Prof. Stephen Noll on Metropolitan Hilarion’s Recent Address

from Stand Firm by David Ould

A lengthy but helpfully substantial analysis of Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion's September address at the Nicean Club of Lambeth Palace is now available on the GAFCON website.

It's really well worth the read through but let me give you his pressing conclusion,

But on what basis is one to discern what “mission” and “end of life” and “a life well lived” mean? Benedict stands on the firm ground of classic Catholic teaching; Williams, I am afraid, is mired in the quicksand of “affirming Catholicism.”

Archbishop Williams, unlike Pope Benedict, does not cite any exemplars of his views, nor does he offer any disquiet with the Pope’s praise of Thomas More or John Henry Newman, More who connived in the arrest and execution of William Tyndale, and Newman, who attacked the Anglican Articles of Religion or revised them to his own liking. Williams does commend the Oxford divine E.B. Pusey for saying of Anglicans and Catholics: “it is what is unholy on both sides that keeps us apart.”

If it is really true that what divides Anglicans and Roman Catholics is their “unholiness,” then surely one side or both should repent forthwith and reunite. If this is true, surely the English martyrs of the 16th century - on both sides - died for naught. In the current context, Rowan Williams clearly finds the holiness of Katherine Schori as qualifying her for a seat in high Anglican counsels, while he pointedly leaves an orthodox bishop like Robert Duncan out in the cold.

At the end of the day, Rowan Williams is a follower of Schleiermacher, the godfather of theological liberalism. Religiosity – a.k.a “holiness” – is the determinant of truth, whether in the church or in the public square. Hence the divide between Anglicans and Roman Catholics is as unbridgeable as that between the Anglicans and the Orthodox, and a genuine dialogue of issues that unite and divide Christians will not happen.