These two assertions recently made in First Things seem to encapsulate at least some of the virulent conviction behind the march of the "Global South" toward separation.
First, this:
The tepid response to Williams’ Lambeth invitations has already shown how and why this will work—hundreds of Anglican bishops will simply decide that Lambeth is not worth going to since no one is required to abide by its decisions.
I think the author, Jordan Hylden, is not alone in his misconception of Lambeth's role in the Anglican Communion. It has never had the power to make any decisions that its members were "required to abide by." True, select parts of Lambeth 1998's 1.10 have been specially singled out and treated as if members were required to uphold them, but this is sheer opportunistic novelty. A new party--the right-wing evangelical "Global South"--came to power in the Communion, and liked it enough to unilaterally but tacitly re-define the authority of Lambeth in practice to suit its interests. Because it wanted to and it could.
There's more:
Like any group lacking authority, Anglicanism thereafter will break apart into several factions.
He means "like any group lacking authority to require members to abide by its pronouncements"--which may seem to contradict his earlier assertion. How could it lack what it has? But nevermind; the larger issue is his assumption that group unity demands that kind of power.
It didn't have that kind of power for more than a century (from 1867), but Lambeth stuck together nonetheless.
Now that such power is sought, the Communion is about to come apart. One might wonder whether it is precisely the fact that such power is sought that is helping cause the Communion disintegrate. After all, the Global South "prosecution" is the faction pushing disintegration hardest, and this is the very faction that seemed most to want Lambeth to have more power.
Is there a connection? I venture to say so. It is as if having tasted power, the GS faction wants more, and is almost convinced it can have as much as it likes, that maybe there need be no limits in Anglican tradition to what it can get away with, or atleast none it is obligated to respect. Its will in this regard is the law.
The Baltimore Declaration Revisited
In the current unpleasantness afflicting the Anglican Communion, it is all too easy to interpret opponents as having no strong points to make at all, as being roughly analogous to the Amakelites from whom the nascent Israelites were to take no goods or prisoners whatsoever. That brutal attitude fits with the profusion of Eliminationist Rhetoric, an easy temptation as lines harden and form walls. So, I figured it might be a good idea to pause and look over one of the Anglican right's earlier attempts to address what it saw as serious trouble in the Episcopal Church: the Baltimore Declartation (1991). Of its signers, I only recognize the name of Alvin Kimel, who is no longer Episcopalian and used to run the Pontifications site. However, the document was an occasion for other reflections, namely those of Reclaiming Faith (1993), a collection of essays penned by more familiar players: Radner, Seitz, Turner, Reno, Sumner, Yeago, Charry, et al.
I. What We Have in Common
How much common ground do I have with the Baltimore Declaration? Well, I find it hard to see exactly why it was controversial. I must be missing something.
It seems to me that most Epipscopalians who are willing to go along with GC2003 would approve of most if not all of the Baltimore Declaration. The only sense I can make of its being controversial is that its authors were in fact engaging with a very vocal minority in high positions around the Episcopal Church. In their minds, that vocal minority may have included people who would sympathize with Spong or Pike and were ready to use their institutional power to spread Spong or Pike-like positions wider in the Episcopal Church, making them normative in time. So it did not matter if in fact the targets of the Declaration were at the time just a minority; the worry was that this minority would surely become a ruling majority, making its noxious brand of unorthodoxy dominant. From such a perspective, GC2003 would have confirmed the worry: a terminal endpoint had been reached.
For instance, I agree with these parts of the Declaration, going from the summaries in boldface at the end of each numbered section:
I (Jesus "definitively and uniquely" reveals God, whom should not stop referring to as Father, Son, an Holy Spirit--and we should not apply titles of our own making to God)
II (monism and deism are false)
IV (humanity needs the salvation that comes uniquely from the Cross and Resurrection)
VII (one should not replace Scriptural content with secular, let historical criticism/the Jesus Seminar tell the Church who Jesus is and what he wants from us, or forbid the Church from a messianic reading of the OT)
Yes, even (I) has a feminist-friendly reading, and does not rule out Scriptural titles and images(like "Mother" or "Creator" and "Sustainer"). (IV) is soft enough to admit inclusivism. (VII) does not actually reject historical criticism.
I, II, IV, and VII need no significant modification in my view. Minor modifications are needed in these following articles, but their drift apart from the gaffes is right in my opinion:
VI (misogyny is wrong and anti-Biblical, and it is false that the Father as "Father" is inaccessible/unavailable to women)
V (anti-Semitism is wrong and anti-Biblical, but Jews still need Jesus and need to have jesus preached to them)
The failings of V and VI are similar, in that they are relatively ahistorical, failing to take account of certain ugly facts on the ground. V does not say enough about how the Gospel should be preached given the history of Christian anti-Semitism with a Biblical foundation: we should at least acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact Scripture and Christian tradition has lent itself to misinterpretation along anti-Semitic lines. Moreover, I wonder if the drift of V means to rule out inclusivism.
Likewise, VI does not seem to acknowledge that women may not be able to approach God as Father, even if logically it remains legitimate and called for in the Church for God to be named Father, etc. VI thus contians a weird a priori principle singling out women (might men have a similar problem?) and ruling out the possibility of human weakness or affliction among them around the issus of how we refer to God. On the face of it, VI seems perilously close to self-contradiction.
The only article that seems to me totally wrong is III, which says Jesus is the whole revelation of God and there is no other revelation of God from which we may gain knowledge of him. That seems unintentionally to rule out the OT being a revelation from God to Israel that gave them knowledge of God; surely it is just such a revelation.
Moreover, it seems intentionally to rule out natural theology altogether, in effect elevating submission to Barth's methodology as a condition of faith. That's just silly. III needs to be qualified at least to permit the OT's being a revelation prior to Christ and to permit natural theology.
Still, a solid core of the declaration (I, II, IV, VII) seems to survive intact, and other bits (V, VI) need only small modifcations. That is alot of common ground. Of course I may be wrong, but I bet most of the Episcopal Church is with me on this. You might think in spite of GC2003, we should be able to get along. Why not?
II. Deeper Differences
The Baltimore Declaration did not put down the most important principles governing separatist opposition to GC2003; it tells only part of the story. Among the most important of the missing:
Christians are obligated to break communion with material heretics, i.e. those sincerely mistaken about the faith.
Sometimes I wonder whether this is among them:
There is no distinction between material and formal heresy; any mistake about the faith is sin implying broken communion.
There is no room for an error in the new Anglican Communion of the separatists. The fact that GC2003 acted bona fide, sincerely, to the best of its ability and knowledge, having discharged epistemic responsibilities is of no importance. I think those principles are false; the Scriptural evidence for them is insufficient--and I think much of the Episcopal Church recognizes their falsehood.
Of course, those rules are impossible for the Church to live by. The separatist camp includes factions with incompatible accounts of the faith who have agreed to put aside their differences for pragmatic ends. In reality, then, the principes should be something like:
Christians are obligated to break communion with material heretics only if they are from the Episcopal Church and against separation; any mistake about the faith is a sin only for an Episcopalian against separation.
Of course, viewed in the light that way, these principles are ridiculous. The separatist movement afoot in the Anglican Communion seems not rooted in the faith of the Creeds and catholic Christianity, but a morally indefensible mean-spritedness incompatible with Scripture. Am I wrong? As I said before, I must be missing something. No?
I. What We Have in Common
How much common ground do I have with the Baltimore Declaration? Well, I find it hard to see exactly why it was controversial. I must be missing something.
It seems to me that most Epipscopalians who are willing to go along with GC2003 would approve of most if not all of the Baltimore Declaration. The only sense I can make of its being controversial is that its authors were in fact engaging with a very vocal minority in high positions around the Episcopal Church. In their minds, that vocal minority may have included people who would sympathize with Spong or Pike and were ready to use their institutional power to spread Spong or Pike-like positions wider in the Episcopal Church, making them normative in time. So it did not matter if in fact the targets of the Declaration were at the time just a minority; the worry was that this minority would surely become a ruling majority, making its noxious brand of unorthodoxy dominant. From such a perspective, GC2003 would have confirmed the worry: a terminal endpoint had been reached.
For instance, I agree with these parts of the Declaration, going from the summaries in boldface at the end of each numbered section:
I (Jesus "definitively and uniquely" reveals God, whom should not stop referring to as Father, Son, an Holy Spirit--and we should not apply titles of our own making to God)
II (monism and deism are false)
IV (humanity needs the salvation that comes uniquely from the Cross and Resurrection)
VII (one should not replace Scriptural content with secular, let historical criticism/the Jesus Seminar tell the Church who Jesus is and what he wants from us, or forbid the Church from a messianic reading of the OT)
Yes, even (I) has a feminist-friendly reading, and does not rule out Scriptural titles and images(like "Mother" or "Creator" and "Sustainer"). (IV) is soft enough to admit inclusivism. (VII) does not actually reject historical criticism.
I, II, IV, and VII need no significant modification in my view. Minor modifications are needed in these following articles, but their drift apart from the gaffes is right in my opinion:
VI (misogyny is wrong and anti-Biblical, and it is false that the Father as "Father" is inaccessible/unavailable to women)
V (anti-Semitism is wrong and anti-Biblical, but Jews still need Jesus and need to have jesus preached to them)
The failings of V and VI are similar, in that they are relatively ahistorical, failing to take account of certain ugly facts on the ground. V does not say enough about how the Gospel should be preached given the history of Christian anti-Semitism with a Biblical foundation: we should at least acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact Scripture and Christian tradition has lent itself to misinterpretation along anti-Semitic lines. Moreover, I wonder if the drift of V means to rule out inclusivism.
Likewise, VI does not seem to acknowledge that women may not be able to approach God as Father, even if logically it remains legitimate and called for in the Church for God to be named Father, etc. VI thus contians a weird a priori principle singling out women (might men have a similar problem?) and ruling out the possibility of human weakness or affliction among them around the issus of how we refer to God. On the face of it, VI seems perilously close to self-contradiction.
The only article that seems to me totally wrong is III, which says Jesus is the whole revelation of God and there is no other revelation of God from which we may gain knowledge of him. That seems unintentionally to rule out the OT being a revelation from God to Israel that gave them knowledge of God; surely it is just such a revelation.
Moreover, it seems intentionally to rule out natural theology altogether, in effect elevating submission to Barth's methodology as a condition of faith. That's just silly. III needs to be qualified at least to permit the OT's being a revelation prior to Christ and to permit natural theology.
Still, a solid core of the declaration (I, II, IV, VII) seems to survive intact, and other bits (V, VI) need only small modifcations. That is alot of common ground. Of course I may be wrong, but I bet most of the Episcopal Church is with me on this. You might think in spite of GC2003, we should be able to get along. Why not?
II. Deeper Differences
The Baltimore Declaration did not put down the most important principles governing separatist opposition to GC2003; it tells only part of the story. Among the most important of the missing:
Christians are obligated to break communion with material heretics, i.e. those sincerely mistaken about the faith.
Sometimes I wonder whether this is among them:
There is no distinction between material and formal heresy; any mistake about the faith is sin implying broken communion.
There is no room for an error in the new Anglican Communion of the separatists. The fact that GC2003 acted bona fide, sincerely, to the best of its ability and knowledge, having discharged epistemic responsibilities is of no importance. I think those principles are false; the Scriptural evidence for them is insufficient--and I think much of the Episcopal Church recognizes their falsehood.
Of course, those rules are impossible for the Church to live by. The separatist camp includes factions with incompatible accounts of the faith who have agreed to put aside their differences for pragmatic ends. In reality, then, the principes should be something like:
Christians are obligated to break communion with material heretics only if they are from the Episcopal Church and against separation; any mistake about the faith is a sin only for an Episcopalian against separation.
Of course, viewed in the light that way, these principles are ridiculous. The separatist movement afoot in the Anglican Communion seems not rooted in the faith of the Creeds and catholic Christianity, but a morally indefensible mean-spritedness incompatible with Scripture. Am I wrong? As I said before, I must be missing something. No?
The Danger of Nihilism in Brothers Minns & Akinola's Letter (somewhat pretentious biretta tip to Brother Milbank)
As you may well know, Akinola's latest missive seems to have been penned in part by Virginia's own import, Bishop Marty Minns.
I advocated the HoB affirm Minola's (as Minns and Akinola seem to be speaking in one voice for now) list of bona fides--but this elicited a well-founded worry that the HoB would be leaving itself vulnerable to the anti-Anglican Communion interpretation of the Minolans.
My response:
The problem for the Minolans is that the decoder ring for Minola's list doesn't come in the Bible box.
It seems the Bible needs the Church, the Spirit moving in the work (liturgy, esp. Eucharistic and Baptismal) of her people, if the Bible is to even approach the significance God intends.
That implies one must go outside the Bible to make sense of what is in the Bible. But--alas--any evidence at this point will underdetermine theory. That means authority will be necessary for Minola to single out which interpretations, which compromises, which equivocations, and which silences about tough texts are permitted and which are not. I.e.: they may be tempted to an exclusivist decoding of Scripture.
The church has to take stands on the basis of underdetermined theory--it is unavoidable. That's fine if it is ready to be always reformed and reforming: if it is ready to be corrected in the Spirit and repent.
But Minola might be tempted instead to Eliminationist Rhetoric--the kind of rhetoric they(?) have used before: TEC et al are a cancer, to be cut off and burned; TEC are not merely erring Christians but not Christian at all; etc. That rhetoric does not call for Separation alone, but a more extreme Solution: Separate and Destroy. The thing speaks for itself, as we have seen the Chapman Memo strategy unfold even as assorted conservative resisters said it wouldn't.
An exclusivist decoding in any terms--conservative or liberal--is an exercise in sheer assertion of Created will over against that of the Creator--Who knew we could never comprehend Him.
The sheer assertion of Will, along the lines of a fiat "Let it mean what we say it means" is an exercise backed by Nothing (what can we really be apart from God?); and the fervent advocacy of sheer will backed by Nothing is merest Nihilism: the impossible attempt to Reduce the Creator to the plane of the Created.
I advocated the HoB affirm Minola's (as Minns and Akinola seem to be speaking in one voice for now) list of bona fides--but this elicited a well-founded worry that the HoB would be leaving itself vulnerable to the anti-Anglican Communion interpretation of the Minolans.
My response:
The problem for the Minolans is that the decoder ring for Minola's list doesn't come in the Bible box.
It seems the Bible needs the Church, the Spirit moving in the work (liturgy, esp. Eucharistic and Baptismal) of her people, if the Bible is to even approach the significance God intends.
That implies one must go outside the Bible to make sense of what is in the Bible. But--alas--any evidence at this point will underdetermine theory. That means authority will be necessary for Minola to single out which interpretations, which compromises, which equivocations, and which silences about tough texts are permitted and which are not. I.e.: they may be tempted to an exclusivist decoding of Scripture.
The church has to take stands on the basis of underdetermined theory--it is unavoidable. That's fine if it is ready to be always reformed and reforming: if it is ready to be corrected in the Spirit and repent.
But Minola might be tempted instead to Eliminationist Rhetoric--the kind of rhetoric they(?) have used before: TEC et al are a cancer, to be cut off and burned; TEC are not merely erring Christians but not Christian at all; etc. That rhetoric does not call for Separation alone, but a more extreme Solution: Separate and Destroy. The thing speaks for itself, as we have seen the Chapman Memo strategy unfold even as assorted conservative resisters said it wouldn't.
An exclusivist decoding in any terms--conservative or liberal--is an exercise in sheer assertion of Created will over against that of the Creator--Who knew we could never comprehend Him.
The sheer assertion of Will, along the lines of a fiat "Let it mean what we say it means" is an exercise backed by Nothing (what can we really be apart from God?); and the fervent advocacy of sheer will backed by Nothing is merest Nihilism: the impossible attempt to Reduce the Creator to the plane of the Created.
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