… this leads to our final point. It is the preservation of this catholicity, the relationship of bishop to the college of bishops, and these finally understood to include some kind of universal college, that is most important. In the past, TEC has exercised its autonomy with accountability in communion with the other Anglican churches. Anyone familiar with the formation of TEC will know that this accountability, although voluntary, was expressed in very concrete ways, including in the formulation of our Book of Common Prayer and the consecration of our first bishops. And within TEC, its autonomous dioceses were able to exercise their autonomy with accountability both to the other dioceses of TEC and to the Anglican college of bishops. But TEC has now repudiated any accountability to the larger communion. This presents TEC’s dioceses with an awful choice. How will they exercise their autonomy? To whom will they be accountable? To no one but themselves? To an isolated and declining body that itself rejects accountability to the church catholic? Or, through the Anglican Covenant, to the wider Communion?
Autonomy without accountability leads to denominationalism and isolation. Accountability without autonomy leads to authoritarian structures. Communion with both autonomy and accountability is the Anglican hope manifested in the Covenant. For us the choice is obvious, but we recognize that it is not without cost.
[blockquote]Both TEC and the Communion as a whole are now wrestling with the consequences of this “self-absorbed†exercise of autonomy: bishops who permit communion of the unbaptized and same sex marriages in direct violation of the Book of Common Prayer and the canons; dioceses that withdraw from TEC altogether[/blockquote]
Aren’t those Dioceses that wish to remain a part of the WWAC via the Covenant leaving TEC in spirit? The Covenant was not intended as a theological firewall for a diocese within TEC. How is this any less schismatic than those Dioceses that have already physically left without the benefit of the Covenant. Additionally, it concerns me the statement puts departure on an equal footing with heresy.
I was fascinated by this article as it touches upon a central tension within both TEC and the Communion, that is the exercise of autonomy.
For the article autonomy is summarized as “self governance”. It is contrasted with “authoritarianism” – which presumably is something like governance by another. The exercise of both is (or would be) a matter of church governance – that is, the legal structures governing the church.
Thus in these terms – within TEC’s legal structures – dioceses possess “autonomy” in respect of, say, General Convention whilst the legal relationship between dioceses and parishes is more “authoritarian”.
Alongside the sphere of autonomy/authority is another realm that is named “ecclesiology”. By definition, not church governance, ecclesiology is explicitly contrasted with the “human construct” that is legal governance and is a sphere in which God’s gift of “communion” may be a reality. (As an aside, this seems to leave the relationship between a bishop and his or her parishes, which is in some measure legally defined, on the governance side of the communion/governance contrast).
So “communion” is a relationship not bound or created by the legal structures of church governance that calls for a voluntary mutual subjection. (“Voluntary” here seems to mean something like not legally demanded but freely given). Such freely given mutual subjection, finds reality, in part, in the visible mutual loyalty and common counsel of bishops one with another and with the see of Canterbury: that is, the universal college of bishops.
Off the cuff remarks:
1. The focus here is on dioceses and provinces rather than parishes and their bishop. The inconcinnity in Anglicanism, is the law like structure of relationships between parishes and dioceses and (outside the US) between dioceses and provinces, and the lack of law like norms in the relationship between provinces. What to make of this theologically? I’m tempted to think that we are on a very slow journey to a more law like set of relationships and would want to think a bit more about whether law like agreements into which one voluntarily enters are necessarily “authoritarian”. The sacrament of marriage is one analogy for a voluntary, law bound oath of mutual self giving – that we don’t typically see as being “authoritarian”. (One might argue that, in unwritten form, our current practices as a Communion manifest the beginnings of some kind of legal framework).
2. Nevertheless we begin from where we are not from some imagine future. I appreciate the reminder of the catholic ecclesiology of Anglicanism and the desire to see it expressed in a “universal college” of bishops in which the mutual self giving (including “accountability”) that permits such catholicity to flourish may be made visible. I’m unclear on what structures in reality this desire implies – do they exist (Lambeth, the Primates Gatherings) – or do such need supplementing?
Respectfully, the authors of this document seem to fall at the final hurdle. They lay down some nice principles about authority which many would agree with (including many liberals and many orthodox) but then fail to state precisely how that will work out in practice, either for the Anglican Communion or TEC. Perhaps it should be viewed as an intermediate study document.
But the article raises even more weighty theological concerns:
[blockquote] As in the Roman Catholic Church, there may be intermediate bodies or conferences, but the key ecclesiological relationship is between the diocesan bishop and the universal college of bishops. And, that essential relationship can be given juridical force (polity), as in the Roman Catholic Church, or that relationship can be entered voluntarily as is the hope of Anglicanism. However, the relationship itself is a given if the Church is to be truly the Church of Christ. [/blockquote]
The Apostles would be rather surprised at this – they wrote a great deal about congregations, virtually nothing about bishops in the sense we use today.
And to assert that there must be some form of episcopal government for a church to be “truly the Church of Christ” is entirely without scriptural warrant. I may not agree that the congregationalists or baptists are following the biblical (i.e. apostolic) ideal of church government as closely as we anglicans, just as I disagree that their stance on baptism is truly reflective of apostolic teaching. But I do not for a moment consider that they are therefore not part of the true church of christ. All faithful christians everywhere are part of that – one faith, one baptism, regardless of whether we use bishops, presbyters or moderators (or indeed whether we dunk pour or sprinkle).
If the article is prepared to be loose with scripture in this fashion, what does it have to offer to orthodox anglicans?
Its also not clear what the ACI means by “the universal college of bishops”. Despite the high hopes of some, the fact remains that the Anglican Communion is not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, whereas it is in communion with the Old Catholics and several Evangelical Lutheran Churches. Moreover, there are many anglican groups who preserve episcopal polity and are orthodox in faith and morals, yet are not in formal communion with canterbury. The ACI article fails to explain why such groups should be regarded less highly than many bishops in TEC who are in formal communion with canterbury, yet appear to have abandoned the faith once delivered….
1. FWIW the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral seems to share something of this view – namely that episcopacy is essential, or at least a basis, for the unity that is God’s will for his church.
2. Some orthodox Anglicans are rather catholic and may like this emphasis. In other words, there may be orthodox Anglicans who take a much higher view of the work of the Spirit in time (that is, tradition) than you, or most baptists for that matter, do.
3. It’s not clear to me that the Communion is the kind of body at the moment that is in communion with any body. Provinces have made various agreements – so that at the moment the Church of England but not TEC is in full communion with the Church of Sweden, whilst TEC but not the Church of England is in full communion with ELCA. (As an aside the scope for theological incoherence amongst such agreements, say with respect to the meaning of episcopacy, is obvious and once again brings into question whether the Communion is capable of speaking frankly about theology, at all).
Driver8 wrote:
I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with that. My concern is an apparent suggestion that non-espiscopal bodies are not the true church or not part of the true church. To the extent that ACI is saying that, then it departs from the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.
The original Chicago quadrilateral was preceded by the important clarification:
[blockquote] “1. Our earnest desire that the Savior’s prayer, “That we all may be one,” may, in its deepest and truest sense, be speedily fulfilled;
2. That we believe that all who have been duly baptized with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the Holy Catholic Church.
3. That in all things of human ordering or human choice, relating to modes of worship and discipline, or to traditional customs, this Church is ready in the spirit of love and humility to forego all preferences of her own;
4. That this Church does not seek to absorb other Communions, but rather, co-operating with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order, to discountenance schism, to heal the wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian graces and the visibile manifestation of Christ to the world.” [/blockquote]
It was thus made clear that the actual quadrilateral did not involve any assertion that those groups without episcopacy were not part of “the church”, but rather an issue as to how anglicans could have intercommunion with them.
The same observation is apparent in the encyclical that was issued by the lambeth conference in 1888 (of which resolution 11 is the actual lambeth quadrilateral). It is clear that the bishops regard ALL churches as part of the “church of christ”. However they recognise that there are practical obstacles to communion with many churches. The bishops specifically mention those churches without episcopacy in some form, but also single out Rome as a church with which intercommunion is impossible:
[blockquote] We reflect with thankfulness that there exist no bars, such as are presented to communion with the Latins by the formulated sanction of the Infallibility of the Church residing in the person of the Supreme Pontiff, by the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and other dogmas imposed by the decrees of Papal councils. [/blockquote]
Re your other comment:
[blockquote] (As an aside the scope for theological incoherence amongst such agreements, say with respect to the meaning of episcopacy, is obvious and once again brings into question whether the Communion is capable of speaking frankly about theology, at all). [/blockquote]
It does not remotely “bring it into question”. The whole basis of the anglican view of the church (as exemplified e.g. by the chicago and lambeth resolutions extracted above) means that individual arrangements for intercommunion carry no weight compared to the theological fundamentals which are set out in the scriptures, the creeds and the articles of religion.
1. I don’t disagree with that and I would be astonished if the ACI folks did. I don’t think they’re saying that non-episcopal communities aren’t churches – they’re making a point that the koinonia that is God’s will for his people is not simply in ideas but is relational. A key point of visibility of those relationships within Anglicanism is the episcopacy.
2. The Episcopacy is a good example – because it has been a venue for some of the most intense theological debates within Anglicanism over the last 50 years. I think of the debates around the formation of the Church of South India, the rejection of union with the Methodists by the COE in part because of concerns surrounding episcopacy, the crisis created by the consecration of Bishop Robinson, the ongoing conversations around the consecration of women presbyters as bishops in the COE. Episcopacy acts as a kind of lightening rod because of its role as a focus of communion and whether we might wish it were not so, in fact, we do disagree deeply about the the meaning and character of episcopacy and have done so repeatedly during the last sixty years. Thus the question about the coherence of the witness that we, in fact, offer.
driver8,
I am sure you are right and I was probably reading too much into a single paragraph.
Good point also about the arguments re nature of episcopacy, which in some ways are extension of a much longer debate in christendom. Unfortunately, it has been given more focus by the recent open apostasy of so many bishops – whatever one’s view on the theology of episcopacy, this is a challenge.