Cur Deus Homo?

Cur Deus Homo? (Why did God became man?) is one of the most famous works on the atonement.

Why did Jesus come into the world? In John 18 we hear Jesus’ own answer: to testify to the truth (John 18:37). He says so in answer to a question about whether he was a king, clearly implying that he is indeed a king. Jesus is king by way of testifying to the truth, by gathering people around him who listen to his voice. He is not a king over people who live in a particular land or over people who are under his military thumb but he is king over those who submit to the truth, who belong to the truth. He thereby implies that a true king is someone to whom people listen, whom they follow.

As autonomous adults, mindful of many bad historical experiences, we, by and large, don’t like to listen to someone just because they are in a position of authority. Jesus earned the right to be listened to by speaking the truth reliably. We do not trust Him because He is the guy in charge. We acknowledge Him as being in charge because He is trustworthy.

Alas, many post-moderns like their own self-determination so much that they deny the very existence of objective truth. Pilate was a precursor for such an outlook in his lack of concern for truth – or justice, for that matter (ultimately it is hard to maintain a concern for justice without a concern for truth). For him, as for many today, it’s all power play.

In fact we find the same lack of concern for truth being spoken in the Sanhedrin – and Jesus puts his finger on it: ‘If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?’ (John 18:23)

But it isn’t just the drive for self-determination, the exercise of power that leads people to turn away from the truth, it is also the fear of power, of what might be done to them if they were to speak truth. So we find Peter denying Jesus three times –­ out of fear.

It turns out that turning away from the truth is not a modern phenomenon after all but has a long history. It is because we so readily turn away from the truth that Jesus came into the world. Why did God become man? To testify to the truth.

 

But why does this get highlighted in the Passion story? Why not in connection with the teaching of Jesus? The parables of Jesus speak of God’s kingdom. The Sermon of the Mount offers kingdom ethics. But it is here that the question is raised and answered: What sort of king is Jesus? One who came to testify to the truth. Presumably this is because it is his passion that profoundly testifies to the truth.

How so? E.g., by bearing witness to the fact that our lives belong to God who cares for us which is why it would be wrong, a denial of the truth, to seek our own comfort at the expense of doing God’s will.

The passion of Christ also testifies to the truth by showing up how readily we turn away from the truth, if it does not suit us. Christ’s suffering embodies our rejection of God, of God’s rule, our rejection of truth .It shows us that such rejection leads to death.

Best of all Jesus testifies to the truth of who God is and that He is worthy of our trust even when it leads to suffering and death because suffering and death will not have the last word.

Peter’s attempt at self-preservation at the expense of truth leaves him wretched. Jesus, by contrast, having sanctified himself in the truth of God’s word, as he had prayed for his disciples (John 17:17–18), is vindicated in his resurrection from the dead.

Jesus earned the right to be listened to by speaking the truth reliably and by committing his life to the truth, rejecting the use of power to enforce his rule.

 

Can we independently verify the claim of Jesus to testify to the truth? No, not really. But Jesus did not fall from heaven. He was born to a Jewish mother as the culmination of a long history of God revealing Himself to humanity. Jesus fulfilled a pattern laid down in what we call the OT Scriptures. As Ian McGilchrist says about the “argument” he presents in The Truth of the Matter (London: Perspectiva Press, 2021)

And yet it is also not an argument, in the conventional sense, at all. If we want others to understand the beauty of a landscape with which they may be unfamiliar, an argument is pointless: instead we must take them there and explore it with them, walking on the hills and mountains, pausing as new vantage points continually open around us, allowing our companions to experience it for themselves.

Come and see! Come and taste! The truth will set you free and the new life vindicates the truth.

Living with Disagreement

Disagreement about the teaching of marriage and sexual intimacy is arguably more serious than, e.g., the disagreements between Presbyterians and Anglicans. It is therefore not one more disagreement which we can add to the list of secondary matters on which we "agree to disagree" and move on. If a revised understanding of what it means to be chaste is embedded in pastoral guidance and/or official prayers, it cannot but do substantial harm to our unity. 

The Bishop of London believes that God is calling us to live with our current disagreements. The reasoning she offered to General Synod in February for having reached this conclusion seemed specious to me but here I want to make the point that believing that God calls us to live with our disagreements does not yet resolve the question how we are to live with these disagreements. There are perhaps three options for the moment, none of whom especially attractive:

(1) continuing as before, namely tolerating the revisionist teaching and (unofficial) practice of blessing same-sex couples without changing our doctrine or the prayers we commend or the moral requirements we put on clergy and others,

(2) creating structural space for "two integrities" with different approaches to Scripture and different understandings of sin and repentance, the Gospel and the Christian life,

(3) welcoming revisionist views as consonant with Anglican teaching and making liturgical space for these new understandings of living out our sexuality while keeping, for now, the marriage canon in place in the hope that the relevant parties are prepared to make the required sacrifices (revisionists foregoing "marriage equality" for now, traditionalists accepting that revisionism is properly Anglican too).

Sarah Mullally favours the last option but this is deeply problematic because very many who hold to the traditional view of marriage feel unable to bring the sacrifice asked of them. My preference is for the second option in the form of creating a separate legal space for those who want to promote a changed understanding of marriage and sexuality. This would be challenging because numerous legal issues would need to be resolved but it has the advantage of preserving integrity. It is not a refusal to live with our current disagreements but rather a (better) way to live with them. Alas, the discussion seems to be cut short by the insinuation that being called to live with our disagreements necessarily means to walk in the way the Bishops lead us, abandoning the normativity of previous teaching.

LLF and London Synod

The London Diocesan Synod on Wednesday 22 March 2023, with a dedicated session on Living in Love and Faith (LLF). The report is sobering. It perpetuates the mischaracterisation of those who are compelled to resist the new teaching as purists who cannot bear disagreement:

There are those who believe that our unity as Christians depends on our agreement on certain doctrinal issues, including those around sex and sexuality. Then there are those who believe that unity is possible and desirable even if we disagree.

But surely ALL of us believe that our unity as Christians depends on our agreement on certain doctrinal issues. The question is whether these doctrinal issues include teaching around marriage and sexual intimacy. And surely ALL of us believe that unity is possible and desirable even if we disagree. The question is whether our disagreements around marriage and sexual intimacy fall in the category of disagreements which we can accommodate or in the category of disagreements that cannot be reconciled within the same structures.  

The Church of England does not ordain Presbyterians or Baptists, even if we do not deny that they are fellow members of the body of Christ. We thereby acknowledge that there are disagreements which lead to structural differentiation. The mischaracterisation of the situation is very discouraging because it reveals a failure to listen and to ask the right questions.

Other statements made suggest serious deficiencies in understanding church history. Every heresy within the church has been argued from scripture. The statement that “both of these approaches can be argued from scripture” is therefore vacuous.

The claim that “the Church of England has always been an intentionally and uniquely broad church” sits uneasily with the fact that close to 2,500 clergy were expelled from the Church of England following the 1662 Act of Uniformity. It is only in modern times that we begun to abandon the principle that what we believe and how we worship must conform to a canonical standard and even then nonconformity is tolerated in some areas but not in others.

The observation that clergy will be free to choose whether or not to use the prayers is not at all reassuring because this freedom of conscience treats the question what it means to be chaste as one of indifference when it comes to being a loyal Anglican. It is not only a further step towards the privatisation of religion but a rejection of the belief that the revisionist teaching about marriage and sexual intimacy is not in agreement with Scripture and not consonant with Anglican teaching and tradition. 

Jesus and the Law

Rodney A. Whitacre reflects on the story of the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus (now mostly at John 7:53–8:11):

‘We see Jesus upholding the law’s teaching that adultery is sin while also setting aside the specific regulations concerning the community’s enforcement of that law. The implication is that the law contains revelation of right and wrong, which is true throughout history, as well as commandments for embodying that revelation in the community of God’s people, which are not true for all times and places. To understand this distinction we must understand that the law as revelation of right and wrong is not an arbitrary set of rules that God made up to test our obedience. Rather, the law is the transposition into human society of patterns of relationship that reflect God’s won character. Adultery is wrong because it violates relationships of faithfulness, and such violation is wrong, ultimately, because God himself is characterized by faithfulness. The morality of Scripture is a pattern of life that reflects God’s own life. This aspect of the law is unchanging, but the law’s prescription for how the community is to embody and enforce the revealed vision of relationships may vary.’

What happened?

The Church of England press release proclaimed Prayers for God’s blessing for same-sex couples take step forward after Synod debate.

The Church of England’s General Synod has welcomed proposals which would enable same-sex couples to come to church after a civil marriage or civil partnership to give thanks, dedicate their relationship to God and receive God’s blessing.

The Anglican Communion News Service reported the event under the headline Church of England Synod endorses bishop’s decision not to change doctrine of marriage. The article points out

During the Synod debate, only one of the tabled amendments to the bishops’ proposal was passed: that the synod endorsed “the decision of the College and House of Bishops not to propose any change to the doctrine of marriage, and their intention that the final version of the Prayers of Love and Faith should not be contrary to or indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church of England”.

It also points out that the two amendments urging the Synod to move towards acceptance of same-sex marriage had both been rejected in all three houses.

All true as far as it goes, but perhaps neither is telling the true story. I was hoping for generous orthodoxy to prevail and it might still do but things are not looking hopeful. It would require greater transparency and integrity from the House of Bishops than has been on display thus far.

The Church of England appears to be split three ways. There are those who urge a change to our doctrine of sex and marriage on the grounds that the received teaching is unloving and harmful. There are those who feel compelled to resist such a move towards (what they perceive to be) heterodoxy. And there are those who are torn in between and just wish for the whole debate to go away.

And then there are those who wield power, who hope they can hold everyone together by offering prayers that can (a) be said not to be indicative of a departure from the church’s doctrine of marriage, and (b) nevertheless be used to bless same-sex couples in sexually active relationships and without regard for whether the couple is in a civil partnership, in a civil marriage, or in a covenanted friendship.

Those who feel compelled to resist such a change are told that they do not have to use these prayers. They only have to accept that those who do use them are faithful, orthodox Christians too.

The first group above is not altogether happy because it is clear that the Church of England is still a long way from endorsing same-sex marriage.

The second group could be happy if it could be convinced that what is on offer is not indicative of a departure from the church’s doctrine. Alas, most in this group think it is and that saying otherwise is merely adding insult to injury or lack of integrity to lack of faithfulness. What is asked of them is nothing short of a redefinition of what constitutes orthodoxy. This is why it’s a big deal.

The third group has no reason to be happy. The one thing that seems certain in all the confusion is that this debate will not go away and that the divisions within the Church of England will deepen and solidify.

The Archbishops urge that it is our Christian duty to stick together and show the world that disagreements do not need to lead to walking apart. But you cannot walk together in different directions. There are disagreements with which one can live and others which must divide us. Tolerating injustice is not loving, neither is tolerating heterodoxy. For as long as the Bishops do not succeed in convincing the one group that refusing same-sex marriage is not unjust and the other that the prayers of blessing on offer are not heterodox, the appeal to unity is just so much whitewash. Painting over harmless hairline cracks in the wall is one thing, covering up structural damage with a bit of paint is another.

For Ian Paul's take on what happened see What exactly happened at Synod on the Prayers for Love and Faith? This also includes links to comments on the legality of what the Bishops offered by Philip Jones and by a group of lawyers who are mostly members of General Synod.

UPDATE: Christopher Cocksworth, who led the LLF process, offers his reflections here.

Development of Doctrine

How does one distinguish between a faithful development of doctrine and a change that is corruption? John Henry Newman suggests “seven Notes of varying cogency, independence and applicability, to discriminate healthy developments of an idea from its state of corruption and decay.” These serve as his litmus tests that may be applied to any doctrine.

In a genuine development of doctrine we find

• preservation of one and the same type
• continuity of the same principles
• power of assimilation into the same organization
• logical consequence of an earlier sequence
• anticipation of subsequent phases in its beginnings
• preservation of that which came before
• vigour to endure

John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Doctrine (1845, 1878) 

Generous Orthodoxy

I do not know the origins of the phrase “generous orthodoxy” but it seems to fit the Church of England as it was designed rather well. The Roman Catholic Church was not broad enough in the sixteenth century to include those who held Reformed views. But among Reformed Catholics there was also disagreement which by and large could not be lived with (“good disagreement”) so that Lutherans ended up forming one denomination, while those who followed Calvin and Zwingli formed separate churches. Perhaps only in England did the Reformed Catholic consensus hold so that both those holding Lutheran views and those looking to Geneva (or Scotland) were held together in the one established church. Roman Catholics were of course excluded, as were Baptists, and in the end even Presbyterians (the Great Ejection). So there were clear limits not only to orthodoxy but perhaps also to generosity. The Thirty-Nine Articles circumscribed the parameters, while the Homilies filled it with more content and clearer definition.

The Tractarian movement pushed the boundaries, declaring the Church of England a via media not between Wittenberg and Geneva but between Rome and the Reformation. The English Church moved from seeking and finding doctrinal agreement among the disagreements on details to accommodating strikingly different readings of the same words. But it is arguably liberal revisionism since the 20th century that is killing off generous orthodoxy, making people forget that “generous orthodoxy” requires both generosity and orthodoxy, tolerance and discipline.

The proposed Prayers of Love and Faith were presumably meant and agreed upon as an expression of “generous orthodoxy.” The Christian doctrine of marriage and the Christian ethics around sexual intimacy were left intact, or so it is alleged, and a new freedom was found within this consensus which would allow some to celebrate the good and healthy aspects of same-sex relationships with couples who form a household, and others to refrain from endorsing patterns of relationships that might invite sexual temptation.

Alas, even before the proposals were presented to the public it became clear that this “generous orthodox” line could not hold. A number of bishops argued that the doctrine should in fact change and the claim made by campaigners that the doctrine of the Church of England discriminates against LGBTI+ people remained largely unaddressed.

An analogy may help to explain what might have happened: Imagine the Bishops, in view of concerns about the gendered language of the traditional formula, had allowed for “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” to be regularly replaced by “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer.” Imagine that some Bishops were very uncomfortable with this because the triune God is then no longer spoken of as who He is in Himself from before the creation of the world (the gendered “He” seems unavoidable, even if God is of course not male) but defined in relation to us. But, being generous, they allowed for this provision on the understanding that it does not as such mark a departure from orthodoxy.

Now imagine further that there are people complaining about the discrimination against Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witness and others in the selection process for ordination in the Church of England and there being no official explanation forthcoming why such “discrimination” is in the nature of the thing. Add to this Bishops who argue that the insights of modern philosophy lead us away from a Trinitarian understanding of God. Even without them also adding that “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer” could be used by those who believe that God is one person who has revealed himself in three modes, it is clear that this is not about being more generous within the existing  orthodoxy  but about re-defining what constitutes orthodoxy, given that we all take the Scriptures seriously. Whatever the Bishops think, for those who hold to the received understanding of orthodoxy and have seen no reason to change this, Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses are without question outside the bounds, even if it may be granted that subjectively they hold a high view of Scripture and “merely” read it differently and even if one affirms gladly that they have all the civil rights of other people.

The question whether we can be more generous within our received orthodoxy is one and it relates to attitudes and behaviour and pastoral practice; the question whether in order to be truly “generous” we need to redefine what constitutes orthodoxy is another. Let us distinguish between the two.