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Windsor Report: Two Observations on Its Ecumenical Content, The
Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Wright, J Robert
This paradigm for ecclesiology derives from the patristic period of the early church and has its theological model in the Greek term perichoresis, a dance among equals in mutual relationship. As John of Damascus explained the relationship of the persons of the Trinity, "They are made one not so as to commingle, but so as to cleave to each other, and they have their being in each other without any coalescence or commingling."5 Beginning with a Trinitarian paradigm in which the fullness of the Trinitarian God dwells in each person of the Trinity, the Russian Orthodox theologian Nicholas Afanassieff and others have reasoned that the unity and fullness of the whole church likewise belongs to each local church and dwells especially within its eucharistic celebration rather than to one universal superchurch. Thus, "the local church is autonomous and independent, because the Church of God in Christ indwells it in perfect fullness."6 From this Orthodox perspective it seems that there is full agreement even on every major point of doctrine.
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A modern Western church historian might well want to question whether such assertions are adequate to support claims of "full agreement" (emphasis mine). But the fact remains that the Orthodox churches of the East do present an appealing picture of unity-incommunion that depends much less upon any central and enhanced role for their leader than that which is advocated for the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Windsor Report (para. 105-110). Given the long history of agreement in Anglican-Orthodox dialogue on such matters (for example, the Dublin Statement, para. 13), it does seem somewhat surprising that the Windsor Report (whose purpose was to explore the riches of ecclesiology) has not presented a quasi-federation paradigm analogous to the autocephalous Orthodox patriarchates of the East as an alternative to the much more centralized pyramid topped by the Archbishop of Canterbury that it has offered. One need not concede that unless there is a convenant one can believe whatever one wants (see para. 92 and Appendix Two). The Orthodox model of ecclesiology does seem to allow for more flexibility and variety without an overarching control from the top.
One cannot help but suspect that the pressing influence of the Roman Catholic model and the understandable demand for someone to tell the Roman Catholic Church authoritatively what Anglicans believe may have weighed heavily upon the Lambeth Commission, no matter what leanings towards the Orthodox have been observed in the present Archbishop of Canterbury. I myself see problems in the Orthodox model, but it seems curious that more was not made of Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology in the Report itself. The "universal authority" in a "visibly united Church" that the Virginia Report (chap. 5, para. 20) longed for and that the Windsor Report seems to advise is, quite frankly, less of an ideal, less appealing, to many American Anglicans now in view of the present situation. After all, one would not say that the Eastern Orthodox churches have chosen to "walk alone," even apart from each other, but in them there does seem to be less than the full visible unity and less than the complete agreement that would seem to be demanded by the Windsor Report's following a more Roman Catholic model. For the Orthodox, the "highest degree of communion possible" (Lambeth 1988) may not mean agreement on every significant point. Nor does it seem necessary for Anglicans all to agree on such things as women bishops, allegiance to all of the Thirty-Nine Articles, monogamy rather than polygamy, full interchangeability of diaconate, invariability of ordination not just by bishops but by bishops in the historic succession, and other theoretically "bearable anomalies." There is an Orthodox ecclesiology that at least deserves our notice.
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