9
October 2014 A.D. Remedial
Chuckling: Anglicans Need to Start Doing
Theology
Oct 9,
2014
I
have just finished reading The Integrity of Anglicanism, a
book by the late Bishop Stephen Sykes, which is a fascinating and
incisive work aimed at addressing the question of whether or not Anglicanism –
and more specifically, the Church of England – has a distinct
theological standpoint. The book is in part a sustained critique of the idea of
'comprehensiveness', the notion that the Anglican Church should be a place
where (in some cases, radically) different theological perspectives can exist
in unity. Sykes essentially concludes that as attractive as this idea is in
theory, it is simply incapable of working in practice, and undermines Anglicanism's
integrity.
As popular as the idea of
comprehensiveness is, Sykes ends up arguing that Anglicanism actually does have
a shared theological standpoint, 'whether or not its theologians are aware of
it and are prepared to think carefully and critically about it’ (74). He
suggests that this standpoint is most evident in its liturgies and canon law.1
If this is true, though, Sykes wonders, why then is there no ‘genre of Anglican
theological literature corresponding to Roman Catholic systematic theology’
(74)? He continues,
I can
only imagine three explanations; it may be that Anglicans have special insight
into why the whole enterprise of systematic theology is a waste of time… But so
far from this being the case, we would more easily be able to show how
pathetically grateful Anglicans are to have some writing on which to cut their
theological teeth and how parasitic Anglican theological education is on the
existence of such literature. Or secondly, it may be that my argument about the
existence of an Anglican standpoint is fallacious. And in this case I hope it
will not be long before its errors have been exposed. Or, thirdly, and I can
see no further possibilities, it may be that the contemporary Anglican
communion is in gross dereliction of its duty to foster the critical study of
its own standpoint as a church participating in the universal Church of Christ,
to its own impoverishment and to the impoverishment of its contribution to the
cause of Christian unity (74-75).
These are strong words,
but an important challenge. I find myself sympathetic to much of Sykes'
critique of comprehensiveness and the need to articulate a distinctive Anglican
theological standpoint. This is not to diminish the way in which Anglicanism has always sought to make room for
theological exploration, but a recognition that this process should
not result in what can end up looking a lot like relativism. When it does, it
fosters a unity that is only institutional, and in many ways illusory. This, I
think, is the situation we find ourselves in today. And we are left, as Sykes
says, impoverished.
True unity is rooted in
shared belief. To be sure, Anglicanism has never been a confessional Church in
the sense of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, and has always been
characterised by a degree of diversity, largely owing to its nature as a
national Church. Nor should it necessarily be. However, as Paul
Avis demonstrates in his book, Anglicanism and the Christian Church,
early post-Reformation Anglicanism did have greater commonality in its
theological foundation, but this has eroded over time as different movements
and traditions, particularly those influenced by liberalism, have become more
prominent. Sykes' call, then, is to recapture a shared foundation – not that we
try to recapture the 16th- and 17th-centuries as a sort of 'golden age', or
that we become a confessional Church, but simply that Anglicans take up the
task of doing theology, to work out and express our theological
standpoint, and from there to draw all the traditions of the Church into the
process of discernment and refinement so that we will come to build our unity
on a common faith. Sykes is happy to affirm that Anglicanism by nature has
always been a broad Church, but he also recognises that we need to draw
boundaries and establish foundations if our unity is going to be real and
lasting.
Sykes wrote these words in
1978, but as far as I know, his call has yet to be answered, at least within
the Church of England. And certainly, with all that's going on today and the
way the fractures in the Church are growing, it is more urgent than ever that
we seek unity in the way Sykes calls us to – indeed, in the way Jesus calls us
to.
1 There is an intriguing
tension that emerges when a Church that prizes diversity of theological
perspectives and traditions claims to hold a 'common' form of worship. Sykes is
right to note that our liturgy embraces a particular theology, as you cannot
say something that means more than one thing at the same time. This results in
different traditions either attempting to interpret the liturgy to fit within
their tradition's theological framework, or to simply ignore the tension, such
that only keen observers will note the dichotomy between the theology professed
in the liturgy and the theology articulated by the church/tradition.
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