Agreeing and Disagreeing with Angus Ritchie, Part Three

In another piece published on ABC , responding to Ian Paul’s critique, Angus Ritchie puts his finger on the institutional hypocrisy of the Church of England. Our official position on same-sex relationships is clear but it is a facade behind which "gay ordinands may well have been encouraged by all of the key authority figures with whom they had to deal - including their Vicar, the staff at theological college and even perhaps their Bishop - to become priests without becoming celibate."

There is therefore "an important dis-analogy between blessing, and allowing clergy to be in, sexually active same-sex relationships and ordaining women to the episcopate." The latter did and could only happen after legal provision for it; the former is happening right now.

“In certain sections of the Church, the official line has been quietly ignored for years. This gentle and genteel form of civil disobedience is endemic in the Church of England. If we are frank, we must recognize that similar forms of rule-breaking go on in all its theological traditions.”

Ritchie’s central point is that the status quo is no longer sustainable because

"The reality today is than an increasing number of clergy, with growing boldness, are defying the official teaching on same-sex relationships."

In short, the genie is out of the bottle. Traditionalists are kidding themselves if they believe that the genie can be bottled up again. The only feasible way forward is to smash the bottle. 

Knowledge of the Church of England's institutional hypocrisy urges compassion in dealing with clergy who had been encouraged to believe that the church's teaching on celibacy can be disregarded; it can hardly be a sufficient reason for changing its teaching. In the ABC piece to which Angus Ritchie responds, Ian Paul had argued that on Scriptural grounds and for practical reasons it will not be possible to agree to disagree on same-sex relationships. 

In his reply Ritchie focuses on Romans 1:26-27 which he interprets with Loveday Alexander (in an essay in Grace and Disagreement) as referring to “a distortion of the default sexual identity, which Paul assumes to be heterosexual.” This means,

“Whereas for St. Paul, homosexual practice was a perversion practiced by people who were understood to have a fundamentally heterosexual identity, Loveday Alexander's claim is that today, ‘we know some people are born gay.’”

In other words, Paul’s reasoning in Romans 1:26-27 proceeds from what we today know to be wrong assumptions and therefore needs to be qualified.[1] For Ritchie this is 

“but another instance of a challenge at least as old as the Galileo affair... Respecting the authority of Scripture is a very different thing from accepting the validity of the scientific worldview of the cultures in which it was written, and to which it was addressed.”

This glosses over the significant hermeneutical difference between Ritchie’s approach and the approach traditionally practiced within the church.[2] Has the church ever declared a theological statement within Scripture or a Biblical prohibition of certain acts no longer valid because she now recognises it to be without foundation, having been based on faulty science?[3]

The departure from traditional Christian hermeneutics is somewhat softened later by the claim that,

“The question which arises for the Church today, and did not arise for St. Paul, is that within its Body there are same-sex couples whose relationships bear these same marks - couples for whom it is also "not good to be alone," but for whom heterosexual marriage is not an option. Theirs are also covenant relationships, where people choose to build a common life, "forsaking all others."

So while Paul held wrong beliefs, he was not wrong (at the time) to condemn sexual activity between partners of the same sex. It seems that Ritchie is committed to the claim that all same-sex relationships within the ancient world were abusive or at least that the apostle in his context was justified in failing to consider the possibility of faithful, loving same-sex relationships.

Ritchie seeks to persuade readers that the view that approves of sexual activity among same-sex couples who are committed to a permanent, faithful and stable relationship is not in fact "outside of Christian moral teaching."

He shows himself puzzled about the practical obstacles Ian Paul outlined. What he seems to overlook is that for “two integrities” to work it is not enough for each side to acknowledge that the other side sincerely believes to be inside Christian moral teaching. What is required is for both sides to be persuaded that both “integrities” are in fact inside Christian moral teaching. But the traditional view is that sexual intimacy outside marriage between a man and a woman is "outside of Christian moral teaching." In other words, traditionalist are asked to abandon the traditional view. It is hard not to see this as an obstacle.

While I do not want to put undue weight on a side comment, the following quotation seems to me to put the finger on a critical issue:

“I remain unconvinced that this can get Dr Paul to his desired conclusion on women's leadership. But that is a debate for another day: we both support the ordination of women, so let us focus instead on the issue where we disagree.”

It illustrates the lack of agreement on where the disagreement lies. Angus Ritchie gives the impression that what really matters is getting to the desired conclusion, never mind how. And he attributes the same thinking to Ian Paul. Because he acknoweldges that we are not likely to agree on this issue, we must agree to disagree. But the crucial issue is not “the issue where we disagree” but our different ways of reasoning. 

Angus Ritchie may genuinely believe that, "It is possible to be affirming of same-sex unions with every bit as high a doctrine of Scripture, every bit as faithful a hermeneutic and every bit as serious an attitude to sexual sin" but he provides little evidence to back this up. It is not altogether clear what "sexual sin" is in his account. (Is there sexual activity that is free of exploitation and abuse and does not obviously harm a third party, i.e. sexual activity which is not wrong for reasons other than those specifically related to sex, which is nevertheless wrong because it is "sexual sin" and on what grounds? Is there a middle ground between sacramental and idolatrous?) 

It is not at all clear that the hermeneutic he assumes is faithful, as none of the precedents suggested here ("Galileo affair") or previously (remarriage of divorcees, the ordination of women) stand up to scrutiny, and claims to a high view of Scripture need to be grounded in exegesis that is humbly and patiently seeking to discern what God is saying to us. It may be unavoidable that much exegesis concerned with the issue at hand looks agenda-driven but Ritchie has done little to dispel this impression, picking up Loveday Alexander's reading of Romans 1:26-27 apparently because Ian Paul has made some appreciative noises about this essay and not necessarily because her understanding of "nature" is the most plausible. Given that Loveday Alexander offers no defence of this reading in the essay in question and Ritchie offers no reflection on the other passages, we do not see the exegesis at work which would warrant the claims made.

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[1] The literature that could be considered here is voluminous. Roy Bowen Ward, "Why Unnatural? The Tradition behind Romans 1:26-27," Harvard Theological Review 90 (1997): 263-84, focuses on contextual background. Theodore de Bruyn, "Ambrosiaster's Interpretations of Romans 1:26-27," Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 463-83, offers insight into how early Christians read the verses.

[2] Margaret Davies, in an essay commended by Loveday Alexander, speaks of Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 as "an anomalous emotional blindspot in an otherwise radical transformation of tradition" ("New Testament Ethics and Ours: Homosexuality and Sexuality in Romans 1:26-27," Biblical Interpretation 3 [1995],  318). This is hardly the language traditionally used in Christian reasoning.

[3] The "Galileo affair," is much misrepresented today and cannot do the work to which Ritchie wants to put it. In the words of Dinesh D'Souza, "The Church's view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.”"

On Affirming Marriage as a Lifelong Union

Canon Dr Angus Ritchie, like others, claims that

To remarry divorcees and to conduct same-sex marriages both go against the Primates' Communique, which affirms that marriage must be “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union.”

This implies that the Church of England’s practice, which allows remarriage of divorcees in some circumstances, and its official doctrine as expressed in Canon B 30

The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

Like others, Angus Ritchie is coy about spelling out what if anything is to be done about this contradiction. 

• Does it matter whether or not the Church acts in accordance with its beliefs?
• If so, should the Church  revert to its more rigorous practice of not allowing divorcees to get married in church?
• Or should the Church adapt doctrine to practice and abandon the doctrine that marriage is a lifelong union?

(Ritchie's general argument suggest to me that he would not be content with blatant contradiction between doctrine and practice and his endorsement of Jeffrey John's Permanent, Faithful, Stable suggests that he does not want to abandon the idea that marriage involves "faithful, lifelong union" but I am not aware of any efforts on his part to revert to a less liberal marriage practice in relation to divorcees.)

The claim that the practice of remarriage of divorcees is incompatible with the view that marriage is a lifelong union is presented as self-evident. But it can hardly be said to be self-evident. Why?

Because for at least one and a half millennia the Eastern Churches strongly affirmed that marriage is a lifelong union, while allowing for the possibility (and permissibility in some circumstances) of divorce with right of remarriage, appealing to Origen and Basil among others.

Because even within the Western Church this was rarely undisputed. There was a period of about 400 years from the Decretum of Gratian onwards during which (Christian!) marriage was held to be indissoluble without much contradiction but the issue was re-opened during the Reformation period. The Reformers abandoned the principle of absolute indissolubility for theological and pastoral reasons and “believed that in doing so, they were recalling the Church to the Scriptural teaching on marriage and divorce.” (Atkinson)*

Because in spite of the fact that the Church of England adopted the most stringent practice in all of Christendom, as far as mainstream churches are concerned anyway, a division of opinion on this matter has been characteristic of Anglican history.

All are (were?) agreed that God’s will for marriage is for it to be a permanent and lifelong union. The debate concerns whether the claim that marriage must be “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union” expresses God’s design which can however be broken or whether a valid marriage once entered into on these terms is a “lifelong union” in the sense that it can ever be broken in God’s sight, whatever the civil authorities declare.

The claim that remarriage of divorcees invariably goes against the view that marriage is a lifelong union seems to presumes not only the view usually attributed to the Roman Catholic Church that sacramental marriage forms a bond which is only severed at death but also extends this principle to all marriages, whether they involve Christians or not. (See here a statement on why marriage that involves someone who is not baptised can be fully valid and even conducted in church without being sacramental according to Roman Catholic church law.)

In short, the assumption behind the claim that remarriage of divorcees goes against an affirmation that marriage must be “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union” is highly controversial. To present the claim as self-evident betrays either an astonishing ignorance of other Christian views on the matter or a breathtakingly arrogant confidence that other views can be dismissed without even being mentioned.

An incumbent within the Church of England should not remain in such ignorance. For the benefit of anyone needing a crash-course in the discussion preceding the change in practice within the Church of England I have excerpted David Atkinson’s To Have and to Hold: The Marriage Covenant and the Discipline of Divorce (St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979) in notes from chapter 1 (areas of disagreement), chapter 2 (historical sketch), chapter 3 (marriage as covenant), chapter 4 (background and biblical evidence), chapter 5 here (principles for a Christian view of divorce) and here (applications of these principles), and chapter 6 (the pastoral problem of divorce and remarriage). A more recent, very learned but not Anglican discussion can be found at http://www.divorce-remarriage.com/.

Quick summary:

(1) Some believe that no (Christian) marriage ever comes to an end in this life. This is the position usually identified with the Roman Catholic Church.
(2) Some believe that there are two ways in which a marriage can end, through death or through sin. This is the position of the Orthodox churches and of the Protestant Reformers.
(3) Some believe that there are many which in a marriage can end other than death and sin. This seems to be the most widespread view in Western society outside the church.

The phrase "lifelong union" means different things to different people.

• For those affirming (1) it describes an inescapable fact about marriage. 
• For those affirming (2) it says something about what marriage intrinsically is according to God's design which is however breakable, a bit like saying a house is a space with walls and roof does not imply that the roof cannot fall down.
• For those affirming 3) the phrase expresses at best an aspiration rather than something that marriage intrinsically is.

*Note Tudor Church Reform: The Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (Boydell Press, 2000)

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Angus Ritchie, Part Two

This is the second post reflecting on agreeing to disagree within the Church of England by exploring a contribution by Canon Dr Angus Ritchie. (The first responds to a published in 2015.) His recent piece commends itself not least because Ritchie recognises flaws in Martyn Percy’s reasoning which to those on the other side of the argument are patently obvious which is why it is all the more remarkable that so few of those who like Percy’s conclusions show embarrassment about the way he got there.

Ritchie’s own piece, however, seems to suffer from a conflation of two different questions. One question is how one goes about deciding about remarriage after divorce, the ordination of women, or the blessing of same-sex relationships. The other is how one goes about deciding on which of these controversies one is able to agree to disagree and which are fellowship-breaking. 

Unless I have misread it, the structure of Ritchie’s argument appears to assume two parallel lines, a “traditionalist” one (refusing to contemplate remarriage after divorce, the ordination of women to the priesthood, or the blessing of same-sex relationships) and a “progressive” one (affirming all three). To the latter, the argument suggests “you progressed on the first two, there is no reason not to do so on the third”. To the former, it suggests “you tolerate disagreement on the first two, there is no reason not to do so on the third (because the hermeneutics involved are the same).” The other, probably more fundamental and fatal, mistake is the assumption that the hermeneutics which lead Ritchie (and others) to affirm or tolerate, e.g., remarriage after divorce are the same across the board within the Church of England. But just as Ritchie can come to roughly the same conclusion as Martyn Percy but through a different route, so many who would agree with Ritchie on one or the other of these questions do so for fundamentally different reasons from his.

The problem is crystallized in the claim that “the ethical perspective, and the hermeneutic of Scripture, which the Anglican Communion has accepted in the case of remarrying divorcees and of ordaining women to the priesthood and episcopate would itself seem to lead towards the acceptability of the blessing of LGBT Christians’ relationships.” The use of the direct article and the singular, as if there was only one ethical perspective and one hermeneutic of Scripture even among Anglicans who accept the remarriage of divorcees and the ordination of women to the priesthood, marks the critical error which deconstructs pretty much all that follows.

Ritchie contrasts two approaches to “how the Scriptures are to be read,” the concordance approach (bad) and the contextualized approach (good, and allegedly what most Anglicans have adopted).

Over the years I have come to know a diverse range of readers of the Scriptures, given a good amount of thought to hermeneutics, and encountered a number of hermeneutical approaches, including the two Angus Ritchie outlines.

I see two problems: (1) The opponents to remarriage after divorce and to the ordination of women that I know by and large do not follow “the concordance approach,” even allowing that Ritchie’s characterisation is an over-simplification. To be fair, Ritchie does not necessarily assume that because “the concordance approach” (in his view) invariably leads to a traditionalist  position, therefore whoever holds a traditionalist position must follow “the concordance approach” but given that he argues that his “contextualized” approach should lead to a progressive take on these issues, it remains unclear whether he knows that there are (a great many) people who with a more sophisticated hermeneutical approach nevertheless fail to come to his preferred conclusions.

(2) While it is likely true that what Ritchie describes as “the contextualized approach” is widespread among Anglicans, it is not the approach of many of the Anglicans I know who come to the same conclusions as Ritchie on one or two (or even three) of these questions, including Ian Paul (mentioned in the essay) and myself.

Ritchie apparently believes that, short of making it up as you go along and setting aside Scripture as and when desired, there is only one conceivable way to get from “there” (past prohibitions on remarriage after divorce, restriction of the priesthood to me) to “here” (accepting or at least tolerating remarriage after divorce and the ordination of women to the priesthood), namely “a deeper understanding of the practice being condemned” and “a prayerful exploration of the contemporary issue” (with experience, reason and tradition as sources [!] of authority).

I do not know of a single, evangelical defence of remarriage after divorce which works from the assumption that while Jesus condemned remarriage we should lift this condemnation because the practice of divorce is different today. No, not one. See http://www.divorce-remarriage.com/.

Actually, the key issue here is not different practices of divorce (first century versus today) but different understandings of marriage. While the church in East and West has agreed for two millennia that marriage is “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union,” the belief developed within the West (only) that the marriage bond cannot be broken other than through death. It is this latter belief which is not warranted from the Scriptures and indeed faces serious obstacles within Scripture (e.g., 1 Corinthians 7:15). Anglicans who affirm that marriage is lifelong but allow for remarriage after divorce in exceptional circumstances may do so for the reasons outlined by Angus Ritchie but alternatively they may simply have come to accept that the Eastern understanding of marriage is correct.

Similarly, it may be obvious to Ritchie that to ordain women “goes directly against a New Testament injunction,” as it is probably obvious to many who belong to Reform, but I rather doubt that it is to any of the GAFCON Primates who allow for the ordination of women, which is to say that I would be surprised if many of the GAFCON Primates in favour of the ordination of women to the priesthood got to this conclusion via the same route on which Ritchie travels. Why is this important? Because it allows us to see that the agreeing to disagree among members of GAFCON  has a different basis from the one Ritchie alleges. It is the failure to see these distinctions which leaves Ritchie unable to see why Anglicans may be able to agree to disagree on this issue without being logically committed to agree to disagree about accepting the blessing of same-sex partnerships.

In short, there are those who affirm the normative role of Scripture and that Scripture needs to be read reasonably (with attention to language and context among other things) and with the help of tradition. Their hermeneutic demands that any text of Scripture is read in the light of the whole of Scripture and that no part is read in a way which would contradict another part. Disagreements in this group are exegetical more than hermeneutical and this is why they are often able to agree to disagree, at least as long as they have confidence that the disagreement really is about the exegesis of specific texts rather than more fundamental. They would find it hard to agree to disagree with people who claim that a practice “goes directly against a New Testament injunction” but may be accepted or even promoted anyway in the light of other sources of authority. 

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Angus Ritchie

This is probably the first of two posts reflecting on living with disagreements within the Church of England with the help of Canon Dr Angus Ritchie.

Canon Dr Angus Ritchie observes that “the depth of disagreement flows from the different narratives that Christians use to interpret history,” the narrative of disobedience (the story of human rebellion against God) and the narrative of liberation (the work of God to free people from unjust oppression). He notes

“The last few decades have seen changes Christians of all traditions are rightly resisting – towards an increasingly consumerist and hedonistic society, where the values of faithfulness and obedience are eroded by a ‘me-first’ attitude to both economics and to sex (both of which are key areas of biblical teaching). For some, any move to allow sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage is seen as part of that erosion of biblical values. They see the push to accept same-sex relationships as a further unfolding of the narrative of disobedience, as Britain becomes a more secular nation. Likewise, Christians from across the theological spectrum acknowledge the presence and power of God in the fight against slavery and segregation, apartheid and other forms of racism – despite the misuse of Scripture to justify these practices. For some, equality for women in the church and for same-sex couples represents a further unfolding of that same narrative of liberation... Each group believes its position to be the one most faithful to the Gospel – to its call to counter-cultural obedience and to the liberation of the oppressed.”

The remainder of this piece published in April 2015 in effect argues that the CofE has no other choice but to accept two integrities on the question of non-celibate gay relationships because there is no chance that we will come to a common mind on this question and no chance of the CofE enforcing its current rules. And our living with disagreements on the remarriage of divorcees and on the ordination of women to the priesthood proves that we can do it. (The appeal to 1 Corinthians 8 is misplaced, as the solution there is abstinence.)

“The challenge for opponents of such a settlement on same-sex relationship – wherever they stand on the substantive issue – is twofold. Firstly, they have to explain why we can live together amid disagreement on both the remarriage of divorcees and the ordination of women to the episcopate, but not on the blessing of same-sex relationships. From the point of view of faithfulness to Scripture and the Catholic faith, it is very hard to see why the first two issues are ones where we can cope with diversity and the issue of same-sex relationships is not. But, secondly, they have to map a realistic path from the current situation to their preferred outcome.”

A first response: These are helpful observations and thoughts but they overlook the issue of trust (and breakdown of trust) and assume too readily that our settlements on remarriage after divorce and on the ordination of women are a success. The jury seems to be still out on this and many opponents of a settlement on same-sex relationships could point out how hard it is to oppose one or the other without being vilified. The slippery slope argument is usually no argument at all but the fear that respecting the traditional view moves quickly towards tolerating, then marginalising, vilifying and finally excluding the traditional view is not altogether without basis. Indeed, even today the traditional call to sexual abstinence outside diverse-sex marriage is considered intrinsically homophobic by most proponents of same-sex partnerships or marriages and it seems therefore unlikely that any agreeing to disagree on their part would be anything other than short-term political rather than principled.

So, as for the challenge. Firstly,  some opponents may feel that they had their fingers burned enough and that having to live with a damaged hand and a broken foot is not reason enough to accept a chest infection as well. I would not really want to put it like that but that there are disagreements which we know we must tolerate and others which we feel we cannot is obvious. If that were not the case, we would be either forming our own independent church in which we all agree or belong to the Roman Catholic church because no disagreement was or is worth splitting away from the main body. 

Would tolerating the blessing of sexual activity outside marriage as traditionally understood fall in a different category from tolerating remarriage after divorce or the ordination of women to the priesthood? I am not best placed to address this, being on the “progressive” side here. I can live with the former two settlements because I can respect the “conservative” view as an expression of Christian discipleship. Being on the “conservative” side on the third question, I would find it much harder to accept the “progressive” view as a genuine, even if misguided, expression of Christian discipleship. This is related to the fact that unlike sexual activity outside marriage I do not see remarriage after divorce or the ordination of women prohibited for Christians in Scripture. Angus Ritchie seems to believe that what is prohibited in Scripture in all three cases is not what we encounter today. If that were the case, he would be right to query why one can disagree on two but not the third of those questions. What he overlooks is that those who accept or at least tolerate the current settlements on remarriage after divorce and on the ordination of women to the priesthood do not necessarily do so for his reasons and following his hermeneutic.