Lambeth's new model isn't pretty, but it's right

The Fifteenth Lambeth Conference ended at Canterbury Cathedral just a few days ago from this writing. There was much to celebrate about the conference. Even having the conference is worth celebrating! Deep disagreements over human sexual identity and practice have torn at the unity of the Anglican Communion for years. And even now, delegates from several conservative African diocese did not attend. This conference tried very hard to bracket that disagreement. There is a lot for the worldwide church to do. And, to a large degree, the many delegates were able to do that. But not wholly. The sore points of division cannot just be ignored. To his credit, Archbishop of Canterbury, the most reverend and right honored Justin Welby, understood this. And, in three addresses to the delegates, he admitted frankly that the communion was not whole. In his remarks on the Lambeth Call for Human Dignity, Welby said,

For the large majority of the Anglican Communion the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted and without question, not only by Bishops but their entire Church, and the societies in which they live. For them, to question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For many churches to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.

For a minority, we can say almost the same. They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change. They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries is making the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For these churches not to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.

So let us not treat each other lightly or carelessly. We are deeply divided. That will not end soon. We are called by Christ himself both to truth and unity.

Dr. Ian Paul, writing on not only Welby's remarks and on the state of discussion throughout the conference sees emerging two different models of unity. And it is these models that I want to highlight in this post. The first model of unity is the historic understanding of the Anglican communion, with its high degree of communion, a thick community, and its historic pattern of faith. This communion Catholicism talked about "living 'in communion with autonomy and accountability'" and being "enabled to be conformed together to the mind of Christ" as churches "bound together 'not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference' and of the other instruments of Communion." This was understood to entail a commitment on the part of each member church of the Communion "to have regard for the common good of the Communion in the exercise of its authority" (3.2.1) and "to act with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy, which by its intensity, substance or extent could threaten the unity of the Communion and the effectiveness or credibility of its mission." Welby's remarks, however, have turned the communion toward another definition of unity called autonomous inclusivism.

In autonomous inclusivism each Province of the Anglican Communion is autonomous and called to live interdependently. It seeks "faithfulness to God in richly diverse cultures, distinct human experiences, and deep disagreements." Quoting Dr. Paul at length here:

The opening declaration [began] with the astonishing statement that "We believe in God who is both three and one, who holds difference and unity in the heart of God’s being, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit" and then connects this to ecclesiology by claiming "Our differences embodied in the Anglican Communion both challenge and deepen our experience of God in the other. As we join in God’s mission of reconciliation through Jesus and in the power of the Spirit, our differences are celebrated and redeemed, as we are made whole in the body of Christ. In that diverse whole, we more fully reflect the image of God". The theological statement represents a serious, arguably heretical, error in relation to the doctrine of God while the ecclesiological application of this seems to make difference and diversity central without drawing any distinction between types of difference, particularly the difference between truth and error. This may help explain the new "Many . . . Other" and "walking together . . . despite our deep disagreement” wordings in the Human Dignity call in relation to sexuality.

This call, if accepted by the Lambeth Conference presided over by Archbishop Justin six years later, effectively says "those who depart from Communion teaching will face no consequences". In fact, it goes further and effectively states "the consequence of their 'unilateral actions on a matter of doctrine without Catholic unity' is that they render the Communion as a whole lacking a teaching and they require all churches in the Communion to recognise a plurality of views which everyone has to accept within Communion life". It is, I think impossible to see this as anything other than a shift from "communion Catholicism" to "autonomous inclusivism".

The one defence of the new draft call that has some weight is that it is at least speaking honestly about our realities. The problem is that it does so in a paradigm diametrically opposed to that which the Communion has developed and worked with until now.

So, there you have it, the dissolving of communion Catholicism into an autonomous inclusivism. I wonder, as I think about this, whether I am looking at a judgment of my developing ideas around St. Augustine's church. Am I looking at the weakness of a church built apart from circle drawing? And does communion Catholicism equate to a giant circle? Can a church be a hospital for the sick, or does it have to require idealogical sameness?

Just today I read an article by Joe Carter, a senior writer for the Gospel Coalition entitled "You can't love Jesus and Condone Immorality." In it he says, "The way God accepts us is 'just as I am, despite who I am, intending to change who I am.'" And he concludes, "We all have a choice to make: we can either choose to obey [Jesus] or admit we don't truly love him." It sure sounds like love, right?

I guess I'm starting to see a process, perhaps a lifelong process, where Joe Carter sees a single event. I guess I'm starting to wonder if the thickness of the communion Catholicism model--and who doesn't feel the safety and togetherness of such a model?--is really just an agreement to lie in the appropriate places. As Ian Paul said about the Archbishop's autonomous inclusivism model: "it is at least speaking honestly." What does honest unity look like? Does Joe Carter's bouncer-at-the-church-door policy produce honesty? I think Carter's is an over-realized expectation. It is circle drawing. And what is needed is eschatological hope providing a common horizon point, a Celestial City, toward which we all move. Such hope has no purchase with power-unto-conformity but only for weakness and prayer and the bitter miracle of the cross of Jesus.

more thinking about purity (circle drawing) and hermeneutics' constant bickering

If the theory of science sets itself the further task of investigating such conditions as are subject to our power, on which the realization of valid methods depends, and if it draws up rules for our procedure in the methodical tracking down of truth, in the valid demarcation and construction of the sciences, in the discovery and use, in particular, of the many methods that advance such sciences, and in the avoidance of errors in all of these concerns, then it has become a technology of science. ~ Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 11.

The more I pursue theological studies, the more I am challenged to give up my purity addiction and embrace the lordship of Jesus. Let me unpack this, beginning with evangelicalism.

Evangelicalism came out of the fundamentalist movement. While confessing the authority of scripture, evangelicals did not want to disengage from cultural ideas and science. They wanted to stay in dialogue. Nevertheless, evangelicalism retained the purity culture of fundamentalism. And what is purity? Purity is an over-realized eschatology. It is "radical discipleship." It is what the Bible is really saying. Call it the first-century church, call it Christian America," call it the Christian home, xmarriage, xsingleness--it goes by many names. At the deep center of all of these purity moves is, I believe (and I'm still thinking about this), a baptized existentialism (or a spoon-cooked commercial ethic) which privileges individual action as the locus of truth. In that I see the Enlightenment plus the Great Bargain. Let me put these together.

The Enlightenment was and is a profound eruption in the Western mind. It removed most accepted forms of knowledge in favor of experiment and demonstration. The invidivual was encouraged to doubt everything. Knowledge was democratized. Its basis was experience rather than revelation.

The Great Bargain is far older than the Enlightenment. It is in the DNA of human living. The Great Bargain is when a human being decides that if they perform an act or produce a thing then God (or whatever passes for God or the gods) will hand over whatever good it is that the human being wants: fertility, a cushy job, rain on the crops, victory over the enemies, get a girlfriend, be free of illness, whatever. This is the root of idolatry. It goes back into the deepest selfishness of the human heart. And people make this bargain without even realizing they are doing it.

The Enlightenment makes the individual king of his own knowing. The Great Bargain makes the individual's actions or choices the king of their own success. Combine them in a religious context, and we get purity as control of knowing and control of acting where control and conformity produce the happy and highest form of life. Consider, as an example of this, the Bible.

The Bible is so central to evangelicalism, examining its use in that movement should isolate a bias toward purity. Evangelicals properly profess the Bible to be God's prophetic word. I certainly do not deny that. Observe that how that is can be understood differently. From the purity side, it means embracing an obedience to the Bible in the form of sola scriptura, but it is an obedience of adherence. Understanding is cultivated in order to conform. Exegesis and other textual disciplines work to isolate and explain in order that the present may be brought into conformity with the past. Certain hermeneutical tools or methods will be favored over others as they aid in this task. Of understanding, there may never be exactness, but the pursuit of exactness can be even more useful than a clear arrival. Even as I write this, I struggle hard in my soul. These are my people and the tools I was trained on. This hermeneutic is my hermeneutic, and I am still convinced of their value and am a student of them. But if they are sound, they can be shaken without harm. Purity culture is a subtle beast. The question is worth asking; truth has a way of broadening into freedom. The cathedral of Christian orthodoxy is larger than any one historical movement or moment.

Back to the Bible, then. Isn't it interesting that the Bible itself always defers to Jesus; Jesus is the revelation of God. It is hermeneutical about itself, certainly, but in the center is not an exegetical arrival but the person Jesus. It is as if we've decided the Pledge of Allegiance is about a flag and not about the country; we have switched out the sign and the signified (nodding toward Augustine's On Christian Teaching (de doctrina Christiana)).

This does not discount the Bible or the careful study of the Bible. The Bible is the divinely sanctioned, apostolic, human witness to the visitation of Yahweh to his people. Yet, it is not what is worshiped; Jesus is worshiped. So we don't study the Bible to be right; we study it to better know its author. Nor do we expect perfection in the Bible, but we do expect it in the one about whom it witnesses. That is one step.

The second step is the Walter Bruggemann step. Bruggemann is a well-respected Old Testament scholar. He points to Jewish ideas of belonging and says that to belong is not to agree in everything, but to join in and participate with others in the argument. The Bible, he says, is like an argument. Different perspectives crush up against one another and battle it out. And one is invited to take up the Bible and join the age-old community of arguers. Participation is community. Argument is being formed by and forming that community. And that community itself is being formed by its texts, which are the fundamental arguments of one's worldview.

That is a much, much different way of thinking about reading and participating and approaching the Bible than the perfection model. The argument model does not guarantee resolution, but formation. Not arrival so as to be right, but struggling to understand and in the struggling becoming a kind of struggler (lex orandi; lex credendi).

Let's say we adopt the Bruggemann model. Now we ask about the unity of the church. Before, in the purity model, we groaned about how far the church has fallen from Jesus's utopic plea that "they would be one as we are one." But now, in the argument model (that may not be the best word; I'm thinking out loud), the church in its struggle to embody the teaching of Jesus, in its centuries of debate and dialogue, looks different. Burning people at the stake is something purity models do (especially when they are wed to political purity); the argument model sees argument as engagement--as listening--as caring together with others.

I'd be willing to bet purity model churches structure their liturgies (for even non-denoms have liturgies) around purity. I'd be willing to bet purity models adopt a purity model of outreach, of the use of church funds, of the education of their children, of the expectations of the faithful, of their dialogue with communities and individuals outside the church. Purity culture is a circle-drawing culture: agape is on the inside; judgment is on the outside.

The Bible itself, in the argument model, models its resultant community in a different way. And its God is probably going to be a unity of plurality and not a monad (but that goes in a different direction). Consider grace. The scandal of grace is God’s operation to break a purity circle “while we were yet sinners.” The second are the many instances where Jesus breaks purity and yet, instead of being made unclean, he makes clean. When I talk about circle drawing, by the way, I'm talking about the creation of purity culture. The difference between purity and argumentation is the negation or acceptance of a hermeneutical model of knowing.