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In the January issue of Christianity Today, renowned Anglican theologian (and CT executive editor) J.I. Packer wrote about why he walked out of the synod of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster as it authorized a service for same sex-unions. In a long-awaited statement, the world's Anglican leaders (called primates) yesterday criticized that diocese's action—along with the Episcopal Church USA's confirmation of a gay bishop—as threatening "the unity of our own Communion as well as our relationships with other parts of Christ's Church, our mission and witness, and our relations with other faiths." In the hours that followed its release, Christianity Today managing editor Mark Galli discussed the primates' statement with Packer.

Where do you think the statement got it right?

I think the statement is a brilliancy of its own kind. First, it's realistic about the seriousness of the relational situation between the different parts of the Anglican Communion. That realism goes beyond what has been representatively acknowledged hitherto, and the facts of threatening division are faced.

And the brilliancy was to formulate the statement in such a way that the frank facing of the facts and the open-endedness of what was said about the future made it possible for that majority to accept the statement as an interim statement, acknowledging their concerns—just as liberal primates who basically remain in sympathy with the move to accept the gay lifestyle in some Anglican provinces were able to accept the statement. Although for one or two of them the words—"as a body we deeply regret the actions of the Diocese of the Westminster and of the Episcopal Church"—implicitly involves a different stance for these liberals from that which they've taken thus far. "As a body we deeply regret"—I'm thankful they say that, and presumably they say it with full honesty.

Where do you think it fell short?

Two things about it seem to me to be less than what really was needed. I think that the issue of the authority of Scripture is fudged. They say that the dispute over the gay issue is only a matter of the interpreting of Scripture, not the authority of Scripture. The truth of the matter is that if you interpret Holy Scripture in an arbitrary way, a way which the writers of the Bible books themselves would not have accepted as correct or valid, if you make Scripture mean something other than what it meant in the minds of those who wrote the words to express their meaning—well, you are actually undermining the authority of Scripture, you are indeed negating it, and it would be a lot clearer to say that straight out.

Or to say something like this: "We accept the authority of Scripture as relative, though not all of us can accept it as absolute." Relative means that we respect the wisdom, the insight of the chaps who wrote it, but we don't see them as having spoken the last word.

Some think of the inspiration of Scripture as a matter of divine origin, God speaking through men, as he spoke through the prophets. Some think of the inspiration of Scripture as simply the quality of the testimony of men who had a lot of spiritual insight, wisdom, and power to inspire readers, but whose testimony, thoughts, experience is in no way decisive. I wish that distinction had been more clearly articulated.

Second, they don't say what needs to be said explicitly in order to express the reality of the situation. Those who have conscientiously separated themselves from the gay lifestyle do so because they see the gospel—quite specifically, the gospel—as bound up in the issue. And they cannot get it out of their minds that in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians (who had the gay lifestyle as a going concern among them), "Don't be deceived"—because this is a matter on which it was obviously easy to be deceived in Corinth, and on which perhaps it's easy to be deceived today as well. Then comes a vice list—those who do, present tense verbs, those who commit themselves habitually, or as a way of life, to these particular vices like adultery and theft, and homosexual activity. This idea is expressed very clearly by the use of two words that point to the involvement of two men in any homosexual connection. Those who do these things, in the sense of making this their lifestyle, will not inherit the kingdom of God, says Paul.

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October (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47