Recent comments on the Thinking Anglicans website made very dogmatic assertions about doctrine in the Church of England. One person asserted that “if you don’t believe in the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, then one thing is certain, you are not a Christian.” Another asserted that “it is ultimately the realisation that there is total forgiveness in Jesus, the hope of the resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives that will anchor people into life-long faith. I get forgiveness of sins only through Christ.” Yet another baldly stated “Didn’t God lay out a set of rules in the Ten Commandments?” Another asserted that if you throw out the essential Christian distinctiveness of the Trinity and the Cross there’s nothing left.
Sometimes, reading the comments on Thinking Anglicans, I conclude that there really is no place for me in today’s Church of England. The doctrine of the Trinity, total forgiveness in Jesus and only through Jesus, the Ten Commandments and the Cross are elements of the Christian faith that reside in my consciousness but they are none of them the fundamentals on which I have built my Christian life.
The conservative evangelical HTB/St Helen’s Bishopsgate/All Souls Langham Place/Resource church version of Anglican theology and teaching, rigidly asserted in some TA comments, underpinned by the salvation theology of the Living in Love and Faith book make me despair. Conservatives are unafraid of posting totally dogmatic comments without concern for the effect this has on more vulnerable souls like me. Oh yes, I know I also seem to post fearlessly challenging blogs that may upset traditionalists and progressives alike, and I try to read every comment and respond with respect and dignity, in so far as that is possible.
The Church Mouse asks what is the Church of England’s doctrine?
The blogs and articles listed on Thinking Anglicans on Tuesdays and Saturdays can both lead me to despair and give me hope. One such day was last Wednesday when I found hope in all four articles, and most especially in The Church Mouse blog: What is the Church of England’s doctrine? Church Mouse’s blog is very valuable and I encourage you to read it in full.
There has been lots of talk recently about doctrine, writes Mouse: whether it is being changed; what it is; whether it can be changed; what our priests and bishops have sworn to uphold; what we mean by doctrine in the Church of England, and whether we actually have any doctrine. Mouse notes that the Church of England is unique in lacking a formalised and codified body of doctrine. It was designed from the outset to accommodate a range of beliefs, but within a framework which holds them together.
Canon A5 says: The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. Mouse reflects: Our doctrine is grounded in such teachings as are agreeable to the scriptures but we have to scratch our heads to work out what that might mean in practice.
Doctrine Commission report 1938
A series of theological controversies began to emerge in the early part of the 20th century which could not easily be resolved, so a Doctrine Commission was created in 1922. The Commission took 16 years to report publishing a summary, Doctrine in the Church of England, in 1938, The Bishops essentially did nothing with the report other than note its existence. The Doctrine Commission report considered the sources of doctrine described in Canon A5 and observed that they were a 16th-century formulation never intended to form the fundamental doctrine of the church. The formularies should not be held to prejudge questions which have arisen since their formulation or problems which have been modified by fresh knowledge or fresh conceptions. These historic Anglican formularies are important and helpful, but new theological questions have arisen since the 16th-century that they do not address. The Commission also concluded that we should consider the statements within the creeds to be ‘true’ but that this truth could be considered a spiritual ‘symbolic’ truth and not necessarily a historical factual truth. If we require priests to assent to doctrine, they needed sufficient wiggle room to allow for interpretation in good conscience.
Believing in the Church
The 1981 document Believing in the Church contains a chapter Where is our doctrine to be found? The report concluded that Church of England doctrine can be found first in Scripture and then in a kind of pyramid below this in ever-expanding formulations, from the 39 Articles and Creeds and the BCP and then a less clear mix of more detailed but less authoritative sources, seeking to expand and explain those higher sources for more practical purposes.
Mouse’s reflection is that we should be very careful when talking about the doctrine of the Church. Those who would like the clarity and certainty of Catholic Dogma will not find it in the Church of England. Despite that wealth of writing and teaching, the quantity which can be considered authoritative official church doctrine is surprisingly small with quite a bit of wriggle room for interpretation. We have varying levels of authoritative teachings from which we continue to explore.
Turning the world upside down
Returning to the comments on Thinking Anglicans, one person, brought up a conservative evangelical and taught to look for certainty or security but now with a more Thinking Anglicans mind set wrote about the frustration they used to feel because they couldn’t find in the Bible the certainty they craved.
There is another, entirely different basis on which faith can be formed, a path that subtly infused my consciousness, creating freedom in contrast to the dogmatic assertiveness of conservative fundamentalist literalist Bible-based Christians.
Love is the essence. God is love. Love changes everything. St John got it. Jesus got it. The Christian teachers and writers and theologians who inspired and enthused and infused me got it. Meditating on Wednesday morning a book suddenly came to mind – The Crucified is no Stranger by Sebastian Moore, a monk of Downside, published in 1977, bought by me in 1978 when I was in training at Westcott House. I located my copy and re-read it in a day. Moore writes of a pressing sense of the contrast between Jesus and culture, a sense blurred by theologians, by piety, and by all the Christian worlds of discourse. We want our faith both ways, he says, worshipping a Jesus who at once turns the world upside down and takes his place within the church, he says, still the old way up. A song by Patrick Appleford sung in my time as curate at St George’s Camberwell came to mind: “O Lord, all the world belongs to you”, written in 1965, still sung in 1981 because Geoffrey Beaumont had briefly been Vicar there, turning the world upside down with his friends in the Twentieth Century Church Light Music Group before retreating to Mirfield.
Appleford, Beaumont and Sebastian Moore are among the hundreds of people who instilled in me a Christianity that was turning my life upside down and inspiring me to be a culturally non-conforming non-“nice” priest who saw my role as turning the world upside down. Christianity is revolutionary, says Moore, displacing the God of our fears and anxieties by Jesus’ convincing us that God is love unconditional. We have no need to placate God. It’s only a question of opening our hearts and minds for God to appear, turning around our whole approach to religion. However, he says, this revision requires prolonged and sustained meditation to appreciate how much we need to change to become more fully the people the God of Jesus invites people to be. It is allowing our whole being to be invaded by God, the innate, indwelling love within, transforming our relationship within, with ourself, with our neighbours and with God, the secret wisdom of love, the essence of our bodies, hearts, minds, emotions and souls. Our experience of the process of being and living in the divine presence is fundamental to the Christian life and task.
If you want to read a contemporary account of a life turned upside down read the book I commended in my last blog, Generous Faith by Giles Goddard, vicar of St John’s Waterloo. Giles is a Southwark-infused person of the generation after mine, more adventurous than me, better able to deal with the contemporary culture of the C of E, open to what happens when you risk yourself and live into deeper truth and life in all its fullness.