A Very Godly Order: A Response to Ephraim Radner’s Making Promises: the Proposed Anglican Covenant in the Life of the Communion
- Michael Nai-Chiu Poon
“. . . A very godly order, agreeable to the Word of God and the Primitive Church, very comfortable to all good people desiring to live in Christian conversation, and most profitable to the estate of this realm (Second Act of Uniformity, 1552).”
Proposed Covenant, is not a “different kind of Anglicanism for the twenty-first century”. His commentary on the Covenant comes at the final section. He has two central concerns. First, the content of the Proposal Covenant is “not new at all” but rather “who we already are and are called to be more and more”. What is this “underlying reality, divine or otherwise is now coming into view, . . . even if somehow always there”? Hence second, Radner argues this underlying reality is “the already of God’s ‘Yes’”: a covenantal relation.
Yet, how does the Communion come to such realization? Here Radner’s confidence in the Communion status quo is clear. He hails Canterbury as the prime mover in such awakening. Further, paragraph after paragraph he notes how the Proposed Draft adopts wordings and resolutions reached through conciliar processes, be they Windsor report, Primates’ communiqué, Lambeth Conferences, ecumenical dialogue statements and suchlike. Does “this ordering of discernment” through the status quo in our recent histories give expression to the already of God’s ‘Yes’? Indeed, this is a faith-affirmation. Yet, I would caution to use this as a justification that “all is well” with our present structures and perceptions.
Two points, then, in brief:
First, recover the godly order. Indeed, as Radner points point, the 1
O’Donovan appeals to the Communion that we need to understand the homosexuals on their own terms rather than through the liberal interpretative lens. 2 This assessment also applies to the Global South. I asked elsewhere: How much does the Global South worth?: a market, sources for raw material, or a war theater? Not long ago, when seminarians from the Global South who come to the West for theological education, they need to contend with English and their lack of philosophical training. It is difficult to understand any theological book without a prior education in the Enlightenment.3 Perhaps what is new in the twenty-first century is that those in the West would find themselves increasingly out of place without knowledge of the present socio-political and lingual-cultural contexts in the wider world. Science and democracy (we can produce better, our political system makes more money) – the twin pillars in Western supremacy – no longer apply in this rapidly changing and complicated world. I do not suppose for a moment the ailing instruments and Communion commissions can help us face today’s world. Is the Communion ready to learn? Does not the Communion need to put in place a listening and learning process for the Global South, and break out of the quadrant-model?
This brings to my finishing remark. Dr Radner suggests an earlier Global South draft was the basis of the Proposed Covenant. He reveals what the Commission has to write “from scratch” is Section 6 (where items 4 to 6 involve disciplinary measures). Was that an oversight on the part of the Global South? Or are Global South churches more in touch with the reality of God’s “yes”? It is the faith expressed in a common order that binds us all in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic ecclesial community. Decisions on the ecclesiastical order are best left to Primates and bishops. Their provisions are necessary; but they are at best like the gracious provision of fig leaves that hide our shame for those who live in the East of Eden. Deeper and wider than we imagine are God’s love for the whole People of God. To deeper wrestling with our souls and wider fellowship with all his saints he has called us, that we may together enter his rest. The surprisingly unpolemical draft from the Global South is a concrete gesture for restoring trust.
Notes:
1 R Williams Franklin, “Winds of Change”, The Tablet, 24 February 2007, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/9399/.
2 “Good News for Gay Christians”, Fulcrum, http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=179.
3 I was fortunate thirty years ago to have a godly theology professor who suggested me to read Athanasius rather than modern theologies!