Of justice and judgement

Steven Croft speaks of the need for resolving a ‘fundamental issue of justice’ and observes that ‘it is almost impossible to have a mutually respectful conversation between Church and society on the grounds of justice, if the Church denies the rights of homosexual people to enter into loving and faithful partnerships and marriage.’  

To be precise, the Church does not seek to roll back anti-discrimination laws nor to abolish civil partnerships and while the waiving of the requirement that marriage partners must be of diverse sex puts the secular definition of marriage at odds with the Church’s understanding of marriage, the Church does not campaign to bring the civil definition in line with the church’s. In this sense, the Church does not in fact deny the civil rights of homosexual people to enter into loving and faithful partnerships and marriage, it merely, at present, refuses to approve of sexual intimacy in same-sex relationships or to redefine its own understanding of marriage.

For Croft there is an issue as to whether ‘the Church is fair and just in its ethics’. He notes ‘a fundamental disagreement about justice and fairness: we [the church] are seen [by society] to inhabit a different moral universe’ (20)

The booklet uses ‘justice’ consistently in a positive way, as it should. By contrast, ‘judgement’ is regularly contrasted with mercy and portrayed negatively. But throughout the Bible wise and appropriate judgement is a means of bringing about justice for the oppressed. Last Sunday’s OT reading from Jeremiah 23 condemning the shepherds that did not keep the flock safe is a case in point.

Is it really coherent to claim that justice demands the Church to welcome and affirm (sexually active) same-sex relationships but to affirm that the traditional view of marriage and human sexuality ‘remains a legitimate and honourable position’? Can a demand for justice be suspended in this way, by refusing to judge those who withhold justice?

It seems to me that a judgement is required: either approving of sexual intimacy outside the parameters of traditional Christian teaching is a matter of justice in which case no clergy should be allowed to withhold such justice, or it is not.

Of trajectories

‘The idea of a trajectory or a redemptive-movement approach to understanding and applying Scripture is hardly a new concept’ is the opening sentence in William J. Webb’s ‘A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic: Encouraging Dialogue Among Four Evangelical Views,’ JETS 48 (2005): 331-49. Steven Croft notes,

Many evangelicals with a high view of the Scriptures find themselves persuaded by this trajectory argument on the question of the equality and inclusion of women in leadership and ministry, despite the prohibitions to the contrary contained in some parts of the New Testament. However, they are unable to discover a parallel trajectory on questions of human sexuality and the recognition of same-sex relationship.

He adds

I believe that trajectory is manifestly present. The direction of travel in the New Testament trajectory is undeniably towards the worth of each individual, the equal value of all humanity, and the freedom that is entrusted to us in Christ.

But it is not clear how he identifies a trajectory within the New Testament. A trajectory implies movement along a path. Where is the beginning of the path and where its end? Does he mean to imply that while Jesus in the Gospels is a bit hazy about the worth of each individual (perhaps thinking of the incident with the Syro-Phoenician woman?), Paul has a better grasp of it (in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek), and the book of Revelation gives us the clearest picture of the equal value of all humanity (a great multitude from every nation, tribe , people and language)? Against this, Croft sees the Biblical understanding of human worth as flowing ‘most of all, from the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ and the life that Jesus lives’. Given that the incarnation and the life of Jesus arguably stand at the beginning, not the end of the path traced in the NT, it is hard to see what kind of trajectory there might be, or is it that Jesus himself, prior to his cross and resurrection, did not yet fully realise what would flow from his life?

Croft observes that ‘this understanding of human worth and dignity…is unfolded from Genesis to Revelation.’ Clearly, man and woman made in the image of God is a key marker of human worth and dignity. Does Croft believe that the implications of this are seen more clearly in Revelation 21-22 than in Genesis 1-3? Does the OT focus on Abraham and his seed (‘in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ [Genesis 12:3]) suggest to Croft uncertainty about ‘the equal value of all humanity’? Even if that were the case, the Bishop of Oxford must surely know that many Christians past and present would strongly contest the view that the OT is equivocal about the worth of each individual, the equal value of all humanity.

The problem here is arguably that Croft accepts the widespread cultural belief that denying sexual intimacy within same-sex relationships denies the value and worth of some individuals. In other words, the key element of the alleged ‘trajectory’ is not taken from Scripture which makes it hard to claim that the trajectory is to be found in Scripture itself. This is essentially different from ‘the question of the equality and inclusion of women in leadership and ministry’ which needs to be addressed in the light of diverse passages which directly concern the matter but at least on first reading seem to point in different directions. The same is true for the argument about slavery and about divorce. In all these cases, the church had to bring into conversation passages which directly address the matter at hand and it has historically done so, knowing that ‘it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another’ (Article 20 of The Thirty-Nine Articles). By contrast, in seeking to redraw the boundaries of sexual morality, Croft suspends the teaching of passages which directly address the matter in the light of his belief about what ‘the worth of each individual, the equal value of all humanity, and the freedom that is entrusted to us in Christ’ imply. This reflects a different hermeneutical approach and a different view of the authority of Scripture from what the Church of England has historically taught.

What about freedom in Christ? This, too, is not best described in the language of trajectory. There is no ever growing movement of freedom in Christ through the Bible or even the NT. The freedom for which Christ has set us free came at a definite moment in history and relates to the end of the old covenant which was brought about by the establishment of a new covenant. This new covenant comes with the same call to be holy and blameless before God (cf. Ephesians 1:4) but no longer is a nation sanctified, set apart for God’s special purpose, and the worship of God in Spirit and in truth no longer needs the regulations that concerned the shadow of the substance that is fulfilled and accomplished in Christ.

Of commandments and prohibitions

Steve Croft’s Together in Love and Faith observes that ‘resistance to changing the position of the Church of England on sexually active same-sex partnerships is principally focused on the prohibition, in biblical texts, on sexual activity between two people of the same gender.’ This seems to be true, if by ‘gender’ we mean ‘sex’ (it is doubtful that within Scripture we can speak of ‘gender’ as a category distinct from biological sex) and understand  ‘prohibition’ as broad enough to include New Testament censures of sexual intimacy outside (diverse-sex) marriage. The Bishop of Oxford appears to address this ‘roadblock’ in a twofold manner: by cancelling the prohibitions and by postulating a trajectory which allows for a re-shaping of biblical morality.

A rhetorical question sums up the argument: ‘how many other commandments and regulations in Leviticus does the Church keep and teach today?’ Croft appears to suggest that we need not pay any attention to perhaps different ways in which various commandments and regulations function within Leviticus, nor to the way in which the church throughout the ages has differentiated between them. We must treat all the commandments and regulations the same – either they are all binding on us or none of them are. This impression is reinforced by the citation of the ‘powerful moment’ in The West Wing in which President Bartlet replies to a Christian fundamentalist who quotes Leviticus 18:22 at him [*] by pointing out that we ignore, among other things, the injunctions against planting two kinds of seed in the same field and against wearing garments made from two kinds of materials (Lev 19:19), implying that we are therefore free to ignore what Leviticus says about sexual morality.

We can ignore all these commandments, according to Croft, because ‘the view of ethics and morality set out in Leviticus has been revised and adapted within the Biblical period and beyond it, in the light of the incarnation, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of these truths, everything has changed.’ To me this sounds rather different from what the Thirty-Nine Articles claim about the Old Testament:

THE Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.

Note that the Bishop of Oxford does not suggest here that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 should be re-interpreted as civil law which need not be received in our society but he seems to dispense with the threefold division of the law itself (cf. later: ‘Gentile Christians are not to be bound by the law of Moses’). Sorting commandments into three boxes labelled ‘ceremonial’, ‘civil’ and ‘moral’ can indeed be problematic but failure to distinguish between the different functions of the law which translate into different ways in which individual commandments might be considered binding on Christians is a different matter altogether. ‘Not uniquely Eastern or Western; Roman Catholic or Protestant; conservative or liberal; Patristic or Puritan; Thomist, Calvinist, or anything else; the threefold division of the law is catholic doctrine.’ (Phillip S. Ross, cited from an article by Nicholas J. Mattai). We may agree that (non-Jewish, and I would suggest Jewish) Christians are not legally bound to the Sinai law but we are arguably morally bound to commandments which reflect the character of God and his universal purposes.

Croft is somewhat less cavalier in his treatment of NT texts such as 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. He is right to note that the full list covers the majority of us and that the emphasis falls on the conclusion ‘And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (verse 11). The verses should not be used to victimise others. But we are warned not to be deceived (verse 9): sexual activity in same-sex relationships is listed alongside idolatry, adultery and other forms of sexual immorality, theft and robbery, greed, drunkenness, verbal abuse and fraud as activities from which we need to be cleansed in order to inherit the kingdom of God. Croft acknowledges that if the relevant Greek terms do not refer exclusively to abusive relationships but to all sexual activity in same-sex relationships, this ‘would support no change in the present position of the Church.’ Alas, he provides no reference or justification for why the Church should commit to the alternative view that this only refers to abusive relationships, even though the Living in Love and Faith book notes the obvious point that ‘there were common Greek terms used to describe these practices, not used here by Paul’ (292).

Croft suggests that ‘the apostles are very careful not to define “porneia” closely in their letter[s]’, as if they went out of their way to keep matters open for ‘a modest redrawing of the boundaries of what constitutes…sexual morality’ by later Christians. But I know of no example of the church re-defining sexual morality in the first nearly two thousand years of its history and can see nothing to suggest an effort on the apostles’ part to keep the definition of sexual morality vague. It seems more obvious that they left porneia undefined because sexual immorality had already been defined in the OT and they saw no need for boundaries to be redrawn by themselves or later Christians. Joshua Pendock observes in his open letter to Steven Croft

It is not difficult to imagine the early Church looking at the wicked examples of pederasty in Greek culture and arguing, ‘there are holier ways of practising same-sex love’. Examples could easily have been given of loving same-sex couples in the Greek world. Furthermore, the argument could easily have been made that considering the eschatological non-procreational issues of sexuality raised by Jesus’ reference to being ‘like the angels’, early Christian theologians could have Christianised same-sex activity through notions of faithfulness and covenant. Considering the strangeness of Christian practice in comparison to the Mediterranean world as witnessed to by the contextually bizarre practices of virginity and celibate marriages, notions of same-sex blessing and even marriage could easily have developed in such an environment. It may even have helped with evangelising many a Greek man.

But they did not. Steven Croft’s assumption that the apostles did not know about loving same-sex relationships and his conviction that our modern knowledge of sexual identity and orientation puts us at such an advantage over Moses at Sinai, Jesus in Galilee and Judah and Paul in the Greco-Roman world that we can now formulate a better, more just sexual ethics than they were able to do, has to carry a lot of weight. Put in the balance it seems to allow him to make light of biblical commandments and prohibitions.

When the Church previously declared that a specific injunction was no longer directly applicable to God’s people, we were still able to affirm that the law was good and right and just for the time and place for which it was given – God's commandments were not suspended on the grounds that people back then were ignorant about things of which we are now cognisant.  To say that at the right time a greater high priest inaugurated a new covenant by his supreme sacrifice which takes away the animal sacrifices under the old covenant is one thing; to say that we no longer bring animal sacrifices because we now know that animals have feelings too and must not be killed would be an altogether different thing. Analogically, Croft’s argument seems a lot closer to the latter than the former.

[*] This is how Croft presents the scene, not entirely accurately. The President actually opens the verbal confrontation.

Remembering Hilda

Different ways of calculating the dates for festivals may not seem sufficiently important to cause a rift among the people of God but there is a long tradition of such disagreements doing exactly that – it is one of the things which put the Essene community (primarily known to us today through the Dead Sea Scrolls) at odds with the Jerusalem establishment.

Today we remember Hilda, born in the year 614 into the royal house of Northumbria. She was baptized at the age of twelve and became a Religious at the age of thirty-three. She established monasteries at Hartlepool and Whitby. The latter became a great centre of learning and Hilda is indeed remembered as a great educator which is a reminder that while the wider church remains in disagreement about the ordination of women, even the Roman Catholic church recognises women as church teachers.

Whitby was also the meeting-place for an important Synod in the year 664 at which it was decided to adopt the Roman tradition in preference to Celtic customs. Hilda, herself formed in the Celtic way of living the faith, played a crucial rôle in reconciling others of that tradition to the decision of the Synod. Alongside monastic tonsure (how to cut hair as a sign of religious), controversy about the calculation of Easter was a key element of the Synod of Whitby, as it had been previously in the church.

We may well struggle to understand why agreement about monastic tonsure was felt necessary. Why was it not possible to agree to disagree on this, letting each monastic foundation adopt their own rules? Setting a common date for Easter is more obviously important, if one wants to celebrate together. Still today the (Eastern and Oriental) Orthodox and the (Roman and Reformed) Catholics struggle to mark the festival together because we mark it on different days. This is perhaps a reminder that even some of the less important things are not open to disagreement, if one wants to walk together. It is of course perfectly possible to respect one another, without walking together.

Hilda considered walking together more important than holding on to customs that are of secondary importance. The long term impact of such Celtic submission to Roman tradition was to preserve close links between the church in Britain and the wider church on the continent.

Hilda died on 17 November in the year 680.

 

Early Anglicans reading Scripture: Bookmarks

That it may please thee to give to all thy people increase of grace to hear meekly thy Word, and to receive it with pure affection, and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit; We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

Jeremy Bergstrom’s posts

• The early ‘Anglican’ reading of Scripture (1): William Laud
• The early ‘Anglican’ reading of Scripture (2): Cranmer and the prayer book

Ashley Null, ‘Thomas Cranmer and the Anglican Way of Reading Scripture,’ Anglican & Episcopal History 75 (2006): 488-526.

John Downame (ed.), Annotations upon all the books of the Old and New Testament wherein the text is explained, doubts resolved, Scriptures parallelled and various readings observed / by the joynt-labour of certain learned divines, thereunto appointed, and therein employed, as is expressed in the preface (London: Printed by John Legatt and John Raworth, 1645), http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A36467.0001.001

Contributors:

• Casaubon, Meric, 1599-1671
• Featley, Daniel, 1582-1645
• Gataker, Thomas, 1574-1654
• Gouge, William, 1578-1653
• Ley, John, 1583-1662
• Reading, John, 1588-1667
• Reynolds, Edward, 1599-1676
• Taylor, Francis, 1590-1656

See also https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp78144 

The Rt Revd Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Contemplations of the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments, various editions, including Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1836.

John Trapp (1601-1669), A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments: In Five Volumes, Vol. 1: Genesis – Second Chronicles (London: Richard D. Dickinson, 1867)

 

 

The keys of the kingdom

 In Matthew 16, Jesus says to Peter: 

‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’

This has been variously interpreted as teaching that the (Roman Catholic) Pope, as the successor to Peter, has the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church; that bishops are entrusted with the exercise of church discipline which signals whether someone belongs to the body of Christ or not;  that the church has the task of proclaiming the Gospel which opens the kingdom for those who confess Jesus as the Christ and closes it for those who reject the Lordship of Christ; and probably in a number of other ways.

Steven Croft believes that Jesus here entrusts the church with the responsibility of customising its moral teaching and practice across different cultures (Together in Love and Faith, 29). How this differs from a more traditional approach is perhaps best seen when one considers the Christian faith being proclaimed in a polygamous society. The traditional approach would uphold monogamy as the Christian teaching, while seeking a way of justice and mercy in messy situations that diverge from the Christian understanding of marriage. Following their conversion Christians would not be permitted to enter into more than one marriage but men who were already in multiple marriage relationships before they came to faith in Christ might remain in those polygamous relationships, notably so if divorcing wives would lead to hardship for the women, even if men in polygamous relationships would not be considered for church leadership.

By contrast, the Bishop of Oxford does not believe that there is a (cross-cultural) Christian doctrine of marriage. A polygamous cultural setting would lend itself to a non-monogamous Christian ethics in such contexts, even if none of the examples of polygamy reported in the Bible are encouraging. (Polygamy is not characterised as intrinsically evil in Scripture although it is nowhere commended. It is regulated in the law, just as divorce is which similarly falls short of God’s intention.) This is the difference between, on the one hand, seeking to discern a morality that is first of all consistent with the whole of Scripture* and, on the other hand, establishing a morality that is first of all responsive to its cultural context, as long as it is ‘consistent with the principles of love’ (29).

The latter qualification is critical. A profound dislocation between the national church and the society it was called to serve opened up in 1930s Germany. Church leaders argued that the mission and ministry of the church would be hindered and severely impeded if it did not adopt the Aryan Paragraph which excluded ‘non-Aryans’ (Jews). This Nazi Gleichschaltung (synchronisation) of political, educational and social bodies was resisted by some within the German Evangelical Church, provoking a split between the main body and the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche). One would like to think that we all, including Steven Croft, would have been in the Confessing Church, preferring lack of synchronisation with wider society to lack of synchronisation with New Testament teaching in this case. In retrospect it looks easy: the Aryan Paragraph was not consistent with the principles of love. The German church mishandled the keys of the kingdom.

The ‘Christian’ teachings that justified the slave trade and apartheid were a similar departure from mainstream, catholic Christian teaching in order to serve people in a particular cultural setting. As these teachings were not consistent with the principles of love, Steven Croft would reject endorsing them for the sake of inhabiting the same moral universe as the people which the church is to serve. But his reference to them on page 40 tells the story differently. Croft suggests that these were historic teachings of the church which required ‘vigorous debate and often conflict between Christians, over several generations’ before a ‘responsible revision of our interpretation of Scripture’ was found which allowed the church to move forward. Not so. It was the rejection of revisionist readings of Scripture that finally freed the church from these false teachings. That it took so long merely shows how deeply embedded self-serving or culture-accommodating readings can become. If Jesus gave authority to the church to devise its own moral teachings as befitting diverse cultures, it was an authority that has been badly abused. It is arguably more accurate to observe that the church is always in danger of being compromised and has time and again found its way back to healthy teaching by paying close attention to Scripture. It is hardly conceivable that the reading of Scripture could convince Christians who were not already so inclined of the need to support apartheid or the slave trade. It was Christians who liked apartheid and supported the slave trade who re-read Scripture to affirm them in this.

The case of money lending at interest is a different and more complex matter. I have written on this at some length elsewhere, e.g., here. In my view, this has little directly to do with the keys of the kingdom, unless perhaps in the sense that we must warn the greedy that they will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10). This raises the question whether for Croft passages such as 1 Corinthians 6  are still determinative for how the church is to exercise the ministry of the keys. What seems clear is that it would be difficult to hold together within one church clergy which teach ‘greed is good’ (growing pie for everyone, trickle down benefits etc.) and clergy which affirm that greed excludes from the kingdom of God. Even cross-culturally, I find it hard to conceive of churches  warning against greed in their context remaining in a strong communion of shared ministry and mission with other churches affirming greed in their different cultural context. The exercise of the ministry of the keys must be reasonably uniform, it seems to me, for it to be credible.

* Many now believe that the various parts of Scripture are irreconcilable but this is itself a marked departure from tradition. My aim here is to highlight this seismic shift. It is probably not possible to defend the view that a consistent Christian ethics can be derived from Scripture without writing a book.

A high view of Scripture

‘As an evangelical, I retain a high view of Scripture’ writes Steven Croft in Together in Love and Faith (11).  A high view of Scripture is apparently what evangelicals are known for although few conservative Anglo-Catholics or even liberal clergy would confess to having a low view of Scripture. The expression can arguably be used not only by those who hold to a traditional view of Holy Scripture but also by those who merely privilege the Bible as a reference point without accepting its authority and sufficiency as historically understood. Some may well be able to combine ‘a high view of Scripture’ with a liberty to correct it, improve upon it, or even discard individual texts within it as ‘toxic’ which others would find indicative of having abandoned the historic Christian teaching about the nature of Scripture.

Evangelicals within the Church of England Evangelical Council believe that the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments were ‘given by the Holy Spirit as the true word of God written…to lead us to salvation, to be the ultimate rule for Christian faith and conduct, and the supreme authority by which the Church must ever reform itself and judge its traditions.’ This reflects the historic teaching of the CofE. It is therefore no surprise that it is a view also held by many who do not own the label ‘evangelical’.

Steven Croft’s characterisation of the Scriptures as ‘the foundational and authoritative teachings of the faith’ (25) suggests that he wants to affirm ‘a high view of Scripture’ in this traditional sense. He adds that ‘we approach the Scriptures poor in spirit, with empty hands, in need of light and guidance, rather than bringing our own certainties’ (27). This perhaps shows more ‘evangelical’ than ‘catholic’ leanings in apparently seeking to ensure that the Scripture – doctrine relationship is a one-way street but it is not altogether clear what ‘empty hands’ means in practice. The Bishop allows that he ‘may be wrong’ (3) and so does not bring ‘certainties’ to the text but he does approach the text with a clear sense of what he wants to hear in the light of our cultural context. Perhaps whether we come to Scripture with ‘empty hands’ is less the issue than whether we respect its integrity, seeking to make sense of all the parts of the puzzle, or whether we are prepared to manipulate and even discard pieces of the puzzle to get the picture we like to see. In other words, whatever we bring to the text, are we ready to let go of our pre-judgements or do we rather let go of uncomfortable texts of Scripture?

When we read Scripture, we want to see Jesus. We meet in Jesus someone who calls to repentance, upholds righteousness and the law (sometimes in a stricter sense than other Rabbis), shows mercy and compassion, and is gentle with the marginalised. On this we are agreed. But while for some readers all this holds together in the holiness of God and as an expression of God’s coming to right all wrongs, Croft believes that in the Gospels ‘judgement and mercy are brought into contrast with each other’ and that the mercy of Jesus may be a ‘counterpoint’ to the call to holiness in Leviticus (apparently some commentators have suggested this; he provides no reference). In his view, the church is not given a vocation in which mercy and holiness necessarily cohere (as they surely do in God) but ‘a dual vocation to mercy and holiness’ which are sometimes in such conflict with each other that we have to choose one over the other. Rather than concluding that we must have fundamentally misunderstood something, if the demands of mercy and holiness seem to pull us in different directions, Croft argues that ‘we should prefer and privilege…the way of mercy’ (28). This suggests that we may need to pick and choose from Scripture rather than interpreting each part in such a way that it is not repugnant to any other part.

What does this look like in practice? Croft’s claim that ‘Jesus himself is largely silent on the matters of human sexuality’ (28) is very odd, even if one focuses on the gospel narratives only. I point to John Nolland’s essay Sexual Ethics and the Jesus of the Gospels. In revisiting the question of remarriage the Bishop appears to suggest that the Anglican Church followed the teaching of Jesus until ‘in the changing cultural context of late-20th-century Britain, the Church of England chose the path of mercy over judgement’ (29). This seems to make the question whether Jesus has something to say in Scripture on matters of human sexuality largely irrelevant. If it sounds judgemental, it is not binding. This reflects a different view of the Bible (and of Jesus) from that held by those for whom allowing for remarriage after divorce in certain circumstances was a matter of critiquing an overly restrictive church tradition in the light of Biblical teaching.

How can the Bishop claim that the church may well promote a different morality from the one taught by Jesus? By reading the passage about the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16) and the teaching about the Holy Spirit (John 16) as telling us that Christ gave ‘responsibility to the Church for the crafting of ethics and practice in ways appropriate in each culture…The Christian Church is entrusted with responsibility and flexibility in matters of ethics, consistent with the principles of love, to enable development and evolution in the light of changes in knowledge and the culture in which the gospel is taking form and shape’ (29). This extraordinary reading of the passages in question is offered without any justification or even acknowledgement of its novelty. (The church has long affirmed that its rites and ceremonies may look different in different cultures but has not, to my knowledge, based this on these passages nor read them as permission for different local churches to adopt different moral teaching.)

Based on this alleged permission given to local churches to develop moral teaching, the Bishop’s call ‘to adjust and revise the traditional teaching of the Church’ in the area of sexuality is based not on a better reading of passages touching on these matters but on ‘new and well-established truths’ about ‘human sexuality and the human condition’ (30) which were (he believes) inaccessible to the biblical writers. While the decision to allow for the remarriage of divorcees in some circumstances and the decision to ordain women into positions of church leadership were carried because there were a large number of people who argued that this did greater justice to the directly relevant passages in Scripture (against some who disagreed, and alongside others who did not care much for what Scripture teaches), the argument here is that passages that deal with sexuality may in fact be irrelevant for our ethics because we now know more and better in this area. It is hard not to see this as a massive departure from the traditional way of using Scripture to be guided in divine truth about matters of morality.

The Church will not split over gay sex

The Church of England will not split over gay sex.

If it splits, it will do so over the authority of Scripture. It is one of the failures of the LLF journey thus far that this is still barely understood. Many people believe that it is homophobia pure and simple that prevents progress in this area. After all, have we not long ceased to treat the Bible as the word of God, departing from it when we felt it was in need of correction? Why not do so now? Surely it is just bigotry that leads some to cling to the words of Scripture in the area of sexuality.

It is undeniable that there are many in the CofE, including many clergy, who do not consider the Bible to be the authoritative word of God in the way those did who wrote our Christian confessions of faith and devised our historic liturgies. A good few among them perhaps really do not realise that there are others within the CofE, including clergy, who still believe the Holy Scriptures to be ‘God’s word written’ (Article 20 of the 39 Articles) and who seek to submit to the teaching of the Bible, read carefully in the light of how it has been understood throughout church history (tradition) and informed by biblical scholarship (reason).

Some of those who have departed from this understanding of Scripture know that there are others within the CofE who have not done so but they expect that ‘traditionalists’ will continue to tolerate departures from Scripture within the CofE, given that they have done so in other areas, unless in this case their homophobia prevents it. This overlooks something crucial. To take one example, ‘revisionists’ may well allow for remarriage after divorce because they think of themselves as more compassionate than the sound of the words on the lips of Jesus in the Gospel but ‘traditionalists’ fall into two groups – a smaller one (I believe) who considers this wrong but tolerates it because the official teaching of the CofE is still that marriage is life-long and the liturgy has not been changed, and a larger one (I believe) who allow for remarriage after divorce in some circumstances because Jesus did, and who consider the twentieth century changes within the CofE a belated return to Scripture (belated, because all other reformed churches had done so during the Reformation period).  

It is true that ‘traditionalists’ by and large have been very tolerant within the last hundred years or so, as the CofE in practice abandoned conformity to a doctrinal standard, but this tolerance was facilitated by the absence of changes to the official teaching or liturgy of the church which enshrined a departure from, say, Article 20 of the 39 Articles. It would be a different matter if the teaching of the BCP had to be suspended to drop the diversity-sex requirement of marriage or if the claim that ‘no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral’ were qualified to make space for a sexual morality which is no longer circumscribed by Scripture.

It is not gay sex that will split the church; it is irreconcilable views about how we discern God’s will which will split the church if it splits.