Blue Cord

Chris Brady at Targum has been posting a series of notes about the current troubles in the Anglican Communion. I had been meaning to respond to a couple of them, and I finally did so yesterday on a post entitled “NPR Report – ‘Anglican Conservatives Step Back from Split Threat’.” Chris responded to my comment, I commented on his comment, and he responded to that. It has been a fruitful conversation, so I thought I would move it to the level of actual posts instead of it being buried deep in the comments. I will post my responses here and I encourage Chris to continue posting on his blog. I would also like to see other Anglican bloggers (such as Steve Cook) jump into the mix as well. Perhaps we can get this whole problem solved in the next few days and the schism will be averted.

My comments will jump around a bit, since I am responding in turn to points that Chris made in his last comment. Readers may want to read the series of comments on the original post before reading further in this post.

In Chris’s latest comment, he notes that the Elizabethan Settlement was itself a power play. He is right, of course, I certainly would not defend the many excesses that occurred in the enforcement of the Settlement. But be that as it may, it doesn’t change the fact that the Settlement was established and has been the basis of our Anglican polity ever since. I think it has to be taken into account in any discussion of how we are to live our common lives as Anglicans.

Chris asserts that one of the problems is that we have no real way of asserting what the teachings of the Anglican Church are. I would disagree. I think they are formulated quite nicely in the creeds of the church as presented in the Book of Common Prayer. These have been the creeds that have held Anglican churches together for almost 600 years. We have been able to come together for common worship based only on those fundamentals. Certainly, there are many other Anglican traditions that have been held in various places and times, and I would not want to reduce Christianity to merely the creeds. But I will say that I am willing to be in fellowship with anyone who shares the creeds with me, regardless of their standing on other issues.

That is what via media means. It is not merely the lowest common denominator. No one has to give up their own beliefs, as long as they are willing to grant others the same freedom. And it certainly does not mean that we stop theological debate on issues where we disagree. But within those disagreements we have to have the charity to admit that others may be Christian even when they disagree (something that is severely lacking on both sides of the current debate).

I would disagree that there is no Evangelical polity. I think there is a fairly clear one, although it is certainly not the polity of the Presbyterian Church. I think the best examples are found within modern Baptist circles and non-denominational churches. It is a polity that bases fellowship and communion on theological agreement. Although most say that you only have to agree on essentials, they usually end up with a list that defines some pretty marginal issues as essential. I think that polity has been evident in a number of conservatives in the Anglican Communion who say they cannot have fellowship with those who disagree with them on homosexuality. You would be hard pressed to define a particular stance on homosexuality as central to what it means to be Christian, yet it is a make-or-break issue for some people. That indicates that their polity is more Evangelical than Anglican.¹

Chris laments the fact that the mechanisms of discipline are weak in the Episcopal church and often do not function well. I would certainly agree. I think, for example, that Bishop Spong should have been removed as a bishop for his unorthodox views (i.e., there were major sections of the creeds that he did not believe). But I don’t see that as a reason to abandon Anglican polity and put a more Evangelical or Catholic version in its place. We should fix the structures so that they function according to our canons and traditions. We need to make the church more Anglican, not less. There is no reason to throw the Anglican baby out with the revisionist bathwater.

I think the most insightful question Chris asks is, “Is polity more important than the view of Scripture?” I would answer that Scripture is more important to how we function as Christians, but polity defines how we live together as Anglicans. If our view of Scripture is the basis for our fellowship, than I doubt that we will survive as a denomination.

Chris finishes with this:

Anglicanism must be something more than structure and procedure if it is to survive. What do we believe? How do we worship? These are the issues at hand and we seem ill equipped to deal with them in any means other than shouting and that means that the loudest (or longest) voice wins.

I certainly agree, and I think it always will be more than that. But the question is whether we have to define what that “something more” is in more detail than the creeds do. What do we believe? The creeds, plus whatever your local congregation and diocese decide, even if that is something different than the congregation down the street. How do we worship? By using the Book of Common Prayer. To paraphrase an old Evangelical saying, “If it was good enough for Cranmer, its good enough for me.” The Anglican church has survived for almost 600 years on that basis, and I see no reason to change it now.

1. I agree with Chris that there are a number of “home grown” Evangelicals within the Anglican church, but many of them have a more Evangelical than Anglican polity as well. [back]

It has been almost three weeks since I last posted, so I thought I would let people know there is a good reason for my absence.

This whole month I have been busy writing articles for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. I wrote about one hundred articles for it when assignments were first made, but last month they contacted me to ask if I would be willing to write a number of articles that other scholars had failed to submit on time. Since I had just finished up at Wartburg College, I agreed to do it.

Two weeks ago they decided that they needed additional editors working on the project as well, and they asked if I would be able to do that. I was more than happy to agree, so I am pleased to announce that I am now working as an editor on the fourth and fifth volumes of the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. No, I am not one of the big-name editors who are listed on the front of the book. Instead, I am just one of a number of editors who reads through the articles to format them correctly, double check citations, insert transcriptions, and make any number of other changes as needed.

I am thoroughly enjoying the work. Basically, I get to read Bible dictionary entries all day, which I do often enough even when no one is paying me. And since I have to read articles that I wouldn’t necessarily read otherwise, I am picking up a lot of new information.

Claude Mariottini has an excellent post critiquing the new so-called Ancient Roots Translinear Bible. It boils down to this: if you took everything that is wrong with someone who doesn’t know the biblical language using Strong’s Concordance and pushed it to the absolute limits, the results would be this translation.

The press release about the translation states, “Author and scientist A. Frances Werner has done her homework.” The problem is, she hasn’t.

I have not really been following the kerfuffle at Westinster Theological Seminary. I have not read Peter Enns’s book Inspiration and Incarnation, but the seminary announced on Wednesday that they were suspending from the seminary faculty because of views expressed in this book. Enns has the support of the majority of the faculty at the seminary, which voted 12-8 against suspending him, and a web site has been set up by those who support him.

The issue comes down to the fact that Enns approach to the Scriptures does not line up with traditional Reformed theology, as is recognized by De Regno Christi, a web site set up by Reformed Christian Witness (the author’s of the site seem to approve of Enns’s suspension). My purpose in discussing this issue is not to debate whether Enns should or should not have been suspended. While I generally err on the side of academic freedom, a seminary can have a reasonable expectation that its faculty will teach from the point-of-view of the tradition of the seminary. Any good seminary will have professors from multiple denominations on their faculty, but if they are to serve their primary mission the majority should represent the tradition of the seminary.

My purpose for discussing Enns’s suspension, however, is to point out that this is in fact a Scripture vs. tradition debate. Enns has been suspended not because he has put forth an interpretation of the Bible which is unfaithful to the Scriptures, but because he has put forth an interpretation that is unfaithful to the Reformed tradition. The ironic thing is that this is being done at a Protestant seminary. One of Protestantism founding ideas during the Reformation was that our traditions should never take primacy over Scripture. Enns’s ideas may not be in line with Reformed traditions, but they are certainly in line with Reformation principles of Scripture being allowed to critique tradition.

What this should point out is that there is no such thing as a “Bible only” denomination. We all interpret Scripture within our traditions. This is, of course, how it should be. Scripture and tradition both have a role to play in our theology. It is either intellectually dishonest or just plain arrogant to claim that your church is faithful to the Bible alone while other churches rely on “man-made” traditions. It is never ever an either/or proposition.

We should all continue to interpret the Bible within our own traditions, while at the same time allowing our interpretation of the Bible to critique those traditions. Tradition can never be allowed to become a static entity. It must always be open to revision and — dare I say? — reformation.

Westminster’s “About Us” page contains this paragraph at the top:

Westminster is committed to Scripture and to the systematic exposition of biblical truth known as the Reformed faith. The very name of the institution signals clearly that our systematic theology has been and remains an outworking of the theological documents known as the Westminster Standards. In addition to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, the Seminary treasures the rich and harmonious diversity of creeds and confessions within the historic Reformed tradition. In particular, it recognizes that the system of doctrine contained in Scripture is also confessed in the Three Forms of Unity (the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort).

While their statement beings by noting that they are committed to Scripture, they immediately turn to enumerating the documents that inform their tradition. They are up front about the fact that theology at Westminster is done within the boundaries of these confessions. Their suspension of Enns, however, suggests that theology can never be allowed to go outside of these bounds, even when led there through the study of the Bible.

Update: Nick Norelli has a round up of bloggings pertaining to the Peter Enns situation at WTS at Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.

In the wake of the news out of Seabury-Western on Thursday, I thought I would point people to two short articles in this week’s The Christian Century (Feb. 26, 2008 issue).

Nick Carter, the dean of Andover Newton Theological Seminary gives an interview in which he discusses the “Constraints & Opportunities” facing seminaries. Although it takes up only a page and a half, he gives a good overview of some of the problems that have led to the current crisis in some seminaries. He gives some statistics that I didn’t know:

• Half of all M.Div. students attend twelve seminaries. Unfortunately, he doesn’t list those twelve. Out of those twelve, only three are traditional mainline seminaries.
• 53% of seminaries have fewer than 150 full-time students.
• Experts (who?) say that as many as twenty seminaries could go out of business in the next five to seven years.

He raises the question of whether we have too many seminaries, although he doesn’t attempt an answer.

The second article is a report on Harvard’s revamped M.Div. program. Harvard Divinity School retooled its M.Div. three years ago, and the first batch of graduates under the new program graduate this semester. One interesting fact is the HDS now requires all M.Div. students to have three semesters in one of the biblical languages. That is not three semesters spread between Hebrew and Greek but three in Hebrew or three in Greek (I am sure this will make John Hobbins quite happy!). I have suggested before that one year of a biblical language is not enough to make one competent in a biblical language, but three semesters is certainly getting closer (see my post on “Seminary Training in Biblical Studies”). Their M.Div. now features a focus on “ministry studies,” although the article does not define what that includes. One thing I didn’t know was that M.T.S. students make up two-thirds of the student body at HDS while M.Div. students only account for one-third.