Faced with divisive moral questions, the habit of the churches in the past century has been to set up a working-party or commission. It is not a self-evident thing to do. An older practice would have left responsibility with the Bishops or governing Assemblies – those who guarded the church’s doctrine. Our new way of seeking ‘the unity of the Spirit’ by commissioned discussion, however, has the advantage that it allows a moral question to be treated distinctly from a doctrinal one, and admits attention to the conscientious reflections of the wider Christian community and the first-hand experience of those who are closest to the problems. The two publications before us, in which representatives of the two major Protestant churches of Great Britain seek to clarify their churches’ pastoral position in relation to gay members and clergy, are an occasion to think not only about the material questions but about the serviceability of this means of seeking practical wisdom.
To continue reading, access this review in Studies in Christian Ethics 27(3) (Aug. 2014) as a PDF.
Fulcrum is very grateful to Sage, the publisher of Studies in Christian Ethics and to Susan Parsons, the editor, for their willingness to make this review freely accessible.
The Rev. Canon Oliver O’Donovan is former Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh.
David, I marvel at your gifts of prophecy, and in a snarky kind of way, I hope you’re right. However, if I may prophecy myself I’d venture that the CofE will allow civil partnerships with the fig leaf of a promise of chastity.
Insightful as always, Professor O’Donovan explains how commissions can fail to discern with catholicity. Yet I suspect that the special difficulty that churches around the world are having with their commissions on That Topic is that they do not want catholicity if that means impersonality. They want reports that feel right in what Michael Polanyi used to call the tacit dimension of knowledge. Conversely, they do not want reports that challenge what people feel that they already know in that self-referential, “in the bones” way. “Very logical, yes, but it cannot be right because it’s not the way I have felt about my own relationships, and they are my inevitable frame of reference, of course.” In fact, it seems that churches overwhelm commissions with stories of eccentric personal experiences as a precaution against getting any report from them that is too categorical or prescriptive. Alright– can stories be guidance?
Whenever I read Dr O’Donovan’s recommendations on the current debate, I’m always left feeling that we will listen and listen and listen to gay people, and then listen some more… until they come up with the right answer in the eyes of the evangelical reading of Scripture.
Well, what we know is that discussion will be facilitated to ensure that ‘lived experience’ is prioritised above all scriptural considerations. It will be easy to re-brand the spirit of the age as the ‘voice of the Holy Spirit’ and guarantee that the groups involved converge on the ‘right’ answer by re-phrasing the question.
Facilitation 101: encourage divergence and exploration. Whittle down the possible solutions. Present the irreducible insoluble dilemma. Suggest a re-phrasing of the issue. Wait for the group to converge on a compromise to address the rephrased issue.
Thank you, Lorenzo, for commenting on Professor O’Donovan’s review.
I hear weary discontent in your words, but cannot tell what in the review has prompted it. Was it this?–
“A good revision in practice cannot be supported by a ‘revisionist’ theology—on the contrary, it needs a thoroughly catholic and orthodox foundation. By articulating carefully everything theological that two sides in a practical disagreement can say together, we can get the scope of the disagreement in proper perspective, and may open the way to agreement on experiments which have a chance of commending themselves in practice. So long as proposals for experiment come with the label of ‘revisionism’, on the other hand, no church with concerns for its catholicity can embrace them. It seems to me that this elementary wisdom has never been seriously put to the test in the gay issue.”
Yes, Mr Walton, it was exactly that. It leaves each side to determine orthodoxy in the first place –and someone’s orthodoxy is another’s heresy. I doubt Porfessor O’Donovan subscribes to natural law reasoning a la RC catechism on the matter, for instance. It also sounds like a dismissal of something offensively decried as ‘revisionism.’ If the conservative Evangelical side could even begin to say what, if anything, would be sufficient to prove them wrong, if anything, we might go somewhere, but I doubt they can.
As for the weariness, it is largely due to the fact that I am now forty six years old and the church has been debating and dissecting my sexuality since I was a child, moving the goalposts every time, changing arguments… only the animus against has been constant. To hear yet another voice, Ent-like, urging not to be too hasty is depressing indeed.
However disheartening his discourse might appear, Professor O’Donovan is not subtly decrying revisionism. He does provide sound reasons for insisting that the starting point for disagreeing constructively is to establish a common framework of where and how we agree. The Jerusalem Council also applied this wisdom.
What he calls the ‘two-track’ approach of both commissions simply plastered over the deep fissures of discord, rather than establishing where the substrate is sound and broachable from both sides. This edifying approach is far more preferable than brokering a desperate compromise with secular imperatives.
It’s the perpetual focus on episcopal responses to the issues of same-sex marriage and LGBT sexuality alone, rather than an holistic theology of human sexuality, that does not wear well.
When you clarify the key differences, they come down to justifying where we apply deductive and inductive reasoning to scripture. Conservative and revisionists alike will happily make wide-ranging deductions about sexuality from Genesis and Galatians respectively, yet neither can explain why other scriptures can only be interpreted inductively.
And no wonder, since deliberations in both camps starts with a principle that will justify what they want to vindicate, rather than a hypothesis to explore. And, of course, it would hardly make sense for either conservatives or revisionists to scrutinize their ‘principles’ for possible flaws. It would undermine their ‘raison-de-etre’, even progress on their terms and feel like starting all over again.
Yes, it’s your life that is kept in meaningless quandary while the church can’t reach resolution. You are resisted by other lives that, by the church adopting a revisionist position, would be thrown back into renewed quandary over the authority of scripture.
I hope you’d agree that even if there’s disagreement, it’s important for both sides to explain with sound and understandable reasoning from scripture exactly where and why they disagree. That’s involves more than either mimicking arguments from favourite conservative theologians on the subject, or lampooning Levitical legalisms for liberal guffaws.
To remain in limbo is unconscionable, but to pander to exasperation serves no lasting good.
Sorry but I disagree with pretty much everything you have written, you cannot even see your assumptions. I do not think that the revisionist position, as you call it, is tantamount to ‘brokering a desperate with secular imperatives,’ nor do most ‘revisionists’. I believe it can be arrived at through thoroughly Christian principles. I can furthermore assure you that my life is not kept in a meaningless quandary. I have never heard any convincing reason why same sex activity should be morally wrong. As for a ‘holistic theology of human sexuality,’ this is generally little ore than code for unexamined heteronormativity. Nor do I believe that both sides’ task is ‘to explain with sound and understandable reasoning from Scripture.’ I’m a Catholic and believe that ethical conclusions can be arrived at quite independently from Scriptural Revelation. Indeed I consider any moral reading of Scripture that cannot be rationally justified to be very dangerous.
I do agree that pandering to exasperation serves no one, I just feel tired and that brings nothing to the argument. You do say that ‘As part of a theological exploration, ‘to explain with sound and understandable reasoning from Scripture’ does not preclude reaching ethical conclusions quite independently from Scriptural revelation’. The two approaches may not be mutually exclusive, but what is it that evangelicals deem immoral apart from Scriptural revelation, I just cannot see it.
a ‘desperate agreement’ is what I meant to quote
Lorenzo, I wonder whether you might explain two things in your own way.
(1) Supposing that a church reached its moral teachings on a controversial matter independently from scripture, why should anyone believe that it is the teaching of Christ?
(2) Can all of the teachings of Jesus be rationally justified?
You are, of course, welcome to disagree. However, your analysis of my position is erroneous.
My description, ‘brokering a desperate compromise with secular imperatives’, did not refer to the revisionist position, but to the two-track approach of both Commissions. The reports were a collusion between revisionists *and* traditionalists to pursue and present distinct lines of discourse. They should have first reflected on their common ground of belief.
Whatever Christian principles to which you and ‘most revisionists’ may adhere, there’s no denying that this was the approach of both Commissions.
Also, my use of ‘quandary’ referred to the uncertainty and perplexity caused *in the church* by dithering church pronouncements regarding homosexuality. I didn’t make any assumptions about your own internal moral questioning.
You claim that ‘an holistic theology of human sexuality,’ is ‘generally little more than code for unexamined heteronormativity’: a disdainful assumption from one who suggests that I cannot see my own.
As part of a theological exploration, ‘to explain with sound and understandable reasoning from Scripture’ does not preclude reaching ethical conclusions quite independently from Scriptural revelation’. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
Nevertheless, it is clear that traditionalists and revisionists do reason differently from the Scripture and it would be useful to identify exactly where we agree and how we differ (rather than assuming that all traditionalists take the sola scriptura line).
The Sadducees viewed the moral edification of the prophetic promise of resurrection to be an emotional crutch for the weak-minded. It could not be rationally justified. Christ’s counter-argument, citing God’s present tense declaration about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was no more (and no less) than a very precise inference from divine revelation.
So, I do dispute your view: ‘any moral reading of Scripture that cannot be rationally justified to be very dangerous’; if, by rational, you mean, without recourse to revelation. I’d defy anyone to find a rational justification explains Christ’s wholesale declaration on the indissolubility of marriage. Perhaps, that’s a dangerous doctrine too.
Bowman, you say “supposing that a church reached its moral teachings on a controversial matter independently from scripture, why should anyone believe that it is the teaching of Christ?” No one should, I just refuse to believe that our Lord’s teaching is irrational.
And the Pilling report, which he skewers, is already ridiculously biased in that everything in it seems to hinge around discovering the proper interpretation of Holy Scripture, or at least some degree of latitude therein. This, from the start, excludes any traditional (I’d say happily say orthodox) catholic view of morality as having little to do with revelation.
A brilliant and incisive analysis of structural challenges that Church Commissions must overcome. He highlights the political imperatives that precipitate failure to discern and deliver on their deliberative and reflective mandates.
The Church ignores Dr. O’Donovan’s scrutinising prophetic discourse at her own peril.
A brilliant and incisive analysis of structural challenges that Church Commissions must overcome. He highlights the political failure to discern and deliver on their deliberative and
The Church ignores Dr. O’Donovan’s scrutinising prophetic discourse at her own peril.