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.
