Is there an Anglican Way? Scripture, Church and Reason: new approaches to an old Triad.

Published by DLT in 1997, edited by Jeffrey John in the Affirming Catholicism Series.  Now out of print, but I will make it available if there is sufficient demand via my e-mail. 

It argues for the traditional balance between scripture, reason and tradition in the way the Anglican Church approaches doctrine and ethics.  I am not sure that the bishops who are currently tearing the Anglican Church apart have read this book, small and readable as it is!

ARE ANGLICANS LOST?

Discusses the image of a party of travellers divided into one camp that relies only on old maps, one that relies only on the compass, and one that advocates blind solidarity with the leader.  Likewise one party of Anglicans relies on scripture alone, one on the individual's reason and conscience, and one on following the traditions and leadership of the Church.  But unless we can begin to use all three together we are lost.

THE ANGLICAN TRIAD

This introduces the traditional triad of authorities, scripture, reason and tradition.  It is not exclusively Anglican, of course, but Anglicans have between them held the tension well.  Nevertheless Anglicans have tended to divide into dogmatic partisans of scripture (the Evangelicals), tradition (Anglo-Catholics) and reason (liberals, who can be as dognatic as the others!)

Doing without ‘basics’

What makes it difficult to do so today is the modern search for foundations.  if we have to see one or other authority as 'fundamental', and regard our faith as a process of building up from unquestionable basics, then it is difficult to use the three resources in a combined way.  But if we are 'postmodern' and reject this 'foundationalist' (and possibly fundamentalist) account of knowledge, and regard knowing as dependent on practical doing, then using the three in an interactive and dialectical way becomes imperative.

But this involves a change in the way we understand all three resources.

1) SCRIPTURE: THE BREATHED WORD

Most traditions give scripture an absolute authority, but this authority does not need to be understood in an absolutist way.  In fact it distorts scripture to see it all as law or a set of divine pronouncements and commands.  The Bible describes itself as 'God-breathed'; it is a polyphony of voices responding to the wind of God.  To hear God aright through it we need to join in the concert of voices as members of an ongoing church tradition.  And we need to bring to bear our own interpretive powers of reason.  This blend of scripture, tradition and wisdom is the way scripture itself develops.

2) CHURCH: ORGANISM, ASSEMBLY AND COMMUNION

This is the most intricate section of the book, and perhaps the most relevant to current Anglican disputes, where I ask what kind of unity should the Church aspire to.

Models of Unity

In nature we witness three kinds of unity: that of an organism, held together and organised by a central brain and chain of command; that of a crystal, which grows by the attraction of like for like; and the recently discovered fractal, which grows genetically - like yeast or a root - by the repetition of a program, in a manner that defies any attempt to define a boundary.

The Church: Organism, Crystal or Fractal?

These modes are compared with the Catholic, Protestant and Anglican understandings of the Church.  The former emphasises central control, the Protestant emphasises contracting in to a covenant based on shared belief, while the latter emphasises a pastoral growth that permeates the whole of society.

How God’s Word informs the Church

Simplifying somewhat, in the Catholic understanding the Word of God generates the faith of the whole Church, which passes to individuals through their belonging and sacramental participation in the whole.  On the Protestant model, personal faith comes first and builds the whole by a contracting together if independent parties.  Anglican faith grown neither top-down, as on the Catholic model, nor in the Protestant 'bottom-up' way, but as it were from the middle out, emerging through the interaction of pastor and people which both, supposes and generates faith. Faith here is like a genetic code from which new organisms are always emerging.

Tradition and Communion

As n the Road to Emmaus, the Word is realised, and generates the sacramental Church, in the moment of its disappearance.  A Church thus understood is interdependent with reason and scripture, and cannot take priority over either.

3) REASON: CONTEMPLATIVE IMAGINATION

But this means that reason cannot simply be the rationalist sceptical force we have inherited from the Enlightenment.  Properly understood, reason is logos, the Word and Wisdom that took flesh in Christ.  It  generates a contemplative imagination, which has a sceptical aspect - in that contemplation alwasy seeks to strip away false and groundless idols - but also an erotic, loving aspect that ios rooted in Christ through the Scriptures and the sacramental Church.

PROSPECTS

The booklet ends (more optimistically than I think I would end it now) with a series of recommendations:

1. Dialogue between the three positions needs strengthening, not least in ministerial training.

2. The Anglican heartland needs renewing over against the partisans.

3. Fractal institutions need to be developed maximising the interface between academy, pew, and surrounding culture, and between the various kinds of theological discipline.

4. The Turnbull report (and I would now add, developments since) which try to establish Anglicanism as a sleek organisational unity on a quasi-Catholic model, need to be decisively rejected.

5. A spiritual sea-change is needed, such that we see our threefold heritage not as a reason for in-fighting but as the wonderful gift of the Triune God to humanity as a whole, holding, perhaps, the secret of the unity in diversity the world needs.

6. Without being complacent Anglicans need to regain confidence in what they have distinctively to offer.