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Covenant and Theology

The Modern Churchpeople’s Union opposes the introduction of a Covenant of the type envisaged in Towards an Anglican Covenant.

If the Covenant were so worded that all provinces could sign it, it is difficult to see how it would have any effect at all. We take it, however, that the reasons for proposing it would be those expressed in the Windsor Report and ‘Towards an Anglican Covenant’, and these anticipate that not all provinces could subscribe. It would therefore have the effect of excluding some. We believe this would be a step on the way to changing Anglicanism from an inclusive, tolerant church into a restrictive and exclusive sect.

Anglican Theology

The Church of England has a distinct theological tradition which we wish to defend. We recognize that some Provinces have been little influenced by it, and we also recognize that there have been changes of theological emphasis over time; but over and above these changes there is a theology which is recognized as distinctively Anglican, has often been able to unite the Evangelical and Catholic wings, and has in general characterized the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Tudor and Stuart monarchs sought to unite the nation under a common religion. Most of them aimed for a religious settlement which allowed a wide range of belief in order to include as many people as possible. This wide range contrasted with the majority Calvinist tradition, with its stronger commitment to purity in doctrine and lifestyle. Where unanimity of opinion is expected, those who in all conscience cannot agree are obliged to leave. Thus Calvinism has suffered many sectarian splits and competing congregations. Anglicanism, by allowing differences of opinion to be expressed within the church, has been better able to retain its unity.

Contrasting accounts of knowledge

These two ways of handling disagreement reflect contrasting epistemologies. Medieval theologians responded in two ways to the fact that human reason cannot produce knowledge with certainty. One, characterized by Aquinas, Hooker and the Anglican tradition, accepted that our sources of information vary, but none produces certainty. Hooker’s view was that we are guided not just by Scripture but by reason and tradition. The interplay between the three allows for new insights, so the church ‘has authority to establish that for an order at one time, which at another it may abolish, and in both do well’. The open-ended and inclusive character of his theology is unaffected if experience is added to the list as a source of knowledge. Even if, as some have recently argued, Hooker’s real views have been misinterpreted, it remains the case that his influence has been valued throughout the bulk of Anglican history, as promoting an inclusive Church, willing to accept uncertainty and live with difference.

The other epistemology, characterized by William of Ockham and popular during the Reformation, denied that reason and tradition have any part to play in matters of faith, and argued instead that divine revelation should be accepted without question. By repudiating reason, they claimed that the truths of revelation are known with greater certainty than human reason can achieve. Descartes later adapted this theory, replacing revelation with reason as the means to certainty.

Philosophers now describe these two epistemologies as, respectively, coherentism and foundationalism. Foundationalists expect to commence with self-evident and certain starting-points, from which all else is deduced with certainty. Coherentism is characterized as a web of knowledge, in which there is no single starting-point and no absolute certainty, but the web is secure to the extent that the parts cohere with each other. Philosophers describe these two epistemologies as contrasting options: the choice between them is either/or, not shades of grey.

Today, although western Protestant theological traditions, and church doctrines, vary widely - so that many Calvinist churches are tolerant of disagreement, while many Anglican churches are not - the underlying contrast between the two epistemologies remains, and is reflected in the uncomprehending astonishment of liberals and conservatives at each other’s views.

Foundationalist theology

In a strictly foundationalist theology, religious truth is to be accepted from divine revelation, primarily given in Scripture. Once accepted, it is known with certainty. The only role for human reason, if any, is to deduce one certainty from another. Disagreements between believers are not expected, as God’s word cannot be inconsistent. When a revelation is known with certainty, a person who disagrees must certainly be wrong.

As revelation is complete, and inherited from the past, there can be no new revelation. There is no value in creative thinking, or in seeking new information from other sources. Thus, for example, psychological research into homosexual orientation cannot add to, or subtract from, divine revelation about homosexuality.

From this perspective, the teaching role of the church is to provide information about the content of revelation. As the only source of information is divine revelation, teaching is hierarchical. For a church to grant a leadership post to a person who disagrees with one element of revelation - for example, an unrepentant homosexual - is to undermine the very purpose of the church. If some members openly disagree with some elements of the teaching, the logical response is to define the true church so as to exclude the dissidents.

Coherentist theology

In coherentist theology, religious truth comes from a wide range of sources, including Scripture. However no single source of knowledge bears the stamp of certainty. The role for human reason is wide. Rational deduction, empirical observation, critical analysis, intuition, the emotions and creative leaps of the imagination all play their part in learning about our relationship with God, as they do about other matters.

Because of this diversity, it is expected that one person’s idea of religious truth will differ from another’s. Disagreements are not a symptom of failure, but a potential source of new insight. The search for truth is a community activity. Because truth is acquired through the interactions of a wide range of sources, new sources and new combinations make possible new insights which are not part of the inherited tradition, but enable the tradition to develop. There is a legitimate role for creativity.

Because we do not know where new insights may be available, any source may turn out to be fruitful. It is entirely proper, therefore, to use the insights of modern psychologists (for example) to shed light on current debates within the Church, even if the psychologists in question are atheists.

From this perspective, the church’s teaching role is open-ended. Everybody has something to learn and something to contribute. Truth emerges not by putting up barriers against error, but by knocking them down. If church leaders disagree with each other on significant issues there is a shared understanding of public reason upon which disagreements can be explored within the church.

Anglican coherentism

Although no theological tradition has been entirely consistent in maintaining either of these traditions, many describe themselves in terms of one and against the other. Anglicanism has been characterized by coherentism and therefore inclusiveness. It has often witnessed major disagreements, without splitting - for example, over slavery, evolution, biblical criticism, women in the ordained ministry, remarriage after divorce, capital punishment and contraception. In every one of these issues the majority Anglican view changed, despite the fact that opponents of change had the lion’s share of the biblical texts on their side. These changes took time. The time was made available because the church permitted its bishops, clergy and laity to disagree in public with the inherited position, and debate each issue on its merits.

The proposed Covenant and foundationalism

Today, very few philosophers defend foundationalism. Self-evident first principles rarely turn out on inspection to be self-evident; they are only ‘first’, foundational, by the say-so of adherents; and precious little can be deduced from them with any semblance of certainty. It would be very odd for Anglicanism, which so successfully resisted foundationalism during its years of popularity, to become more foundationalist today. The history of Anglicanism witnesses to an ecclesiology which allows doctrines to change, but in an informal, gradual and consensual way which retains the Church’s unity.

We believe that the reasons for a Covenant, as expressed in the Windsor Report and ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today’, are based on a foundationalist epistemology which would undermine this tradition.

Doctrines as static

A good illustration is where the Windsor Report (127) defends its claim that ‘The Communion has… made its collective position clear on the issue of ordaining those who are involved in same gender unions’ by citing the Lambeth Conference 1998, Resolution 1.10. This statement presupposes three views about Anglican doctrines: that they are established by central hierarchies, are irreversible and are universally applicable.

(a) that they are established by central hierarchies. In fact it is not the case either that Lambeth Conference resolutions are binding on the Communion, or that Anglicans in practice accept its judgments. The claim that the Communion has made its position clear is perhaps best interpreted as an aspiration - which might be achieved by a Covenant.

 (b) that they are irreversible. Here and elsewhere the Windsor Report claims that the question of the morality of homosexuality has been settled as far as Anglicanism is concerned, and strongly implies that it cannot be reopened (e.g. 69). To attribute such authority to a document less than ten years old is striking. If a document of 1998 can settle a matter once and for all, it seems strange not to allow that a document of 2008 or 2018 may do so too. Historically, many Lambeth Conference resolutions have been overturned at subsequent conferences; for example, contraception was repeatedly condemned in early Lambeth Conferences, but was later accepted. Part of the case for a Covenant is that it should become harder to overturn formal resolutions. We do not think it should.

(c) that they apply universally. The Windsor Report and successive Primates’ Meetings have treated the New Westminster same-sex blessings, and the consecration of an openly gay bishop, as universally significant, even though each of these innovations applied to only one diocese. For a Nigerian or a Texan to insist that they cannot tolerate a gay bishop in New Hampshire is, clearly, to appeal to a universal principle of non-disagreement; that is to say, it presupposes a sectarian Calvinist, rather than Anglican, view of the Church. To the extent that the proposed Covenant will be designed to discourage disagreements of this type, it will formally establish a Calvinist, and foundationalist, ecclesiology in the Anglican Communion.

Innovations as problematic

We understand that the purpose behind the proposed Covenant will be to protect the Anglican Communion against threats of division like the one currently focused on homosexuality and the interpretation of Scripture. Anglican provinces would commit themselves to consultation with the Communion as a whole before introducing significant innovations. We believe that the Covenant would have the reverse effect. By replacing the informal, gradual and consensual method of doctrinal change with a formal and centralized method, it would make changes more difficult and more divisive.

It would also contain the following weaknesses.

a) Such a policy can only succeed if there is a clear definition of which innovations would be subject to regulation. We do not believe any definition would suffice to resolve disagreements, as there will always be room for debate about how to categorize a particular issue. Once the Covenant is signed, therefore, there will be persistent pressure to make it all-encompassing.

b) Many significant innovations are not at the time recognized as such, or do not follow established procedures. At one place the Windsor Report, arguing that not all differences of opinion can be tolerated within the Church, offers a telling example: ‘We would not say “some of us are racists, some of us are not, so let’s celebrate our diversity”’ (89). Those familiar with the history of racism would have sought an illustration elsewhere. At the end of the nineteenth century, racialist theory was widely accepted, especially in England. It was propounded by the leading scientists of the day, and was used to justify imperialist aggression. The fact that Anglicans are today so overwhelmingly opposed to racism that the Windsor Report can cite it for this purpose, indicates not that opposition to racism is a permanent feature of Anglicanism but that the majority view can change, without any formal structure for permitting change, and without the Church’s hierarchy in any sense supervising it. A Covenant would not have made it easier for English Anglicanism to renounce its racism, but it may well have made it harder.

c) The main purpose of the proposed Covenant would be to avoid conflict by restricting innovation. This presupposes that the absence of innovation will reduce conflict.

We suggest that the reverse is often the case, and the current debate about homosexual bishops is a case in point. Innovations are frequent, but only cause conflict if they are opposed. The consecration of the first slave-owning bishop, and the first divorced and remarried bishop, could equally have generated debate across the Communion, but did not. The intensity of the current dispute was generated by two contrasting reactions to the growing acceptance of homosexuality. One was to welcome it; the other was to oppose it, and isolate homosexuality as the defining issue for Evangelicals. Both were innovations. It may be argued that one innovated more than the other, but any response to the changing social norms would have been to some extent an innovation.

d) A Covenant of the type envisaged would give too much power to the opponents of change. Much would depend on which issues would require Communion-wide consultation, but we anticipate that if it were to make any difference at all, it would give encouragement to single-issue campaigning groups determined to block innovations. For example the Windsor Report, discussing the difference between adiaphora, ‘things indifferent’, and essentials, asks:

If [an issue] is indeed ‘adiaphora’, is it something that, nevertheless, a sufficient number of other Christians will find scandalous and offensive, either in the sense that they will be led into acting against their own consciences or that they will be forced, for conscience’s sake, to break fellowship with those who go ahead? If the answer to the latter question is ‘yes’, the biblical guidelines insist that those who have no scruples about the proposed action should nevertheless refrain from going ahead. (93)

If this criterion is formally accepted by a Covenant, one wonders how the Communion will establish what constitutes a sufficient number of the scandalized and offended. In practice access to financial resources and the mass media will be influential. This criterion will therefore play into the hands of well-organized campaigning groups, who will only need to insist - as is happening now - that their conscience demands that they split the Communion unless they get their own way.

Until now this has not been the case. A few examples may illustrate how changes take place.

(i) When the Lambeth Conference finally accepted the legitimacy of contraception, overturning successive previous resolutions, opponents of contraception could have declared that their view was the traditional Anglicanism, and insisted on expelling supporters of contraception. They did not.

(ii) The Church of England approved of capital punishment for centuries; it is explicitly endorsed by the 37th Article of Religion. The Homicide Act of 1957, retaining capital punishment for the worst forms of murder, was strongly supported by Archbishop Fisher speaking ‘in the name of God and society’, yet only eight years later capital punishment was abolished, with Archbishop Ramsey and sixteen bishops voting in favour and none against.

(iii) The most decisive change in Church of England attitudes to homosexuality came about in the 1960s when the bishops, led by Archbishop Michael Ramsey, led the way in urging the total decriminalisation of all forms of homosexual behaviour. No bishop voted against any of the Bills between 1965 and 1967, even though only twelve years earlier Archbishop Fisher had described sodomy as ‘a crime in a class by itself’.

What is distinctive about the current debate is not that allowing homosexuals to be made bishops could possibly be a more significant issue, but that the opposition is better organized and more willing to issue threats to split the Communion. A Covenant which formalized their right to prevent innovation would therefore be a step in the wrong direction.

Foundationalism and support for the Covenant

We therefore believe that the support for a Covenant is motivated by a foundationalist concept of ecclesiastical authority, which expects it to be hierarchical, centralized, and with a sense of timeless and universal certainties.

We are not arguing that opponents of homosexual bishops and same-sex blessing services individually adhere strictly to foundationalist theologies, still less that they do so intentionally. However we do believe that the reasons for their objections are necessarily foundationalist. It is their foundationalist interpretation of Christian theology which generates their unwillingness to live with differences of opinion.

An alternative vision for the Church

We would like to see the Church move in the opposite direction. We would like it to become more egalitarian, democratic and decentralized, and more willing to accept diversity and change. Innovations should characteristically be local and reversible.

We suggest, therefore, that rather than establishing a Covenant which would hinder innovation, we should seek a different vision for the Church, with a more creative account of the relationship between tradition and innovation. One of the Church’s roles is to teach and recommend the faith, as inherited through the Christian tradition, with its roots in Scripture. Another of its roles is to relate the tradition to our ever-changing society, articulate new issues and seek new insights. A third role is to assess new theories and insights, judge which ones are worthy of affirmation, and allow these to influence and reinvigorate the tradition.

Tradition and innovation

This will mean expecting Christians to accept a tension between traditional doctrines and the variety of alternative theories in vogue at any one time. Differences of opinion will always be with us, but other institutions manage them better.

For example, in order to provide children with a wide education, schools simplify and select the information they provide. Children are taught traditional accounts of each subject, without being expected to know about contemporary disagreements between professional researchers. Researchers, on the other hand, are aware of specialist debates within their field, including new theories which may challenge traditional opinion. At any one stage what a school teacher is telling pupils, as undisputed fact, may already have been challenged by the latest research. Educational institutions live with this tension by distinguishing between different roles and recognizing the limits to knowledge.

Similarly, the latest findings in medical research do not correspond with what doctors are offering patients at any one time. Doctors expect to give, and patients to receive, remedies which are well tried and tested. On the other hand research findings are welcomed because in time they may make new treatments possible.

Many modern institutions experience similar tensions between theoretical disagreements and the inherited tradition. What makes the tension a positive one is that the theoretical ideas, when tested and accepted, provide new insights which enable the institution to develop creatively.

Churches experience the same tensions, but differ in that their leadership characteristically interprets them negatively. Although church leaders have long complained about the growing gap between academic theology and the teaching characteristic of local churches, in practice the gap is retained by the underlying foundationalist commitment to the idea that all truth is inherited from the past.

In other aspects of life Christians are familiar with creative tension between tradition and innovation, and we believe there is no difficulty in principle with accepting it in the case of religion too. It may also help the Church to rediscover the Apostles’ excitement with the newness of God’s activity in the world.