Mark Woods Christian Today 20 November 2014
Better apart: why holding the Church of England together might not be a good idea – Christian Today
9 thoughts on “Better apart: why holding the Church of England together might not be a good idea – Christian Today”
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“In other words, is there really a ‘quatenus’ option for Anglican clergy?”
Phil’s succinct question can be restated in terms of subscription to Article 6–
Does Article 6 entail that Anglican clergy may only assent to the Articles ‘insofar as’ (quatenus) they reflect scriptural knowledge necessary to salvation?
Conversely, if Article 6 requires that Anglican clergy assent to the Articles ‘because’ (quia) they reflect such knowledge, what is their duty if improvement in such knowledge appears to unsettle the scriptural support for another Article?
In either case, does Article 6 inform assent in the same way for all Thirty-Nine Articles?
The quia/quatenus distinction, incidentally, both unites and divides Lutherans. The American Lutherans in full communion with TEC (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and some Reformed churches take a ‘quatenus’ view of subscription to the confessions in the Book of Concord, as do the state church Lutherans in communion with the Church of England. Those Lutherans in America who are in full communion with neither Anglicans, nor the Reformed, nor other Lutherans (Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) take a ‘quia’ view of subscription to the same confessions. Whether the mode of assent must have these or other ecclesiological consequences has been extensively debated.
Why, Phil, do you refer to subscription ‘ex animo’? No church wants insincere subscription, of course, but even rather confessional churches may distinguish between two sincere modes of subscription ‘quia’ and ‘quatenus’.
Bowman
As far as I remember I came across ‘ex animo’ in something Professor Packer wrote long ago. Something like this (I may have got this not quite right as I am relying on memory, and my recollection of what he wrote may be, given my convictions, more critical than what he did in fact write): ‘Those of us who have subscribed the Articles “ex animo” are at a loss to respect those who subscribe without believing what the Articles clearly teach’. In my recollection he also said (either in the same passage or another) that a Bishop had advised his ordinands that when they subscribed to the Articles they were ‘subscribing to general Anglican theology’ on which Packer wrote something like, ‘what the Bishop meant by “general Anglican theology” can only be surmised, but it is obviously different from the Articles’.
My phrase ‘believe ex animo’ is intended to convey three convictions. Firstly, that Articles 9, 10, 17, 31 can only be reasonably understood to mean that all human beings are born spiritually dead, with a nature inclined to evil and facing God’s wrath and condemnation, incapable, without divine grace, of taking any steps towards God, and that God has chosen in eternity those whom he will save and those, those only, will certainly be saved, and that the death of Christ propitiates and satisfies God’s just wrath and that God and Christ exhort all to repent and embrace the offered salvation. Secondly, that the language of the Anglican Declaration of Assent is such that those who make it are declaring that they believe these Articles are true. Thirdly that these Articles are a true summary of what the Bible says on Original Sin, Inability, Predestination, the wrath of God, the central purpose of the death of Christ and the free offer of salvation to all.
I would be glad and humbled to be proved wrong but I think that these truths
would be believed ex animo by only a minority of the ordained persons in the CofE. And their conscience is untroubled because, as they see it, either those Articles need not be understood to mean these doctrines, or – the Declaration is so loosely worded that they can make it in good conscience without believing that those Articles are true.
On March 4 2014 George Day posted on the thread ‘Where are we going?’
‘Phil, you do love boxing people into corners, don’t you? Do I fully agree with your points 1-4 as an adequate statement of truth? No. Do I totally reject them? No. And that I guess is the position of the vast majority of Anglican clergy, whether evangelical or not. And of many Fulcrum members too.
The articles came out of a time when you had to believe exactly what you were supposed to believe, or else! Thank God we have moved from that, and that means that for many the articles represent a far more rigid stance than we would ideally want to take. However, there is no way the C of E is likely to formally ditch the articles as it would involve us in disputes that would probably be far greater than the women’s ordination/consecration disputes, but without the justification of a crying need to sort out a problem. Fortunately the assent that clergy are required to make has been toned down over the decades – I cannot remember the exact change of wording – but it was a recognition that the articles no longer adequately express the faith of those who offer themselves for the ministry of the church. So a degree of flexibility has been introduced. Is this entirely satisfactory? No. Is it just about the best we can do? Yes.’
George’s assertion about the Declaration being ‘toned down’ is often made. Perhaps it is true, but to be convinced I would like to see the evidence in Synod Debates or papers. In other words, is there really a ‘quatenus’ option for Anglican clergy?
Phil Almond
“And of many Fulcrum members too.”
I assented with belief to the 39 articles and I am a Fulcrum member so speaking for myself in response to your comment – belief is belief – I certainly didn’t cross my fingers behind my back on the day of my ordination.
You raise points I have thought long and hard about. Thank you.
My guess is that Rachel felt pretty good when she posted this. Assent feels good when it is a self-congruent behaviour, just as it feels bad when it is not. From what Phil says Packer said the bishop said, it would seem that the nameless shepherd was offering his ordinands a way to feel less bad about their required declarations. How very odd: is not profession of faith a joyous experience? Since from a merely psychological point of view, it is clearly better and more enjoyable to be like Rachel, why is there any interest at all in strategies to minimise the content of the declaration? When we hear that water is running uphill, we should be curious.
Conversely, if we agree– and I suspect that we all do– that ordinands and their churches are better off with stronger assent like Rachel’s than with the weaker assent that the bishop suggested, it is reasonable and indeed natural for ordinands to seek it and for all of us to promote it. Since there is a tolerably clear spectrum from hostility to the Articles to agreement with them, we can also discern how presentations of the Articles do in fact move people on that spectrum. This can be helpful in thinking about why water might be running uphill.
Contrast this with the world’s Lutheran churches, which have roughly the same spectrum of opinion from low churchmanship to high, and from conservative to liberal. They have had almost none of the official ambivalence about their confessions that Anglican churches have accommodated with counsels like those of the nameless bishop. American Lutheran clergy, for example, are far more likely than Episcopalian clergy of similar theological views to assent to their confessional inheritance. We might reasonably have expected the sheer bulk, precision, and historicity of the Lutheran documents to raise far greater obstacles to assent than the Articles do, but in fact the water still runs downhill here.
And the Reformed? Interestingly, the Reformed seem to have about the incidence of assent that the Lutherans do, but it results in far weaker ecclesial relations than those of Lutherans, to say nothing of Anglicans. America has several tiny Reformed churches bound by the Westminster Confession but divided by shades of opinion on issues that only the Reformed think about. When Episcopalians say that “Anglicanism is not confessional,” these fissiparous presbyterians are the alternative especially in mind.
It seems that the Articles themselves are robust. A few are Reformation masterpieces, and Phil’s summary fits the other Protestant confessions just as well. The content of the Articles does not seem to account for their marginalisation.
Something cultural has pushed them toward the margins. I do not know what that is, but I have two candidates–
(a) Assent that is both strong and unifying must be free to acknowledge the historicity of the text itself. The same eternal gospel is in all of these documents, but unambiguous assent to that gospel requires some distinction between it and their situated language. Lutherans do not worry about this; the Reformed do not acknowledge it; Anglicans are rent by extremes of historicism and infallibilism.
(b) Assent that is strong and unifying must be able to accommodate high churchmanship. All branches of the Reformation had some dematerialising project in relation to sacraments, etc, but the traces of this in some Articles has been a far more difficult challenge to Anglican churchmen of high practise than to their Lutheran and Reformed counterparts. Indeed, not a few hear advocacy of the Articles as partisanship for low churchmanship.
Would more water run downhill if advocacy for the Articles took these two problems into account?
Rachel Marszalek
I have long suspected that no supporters of the Ordination of Women also believe ‘that all human beings are born spiritually dead, with a nature inclined to evil and facing God’s wrath and condemnation, incapable, without divine grace, of taking any steps towards God, and that God has chosen in eternity those whom he will save and those, those only, will certainly be saved, and that the death of Christ propitiates and satisfies God’s just wrath’. Your post of December 16 rebukes that suspicion and humbles me. I hope that your convictions are shared by many other members of Fulcrum, including the Fulcrum Leadership Team, who for some reason have never confirmed explicitly that they do share these convictions. Thank you.
Phil Almond
An alternative – a painfully candid alternative – would be for the members of the Church of England, including Bishops and Archbishops, to explicitly and in public disagree with each other, and for those who believe ex animo the worldview of the salvation articles – that all human beings are born spiritually dead, with a nature inclined to evil and facing God’s wrath and condemnation, incapable, without divine grace, of taking any steps towards God, and that God and Christ exhort all to repent and embrace the offered salvation – should in their public utterances say that.
Phil Almond
Once upon a time, a sister province, the Church of Parador, found herself in precisely the same predicament as the Church of England today. But after due consultations, ++Julia, the Archbishop of Murcluf and Primate of All Parador, creatively proposed that, before any vote on That Topic could be taken, the Church must first approve a general rule of order. It “engages in the Spirit to manifest the Father’s love for the whole world in his Son,” and “prohibits teachings and acts in this church not plausibly warranted by the apostolic faith in God’s love exhibited in the canonical scriptures.” Julia’s proposal distinguished the church’s divine source from its fallible adaptations of apostolic teaching. The proposal passed.
And extremists loathed it. Julia’s proposal anchored practice in the words of those who walked with the Lord, but required a timely showing that any such practice is congruent with God’s revealed nature and motivations. Those at one pole resent the implicit renunciation of doctrinal and moral progress.They were much happier saying “Today’s God is love, so let’s…” without the necessity of finding some plausible connection between their own enthusiasms and those of St Paul et al. At the opposing pole, some evangelicals are wary of the rule’s historical notion of scriptural warrant, and its requirement of plausibility. They were happy to say “Scripture is law and the most probable construal of this controlling clause is…” without showing a divine motivation in scripture for each particular ruling. In yoking aspects of the liberal and evangelical sensibilities together, Julia’s rule has made it harder for those at either pole to bluster on past the other as if it were not there. “All of this has been implicit in our faith from the beginning,” the Archbishop explained, “but we have been confused and divided because some central truths have not been explicit enough in our common life.”
Most people agree that she saved an all too human church from a collision of brittle perfectionisms. After all, the church in Parador did eventually decide unwisely on That Topic, just as many had feared that it would. But its errors do not include pastoral negligence or rebellion against scripture. Since the rule passed, a few have left the Church of Parador as ‘institutionally homophobic’ or as ‘abandoning the authority of scripture,’ but the last YouGov survey did not find that many had followed them. Importantly, whether they criticise the church’s ill-judged actions or still believe in them, those who remain stand together on firmer ground than they had before the rule. For all are Anglicans who know that their church is, not the final descent of heaven to earth, but a pilgrim in time reading its book on the way.
Series of surveys have their uses, but I am wary of any single survey’s snapshot of a moment in time.
“…two thirds of the evangelical clergy contending either that either the Church should seek greater uniformity of views or else that it should not be afraid of separating amicably along doctrinal and ethical lines.”
Wait– do they either contend A or contend B, or do they contend either A or B? Big difference.
*The survey also found that it was evangelical men rather than evangelical women who are opposed to the Archbishop’s goal of ‘disagreeing well.’ Most evangelical women clergy (61 per cent) agree with the majority of clergy who support greater toleration. But 68 per cent of evangelical male clergy disagree.*
Supposing that there is such a disagreement, do the sexes differ in what they prefer or in the options that they imagine? From psychological research on the sexes and conflict, my guess is that women and men hear rather different things in “good disagreement.”