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.

The Church as a Corpus Mixtum in Calvin's Thought

John Calvin has much to say about the Church with a substantial part of The Institutes of the Christian Religion devoted to ecclesiology. Eduardus Van der Borght notes that Calvin’s ecclesiology was modified or refined over the years by pastoral experience, see “Calvin's Ecclesiology Revisited: Seven Trends in the Research of Calvin's Ecclesiology,” in John Calvin's Ecclesiology: Ecumenical Perspectives (T & T Clark International, 2011). But it seems clear that Calvin never held a “purist” view of the church. 

The following excerpt from The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559) is from an 18th century translation by Henry Beveridge accessed at  http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.vi.ii.html.

“Thinking there is no church where there is not complete purity and integrity of conduct, they, through hatred of wickedness, withdraw from a genuine church, while they think they are shunning the company of the ungodly. They allege that the Church of God is holy. But that they may at the same time understand that it contains a mixture of good and bad, let them hear from the lips of our Saviour that parable in which he compares the Church to a net in which all kinds of fishes are taken, but not separated until they are brought ashore. Let them hear it compared to a field which, planted with good seed, is by the fraud of an enemy mingled with tares, and is not freed of them until the harvest is brought into the barn. Let them hear, in fine, that it is a thrashing-floor in which the collected wheat lies concealed under the chaff, until, cleansed by the fanners and the sieve, it is at length laid up in the granary. If the Lord declares that the Church will labour under the defect of being burdened with a multitude of wicked until the day of judgment, it is in vain to look for a church altogether free from blemish (Mt. 13).”

Here is what John Calvin had to say about the parable of the weeds in his Harmony of the Gospels (1555; cited from the 1972 translation by T. H. L. Parker):

"It seems quite inconsistent to many that the Church should nurse in her bosom the ungodly, or the irreligious, or the wicked. Add that, under a pretence of zeal, many are more awkward than they need be if everything is not settled according to their wishes (for nowhere is an absolute purity seen) and they go mad and leave the Church or upset and ruin everything with their harsh strictness. Hence, to my mind, the intention of the parable is simple. So long as the Church is on pilgrimage in this world, the good and the sincere will be mixed in with the bad and the hypocrites. So the children of God must arm themselves with patience and maintain an unbroken constancy of faith among all the offences which can trouble them." 

A common objection to identifying "his kingdom" in Matthew 13:41 with the church is that the wheat and the weeds are obviously gathered from the field and the field is explicitly said to be "the world" (v. 38). Calvin is unperturbed by this.

"And it is a most apt comparison when the Lord calls the Church His field, for believers are His seed. Although Christ afterwards adds that the field is the world, there can be no doubt that He really wants to apply this name to the Church, about which, after all, He was speaking. But because his plough would be driven through all the world and He would break in fields everywhere and sow the seed of life, He transfers by synecdoche to the world what is more apt of a part of it."

This reading follows Augustione for whom the parable provided an important framework in his writings against the Donatists. Augustine observed that the wheat must grow in the whole world. A community that only exists in Africa (the Donatists) therefore cannot claim to be the whole church because the wheat grows across the field (the world). So, e.g., in his Letter 76 (in WSA 2/1, 298).

"Why do you believe that the weeds have increased and filled the world, but the wheat has decreased and remains only in Africa? You say that you are Christians, and you contradict Christ. He said, Allow them both to grow until the harvest (Mt 13:30); he did not say, “Let the weeds increase, and let the grain decrease.” He said, The field is the world; he did not say, “The field is Africa.” He said, The harvest is the end of the world; he did not say, “The harvest is the time of Donatus.” He said, The harvesters are the angels; he did not say, “The harvesters are leaders of the Circumcellions.” And because you accuse the wheat in defense of the weeds, you have proved that you are weeds, and what is worse, you have separated yourselves from the wheat ahead of time."

Ecclesiastical Polity: Three Quotes

Three citations in conjunction with research mentioned in the preceding post:

From LEP 3.1.14: "For although the name of the Church be given unto Christian assemblies, although any multitude of Christian men congregated may be termed by the name of a Church, yet assemblies properly are rather things that belong to a Church. Men are assembled for performance of public actions; which actions being ended, the assembly dissolveth itself and is no longer in being, whereas the Church which was assembled doth no less continue afterwards than before...But a Church, as now we are to understand it, is a Society; that is, a number of men belonging unto some Christian fellowship, the place and limits whereof are certain. That wherein they have communion is the public exercise of such duties as those mentioned in the Apostles’ Acts, Instruction, Breaking of Bread, and Prayers. As therefore they that are of the mystical body of Christ have those inward graces and virtues, whereby they differ from all others, which are not of the same body; again, whosoever appertain to the visible body of the Church, they have also the notes of external profession, whereby the world knoweth what they are: after the same manner even the several societies of Christian men, unto every of which the name of a Church is given with addition betokening severalty, as the Church of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, England, and so the rest, must be endued with correspondent general properties belonging unto them as they are public Christian societies. And of such properties common unto all societies Christian, it may not be denied that one of the very chiefest is Ecclesiastical Polity."

From LEP 3.2.1: But we must note, that he which affirmeth speech to be necessary amongst all men throughout the world, doth not thereby import that all men must necessarily speak one kind of language. Even so the necessity of polity and regiment in all Churches may be held without holding any one certain form to be necessary in them all. Nor is it possible that any form of polity, much less of polity ecclesiastical, should be good, unless God himself be author of it.

From LEP 8.3.5: Dissimilitude in great things is such a thing which draweth great inconvenience after it, a thing which Christian religion must always carefully prevent. And the way to prevent it is, not as some do imagine, the yielding up of supreme power over all churches into one only pastor’s hands; but the framing of their government, especially for matter of substance, every where according to the rule of one only Law, to stand in no less force than the law of nations doth, to be received in all kingdoms, all sovereign rulers to be sworn no otherwise unto it than some are to maintain the liberties, laws, and received customs of the country where they reign. This shall cause uniformity even under several dominions, without those woeful inconveniences whereunto the state of Christendom was subject heretofore, through the tyranny and oppression of that one universal Nimrod who alone did all. And, till the Christian world be driven to enter into the peaceable and true consultation about some such kind of general law concerning those things of weight and moment wherein now we differ, if one church hath not the same order which another hath: let every church keep as near as may be the order it should have, and commend the just defence thereof unto God, even as Juda did, when it differed in the exercise of religion from that form which Israel followed.

Taken from Richard Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker with an Account of His Life and Death by Isaac Walton. Arranged by the Rev. John Keble MA. 7th edition revised by the Very Rev. R.W. Church and the Rev. F. Paget (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888). 3 vols. Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1731 on 2012-03-05

Notes on Hooker's Ecclesiology

A few notes I took two years ago, consulting Richard Hooker, The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker with an Account of His Life and Death by Isaac Walton. Arranged by the Rev. John Keble MA. 7th edition revised by the Very Rev. R.W. Church and the Rev. F. Paget (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888). 3 vols. Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1731 on 2012-03-05.

LEP = Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

• the two natures or aspects of the church (not Hooker's phrase): the church is a supernatural society; its visible form, however, is a political society (LEP 1.15.2)
• the failure to distinguish between the two natures is "the mother of all error" in ecclesiology as much as Christology (LEP 3.3.1)
• the Church of Christ as "body mystical" cannot be but one although we cannot discern it as such (heaven/earth; mixed multitude); the true members of the church are only known to God (LEP 3.1.2)
• the Church is, on the other hand, a discernible, known company; the visible church is defined as those who profess to be servants of one Lord who acknowledge one faith and were initiated by one baptism - outward profession is the basis for the unity of the church (LEP 3.1.)
• communicatio idiomatum applies in ecclesiology as well as Christology, hence human laws for the external polity "church" must not contradict the positive law in scripture, "otherwise they are ill made"; unless in disagreement with scripture we must heed the laws of the Church (LEP 3.9.3)
• excommunication cuts off from the Church but not the Commonwealth; it bars people from full participation in public worship without denying their Christian identity (LEP 8.1.6)

Hooker proceeds from the assumptions that all members of the Commonwealth are Christians and hence members of the Church and argues from this for the union of Commonwealth and Church and royal supremacy (cf. Daniel Eppley on "Royal Supremacy", chap. 18 in W. J. Torrance Kirby, A Companion to Richard Hooker (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, 8; Leiden: Brill, 2008).

Pierre Lurbe, "Theologico-political Issues in Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan" in LISA 9/1 [2011], online, goes so far as to claim: 

"The main effect of the Reformation was to transform the English monarch into the Head of his national Church, thus combining in a single man —or woman— the two distinct functions of Head of State and Head of the Church."  

He contrasts Hooker and Hobbes succinctly: 

"For Hooker, religion is a set of beliefs that is so beneficial that it is the duty of the commonwealth to promote it through the agency of a state church. For Hobbes, religion is a passion that is so dangerous that it is the duty of the commonwealth to hold it in check through the agency of a state church."

Royal dominion over the church is based on the consent of the English community not on divine right which is why Scripture is not the source to consult on this matter but the laws and traditions of the realm. God mandates neither presbyterianism nor royal dominion in the church (Eppley, "Royal Supremacy," 511).

Hooker argues that "the power to authoritatively interpret scripture belongs to the crown in parliament with the convocation" (Eppley, "Royal Supremacy," 523) because this represents the collective wisdom of the entire church and the approval of the church as a whole is the most certain guide to reasonable interpretation; he stresses the necessity for incontrovertible argument.

See chapter 3 ("Ecclesiology: The Doctrine of the Two Churches") of  W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker's Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 43; Leiden: Brill, 1990). Cf. William H. Harrison, "The Church," chap. 12 in A Companion to Richard Hooker.

 

Authority in the Church

Further excerpts from Victor Lee Austin's Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (London: T & T Clark, 2010), chapter 5:

Authority in the church, then, appears as a sort of mysterious percolation. It requires hat there be an assembly, and therefore it requires that there be the communal identity and structure that makes the assembly possible. To be specific, and to take a catholic ecclesiology as normative, authority requires that there be a given structure of ordained ministry, received creeds, and continually-renewed tradition. Above all, authority in the church requires the Scriptures, [100] faithfully handed down and recited in the presence of all the faithful. But the odd thing we see in the church is that authority in the radical sense resides in none of those things: not in ordination, not in creed and tradition, not even in Scripture. Authority resides in the individual believer who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, proclaims faithfully her allegiance to the suffering Jesus, and thus to her Lord, and thus to the Triune Reality that is the source of all authority in heaven and earth. (pages 99-100)

Authority is actualized in the church when Christ is confessed; the Christ who is confessed is the one who has all authority. He bestows the Holy Spirit to bring human beings into communion with God and each other. (page 100)

So we cannot have an individual confession of Christ that does not arise out of a eucharistic community. And we cannot have eucharistic community without the oversight of a bishop. And we cannot have a bishop who is not in communion with other bishops, nor a eucharistic community that is not in communion with other eucharistic communities. And we cannot have communities and bishops without some means of making authoritative determinations about the [102] boundaries of Christian confession. But all these things--authoritative doctrinal determinations, authoritative conciliar structures, authoritative persons with oversight of particular communities--all exist to make possible the one truly authoritative act, which is the confession of Christ, which like all authority is ineluctably personal. (pages 101-102)

Authority in the church, in other words, highlights for us an essential dynamic in the working out of authority. The community is prior to the individual. No person could have faith or come to any knowledge of truth without submitting to the authority of others. And yet the community exists only in the individual to which it gives rise. The individual, as it were, contains the community, even as she enacts, authoritatively, the faithful response of the community, which must be in an individual, to the faithfulness of the one who is the source of all the church's authority, namely the Son to whom all authority has been given. (page 103)

[Drawing on Herbert McCabe, The Good Life [London: Continuum, 2005] and citing from pages 26-27} The error of contractarian thinking in political philosophy--that already existing individuals enter into contracts together to make societies--lies in the fact that before you could be an individual you must "be already in possession of what only society could provide--institutions such as language, contract, agreement, and so on." Humans are rational beings, which means preeminently that we can talk with each other and articulate alternatives to the way things are. "Rationality," McCabe says, "is a special way of being in a group." (page 103)

Up with Authority: The Church

Excerpts from Victor Lee Austin's Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (London: T & T Clark, 2010), chapter 5:

The examination of authority has been undertaken so far from a human point of view. To succeed at being a human, I have urged, is to be able to live together with others. Upon examination, it turns out that to live together with others in any sort of society requires that authority be there. And to live together with the skills of knowing and discerning the truth about the world, that also requires the existence of authority. Thus, to be human at all requires authority both social and epistemic. Furthermore, when we consider social authority as its most extensive--the authority that governs a society--we encounter political authority, a species that is social and epistemic but also has coercive force at its disposal.
     But none of this discussion has been carried on with theological blinders. Early on, the biblical understanding of authority confirmed our sense that it is a complex, structured affair; that to be a person "in authority" or to "have authority" is not to be pushed up to the top of a pyramid, but rather to be one who is also under authority. Then the relationship of authority and truth, which Michael Polanyi helped us see as a necessarily dialectical one in which authority points beyond itself to truth and, at the same time, the truth as apprehended raises a question upon authority, was itself a dialectical relationship expressed by Jesus when he said, as one with authority, that his mission was to bring knowledge of the truth, which knoweldge in turn would be liberating. Likewise in our study of authority and power, theology was present when we turned back to the roots of political theology, as [94] exposed by Oliver O'Donovan, where we could see the nature of political authority.
     This chapter does not form a simple progression with the three chapters that have preceded it, and that is because to move from social, epistemic, and political authority to ecclesial authority is not to move to yet another field or dimension of human existence. For the church is not rightly understood as another society, alongside, say, the symphony and the academy, existing in conjunction with them in a common political society. To make the church out to be another mini-society or voluntary association is to reject its claims of bearing revealed and transcendent truth. Nor is the church "over" society, as a super-City within which not only the symphony and the university but also every political society also exists. To make the church out to be the universal political society is to deny in some fundamental way both the autonomous and natural importance of human political societies and, also, the provisionality of the church itself as a witness to a kingdom that is in important ways still to come.
     Neither an association nor an epistemic allegiance, nor yet an overarching "umbrella" society, the church is a strange thing that fails to fit into any given categorical scheme. Fortunately, we need not achieve the impossibility of mastering an unmasterable topic in order to learn from authority as we can see it in action in the church. Nor must the church as we experience it be healthy, faithful, and in general trouble-free. Even from an afflicted church we may learn something new about authority, and perhaps what we learn overall will be of some service to people in churches today who struggle with problems of authority. (pages 93-94)

The church is a congregation or a synagogue, words which speak etymologically of a "calling" or "bringing together." Those called together as a church have come in some way to recognize God's authority. They are a congregation dedicated to the Truth (and here the capital letter impresses itself upon us). The church is not a political society and will never be one, but its mission is to point to one peculiar and ultimate political society: a kingdom of citizens who freely obey and follow their King, who live in a city of which their Lord is the light. As a society gathered for the sake of knowing the Truth and witnessing to God's kingdom, what can the church teach us about the relationship of God and authority?" (page 95)

[The Aria is Bach's Saint Matthew Passion is discussed as an illustration of the relation between individual and community.]

What is happening when a soloist rises to sing an aria? The soloist is authorized by Bach to stand and sing; this is the plain truth of the text. In the performance, the soloist is authorized also by the conductor. But in that which the performance is about, the soloist speaks of her faith with authority. It is my view that Bach here gives us a model of the true functioning of authority in the church. The individual could not sing, as it were, authoritatively, were she not standing in the midst of the assembly of the faithful. The assembly of the faithful is the locus where we may find the exercise of authority. Yet the faithful, as a whole, only prepare the ground for the authority of the faithful individual who sings. The authority in the church as a whole is only potential and implicit; it is exercised--it comes alive--when the one stands to profess. Note too that what is said authoritatively is not the simple recitation of a scriptural text. Rather, it involves a leap that makes the sacred story contemporary to the singer. Often, what is said authoritatively entails an act of self-oblation. Again, the aria is sung with authority only because it is sung in the context of the sacred [99] words. Thus, as there is no authority apart from the assembly, so is there no authority apart from Scripture. But Scripture alone, even when it is spoken in the midst of the assembly, is not where authority is being actualized. Nonetheless, authority is responsive. The soloist responds neither to Bach nor to the conductor; she speaks in the midst of the assembly but not to the assembly; she speaks in the context of the church's recitation of the salvific narrative but her words are not in the narrative. her authority resides in the one in whom she is placing her faith.