Evangelical and Anglican?

If Sydney Anglicans identify somewhat with the Puritans, especially of the Elizabethan era, it is also the case that they identify very strongly with the ‘Evangelical’ movement of the eighteenth century. The first chaplains of the colony were evangelicals and sponsored by the circle of Charles Simeon, one of the leading evangelicals of the Church of England. Like the Puritan movement, this was a movement that began within but subsequently exceeded the bounds of the Church of England. The established church proved too limiting for many and also sought to persecute and expel the proponents of evangelicalism. And yet, there is no doubt that evangelicalism has played and continues to play a major part in the history and ethos of Anglicanism. As Turnbull says, ‘…Anglican Evangelicalism is a manifestation of the Christian faith which gives fullness of expression to the core foundational beliefs of both Anglican and Evangelical Christian traditions’.

Most commonly, the Evangelical movement is thought to have begun in the eighteenth century with the conversion of John Wesley (1703-1791) in 1738. Labelled ‘enthusiasts’ by their opponents in the Church of England, the evangelicals were treated with a great deal of hostility and found difficulty in obtaining livings. This ‘enthusiasm’, though it seemed crass to some of their co-religionists, was representative of an extraordinary reawakening of ardent faith. It was also a judgement that the assumption that mere membership in the Church of England was sufficient for Christian identity was deeply flawed. It was after all a direct reaction against the dryness, formalism and rationalism that characterised much of early eighteenth century established Christianity. A Christianity without a heart for God was clearly deficient. The evangelical movement lead to missionary zeal and social reform on a grand scale; evangelicals formed societies and co-operated trans-denominationally. They wrote hymns that are still sung today. John Wesley and George Whitfield (1714-1770) become famous as open-air preachers. Like the Puritans, it is has to be said that the evangelicals oftentimes inhabited the fringes of the institutional church. They seemed less interested in ecclesiastical preferment and more concerned with missionary work. They were often directly persecuted by the authorities.
The term ‘evangelical’ itself is contested territory, both as a historical description and as a identifier for contemporary Christians. My purpose here is not to become entangled in this debate, but simply to show with broad brush strokes that evangelicalism and Anglicanism overlap considerably. Anglicanism is a great denominational home for evangelicalism, but it is not the only one. Likewise, evangelicalism has made and continues to make a considerable contribution to Anglicanism. The British historian David Bebbington’s description of evangelicalism is the best known and most widely used and will be sufficient to frame our discussion here. Bebbington speaks of ‘a quadrilateral of priorities’ – namely, conversionism, activism, Biblicism and crucicentricism.

Evangelicals are conversionist in that they proclaim the necessity of personal transformation in response to the gospel of grace. They preach to the heart, appealing for repentance of sin and turning to God in dependence. Their gospel is highly individualist in this sense – it is not sufficient for true Christian faith merely to be in possession of membership in a church grouping. Evangelicals are also, as Bebbington speaks of them, activist. They expected the evangelical conversion to result in a transformation of life. This meant that the believer was expected to be busy in the process of moral renewal and in seeking the conversion and moral renewal of others. The activism characteristic of evangelicals resulted in evangelistic mission but also in programmes for social welfare on a large scale. Evangelicals such as William Wilberforce and the Earl of Shaftesbury become bywords for the activist streak within evangelicalism.
Evangelicals have always been people of the Bible. Like their Reformation forebears, they have taken Scripture as the supreme authority for Christian life and for doctrine. The centrality of preaching for evangelicals is evidence of what this means in practice. As well as being Biblicist, the evangelical is also crucicentric – which means that central place is given to the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Christ is an exemplary figure and a moral teacher, but he is first and foremost the saviour who died for sin.

In bringing Anglicanism and evangelicalism together, Anglican Evangelicals have mostly but not exclusively subscribed to a form of moderate Calvinism. This description would apply to the faith of two of the greatest of evangelical Anglicans, Charles Simeon (1759-1836) and Bishop J.C. Ryle (1816-1900). They appealed for their identity within Anglicanism to the Protestant and Reformed nature of the Anglican settlements of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. However, they did not insist on the rigorous application of Reformed doctrine, especially over the extent of the atonement. Just as Article 17 is quite a restrained account of predestination, so Anglican Evangelicals have certainly asserted but not overemphasised this teaching. Most often co-operation in evangelism and fellowship with non-Calvinist evangelicals overrode concerns about absolute purity of doctrine. Even if the effects of the atonement were to be applied only to the elect, the preaching of the gospel was to be to all.

This ethos is perhaps where tension with the institutional framework of Anglicanism most often surfaces. More often than not, evangelicals have felt themselves excluded from the positions of power within the Anglican churches of the West. Their priority has always been the preaching of the gospel and not the maintenance of the institutional church. Their ecclesiology – and they most certainly do have an ecclesiology – does not tend to recognise the bureaucratic side of the denomination as ‘church’. If the institution inhibits the preaching of the gospel, then there is no question where compromise has to be made. For other Anglicans with a more hierarchical view this seems like schismatic behaviour.

As the Oxford movement grew in influence in the middle part of the nineteenth century, the evangelicals insisted on the Protestantism of the Church of England, often to the point of legal controversy. The most celebrated – or notorious, depending on your point of view - of these incidents was the ‘Gorham case’ of 1846-7. Evangelical clergyman Charles Gorham clashed with his Tractarian bishop Henry Phillpotts over the critical issue of infant baptism. Gorham, taking the evangelical position, asserted that baptism did not necessarily effect regeneration. After all, evangelicals believed in repentance and conversion. Phillpotts pointed to the wording of the Book of Common Prayer which seems to refer to the child as regenerate; and wanted to refuse him a post in his diocese as a man of unsound doctrine. The precedent set by the case could have made the position of every evangelical clergyman in England uncertain to say the least. The case made its way as far as the non-ecclesiastical Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which finally found for Gorham. What this meant was that the place of evangelicals within the Church of England was secured. Their interpretation of the formularies was certainly permitted, if not entirely endorsed.

In Sydney there is an entire diocese in a major city which is run by evangelicals. This breaks with the usual experience of evangelicals as having almost no institutional leverage and in having to live within diocesan structures which are liberal-Catholic in flavour. The evangelical behaviours which have irritated non-evangelical Anglicans historically are magnified in the case of Sydney. The unusual dominance of evangelicals in the diocesan structure of Sydney diocese means that Sydney does look strange to Anglicans who are accustomed to liberal-Catholic hegemony – and ecclesiology - elsewhere. Liberal-Catholics expect to be in charge of things. But they would be mistaken in calling evangelicalism ‘unAnglican’, for the moderate Calvinist evangelical outlook of Sydney with its missionary activism and its Biblicism and with its emphasis on the atoning blood of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sins is utterly consistent with the evangelical Anglican tradition that has had an unbroken presence in the Church of England for nearly three centuries. The English evangelical Anglican Alister McGrath has written:

My concern is simply to insist that evangelicalism is, historically and theologically, a legitimate and respectable option within Anglicanism. At no point is evangelicalism inconsistent with any of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the only document apart from Scripture, the creeds and the Prayer Book, regarded as authoritative for Anglicans.

It has not only been my intention to show here that Sydney’s evangelical Anglicans have a legitimate place within Anglicanism. History shows that the evangelicalism held so dear by Sydney’s Anglicans arose from and was to a great extent nurtured by Anglicanism. The Anglican operating system was not always strictly compatible with the evangelical software, but at many points it actually helped -and helps - it to run better.

Puritan and Anglican?

Sydney Anglicans more often than not trace their heritage to the great Church of England figures of the sixteenth century – to Cranmer, to Latimer and Ridley and to the others who were leaders under Edward VI and martyred under his sister Mary. Marcus Loane (1911-2009), Archbishop of Sydney from 1966-81 and formerly Principal of Moore College, authored a number of popular histories of this period after the manner of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. The defiant stance of these figures on the basis of the Protestant and Reformed character of the Church of England was an marker of identity in 1950s and 60s Australia – a period in which sectarianism was much more prominent as a social issue and a period in which the Anglo-Catholic movement within the Anglican Church of Australia was making a great deal of headway. As the national church came together, would Sydney Anglicans remain true to the faith for which the great Marian martyrs died? Certainly they would.

The somewhat romantic appeal to the martyrdoms of the Marian reign is a hint that a particular reading of the course of the English Reformation is in place: that the short reign of Edward VI was a Protestant high water-mark for the Church of England, but that the programme begun in that brief period (1547-53) had remained unfinished. On this reading of the English Reformation, there is some sympathy for those who later chafed at the slow rate of change under Elizabeth’s rule and who became known as ‘the Puritans’. It is one of those words – like ‘fundamentalist’- that has become (indeed always was) a religious term of abuse, with its image of humourless and stern moral nitpickers. This label has been frequently applied to Sydney Anglicans by their detractors not only to indicate their determination to further reform Anglicanism along Protestant lines but also to their alleged moral seriousness.

Historically speaking, the label ‘Puritan’ is a broad brush. There were Puritans over the long period of their prominence (from 1560s through to 1680s) who strongly disagreed with each other over what needed to change in the church and which doctrines to emphasise. Ultimately it was the Puritans of Parliament who rose up against the forces of Charles I and had him executed in 1649, inaugurating the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell (1653-58). Puritans were at various times persecuted and even expelled by the church authorities. Yet at the same time, the presence within the Church of England of those who might identify with the Puritan disposition has been ongoing. As Richard Turnbull has written ‘[T]hroughout the history of the Church of England there has also been a persecution of Puritan divines and yet also a continuing presence within the Church of those of Puritan disposition.’ This was so even after the ‘Great Ejection’, when nearly 2,000 Puritan clergy chose to leave their livings in protest against the 1662 Act of Uniformity. Interestingly, it was the issue of the royal supremacy which was most controversial. The restoration of the Book of Common Prayer, somewhat modified in line with Puritan sensibilities, was not nearly as problematic.

To identify with the Puritans, then, is not to repudiate Anglicanism. It is certainly to insist on the importance of right doctrine and on the propriety of ongoing reform of church practices in line with Scripture – and this is not to the taste of some other Anglicans. Some streams of Puritanism certainly found themselves outside the Church of England. Those Puritans who would advocate Presbyterianism, for example, found themselves outside of the bounds of the Church of England following the Restoration. It would be hard to make the case for a non-episcopal version of Anglicanism today. On matters of church governance, discipline and order, the normative rather than the regulative principle holds sway with Anglicanism. However, it was frequently matters to do with Church-State relations that led to the rebellion and then departure of Puritan clergy from the established church. It is fascinating to note that this was the very goad against which the Oxford movement kicked. John Keble’s famous 1833 sermon ‘National Apostasy’ was an attack on the collaboration of the Church of England with its government. For Anglicans not now living in England under royal supremacy, this issue is entirely irrelevant.

What this means is that Puritans have had a long-standing place within the Church of England and within Anglicanism, and that one of the major issues on which they took their stand they were not the only ones to do so and there is now in any case no longer any controversy. If Sydney Anglicans are Puritans, it does not follow that they are not also Anglicans.

Anglicanism as 'unabashed Protestantism'?

What is an ‘Anglican’? In one sense the term itself is anachronistic. The Church of England is primarily an institution, the national church of a particular country. It was only with the growth of the British Empire that the question of ‘Anglicanism’ arose – especially when there was now a political separation between England and the US. The Episcopal Church was not governed by the King of England from 1776 – so in what sense could it, and other former Church of England churches, understand their continuity with the church that had given them birth? It was an identity question that was felt with a particular pressure in the nineteenth century and which has decisive significance for the way we consider the question of ‘Anglicanism’ today.

Those of more Catholic disposition have emphasised the continuity of the English church today with the church of the pre-Reformation period. Even when it was in communion with the Church of Rome, the English church (the ecclesia Anglicana) had its own remarkable and somewhat independent identity. The tension between the papacy and the English monarchy – which came to a head in the Reformation – had many precedents, including the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, in 1170 by King Henry II’s henchmen. However, any assertion of a continuity of heritage between the pre-Reformation Church and what came later has to reckon with the complexity and diversity of that history. For example, in the seventh century AD both Celtic and Roman styles of Christianity competed for supremacy in the English Church. Which is to be held as more authentically ‘Anglican’? Or is it a synthesis between them? Where in the story does the radicalism of the Oxford scholar John Wyclif (1330-78) and the movement of his followers, the Lollards, fit in? That is to say: describing a continuous line from the pre-Reformation period to the present has more challenges than the standard Anglo-Catholic description allows. The demand for reform and the appeal to the authority of Scripture is part of the picture that ought not to be obscured.

Since the 1980s, revisionist historians such as Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy have tried to describe the English Reformation as a top-down and chiefly political movement which had little traction amongst the English people themselves. There is no doubt that the English Reformation was achieved through the workings of statecraft as much as through the conversion of souls. Henry VIII’s ‘great matter’ - the problem of his barren marriage to Catherine of Aragon – was the catalyst not only for an institutional break with the Church of Rome and with the papacy, but for a change in the theological outlook of the English church. While Haigh and Duffy try to paint this as entirely engineered by a coterie of theologians like Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, there is no question but that the faith of Reformation Europe had made some inroads among the English people, however clandestine.

Thomas Cranmer is not a figure for Anglicans equivalent to the way Martin Luther is for Lutherans. Nonetheless, Cranmer’s Reformation bequeathed to the English Church as particular theological outlook which cannot be eclipsed in any description of Anglican identity. Though some have tried, Richard Turnbull notes ‘[I]t is difficult to deny the formative role of the Reformation on the polity, theology and ministry of the Church of England.’

Cranmer set down three large foundation stones upon which henceforth the English church was subsequently built: the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. These have not come down to us unaltered from his pen. They were subject to a degree of refinement and alteration. Even so, the attempt to minimise the importance of these formularies in some parts of the Anglican church in recent years only reveals an embarrassment with the unabashed Protestantism of these documents. While it would be historically naïve to think of the career of Cranmer as the reset point for Anglican identity – as if nothing has happened since then, or as if he is an Anglican Muhammad – it is certainly the case that no description of Anglican identity can bypass or minimise his contribution to the theological distinctiveness of Anglicanism.

‘Unabashed Protestantism’ – is that an overstatement? That the liturgy was now to be in the vernacular was in itself a recognition of a different – Protestant (or better, ‘evangelical’) - understanding of the very nature of Christian faith itself. The words of the Prayer Book were not meant to be experienced by the people as a mystery evading their understanding. The service of Holy Communion was, in successive editions of the Prayer Book, moving in a more Protestant direction. Recent work by renowned Oxford historian Dairmaid MacCulloch shows that Cranmer’s Eucharistic theology was becoming even less like Luther’s understanding of the ‘real presence’ and shifting towards a Reformed understanding. The document that became The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion is unmistakeably Reformed in character. It is true that the articles do allow for a deal of flexibility, and do not pronounce on some controversial matters. Yet that should not be mistaken for some policy of reticence or the endorsement of infinite variety. The embarrassment of liberal and Catholic Anglicans at the Articles is a fairly strong indication that the plain reading of them sees them as an expression of a Reformed theological outlook.
The Articles assert the primacy of the authority of Scripture for Anglican faith and practice. That is not to say that Scripture is the only authority, but it is held to be the supreme authority, even over the great creeds of the church (Article VIII). Article VI reads: ‘Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation’. According to the articles, Scripture is to act as the measure of what Anglicans believe.

For two great Elizabethan Anglicans, Scripture was likewise of paramount importance. Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is often held up as the doyen of Anglican divines – ‘judicious’, rational, careful and moderate in tone. He was an opponent of the Puritan extremists in the Church of England who were moving against the episcopate and against all customs not explicitly sanctioned in Scripture. For a long time it was thought that he had endorsed ‘the three-legged stool’ of Scripture, Reason and Tradition as equal, mutually-informing authorities in Anglican thinking. Careful reading of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity tells another story. He writes:
What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever ( Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).

Scripture, reason and tradition do not have equal weight for Hooker. Quite clearly, Scripture has precedence, then reason and third, church tradition. Though the Puritans were mistaken when they opposed tradition where Scripture was silent, they were correct in placing Scripture ahead of all other authorities. Hooker can be described as endorsing the ‘normative’ view of Scripture with regard to church order and ceremonies, as opposed to the ‘regulative’ view championed by his Puritan opponents such as William Perkins and Thomas Cartwright. He conceded that the threefold order of ministry – bishop, priest and deacon – cannot be directly established from Scripture, but that the historic episcopate is nevertheless a good way to frame the polity of the English church.

In his 1562 work Apology of the Church in England, Bishop John Jewel (1522-71) of Salisbury made an ardent defence of the Reformation settlement in England, setting it over against the abuses of the Church of Rome. He depicted the Church of England as episcopal, but thoroughly Reformed in doctrine. The Church of England in its stance against Rome needed to be convincingly apostolic. It could do so by appeal to Scripture; but also by appeal to the Church Fathers and to the Councils. This was not to invest them with an authority independent of Scripture, but to show that, even on their preferred ground, the Roman Church was not the true heir of the apostolic teaching.

To the work of these two Elizabethan divines we might well add the declaration of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral in 1888 as an instance in Anglican history when the primacy of Scripture was clearly asserted. The 1888 Lambeth conference of bishops received in slightly amended form a document which had been passed by the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America in 1886. The four points of the quadrilateral are, in order: Holy Scripture as ‘the rule and ultimate standard of faith’; the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed; the two sacraments; and the historic episcopate. The basis of the unity of the Anglican Communion is thus a common confession of faith derived from Scripture.

What these examples prove is quite modest, but it is sufficient. They demonstrate that those who hold that it is thoroughly and authentically Anglican to view Scripture as the supreme authority have a more than reasonable case grounded in the major documents of Anglican history and in the thought of its major theologians. Furthermore, on soteriology and the sacraments it is quite clearly possible to discern a succession of authoritative figures and documents that assert the Reformed view, however distasteful this might be to some contemporary Anglicans. There are other readings of Anglican history – most notably the reading perpetuated by the Oxford movement in the 19th century, which emphasised the Caroline divines and their appeal to the Church Fathers. Yet even this sketch of Anglicanism shows that this reading of Anglican history could only ever be a selective and polemical one. A Christian faith which places it emphasis on the supreme authority of Scripture for doctrine and practice and which upholds the Reformed view or salvation and the sacraments can with confidence assert its continuous place within the Anglican story. A view of Anglicanism which places Scripture as supreme authority and which has a Reformed soteriology and which has a flexible attitude to liturgical practice certainly has a good case to be considered as authentically Anglican. However, this plurality and flexibility is not infinite.

An Emerging Church Bibliography

...for an MA Course I am teaching with Archie Poulos next year.


Burke, Spencer. Out of the Ooze : Unlikely Love Letters to the Church from Beyond the Pew. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2007.

Burke, Spencer, and Colleen Pepper. Making Sense of Church : Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations About God, Community, and Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003.

Burke, Spencer, and Barry Taylor. A Heretic's Guide to Eternity. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Carson, D. A. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church : Understanding a Movement and Its Implications. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005.

DeYoung, Kevin, and Ted Kluck. Why We're Not Emergent : By Two Guys Who Should Be. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008.

Frost, Michael, and Alan Hirsch. Rejesus : A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church. Peabody, Mass. Sydney: Hendrickson Publishers ; Strand Publishing, 2009.

Gibbs, Eddie, and Ryan K. Bolger. Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005.

Grenz, Stanley J. Renewing the Center : Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2000.

Grenz, Stanley J., and John R. Franke. Beyond Foundationalism : Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context. 1st ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Jones, Tony. The New Christians : Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. 1st ed, A Living Way. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Kimball, Dan. The Emerging Church : Vintage Christianity for New Generations. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003.

Kirkpatrick, Cathy, Mark Pierson, and Michael Riddell. The Prodigal Project : Journey into the Emerging Church. London: SPCK, 2000.

McKnight, Scot. The Blue Parakeet : Rethinking How You Read the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008.

McKnight, Scot. Embracing Grace : A Gospel for All of Us. Brewster MA: Paraclete Press, 2005.

McKnight, Scot. The Jesus Creed : Loving God, Loving Others. Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2004.

McLaren, Brian D. A Generous Orthodoxy : Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished Christian. El Cajon, CA: Youth Specialties, 2006.

McLaren, Brian D. A New Kind of Christianity : Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. 1st ed. New York: HarperOne, 2010.

Murray, Stuart. Church after Christendom, After Christendom. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004.

Smith, James K. A. Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? : Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, Church and Postmodern Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006.

Sweet, Leonard I., and Frank Viola. Jesus Manifesto : Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2010.

Tomlinson, Dave. The Post Evangelical. Rev. North American ed. El Cajon, CA: Emergent YS/Zondervan, 2003.

Webber, Robert. Ancient-Future Faith : Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999.

Webber, Robert. Ancient-Future Worship : Proclaiming and Enacting God's Narrative, Ancient-Future Series. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2008.

Webber, Robert, John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, Karen M. Ward, and Mark Driscoll. Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches : Five Perspectives. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007.

Preaching and the confusion of terms

The notion of preaching as it has come to be understood and practiced in evangelical pulpits is beset by terminological and theological confusions. Peter Adam defines preaching as ‘the explanation and application of the Word in the assemble congregation of Christ’. That definition certainly reflects current practice. Yet it is hard to find a direct comparison between what we can see practised in the New Testament - and the terminology that was used to describe it – and what we know as ‘preaching’ in the churches of the Sydney diocese and elsewhere. There is certainly a well-established tradition of preaching as a sustained monologue from a trained pastor in the setting of a church service. This tradition may be a proper development from the New Testament experience, but it is hard to see how it directly compares to what happened in the early churches.

Characteristically, Donald Robinson worked on the words. In an unpublished paper read at the Autumn School of Theology held at Moore College in 1966, Robinson pointed out that there finds three fairly clearly distinct activities by which the Word of God is conveyed in the New Testament. There is the handing on, or teaching, of the paradosis or tradition. There was the activity of prophecy, a highly valued gift in which exhortations and encouragements were delivered. And then there was the preaching of the gospel to those outside the church: ‘the very spearhead of God’s overture to lost mankind’.

The conventional ‘sermon’ (literally ‘a word’) is usually a mixture of all three of these things in various proportions. A preacher characteristically preaches the gospel, passes on the faith ‘once delivered to all the saints’, and prophesies (in the sense that Donald Robinson means it here). Yet it would also be the case that these activities are not restricted to formal occasions. The ministry of the Word, Sydney Anglicans would want to emphasise, can take place mutually and informally among Christians. Those without office in the church are invited to join in this mutual Word ministry. Romans 15:14 calls on Christians to ‘instruct one another’, and is confident of the capability of any Christian in the Spirit to perform this role. The day of Pentecost, after all, was declared by Peter to by the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel that the Spirit would be poured out on young men and women such that prophecy would no longer be a gift restricted to a few carefully designated individuals.

While there is a kind of democratisation of this ministry of the word, there is also in practice the sense in which ‘preaching’ is connected to a particular ‘office’ and is the work of a particular designated individual, the preacher. The sermon that is preached by this person is usually given the bulk of the time in a church service. It is somewhat confusing to use ‘preaching’ language to describe the informal encouragements and exhortations that occur between Christians. Furthermore, there is no need for a sense of embarrassment that giving this particular person’s Word ministry pride of place contradicts the Reformation notion of ‘priesthood of all believers’. Far better to use the label ‘ministry of the word’ to describe that general activity and to reserve ‘preaching’ for the specific, formal monologue in the church meeting.

It is extremely useful to have the terminology of the New Testament clarified and shown that it doesn’t quite fit with today’s practice of preaching. This helps us to be appropriately flexible about our customs. But it is entirely appropriate that this traditional practice has developed as a way of receiving the New Testament material rather than as a way of expressing it exactly. Returning to the primitive terminology in order to clear away the accretions of traditional practice, as if in that terminology was indicator of normativity to be found, is a dubious process. It is doubtful whether a coherent or consistent answer could be found. The New Testament terminology is somewhat loose and overlapping. The data is too sketchy. Enormous effort has been put into trying to define what ‘prophecy’ and ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching’ actually mean, on the assumption that the usage of these terms by the New Testament church reflects a normative practice. I not at all convinced that this is a productive line of inquiry. ‘Preaching’ as we know it now is an activity of the church which is entirely in keeping with the kind of church it has learnt to be from reading the New Testament – even if it is not exactly what the churches of the New Testament were doing when they met.

The dramatic persona of the preacher

Preaching is carried out by preachers. Although as Protestants, Sydney Anglican evangelicals do not have a priestly view of the ministry, the preacher is certainly a designated, called and highly trained for his role. For all the talk about every-member ministry, it is preaching that is the chief ministry in the congregation and the most special calling. The figure of the preacher assumes an almost heroic status. Ideally, the preacher embodies Christ himself – and like one of the great martyrs of the church is ready to suffer for the truth if necessary. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the preacher imitates the apostle Paul as he in turn speaks of his own imitation of Christ in his ministry in 1 and 2 Corinthians. The onerous duty of the preacher is that he is called upon to say hard as well as gentle things; but this risky duty lends to the preaching profession a sense of romance.

The preacher’s privilege is extraordinary. His ministry is not merely in God’s service; it is in the terrifying honour of being God’s mouthpiece. The ministry of the word is the first and most important of ministries, and he is its designated exponent for the congregation. The word of God constitutes the church in its very essence. It calls it into being. And he, the preacher, wields this word – not exclusively or without accountability, but as his calling and duty.

If being a preacher is a joy with many delights, then it is also a burden with many pains. The dramatization of the role of the preacher in the life of the congregation is reflected in Phillip Jensen’s description of the preaching profession as ‘inherently dangerous.’ As he puts it, ‘If we are going to faithful preachers of the very words of God, delivering, explaining and applying his message to the people he has given us to love, we need to be ready for those times when people don’t love us back…This sort of faithfulness will inevitably lead to difficulty, conflict, suffering and persecution.’

The heroism of expository preaching in Sydney has been further shaped by the Katoomba Christian Conventions. The KCC is a non-denominational organisation with evangelical convictions, but Sydney Anglicans have had a substantial influence in it and have been substantially influenced by it. The conventions, especially the Youth Convention which ran from the 1970s until the mid-1990s in January each year, are intended to be a showcase of the best preachers and the best preaching. Though the KCC is non-denominational, Sydney Anglicans were often on the platform. It is the occasional nature and remarkable setting of the convention which means that the preaching heard there lingers long in the memory in a way in which the regular Sunday preaching tends not to.

At Katoomba, preachers like John Chapman, John Woodhouse and Phillip Jensen ministered to thousands of people in their late teens and early adulthood. Those who would fill Moore College to overflowing in the 1990s and 2000s had filled Katoomba’s massive tent in 1980s. It would be very difficult to forget Woodhouse’s remarkable exposition of the book of Leviticus in 1986 as a model of what could be done with the Sydney Anglican method of preaching. Leviticus is perhaps the least promising of all Old Testament books for a sermon series – and especially for a series at a major conference at which the organisers were hoping to attract thousands of young people. And yet, without resorting to a terrible and bizarre legalism, Woodhouse preached this difficult text as though it were God’s word for today.

Though it is something of a habit to bemoan the standard of the preaching, the quality of preaching in ordinary Sydney pulpits is very high. The overwhelming majority of preachers are well-trained (often to postgraduate level), mature and articulate. Even so, there were, for a couple of decades, a small group of local preachers who exemplified what expository preaching could achieve, and whose leadership of the movement as a whole was linked to their presence in the pulpit. Phillip Jensen’s influence was increased by the recording, cataloguing and distribution of tapes of his sermons. After the turn of the millennium, however, this technology was swiftly and rapidly superseded by the advent of mp3s and the internet. It became possible to hear the best of overseas preachers like John Piper, Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller regularly and almost without cost. Each of these men, whose Reformed convictions Sydney Anglicans share, has built enormous ministries in large US cities on a scale unimaginable in Australia. Preachers now preach in an environment where truly extraordinary preaching is available to their congregations in a few quick mouse-clicks.

The visit of Mark Driscoll to Australia in 2008 signalled a sea-change in the local evangelical scene. Some of the responses have seemed panicked. There has been an awful lot of muddle and a diffusion of strategies. The boundary-riding, heroic identity that had belonged to the preacher was now transferred to the figure of the church planter. While church planting is a noble calling, and church planters are indeed preachers, the danger in this transferral is that the nature and priority of the Christian ministry becomes much more managerial. New churches will not begin without good planning and effective management. But they will not be what they really are if listening to the voice of God in the Scriptures is not central to their life together.

I have spoken here about the dramatization of the role of the preacher in the culture of evangelicalism. To point it out is not to deride it. Biblically speaking, the activity of 'preaching' (as we pratice it) is linked to certain offices established by dint of the character of the preacher. I think this dramatization is entirely appropriate in a church or fellowship of churches that wants to be a church that listens to the word of God as its focal point. Where it becomes problematic is when the expectation that there will be rejection and persecution for preachers leads to a deafness to genuinely constructive criticism. The preacher speaks the words of God, but he does so as a fallible and sinful human being. He word he speaks is a word of man as well as a word of God. Sometimes he will be simply inept; at other times, he will be mistaken. He may be confused and inarticulate. He may be in sinful error and simply disobedient. To point out any of these, a person should not be made to feel as if he or she is being directly disobedient to the word of God, or stoking the flames beneath a martyr's pyre. It seriously dishonours the memory of the genuine martyrs to call a little bit of robust disagreement 'persecution' and 'rejection'.

Words and their background

Christians are bound to take words quite seriously and biblical words in particular. This is in particular once we realise that words have peculiar histories. The analysis of words is inevitably a historical exercise - it is diachronic, we might say, as well as synchronic. It is important not only to establish what a particular word means in general usage at a particular time and locale but also to reckon with the way in which a word may be quickly - in a matter of weeks even - be adapted to a new usage and take on new connotations. Some of this can be deliberate, but most of this evolution in words takes place without individuals ever deciding for it to be the case.

A particular term may have an 'ordinary', 'literal' or direct and non-technical sense, but find itself adapted to a technical usage in not very much time at all.

This takes careful observation and delineation in the contemporary world, but it is even more difficult to manage with ancient words. On the one hand, it appears to be a quite easy matter because we can count the number of times a particular Greek word is used in the extent literature, and it is frequently only a matter of, say, fifty instances. When we narrow it down to the period we are looking at to within a century, we may find only a handful. It is then a simple matter, is it not, to decide what the word most often meant, and so what it must mean in the New Testament setting.

Not so fast. One of the obvious difficulties here is that we have no record of oral usage. Furthermore, we can surmise that a great deal of written examples have simply passed from view. So, it seems that the proposed method of totting up the known references to a word in the extant literature is more guesswork than it appears. Now, granted, the evidence available is not nothing or irrelevant; but it is certainly not nearly complete. And when theological edifices are built upon these linguistic foundations, they are liable to fall down at the next puff of wind. Context is always king. Example: I don't happen to think that 'kephale' means 'source' in 1 Cor 11, but it seems to me that it would take an overwhelming mass of counter-examples to overturn the simple pressure of context, if the context was telling us that 'kephale' means 'source'.

In any case, a word can fairly quickly take on a quite specific 'technical' sense in a small group - especially a small group who are making a new identity for themselves out of what they perceive to be the wreckage of the old. We can observe this process in the way that our modern urban tribes quickly adapt old terms and invent new ones to create a special 'in' language that does a job peculiar to their own needs, and establishes and strengthens their identity. And this local and particular setting trumps all when it comes to the meanings of words. It beats the dictionary every time.

How does this relate to the New Testament? One of the exegetical strategies I see employed a great deal is a kind of linguistic primitivism which assumes that any 'technical' senses for words in the NT are actually most likely not there but the effects of us reading through the lens of later Church history. This has especially to do with words that are employed in the institutional life of later Christianity. So, for example, ekklesia originally had the ordinary sense of 'gathering', not Church in the technical sense. So we should not read the word when it appears on the page in its 'special, religious' (=bad and corrupt) sense but in its 'ordinary' sense (such as can be determined of course).

The fallacy here is this (quite apart from the Harnackian negativity towards the notion of an institutional or formally structured church): the texts of the New Testament are written AFTER the application of the particular vocabulary in question and not before it. The notion that baptism was connected to a ritual involving water which symbolised spiritual baptism, for example, PREDATES the composition of Matthew's gospel. It would be impossible to imagine Matthew using the word or his intended audience reading it without the technical inference, since his gospel is not written till a number of decades after the church has got going and has been splashing quite a bit of water about. It is impossible to conceive of a pre-technical, so-called 'ordinary' usage of the word ekklesia. We neglect to our peril the indisputable fact that much of the New Testament postdates the very early church and so more likely reflects its specific, new, even tribalised use of words - which in turn was shaped by the apostolic preaching (which when you think about it is a conceptual revolution of the highest order: sacrifice, victory, temple, redemption - all become completely transformed as concepts under the press of the gospel).

We can also see in the New Testament itself the trajectories along which words are beginning to travel - and we shouldn't assume that where the individual words end up is therefore not sanctioned by the NT. The word 'martyrion' for example (a favourite of mine) is not quite in the NT yet the specific and technical word for 'a person who dies for their Christian belief'. It still has the 'ordinary' sense of 'witness'. But you can see it gathering steam - when Jesus talks to the disciples in John 15, the appearances of the disciples in the law courts as suffering witnesses are clearly on view. Likewise, the blood of the martyrion which cries out from under the altar in Revelation is very close to something like what the word will become later on. The point is this: the job of this observation of words is not scrape away the later accretions as if they are almost always distortions of the true primitive meaning of the word. On the contrary: the later meaning of the word may be a very good clue as to what the earlier meaning was. Or, in fact, the later more technical/official/institutional sense may already be well in view in the NT usage.

Narrawallee

Some photos of our holiday house. We are looking to rent to interested holidaymakers!

Is preaching itself the Word of God?

The following are some notes on Peter Adam's book Speaking God's Words - The Art of Biblical Preaching. I have been asking lately about how the practice of 'preaching' in evangelical circles came to be what it is. A crucial question is: how does preaching relate to the notion of the Word of God? Is it itself the word of God?

Peter Adam addresses this very question on pp. 112ff. He notes how the issue was raised in the 2nd Helvetic Confession of 1566 which states that 'The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God'. Adam notes that this statement - which is actually in the marginalia of the Confession - has been taken as a Reformation axiom by Runia and Bloesch and others. However, Adam suggests that it needs more careful theological treatment. He looks at Bullinger's sermons - since Bullinger was the author the aforemention confession it seems worth asking what Bullinger might have thought he meant. Adam asserts that Bullinger was arguing that 'sermons are the means by which the Word of God is applied to people, not that the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God' (p. 115) in the baldest sense. In the verse usually used to support a closer identification of preaching and the word of God - 1 Thess 2:13 - Paul seems to be speaking about his particular authority as an apostle rather than his more general role as a preacher. (He doesn't discuss 1 Peter 4:11: 'If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God' I note). Adam deduces: 'it may be fair to infer that when we preach Paul's words we are preaching the Word of God, but it does not necessarily follow that our preaching is in itself the Word of God' (p. 115).

For Adam, too high a view of preaching as the Word of God may cause problems because it may herald the beginning of a Protestant papacy. Too close an identification of the preacher's human words with 'the Word of God' gives the preaching itself unwarranted and apparently underived authority. Preaching is authoritative and divinely inspired (we might say) and ought to be received as such inasmuch as it is derived from and faithful to the divinely inspired text. (Should we speak of 'preaching the Word of God' - with Scripture remaining the Word of God that is so preached - rather than preaching being the Word of God?)

Adam writes:
Perhaps the best way of describing it is to say that when human beings explain the Word of God, preach it, teach it, and urge people to accept it, then the Word of God achieves its purpose and this is on eof the normal ways in which God brings his Word to human beings. It is perhaps helpful to describe this in terms of the work of the Spirit. ... The Scripture itself is a product of the Spirit, and when the Spirit works in the preacher and in the hearers, the words of God are mediated and bear fruit in the lives of those who hear. (p. 118)

If our preaching is true to Scripture it will be the means by which God brings the Word of God to those who hear us. (p. 120) .... and thus, we can speak, I think, of preaching as the Word of God when it is preaching of the Word of God.

Should we use the word 'metaphor' in talking about the cross?

Yes, I think so. We should use the word 'metaphor' (although I am happy with 'models' or 'analogies' I guess - see JI Packer) because:

1 - 'descriptions' as a term simply does not tell us what is going in in the relationship between the words and their meaning.

2 - 'metaphor' reminds us that the language being used is being stretched beyond its ordinary sphere of reference, and so we need to be careful in how we use it. If we fail to see that the langauge is metaphorical in nature, we distort it badly.

3 - metaphors are a not to be afeard of. They can be a precise way communicating actual, real things. In fact, they are ideally suited to expressing things that are new or singular in human experience. Like the atonement.

4 - that the langauge of the NT re the atonement is metaphorical allows us to see how the different metaphors moderate and shape one another - especially when we see Paul stringing his metaphors together, as in Rom 3:21-31. If we just say these are 'descriptions', then we are not likely to be as aware of how this goes on in the Scriptural texts.

The 'ransom' example shows how everything can go badly wrong if we don't reckon with the metaphorical nature of the language we are using. Jesus' death IS ransom-ish - it can be understood as resembling that interaction between human beings that we name 'ransom', but if we press the metaphor too far (which the Bible doesn't do) we start making theologically dangerous statements about the devil being paid a ransom price and so on.

Now what about sacrifice?

Nothing on the surface about Jesus' death was sacrificial, in the usual sense of the word. He did not apparently die 'for' anyone, in the sense that a lifesaver might die trying to save a drowning person. It just looked like an ordinary execution. There was no religious ritual. It happened outside the temple, not in it. There was not an offering priest. There was a human and not an animal victim (expressly forbidden in the OT). It is very different to a sacrifice as the Jews (and the pagans) knew it. Right?

So when we hear Jesus himself and the other NT writers refering to Jesus' death as a sacrifice, we know that some stretching and rennovating of the concept of sacrifice is going on. And so it proves: Jesus's death on the cross is yoked to the notion of sacrifice familiar to Israel from its history and from its religious life; and it is done in such a remarkable way that the very notion of sacrifice itself is completely transformed! Hebrews has to show how Jesus is both priest AND sacrifice in order to make it work. In what previously known sacrificial system was this the case? Jesus calls his body 'the temple' (it's a metaphor again!) in order to indicate that now serves the function of and discplaces the original temple.

This is part of our difficulty here: the yoking of the idea of 'sacrifice' to Jesus' death has so transformed our human thinking about sacrifice (at least in the Judaeo-Christian west) that we find it hard to imagine a way of thinking about sacrifice without Jesus' death. (see Nick Colyer's comment)

Further, we feel uneasy with the term 'metaphor' because we want to know (rightly) that the Biblical langauge is a) not random and b) describes actual things that occurred between us and God and not just pictures of the possibility of something occurring. But furrow not your brows: a) the metaphors are NOT random, but revealed and inspired and b) they do depict real and actual things that occurred.

Was the death of Jesus a sacrifice, actually? Well, yes: but not like one that has ever been made before or since. By calling it a sacrifice the NT writers have helped us to relearn what sacrifice actually means all over again!

Euthanasia piece on The Punch

HERE

Are Sydney Anglicans Fundamentalists? Muriel Porter thinks so

The critics of Sydney of course continue to use the term 'fundamentalist' as a pejorative against them. One such very recent example is Muriel Porter’s book The New Puritans – The Rise of Fundamentalism in the Anglican Church. Make no mistake: Porter loathes Sydney Anglicanism and is not afraid to say so. Though it is published by a University Press (Melbourne), this book is a piece of unmitigated polemic rather than having any pretence to some kind of scholarly objectivity (as the author herself admits). The title of her project is an indication of the purpose of her tract. If she can prove that Sydney Anglicans are rightly labelled ‘fundamentalists’ then that is, in a sense, enough. In the minds of the audience to which Porter imagines she is writing, fundamentalism is per definition a very bad thing. Her thesis is that ‘Sydney Diocese is now in several key respects fundamentalist although it detests this badge’; therefore, she denies the right of Sydney Anglicans to self-describe. In fact, protesting against being called ‘fundamentalists’ (as Robinson has done) is exactly what fundamentalists do.

So, she is right about that Sydney Anglicans do not wish to be called fundamentalists. Archbishop Peter Jensen sought to distinguish fundamentalism from his kind of evangelicalism in his first major address following his election in 2001. In that speech he outline fundamentalism as implying ‘an anti-intellectual, backward-looking and ugly zeal in the cause of religion’. He agrees that both the fundamentalist and the evangelical hold to the supreme authority of Scripture. The difference is that, while the evangelical interprets the Bible ‘literally’, the fundamentalist interprets it ‘literalistically’. A literal, or plain reading of Scripture might still make use of traditional interpretation, the genuine advances of modern biblical scholarship and was open to learning from contemporary thought.

Porter is less than impressed by this speech, mostly because she can’t grasp the really not very subtle difference between ‘literal’ and ‘literalistic’. There is more to fundamentalism than that, she says, and points to Barr’s notion of the particular ‘fundamentalist mentality’. Never mind that Peter Jensen has actually acknowledged a similar kind of definition in his speech. What is that mentality? Porter wheels on the definitions provided by Oxford academic Harriet Harris: a rationalist mindset, a ‘Calvinistic zeal to root out error and preserve doctrinal purity’, charismatic and authoritarian leadership, behavioural requirements, and a tendency to separatism. To this Porter adds ‘a commitment to male headship’. This list is of course not arbitrary. Porter’s determination is to define ‘fundamentalism’ in such a way that her description of Sydney Anglicanism fits the definition. But the definition is already decided by her perceptions of Sydney Anglicans. While she acknowledges that there is a vast literature in the study of religion about fundamentalism (she doesn’t mention the ground-breaking work of George Marsden and Mark Noll, for example), she overlooks that and chooses the one that suits her polemical purposes best. Sydney Anglicanism is fundamentalist because fundamentalism is whatever Sydney Anglicans are. And Porter doesn’t like it. It is, in short, a cheap shot.
But even with the dice loaded, it still fails miserably. Firstly, she claims that Sydney is ‘rationalistic’. It is interesting, by the way, that ‘rationalism’ is felt by Porter to be an obviously bad thing, without explanation as to why this is so. Porter claims that the Sydney commitment to ‘propositional revelation’ is evidence of this self-evidently egregious rationalism – which is of course evidence of fundamentalism, on the terms she has decided beforehand:
The theory [i.e. propositional revelation] refers to revelation imparted through rational thought processes alone, without any subsidiary, complementary or external revelatory processes, such as through sensuous experiences mediated through liturgy, music, nature or Eucharistic participation.
Certainly, the emphasis on the Word of God as the revelation is the Sydney emphasis, and she is right to say that Sydney church services emphasis the reading, hearing and preaching of the Word of God over against other aspects. It is not accurate to describe this in terms of ‘rational thought processes’. It is the hearing of the Word, which has personal and existential and emotional and experiential impact – as Luther said, ‘the ears are the organ of the Christian’. Faith comes from hearing, after all. It seems uncontroversial to uphold, in a Protestant denomination, the verbal nature of the Word of God (for that is all that is meant by ‘propositional’ revelation).

Again, Porter rightly observes that what is at stake is a different view of how Scripture is meant to work. This is a crucial and revealing moment, for Porter at this point puts forward her version of the Christian doctrine of revelation. What Porter wants is for the Holy Spirit to speak outside of Scripture so that her particular causes, especially the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopacy, may be endorsed. She appeals to some vague sense of an extra-scriptural guidance which is not at the same time subject to the authority of Scripture. And she makes an attack on the classic Protestant doctrine of the clarity of Scripture – which now becomes another feature of fundamentalism (not before listed): ‘This support for a ‘plain’ meaning is a hallmark of the fundamentalist approach to Scripture’. (p. 26) This is because Porter doesn’t like the insistence in Sydney that Scripture might mean what it actually says. As a matter of fact, fundamentalist approaches to Scripture more often result in literalistic and not plain readings of Scripture.

Then follows a bizarre paragraph:
Many commentators have demonstrated that no ‘plain’ reading is possible, given the nature of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, which are thousands of years old. They reflect entirely different thought-worlds from that of the twenty-first century, and are inevitably imbued with the ancient cultural patterns, norms and expectations from which they were written. More than a hundred years of scholarly criticism has revealed the complexity of interpreting the meaning of the Bible for contemporary Christians. Similarly, many scholars have pointed out clear examples of the Christian Church changing its mind as over the centuries it has read the Scriptures with fresh insight.
Porter of course names no such commentators or scholars or critics, despite citing them as indisputable authorities. Despite Peter Jensen’s protestation that Sydney Anglicans were in fact open to the genuine findings of contemporary biblical scholarship, Porter is insistent that this is not the case. Never mind the academic qualifications and publications – from secular universities and in leading research journals - of the biblical scholars from Moore.

What’s more, she misunderstands the notion of the ‘plain’ reading entirely. Protestant interpreters have always acknowledged that the interpretation of Scripture is complex, and that new light may be shed on the meaning of the text (as in fact 2 Peter 3 tells us!). The notion of the plain reading of Scripture is in the first instance a commitment to read Scripture as a properly literary document and not to bring fanciful spiritual allegories to bear upon it. Porter herself is confused - on the one hand she wants to be able to say that the Holy Spirit can overrule the teachings of Scripture; but on the other she wants to say that reading the Scriptures with fresh insight matters. Why would fresh insight into Scripture matter if you weren’t actually committed to the authority of Scripture? The example of slavery is brought out, as it always is, of a case in which people changed their minds about Scripture. This is of course not news. It was people who held to a doctrine of revelation like that of Sydney, such as the great reformer William Wilberforce, who decided that obedience to Scripture necessitated an end to slavery. He won not because his reading of Scripture was in the end more convincing than those who argue for slavery from Scripture. The danger with Porter’s model of divine revelation, which seems to invite consideration of which social trends are the work of the Holy Spirit and which aren’t, is that this logic could be used to support almost any cause you could name. How could Porter speak against an aberrant but widely-held development in society? This is where Porter’s own extremism slips into view: she represents the extreme liberal wing of the Anglican Communion as represented by the Episcopal Church in the USA, in which the only authority to which anyone is subject is gut feeling. Is ‘emotionalism’ preferable to ‘rationalism’? Whatever the case, even if ‘rationalism’ is a hallmark of fundamentalism, and even if the kind of rationalism that is meant by that term is found in Sydney, Porter has wandered far from this point and strayed into a discussion of the role and practise of the authority of Scripture – in which she proves less than widely read and not particularly acute. It is hard to see how it supports the point she is making.
As for the ‘zeal to root out error and doctrinal impurity’, again Porter resorts to the unscholarly sweeping gesture - ‘too many to discuss in detail here’. The frankly trivial example that she does cite is the ban on the Anglo-Catholic use of the chasuble, which has been in force since 1910. Remembering that Porter is trying to show that Sydney is only since 2001 ‘fundamentalist’, this example is particularly insipid. Other Anglican dioceses make requirements of their clergy vis a vis liturgical garments. Her second example is a piece of unsubstantiated hearsay: ‘refusal by many Sydney clergy to allow lay women to play any significant part in the main Sunday services – even reading lessons from the Bible – as a means of keeping faith with their claim that women must not exercise any leadership in mixed … congregations’ (p. 29). Not one concrete instance is cited. I personally travel to many different parishes in Sydney and I can say categorically that Porter is plainly wrong at this point. Lay and clergy women lead services, read lessons, lead in prayers, lead singing and in some parishes preach. In my own parish, there are a number of women who serve in this way. Once again: the experience of evangelical clergy and candidates who hold a complementarian view in other dioceses is that the authorities will insist on their view with zeal and enforce it if necessary. Is this not ‘zeal to root out error and doctrinal impurity’? It just aligns with Porter’s prejudices.

The third point on her checklist is ‘charismatic and authoritarian leadership’. In her sketch of the role of Sydney’s Archbishop, she provides a less than convincing case, noting that Sydney is historically committed to the priority of the parish. Parish clergy enjoy remarkable independence in Sydney, in fact, compared with other dioceses. While noting Peter Jensen’s high profile, she admits ‘whether this equates with authoritarianism I do not know, but I suspect that this archbishop does not need to be authoritarian’. Noting that there has been in Sydney a high degree of unity in the Synod and so on is not exactly tantamount to establishing an authoritarian pattern. Again, it is worth observing that there are charismatic and authoritarian leaders in non-evangelical dioceses – indeed far more authoritarian than in Sydney. Archbishop Peter Carnley of Perth, well known for his liberal Catholic or ‘progressive Orthodox’ views, was by all accounts just such a figure.

Thus far, Porter has failed to tick off any of the points on her checklist. We might concede something of her first point. However, despite the fact that she acknowledges the sophistication with which the Sydney view is argued, her own alternative model of guidance and revelation is theologically thin and certainly questionable.

What of the last two points? As to behavioural requirements, Porter argues that Sydney has a ‘harsher set of rules concerning personal morality’. As evidence, she cites Sydney’s policy on divorce and remarriage. Sydney’s policy is certainly less flexible than the free-for-all in place in some places in Australia. It remains however a good deal more liberal and accommodating than the practice of the Roman Catholic Church. Remarriage after divorce is not banned – it is, rather, than clergy are very reasonably required to be cautious. Since scripture has some specific things to say on this issue, it seems unremarkable to find this policy. Sydney Anglicans talk about sex far less than outsiders sometimes think. However, it is true that an orthodox position on marriage – held by the majority of Anglican Christians today, contrary to Porter’s claim – is held by the great majority in Sydney diocese. Porter then repeats a piece of ‘anecdotal evidence’ which is actually false: ‘it is now highly unlikely that a single man will be appointed rector of any Sydney parish, presumably for fear that his single state might mask an unacceptable sexual identity or that he might fall prey to sexual temptation’. There is no such policy. I cite as counter-evidence Rev Paul Dale, who is now married, but who was appointed rector of St John’s Kirribilli some years ago as a single man.

‘Separatism’ is Porter’s last check-box. She can only establish this by looking sideways at the evidence. She notes rightly that Sydney Anglicans are proudly counter-cultural which she says ‘indicates a predisposition towards separatism’. We thank her for her amateur psycho-analysis. However, it is scarcely a telling point. Christians have always seen themselves as counter-cultural in some way, since the earliest times. In any case, the label ‘separatism’ invites the question ‘what separatism and on what grounds?’ There have been many forms of separatism in Christian history justified for any number of reasons. The monastic movement is one such example. Porter quite overlooks the ongoing commitment of the Sydney diocese in any case to involvement in society – its commitment to justice and social welfare in which it continues to invest enormous resources. Sydney seeks the Christianisation of society by inviting people to become Christians, not by spreading Christian values (so-called) abroad. That much is a given. But it is not tantamount to ‘separatism’.

Porter’s attempt to classify Sydney Anglicans as fundamentalists was a put-up job in the first place. Even then, it fails spectacularly at every point – partly because she is simply hasn’t done her homework and relies on gossip and hearsay. She has an open goal, and still she misses the target. As she herself acknowledges she avoids scholarly complexity repeatedly and chooses instead the kind of journalistic shorthand that has corrupted public debate of politics in Australia.

Homo adorans: Eight theses liable to contradiction...

1. ‘Men of Athens – I can see that in every way you are very religious’ (Acts 17). Religiosity is natural for human beings – a phenomenological observation and a theological one. Man is by natural disposition a worshipper. The trick is to work out what ‘natural’ means…

2. It is only comparatively recently that religious belief was counted an alternative to be chosen by the believing subject, and not a properly basic condition of the world (Charles Taylor, The Secular Age).

3. We need to beware the tendency to impose Western and Christian notions of religion upon the religious phenomena of the world. Hinduism for example is almost entirely a creation of the British Raj. We seek to observe quasi-Christian structures and observances.

4. Where does religion end and philosophy begin? Which is Marxism? Taoism? Buddhism? It makes a large difference to a theological analysis.

5. The religious disposition in human beings has been conducive to wisdom about human beings and the world. It has more often than not obscured the truth about God.

6. While religions may be the monstrous lies and deceits of Satan, they may also be sources of social cohesion, the transmission of wisdom inter-generationally and the basis for human enlightenment. Religions do (to a degree) work as ways to live in the world. It is this ambiguity that is the real tragedy. They present incomplete truths.

7. ‘The human heart is a factory for making idols’ (John Calvin). Prides corrupts the properly natural disposition for worship.

8. False belief and unbelief are suppressions of the truth about the divine nature that is already available to human beings. Ignorance, being culpable, is no excuse.

George Athas' notes on my 1 Corinthians paper

http://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/apocalyptic-and-ethical-in-1-corinthians/

Matthew Malcolm - The glory of God in 1 Corinthians

Matthew determines to read 1 Cor with the help of John Chrysostom.

For Chrysostom: The Corinthians are effectively pursuing the glory of humans rather than the glory of God. Boastful pride is the cause of the evil among them. Orators who think of themselves as wise have put themselves forward, and put godly leaders like Stephanos down. In all the various sins of the Corinthians, Chrysostom identifies pride. His hearers should see human pride to be nothing. Paul must pull down the 'puffed up pride of the opponents'.

But also: present wealth. We should ... look down on all things present. Let us think nothing of riches and think much of hell. Let us look down on glory, and look rather at salvation. Let us endure toil and labour here, in order that we might not fall into punishment there. (Hom 6)...

The problem of human autonomy. The present focussed human pride results in the problem of human autonomy. This is an attempt for humans to save themselves.... He does all things in order that we might consider nothing to be of ourselves; in order that all things might be ascribed to God. And have you given yourselves over to this or that person? And what pardon will you receive for this? For God has shown that we are not able to be saved by ourselves alone, and he has done this from the beginning.

Paul wants to indicate that God overcomes the world by contraries and how the gospel is not human. Becoming dead to the world, we live! The pastoral point of 1 Cor 1-4: the church clings to CHrist and his cross, not feeding boastful human pride. Therefore:

We glorify God by depending on the cross of Jesus Christ. We exhibit our dependence by inhabiting the cross of Christ. 'let us be cemented to him; for if we are apart from him, we are destroyed.'... 'The one who has descended will rise with great gain, just as also Paul descended alone, but ascended with the world...

The Glory of God and the Exercise of Theology...
Will we entrust ourselves to the one who raises Christ from the dead?
The ground and goal of all theology is necessitated by independent identification with God's messiah Jesus Christ. Christian believers are united to Jesus Christ. Sharing ultimately in his glory. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord!

Paul evaluates pastoral situations theologically in terms of the glory of God.

But: why the ascension? God is glorified when we know him as the one who gives life to the dead....

David Peterson - 'Enriched in every way': Gifts and Ministries in 1 Corinthians

The first four chapters of 1 Corinthians provide a very important basis for the discussion of ministry and gifts in 1 Corinthians. It is a substantial theme!

Paul starts by noting how the Corinthians were enriched in grace and in knowledge - by the Holy Spirit's gifting. Spiritually, they were rich (4:8). It is very unhelpful to translate karisma as 'spiritual gift'... it is probably better rendered 'gift'. In 12, of course, we get a trinitarian explanation (as opposed to the Corinthians pneumatika).

The initial discussion of gifts seems to emphasise the communicative giftings; and also that it is for those who wait and who need to be sustained. Perserverance is enabled by the gifting that God gives to the church - sustained externally in other words. It is a salvific concern - the gifts are given to SUSTAIN us in Christ - not for our enjoyment, or even for our maturing.

Paul goes on to critique the divisions among the Corinthians. They wrongly evaluated their favourites - Paul/Apollos/Cephas.... Paul challenges this by reminding them of the wisdom they received in the gospel in the first place. Paul was concerned for the sophia/content and the logou/form of Christian proclamation. Both form and content of ministry need to be God-honouring. Paul draws attention to the MANNER of his own proclamation of the gospel. There is a FORM that is appropriate to the gospel. Especially, the ministry of evangelism.

The work of the Spirit? He moved the preacher to avoid display of rhetoric and brought people to faith. 2:6-16 establishes a framework for the later discussions. There needs to be an interpretation of spiritual things to spiritual people... the Corinthians regarded themselves as spiritual: but Paul reminds them of the true maturity in the knowledge of God and for which food is needed. Gospel faithfulness is a key for evaluating the ministries of people in ch 4. The gospel should determine the content AND the manner in which the ministry is conducted. How would Paul have classified his own ministry in relation to the gifts of ch 12? In 4:1, the three are described as 'servants of Christ'. Gospel-driven leadership was foundational. (It is a mistake to focus on 11-14 when in 1-4 you have a picture of gospel-preaching for the benefit and growth of the church... put the two sections together and you have a better picture).

What about gender distinctiveness in congregational ministry? (11:2-16). Paul doesn't explain what prophesying is here. His concern is to elaborate on appopriate relationships. C/R seem to think that Paul is talking about 3 things:
1) respect for a certain creation mandate
2) respect for culturally specific approaches to guarding sexual purity in mixed company
3) fully integrating women into the experience of the worshipping community

The apostle wants them to understand an aspect of their own traditions that they have neglected. God is the top of a series of 'heads'. Christ honoured his head... so men and women must honour their respective heads. The theme of self-discipline for the other's good comes out.
It is possible that they are talking about husbands and wives; but the dress codes had a wider significance. (note a huge amount of information about 1st century customs and fashions)
Paul is concerned to develop a scriptural argt but to tie it in to cultural appropriateness. The word 'head' kephale? It seems to mean 'one who has authority over'. Of course this is made egalitarian in ch 7 in a remarkable way... but the order from Gen 2: a submission maintained. How are these two to be balanced? Tricky.

In 1 Cor 11 Paul is setting up a complex order between creation and recreation -a dialectic. The practice expression is the appropriate covering of the woman's head and the uncovering of the man's. Covered hair for a woman indicated controlled sexuality. Ciampa and Rosner show how Paul is continuing a common custom of his own time. Sexual provocation is the point.

The Greco-Roman world was concerned for separate spaces in worship. The Christians met together. But Paul wanted them not to simply be blended. Paul seems to have understood Gen 2 in Psalm 8 terms counterbalancing the shame aspect of the argument. Paul's ultimate concern is what gives glory to God in public worship between the genders.

11:10? Is this the wife's recognition of her husband's authority? or a sign of her own authority? Whichever: women clearly participate in prayer and prophesy in the congregation. Paul does not forbid this at all. But they should do it an appropriate way.

What is this 'prophesying'? What were the women doing? Certainly in ch 14, Paul thinks that this is THE best and preferred activity. Of course it is much contested. What is said about the prophetic ministry in Paul and Luke/Acts? It is not merely the spontaneous utterance of future predictions, this isn't what the evidence says. Paul notes that revelations may come in the meeting; and may occur before hand. Not all of these give expression to immediate revelations. He also talks about how the outsider is convicted by such prophesying, of their sin. It is a ministry that they have to one another. In the process the outsider is converted. IT IS SOME KIND OF GOSPEL COMMUNICATION - which the unbeliever hears. Prophesying edifies everyone (ie, not just the women or men). It is a very significant ministry, right? It is a great shame that this biblical concept is not talked about. Thisleton argues that the limitation of prophesy to mini-messages demeans the term. He calls it 'the proclamation of gospel truths to the contexts of the hearers'. The church is upbuilt by the declaration of the truths of the gospel. In Eph 1:17 - the spirit applies the Wisdom of the gospel to a particular context and situation. There is a link between prophesy and the 'word of wisdom/knowledge' (of course redefined by Paul in terms of the cross). It is all about gospel applicaton. These words in chp 12 seem to be limited discreet teachings... Prophesy is the broad heading under which these come.

What is the relationship between this and pastoral preaching? Calvin notes that the 1 Tim relates the teaching to leadership and authority - quite different from prophecy. A simplistic equation of prophesy with what we call 'preaching' is not on. But prophecy seemed to be an umbrella term. Remember Acts 2 - everyone will prophesy (both genders)? Certainly, the apostles seem to preach evangelistic sermons as a result. There are many things that prophets do in Acts (in addition to Agabus of course). = Spirit-directed gospel proclamation. Likely that the teaching/prophecy distinguishment of the GR world is maintained. The Spirit can work to empower preaching and so on - but it does a whole range of things.

SO: chapter 12-14? The source and purpose of gifts and ministries.

The christological test for spirit-led ministry in 12.... Paul goes beyond what the Corinthians say, and offers a corrective of the pneumatika... Had the Corinthians been involved in ecstatic pagan worship? Carson (1987) doesn't think so. As pagans, their ignorance was profound... the christological confession was the test of true spirituality... who is spritual? it is about Jesus and his Lordship!!

Unity in the gifts is given a trinitarian basis. The gifts have the same origins - one Lord/Spirit/God. Paul lists the gifts of the spirit: is there any order to the lists? Certainly, he seems to think about prophets/apostles etc as the gifts which are foundational (as back in chapter 4).

Love and the edification in the church (13-14)
Prophecy and tongues... edification is about maturity but also evangelism. The significance of love in ministry is expounded in 13 as we know - this grounds the gifts... He proclaims there love as the power of the future age.

Six principles for edification.
a) church is not primarily for self-edication or private communion with God, but for the edication of teh body in relation to its head;
b) Prophesying edifies the churchin a way that tongues do not by providng encouragement and consolation through divine direction for all;
c) Evne prayers and praises that are directed to God must be expressed in a way that eidfies the congregation.
d) When believers prophesy for mutual encouragement and strengthening, God may use that ministry to bring unbelievers to himself.
e) Although many may wish to contribute to the congregational meeting on any given occasion, only a few will be able to participate in a meaningful way: practical considerations exercised in love should determine the pattern;
f) Listening with discernemnt is an aspect of edifaction: it is a way of encouraging others in theri ministry and benefitting from it at the same time.

Bruce Winter on Paul's Pastoral Practice in 1 Corinthians

In 1 Corinthians Paul deals pastorally with the church's presenting problems - those both reported and written to him. These can be examined under the heading of cause, consequence and cure. Bruce argues that the causes of the problems arise from the influence of secular ethics... the way Corinthian culture had programmed the converts before they became Christians and significant social changes that had occurred after Paul left Corinth.

1 Cor 15 shows Paul dealing with the underlying problems. What has the 'wake out of drunkeness' passage have to do with the resurrection of the body, however? In this chapter, Paul is dealing with the effect that their concept of anthropology are causing.

In Philo of Alexandria we see just such a critique of a pagan anthropology. The orators of Alexandria were saying 'Is not the body the soul's house?' 'Did not nature creat pleasures and enjoyments and the delights that meet us all the way through life for the dead, or for those who have never come into existence, and not for the living?' 'The so-called lovers of virture are almost without exception obscure people, looked down upon, of mean estate, destitute of the ncessities of life, not enjoying the privileges of subject peoples or even of slaves, filthy, sallow, reduced to skeletons, with a hungry look for want of food, the prey of disease, in training for dying'....

Philo called these opponents the 'lovers of self' ...

In Corinth, Paul likewise finds people living out of their anthropology: that the body and its behaviour doesn't have eternal significance at all.

Paul talks about his own life, with its own struggles:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1Co 15:10 TNIV)
30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour?
31 I face death every day--yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord.
32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
33 Do not be misled: "Bad company corrupts good character."
(1Co 15:30-33 TNIV)

Bruce wants to suggest that the last set of injunctions is key. 15:58 begins with a strong injunction - they are to be steadfast by how they live their lives; immovable about their thinking. Not prone to the smorgasbord approach to Christianity. The last line is a very important line!
See For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive what is due them for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2Co 5:10 TNIV)
The presenting problems are serious matters indeed: the incestuous relationship in ch 5, for example. Surface conformity was the go in Rome, hiding deep competetiveness and conflict.
Education was a means of getting ahead, not of actual learning. Don't forget the vexatious litigations issue. People are being contentious... see 1 Cor 11.

Has Bruce ignored what the passage is actually about? Well, he says he has tried to raise the often overlooked sections which reveal the underlying cause: a popular anthropology that the Christians were toying with while at the same time invoking the Christian identity. The Christian playboy 'your best life now' philosophy! Life is NOT all about my pleasure... But I did it my way is now the most popular funeral hymn in England...

The issue is the insurrection of the body, to which the resurrection of the body is the retort.