THE EPISCOPALIAN PREFERENCE by Dr. Philip Turner – some further thoughts.

Some weeks ago I commended the Essay by Dr Philip Turner entitled “The Episcopalian Preference” [First Things, Nov 2003] as a most insightful account of the Episcopal Church over the last fifty years or so. What I wrote was printed in various publications including the FinFNA newsletter for January 2004.

In “Correspondence” in the March 2004 issue of First Things there are two letters about this essay with a response by Dr Turner. One letter deals with the question of authority in the Anglican Way and the other with women’s ordination. I take up only the second topic, for in Turner’s response we find out why he can identify a variety of innovations in the life of the Episcopal Church which led to its moral and spiritual demise (even to its idolatry and apostasy) and not include within them the major innovation of the ordination of women.

Since he is the most senior and the most articulate of the theologians of The Communion Institute and of The Network, it is rather important that Episcopalians who desire to be orthodox know how and why he defends the innovation of women in all three orders of the Ministry of the Church.

The question he addresses is: Is it not the case that both the ordination of women and the approval of homosexual relations spring from the same faulty view of human moral agency? That view, we recall, is common in our culture and removes persons as agents from a moral order to which they are obligated to conform, and locates them as individuals, selves and persons in a social economy where they are free to pursue their own particular preferences & orientations, just as long as they do not knowingly harm others.

Turner, who is married to an ordained woman, both defends the moral order of obligation (as it is has been understood through Christendom for centuries and wherein women were not considered on biblical and philosophical grounds as appropriate candidates for ordination) and the modern practice of the ordination of women. He recognizes that they are problems in holding these two positions but he has an argument for seeing the opposition between them as only apparent and not substantial.

His reasoning is something like this:

Though the modern view of persons as agents free to pursue their preferences as individual selves is generally a bad one, nevertheless it has highlighted and brought into our common life some good things. For example, it has called attention to the moral significance, dignity and worth of individual persons, and this has had beneficial aspects in various areas of society, in race relations, for example.

Bearing this beneficial dimension clearly in mind, the questions to be addressed with regard to women and ordination are such as these: Is that which leads women to seek ordination been at a deeper moral level than that of mere personal preference? Do the aspirations of women to be ordained cohere with the known will of God for the Ministry of his Church? The answer to both questions he claims is in the affirmative. But he does not supply the arguments for the second affirmative, for there is not space to do so.

Thus he is able to believe, teach and confess that while there are superficial similarities between the ordination of women on the one hand and the blessing of homosexual couples and the ordaining of active homosexual person on the other, there are important and substantial differences between them as innovations. While the ordination of women as a movement is initially raised and propelled publicly by the new western view of the human agent’s freedom and preferences, it is not based on this view, he holds. This innovation reaches down through the modern view to the traditional understanding of divine order, where women and men are equal before God and gifted by him for different vocations, which include, in his judgment, for both sexes the possible call to the ordained Ministry.

I must confess that, of the ordained women I know, I can honestly say it appears to me that some of them do conduct themselves in such a way as to suggest that they believe the real basis for their call is in that divine order to which Scripture witnesses and is not in the feminist movement of the middle and late 20th century, although they do acknowledge that the changed moral climate made it possible for the door to open to them. And of these a minority seem to take seriously the Anglican doctrine of reception [Eames Commission], that the Communion of Churches is actually seeking to discern whether or not this innovative ministry is led by the Holy Spirit or is only the best intentions of human beings as they are unknowingly influenced by the Zeitgeist.

The questions I am left with and for which I am sure Dr. Turner has answers are such as these:

1. Why did not the Church before the modern era, and especially before the 1960s in the West, perceive that the traditional moral order allowed, even required, the ordaining of women?


2. Why do the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Churches, many biblically-based Protestants and some Anglican provinces, all state with such clarity that ordaining women remains contrary to the revealed will of the Lord?


3. Is it not the case the whatever be the merits of the ordaining of women, in a culture dominated by human rights and personal preference, this innovation has made it much easier for other innovations, also based on human rights and preference, to be accepted in the ECUSA? Has this innovation not opened the door for others (perhaps less authentic) to enter in?


4. Has the development of inclusive language not only for human beings but for God – and the profound effect this had had upon liturgical texts and Bible translation – come as a result of the felt need of women clergy to use a discourse that seemed appropriate to their gender/sex?


5. Is it possible that if the Anglican Communion takes seriously the Doctrine of Reception there will be eventually a general recognition that this innovation was just such, merely an innovation?


6. Why does Dr Turner not place any authority in his writings on the received, classic Formularies of the Anglican Way -- BCP, Ordinal and Articles? If we take these seriously then the burden is on the innovator to show that the innovation of women’s ministry is in accord with the binding formulae of doctrine of the Reformed Catholic Faith as professed in the historic Anglican Way.

Those of us who believe that the basic roots of the innovation of women’s ordination and that of “gay” blessings/ordinations are the same do not of course mean to imply that women who are ordained are motivated by evil. We believe that they are rather sincerely mistaken and that by the providence, forgiveness & grace of God they are able to achieve much good in the kingdom of God and church of Christ. After all, it is not the case that many of us walk into the wrong path of life and God in his goodness blesses us there and makes use of us as his servants in that path?

The Rev’d Dr. Peter Toon March 13 2004.