Those who call themselves “orthodox” in the Episcopal Church of the USA and other provinces of the Anglican Communion tend to view the Windsor Report (2004) from the Lambeth Commission of Communion as a good thing, both in general and in specifics.
However, there are voices to be heard and words to be read from the left and the right that raise important questions about what this Report actually assumed and commended on a variety of themes.
Dr Ashley Null, author of a book on Cranmer (Oxford UP 2000) and Canon Theologian of the ECUSA diocese of Western Kansas, has expressed serious concern as to the view stated by the Report as to how the people of God are to relate to the Bible from now on in the Anglican Communion. His concern arises because he knows, as well as any other person in the whole world, the classic position of the Holy Scriptures in the Anglican Way -- as stated by Archbishop Cranmer in the Preface to the Great Bible, in his Homily on the reading of Scripture in the First Book of Homilies, and in Articles VI, VII, & XX of The Thirty-Nine Articles.
Dr Null understands that what the Commission is recommending in its Report , in order to maintain the Communion as a diversity in unity is the equivalent in Anglican terms of an authoritative teaching magisterium (the Archbishop of Canterbury and a panel of advisers, in close liaison with the Primates). Bound together by a covenant, the provinces will be also bound to accept in major matters of controversy the final ruling of the magisterium.
Let us be clear. The Anglican Communion is a very long way from agreeing to either a mutually binding covenant or to a teaching magisterium. However, what the ongoing controversy and crisis over “same-sex stuff” has brought out into the open is the variety of ways in which the Bible is interpreted by Anglicans. And different approaches to the Bible lead to the discovery therein of different, even opposing doctrines. If the Anglican Communion is to survive as a diversity in unity and unity in diversity it will certainly need to agree at least on which forms of biblical interpretation are either acceptable or not.
The classic, traditional position, first stated with great power and clarity by Cranmer is that the basic message from God given in the Bible, One Canon with Two Testaments, is clear to all. This message is that everlasting salvation is given by God through and in Jesus Christ, and with it a basic form of doctrine and morality is presented. So what is essential to salvation is clearly there in the Bible, understood in its plain sense and in the light of the entire canon by the rule of non-contradiction. No teaching magisterium is needed to do this job for the baptized people of God; and further the national Church, and the even the Church international meeting in Council, does not have the authority to require of any local church or individual Christian for eternal salvation anything that is not clearly taught in Scripture or may not be deduced from the clear teaching of Scripture.
We are now at a point in Anglican history where some of the sophisticated teachers of Biblical Studies in colleges and seminaries, together with some bishops, are claiming that the received position of the clarity of Scripture on basic faith and morality is wholly wrong, and that the Bible only opens up its unique message with the use of special tools of interpretation, as sued by scholars. One may see these tools being used in To Set Our Hope on Christ, the book produced for the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA by a team of scholars, and then presented to the Anglican Communion as a way of justifying the new ECUSA doctrine with respect to the holiness of same-sex unions. (see my response in Same-Sex Affection, A Response to Presiding Bishop Griswold - 1-800-727-1928 or www.anglicanmarketplace.com )
What these “western” enlightened Anglicans are saying is that the Cranmerian approach to the Bible (a) is totally outdated and will not work in post-modern society, (b) was taken by missionaries to Africa and is the cause of the “fundamentalism” of African bishops and Primates, and (c) must be replaced by an approach to the Bible that is consonant with modern sensibilities and knowledge.
To be specific -- the Cranmerian approach states that sexual morality is clear in the Bible and is given in the form of commandments and exhortations and by these we know the will of God for today for sexual relations.
In contrast, one approach amongst theologians from mainline churches suggests that the key to understand what the Bible really teaches is by identifying with Jesus as he is presented at his most different from others in the Gospels – that is as the friend of the outcasts of society, as the Saviour of the excluded, as the healer of those rejected by their families, and so on. This true and vital Jesus stands against sexism and patriarchy and discrimination and homophobia and in his embrace of all deserving souls he blesses loving, faithful, covenanted same-sex partnerships. So here the Jesus of parts of the Gospels is the internal critic of much of the content, doctrine and morality of the Bible! And this all-inclusive Jesus commends and defends what the traditional Jesus says is sin and immorality.
Thus in the confusing array of doctrines and forms of morality arrived at by new and different methods in interpretation there is certainly diversity but no unity. So the Report suggests that to keep everyone together there is needed a central authority which after discernment can make a judgment and say “This is the Anglican Way” and then all the Provinces with their whole membership will be expected to follow after.
Dr Null is right to be worried as to the proposal and to where this will lead!
(Ashley Null’s booklet is THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES AND REFORMATION ANGLICANISM, Biblical Authority Defined and Applied, 2005, and is published by the Uganda Christian University, Mukono, Uganda.)
petertoon@msn.com Septuagesima Sunday 2006 February 26, 2006
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