Ephesians 2. 14,15: For he . . has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances.
The author of Ephesians is unknown; the only things we can be fairly certain about are that he was not S Paul, since the two styles differ, and that he came later, because his idea of the church is more developed. But he is of S Paul’s way of thinking. He is emphasizing that with the coming of Jesus circumcision has lost its significance; Jesus abolished “in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances”. It is not clear what he means by “in his flesh”; of course Jesus was circumcised, like any other Jew. I suggest that it signifies “during his life on earth” and refers to the indifference of Jesus to the strict interpretation of the Mosaic laws about purity and the Sabbath. What the text asserts is that the law of commandments and ordinances no longer applies, having been abrogated by Jesus. By law, the writer understands the regulations of the Old Testament, but I suggest that what he is saying really is that Jesus abolished the system of living according to rules, and replaced it with the life of mutual love and service.
This point is important because the demand for rules is at the heart of the current dispute about sexuality in the Anglican Communion. It seems to me that this dispute is a clash of cultures. It is not really, as the traditionalists assert, about the authority of the Bible; this text is a sample demonstration that you can find a proof text in the Bible to support any view. You may declare it to be the word of God, but too often that means no more than that it is valid for you personally. I myself would say that the Bible contains messages from God, in the gradual development of Hebrew religion in the Old Testament and in its culmination in the revelation of Jesus Christ in the New, rather than in the fallible reports of detailed teaching. We can be more certain of the Father’s love from the tradition of what Jesus did on the last evening of his life on earth than from sayings attributed to him fifty year after the resurrection.
I repeat that the Anglican Communion is being riven by a clash of cultures. People in Hampstead do not feel threatened personally by disagreements over religion. In other societies the admission of a lack of uniformity is seen as itself undermining the structure of that society, so that their bishops are expected to tell obvious lies about the absence of homosexuality in their midst and to make people conform. It is not truth but appearance that matters to them. One difficulty for the Church of England is that it is a relic of the British Empire, which naturally means that the younger churches are in revolt against what they suppose the older to represent. It also means that the English are divided about their responsibilities and that the titular Head of the Communion is in an impossible position. His problem is that religion is supposed to be about absolute truth, so that the Archbishop of Canterbury cannot openly declare that the contrasting opinions of the Churches of Nigeria and the United States have as much or as little authority as one another. In my view, while the love of God is universal and the injunction to love one another is therefore also universal, some aspects of religious teaching are culturally determined. Thus, in this country respect for those in authority has declined, and it is therefore perfectly acceptable for bishops to diminish it further and admit the errors which the church has committed, for instance in appointing paedophile priests. We do not need the reassurance which might be given by denial of the truth. I do not think we can hope that every country or every church will approach social problems in the same way. This would not matter if we did not have modern communications alerting us to our differences, which cause us discomfort because, as Christians, we are supposed to speak the truth in love, and only too obviously, not all of us do. At least, it is clear that we have different definitions of truth, as well as differences about the expression of mutual affection. These disagreements about the will of God are bound to work against the unity of the church.
My own answer to this problem is the opposite of Archbishop Eames’s: it is to devise, if possible, a much looser federation of Anglican Churches united by loving-kindness and not by rules, not requiring adherence to the demands of the most demanding members, and not having in the Archbishop of Canterbury a permanent head with responsibility but no power who is unable to speak for the Church of England because he must go with the majority. If such a federation is unacceptable to those who merely seek unquestioning obedience to their prejudices, then I would prefer to dissolve the Anglican Communion and accept that the equal disunity in practice and opinion in the Church of England will eventually lead to division and disestablishment here. I prefer honesty to unity. Of course, such an approach might not promote inter-church relations, such as the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, but neither does pretending to a uniformity we cannot deliver. It seems to me that the Church of Rome worldwide is facing similar problems; it will be interesting to see how soon it will split or whether the next Pope can find better answers than the dictatorship asserted by his predecessor. I do not believe that God has given us any clear guidance about what church structures should be. Two thousand years is nothing to him; the Church has always suffered from divisions and is still in the experimental stage, and we have a long way to go. If, indeed, our way proves, like that of the Israelites, to be through the desert, at least we may hope that we shall, like them, reach the Promised Land in the end. Amen
Alan Goodison