Restoring the Bonds of Affection

Carroll, R William

The Windsor Report would move Anglicanism in the wrong direction. Instead of centralization, which makes colonial, patriarchal, and Constantinian assumptions, I advocate devolving authority. Authority should be dispersed away from bishops and toward the entire people of God, which interprets Scripture with the Spirit's guidance; this is the direction of the subversive character of Jesus' message and the baptismal ecclesiology of the 1979 Prayer Book. The Anglican Communion should be polycentric with self-governing churches discerning God's will in their local context. Indeed, dioceses, parishes, and individuals should be more free to follow their consciences. Authority should be dispersed away from "core doctrines" and toward Jesus, who is the sole center of the Communion. Preserving a Communion held together by "bonds of affection" rather than global hierarchy and canon law would keep Anglicans closer to the gospel, which proclaims Christ alone as Lord.

Some responses to the Windsor Report have indicated substantial agreement with its doctrinal content, while noting reservations about its practical recommendations. These statements may convey commitment to dialogue, as well as the intention to resist the Report's more extreme proposals. Nevertheless, one should not leave sections A and B unchallenged. These sections make problematic assumptions about authority, subsidiarity, and unity. Although "foundational" claims often turn out to be multivalent,1 no reason exists to allow such premises to stand. A more direct approach makes more room for ecclesiologies that preserve normative Anglicanism's respect for provincial autonomy, summed up in the phrase "bonds of affection."

The problems are interrelated. The Reports conception of authority is insufficiently analogical and fails to acknowledge that true authority, modeled on Jesus and the prophets, subverts unity when unity involves dishonesty or injustice. Furthermore, the Report offers notions of subsidiarity, autonomy, and communion according to which local churches, rather than embodying the church's communion in its fullness, are reduced to mere parts of a whole. Thus, autonomous provinces are not at liberty to discern God's will for themselves. Such innovations are tempting, because the authors believe that only consensus on essentials of teaching and practice can preserve unity.

In what follows, I examine the Report's proposals about authority, subsidiarity, and unity. In each case, I question these proposals and provide alternatives. In general, the Report does too little to challenge a framework inherited from colonial Anglicanism, in which authority is exercised from the "center" outward, and local variation is seen as a matter of indifference or a threat to be neutralized.2 The welcome development that former colonial churches now play more nearly equal roles in the Communion does nothing to change the hegemonic relationship between global and local ecclesial bodies that the Report seeks to create. The kind of centralization represented by the "Anglican Covenant" is not the best recommendation for the future of the Communion. As an alternative, I propose a genuinely polycentric3 and postcolonial Anglicanism, in which intercommunion in Christ enhances rather than diminishes autonomy. Such an approach coheres better with normative Anglicanism. It is also more faithful to gospel-based criticism of power as domination, to insights of Christian feminism, and to requirements for Christian mission in a pluralistic church and world.

Authority: Monologue or Dialogue?

The Report's treatment of authority contains hopeful signs. It disavows any intention to create structures like those in Roman Catholicism (para. 42, 70). It acknowledges the "supreme authority" of Scripture (para. 42). It qualifies this in helpful ways, since ultimate authority resides in "God" and "Jesus, the living Word" (para. 54). The "authority of Scripture" is always "shorthand" for "the authority of the triune God, exercised through scripture" (para. 54). The Report also seems to eschew static, simplistic conceptions of biblical authority (para. 55). In its view, moreover, bishops exercise authority mainly as "teachers," rather than officials within a hierarchy (para. 57-58).

Nevertheless, the Report pays little heed to tensions within the Bible. As Rowan Williams observes, "The meaning of one portion of scriptural text is constructed in opposition to another."4 Scripture contains falsehoods and ideological distortions, and decent theories of interpretation allow for more historical and ideological criticism of the text.5 For example, much that Scripture asserts or implies about the relationships between women and men must be challenged.6 The Report, by contrast, insists that "questions of interpretation are rightly raised, not as an attempt to avoid or relativise scripture and its authority, but as a way of ensuring that it is really scripture that is being heard" (para. 59). It also asserts: "The message of scripture, as a whole and in its several parts, must be preached and taught in all possible and appropriate ways" (para. 58). Does this include the subordination of women and other forms of oppression? Denying that this is part of the essential "message" does not help.7 Portions of Scripture were written and canonized to marginalize women,8 and they are still so used, with deadly results.

Another problem concerns the notion that God's authority is "vested in scripture" (para. 58). This runs counter to the more cautious formulations in paragraphs 54-55, and it does not seem to permit the kind of "talking back" that good interpretation requires.9 It is idolatrous, moreover, to assert that God s authority can be "vested" in any text or creature, except in highly provisional ways. A more accurate theory of interpretation would stress the critical "conversation" between readers and the text.10

The merit of the notion of bishop as teacher depends on what kind of pedagogy is involved. The Report seems to espouse a sharp division between "accredited leaders" and other Christians. It envisions a teaching church, consisting of ordained ministers (especially bishops, mostly men), and a learning church, which affects doctrinal development chiefly by giving or withholding its "consent."11 Bible study is encouraged for all (para. 57), but teaching by "bishops" and "primates" is stressed as the means by which "the authority of God vested in scripture is brought to bear-in mission within the world and in wise teaching to build up the Church" (para. 58).

The Report gives the impression that the faithful are largely passive recipients of teaching, which consists of the application of Scripture s "message" in a local context.12 The gifts of the Spirit are not emphasized. Several of these involve teaching, and none is restricted to ordained ministers. The episcopacy is largely a second-century development.13 In the New Testament, office is bound with charism (1 Cor. 12:28, Rom. 12:6-8, Eph. 4:11-16), and the church retains an open structure as it awaits the work of the Spirit, the parousia of Jesus, and the Reign of God.

Bishops, priests, and deacons do take on responsibility for preaching and teaching, but how is this to be understood, given the baptismal ecclesiology of the 1979 Prayer Book?14 The gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism directly empowers the whole church (and each of its members) to participate in the ministry of Jesus.15 All ministry involves living out particular aspects of this ministry, to encourage others to exercise their gifts and to contribute to the process of evangelization. No ministry, including teaching, is restricted to any one order, and every order functions only in relationship with the others. God forbid that only deacons should serve the poor or confront the powers that "corrupt and destroy the creatures of God." Both are baptismal promises.16 The case is similar with regard to proclaiming the gospel, teaching, celebrating the sacraments, and providing pastoral care and oversight (episcopé). The principal ministry of each order, including "laypersons," is to "represent Christ and his Church."17 Thus, Christians fulfill their baptismal vow to "proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ."18

A better conception of the teaching ministry of bishops would stress its continuity with that of the baptized, breaking down any fixed division between teaching and learning churches. Distinctions remain within the body, but these are negotiable in light of the egalitarian implications of baptism (Gal. 3:25-29) and the requirements of the church's mission.19 As successors of the apostles, bishops serve as sacramental signs of the primitive testimony to the resurrection. The bishop must be a "teacher of Scripture" because the contemporary church's teaching is grounded in the "apostles' teaching and fellowship."20 The chief criterion for including writings in the New Testament was fidelity to the apostolic "rule of faith" at the heart of the creeds.21 As Christians, we read the Old Testament in light of its messianic fulfillment. Together with the words and deeds of Jesus, his resurrection is central to any evangelical and apostolic testimony Testimony arises from anamnesis, which plays a central role in the sacraments of the church, above all baptism and eucharist (1 Cor. 11:24-25; Luke 22:19). Anamnesis involves more than merely "remembrance" or "memorial": "Through anamnesis, we become participants in the events, not as history, but as present realities in our lives."22 The bishop's authority to preside, oversee, preach, and teach comes from (and contributes to) the entire church's active anamnesis of Jesus.

What kind of memory is this? Johann Baptist Metz calls it "dangerous" and "subversive."23 Jesus proclaims a kingdom in which the first are last and the last are first (Mark 10:31; Matt. 19:30, 20:16; Luke 13:30). Before he is even born, Simeon calls him a "sign that will be opposed" (Luke 2:34). Jesus himself says that he will divide families (Luke 12:49-53, Matt. 10:34-39). He begins his ministry with a sermon so scandalous that the decent, religious people of his hometown try to kill him (Luke 4:29). After his resurrection, his followers are accused of turning "the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). Therefore, the Report is not convincing when it laments that Scripture should promote "unity, not division" (para. 62). In places, Scripture does speak of our unity in Christ.24 I consider this below.

Subsidiarity, Autonomy, and Communion

In the previous section, I argued that authority is "vested" neither in the biblical "message" nor in "accredited leaders" and that provisional authority should be dispersed among the priestly people of God,25 which interprets the Scriptures under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.26 To do so, I relied on the "dangerous memory" of Jesus preserved in the New Testament, as well as the equally biblical theology of ministry in the Prayer Book. Here, I make a similar move with regard to geography, making the case for polycentric Anglicanism.

The Report draws the wrong conclusions from the notion of subsidiarity, which it conscripts from ethics for service in ecclesiology.27 Subsidiarity refers to "the principle that matters should be decided as close to the local level as possible" (para. 38). If followed to its logical conclusion, it would imply emancipating local communities and individuals to assume adult responsibility for their discipleship. The church would emerge out of local, lay-led Christian action, as in Latin American base communities,28 many historic religious orders, and contemporary renewal movements. The Report, however, uses subsidiarity to centralize rather than disperse authority.29

It does so for two principal reasons. First, the authors doubt how much local decision-making is "possible," given the need to preserve unity, holiness, and orthodoxy (para. 2-5, 25-28). The more important a decision is, the less local it can be (para. 94). Unity is deemed so important that even decisions about matters of indifference (adiaphora) must be made at a global level, if local decisions might cause division (para. 82). Thus, the Report privileges Paul's teaching on scandal (para. 92-93; compare 1 Cor. 8:1-13, 10:27-33) over his face-to-face confrontation with Peter (Gal. 2:11-14). Apparently, no question of truth or justice can trump concern for unity. What if the issue were slavery or genocide?

Second, the Report claims that communion is the "fundamental limit to autonomy" (para. 82). Throughout paragraphs 72-86, the authors seek to clarify autonomy, a "much-misunderstood concept" (para. 72). Relying on the Virginia Report, they redefine autonomy in directions that support centralization. Ultimately, no local church may exercise its autonomy in any way that could compromise the "unity and good order of the Anglican Communion" (para. 84; compare para. 79). Now, quite correctly, the Report notes that autonomy is not "unlimited freedom" but "freedom-in-relation" (para. 80). Love for God and neighbor, as lived out in the ministry of Jesus, specifies and constitutes freedom as Christians understand it. "Autonomousq," however, means "self-governing." At present, it means that none of the Instruments of Unity has any binding, canonical authority. Each is consultative in character. The ties uniting Anglicans are "bonds of affection."

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:

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

The "data of common belief and worship," however, are themselves hotly contested. Nothing prevents someone from claiming that teaching about human sexuality belongs among these data. This is another version of the strategy of grabbing the center, here the one implied by the phrase "core doctrines" (para. 36). So long as the paradigm inherited from colonialism endures, this will be a temptation. Anglicans have "different interpretations of that holiness to which we are called, and different interpretations of the range of appropriate diversity within our union and communion" (para. 5). The Report seeks to create a process for defining limits.

Even if this process were desirable, it would at best force the conflict underground for a season. For Christians, every limit is negotiable. No thesis of theology escapes criticism, and no edict is exempt from conscientious dissent. This is part of what it means to proclaim Jesus as Lord. He alone defines the "center." No person or text can speak for him in an unquestionable way.

A better process would focus on "restoring the bonds of affection," thus continuing the process of devolution of authority that began with the end of the British Empire. In Ephesians 4:1-3, Paul identifies virtues and practices that might sustain the church in the process: "I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Ultimately, communion is God's irrevocable gift of God's own life.39

The jury is still out about Anglicanism, which is one way God shares this gift. In my view, the Report's recommendations would destroy too much that is priceless and distinctive about Anglican witness to the gospel. The future of the Communion is uncertain. Rather than attempting to preserve its unit)7 at any cost, it must be commended to God's mercy, the Spirits guidance, and the responsible use of human freedom.

2 See Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 52-53.

3 Compare the critique of retrenchment and centralization in Roman Catholicism under John Paul II in Johann Baptist Metz, The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Post-Bourgeois World (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 93.

4 Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 53.

5 On "ideology criticism," see Sandra M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 120-121.

6 Patriarchy is intertwined with other forms of oppression. See Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 27.

7 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Menwry of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. 10th Anniversary ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 14-21.

8 Schüssler Fiorenza, In Menwnj of Her, 53.

9 Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 35-45.

10 See David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

11 On the consensus fidelium, see paragraph 68.

12 The Reports remarks about inculturation (para. 32, 67, 85, 91) rely on a false distinction between an eternal message and its historical, cultural form.

13 Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York and Mahwah, NJ.: Newman Press, 2001), 15. Episcopos and its cognates are mentioned in Acts 1:20, Phil. 1:1, Acts 20:28, 1 Tim. 3:1-2, and Titus 1:3. How this office compares with that of later bishops remains uncertain.

14 The Book of Common Prayer, According to the Use of the Episcopal Church (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1979), 298, 301-308, 531, 855-856 (hereafter BCP). See Daniel B. Stevick, Baptismal Moments, Baptismal Meanings (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1987), 136-138; and Ruth Mevers's more recent Continuing the Reformation: Re-Visioning Baptism in the Episcopal Church (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1997).

15 I am here indebted to my colleague Robert D. Hughes.

16 BCP, 302, 305.

17 BCP, 855-856.

18 BCP, 305.

19 Compare the Quadrilateral on "the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted" (BCP, 877).

20 BCP, 304, citing Acts 2:42.

21 See Christopher Bryan, And God Spoke: The Authority of the Bible for the Church Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Covvley Publications, 2002), 25, 137-138.

22 Leonel L. Mitchell, Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer (Minneapolis, Minn.: Winston Press, 1985; reprint, Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse, 1991), 164.

23 Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 90. see Bruce T. Morrill, Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue (CoIlegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000).

24 See, for example, the references to Ephesians in paragraphs 2, 6. See also John 17:21, which figures prominently in the history of the ecumenical movement; in the 1995 encyclical, Ut Unum Sint; and in the Prayers of the People, Form III (BCP, 387).

25 See BCP, 94, 308, 854. Compare 1 Pet. 2:19, Rev. 5:10.

26 BCP, 854.

27 Compare chapter 4 of the 1997 "Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (The Virginia Report)." See paragraph 83.

28 See Marcello de C. Azevedo, "Basic Ecclesial Communities," in Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. and Jon Sobrino, S.J., Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), 636-651.

29 Compare my "Local Options: True Subsidiarity in the Body," Covenant 19 (Jan. 2005).

30 Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2001), 3, citing Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 79.

31 Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity, 78.

32 The Catechism defines sin in terms of distorted relationship. See BCP, 848.

33 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, 111, 2; Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

34 On the principle conscientia semper sequenda, compare Kenneth E. Kirk, Conscience and its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry (London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1927; reprint, with an introduction by David H. Smith, Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1999), 226-240.

35 See Bryan, And God Spoke, 85-86, on the distinction between "coercive" and "appellatory" authority. The latter is stronger. This is the authority of friendship and love, which is characteristic of God's authority as "exercised through Scripture" (para. 54).

36 Rowan Williams, "On Making Moral Decisions," Sewanee Theological Review 42:2(1999): 147-158, at 157.

37 Williams, "On Making Moral Decisions," 152.

38 Williams, "On Making Moral Decisions," 157.

39 Compare the words spoken at baptismal anointing: "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever" (BCP, 308).

R. WILLIAM CARROLL*

* R. William Carroll is Visiting Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the School of Theology of the University of the South.

1 Kathryn Tanner, The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1992), 1-31.

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