Fulcrum Newsletter, December 2007

by Graham Kings
vicar of St Mary Islington and theological secretary of Fulcrum

prepublished, with permission, from The Church of England Newspaper, 28 December 2007

Dear Fulcrum friends,

Are oxymorons morons from Oxford? Well, perhaps so, perhaps not. It may depend who is speaking – someone from Cambridge? - and then again who is being discussed – the Archbishop of Canterbury? Hardly.

Oxymorons – ‘A figure of speech that combines two usually contradictory terms in a compressed paradox’ - sometimes focus sharply the tension implicit in various contexts: ‘healthy tan’, ‘original copy’ and, to an earlier generation of software, ‘microsoft works’.

‘Contemplative pragmatism’ is an oxymoronic phrase used by Rowan Williams in his lecture in Oxford, in 2000, on the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hooker. It forms a sub heading for the published version, in his book of essays Anglican Identities (DLT, 2004). As a phrase, it works as well and as deep as the oxymoron ‘passionate patience’ at the end of his introduction to the book. He sums up:

[Hooker] is pragmatic to the degree that the accumulation of historical precedent has real intellectual weight, in the light of our ineradicable folly, selfishness and slowness as human thinkers, and he is contemplative to the degree that his guiding principles are seen by him as received, not invented, as the uncovering of a pattern of ‘wisdom’ in the universe, focused in and through the Word incarnate.

We have published our positive Fulcrum response to the Advent Letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but what is the ‘hinterland’ of thinking out of which he is writing? He builds on his earlier writings eg ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today’ (2006), but he also draws on earlier Anglican theologians who were embroiled in ecclesiological controversy, not from personal preference but out of theological reflection. It may be that the phrase ‘contemplative pragmatism’ furnishes some hints to that hinterland.

It is easy to misinterpret the meaning of ‘pragmatism’ here. In the Advent Letter some may accuse him of being ‘pragmatic’ in the sense of just setting out what he can get away with in order to gather a large Lambeth Conference. Another article where Rowan Williams uses this concept as a description of a distinctive Anglican mood helps guard against this interpretation.

In his (unsigned yet unmistakeable) ‘General Introduction’ to the book he edited with Kenneth Stevenson and Geoffrey Rowell, Love’s Redeeming Work: An Anglican Quest for Holiness (OUP, 2001), he discusses the writings of Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker and George Herbert. He distinguishes two types of pragmatism and approves of the second:

To call this approach 'pragmatic' in the usual sense is not helpful if it implies that their only concern was what works in practise; but it is pragmatic to the extent that they all sought to answer the question, 'What should I do and say as someone brought into the communion of Christ's faithful people. (p. xxiv)

Not so much ‘what works in practise’ as ‘working out (our common identity in Christ) in practice’. Later in the same essay, he distinguishes two types of scepticism and approves of the second:

There is a natural scepticism that has to do with self-protection against being made a fool of: how do I know anything for sure? I am always likely to be deceived, so I do better to reserve my options and commit myself to as little as possible. But there is also a reflective and theological scepticism: I am always ready to deceive myself, because my passions distort clear judgement. I am a fallen being whose mind is readily swayed by selfish concern and idleness and cowardice.

It is this theological scepticism, which interestingly has a ‘Reformed’ emphasis in that it is conscious that the ‘fall’ involved the mind as well as other parts of our humanity, rather than the natural sort, that forms the culture of his writing. He continues:

The former kind of scepticism is usually revolutionary: let us rise up and destroy the systems that have deceived us, the authorities that have falsely claimed to be able to tell us the truth.

Now where have we heard that sort of scepticism recently concerning the Instruments of Communion?

The latter is conservative: if I so often deceive myself, I need the presence of history and community to check my self-obsessions. I can only move by tracing analogies and probabilities, by a very patient listening and looking and not being afraid of depending on others. And this second form of scepticism is very characteristic of much of the Anglican style over the centuries. (p. xxv)

Again, it is this second form of scepticism which is historically profoundly Anglican and which is part of the hinterland.

In the current crisis concerning The Episcopal Church, there has been talk of ‘two religions’. However, in his lecture in 2000, Rowan Williams reminds us, ‘Richard Hooker believed (injudiciously, in terms of his reputation and career) that Roman Catholics could go to heaven’ (p.24). The Archbishop goes on to draw out the implications of this:

…mutual recognition as Christian is still possible between churches that are engaged in radical controversy. A church may be putting any number of obstacles in the way of the sanctification of its members, and it is the duty of other churches to point this out; but this is rather different from a church ceasing in all respects to be a church. (p. 25)

The Episcopal Church should not be denied the name church - let alone described as ‘another religion’ - yet the delineation of boundaries is indeed important in ecclesiology. The careful description of these in the Advent Letter fulfils the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury to ‘articulate the mind of the Communion’ in moments of tension and controversy (para 109, The Windsor Report).

The Anglican Communion is not a federation of individual Christians with a common purpose – or even a common enemy – but part of the organism of Christ himself and for the benefit of the whole world. Ontology trumps function and leads into mission.

The Advent Letter interweaves belonging and shape, hope and warnings. In God’s mercy, may it prove to be a brake to breaks, a pause for pondering and a cause for conferring at Lambeth 2008.

The phrase ‘babe in the manger’ oxymoronically manifests pragmatic arrangements, in its more usual sense of the word, and a focus of contemplation for the shepherds and the Magi. The ultimate oxymoron at the heart of our celebrations this Christmas is ‘the Word became flesh’.

Yours in Christ,

Graham

Canon Dr Graham Kings is vicar of St Mary Islington and theological secretary of Fulcrum