This could equally be said about Bp. Adams of the DCNY: "It is sometimes said that the Dr Williams is orthodox on the issues which became so controversial in the Church of England during the 1980's, such as the incarnation and the resurrection, but orthodoxy cannot be just a matter of ticking certain boxes based on theological speculation."
By Charles Raven
January 27, 2009
Last Sunday, the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered a sermon at Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge, England as the Diocese of Ely launched its 900th anniversary celebrations. Although barely noticed by the press, it was an event which brought a lamentable truth into sharp focus - that despite centuries of Christian heritage, what now passes for Anglicanism in England has drifted far apart from the faith which GAFCON reaffirmed last year in the Jerusalem Declaration.
While it is the part the Archbishop has played in the advocacy of homosexual lifestyles over the past twenty years which has attracted the most controversy, the heart of the problem is his understanding of the doctrine of revelation. It is sometimes said that the Dr Williams is orthodox on the issues which became so controversial in the Church of England during the 1980's, such as the incarnation and the resurrection, but orthodoxy cannot be just a matter of ticking certain boxes based on theological speculation.
Even in England, where institutional loyalty tends to be very strong, some leaders are beginning to articulate their concerns. The Ven. Michael Lawson, Archdeacon of Hampstead and newly elected Chairman of the Church of England Evangelical Council, told The Church of England Newspaper last week: "Rowan's theological method is reflective and in a sense poetic. It's a valuable contribution to the discussion. But there is a distinction to be drawn between even the best kind of speculative theology and the leadership required of an Archbishop."
In a world where the post modern rejection of overarching truths is an increasingly common habit, it is all the more vital to have a firm grasp on orthodox epistemology - in other words to know how we know. This is not simply an intellectual exercise. Clause 2 of the GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration states robustly that 'We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation' because there can be no effective proclamation of the gospel If the Scriptures do not give clear and authoritative revelation. And so the Jerusalem Statement concludes 'The primary reason we have come to Jerusalem and issued this declaration is to free our churches to give clear and certain witness to Jesus Christ.'
So to turn to the sermon, which is typically learned, superficially reassuring, but on closer examination deeply problematic. Many find Rowan Williams to be an enigma and one of the keys to understanding his thought which emerges here is the influence of Karl Barth and neo-orthodoxy (Hegel is another - see A S Haley's helpful article Understanding Rowan Williams for the First Time ) . In answer to the hopeful sounding question 'What might a defence of the significance and authority of revelation look like today...?' we are told that Barth 'insisted...that the claim about revelation was initially and decisively a claim about the nature of the revealer rather than about the content of revelation'.
But can the content of revelation - which is of course Scripture itself - be given a subsidiary role? While it is obviously the case that biblical revelation is not comprehensive in telling us all that we could possibly want to know, the historic Anglican understanding has been that God's Word written is real revelation containing all things necessary for salvation. It is also true that biblical revelation comes to us as personal knowledge of a God who knows us far more truly than we know ourselves and reconciles us through Jesus Christ, but the lethal error which runs through this sermon is the downgrading of the content of revelation while maintaining the concept of revelation. Thus revelation is 'the drawing of the mind into a place where it is overwhelmingly aware of being acted upon ad thus of its own secondary and vulnerable character'. In fact, revelation has more to do with asking questions than having secure knowledge 'We are stuck with the difficult task of negotiating how to say 'This is true', sensing the accumulated weight and tracing its imprint on other believing lives, without saying, 'This is a truth that needs no more questioning'.
For a sermon on revelation, it is surprising to find no mention of the self understanding found within the Canon of Scripture itself, except for the observation that 'the way which the New Testament itself presents revelation' is as a 'continuing process of loss and recreation, night and dawn' . Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well of Sychar and the conversion of the Apostle Paul are pressed into service as examples, but both express a confidence in what they know which seems rather at odds with Dr Williams' emergent process.
The Samaritan woman's initial question' Could this be the Christ' (John 4:29) is evidently intended to become firm conviction, since soon (v42) the people of the nearby town say to her"For we have heard for ourselves ad we know that this indeed the Saviour of the world". Similarly, for Paul, his life was not the story of a tentative journey of self discovery, but was driven by profound conviction flowing from one particular and life changing experience of loss and recreation on the Damascus road.
The GAFCON Primates stepped in to bring godly order to the Communion, based on their shared conviction of the sovereign authority of Scripture. This is their most fundamental difference with those who control the existing Instruments of Unity and such a divergence must ultimately lead to separate structures unless the truly orthodox are domesticated and absorbed, or those in error come to repentance. At the Primates meeting in Alexandria next week the Archbishop of Canterbury looks set to take a leading role with a 'business as usual' approach and the formation of the Anglican Church in North America not even on the agenda. This must surely be challenged by the GAFCON Primates.
In fairness to Dr Williams it should of course be acknowledged that he is by no means the first Archbishop of Canterbury to try and avoid the idea that God has spoken in clear verbal revelation, but in the times in which we live, is it not now more appropriate to say 'He who is not for us is against us' rather than 'He who is not against us is for us?' The Archbishop may not be an advocate of the 'new religion', or perhaps we should say 'the new revelation', which Mrs Schori and her colleagues advocate so passionately, but he has made a significant contribution to its theology and as long as he leads the Anglican Communion it will continue to drift on the cultural tide.
END
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