There is no reason here to be encouraged. Some will reply that
they will be delighted to have an Archbishop who asserts central credal
doctrines. This delight in itself is alarming
by Garry Williams, Tutor in Church History and Doctrine, Oak Hill College,
London
Alister McGrath tells readers of the Church of England Newspaper (no.
5627)
that he is positive about Rowans appointment as archbishop of Canterbury.
Specifically, he is encouraged by the fact that Rowan Williams believes
that the role of a bishop is to be a focus of unity, not to push his own
personal agenda, and that he holds his views on the question of
homosexuality on the basis of Scripture rather than cultural pressure.
As
a fellow Evangelical it is with reluctance that I write to disagree with
McGrath, but I fear that his reasoning is mistaken. More importantly,
his
conclusions will be too influential among Evangelicals to allow them to
pass unchallenged.
McGrath adduces evidence mainly from Authority and the Bishop in the
Church, a piece written by Williams in 1982 about the function of bishops.
Williams, he tells us, will be safe as archbishop because he sees bishops
as the focus of unity, not as agents of discord. There are two problems
with this claim. First, it fails to take account of the available
evidence. McGrath covers what Williams has written, but he ignores what
we know of the years since 1982 during which he has actually held the
office of bishop and archbishop. It was after writing the 1982 piece,
having become a bishop, that Williams voted against the Lambeth resolution,
knowingly ordained a practising homosexual, and gave the interview in
which
he admitted and defended his action. McGrath may conclude from his
writings of twenty years ago that Williams will distinguish his public
and
private opinions, but his public words and actions since then have been
alarmingly consistent with his private opinions.
Secondly, it is curious to find McGrath telling us not to worry about
Williams because he holds that the bishop is an authority to unify. This
claim ought by itself to alarm any Evangelical theologian. Certainly the
ecclesiology behind it is an ancient one, evident for example in the work
of Ignatius of Antioch. But the unity of the church inheres first and
foremost in Christ and in the Gospel which is believed. Where that unity
manifests itself, it does so with congregations as its primary focus,
not
bishops. Hence the visible church, as Article 19 puts it, is to be
defined principally as a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure
Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered.
It is not even clear that McGrath himself thinks that Williams will
hold
the line on the issue of homosexuality. He judges that Williams will see
his role as raising uncomfortable questions, and keeping them open.
Hence, perhaps, his vote against the Lambeth resolution. Is this really
meant to comfort us? Surely this is bad enough by itself? Here is (in
New Testament terms) the most senior presbyter in the whole Anglican
church, and he will be busy raising uncomfortable questions about the
teaching of the Word of God. It is hard to find a passage where Paul
tells Timothy or Titus to appoint people who will be able and reliable
in
raising awkward questions about the teaching handed down to them, and
they
were only looking for local elders. Of course, there are plenty of
searching questions that an archbishop could rightly ask. But given his
own views on homosexual practice, McGrath can hardly think that the basic
questions of its morality and of what it means to be conformed to Christ,
questions which Williams has raised, fall within that category. Presuming
this, it is hard to see why he seems to be encouraged by the continuing
questioning that he anticipates.
McGrath's right anticipation of ongoing debate shows why the headline
in
the same edition of the Church of England Newspaper, Archbishop Backs
Lambeth Resolution is misleading. Rowan Williams does not back the
resolution. He says that he will adhere to it while it is there, but that
is not the same as backing it himself. This is no encouraging statement,
since his letter to the primates also makes clear that he disagrees with
the resolution, and that he wants to keep the issue open for debate. In
other words, he disagrees and will seek to keep pressing for change. This
simply shows that he is politically astute in his opposition to the
resolution and is prepared to move slowly in working for a new consensus
which fits his private opinion, not that we should be encouraged because
he
supports it from the heart.
It would seem fair to expect that the higher you look in the church
the
more you would expect to find a man who stands firm in expounding and
defending Scripture. Yet bizarrely we are in precisely the opposite
situation. It is easily summed up. Even most conservative Evangelicals
in the Church of England seem to be happy to have as their archbishop
a man
they would not accept as their local vicar. Indeed, many of them would
move if he were appointed to the parish church. This is an extraordinary
situation. They may argue that he is not the Pope, but he remains the
most senior presbyter, and he is the most publicly noticed figure in the
church.
At the least then, it is like having him in charge of your parishs public
statements. We need to remember that the uncomfortable questions have
already been raised not behind closed doors but before the watching
non-Christian public. Even before Williams was appointed, non-Christians
were making comments on the gay issue like So all of that is OK now is
it?.
How can we possibly welcome such a witness? How can we not lament the
pastoral damage it may do to Christians who struggle with homosexual
temptation? Such questioning by itself is sufficiently damaging to the
churchs witness and its people to mean that the appointment of Williams
can
never be a positive thing.
It is also alarming to see McGrath apparently encouraged by the fact
that
Williams claims that his opinions are simply an interpretation of
Scripture. It is as if this means that we should take him more seriously,
simply because he claims to be interpreting rather than disagreeing with
the Bible. The problem with such a stance should be obvious from church
history. We need think only of the Socinian radicals of the sixteenth
and
seventeenth centuries. In their defining text, the Racovian Catechism
(first published in 1605), we find an impeccably orthodox doctrine of
Scripture. They affirm the total authenticity, sufficiency, and
perspicuity of the Bible in terms of which even a Reformed Scholastic
such
as John Owen could approve. Yet at the same time they deny the doctrine
of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, and of justification
by faith alone. All this, they claim, is merely the right interpretation
of Scripture. Their example makes plain that saying I am merely
interpreting Scripture actually proves nothing at all if the interpretation
is ill-founded and unfaithful.
So when McGrath writes that Rowan's views on this matter, however, do
not
result from an uncritical absorption of the views of Western culture,
but
rest on his reading of Scripture and especially his understanding of Gods
inclusiveness of homosexuals in the mission and fellowship of the church,
we may justly be suspicious. Doubtless this is what Williams himself
thinks, but in rejecting his interpretation as a misinterpretation we
find
that in fact his views cannot legitimately be derived from Scripture,
and
thus must in fact stem from elsewhere. Conversely, to give any kind of
credibility to his misinterpretation because it claims to be an
interpretation is to go a long way toward validating the hermeneutic which
Williams employs. I cannot think that McGrath would want to do that.
McGrath is also encouraged by these words which he quotes from Williams:
At its best, the Catholic tradition can claim that it has sufficient joy
and gratitude and confidence in its understanding to know that it is not
going to be undermined or rubbished by other perspectives, but rather
be
enriched and illuminated by them. From this McGrath concludes that for
Williams Evangelicalism is thus something to be affirmed, rather than
perceived as a threat or an enemy, in that it offers a stimulus to
discerning the fullness or wholeness of the catholic faith. But let us
look again at the wording. The conceptualization is clear. At the
centre stands the Catholic tradition, and on the periphery we have other
things which can be drawn on for insight. Evangelicalism, the religion
which puts the Bible and the Cross at its centre, is thus a displaced
theology, one which stands at the edges to be used as a kind of supplement
for the spiritual diet. On the contrary, John Stott reminds us that the
substance of Evangelicalism is biblical, original, fundamental Christianity
[] the true faith of Christ, as He taught it to His apostles and especially
as He defended it against its opponents and detractors (Christ the
Controversialist, London, 1970, p. 8). We should not be encouraged to
find such apostolic Christianity sidelined.
The new archbishops marginalizing comments on Evangelicalism will be
no
surprise to anyone who has read one of the interviews given by him in
Australia (available at http://www.media.anglican.com.au). Asked about
the contribution of Reformed theology and Evangelicalism, Williams
commented that It is something that I think became very important to me
at
one or two points when I needed it as a kind of corrective to what can
be a
slightly precious and elitist anglo-catholicism. Sometimes you just need
to sing Blessed Assurance and hit a tambourine. You just need to know
that there is something profoundly simple about what an evangelical would
rightly call a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that nothing
substitutes for that. We may be glad that Williams sees a relationship
with Jesus as important, but does he really think that a comment on the
contribution of Reformed theology and Evangelicalism is best introduced
by
emphasising the occasional importance of bashing a tambourine, let alone
that such an action is rightly identified as an instantiation of the
reality of our personal relationship with Christ? Is this really the
extent of his appreciation for Evangelicalism or his understanding of
it?
There is no reason here to be encouraged. Some will reply that they
will
be delighted to have an Archbishop who asserts central credal doctrines.
This delight in itself is alarming. We know that we are in a bad way when
we rejoice to hear a bishop affirm something which even the youngest
convert should believe, as if this were a novelty. Indeed, we should
despair that we are in a situation where a basic affirmation by one of
our
leaders has become encouraging. It is still less satisfactory that
Williams seems to down-play the importance of the bodily resurrection
of
Jesus, even though he holds to it himself. In his volume Resurrection
(London, 1982) he presents as competing alternatives an objective and
a
more subjective account of the event. He favours the former, but he
writes that, even in the midst of that discussion, he is not particularly
concerned with arguing for the objectivist view. He identifies the very
question What happened to Jesus? as part of the trouble with the modern
debate on the resurrection (p. 119). This rather laissez-faire attitude
in print twenty years ago lends credibility to more recent reports of
comments made by the archbishop in America and Uganda concerning the
permissibility of denying the bodily resurrection and the virgin birth
(available online in the Virtuosity archives for August). If this
evidence together represents the archbishops present thinking, then what
he
has said on these subjects may amount to little more than an advance
promise to fail to exercise doctrinal discipline.
It is very surprising that the Alister McGrath can feel positive about
this appointment for these reasons. I would urge him and other
Evangelicals to rethink as they consider their response to recent events.
http://www.latimertrust.org/documents/no_good_news.htm
