The Theology of Rowan Williams An outline, critique, and consideration of its consequences Garry J. Williams, MA, DPhil Latimer Studies 55 Contents Page Introduction 2 I. Outline and Critique 3 1. The Doctrine of Revelation: Outline 5 2. The Doctrine of Revelation: Critique 21 3. Sin and Salvation: Outline 25 4. Sin and Salvation: Critique 28 5. Sexual Ethics: Outline 30 6. Sexual Ethics: Critique 33 II. The Pastoral Consequences 36 Bibliography 38 1 Introduction In the debate concerning how Christians in Anglican churches around the world should respond to the appointment of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury, it is frequently and rightly said that they need to know what he thinks before they respond. This publication seeks to meet that need by offering an introduction to some of the key elements of his theology as it is found in a range of his published works. It is also frequently said that Williams is wholly orthodox on central doctrinal questions and that it is only his views on sexual ethics which are in any way questionable. This piece seeks to explore that issue by giving a much broader account of his theology, including the doctrines of revelation, sin, and salvation, alongside a treatment of his by now better­known views on sexual ethics. While such an outline would readily speak for itself, I have also attempted to suggest the very beginnings of a critique from a Reformed theological perspective as the outline progresses. This critique is not an attempt to demonstrate the viability of an alternative, Reformed theological system. It is rather an initial indication of the way in which that critique might unfold. The critique closes with an examination of the pastoral consequences of Williams's theology, and an argument that in the light of those consequences his appointment cannot be welcomed by Anglicans as a positive event. The use of the term `Anglicans' here rather than just `Evangelicals' or `conservatives' is intentional, since the theology which we find in the writings of Williams should, it will emerge, be of just as much concern to an Anglo­Catholic or even a more traditional Liberal as it is to those who have already protested publicly about the appointment.(1) 1 Professor Alister McGrath (Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford) has published an article welcoming the appointment of Rowan Williams as a positive development (see The Church of England Newspaper, no. 5627). Readers who wish to see where we differ will find my reply online at http://www.latimertrust.org. 2 I. Outline and Critique A word is necessary on the attention which is given here to specific texts by Rowan Williams. I have concentrated on presenting evidence from works which directly express his own theology. My aim in the expository sections of this piece has been to let him speak for himself in his own words, as plainly as possible. There are, for example, very few citations from his extensive historical writing on spirituality or on figures such as Arius or Teresa of Avila.(2) This is because the citations given are intended to express his own views without it being necessary to disentangle them from more technical material. Within the directly theological works, I have cited most from the two wide­ ranging volumes, Open to Judgement, and On Christian Theology.(3) The former work is made up of sermons and addresses for a variety of groups, which means that it is more accessible than the latter, much of which is taken from journals or collections of essays. Readers who wish to check my interpretation of Williams's writings would do well to begin with these two volumes. Both cover wider doctrinal ground than a work such as Resurrection, and both are more concerned with doctrine than the socio­critical works like Lost Icons, though Williams is always eager to hold these two aspects together. I have grouped together under a series of headings a clear set of themes emerging from Williams's works. These headings do represent his own concerns in that the themes are all prominent in his writing, but it is only fair to point out that there are many other themes on which he writes that are not covered here, on some of which he expresses views which are compatible with a more conservative theology. Nonetheless, for the present time it is the points of disagreement on central doctrinal issues which demand our attention. I have therefore concentrated on those themes which coincide with some of the traditional topics or loci 2 See especially The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979); Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987; 2nd edn SCM Press, 2001); Teresa of Avila (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1991). 3 Open to Judgement (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994, repr. 1996, 2001, 2002), hereafter OTJ; On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), hereafter OCT. 3 of systematic theology, though that is a discipline about which, as we shall see, Williams has strong reservations. As we consider these themes, it will be apparent that the difficulties with Williams's theology are in fact on central doctrinal questions. By the time we get to the question of sexual ethics, we will have seen that the controversy around that subject is merely the presenting symptom. Much as earlier debates in the history of the church about circumcision and indulgences were actually debates about the doctrine of salvation, the heart of the matter here is the doctrine of revelation. 4 1. The Doctrine of Revelation: Outline We begin with the doctrine of revelation both because it is a central theme in Williams's works, and because it has a central place in any theology. Our understanding of how we know God will shape the rest of our theology. The theological method that we choose in approaching any question will inevitably have a determinative effect on the conclusions that we reach. The system­questioning silence of God Williams is very concerned about our propensity to establish systems of truth which we then take to be God's truth and use against others. This, he repeatedly notes, is how `truth' becomes the agent of power and serves our desire to dominate. `Those who claim to speak in the name of God will always be dangerously (exhilaratingly) close to the claim that in their speech, their active presence, the absent God who is never an existent among others is actually present: a claim of stupendous importance in legitimating any bid for power.'(4) The Gospel cuts across this desire for power and denies our systems and policies. In Open to Judgement this argument is at its clearest when Williams comments on the birth of Jesus and his existence as a child. In the Christ­child we find God unable to speak clearly to us. He is present, but he will not answer our questions or approve of our thoughts. As he puts it, `Ask a baby about the ordination of women, about divorce legislation, violence on television, who will win the election: it is not a fruitful experience.' Thus the baby Jesus challenges us with his silence: `So far from the divine child being a cipher, the tool of our schemes and systems, he confronts us with the alarming, mysterious, shattering strangeness of God.'(5) Such a God as this undermines all of our power­seeking systems. He `passes annihilating judgement on our efforts to be right and secure, defended by God against others'.(6) In a discussion of being alone, Williams uses another image, this time not of a baby but of God 4 Lost Icons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), p. 162. 5 OTJ, p. 35. 6 OTJ, pp. 36­37. 5 as a nine­year­old spastic child: `This is the solitude of truth, the solitude, finally, of God: God as a spastic child who can communicate nothing but his presence and his inarticulate wanting.'(7) The dark night of the soul The theme of our systems being called into question is also evident in the stress which Williams places on the mystical conception of the dark night of the soul. He believes that the dark night is the `only defence religion ever has or ever will have against the charge of cosy fantasy'.(8) This is because it is only in the darkness of that night, as we `talk to an iron heaven' that we are confronted with the silence of God which subverts all of our theology and practice.(9) `You must recognise that God is so unlike whatever can be thought or pictured, that, when you have got beyond the stage of self­indulgent religiosity there will be nothing you can securely know or feel. You face a blank: and any attempt to avoid that or shy away from it is a return to playing comfortable religious games. The dark night is God's attack on religion.'(10) In his reflection on icons of Mary, Williams explains that she points the way here. In the Orans icon (a picture of Mary facing forwards with her hands extended in prayer and the baby Jesus in a medallion on her breast), Mary represents the church, but it is a particular kind of church, a church that is `able to stay with the mysteriousness of Christ's presence rather than creating an accessible but false picture to hang on to'.(11) Elsewhere, Williams explains that Jesus himself provides our example of entering the darkness. He was the one closest to God, and yet he entered the darkness of the cross even to the point of death. We see from Jesus that `intimacy with God means refusing 7 OTJ, p. 145. 8 OTJ, p. 95. 9 OTJ, p. 96. 10 OTJ, p. 97. 11 Ponder These Things: Praying With Icons of the Virgin (Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 2002), p. 55. 6 all consoling substitutes for God and bearing the consequences.'(12) Thus it is that when the ray of God's darkness shines on me, `when God's light breaks on my darkness, the first thing I know is that I don't know -- and never did'.(13) This denial of knowledge is what the reign of Christ over us means: `Christ's is the kingship of a riddler, the one who makes us strangers to what we think we know.'(14) The denial of knowledge is also a consequence of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity teaches us that we must give our certainties away as God gives himself away to himself in the trinitarian relationship: `our spiritual conformation to the life of the trinitarian God involves, among a good many other things, a scepticism, both relentless and unanxious, about all claims to successful performance in our life and our discourse'.(15) Religious pluralism This negation of systems is especially important for Williams when it comes to his consideration of the relationships among world religions. Given the radical subversion of all of their own truth systems, Christians should bring to dialogue with other religions less an answer and more a question. Williams quotes Jacques Pohier with approval: `The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Pentecost of his Spirit do not mean that Jesus Christ is henceforward the answer to everything ... They indicate that God bears witness that the question raised by Jesus Christ is the one by which God manifests himself'.(16) Or in his own significant words: `Jesus ``uniquely'' reveals the God whose nature is not to make the claim of unique revelation as total and authoritative meaning.' `He is presented as the revelation of God: as God's question, no more, no less.'(17) 12 OTJ, p. 98. 13 OTJ, p. 120. 14 OTJ, p. 131. 15 OCT, p. 258. 16 Cited in OCT, pp. 104­105. 17 OCT, p. 105. 7 The position which Williams takes on religious pluralism emerges again in his comments on the work of Raimundo Panikkar, for whom `The mystery of the Trinity is the ultimate foundation for pluralism.'(18) Williams is not without criticisms of the pluralist Panikkar, but his evaluation as a whole is very positive. He writes that the `most substantial contribution' of Panikkar to the work of Christianity is to point out that `Trinitarian theology becomes not so much an attempt to say the last word about the divine nature as a prohibition against would­be final accounts of divine nature and action.' In short, he agrees with Panikkar, `What we know, if we claim to be Christians, is as much as anything a set of negations.' Jesus may be pivotal in the history of the creation, `but we know that the historical form of Jesus, in which we see creation turning on its pivot, does not exhaust the divine'.(19) Jesus is central not as the answer of God to humanity, but as the great questioner of all answers, be they non­Christian or Christian. The many Christs An example of the consequences of this denial of knowledge emerges when, in an essay entitled `Different Christs?', Williams discusses how people who hold different theologies should understand their differences. He recognizes that such disagreements are real and that they cannot be avoided by a kind of `liberal indifferentism'.(20) Nor, he thinks, can they be resolved by `argument', by `new facts', or by `new perspectives' on the issue. 21 This is because, in the end, we do not have the voice of God to tell us which beliefs are right. We have our own differing visions of Christ, but Christ himself is silent. Christ has left us with signs, `the totally enigmatic face on the wall, the cross, the bread and wine', but these do not speak: ` Silent signs, as silent as he was before Pilate, consistently refusing a straight and simple answer.' Any attempt to make Christ speak is pointless: `We can draw little balloons coming out 18 Cited in OCT, p. 167. 19 OCT, p. 178. 20 OTJ, p. 106. 21 OTJ, p. 107. 8 of his mouth, as much as we like. What does that tell us? The vulgarity of the analogy underlines the futility of the exercise.'(22) It is important to remember here that Williams is not saying that there are some controverted issues, some areas where we cannot know the mind of God. He is speaking about central, painful, theological disagreements about the identity of Jesus Christ. On these, we have only silence from Jesus. Coping with the many Christs in the church How then would Williams have us proceed when we disagree over who Jesus is? The vital thing, he tells us, is that we should not become preoccupied in opposing others such that we lose our own vision, that we should ask if our Jesus can save others, and that we should remain together in our discipleship and come to the eucharist where we are all judged by the silence of the cross.(23) With that focus of unity, we may question one another, but in the end there is silence. We must ask if we are ready `to go into the desert when the security of pictures and ideas fades away, where all theologies finally give way to God'.(24) In the end then, we do not have a theology which God reveals to us. Or rather, he reveals only that there is no revelation, that we cannot claim to have access to God's own truth. It is the powerful oppressor who claims such knowledge and who uses it to attack others. It is the spiritually immature who have not met the silence and darkness of the cross. Outright conflict between visions of Christ is thus out of place. We may question, but we may not exclude. The misapprehension of revelation in the Bible The general account which Williams gives of revelation has, as we would expect, consequences for his estimate of the Bible. It 22 OTJ, p. 107. 23 OTJ, pp. 108­109. 24 OTJ, p. 110. 9 emerges that the biblical authors were, like us, those who encountered the reality of God which is impossible to pin down in forms of words. Some of them were broken by their encounter, but they spoke from their brokenness, as a poet or seer speaks from `a fractured sensibility'.(25) It is the `pressure of the figure of the crucified Messiah' which resulted in the `disturbing confusion of theological language in the New Testament'.(26) The description which Williams gives of John the Divine and his Book of Revelation is the plainest example here. The book contains two scripts, one with a clear and `haunting authority', but the other `tightly written, pen driving into cheap paper, page after page of paranoid fantasy and malice, like the letters clergymen so frequently get from the wretched and disturbed'.(27) It is true that for Williams even this script contributes to our hearing the Word of God, but it does so by its stark contrast with the other script: `Perhaps, as we read the Revelation of John, we should let its ugly and diseased elements speak to us in this way. The very disorder, the madness and vengefulness, of certain passages can help us to hear more clearly the depth and authority of others.'(28) Or again, `The rantings of John the Divine about his theological rivals are part of the by­product of the very vision of the Living One that shows these ravings for what they are, by showing the radical and unconfined purpose of God in Jesus Christ.'(29) So it is that we do not have to submit to the teaching of the Book of Revelation. With people like John, `We aren't called to believe and endorse all they say, only to ask ourselves what we are taught here about the strangeness and sometimes the terror of the Word of God to fragile minds.'(30) We find revelation, therefore, in the midst of the fragility of the biblical writers: `the revelation of God comes to us in the middle 25 OTJ, p. 114. Williams writes further on the dislocating and remaking function of poetry in `Poetic and Religious Imagination', Theology, 80 (May 1977), 178­187. 26 OCT, p. 125. 27 OTJ, pp. 113, 112. 28 OTJ, p. 114. 29 OTJ, p. 115. 30 OTJ, p. 116. 10 of weakness and fallibility', and this is not just our fallibility, but that of the writers in apprehending the revelation they were given. `We read with a sense of our own benighted savagery in receiving God's gift, and our solidarity with those writers of scripture caught up in the blazing fire of God's gift who yet struggle with it, misapprehend it, and misread it.' (31) The biblical writers, like us, at times mistook the revelation of God. Hence the parable of the unjust steward is `a story which St Luke does not seem to have understood particularly well', and hence `In the letters to Timothy and Titus we can see how Paul's own insight was bundled together by a later generation with a lot of anxiety about being respectable and having a good reputation.'(32) The Bible as exemplifying theological method The Bible is therefore less a set of theological statements than an example of theological method. `The Bible continues to be of unique significance because without it we should not have any understanding at all of faith itself. It has this significance not simply because it speaks to us of God's active presence in history, but because it speaks of this by being itself a response to God, rather than merely by detached ``reporting''.'(33) The Bible, in other words, contains the call of God and an example of human response. We are to look at how the writers apprehended the revelation and to learn from their experience for our own apprehension of it: `if [as Williams has argued] the New Testament is less a set of theological conclusions than a set of generative models for how to do Christian thinking, our own consideration of how we should speak of the unity of doctrinal language must be shaped by the methods displayed in these writings'.(34) This must be what Williams means in his final presidential address to the Monmouth Diocesan Conference when he says that the Bible is the `touchstone' for Christian theology.(35) We must take the writers of Scripture as the best model we have 31 OTJ, p. 159. 32 OTJ, pp. 158, 159. 33 `On Doing Theology' (with J. Atkinson), in Stepping Stones, ed. C. Baxter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987), 1­20 (pp. 7­8). 34 OCT, p. 22. 35 See http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/archbishop (18/10/02). 11 of a response to revelation. This is so despite the fact that he holds that they misapprehended it. The unacceptable alternative would be a doctrine of propositional revelation according to which we look to the Bible's propositions to define our theology. This must be rejected because it leads to `intellectual totalitarianism'.(36) Just as Williams finds that much of the theology expressed in the New Testament is not binding for us, so too its history is open to serious questioning. We have seen a hint of this already in Luke's misreading of the teaching of Jesus, but Williams evidently has wider doubts: `the Jesus we meet in the gospels calls twelve to be with him as judges of the tribes, assumes a certain (rather ill­ defined) liberty in regard to some aspects of the Torah, and dies at the time of the Passover festival, declaring the existence of a new covenant sealed in his blood. What of this can be confidently affirmed to be true of the ``Jesus of history'' is unclear, and actually immaterial for our present purposes'.(37) So too with the trial of Jesus before Pilate: `Here, more than almost anywhere else, a concern about whether this is exact history can distract us from the central issue, which is our dialogue with Jesus through the medium of the inspired narrative.'(38) Likewise with the resurrection. In his work Resurrection, Williams himself is persuaded of the historicity of the empty tomb, but he thinks that `part of the trouble with a good deal of modern debate on the resurrection is that it turns on the questions of ``What happened to Jesus?'''.(39) The view of religious truth which stands behind such a comment demands our attention. Orthodoxy defined by the life of the community When Williams seeks to define what religious orthodoxy is, he spells out his understanding of the nature of Christian doctrine, and in particular how he thinks that we should distinguish truth 36 OCT, p. 132. 37 OCT, p. 97. 38 Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement (London: Fount, 2000), p. xiv. 39 Resurrection (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982), p. 119. 12 from error. `All that a religious orthodoxy ought to claim is that it is a way of access to certain patterns of human living and dying that are -- irrespective of even the most far­reaching shifts in historical understanding -- ``fundamental'' in concern and orientation.'(40) What does this mean? In essence it is quite simple: orthodoxy is that system of thought which most closely matches with the reality that we experience in our lives as Christians. We discern the truth of religious claims by discerning such correspondence between them and our lived reality: `Establishing the truth of a religious claim is a matter of discovering its resource and scope for holding together and making sense of our perceptions and transactions without illusion'.(41) When such correspondence between thought and reality is missing, we find ourselves in error: `The test of an orthodoxy, then, is something to do with its potential for authentic comprehensiveness. Can it continue to show the appropriateness of its classical models by continuing to nourish patterns of life and speech and transformative action that are not obviously regressive, evasive, exclusivist and defensively self­conscious in a contemporary setting?'(42) In other words, where our thinking fails to account for the aspects of reality which we find in our lives as Christians together, it is ceasing to be orthodox. Conformity to the patterns and forms of our lives is the test of faithfulness. When we start to force the shape of our thinking to make it consistent within itself, we may gain internal intellectual consistency, but we will lose `the coherence of lived fidelity'.(43) Williams holds a similar view in his more recent writing. Where do we look to know what `God' means? `The meanings of the word ``God'' are to be discovered by watching what this community does -- not only when it is consciously reflecting in conceptual ways, but when it is acting, educating or ``inducting'', imagining and worshipping.'(44) Williams cites the work of Norman Gottwald 40 `What is Catholic Orthodoxy?' (hereafter WICO), Essays Catholic and Radical, ed. K. Leech and R. Williams (London: Bowerdean Press, 1983), 11­25 (p. 16). 41 OCT, p. 14. 42 WICO, p. 16. 43 WICO, p. 17. 44 OCT, p. xii. 13 on ancient Israel as a good example here. Gottwald has argued that Israel `constitutes a concept of God for itself by asking what it is that constitutes itself. To be able to answer the question about our roots, our context, what it is that has formed us, is at least to begin to deal with the question of the meaning of ``God''.'(45) Williams is clear that this means that God is defined by what humanity is. While in Christ the new humanity is itself defined by God, `for us, God is defined by humanity also -- never completely or adequately, because the relation is always a restless and growing one'.(46) Hence, for example, our understanding of who Jesus is must be `grasped in the light of what Christian humanity is'. Christian humanity was initiated by Jesus, but it now tells us about him. This is not just the now conventional but still important claim that we are in danger of seeing our own faces as we look down the well at the Jesus of history. The claim is much stronger than this. Identifying who Jesus is by looking to Christian humanity is not a danger to be avoided in interpretation, it is the way we can and in fact `must' proceed.(47) Orthodoxy is therefore certainly not `a supra­historical, ``God's­ eye'' account of the structure of reality'.(48) Indeed, `religious and theological integrity is possible as and when discourse about God denies the attempt to take God's point of view (i.e. a ``total perspective'')'.(49) Such a totalizing account, Williams again warns, would simply be a tool for domination: `To appeal to a total perspective is to betray the dominative interest at work in what you are saying, for there can be no conversation with a total perspective.'(50) This means that orthodoxy is, first and foremost, about a shared pattern of life, rather than a shared body of doctrine: `Heresy is possible; but before we throw the word around, we need to 45 OCT, p. 135. 46 OCT, p. 288. 47 OCT, p. 25. 48 WICO, p. 19. 49 OCT, p. 6. 50 OCT, p. 5. 14 remember that orthodoxy is common life before it's common doctrine.'(51) Likewise, mission takes on a distinctly non­verbal form for Williams, a form concerned with living and not with changing minds by preaching words. It `is not the work of persuasion, getting someone to adopt your views or join your group; or, rather, it's only persuasion in the sense that an extended hand, a smile, an opening door, a greeting could be called persuasion'.(52) Orthodoxy as a method of uncertainty Williams does not want us to think that there is no stable centre in orthodoxy -- the centre is `the concrete event of generation and transformation', the death and resurrection and ascension of Christ.(53) But exactly how the Christ­event tethers orthodox doctrine requires further attention. Williams does not seem to mean that there is some final and full propositional content to orthodoxy. Rather the cross and resurrection are at the centre because in them we see that the Word himself is broken and then lives again. That is, the cross and resurrection tether orthodoxy to a centre only in so far as they tether it to being itself constantly broken and remade. They constitute the narrative which generates `the death and resurrection of meaning'.(54) This is their centring work: they show that our orthodoxy must itself constantly die and rise again, must be ever transformed.(55) The cross and resurrection are the frame of judgement for our doctrine in that `if you do believe in and commit yourself to this frame of reference, this point of judgement, you may expect to live with a continuing breaking and recovery of this same frame of reference, at deeper and deeper levels.'(56) The narratives of the trial of Jesus point in the same direction, especially when they depict a silent or 51 OTJ, p. 264. 52 OTJ, p. 265. 53 WICO, p. 19. 54 `Between Politics and Metaphysics: Reflections in the Wake of Gillian Rose', Modern Theology, 11:1 (January 1995), 3­22 (p. 20). 55 WICO, p. 19. 56 WICO, p. 20. 15 questioning Jesus. Mark's account, for example, speaks of `God's alienation from almost all our language of meaning'.(57) This point emerges in two earlier pieces by Williams. In his work on the question of pre­Nicene orthodoxy, he argues that the strength of that period of early church history was precisely that it did not give too many answers: `In so far as certain features of the development of canon and orthodoxy paradoxically worked against the absorption of Jesus into a thematized religious subjectivity and a system of ideas, they preserved the possibility of preaching Jesus as a questioning and converting presence in ever more diverse cultures and periods'.(58) In The Truce of God, Williams uses the Hindu god Shiva to illustrate the questioning nature of Jesus. He writes that `there can be few other icons which so remarkably embody the fusion of trust and tension in the Gospel' as that of Shiva Nataraja. The picture of Shiva illumines the picture of Jesus, so that we may return to the crucifix and see it in the way that we have seen Shiva. Thus one hand of the crucified Jesus holds meaning, but in the other we see `the fire which questions all words and images'.(59) We must note that Williams does not mean that we should constantly ask if we are being faithful to the doctrines of Scripture. Rather, we must constantly look to see how our orthodoxy fits with our experience of Christian humanity and the world around us, and we must keep revising it to expand as our experience changes. Orthodoxy is not a goal, a pattern of conformity to the mind of God revealed in the Scriptures. Rather, it is a tool, a process of breaking and remaking.(60) Like the Bible, it is about method, not content. Certain and sure theological knowledge is for the fundamentalist who lacks critical self­awareness: `For the fundamentalist, the will of God is clearly ascertainable for all situations, either through the 57 Christ on Trial, p. 69. 58 `Does It Make Sense to Speak of Pre­Nicene Orthodoxy?', in The Making of Orthodoxy, ed. R. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1­23 (p. 17). 59 The Truce of God (London: Fount, 1983), p. 82. 60 WICO, pp. 24­25. 16 plain words of scripture (as received in a particular but unacknowledged convention of reading) or with the aid of supernatural direct prompting: Christian revelation is there to offer clear and important information -- how to be right.'(61) Words find their meaning in use The approach to truth which we find in Williams's works is a distinctive one. Like much post­Kantian theology, it focuses on human life and experience, the phenomena of this world. Much as Friedrich Schleiermacher studied the works of Kant and developed a theology centred on the phenomena of human religion, so Williams tells us that we must look to human life to discern orthodoxy. To test the truth, we look to our experience of Christian humanity and reality and how our thinking fits with it. There are also strong hints of Ludwig Wittgenstein's view of religious truth here, which is no surprise given the frequency with which Williams discusses the philosopher.(62) For Wittgenstein, in his Lectures on Religious Belief, the truth is something which arises from our life together, from the grammar which we share, rather than from its correspondence to, for example, the facts of history.(63) Wittgenstein claims that if two people disagree about whether there will be a final judgement or a resurrection, they are not disagreeing about a future fact. They reveal, rather, that they live in different ways. References to an author cannot determine influences, nor does admiration for Wittgenstein necessarily imply agreement with him. It is more significant, therefore, that Williams holds a view of religious language which bears a distinct resemblance to the approach taken in the Lectures. For Williams, the orthodoxy of religious claims is determined by their correspondence to the 61 OTJ, p. 221. 62 See for example, on the question of the underlying self in Wittgenstein, `The Suspicion of Suspicion: Wittgenstein and Bonhoeffer', in The Grammar of the Heart: New Essays in Moral Philosophy and Theology, ed. R.H. Bell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 36­53. 63 See L. Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, ed. C. Barrett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), pp. 53­72. 17 experience of Christian humanity in the world. We discern truth by measuring claims against that pattern of life. This explains why Williams advises the student looking for what is normal as opposed to deviant in a religious community to ask not what people are meant to believe, but `What sort of behaviour is counted as showing that you belong?'(64) The narratives of the past engender a new community. Members of that community may still measure the accuracy of their language as a description of the life of their community, even if the historical basis is, as Wittgenstein himself argued, flimsy. And they may happily tolerate diversity within the community on questions such as the identity of Jesus, so long as they share the same eucharistic life together.(65) In short, Williams emphasises that meaning consists of correspondence to the life of the community rather than objective reference. An example: Heaven and hell A good example of this is in his treatment of heaven and hell. He explains that it is not possible to systematize the Christian understanding of heaven and hell. On the one hand, we cannot see how a loving Creator could create `persons capable of terminally ruining themselves'. Nor can we understand how the saved will be happy if they know that others are lost. These arguments weigh against the idea of an eternal hell. On the other hand, preaching about hell serves the important purpose of warning us about our potential for self­deception. Williams depicts hell as a state of being unable to perceive the truth, and so he finds that teaching about hell functions as language which persuades us not to lose touch with reality: `imagine yourself as capable of that level of self­deception! Don't take it for granted that you could never so radically lose touch with reality. Talking 64 `Defining Heresy', in The Origins of Christendom in the West, ed. A. Kreider (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 313­335 (p. 316). 65 A similar argument for unity is found in `Making Moral Decisions', in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. R. Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3­15. There the true violation of the life of the community is the exclusion of groups by making the offer of the Gospel conditional (p. 13). 18 about hell makes us see something like that.'(66) In question, then, is the objective existence of a post­mortem hell. Yet alongside that uncertainty there stands a clear emphasis on the use of the idea of hell in the life of the Christian community. Language about hell, we see, has a purpose sufficient to justify it even if it does not refer to a state which will exist. The extra­linguistic existence of God In the early 1980s the view of religious language which Williams held also made him reluctant to argue strongly in favour of theological realism. Theological realism is simply the view that religious language genuinely refers to reality, to an objective realm of being outside of the religious community and its language. Realism has been famously opposed by Don Cupitt. It was in a discussion of Cupitt's anti­realist work entitled, significantly, ```Religious Realism'': On Not Quite Agreeing With Don Cupitt', that Williams made his own position clear. He eschewed the attempt to defend the realist case with arguments. Rather than defend it with arguments, he encouraged an attempt to ask whether realism or anti­realism best explains what we see in religious lives. He wrote that we need `to ask what is shown in lives purporting to be religious, and in this way to keep open the question (which Mr Cupitt seeks to foreclose) of the relation between meaning and being, the eternal and the contingent'.(67) In other words, for Williams then, it was an open question whether or not religious language refers to an objective reality. As Cupitt himself wrote in a reply at the time, Williams `has little to say in favour of theological realism of the type that I have criticized, and produces no classical­type metaphysical arguments in support of it'. Cupitt even concluded that `it appears that there is no significant difference between us'. Williams, Cupitt 66 `Heaven and Hell: A Modern Embarrassment?', Epworth Review, 21 (1994), 15­20 (p. 19). 67 ```Religious Realism'': On Not Quite Agreeing With Don Cupitt', Modern Theology, 1:1 (1984), 3­24 (p. 20). 19 argued, was left with only a `vestigial and groundless attachment to realism' and he ought in fact `to change sides'.(68) It is heartening that more recently Williams has adopted a stronger stance on this issue. In a foreword he wrote in 1997 to a volume of essays on the subject, he states that he is not persuaded by anti­realism.(69) In Lost Icons, he asks this question: `Is the absent Other [...] simply a construct, a linguistic device to spring me from my trap and no more?' His own answer is that if the Other is just a linguistic construct, then `the implications are not promising'. What difference will it make if the Other exists only in our words? If the Other is something which I myself invent and project in my words, then it will be a tool for my own ego. Likewise, if it is something constructed by someone else, then that person's ego will be pitted against another's.(70) Either way, the Other would serve our human, power­seeking ends. If the Other is to deal with our dominative desires, then it must be more than a linguistic construct. Williams has pointed out to me in correspondence that he has refused to issue a license to one anti­realist minister, and he has made clear that he would not license anyone holding such views. It is encouraging that in the light of this recent action and his other writing Williams appears willing to foreclose the question of realism in a way that he was not in 1984. 68 `A Reply to Rowan Williams', Modern Theology, 1:1 (1984), 25­31 (p. 26). 69 God and Reality: Essays on Christian Non­Realism, ed. C. Crowder (London: Mowbray, 1997), v­ix, (p. ix). 70 Lost Icons, p. 180. 20 2. The Doctrine of Revelation: Critique A right kind of negation It is possible to agree with one version of the argument that God negates our theological systems. Certainly the Gospel radically undermines our natural human religious ideas. Certainly it entails the painful experience of having our thoughts and our ways dismantled before the cross. Such are assertions entirely compatible with orthodoxy. A radical apophatic theology Sadly, it is clear that Williams means much more than this when he writes about systems. It is not only false systems and practices that are questioned. It is all theology which needs to be silenced by the darkness. It is not that God has given us a true theological system and a true devotional practice which subverts our false truths. It is that God, like the baby Jesus, is silent before our questioning. Heaven is iron. The silence does not speak, it undermines our speech. God is a baby, a spastic child. There is no answer given which we can proclaim to other religions, only the question. We may not reject competing visions of Christ, since Christ himself has left us with only silent signs. It is hard to see how Williams will allow any more revelation than the claim that there is no sure revelation. Such a claim, of course, falls prey to the charge of self­referential incoherence. If there is no revelation, how can we be sure that there is no revelation? If the question itself is not to become an answer, the question must itself be questioned. And then we are left with darkness indeed. This is at its heart a theology which negates all theologies, a via negativa, a radical apophatic theology, that is, one which moves us away from speech and into the darkness. As such it may claim to have an ancient pedigree, although the way that Williams deploys it has a distinctly contemporary feel in that it reflects the 21 widespread suspicion of power which we find so evident in the work of post­modern and politically conscious writers. No matter how old this approach is, and no matter how much it may be found in mainstream theology, the length to which Williams takes it goes far beyond the catholic consensus, and certainly far beyond the Scriptures and the formularies of Anglicanism. It is true that our own human systems are undermined by God. It is true that we know God through his works, not directly by gazing on his essence, that essence being concealed in an unapproachable light, or even in darkness as in Exodus 20:21, and ultimately being invisible as the essence of a timeless and extra­spatial being. These convictions, however, are held in the catholic tradition alongside a robust confidence in the revealed truth as it is found in Scripture, and in the reliability of Scripture itself. 1 Clement tells us that the Scriptures, as the true utterances of the Holy Spirit (rather, we note, than of deranged and mistaken men) contain `nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character'.(71) Justin Martyr describes the writers of Scripture as strings plucked by `the divine plectrum itself', and holds that they speak the truth to us without contradictions.(72) Irenaeus speaks of the perfection of the Scriptures and judges it conceit to find error in them when we cannot even understand the world around us.(73) But perhaps this was the naivety of a pre­critical age unaware of the difficulties in the text? Not, we may be confident, in the case of someone like Augustine. We find in his Harmony of the Gospels a detailed awareness of the possible contradictions between the different Gospel narratives, together with a robust attempt to show why they are not in fact contradictions. If these and so many more writers of the early church were prepared to take this stand on matters of history as well as doctrine, they certainly held a very high view of Scripture as the fully inspired word of God. We find no talk of misapprehension here. Williams thus speaks 71 1 Clement, xlv, Ante­Nicene Fathers (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1995), 1:17. 72 Hortatory Address to the Greeks, viii, ANF, 1:276; Dialogue with Trypho, lxv, ANF, 1:230. 73 Adversus haereses, xviii. 2. 22 against the catholic consensus on both the doctrinal and historical reliability of Scripture.(74) An untenable departure These are departures of the utmost seriousness in terms of their consequences for Christian doctrine. Gone is the clear, content­ full revelation of God in Christ. Gone is the perspicuity of Scripture as an inspired witness to the revelation. Gone is the illuminating work of the Spirit in opening our minds to the clear truth which God has given us in his Word. Gone in the end is theology as a system of revealed public truths. The only truth which remains is the truth that all truth is in question. Whatever its exact intellectual ancestry, this view of orthodoxy is far from any relation to the teaching of Scripture. Here, in fact, is orthodoxy stood on its head. No longer do we test our thoughts against the revelation of God in the apostolic witness, against the deposit handed down to us in the pages of Scripture. Rather we seek to have as extensive a grasp as we can of our human experience as Christians and to measure our orthodoxy against that. This is an anthropocentric theology, one which looks to human experience as the measure of truth. Even where there is an appeal to the events of the Gospel, it serves simply to tell us that we must keep on testing our thoughts against the reality of our community, that our orthodoxy must die and rise as Jesus did. The danger of oppression remains All of this is important to Williams because such radical questioning alone can preserve us from ourselves becoming tyrants, those whose behaviour is dominative over others. This concern is not met, however, by the approach which Williams takes. Just as in seeking to question all of our truth claims he makes a truth claim, so here in seeking to undermine all systems of dominance he constructs another. 74 Williams himself states that a number of early Christian writers in the period before Origen held that the Bible is `inspired in every detail'. See `The Bible', in Early Christianity: Origins and Evolution to AD 600, ed. I. Hazlett (London: SPCK, 1991), 81­91 (p. 88). 23 A theological method which relativizes all theology is itself a potential tool for domination. All those who make firm theological claims will see them undercut. Any attempt to state a truth will be subject to the judgement that it is not a truth which fits the experience of Christian humanity. That itself will be a usefully flexible measuring rod. The task of deciding which assessment of experience is valid and thus which theology is orthodox makes the traditional Protestant task of distilling a systematic theology from Scripture look simple. And in the complexity of the resulting assessments there will be plenty of scope for one assessment to de­legitimate another, to topple, to overpower, to dominate. To the place where a variety of theologies compete comes a person who declares that all theologies are alike provisional because all are under judgement. This is the person who wields the most dominative theology of them all. We need only ask how an Anglo­ Catholic or an Evangelical will feel when he or she is told that Jesus brings only questions, to see that there is plenty of scope for power and dominance in the all­questioning theology with which Williams seeks to supplant `totalitarian' propositional theologies.(75) 75 It is interesting that Williams himself notes in Lost Icons (pp. 163­164) that in trying to remove one set of authorities the Enlightenment made the mistake of imposing another. 24 3. Sin and Salvation: Outline Sin Repeatedly, Williams expresses the centrality of the victim for Christian theology. He certainly means the marginalized in society, but he also means all sinners. In the eyes of Christ we are all victims, since we are all sinners: `To Christ, the sinner is a victim more than a criminal.' From his trials, Jesus gained a sense of how fragile we are, and a `love and fidelity so profound and strong that no failure or error could provoke his condemnation, except the error of those legalists who could not understand that very precariousness'.(76) Likewise, when we sin against one another, we victimize one another. To sin is to victimize. This means that the problem we have is both that we are victims, and that we are unforgiven for our victimization. As Williams puts it, `it seems as if there can be no forgiveness if the victim doesn't forgive -- and the dead, you might say, don't forgive'.(77) Thus forgiveness for our victimization becomes impossible. Impossible for us, but not for God. The death and resurrection of Christ While we cannot forgive for another, God can. This means that there is hope for us in our state as victimizers. How does God gain this right? He gains it by the cross: `God is the ultimate victim of all human cruelty, says the gospel: God bleeds for every human wound.'(78) We the victimizers need to be forgiven. Other people cannot forgive us on behalf of our victims, but God can. He can do so because he has himself become the ultimate victim of our human hatred on the cross. And the God who died has the infinite love to forgive that hatred; he can exhaust our victimization. In the cross we see the height of `the world's senseless evil'.(79) The cross speaks of `God as victim'.(80) 76 OTJ, p. 17. 77 OTJ, p. 60. 78 OTJ, p. 60. 79 OTJ, p. 93. 80 OTJ, p. 61. 25 For Williams the doctrine of the atonement focuses on the concept of suffering pain. Jesus brings us life because he plumbs the depth of human suffering: `In every extremity, every horror and pain, Jesus is accessible as the one who continued to make God's loving presence wholly present in the depth of his own anguish and abandonment.'(81) This is how Jesus holds the keys of hell: `he has dwelt there and still lives'.(82) Hell, a word which Williams uses quite often, is thus explained in terms of dereliction, abandonment, emptiness and poverty -- in short, in terms of human suffering. This Jesus has himself entered into, and this he has passed through and exhausted. Hence the cross deals not only with us as victimizers, but also as victimized. Jesus exhausts our victimizing by bearing human hatred. And he gives us hope when we are victims by becoming a victim and by passing through that victimization to life. This is our hope as victimizers, that God has entered our world of victimization and has suffused it with life. Williams explains this in his discussion of T.S. Eliot's work: `If there is a God whose will is for the healing of men and women, he can heal only by acting in the worldliness of the world, in and through the vortex of loss and death. He must share the condition of our sickness, our damnation, so as to bring his life and his fullness into it.'(83) This life obviously comes into our midst with the resurrection of Jesus. For Williams, the resurrection, like the cross, is understood in terms of being rescued from victimization: `In the resurrection we learn that victims are not lost: God takes their side, their ``perspective'' becomes one with God's. God in raising the reviled and executed Jesus pronounces that there is an end to the perspective of the oppressor, and that history can move beyond victimage and slaughter. There is a future, a voice for the voiceless.'(84) Or in an earlier essay: `God's blameless servant is the victim of a paradigmatic act of violence and rejection, but God ``returns'' him to the world as the ultimate and 81 OTJ, p. 69. 82 OTJ, p. 70. 83 OTJ, p. 218. 84 OTJ, p. 242. 26 decisive symbol of undefeated compassion and inexhaustible creative resource'.(85) Individual salvation The work of Christ thus means for individuals their healing as both victimizer and as victimized. For Williams, a prominent theme here is the healing of who I am as a complex web of my past and my memories. He repeatedly stresses that I today cannot be separated from who I was yesterday. I bring my past and my memory of it with me. Like Israel returning to the land, my redemption thus entails a revisiting of my past and not its denial but its healing. My memory of my past wounds may have a deeply harmful effect on me if it is not healed, yet I cannot just leave the memory aside: `My future will not be mine without the concrete memories of all my past.'(86) If I deny my past, I deny myself: am my history.'(87) Thus it is that Israel returned to the land, and thus it is that the Risen Jesus did what the earthly Jesus had done, revisiting past scenes and activities. Our memory is not to be abolished, but it is to be transformed to the point where `even its pains and traumas will speak to us of God'.(88) 85 `Authority and the Bishop in the Church', in Their Lord and Ours, ed. M. Santer (London: SPCK, 1982), 90­112 (p. 94). 86 OTJ, p. 77. 87 OTJ, p. 58. 88 OTJ, p. 102. 27 4. Sin and Salvation: Critique Absent here is the Patristic, Protestant, and Anglican juridical doctrine of sin and salvation. This again is a departure from the catholic consensus. We find a juridical conception of sin and the atonement at the centre of the Old Testament and the New, and we find it in Justin Martyr, in Eusebius, in Athanasius, in Ambrose, in Augustine, in Hilary, in Gelasius of Cyzicus and in Gregory the Great, but we do not find it here.(89) The doctrine that Jesus bore in our place the judicial wrath of God which sin deserved has been displaced by the idea that he became the great victim of human hatred. This idea is itself true -- the cross was indeed the great, loathing, violent murder of the divine Creator in the flesh, but within catholic theology that is not the reason for its atoning power. Its power stems from the fact that the unjust human hatred was the vessel for God's just hatred for sin to be poured out on himself in Christ instead of on his people. This Gospel doctrine is absent in Williams. Indeed, it is attacked, both in a caricatured and a more accurate form. First, the caricature: `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. If that is how we think of forgiveness, it really does become incredible -- an arbitrary fiat which unties all the knots we are bound in by simply pretending certain things haven't happened.'(90) Later, and with more descriptive though not evaluative accuracy, Williams writes of `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'.(91) This is despite the explicitly forensic conceptualization of sin and salvation running through the whole of Scripture, for example in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and 89 For examples of the penal doctrine of the atonement see, inter alia, Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica, x. 1; Athanasius, Oratio contra Arianos, i. 60; Ambrose, De Esau sive de fuga saeculi, 7; Augustine, Contra Faustum, xiv. 6; Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, iii. 14.This is not to deny that there are other ways of speaking of the cross in and beyond Scripture, but it is to assert the centrality and necessity of the juridical account. 90 OTJ, p. 58. 91 OTJ, p. 222. 28 in Paul's epistles. David rejoices in the non­imputation of sin (Psalm 32:2), even in the fact that God has obliterated it (Psalm 103). In Romans 4:8 Paul picks up on the verb for non­imputation in Psalm 32:2 (bwxy al, lo' yaHwoB) using a forensic term as in the Septuagint (logivshtai, logisetai). `No condemnation', the Apostle goes on to argue, on the basis of the fact that Jesus himself has borne the condemnation for sin in the likeness of sinful flesh (8:1­ 3). This forensic pattern of guilt and deserved retribution dealt with by substitution is central in Scripture, but Williams replaces it with a victim theology where the atonement is about men inflicting wounds, not God bearing his own judgement in Christ. This is, in short, a different doctrine of salvation from that of the Bible, the early church, the Reformers, and therefore from the formularies of the Church of England. Nor, finally, can we fail to question the fact that Williams says in the quotation above that he is rejecting a doctrine `of an earlier age', a phrase which overlooks the place which the penal doctrine holds in the minds of Anglican Evangelicals around the world, and which suggests a worrying lack of familiarity with what so many of the people he will be leading believe. 29 5. Sexual Ethics: Outline A radical reconstruction It is wrong to think that Williams is concerned to advocate solely the permissibility of homosexual activity -- he is in fact concerned with proposing a new test for sexual activity in all its possible forms. His 1989 lecture for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, The Body's Grace , sets out a clear case for beginning to reconstruct sexual ethics, a project which he hopes others will take up where he leaves off.(92) A trinitarian sexual ethic of desire Williams seeks to derive his approach to sex from the doctrine of the Trinity. In the Trinity, God loves himself. In biblical terms, the Father loves the Son, although in The Body's Grace Williams is notably shy of masculine terms such as `Father', `Son', or `he'.(93) When we are incorporated into the body of Christ, we thus become the objects of that love which God has for God in the Trinity: `God loves us as God loves God' (again, he does not write `the Father loves us as the Father loves the Son'). This means that our experience of God's grace is an experience of being desired. The Christian community has the task of `so ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired'.(94) Here we find the link to sex. In authentic sexual encounters we find that our bodies have become a cause of happiness to ourselves and to another, a source of grace (hence the title). They have become objects of desire, and we have abandoned ourselves to another: `in sexual relation I am no longer in charge of what I am'.(95) And here we become like God himself in his trinitarian relations. Where there is such genuine abandonment to desire from another there is authentic sexual activity. This is why rape, paedophilia and bestiality are wrong. Or rather, they `have some 92 The Body's Grace (London: Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and The Institute for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality, 1989, 2nd edn 2002), p. 12, hereafter TBG. 93 Note, for example, the warning marks around `his' on p. 10. 94 TBG, p. 3. 95 TBG, p. 4. 30 claim to be called perverse' because the desire of another is `irrelevant or minimal' in them. They are designated `asymmetrical'. Lack of abandonment is also marked as a sign of inauthenticity: `Distorted sexuality is the effort to bring my happiness back under my control and to refuse to let my body be recreated by another person's perception.'(96) The test for our sexual conduct is thus its conformity to the self­giving, desire­ giving and receiving life of the Trinity.(97) From this theoretical basis it is obvious why Williams thinks that homosexual activity is acceptable, since it can admit this kind of desire and abandonment. But so too can transitory sexual encounters, as Williams explains by using a character from a set of Paul Scott novels: `People do discover -- as does Sarah Layton -- a grace in encounters fraught with transitoriness and without much ``promising'' (in any sense)'.(98) To recognize this `is no more than recognising the facts of a lot of people's histories, heterosexual or homosexual, in our society'. Conversely, insisting on heterosexual marriage as the only ideal is damaging `when the facts of the situation are that an enormous number of ``sanctioned'' unions are a framework for violence and human destructiveness on a disturbing scale'.(99) In the light of Williams's doctrine of revelation, it is no surprise to find such a concern not to contradict the facts of experience. Williams seeks to rule out any rejection of homosexual practice on the basis of its non­reproductive character.(100) He points out that in Scripture Jesus and Paul do not appeal to reproductivity as a criterion for acceptable sexual practice.(101) Indeed, the acceptance of contraception holds the same implication, that authentic sex is not to be measured by reproductivity. The only way that this conclusion can be avoided and `same­sex relations of intimacy' can be rejected, Williams judges, is with either `an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very 96 TBG, p. 5. 97 For a broader application of this principle, see OCT, p. 263. 98 TBG, p. 7. 99 TBG, p. 7. 100 TBG, p. 10ff. 101 TBG, p. 11. 31 ambiguous texts' or `a problematic and non­scriptural theory about natural complementarity'.(102) 102 TBG, p. 12. 32 6. Sexual Ethics: Critique Reproductivity We may begin to question this new sexual ethic by taking issue with the point about reproductivity. Williams defends homosexual practice on the basis that it is no more non­reproductive than heterosexual sex acts using contraception. That is not the right comparison. The difference which prevents heterosexual sex with contraception being invoked to defend homosexual sex is that a marriage which uses contraception for a limited period and purpose is open to the possibility of reproduction in a way that homosexual relations simply cannot be. The totality of the marriage relation is potentially reproductive, whereas the totality of homosexual acts is not. It is this which indicates that the totality of one is acceptable where the totality of the other is not. Heterosexual sex outside marriage? Contrary to the impression given above, Williams has recently said in his final presidential address to the Monmouth Diocesan Conference that he has always held to the traditional view of sex before marriage and adultery.(103) Given this statement, we must ask him to explain how we should read these passages in The Body's Grace . In particular, he needs to show why the logic of his desire­based approach does not extend approval to pre­marital sex between men and women when it does so for sex between men and men or women and women. Is there something different about the desire? Further, if, as he writes in Open to Judgement, the test for authentic sexual conduct is `How much am I prepared for this to signify?', then why should gay sex outside marriage signify more than heterosexual sex outside marriage?(104) Why does one have sufficient signification and the other not? Despite the presidential address, these remain unanswered questions. Illegitimate inferences 103 See http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/archbishop. 104 OTJ, p. 167. 33 The method which Williams employs in his theological argument entails a significant non sequitur. He finds that God desires his people, and he identifies sexual desire with that desire in God. There may be some basis for this analogy, given that God is so often in Scripture depicted as the husband of his bride. It is, however, hermeneutically dubious to use the relation between God and his people to justify specific sexual activity. The comparison of God and his people with a husband and his wife is an analogy, and certain aspects of an analogy are always non­ transferrable. We may, in other words, infer the importance of exclusive relational fidelity from Hosea, or of sacrificial love from Ephesians 5, without using the love of God for his people to defend the validity of any kind of human sexual desire. Indeed, the specific issue of sexual desire is not the point of comparison in these texts. They compare us to God with regard to our covenant unfaithfulness and our self­giving service, not with regard to our sexual desires. Furthermore, Williams goes beyond identifying even heterosexual marriage with the desire of God for his people, which is the only identification we find in Scripture. He jumps straight to arguing that homosexual activity which entails the genuine communication of mutual desire is legitimate. There are thus two leaps here. One is from the desire or love of God for his people to human sexual desire, and the other is from heterosexual biblical examples to homosexual acts. Like the first, this second leap is consistently and conspicuously absent in the Bible. This is not to argue from a narrow range of texts, it is simply to point out that Scripture does not make the step which Williams makes, in that it customarily marks a clear distinction between heterosexual and homosexual relations and compares aspects of God's relation to his people with the former and not the latter. Non­engagement with the conservative case To say that this objection is founded on a series of `very ambiguous texts' misses the force of the conservative moral argument and caricatures its basis. Certainly there is a strong 34 case to be made from individual texts, as even a more liberal scholar such as Robert Gagnon recognizes in his seminal work on the subject.(105) But the core of the conservative argument and the premise on which those texts themselves are built is the biblical doctrine of creation. This is not an isolated text, it is a reading of Genesis 1­2 in the light of its key role in the canon as a whole and especially in the teaching of Jesus, where it has a normative function in sexual ethics (e.g. Matthew 19:3­12). For Jesus, the account of creation serves as the paradigm which God has set out for his world and relations within it. That is a basis for rejecting same­sex relations which does not appeal to reproductivity, and which is based on neither fundamentalism nor non­scriptural theory. 105 The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2001). 35 II. The Pastoral Consequences The sexual ethic which Rowan Williams espouses will have terrible eternal effects, since it is a matter of salvation and condemnation. It is identified as such within the framework of biblical theology. In Romans 1:26­27 homosexual practice serves as an instance of the consequences of human rebellion against God and as an example of the judgement of God manifested in the present age. As such, it is identified (let us remember not uniquely but with other sins such as idolatry, sins which are committed by heterosexual people too) as an epitome of human rebellion against God. For a senior presbyter in the church (which is what the Archbishop is in the language of the New Testament) to defend such an epitome of sin is to place himself in conflict with the Gospel and to imperil the souls of the men and women who follow him. This is easily demonstrated by considering the consequences of Williams's words and actions. He reports that his thinking on homosexuality has emerged through counselling people facing homosexual temptation. His opinion is that homosexual practice will not always be wrong for them. If he has counselled individuals accordingly then, in his own pastoral ministry, he has encouraged people to adopt a homosexual lifestyle. Certainly he has published on the subject and has thus encouraged his readers. And now his views have been reported within the hearing of millions of people, and he has taught them that God has no problem with gay sex, and that there is grace in other non­marital sexual encounters. In this way the senior presbyter of the church has been instrumental in encouraging people to engage in what the Apostle Paul regards as an embodiment of human rebellion. And where will that lead them? The same Apostle tells us that if they do not turn from it in repentance it will lead them, be they the passive partner (malakÒj, malakos) or the active partner (¢rsenoko...thj , arsenokoites), to being shut out of the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9­10). The Archbishop has taught and is teaching people, now millions of people in this country and around the 36 world, a sure way of being shut out from the presence of God for ever. That by itself would be reason enough to oppose the appointment of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury, but sadly there are further reasons. We have also to consider the understanding of sin and salvation which Williams holds. This is one which will not bring sinners to grasp their judicial guilt before an offended, holy, sin­punishing God. They will not hear of the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ bearing that punishment for sin in the place of sinners. They will instead be comforted as victims and urged to look to the ultimate victim who atoned by triumphing over human hatred. Then there are the pastoral effects of his radical apophatic doctrine of revelation which denies content­full theological systems. In particular, the view that the authors of Scripture misapprehended revelation is a departure from the attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ to Scripture and from the witness of Scripture to itself. It is a break from the catholic consensus and from historic Anglicanism. With this doctrine it is not possible or even desirable to preach the whole of Scripture as the counsel of God, and the constant theme will be one of all theology, even the theology of the biblical writers, being under a negating judgement. Given his views on these issues, the theology of Rowan Williams puts souls at risk of perishing. The tragic consequence, a consequence which we can only greet with heavy hearts, is that we find ourselves bound to oppose his appointment. To keep silence in the face of his theology is to acquiesce in the injury of souls. As he himself has written: `peaceful co­existence in an undemanding pluralism is an inadequate response when the matters at issue seem to relate to basic questions about how the gospel can be heard in the struggles of contemporary social existence. There is a case for protest, even for ``confessional'' separation over some issues.'(106) 106 OCT, p. 57. 37 Bibliography Works by Rowan Williams quoted or referred to: `Poetic and Religious Imagination', Theology, 80 (May 1977), 178­ 187 The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979) `Authority and the Bishop in the Church', in Their Lord and Ours, ed. M. Santer (London: SPCK, 1982), 90­112 Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982) The Truce of God (London: Fount, 1983) `What is Catholic Orthodoxy?', in Essays Catholic and Radical, ed. K. Leech and R. Williams (London: Bowerdean Press, 1983), 11­ 25 ```Religious Realism'': On Not Quite Agreeing With Don Cupitt', Modern Theology, 1:1 (1984), 3­24 `On Doing Theology' (with James Atkinson), in Stepping Stones, ed. C. Baxter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987), 1­20 `The Suspicion of Suspicion: Wittgenstein and Bonhoeffer', in The Grammar of the Heart: New Essays in Moral Philosophy and Theology, ed. R.H. Bell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 36­ 53 The Body's Grace (London: Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and The Institute for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality, 1989, 2nd edn 2002) 39 `Does it make sense to speak of pre­Nicene orthodoxy?', in The Making of Orthodoxy, ed. R. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1­23 Teresa of Avila (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1991) `The Bible', in Early Christianity, ed. I. Hazlett (London: SPCK, 1991), 81­91 `Heaven and Hell: A Modern Embarrassment?', Epworth Review, 21 (1994), 15­20 Open to Judgement (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994, repr. 1996, 2001, 2002) `Between Politics and Metaphysics: Reflections in the Wake of Gillian Rose', Modern Theology, 11:1 (January 1995), 3­22 Foreword to God and Reality: Essays on Christian Non­Realism, ed. C. Crowder (London: Mowbray, 1997), v­ix Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement (London: Fount, 2000) Lost Icons: Reflection on Cultural Bereavement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000, repr. 2001, 2002) On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987; 2nd edn SCM Press, 2001) `Defining Heresy', in The Origins of Christendom in the West, ed. A. Kreider (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 313­335 `Making Moral Decisions', in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. R. Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3­15 40 Ponder These Things: Praying With Icons of the Virgin (Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 2002) Other works by Rowan Williams consulted: `Jesus -- God With Us' (with Richard Bauckham), in Stepping Stones, ed. C. Baxter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987), 21­41 `Postmodern Theology and the Judgment of the World', in Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World, ed. F.B. Burnham (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 92­112 `The Literal Sense of Scripture', Modern Theology 7:2 (January 1991), 121­134 `Penitence in the Penitentiary', Theology, 95 (March/April 1992), 88­96 `Teaching the Truth', in Living Tradition: Affirming Catholicism in the Anglican Church, ed. J. John (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1992), 29­43 `Doctrinal Criticism: Some Questions', in The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 239­264 Review of E. Stuart, Just Good Friends, in Theology and Sexuality, 4 (1996), 123­126 `A History of Faith in Jesus', in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, ed. M. Bockmuehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 220­236 Writing in the Dust: Reflections on 11th September and Its Aftermath (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002) The Kingdom is Theirs: Five Reflections on the Beatitudes (London: Christian Socialist Movement, no date) 41 PREVIOUS LATIMER STUDIES Latimer Studies are an occasional series on various subjects of topical concern, edited by the Theological Work Group of the Latimer Trust (formerly Latimer House, Oxford). Each author accepts personal responsibility for the particular views he or she expresses. 1 The Evangelical Anglican Identity Problem J.I. Packer 2 The ASB Rite A Communion - A Way Forward R.T. Beckwith 3 The Doctrine of Justification in the Church of England R.A. Leaver 4 Justification Today: The Roman Catholic & Anglican Debate R.G. England 5/6 Homosexuals in the Christian Fellowship D.J. Atkinson 7 Nationhood: A Christian Perspective O.R. Johnston 8 Evangelical Anglian Identity: Problems & Prospects N.T. Wright 9 Confessing the Faith in the Church of England Today R.T. Beckwith 10 A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness J.I. Packer 11 Sickness & Healing in the Church D.S. Allister 12 Rome & Reformation Today: How Luther Speaks to the New Situation J. Atkinson 13 Music as Preaching: Bach, Passions & Music in Worship R.A. Leaver 14 Jesus Through Other Eyes: Christology in Multi-Faith Context C.A. Lamb 15 Church & State Under God J. Atkinson 16 Language & Liturgy G.I. Bray, S.A. Wilcockson & R.A. Leaver 17 Christianity and Judaism: New Understanding, New Relationship J. 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Osborn 35/36 Mission & Evangelism in Recent Thinking 1974: 1986 R. Bashford 37 Future Patterns of Episcopacy: Reflections in Retirement S. Blanch 38 Christian Character: Jeremy Taylor and Christian Ethics Today D. A. Scott 39 Islam: Towards a Christian Assessment H. Goddard 40 Liberal Catholicism: Charles Gore and the Question of Authority G.F. Grimes 41/42 The Christian Message in a Multi-Faith Society C. Chapman 43 The Way of Holiness 1: Principles D.A. Ousley 44/45 The Lambeth Articles V.C. Miller 46 The Way of Holiness 2: Issues by D.A. Ousley 47 Building Multi-Racial Churches J. Root 48 Episcopal Oversight: A Case for Reform D.R.J. Holloway 49 Euthanasia: A Christian Evaluation H. Jochemsen 50/51 The Rough Places Plain: AEA 1995 52 A Critique of Spirituality J.F.D. Pearce 53/54 The Toronto Blessing M. Percy Single issues £2.00 each. Double issues £3.50 each The Latimer Trust serves the church as a think-tank for study and research. It is committed to the ideal of creatively applying Biblical and Reformation theology to the ongoing life of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. (c) Garry J. Williams, 2002 £1 Further copies of all publication are available from: The Latimer Trust PO Box 26685 London N14 4XQ Latimer Trust can also be contacted via email at: administrator@latimertrust.org This publication is accessible online at: http://www.latimertrust.org