The Visibility of Fellowshop

Unity without uniformity: this is one of the keynotes of the Principles of Union, now published, by which it is proposed that any scheme for uniting the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada should be governed. It is undoubtedly an important keynote. The present document sets forth “basic principles and not final expressions of doctrine or details of organization and liturgy.” Its terms represent the “full and unanimous agreement” of the two committees concerned.

The principles propounded fall into two categories: first, those relating to faith and order; and, secondly, those relating to organizational union. The former of these is divided into sections on the faith, the church, the sacraments, and the ministry. If a certain embarrassment is evident in what is said of the Bible, so that an impression of ambiguity is conveyed, what is in fact said might well have been worse. Thus the Holy Scriptures are accepted as “the faithful witness of God’s self-revelation and his mighty acts.” Further: “Through the Bible, as the record of the prophetic witness to the word of God and the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ, the Word of God Incarnate, the church hears that living Word and receives it [what is the antecedent of this pronoun?] as the supreme rule of faith through which its life, teaching, and worship are to be tested and renewed.”

From the ancient Church the Apostles’ Creed is gratefully received, together with “the ecumenical statements of faith” (presumably the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds; the failure to be specific is unsatisfactory in a document of this nature). Moving on to more modern formularies, “the witness borne to the Catholic faith by those articles of doctrine and forms of common worship which have been authorized in our separate churches and used by God as means of grace” is gratefully acknowledged. The proviso is added that such formulation must be “always in essential agreement with the Word of God received in Holy Scripture and witnessed by the creeds of the Ancient Church, of which agreement the church shall be sole judge.”

There is a danger here of introducing a double standard: Scripture plus the ancient Church; whereas classical Anglicanism knows only one standard, that of the Holy Scriptures (cf. the Thirty-nine Articles throughout), and approves the creeds of the ancient Church precisely because “they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture” (Article 8). Furthermore, setting up the Church as the sole judge introduces yet another standard, that of the modern Church. And in this connection what exactly is meant by “the church”: the bishops? the clerics? the majority vote? History, ancient and modern, supplies abundant evidence of the basic unreliability of any such standard, however interpreted. In any case, the lack of precision here is a serious defect.

In the section on the Church, emphasis is placed on the visibility of the Christian fellowship. It is an impoverishment of perspective to overlook the invisibility of the Church—by which is meant that there are tares among the wheat and that both grow together until the harvest, when God, who alone can infallibly separate between the genuine and the spurious, will make the ultimate distinction. Thus the otherwise admirable definition of the Church as “the Body of Christ, in which the members are united with Him and with one another in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, in which the Gospel is preached and the Sacraments are administered,” could be improved by greater explicitness, for the first part would fit the Church in its invisible aspect and the second part the Church in its visible aspect. The unsatisfactory nature of the statement that “those are members of the Church who have been baptized with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is obvious. It could be simply remedied, however, by adding the adjective “visible” before the noun “Church.” Entirely commendable is the explanation of the apos-tolicity of the Church as its “continuing in the apostles’ doctrine and mission.”

The section on the sacraments is confused and lacking in coherence. It is certainly true that the sacraments “are primarily concerned, not with what men do, but with what God does and has already done.” If, as stated, repentence and faith are the requirements for baptism, and grace is prior to the sacraments (as implied in the quotation given in the previous sentence), in what way is it possible to describe baptism as a sacrament “whereby we are made children of grace,” etc., except in an external and ceremonial sense, which, however, is hardly consistent with the terms used of its effect. It would seem, rather, to make baptism prior to grace. The significance of the sacraments as means of grace needs more careful definition.

Again, what are we to understand by the assertion that in the Holy Communion we “set forth and represent” Christ’s sacrifice to the Father? Does it mean that this sacrament is a reminder to God, as though he might be forgetful and needs to be confronted with the dramatic spectacle of the Eucharist? Or does it mean that at the Eucharist Christ’s sacrifice is reoffered (represented)? And does not talk of our offering ourselves to God “in union with the self-offering of Christ” suggest a quite illegitimate association of those whom Christ came to save with his unique, once-for-all sacrifice of himself on the Cross? Is this language designed to leave the door open for sacerdotalism and eucharistic sacrifice? Its effect is to reverse the proper movement of the Eucharist, which is from God to man. Our self-offering, as the New Testament makes plain, is in response to, not in union with, the self-offering of Christ.

There is agreement that, when union is achieved, the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons shall be adopted “in some constitutional form,” which is fair enough; but agreement seems to be altogether lacking when it comes to deciding what it is that constitutes a valid ministry. There will, accordingly, be need to define precisely what is implied or intended by the act of unification of ministries which is envisaged. The lesson can at least be learned from the negotiations between the Church of England and the Scottish and Methodist churches that any suggestion of the validation of previously inadequate ministries or of the conferring of priesthood through the imposition of a bishop’s hands will hinder, not promote, the realization of union.

In this respect the Church of South India has given a lead that others should follow. While adopting the pattern of the threefold ministry, the ministers of the uniting churches were accepted as they were, without any camouflage of reconciliation or validation or reordination. It is a shameful thing that to this day Anglicanism has refused to enter into a relationship of full communion with the Church of South India.

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