Reform, as a grass roots movement, envisages action coming from members who have thought, studied, discussed and agreed. Discussion papers such as this one are written by individual members for the council of Reform and the wider church. The author alone is responsible for the paper. This paper may be copied freely.
Rowan Williams - A Godly Concern
by Melvin Tinker, Reform Council
member and vicar of St John's Newlands in Hull.
Introduction
Pastors in the Church of Christ have many responsibilities. One place where
these are spelt out clearly is in Paul’s farewell speech to senior ministers
in Acts 20:28, which, interestingly enough, forms the basis for the charge given
at the consecration of a Bishop in the Church of England:
‘Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood.’
Why are they to be so watchful? Paul goes on to tell us:
‘I know after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and not spare the flock. Even from among your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard.’
You see, in principle, no one is immune from being led astray and leading astray
- including myself. That is why ministers have to watch themselves as well as
those under their care. This does not mean being hard, censorious or ‘judgmental’,
but it does mean that we are all called to be discerning. In fact, it is a mark
of loving care that we do take steps to check things out, and even check out
people. As a society we are having to do this more and more, hence police checks
on those who are being considered for positions of trust when working amongst
children. This doesn’t mean that those being investigated are in some way
being denigrated, nor that those doing the checking are being ‘judgmental’.
Indeed, not to do this would be irresponsible and unloving. So the motive is
in fact love. If that is the case at the level of society in general, how much
more should that be so when it comes to God’s supernatural society, the
church, in particular?
It is in that same spirit of loving, responsible care that we approach the subject
I have entitled: ‘Rowan Williams- a Godly Concern.’ This paper reflects
no personal animosity towards Dr Williams whatsoever. By all accounts he is
friendly, charming and courteous. Neither are his academic abilities in question.
But then again these characteristics of being charming and clever may feature
in people of other religions and none. In themselves they do not provide sufficient
reasons for occupying a position of leadership within the church. The furore
that has arisen and which surrounds Dr Williams is not at the level of personality,
but at the level of principle and practice. To be an academic theologian kicking
ideas around in the rarefied atmosphere of a university is one thing, being
a world church leader of tremendous influence for good or ill is another thing
entirely. It is because Dr Williams holds and teaches views which, as we shall
see, many believe to be entirely at odds with some of the central tenets of
the Christian faith rooted in Scripture, that alarm and concern is being expressed.
Two other things need to be said at the outset.
First, Dr Williams' writings are many, wide and often complex. They do not always
make for an ‘easy read.’ So what at most can be hoped to be achieved
in this paper is to provide a ‘taster’ of Dr William’s work which
gives some insight as to where he is coming from.
Secondly, the widespread impression is that the main reason for opposition towards
Dr Williams appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury is because of his views
on the gay issue. Certainly it is true that he was one of the minority of bishops
who voted against the Lambeth Resolution which affirmed that “homosexuality
is incompatible with Scripture’. He has knowingly ordained a practising
homosexual. And on TV he has gone on record as saying : ‘I can see a case
for acknowledging same-sex relationships.’ This is a very serious issue,
but it is simply a presenting issue, for, as we shall discover, the reason why
Dr Williams is able to hold an unorthodox view on this particular ethical issue
is because of more fundamental unorthodox views he holds in other areas of belief.
After all, what we believe affects how we behave and that is the focus of this
paper together with an attempt to work through some of the implications.
Knowing God
The fundamental question is: ‘How can we know God?’ Traditionally this has been answered in terms of God revealing himself to us. If we are finite and have spiritually faulty vision because of our sin, the only way we are going to know an infinite and pure God is if he takes the initiative and, as it were, pulls back the curtain. Christian belief is that he has done just that. This takes place through general revelation, that is, what can be known of God by a consideration of the world he has made and the divine sense we all have within us. This is the apostle Paul's argument in chapter 1 of his letter to the Romans. But more importantly this occurs by special revelation - the belief that God has acted and spoken clearly in history and supremely in and through his Son, the God-man, Jesus Christ. The place where that revelation is now found is, of course, the Bible, which is why Christians refer to it as the Word of God - God’s self-communication.
Rowan Williams’ view is decidedly at odds with this. Certainly in Williams’
theology the Bible has a role to play but it is not that as traditionally understood
as we have just outlined - God speaking through its different literary forms
in the power of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, for Williams God is hardly a speaking
God at all.
Silent Night?
In one of his sermons he takes as the model of revelation Jesus as ‘God with us as child.’ ('Open to Judgement' - to be referred to as OTJ, p35). This, it is argued, points to a way of construing how God 'communicates' with us, so Dr Williams writes:
‘He is the God who, in St Augustine’s unforgettable words, penetrates my deafness by his violent and loud crying. And all that crying, as every parent knows, can be alarming because we don’t understand what the baby wants..... So far from the divine child being a cypher, the tool of our schemes and systems, he confronts us with the alarming, mysterious, shattering strangeness of God.’
He then likens our experience of asking this ‘Christ-child ‘questions
to that of Zen Buddhist disciple asking questions of a Zen master who simply
replies: ‘Mu’ -’No’.’ This may be frustrating but it
is no more than we can expect, after all a baby can’t do much more than
cry or laugh. In another sermon taken from the same book (OTJ), Dr Williams
reflects on the experience of loneliness and uses another image of encountering
God, not that of a baby this time but a nine-year old spastic child:
‘This is the solitude of truth, the solitude finally of God; God as the spastic child who can communicate nothing but his presence and his inarticulate wanting?’ (p145)
How does he arrive at this conclusion? From the Scripture, he says, for he draws
attention to the account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate in John’s Gospel
and says:
‘Why is Jesus so totally alone at his end? One exchange, more than all others perhaps, embodies the reason: Pilate’s question and Jesus answering silence. Because the truth stands there in flesh, a truth that cannot be contained in any words or images we may create.’ (p 145).
The theme of the silent God (in contrast to a book written many years ago by
Dr Francis Schaeffer- ‘He is there and he is not silent’) or rather
the paradox that God communicates through his silence - is a major one in his
thought. The upshot is that we are left with a multitude of our own interpretations,
a variety of views not only of God, but a variety of visions of Christ:
‘There is our Christ, the totally enigmatic face on the wall, the cross, the bread and the wine. Silent signs as silent as he was before Pilate, consistently refusing a straight and simple answer. We can’t feed him questions like a computer and receive tidy, systematic replies. He won't let on.... Christ can bear all sorts of interpretations, and we can draw little balloons coming out of his mouth as much as we like. What does that tell us? The vulgarity of the analogy underlines the futility of it all.’ (p 107).
Let’s now just pause and take stock. I will assume that what you have just
read has made you more than a little uneasy. It doesn’t seem quite right
does it? But why? It has all to do with Rowan Williams’ method, his theological
approach.
Questionable method leading to a questionable message
First, Dr Williams allows a certain image or idea to dominate and act as the
control on all subsequent theological reflection - like a picture of the Christ-child
or the dumb Jesus before Pilate for example. What is more, the images and ideas
which are drawn on are allowed to function in a way that they do not function
in the Bible. Where do the Bible writers themselves, either implicitly or explicitly,
refer to the baby Jesus as a model of the way God communicates? Certainly Paul
in that great hymn in Philippians 2 could be said to be referring to the incarnation
as an expression of divine humility - that is the sort of God we worship, but
not as a model for divine intelligibility. After all, the baby Jesus grows up
to be a man and he is known supremely as ‘rabbi’ - teacher. He teaches
all sorts of things by both what he says and does. He does not stand before
us silent refusing to answer our questions. By his words he raises questions
with us, certainly, but he answers many of our questions also, questions about
the nature of God, the purpose of life, sins which beset us, how we can be rightly
related to God and so on.
Let us now go to the other end of Jesus life and his trial before Pilate. Is
it really the case that Jesus remained dumb there? Not according to the Gospel
accounts. In John 19 there is a whole dialogue going on between Pilate and Jesus,
with Jesus correcting Pilate’s faulty perceptions of himself. In Mark’s
account, Pilate asks Jesus a direct question: ‘Are you the king of the
Jews? To which Jesus replied, ‘Yes, it is as you say.’ That is pretty
unambiguous isn’t it? What Dr Williams does is to abuse and misuse Scripture
in order to construct a belief which is alien to Scripture. I am reminded of
what Dr Carl Henry wrote some years ago of the way some theologians approach
the Bible. He said that
‘Some now even introduce authorial intention or cultural context of language
as specious rationalisations for their crime against the Bible, much as some
rapist might assure me that he is assaulting my wife for my or her own good..
they misuse Scripture in order to champion as biblically true what in fact does
violence to Scripture.’
That would be an accurate commentary on what Dr Williams does.
Secondly, Dr Williams sets up false options and engages in caricatures which
then subtly manoeuvre people into having to make false choices. Sure, Jesus
is not presented in the Bible like a ‘computer into which we feed questions’
-whoever said that he was? However, he is presented as a personal, speaking,
communicative agent of whom people ask all sorts of questions and receive a
variety of answers. Neither is it the case that the Bible leaves us with a dumb
Jesus which can bear all sorts of interpretations as Dr Williams maintains.
For a start, in his own day he corrected wrong interpretations of himself. At
Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples ‘Who do people say that I am?’
Then he accepted none of the interpretations. And when Peter answered ‘You
are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’, that too had to be corrected
by Jesus spelling out what type of Christ he was going to be - a suffering Christ.
He did not allow Peter to ‘draw a balloon coming out of his mouth' - he
did not remain silent before his confession. What Dr Williams often does is
to paint positions other than his own in such an absurd way (which is quite
unfair) so that one is left with facing a choice between one of these positions
portrayed in an unfavourable light and his more mystical and emotionally evocative
rendering. The result is that we can be seduced towards his seemingly more ‘reasonable’
position.
But why doesn’t Dr Williams approach the Scriptures in a way which gives
them the authority they have traditionally had in the Church, which according
to article 6 of the 39 articles of the Church of England means that it contains
everything necessary for our salvation and in article 20 that the Bible should
not be interpreted in such a way that one part is set against another part?
What does he propose to put in its place?
In answer to the first question, Dr Williams does not believe that the Bible
is a communicative act of God, ‘God preaching’ if you will. Rather,
it is a book made up of fallible attempts to put into words what people in the
past have experienced. Certainly through these attempts God tries to communicate
but does not succeed very well. So, drawing on the story of Jacob wrestling
with the angel of God, he writes:
‘Scripture is the record of encounter and a contest.... Here in Scripture is God’s urgency to communicate, here in Scripture is our mishearing, our misappropriating, our deafness and our resistance. Woven together in Scripture are those two things, the giving of God and our inability to receive what God wants to give.’
Then we have another example of misusing Scripture to make a point he decided
upon previously:
‘On almost every page of the Gospels we read: ‘Jesus said. "Do you now understand?" (note the exaggeration-almost every page) They said "No".’ (OTJ p 158).
What did Jesus do? Give up? No, he kept on teaching until they did get it. If
the disciples were so hopeless and Jesus so ineffective a communicator it is
a wonder we have anything written down at all! What is more, we do have Jesus’
promise and the apostle’s own testimony that they were not to be left alone
to grope in the dark, or to encounter the silence of God, but that Jesus would
send another Paraclete - one who comes alongside to help, the Holy Spirit, and
he would bring to remembrance all that Jesus taught and would lead them into
all truth. (John 14:26;16:13) But obviously this did not apply to Luke for according
to Dr Williams:
‘The Parable of the Unjust Steward is my favourite example, a story which St Luke does not seem to have understood particularly well.... Luke tried his best with it - as does every ill fated preacher.’
And so we come to the second question, if the Bible is not to be understood
as a source of revelation in the traditional sense, how then is it to be thought
of and used? The answer - as offering some insight into how we are to go about
theological thinking - it contains what Dr Williams calls ‘generative models.’
Let me illustrate what he means by this as, again, he takes a biblical picture
and abuses it, namely, that of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Whereas
the Bible presents us with this as being God’s means of rescuing us from
the judgement to come and a sign of his saving purposes, Dr Williams takes it
as a model of how we do theology, as the ‘death and resurrection of meaning’.
So as we work out what we believe in our different communities, we must be open
to our views ‘dying’ and then ‘reappearing’ transformed,
just as Jesus died and in his resurrection was ‘transformed’. Nowhere
do the NT writers say that this is a picture of the way we are to approach matters
of faith.
Confused and Confusing
The result is Babel, not only in that Dr Williams is not the clearest communicator in the world, which does not bode well for an Archbishop, but that we are left with a variety of conflicting beliefs which we are simply meant to put up with. Therefore, on Christ he writes:
‘Yet interpret him we must. We're constructive, imaginative beings, after all, and we can’t escape from language, so we must talk; and as soon as we do, as soon as the balloons are scribbled over, we have visions of Christ at enmity with one another, and conflicts that can’t be resolved.’
In short, you can have your view of Jesus or God and I can have mine and because
we do not have access to any objective revelation to which we can appeal, we
are left with our own versions or ‘visions’ of Christ as Dr Williams
puts it.
Leaving the Bible behind
Let us make a few points here.
First, Dr Williams writes that, ‘We cannot escape from language’ as
if language is a handicap, a prison which ideally we would escape from in order
to get in touch with reality. The fact is, it is language which makes us personal
beings, it is the means whereby we can relate to each other meaningfully. What
is more God himself is portrayed as the great Communicator par excellence. He
is the one who speaks the universe into being and upholds it by his Word (Hebrews
1). Jesus is not referred to as ‘the Word’ - the Logos - for nothing,
neither is it coincidental that the term ‘Thus says the LORD’ is one
of the most repeated phrases in the OT.
Secondly, it is considered a vice, not a virtue by the Bible to use our imaginations
when it comes to knowing God. The way of imagination is the way of forming the
image and so is a way of idolatry and a direct breaking of the first and second
commandments.
Thirdly, according to the Bible it is the false gods, the idols which are described
as silent or dumb, whereas the glory of the one true and living God is that
he speaks and it is a creative speaking. Listen to Isaiah 44:6-7: -
‘This is what the Lord says - Israel’s King and redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and the last, apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me, let him proclaim it.’
Then in v9:
‘All who make idols are nothing; and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who speak up for them are blind’
They have to speak up for them for they can’t speak up for themselves. As Jeremiah says they are ‘speechless, like scarecrows in a melon patch.’
The problem of Idolatry
Here then, we come to the tragedy and underlying cause for concern. To do as Dr Williams has done, namely, that by a deregulated and unwarranted use of certain biblical ideas and concepts, or rather taking biblical words and pictures devoid of biblical content, what Dr Williams is presenting us with is hardly the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who appeared in history and is presented to us in the OT and NT Scriptures. As you will appreciate, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that here we have an instance of what Bible writers call idolatry. Instead of using metals and hammers to forge a god of one’s own making, Dr Williams is using theological tools and methods to forge an idea of a god which is of his own making. There are such things as mental images as well as metal images.
This is a god who is not all-powerful - for example he may wish to communicate
but is reduced to being like a spastic child. It is a god who does not offer
a gospel in which we are justified, acquitted by the atoning death of his Son
on the cross. Indeed, this is a belief he caricatures:
‘We look at forgiveness as if it were the same as acquittal - leaving the court without a stain on our character; as if it simply obliterated the past.’ (OTJ, p58).
Instead he prefers to see the work of Christ in terms of individuals being healed
as both victim and victimizer (OTJ p17). In fact, he bemoans ‘the awful
language, beloved even of some of the finest theologians and preachers of an
earlier age, about God’s “offended holiness”, which needs to
be mollified.’ (OTJ.p.222).
What we see in the work of Rowan Williams is a disturbing outworking of what
the apostle Paul writes about in Romans 1 :18-23
‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.’
And so we should not be surprised that Dr Williams' work fulfils what Paul says
in the next few verses - v24-25.
‘Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator.’
The subject of homosexual practice is introduced by the apostle in a passage
of the consequences of not knowing God as Creator. The parallels are striking
- God and truth are exchanged for creatures and lies, just as the natural is
exchanged for the unnatural. And that is in effect what we have in the thought
of Dr Williams.
Conclusion
Hopefully we can now see why the appointment of Dr Williams as Archbishop of
Canterbury is cause for serious concern. Let us spell out the implications even
further.
First, the matter of sincerity is not the issue, but the question of integrity
is. Dr Williams has said in a letter which I have read:
‘I can and do state what is the majority of teaching in the church, and
I will exercise the discipline of the church as I am bound to do.’
This lacks integrity for several reasons.
- He has already made it clear that he personally does not share the majority
teaching of the church on homosexual sex, but that he will ‘state that
teaching’. That is like Ian Duncan Smith as leader of the Conservative
party saying: ‘I will state the Tory party’s policy on privatisation
but I personally believe that nationalisation is the way ahead.’ In that
case he should join another party. Such a position lacks integrity in that
there is no integration between the private man and the public face.
- He has already shown that as Archbishop of Wales he was ready not to exercise
the discipline of the church in ordaining a practising homosexual. Why should
we believe that he will do any different now?
- It will be very difficult if not impossible for Dr Williams ‘to exercise the discipline of the church’ on, say, ordaining practising homosexuals for by his previous action he as been morally compromised. How can he take a bishop to task for doing only what he has already done and which is in line with his own public teachings on the subject? He simply has to sit tight and not say anything on the issue, merely his presence at Lambeth Palace helps to encourage a culture of liberalism which will increasingly pervade the whole church with more and more unorthodox beliefs and practices being generated.
Second, it has been said, ‘But Dr Williams is orthodox - he believes in
the Virgin Birth and the bodily resurrection.’ It is not as simple as that.
These are not just isolated items of belief which can easily be detached from
the web of other beliefs of which they are a part. It is obvious that while
Dr Williams believes in the resurrection, (1982), he allows for other views
which are more subjective interpretations and says he is ‘not particularly
concerned.’ So the views of the former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins,
would be acceptable. This is a far cry from what Paul says in 1 Corinthians
15, that if Christ has not be raised, your faith is in vain and we are found
to be misrepresenting God. If Dr Williams believes such items of the faith they
are almost accidental and his theological method could easily bring him to a
different position in time. But is he so orthodox in his belief in the Virginal
conception? This is what he writes referring to the accounts in Matthew and
Luke:
‘The more we become aware of the story telling conventions by which such narratives grew in the first century, the harder it becomes to reach a firm judgement on the historical ground of all of this. Jesus is like the Old Testament children of promise, Isaac, Samson and Samuel... they too had stories told of their miraculous conception... But Jesus is greater than Isaac or even Isaac’s father - he is pure grace, pure promise. The core of it may be literally true; or there may have been an oddity or mystery about Jesus birth that sparked off legend and speculation.'(OTJ p26)
What we are being asked to accept is an Archbishop who in effect believes in
a different God and another gospel than that revealed in Scripture. At a time
when we are facing decline as a denomination, or in the words of a recent report
facing ‘meltdown’, when division is occurring within the wider Anglican
communion because of those who are trampling over the beliefs of orthodox Christians,
as in the USA, one fears that Dr Williams' election will only accelerate and
exacerbate what is already a troubling situation.