The General Convention resolution of which I am a co-sponsor is now officially in the pipeline and has been given the name by which it will be known and referred to for the extent of its lifespan (however long that might be!): D020. It has been assigned to Legislative Committee #8 (World Mission), and the house of initial action is the House of Deputies.

Given the debacle that took place at the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica last month, one might be tempted to consider the matter somewhat moot. Quite the opposite is in fact the case, I believe.

The text of the resolution, of course, calls for the voluntary and provisional agreement of the Episcopal Church to abide by the terms of the most recent draft of the propsed covenant while we study what impact it may (or may not) have on our Constitution & Canons. If the ACC had actuallly endorsed the covenant and formally commended it, critics of D020 could well argue that its passage would nonetheless be a de facto acceptance on a permanent basis. But given what actually did transpire in Jamaica, that argument gets no traction.

Instead, with that pressure removed, General Convention is free to act in a way that is consistent with the generosity of spirit evinced in 2006 resolutions A159 (Commitment of Interdependence in the Anglican Communion), A160 (Expression of Regret), and A165 (Commitment to Windsor and Listening Process). If we indeed meant what we said in those resolutions, there is no plausible reason not to enact D020 in Anaheim.
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Fr. Dan Martins - 12 June 2009 11:35 AM

The General Convention resolution of which I am a co-sponsor is now officially in the pipeline and has been given the name by which it will be known and referred to for the extent of its lifespan (however long that might be!): D020. It has been assigned to Legislative Committee #8 (World Mission), and the house of initial action is the House of Deputies.

Given the debacle that took place at the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica last month, one might be tempted to consider the matter somewhat moot. Quite the opposite is in fact the case, I believe.

The text of the resolution, of course, calls for the voluntary and provisional agreement of the Episcopal Church to abide by the terms of the most recent draft of the propsed covenant while we study what impact it may (or may not) have on our Constitution & Canons. If the ACC had actuallly endorsed the covenant and formally commended it, critics of D020 could well argue that its passage would nonetheless be a de facto acceptance on a permanent basis. But given what actually did transpire in Jamaica, that argument gets no traction.

Instead, with that pressure removed, General Convention is free to act in a way that is consistent with the generosity of spirit evinced in 2006 resolutions A159 (Commitment of Interdependence in the Anglican Communion), A160 (Expression of Regret), and A165 (Commitment to Windsor and Listening Process). If we indeed meant what we said in those resolutions, there is no plausible reason not to enact D020 in Anaheim.
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Oh, Dan there are many reasons not to enact the D020.  Let me count just a few:

1)  It enshrines the fictive four instruments of unity, communion, or conciliar or whatever they are going by this week. It expands their authority beyond what their original purpose was.  The behavior of the Primates as a group (including trying to take over the ACC, bully the ++ABC, and for, for some, sit out Lambeth) and the inchoate events of the ACC are indications that these four are not ready for prime time and not capable of it.

2)  However defective the metaphor of the three legged stool is, it is better than the “stilts” of the Anglican Covenant.  It enshrines your two favorites,  Scripture and Tradition, but fails to be Anglican in letting Reason simply vanish as a major source of authority in the life of the communion.  Since it is Reason which leads people to understand and consent to the stilts, the Ridley draft departs from Anglican heritage by leaving it out.

3)  Section 4.1.5 is a back door into the four IU.  Dr. Radner’s defense, that the 4 IU can already admit whom they please to their membership is not shown by any actual history, so I continue to submit that this is an end run to allow the Primates to seat the soon to be fauxAB of the faux Anglican Province in NA.

Those three are enough to send it back for more revision and I see no reason that GC should even for a moment consider provisional acceptance of this document.  And I did not even mention its punitive tone!

Michael -

Reason, which has historically been bound up with conceptions of both Nature and natural law, has been marginalized in Anglican theology for a rather long time - decades, if not the better part of the 20th century.  William Temple was probably the last major Anglican theologian to give a serious consideration to the place of nature within Anglican thought (although I confess to having not read McGrath’s recent work on point).  Thus, if the Ridley draft is somehow “sub-Anglican” due to its lack of a mention of reason, it only follows suit with the major trends of Anglican theology and practice for quite some time.  I agree that this is to be lamented, but I also recognize that the way forward is not to enshrine a view of reason that is autonomous vis-a-vis Nature and natural law, in particular.  For Hooker, as I would think you would know, reason is that which apprehends both the order of nature and that which is given in revelation.  It’s not coterminous with logic or - God forbid - a reasoning process somehow divorced from prolonged, intensive study.  Whatever the faults of our own Divines, one cannot criticize them for want of learning or critical engagement, particularly via humanism, with the questions of the day back in the 16th and 17th centuries.  It’s not as if the Episcopal Church (USA) is a bastion of scholarship; nor does ECUSA contain any sort of great wealth of reflections about reason and its place within the natural order.  One may, of course, criticize - but the criticisms of the draft only highlight the far more egregious lack of reflection on these issues within Anglicanism for quite some time.  As with many attempts at reform, the solution proposed is a product of the same lack that gave rise to the need for a solution in the first place.  This does not, of course, make the Covenant - or, for that matter, the English Reformation - worthless or undesirable.  It simply points to the need for more work to be done.

Incidentally, where do you get the idea that the Instruments of Unity are “fictive”?  That seems not a little bit odd.

Benjamin Guyer - 12 June 2009 01:20 PM

Michael -

Reason, which has historically been bound up with conceptions of both Nature and natural law, has been marginalized in Anglican theology for a rather long time - decades, if not the better part of the 20th century.  William Temple was probably the last major Anglican theologian to give a serious consideration to the place of nature within Anglican thought (although I confess to having not read McGrath’s recent work on point).  Thus, if the Ridley draft is somehow “sub-Anglican” due to its lack of a mention of reason, it only follows suit with the major trends of Anglican theology and practice for quite some time.  I agree that this is to be lamented, but I also recognize that the way forward is not to enshrine a view of reason that is autonomous vis-a-vis Nature and natural law, in particular.  For Hooker, as I would think you would know, reason is that which apprehends both the order of nature and that which is given in revelation.  It’s not coterminous with logic or - God forbid - a reasoning process somehow divorced from prolonged, intensive study.  Whatever the faults of our own Divines, one cannot criticize them for want of learning or critical engagement, particularly via humanism, with the questions of the day back in the 16th and 17th centuries.  It’s not as if the Episcopal Church (USA) is a bastion of scholarship; nor does ECUSA contain any sort of great wealth of reflections about reason and its place within the natural order.  One may, of course, criticize - but the criticisms of the draft only highlight the far more egregious lack of reflection on these issues within Anglicanism for quite some time.  As with many attempts at reform, the solution proposed is a product of the same lack that gave rise to the need for a solution in the first place.  This does not, of course, make the Covenant - or, for that matter, the English Reformation - worthless or undesirable.  It simply points to the need for more work to be done.

Incidentally, where do you get the idea that the Instruments of Unity are “fictive”?  That seems not a little bit odd.

Benjamin,

  Thank you for this reply. let me reply in a couple of ways.

  Natural law is a subset of Reason, Reason is that facility that assists us in identifying truth. Hooker saw Reason as an instrument of Revelation along with Divine Law (of which Scripture is a subset) and The law of Nature.  None could exist without the others and there as interplay among them.  But the capacity to understand Divine law, Scripture and Nature were a function of one’s capacity to exercise and live withint he Law of Reason.
  Reason became unfashionable in religious circles, to some extent, when the Enlightenment amputated it from other Revelation and made People the Measure of all things. It set up a false battle between Reason and Revelation and subsequent religious generations forgot what was an indispensable facility for apprehending the Divine. The descent into bibilcal literalism and fundamentalism was one consequence.
  Modernism, interestingly, helped too.  There was no new edition of Hooker after 1925 until the Folger edition.  Hooker was relegated to a resource on worship when his greatest gifts had been in law and the construction of Christian Societies. A friend and I published the only complete edition of Hooker in the 20th century in 1994 (the Keble edition) at a price students could afford.  It took 10 years to sell 1,000 copies!
  Now Drexel Gomez may not know better, but the folks at the ACI should.  This is the segue to you question about fictive.  The notion of the four bodies being Instruments of anything was coined in the Virginia Report.  It made for a nice paper, but no one in the community ever agreed that it was polity.  That report morphed itself into the Windsor Report where they were once again defined into existence as the Four Instruments of Unity, later the Four Instruments of Communion and later still the Conciliar Instruments.  As such the elevation of all of them to more than they were created to be is fiction.  It has no reality in a vote or consent among the Provinces.  It is the proverbial Emperor without any clothing.
  The Ridley Draft would purport to concretize them as such, but then fails to allow for an accumulated Provincial approval as is required for changes in the structure of the ACC.  So essentially they are implemented by fiat and not by consent.  And once implemented the Covenant purports to have judicial and legislative status.  Legislative at least in terms of the “teaching” authority as it is delegated.

  All of this process is quite clever, but fiction.  And since Provinces have never agreed to a central C&C it will have no power either.  It will certainly not matter in the litigation as the AAC and ACN originally hoped TEC’s expulsion would.

  So I cannot support this draft.  GC will fudge and leave it until 2012.

Michael -

You wrote

Natural law is a subset of Reason, Reason is that facility that assists us in identifying truth. Hooker saw Reason as an instrument of Revelation along with Divine Law (of which Scripture is a subset) and The law of Nature.

First, can you give me a reference (primary and/or secondary) on this?  Perhaps the issue is the relationship between Nature, natural law, and reason; from my read of Hooker, God has crafted Nature, in which is natural law - reason being oriented towards natural law.  Would this not set a hierarchy: God, Nature, natural law, human reason?  I do not see how natural law is a subset of reason.  Just to be clear, by reason I mean human reason, not Logos, of which natural law would surely be a subset.  Of course, human reason is not the same as Logos.

Second, on the Anglican Communion’s website, the Instruments of Unity are listed as Instruments of Communion.  Do you not see these terms as synonymous?  If not, why not?  Surely Lambeth 1930.49 binds communion and Anglican unity in the office of Canterbury:

The Conference approves the following statement of nature and status of the Anglican Communion, as that term is used in its Resolutions:

The Anglican Communion is a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces or regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, which have the following characteristics in common:

  1. they uphold and propagate the Catholic and Apostolic faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer as authorised in their several Churches;

  2. they are particular or national Churches, and, as such, promote within each of their territories a national expression of Christian faith, life and worship; and

  3. they are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference.

The Conference makes this statement praying for and eagerly awaiting the time when the Churches of the present Anglican Communion will enter into communion with other parts of the Catholic Church not definable as Anglican in the above sense, as a step towards the ultimate reunion of all Christendom in one visibly united fellowship.

Or am I missing something in your argument?

Benjamin Guyer - 12 June 2009 02:38 PM

Michael -

You wrote

Natural law is a subset of Reason, Reason is that facility that assists us in identifying truth. Hooker saw Reason as an instrument of Revelation along with Divine Law (of which Scripture is a subset) and The law of Nature.

First, can you give me a reference (primary and/or secondary) on this?  Perhaps the issue is the relationship between Nature, natural law, and reason; from my read of Hooker, God has crafted Nature, in which is natural law - reason being oriented towards natural law.  Would this not set a hierarchy: God, Nature, natural law, human reason?  I do not see how natural law is a subset of reason.  Just to be clear, by reason I mean human reason, not Logos, of which natural law would surely be a subset.  Of course, human reason is not the same as Logos.

Second, on the Anglican Communion’s website, the Instruments of Unity are listed as Instruments of Communion.  Do you not see these terms as synonymous?  If not, why not?  Surely Lambeth 1930.49 binds communion and Anglican unity in the office of Canterbury:

The Conference approves the following statement of nature and status of the Anglican Communion, as that term is used in its Resolutions:

The Anglican Communion is a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces or regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, which have the following characteristics in common:

  1. they uphold and propagate the Catholic and Apostolic faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer as authorised in their several Churches;

  2. they are particular or national Churches, and, as such, promote within each of their territories a national expression of Christian faith, life and worship; and

  3. they are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference.

The Conference makes this statement praying for and eagerly awaiting the time when the Churches of the present Anglican Communion will enter into communion with other parts of the Catholic Church not definable as Anglican in the above sense, as a step towards the ultimate reunion of all Christendom in one visibly united fellowship.

Or am I missing something in your argument?

Primary Source:

  Richard Hooker, Book I chapters 3 and 10

  The reason Natural law is a subset of the Law of Reason is that the Law of reason also encompasses Human law, the laws of nations and even the laws of Christian society.

  The Name of the Four has changed from time to time since the Virginia Report.  The ACI does it for the same reason Costco and other retailers move all the stuff around in their stores…. to bedevil us.  Having the Anglican Communion website adopt the fiction is the only success the ACI has had.  Nonetheless, while the ++ABC, Lambeth, the ACC and the Primates do meet, no one has vested them with any authority.  Defining it as so is just an end run around a full discussion and consent. 
  More importantly it was a desperate political act.  They thought that if they defined these tea parties as having authority they would actually stand up and act like it.  They did not.  The Primates tried to eat the other three.  Section 4.1.5 of the Ridley draft would create chaos, as if just giving them primped up names had not already created enough chaos.
  Indeed the passage you quote seems right for what the WWAC is, except it leaves out the ACC.

Let’s not talk about Natural law as if Barth never existed.

Charlie Clauss - 14 June 2009 10:31 PM

Let’s not talk about Natural law as if Barth never existed.

John Barth is like my favorite novelist! But he is more a fabulist than a Natural Law guy.

I don’t have anything to add, but I want to get emailed when additions to this thread are made.  I tend to lose these threads otherwise.  And this is a good one.

Thanks,
Shawn