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Restoring the Bonds of Affection

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Carroll, R William

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How then does the Report slip so easily from unobjectionable claims about a wider "circle of consultation" (para. 94) to unacceptable demands for centralized, legislative authority? The argument trades on an equivocation. The initial plausibility of the notion of "limited freedom" stems from the noncoercive character of the limits. Like dependence on God, some forms of human interdependence enhance rather than diminish freedom.30 These are vital to genuine Christian community, but not all forms of dependence have this character. As Kathryn Tanner notes:

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Relations with God are life affirming and constitutive of one's person for one's own good . . . because of God's special character as gift giver. If human communities are not similarly beneficent and gift-giving to their members, an attack on individual selfassertion is simply not the proper conclusion to draw from the incarnation and Trinity as models for human lives that participate in them.31

Communal relationships can be means of grace that liberate people from sin32 and help them recover their true selves. Grace, however, is noncoercive. It preserves the integrity of human nature, including free will.33 Coerced obedience, as in a patriarchal family, diminishes human freedom in ways that God never does. For the Report's notion of "freedom-in-relation" to remain plausible, it must involve genuine freedom, including the ability to say "No."

The devolution of authority does not stop with the provinces. The church needs greater recognition of the autonomy of dioceses, congregations, and individuals, as well as more protection for liberty of conscience, a basic principle of Anglican moral theology.34 Even if it were desirable to compel obedience, it is rarely possible. Forms of authority will continue to be exercised in the church, but these should include more democratic elements (understood as dispersal of episcopé) and protections for conscientious dissent and disobedience. Note the words of Jesus: "Among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you" (Mark 10:42-43; compare Luke 22:25-26, 1 Pet. 5:3). Noncoercive models of authority involve free and equal partners in dialogue and require the lulling consent of those who obey.3'5 In others words, they are consultative and do not provide a hierarchy with definitive answers. Communion is not "the fundamental limit to autonomy," at least not in any sense that diminishes freedom. Rather, it is a God-given relationship, in and through Christ, among fully autonomous persons or communities.

Restoring the Bonds of Affection

In an address given at the Lambeth Conference in 1998, Rowan Williams contends that one "cannot escape the obligation of looking and listening for Christ in the acts of another Christian who is manifestly engaged, self-critically engaged, with the data of common belief and worship."36 For him, "every action of the believer is in some sense designed as a gift to the Body," modeled on Jesus' own unconditional self-giving (Phil. 2:5-8).37 This holds even for those gifts that we find difficult to understand or receive. Williams recognizes limits to conversation, but these are impossible to specify in advance. The criterion is ultimately "the sense . . . that we are being encountered by a limitation on the unconditionality of the Gospel's offer rather than our own enunciation in advance of a principle that will legitimate the creation of divisions."38

Restoring the Bonds of Affection

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Carroll, R William

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