Prof. [Ephraim] Radner, one of 10 members of the group drafting the proposed Anglican Covenant, made no bones about division as an endearing reality in the church’s life. He called unity a thing not to “cleaned of division,” but rather emanating from “the blood of the cross, from which there is no escape. We are called to be one,” he said, “but our soul depends on the sharp sword of division.”
Bishop [James] Stanton, billing his talk “a report from the front lines in the struggle for a Communion Covenant,” took issue with too-easy attempts to define the Greek word koinonia as mere “fellowship,” when the “koinonia” of God through Christ ”“ his entering into flesh and blood” in fact brings unity through restoration of “fallen, broken humanity.”
“It belongs to koinonia,” he said, “to endure sacrifice and suffering until the battle is through.” Among the obstacles to achievement of koinonia, in Bishop Stanton’s recounting: inadequate education concerning the whole question; the lack of “corporation memory” concerning the church’s own promises to rein in divisive, free-lance activity by advanced spirits; and, last, inability “to articulate in a compelling way why the office and person of the Archbishop [of Canterbury] is critical to our continuing Communion.”
Frankly, I believe if unity above all is our calling, it makes no sense to continue as an Episcopalian. One should resign holy orders and begin the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults into the Roman Catholic church (in the United States, at least).
I confess, while I have read some of what Prof. Ephraim Radner has written and am in substantial agreement, I can’t understand how he can continue in a sect which clearly (albeit, correctly, in my opinion) split from the Church of Rome. This is the same for others (Bp. Peter James Lee of Richmond) who maintain that division is the greatest sin.
Am I missing something?
“Separating” from TEC by realigning with a more faithful Anglican province is hardly ‘schism’! Why is it that Dr. Radner (and others) have located “Church” to which we must stay faithful and from which we dare not depart is TEC?!? Truly, if significant efforts to overcome true division are what is sought, then we should turn to both Rome and The East.
Why this angst over TEC?
What does he mean when Dr. Radner writes, “Our soul depends on the sharp sword of division”? We can only be saved in a divided church – in an apostate church?
All of this strikes me as nothing more than after-the-fact contortions of logic to justify the unjustifiable incoherence of the Anglican Communion. In that sense, it’s no different than ECUSA’s activists, who also started with the answer to whether their behavior should be glorified, then started trying to make up a rationale for it.
I’m hoping that somehow this article was poorly written. It seems to fall into unintelligible gibberish at certain points. Perhaps it was poorly translated from Chinese? Some examples: “…our soul depends on the sharp sword of division†and “inadequate education concerning the whole question….” What does this mean? “…the lack of “corporation memory†concerning the church’s own promises to rein in divisive, free-lance activity by advanced spirits….” Jim Stanton surely was intending to mean “CORPORATE memory”, but what the heck are “advanced spirits”? But what does “….and, last, inability “to articulate in a compelling way why the office and person of the Archbishop [of Canterbury] is critical to our continuing Communion.†Poor Rowan Williams has been such a lousy leader for the Communion in a critical time that he himself is unable to compellingly articulate why anyone should pay attention to his office at all.
The article quotes a total of 30 words from Fr. Radner—necessarily a tiny portion of what he said. Let’s not overreact to them.
Ireanaeus – this is a good point. I am probably reading a lot of my lingering frustration into this. Also, Sr. Priest confirms (for me) that this article was not well written.
#8 — The last six months or so of news from the Anglican Communion have caused me to consider that the respsonse you suggested in #1 may well be correct. I grew up in the Episcopal Church, but I am close to concluding that its structure is in fact incoherent. Anglicanism may in fact amount to little more than a cultural expression of Christianity rooted in England, and bound by the Book of Common Prayer and the accidents of British colonial history. The actions of the leadership of ECUSA, and the inaction of the ABC, have left me seriously considering whether Rome or the Orthodox are the only viable options.
I really would appreciate any helpful thoughts about the case for the new Anglican Province, or any expression of Anglicanism, because I am really at a crossroads.
Peace.
#9
In addition to the Scripture and the Sacrament, a quote that has encouraged my endurance is one from JPII, which I found in an article on Dallas Willard in Christianity Today (I figure when CT quotes a pope, I should take notice).
Here’s the relevant section: “It is often pointed out by biographers of Pope John Paul II that [the] call to see in the moral actions of a person who the person has chosen to become is very much a reaction against the routine hypocrisy required for survival in communist Poland,” he writes. Later, he summarizes John Paul’s insight: [b]”You are who you are, not what you would be if the system was different.”[/b]
I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t control the system, but I can control my actions. And that if my heart is not set to learn to follow Christ’s commands where I am now, then it won’t matter what system I’m in later. At present, I’m choosing to believe that it’s possible for me to be faithful to Christ as an Christian who is an Anglican in TEC, simply because that’s where I am and I don’t see that Jesus would place me in a system where it’s impossible to be faithful to him.
That said, Anglicans don’t claim to be the only church. So I’m having a hard time finding full agreement with my colleagues, friends, and brother priests who are more committed to the covenant strategy than I am. And if our Christian identity needs to be tied to a particular See, there are several that make more sense to me than Canterbury.
I agree with the principle of the covenant argument, unity is a necessary goal for Christians. This principle motivates me, as an Anglican, to seek biblical commitments that minimize the distance between myself and my communion’s senior ecumenical partners.
It also leads me to be patient with and supportive of my colleagues, friends, and brothers priests who are seeking a jurisdiction in which they can survive long enough as historic Christians to contribute, God willing, to the reunification of the Western and Eastern churches.
I’m currently in the beginning chapters of E.L. Mascall’s, The Recovery of Unity: A Theological Approach. While it is a bit dated, it is also helping me say my prayers each day and be who I am where I am, even if I don’t like the system.
The “schism is worse than heresy” argument is a rationalization which would have been incomprehensible to Cramner, Ridley and Latimer as well as to the early church fathers.
The Orthodox view of the matter is that heresy [b]is[/b] schism. If one teaches that which is contrary to what the Church teaches, one has, in fact, separated oneself from the Catholic Church.
For the early church fathers, if one found one’s bishop to be teaching heresy, one was bound to flee to an orthodox bishop. And if a bishop was a heretic, it was the duty of orthodox bishops to provide the faithful of that diocese with an orthodox bishop.
Shouldn’t that be ‘enduring’ reality? Division isn’t exactly what I would call an endearing quality of the church. I agree, #6, the article is poorly written.
#10, thanks for the encouragement. We are where we are for a reason, and we often have to find that reason before we can know what we are to do or before we can move on to somewhere else.
As someone who was present at the conference (sorry I didn’t see more of you there), I’d like to supplement the [i]Living Church[/i] account with a few observations. These are my personal views and do not necessarily represent those held by anyone else.
1. There was a substantial turnout, probably a majority of whom were laity. These came not only from the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, but also from the Southern Cone Diocese of Fort Worth and other jurisdictions, from Texas, Louisiana, and well beyond (one speaker came from Toronto and another from London).
2. This was not a “schism is worse than heresy” meeting. That was emphatically not the message of Dr. Radner or anyone else. Bishop Stanton set the tone by focusing attention on the biblical and traditional concept of [i]koinonia[/i], the Greek word that lies behind “Communion” and means a good deal more than the traditional translation “fellowship.” Other speakers concentrated on communion as a spiritual discipline that transcends ecclesiastical politics. Thus, for example, there were presentations on the sacraments and daily offices and their implications for communion.
3. There seemed to be a general understanding that institutional division within the Communion and its North American components is no longer avoidable, so trying to avoid or suppress it would be a waste of time and energy. We will not see for years (if ever within our lifetimes) a return to the situation where there is a single institution in the US or Canada that is recognized, to the exclusion of any alternative, by all 43 Anglican churches elsewhere in the world. Both TEC and the ACNA will hold much the same status as the “Church of England in South Africa” as entities that define themselves as Anglican but that are in unrestricted communion with substantially fewer than all other Anglican churches.
Even if TEC leaves the formal Anglican Communion and is replaced by ACNA, there will be provinces that retain ties to TEC. Even if TEC remains a formal member, there will be provinces that are closer to ACNA. To some extent, therefore, Anglicans will be dealing with one another in ways that borrow more from traditional ecumenical relations than from denominational solidarity.
4. If so, the issue remaining for those who take Christian unity seriously is how to preserve the highest degree of communion conscientiously possible among self-styled Anglicans in North America and between them and Anglicans elsewhere in the world. Globally, there is a challenge to avoid propagating the American schism to all the other churches in the Anglican Communion. Most of the speakers and sponsors value a continued relationship to the historic See of Canterbury, although none of them value that relationship more than Catholic Christianity. The message of this conference, to me at least, was that the only way to achieve these goals is to look at communion/koinonia on a much more fundamental level than we have hitherto been willing to do.
5. While the sponsoring group includes some who have chosen other paths, most still feel called to work within TEC in the hope of slowing its breach with the rest of the Communion. They have no illusions that they can do this through political activity. Theirs is a ministry of witness, which does not exclude political action but goes well beyond it into the areas of evangelism, theological education, and spiritual formation.
6. For me, one of the most hopeful features of the conference was the opportunity to meet a number of young clergy and Christian teachers who seem to have a much better grasp of the issues (and their Gospel implications) than most of those in my own Baby Boomer generation. The current situation may not clear up until after a generational transition or two. We need to be patient, a virtue that has been notably absent on both sides of the recent and current disputes. God is working His purpose out on a schedule that we might not adopt if we were in charge. Thankfully, we aren’t.
7. I would urge readers not to rely on excerpts such as this story. As they are revised for publication, all or most of the conference presentations will be appearing [url= http://covenant-communion.com/index.php%5Dhere%5B/url%5D.
Correction:
7. I would urge readers not to rely on excerpts such as this story. As they are revised for publication, all or most of the conference presentations will be appearing [url=http://covenant-communion.com/index.php]here[/url].
I very much wanted to be at this conference, but I was asked to be the Deacon at the Ordination of the Diocese’ newest priest and had to be at the rehearsal at 11:00 am with the ordination at 1:00pm.
I commend Fr. Greg’s comments in #10.
I see the twin strategies of inside (covenant) and outside (ACNA) to be like the hammer and anvil that molds a stronger communion. It is my prayer that these will eventually merge – whether because the leadership of TEC repents of their heresy or because TEC removes itself from the communion. In either case, the existence of both strategies can lead to a stronger covenant that fuels the second outcome (ACNA replaces TEC and ACoC) and only God can provide for the first outcome.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
William P. Sulik,
Two things:
1. Your question above assumes that Rome remains the ‘true church.’ Having read some of Dr. Radner’s work, I don’t think this is a position that he would hold given that he states explicitly, “the point [for our own souls] that asks not, how can I prove myself theologically correct? but what is God doing to this church of which I am a part and how shall I serve it (Hope Among the Fragments p. 203). Our divisions seemingly force us to ask ‘who is the true church’ and/or who is ‘theologically correct’ as though finding an accurate response to that question will ensure our purity and/or salvation or the continuity of the Church. But it is God who ensures the continuity of the Church even in all of its error and division. Having said that, I do believe that we must engage in efforts to make right our errors; but how we go about engaging in this effort is key. Trying to make right our errors by returning or starting a ‘true church’ with right teaching, right, doctrine, etc is an effort that assumes erroneously that we have the knowledge and understanding of how God’s plan is unfolding and a grasp of the time in which his plan will unfold. The reality is that even in our divisions, failures, straying, errors, we are in Christ and so the question of faith is not, which one of our divided churches is the right one; rather the question of faith is how is God calling me to serve his purpose in the divided church that I am presently in. If we can grasp this, then the question becomes what must I do to witness to what God is doing in the Church. A place we might begin is by creating time and space (through how we order our church) by which people can see God at work. On a practical level, this requires that we stay together and don’t break apart every time we believe the church to have committed grave error. All people see when the church splits or when people move from what they deem to be an apostate church to a true church is people justifying the ‘rightness’ of their own actions (justifying their own individual conscience); it certainly doesn’t witness to God’s own healing of our divisions.
2. I would second Dale Rye’s advice not to rely on this report; the actual full content of what Dr. Radner had to say is coherent, convincing and if heeded, transformative of our way of thinking about our place and work in the Church. This report doesn’t capture that coherence.
I was there, and I just want to echo Dale’s comment and description in #14.
koinonia as described above clearly is outside of and greater than what is commonly meant when unity is invoked as a greater good. To suppose that unity is supposed to mean “one and only one church” rests on untenable practical grounds since no human activity has ever achieved such homogenization. And I doubt that it has any better grounds for any conceptual undertaking. Christ surely meant this as a transcendant concept, Christianity sub species eternitatis, if I may put it that way. Isn’t this the case? Larry
Despite the practices of open Communion and same-sex blessings all throughout TEC, and the fact that its leader seems to have much trouble getting her tongue around the words “Resurrected Christ”(not to mention the “we come to our relationship with God largely through our experience of holiness in other human beings” and “Jesus is a way, not THE Way” comments), all the TEC diocesan bishops who consecrated an active homosexual to the episcopate of the whole Church remained constituent members of the Communion, through the AB of C’s Lambeth invitations despite their massive deviations from traditional Anglican theology.
TEC could eventually opt out of the Covenant process and thus become some sort of “ecumenical relation” but does that mean that their ’18 Lambeth invitations will read differently or never materialize? If not, then they are still “in Communion” and remain undisciplined.
With respect to all the hard work of ACI and colleagues, the issue for people like me is one of trust. I realize that God is continually working on his Church, but will the Covenant process get vaporized by aliens just as the DeS Communique, and its proposed solution, did? No one with any clout has ever clearly articulated what happened to the DeS proposal. Any takers here, just to clear that up for me?
And meanwhile, I’m not crazy about the fractured mess that the Anglican Communion is fast becoming. It’s also my view, right or wrong, that the current British leader, supposedly a godly man, is allowing all this to remain incoherent, and meanwhile the revisionist agenda advances. But, maybe that’s been the plan all along.
I can truly see why so many people out there say, in basic reference to Protestantism, “well, you’re either Catholic, or you’re not”. And, it’s fast becoming that if “you’re not”, then you are part of a rather theologically incoherent mess.
Many people on Titus One Nine only want a Protestant type unity, not only within Anglicanism, but also in general (really not interested at all in unity with Rome or Orthodoxy)
A limited observation on my part;
It seems to me the TEC PB is just as guilty in trying to kick out people from TEC because they don’t follow the ultra-liberal party line as those who are charged as wrongly leaving the church.