‘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.
