenge in understanding the Bible. Not all of it by any means is cast in the grammatical form of invitation or summons. There are substantial bits of it that read like that – much of the Mosaic Law and the Prophets, and the letters of Christian Scripture, for example. But we have to work out what it means to say that a Hebrew genealogy, the Song of Songs, the laments of Job and the Psalmist, the narratives of the gospels and the visions of Revelation are equally acts of communication whose effect is to convoke the assembly of faithful. It must sometimes strike the worshipper as slightly strange to be asked to say, ‘This is the Word of the Lord’ at the end of a passage addressed to the Lord – not least one addressed to the Lord in terms of query or even reproach.
Two principles emerge very directly from this, though they are not always stated clearly in the Church. The first is that when we are dealing with texts that are grammatically addressed to a specific audience, we are being asked to imagine that historically remote audience as not only continuous with us but in some sense one with us. Just as in Deuteronomy, there is an insistence that the words spoken at Sinai are being spoken ‘not to your forefathers’ but to ‘us’ here present today – to all those in the liturgical assembly at any moment in Israel’s history (Dt 5.2-5), so for the Christian –and the Jewish –believer. We, here and now, are incorporated in the audience. The second principle is that in dealing with texts that are not grammatically directed in this way, we are obliged to ask, ‘What does this text suggest or imply about the changes which reading it or hearing it might bring about?’ The Bible itself gives us a cardinal example of ‘texts’ – oral recitations in this case – clearly intended to effect change: the parables of Jesus. And the sort of change they envisage is the result of being forced to identify yourself within the world of the narrative, to recognise who you are or might be, how your situation is included in what the parable narrates.
These principles need a good deal of further filling out if we are to be able to apply them to some of the hardest interpretative cases, but they are significant and, I’d say, primary implications of the practice of hearing Scripture publicly. Both tell us that the ‘time’ in which we hear Scripture is not like ordinary time. We are contemporary with events remote in history; we are caught up in the time of recitation, when we are to reimagine ourselves. For this moment, we exist simply as listeners, suspending our questions while the question is put to us of how we are to speak afresh about ourselves. We stand at a point of origin, and, as listeners, our primary responsibility is to receive. Kierkegaard stressed this receptive dimension eloquently in some of his writings; but a recent discussion (by Alan Jacobs in his excellent book, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, pp.107-12) notes importantly that there is a risk of so glossing the receptivity of the reader/hearer as to dissolve the proper tension between I and Other. Receiving as itself an act of enabling communication requires the free engagement of a self with skills and history. What this might mean we shall come back to shortly. But it remains true that this level of reading cannot happen if we are dominated by the time we think we occupy, so that anything coming at us through an alien text is likely to be processed into whatever most concerns us now and subjected to the criteria by which we judge something as useful or useless for the time of our plans and projects. And this has some implications for the whole of our thinking about worship, of course.
Fragmentary Reading is Risky

Among those skills we need to bring for receptivity is a capacity to think through what the initial relation between text and audience might be. I am not thinking primarily here of the way in which good critical scholarship elucidates such relations, though that is one of the underappreciated gifts of intellectual modernity – the enrichment of sheer historical imagination in ways barely accessible to most premodern readers and hearers. What I have in mind is a more basic matter, the capacity to read/hear enough to sense the directedness of a text. Fragmentary reading is highly risky to the extent that it abstracts from what various hermeneutical theorists (Ricoeur above all) have thought of as the world ‘in front of the text’ – the specific needs that shape the movement and emphasis of the text itself. Elements in that text may be valid and significant, but yet be capable of partial and even distorting use if not seen as part of a rhetorical process or argument. It is always worth asking, ‘What is the text as a full unit trying not to say or to deny?’
Two contentious examples. The first of them is, as we shall see, of more than accidental importance in understanding certain things about Scripture as a whole, but I choose it because of its frequent use in modern debates about relations between faith communities. Jesus says in the Farewell Discourses of John’s Gospel that ‘no-one comes to the Father except by me’. As an isolated text, this is regularly used to insist that salvation depends upon explicit confession of Christ, and so as a refutation of any attempt to create a more ‘inclusive’ theology of interfaith relations. But the words come at the end of a typically dense and compressed piece of exposition. Jesus has, at the end of ch.13, explained that the disciples cannot follow him now; he goes ahead to prepare a place. Thus, he creates the path to the Father that the disciples must follow; they know the path already in the sense that they know him. And this knowledge of him, expressed in the mutual love that he has made possible (13.34-5), will carry them through the devastation of absence and not-knowing which will follow the crucifixion. Seeing and knowing Jesus as he goes towards his death in the perfection of his ‘love for his own’ is already in some way a knowing of the Father as that goal towards which the self-giving of Jesus in life and death is directed. The Father is not to be known apart from this knowledge of Jesus.
Now this certainly does not suggest in any direct way a more inclusive approach to other faiths. But the point is that the actual question being asked is not about the fate of non-Christians; it is about how the disciples are to understand the death of Jesus as the necessary clearing of the way which they are to walk. If they are devastated and left desolate by his death, they have not grasped that it is itself the opening of a way which would otherwise remain closed to them. Thus it is part of the theology of the cross that is evolving throughout the later chapters of John, the mapping out of a revelation of glory through self-forgetting and self-offering. The text in question indeed states that there is no way to the Father except in virtue of what Jesus does and suffers; but precisely because that defines the way we must then follow, it is (to say the least) paradoxical if it is used as a simple self-affirmation for the exclusive claim of the Christian institution or the Christian system. There is, in other words, a way of affirming the necessity of Christ’s crucified mediation that has the effect of undermining the very way it is supposed to operate. If we ask what the question is that the passage overall poses, or what the change is that needs to be taking place over the time of the passage’s narration, it is about the move from desolation in the face of the cross (Jesus’ cross and the implicit demand for the disciple to carry the cross also) to confidence that the process is the work of love coming from and leading to the Father.
St. Paul's Argument

My second example is even more contentious in the present climate; and once again I must stress that the point I am making is not that the reading I proposes settles a controversy or changes a substantive interpretation but that many current ways of reading miss the actual direction of the passage and so undermine a proper theological approach to Scripture. Paul in the first chapter of Romans famously uses same-sex relationships as an illustration of human depravity – along with other ‘unnatural’ behaviours such as scandal, disobedience to parents and lack of pity. It is, for the majority of modern readers the most important single text in Scripture on the subject of homosexuality, and has understandably been the focus of an enormous amount of exegetical attention.
What is Paul’s argument? And, once again, what is the movement that the text seeks to facilitate? The answer is in the opening of chapter 2: we have been listing examples of the barefaced perversity of those who cannot see the requirements of the natural order in front of their noses; well, it is precisely the same perversity that affects those who have received the revelation of God and persist in self-seeking and self-deceit. The change envisaged is from confidence in having received divine revelation to an awareness of universal sinfulness and need. Once again, there is a paradox in reading Romans 1 as a foundation for identifying in others a level of sin that is not found in the chosen community.
Now this gives little comfort to either party in the current culture wars in the Church. It is not helpful for a ‘liberal’ or revisionist case, since the whole point of Paul’s rhetorical gambit is that everyone in his imagined readership agrees in thinking the same-sex relations of the culture around them to be as obviously immoral as idol-worship or disobedience to parents. It is not very helpful to the conservative either, though, because Paul insists on shifting the focus away from the objects of moral disapprobation in chapter 1 to the reading /hearing subject who has been up to this point happily identifying with Paul’s castigation of someone else. The complex and interesting argument of chapter 1 about certain forms of sin beginning by the ‘exchange’ of true for false perception and natural for unnatural desire stands, but now has to be applied not to the pagan world alone but to the ‘insiders’ of the chosen community. Paul is making a primary point not about homosexuality but about the delusions of the supposedly law-abiding.
As I have said, this does nothing to settle the exegetical questions fiercely debated at the moment. But I want to stress that what I am trying to define as a strictly theological reading of Scripture, a reading in which the present community is made contemporary with the world in front of the text, is bound to give priority to the question that the text specifically puts and to ask how the movement, the transition, worked for within the text is to be realised in the contemporary reading community. To move too rapidly to the use of the text to make a general point which does not require the reader to be converted is to step outside what I have been calling the time of the text, the process by which it shapes its question. It is to make the text more passive than active, and so to move away from the stance of the listener, from the stance of the Church as trying to be still enough to hear and free enough to respond to God’s summons to be his community. Of course the work of exegesis to establish doctrine and ethics is unavoidable; commentary is always going on. But the first moment of commentary – if this emphasis on the basic character of listening is correct – needs to be the tracing of the ‘time’ of a text so as to chart where it is moving.
A similar point is made by the Jewish scholar Peter Ochs, whose work on hermeneutics has been so fruitful in recent years. In an essay published in 2005, he sketches the debates within rabbinic tradition around the relation between the oral and the written Torah – rabbinical tradition and the text as delivered at Sinai. Rather than treating written Torah as a straightforward, unambiguous declaration of God’s will needing minimal interpretation, with oral Torah as an accumulation of commentary that simply lays out what has been handed down by rabbinic transmission from Moses to the present day, we need, Ochs suggests, following the influential Talmudic scholar David Weiss Halivni, and the biblical exegete, Michael Fishbane, a model in which oral Torah is indeed continuous with written Torah, not as a kind of supplement but as a continuation of the process already going on in written Torah. The written text is not a synchronic ‘surface’ of isolated acts of communication; it is a text in which the component parts are in relation with each other, making sense of each other: oral Torah is the ongoing attempt to clarify those relations. ‘The Oral Torah reads the Written Torah, alone, but between its verses’ (Ochs, ‘Scripture’, pp.104-118 in Fields of Faith. Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century, p.111). The divine action that is going on in Scripture is not just a relation between every atomised bit of text and God, but also God elucidating text by text, element by element. Instead of ‘the things of the world…correspond[ing], one for one, to the words of Torah’, they correspond to the relations between the words of Torah (ibid.).

The Interpretation 'That Speaks Most Truly'
This is a little obscurely worded, but its import is clear. If we speak of the effect of Scripture being the creation of an analogy of situation between the world in front of the text and the world of the current reader/hearer, this is not simply to say that any isolated piece of the text speaks unambiguously and without need of gloss to a current situation. It is rather to claim that the connections between elements of scriptural text, the connections that constitute what I have here been calling its ‘movement’, will be uncovered in the reader’s world as still effecting the same movement and making the same overall demands. The reader who shares the covenant relationship with the first recipients of Torah – to stay with Ochs’ argument for the moment – has to draw out the connection between the initial goal of Torah as a whole, which is the establishing of the covenant people in holiness and faithfulness, and the condition of Israel now, so as to find the interpretation ‘that speaks most ‘truly’ to the ends of renewing Judaism today, after Destruction’ (ibid. 113) – the destruction of the Temple, the destruction of the Shoah, or any other historical catastrophe that poses a prima facie challenge to the continuity of God’s people then and now.
The Christian may seem not to be working with the same kind of issue around radical disruption in continuity – until we reflect on the division of the Testaments itself, with the cross of Jesus as its pivot, as inscribing an analogous problem at the heart of Scripture. Christian Scripture, the New Testament, is already a work of interpretation, a statement of some very paradoxical connections; it is an attempt to chart what is ‘between’ the texts of Jewish Scripture on which it works. So 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. It is not that we are given only a method of interpretation by the form of Scripture – a method that, by pointing us to the conflict and tension between texts simply leaves us with theologically unresolvable debate as a universal norm for Christian discourse (I make the point partly in order to correct what some have – pardonably – understood as the implication of what I have written elsewhere on this matter). There is a substantive and discernible form. The canon is presented to us as a whole, whose unity is real and coherent, even if not superficially smooth. To quote from Kevin Vanhoozer’s recent and magisterial work on The Drama of Doctrine. A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology, p.137, ‘The canon both recounts the history of God’s covenantal dealings with humanity and regulates God’s ongoing covenantal relationship with his people…[I]t is the text that “documents” our covenantal privileges and responsibilities.’ We must acknowledge the tensions and internal debates in Scripture; we must also acknowledge the clear sense that the text is presented as a narrative of ‘fulfilment’ – as one that contains a vision claiming comprehensiveness of meaning. We are to locate ourselves within this set of connections and engagements, the history of Israel, called, exiled, restored, and of Jesus crucified and risen and alive in the Spirit within the community, not to regard Scripture as one element in a merely modern landscape of conflicts.
Vanhoozer writes of the Church as ‘staging’ what Scripture unfolds. Relating this to my earlier discussion, it suggests that the reading community listens so as to be not only summoned into being in the abstract but so as to be called into specific, self-identifying action, action that seeks to embody the Kingdom. And, looking at the full range of scriptural language and demand, this is not just the embodying of formal precept and instruction: it is the re-production of those patterns of faithful response spelled out in the narrative – further energised and further complicated by the interweaving of patterns of unfaithful and partial response. How are we to re-enact the faith of Abraham or David while recognising that areas of the narrative of Abraham and David are themselves brought under judgement as the text unfolds, judged within the ‘movement’ of the text? How are we to be faithful to Torah as given to the people of the First Covenant while recognising that the whole notion of Torah is reshaped by the events of Jesus’ life and death? Going back for a moment to the text I discussed from the Farewell Discourses a little while ago, we must ultimately say that the reading and hearing required will be found as we find what it is to walk the way of Jesus as he goes to his Father by way of his cross.

The Dual Character of Text
A written text inevitably has about it a dual character. It comes before the reader/hearer as a finished product, and so as something that can in some ways be treated as an object. If we are not careful its written character can be misused by working with the text as if it were passive. In contrast to the event of a voice speaking, it can be abstracted from the single occasion when the hearer has no control over what comes to her or him from outside. At the same time, a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continuously generates new events of interpretation. It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be. So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate. Just as the text itself contains re-reading, is almost constituted by re-reading, so that it repeatedly recreates a movement towards conversion (towards the cross of Jesus, in Christian terms), so the eternal possibility of ‘reading again’ stands as a warning against ignoring the active ‘restlessness’ of the text in summoning the reader to change. The writtenness of the text is from one point of view risky as a strategy of communication: it risks the appearance of passivity, and the re-readability of the text risks the appearance of indeterminacy. Yet from another point of view it can be seen as inseparable from the risk of the communication it itself describes as well as enacts – a divine communication that is never without human speech and narrative, never just an interruption of the created continuum but a pressure upon it that opens up to the divine by the character of its internal relations and connections, the shifting, penitent perspective of a story enacted in time. The writtenness of the text is like the sheer factuality of the historical past as the vehicle of revelation: it is something irreversibly done, but for that very reason continuously inviting or demanding.
[A note here on the notion of canonicity so fully discussed by Vanhoozer: were we to treat Scripture’s limits as negotiable, we should be challenging the significance of the written character of scriptural revelation. If we were asking whether there could be supplements to Scripture, ‘third testaments’ and so on, we should be attempting to assess the revelatory claims of various texts that, in the nature of the case, had not been read publicly and communally in the way scriptural texts have been, and therefore not read continuously in anything like the same sense. 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. Opening the canon (itself a strained use of language if you think about it) would mean that something was being negotiated that was not primarily and essentially response to an act already performed. We should have a hybrid view of revelation as text plus supplements – additional elements, written or unwritten, uncontrolled by the limits of a text whose identity is fixed as historical. This is the substance of the Reformation objection to certain decadent views of tradition, views decisively rejected by later Catholic thought also.]
I have used the language of invitation and summons at a number of points earlier in this essay, and in the final sections of it I want to return to this theme, since it will illuminate some of the issues just touched upon about the specificity and coherence of scriptural revelation. We noted earlier that the celebration of the Eucharist and the reading of the Bible are the most universal ways in which the Church ‘represents’ what it is; and both sow the Church as a community committed to listening afresh to its foundational call. The gathering of the assembly for worship is not simply a human routine, however much it may come to look like that. It is, theologically speaking, a moment in which the present activity of God is assumed and responded to.
But to read Scripture in the context of the Eucharist – which has been from the beginning of the Church the primary place for it – is to say that the Word of God that acts in the Bible is a Word directed towards those changes that bring about the Eucharistic community. The summons to the reader/hearer is to involvement in the Body of Christ, the agent of the Kingdom, as we have seen; and that Body is what is constituted and maintained by the breaking of bread and all that this means. For Paul, exploring it in I Corinthians, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is strictly bound up with the central character of the community: what is shown in the Eucharist is a community of interdependence and penitent self-awareness, discovering the dangers of partisan self-assertion or uncritical reproduction of the relations of power and status that prevail in the society around. So if Scripture is to be heard as summons or invitation before all else, this is what it is a summons to. And the reading and understanding of the text must be pursued in this light. We ask what change is envisaged or required in the ‘time’ of any passage of Scripture; and now we can add that whatever change that is in particular, it must make sense in the context of the formation of this kind of community – the Eucharistic Body.

The Eucharist and Scripture
Take Scripture out of this context of the invitation to sit at table with Jesus and to be incorporated into his labour and suffering for the Kingdom, and you will be treating Scripture as either simply an inspired supernatural guide for individual conduct or a piece of detached historical record – the typical exaggerations of Biblicist and liberal approaches respectively. For the former, the work of the Spirit is more or less restricted to the transformation of the particular believer; for the latter, the life of the community is where the Spirit is primarily to be heard and discerned, with Scripture an illuminating adjunct at certain points. But grasp Scripture as part of the form taken by the divine act of invitation that summons and establishes the community around the Lord’s Table, and the Bible becomes coherent at a new level, as a text whose meaning is most centrally to do with the passage from rivalry and self-assertion and the enmity with God that is bound up with these to the community in which each, by the influx of the Spirit, takes responsibility for all, and all for each. The context of the Eucharist, in which everyone present is there simply because they are guests by the free generosity of the host, obliges a reading of Scripture in which what is decisive is always this shared dependence on God’s initiative of welcome which removes pride and fear.
But equally, take Scripture out of the Eucharistic context and the Eucharist itself becomes different. Without this anchorage in the history of God’s creative welcome as slowly and painfully spelled out in the history of Israel and Jesus, the Eucharist can more readily be distorted into a celebration of what the community now senses itself to be or to have achieved. It is robbed of the analogy that makes it contemporary with the founding act – what you might call the ‘Deuteronomic analogy’, thinking back to the text from Deut.5 discussed earlier (‘Not to your forefathers…’),and so does not see itself as formed by a divine communication that is in fact conveyed through human history, through the record of faithful and unfaithful response. If the Eucharist is properly a covenant meal, as the founding text declares, it presupposes a connectedness with the history of the covenant people; it always has (setting aside for a moment the debates over whether the Last Supper was historically a Passover meal) a Passover dimension.
Thus Eucharist and Scripture need to be held together if we are to have an adequate theology of either. The Eucharist is the primary locus of the listening Church, the place where it shows itself to be there in response to the call of God; and the Scripture that embodies that call has to be read as leading to precisely this point, the existence of a community that embodies Christ and does so by reflecting his kenotic act. And as I have hinted already, this must be anchored clearly in a theology of the Spirit, which holds the two themes together. The Spirit, according to John’s gospel, is the remembrancer, the divine agency that makes the words of Christ contemporary. It is the Spirit that incorporates us into one community with the disciples at the Last Supper and indeed with the Deuteronomically imagined people of Israel. It is the Spirit that enables the mutual self-offering that builds up the Body and that unites the members in the prayer of the glorified Christ. It is the Spirit that connects the periods of God’s communicative action towards humanity and thus connects the diverse texts that make up the one manifold text that we call Holy Scripture. The Spirit’s work as ‘breathing’ God’s wisdom into the text of Scripture is not a magical process that removes biblical writing from the realm of actual human writing; it is the work of creating one ‘movement’ out of the diverse historical narratives and textual deposits that represent Israel’s and the Church’s efforts to find words to communicate God’s communication of summons and invitation. The Spirit through the events of God’s initiative stirs up those words and makes sense of them for the reader/hearer in the Spirit-sustained community. As Karl Barth insisted, this leaves no ground for breaking up Scripture into the parts we can ‘approve’ as God-inspired and the parts that are merely human; the whole is human and the whole is offered by God in and through the life of the Body, always shaping and determining the form of that life.
The Spirit in the New Testament, not least in the Johannine tradition, is associated in its fullness with the resurrection of Jesus; and my final point is to note the way in which Eucharist and Scripture alike have to be considered in relation to belief in the resurrection. The Eucharist itself is generally recognised as, among other things, a continuation of Jesus’ meal-fellowship with the marginal and disreputable in Israel; by this fellowship, he declares a new way of being Israel that will not restrict membership to those who can satisfy conditions but will be open to all who are ready to be welcomed by him in the name of Israel’s God. The eucharistic encounter is with the Christ who is still today actively defining the people of God simply by his invitation. Seen like this, the eucharist is not the memorial of past meals with Jesus but the reality of contemporary response to his hospitality – a hospitality once and for all established as indestructible by the cross and the resurrection, so that what was done in the ministry of Jesus in Galilee and Jerusalem is done constantly in the history of the Church.
But to say that Christ’s transforming hospitality is renewed constantly in this history is also to say that Christ continues to speak in and to the community. The community exists because of God’s act of communication, as we have seen repeatedly; the resurrection is the persistence of that act. Without belief in the resurrection, our understanding of Scripture is going to be deficient at best. If it is not the present vehicle of God speaking in the risen Christ, it is a record only of God speaking to others. For it to be an address that works directly upon self and community now, it must be given to us as the continuation of the same act, the re-presenting and re-enacting of the same scriptural reality of invitation and the creation of a people defined by justice, mutual service and the liberty to relate to God as Father and faithful partner.
So in sum: what I believe we need for a renewed theological grasp of Scripture is (i) the recognition that Scripture is something heard in the event where the community affirms its identity and seeks its renewal; (ii) the development of the skills needed to explore the analogy and continuity between the world ‘in front of’ the text and the current context, so as at least to avoid the misuse of texts by abstracting them from the questions they actually put ;(iii) thus also, the discernment of where any given section of Scripture is moving – what are the changes it sets out and proposes for the reader/hearer; (iv) an understanding that this last is decisively and authoritatively illuminated by the Eucharistic setting of biblical reading; (v) the consequent holding together of Eucharist and Scripture through a strong doctrine of the Spirit’s work in constructing the community of Christ’s Body; and (vi) the recognition that neither Scripture nor Eucharist makes sense without commitment to the resurrection of Jesus as the fundamental condition of a Church whose identity is realised in listening and responding. Reading Scripture theologically and understanding theologically the process of reading – all this is essentially about seeing Scripture as the vehicle of God’s act to bring about conversion. Ultimately, Scripture brings us back to the uniquely creative moment of God’s freedom – to the grace of a free self-bestowal that can create what is other and then, by love and welcome, transform that other into a sharer and communicator of the same joyful, generative act. ‘The word of life…[that] we have seen and heard we declare to you, so that you and we together may share in a common life, that life which we share with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ’ (I Jn.1.1-3).
© Rowan Williams 2007