Notes on the Talk Given by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on June 6, 2008,

St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary,

By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

Fr. John Neuhaus is one of the most well-known Roman Catholic priests in the country. He was for many years an equally well-known inner-city Lutheran pastor and civil rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King. Some of his old friends from the 1960s find his conversion to Roman Catholicism and his neo-conservative politics hard to fathom. His most famous book is a protest against militant secularism in public life, called The Naked Public Square. Fr. Neuhaus has been very active in ecumenical affairs for many years and is one of the organizers with Charles Colson and J.I. Packer of Evangelicals and Catholics together, a group which has made some important statements on ethics and American life.

Fr. Neuhaus began with a phrase that he repeated throughout his talk that reconciliation between East and West is an eschatological hope in that it can only come by God’s grace and in God’s time and it would seem by some dramatic intervention of God, but nevertheless at the same time we maintain unity between East and West as an eschatological hope we should also pursue it with a sense of temporal urgency.

Fr. Neuhaus gave thanks for his affiliation with St. Vladimir’s over the years and said that the seminary was holy ground to him because of the wonderful ecumenical conversations in which he had participated on the seminary grounds. He made special reference to his friendship with the late Dean of the seminary Alexander Schmemann whose mennshlichkeit Fr. Neuhaus well remembers.

Fr. Neuhaus stated that the Roman Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to reunion and cited official Vatican documents and the letters and speeches of both the most recent and the current Pope in evidence. He stated that hope for unity with the churches coming out of the Reformation seems to be receding as never before and that the unity of all Christians is vastly impaired by the proliferation of Christian communities especially in the Global South. There is a special closeness between East and West and reunion here is the most feasible front for ecumenical progress. “The wounds in the body of Christ began the rift between East and West and the healing should begin there as well.” “In Ecumenism readiness is all and faithfulness is all.”

Fr. Neuhaus reported a conversation with John Paul II in the 1990’s in which he asked the Pope what one thing he wanted to achieve in his pontificate and the answer came, “Christian unity.” The Pope hoped that the healing could begin where the division had begun.

Fr. Neuhaus criticized the idea that Roman Catholic interest in ecumenism expressed any sort of imperial agenda. “The dynamic that drives R.C. ecumenism is not power but weakness. The Catholic Church cannot be what she claims to be apart from other Christians, especially the Orthodox, and Anglicans until recently, as we witness the destruction of that hope once held so fervently.”

Fr. Neuhaus said that the newer churches in the Global South don’t see unity as necessary to being the church but for Roman Catholics the Church is, “the apostolically ordered Body of Christ through time.” Catholics and Orthodox who see themselves as the one true church without a need for reunion have unwittingly adopted a Protestant view of the church because the Church must be a visible unity to be a proper witness to God’s salvation. “Divisions are scandalous and ecumenism requires conversion.”

Fr. Neuhaus said that ecumenical dialogue needs to be a dialogue of conversion. There needs to be a vertical aspect of dialogue, “an acknowledgement that we have sinned.” “This creates the space where Christ can act.”

He referred to John Paul II’s invitation to redefine Peter’s office while not denying the essence of its mission. Neuhaus regretted the relative lack of response to this invitation. He quoted the Orthodox theologian, Myendorf who also regretted that the Orthodox had found no way to respond. Neuhaus approved of the response to the question in the ARCIC(Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) documents but questioned the degree to which ARCIC was truly reflective of Anglican identity.

Fr. Neuhaus quotes a French theologian. I am not sure I got the name correctly but I think it was Claimont, who thought that the truth that the primacy of Peter was to be exercised in a concilliar way was lost in Vatican I but regained in Vatican II. This theologian was critical of the direction in Orthodoxy toward autocephalous national churches and was also critical of what he called the reductive episcopalianism of Patriarch Bartholomew and Zizioulas. This is the communio ecclesiology that finds the fundamental identity of the church in the Eucharistic fellowship of the local bishop.

Fr. Neuhaus pointed out that full reunion will require essential dogmatic agreement and the acceptance of each other’s dogmas as de fide. He thought there was no essential dogmatic disagreement on the procession of the Spirit.

He suggested that, “It is possible in God’s plan that we are the early church. Therefore eschatological hope is reason for temporal urgency and our response to the quest for reconciliation matters eternally.”

Fr. Neuhaus ended by making reference to the changes in American culture and church life to which he has been a witness. He spoke of the ecumenical movement of the 1960’s and 70’s which was driven by the ecumenical liberal Protestantism. He found it remarkable that this institution which he likened to the American Medical Association or to the Ivy League universities had “destroyed itself” and ceased to have meaningful cultural influence. The old ecumenical movement in this country, which was perhaps superficial, has collapsed with the self-destruction of the Mainline churches. “Ecumenism must be reconstituted on a drive to go deeper and only the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics can do this.”

Notes on the Talk by Fr. John Erickson on Primacy in the Orthodox Tradition

Given at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, June 6, 2008

By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

Fr. Erickson is the Dean of St. Vladimir’s. He identified primacy as a both an inter- and intra-Orthodox problem. He affirmed that both Orthodox and Anglicans have an apophatic approach to primacy. Both traditions are articulate about what primacy is not and less articulate about what primacy is. For the Orthodox there is not dogma of the church. “The Orthodox sing hymns about the church but have no dogma of the church.” They have not defined the church in dogmatic terms. Fr. Erickson pointed out that even in Roman Catholic theology the dogmas on the church are of relatively recent origin. “For many centuries ecclesiology was not a forefront of dispute.” The Dean did say that the Orthodox system of autocephalous churches “has proven inadequate.” In practice he thought that the line between primacy and neo-papalism is not always clearly drawn.

Fr. Erickson pointed to the ecumenical nature of the ecclesiological discussion and of the influence of communio ecclesiology. He noted the starting point of much of this theology is with Ignatius of Antioch. The vision here is of the local church gathered about its bishop who acts both in persona Christi and in persona populi. This makes the local Eucharistic community gathered around the bishop and the local church in this sense the starting point. The canonical tradition takes for granted the unity and equality of the bishops. The emphasis in the council of bishops is on unanimity. Fr. Erickson said that the role of the council was to express the common mind of the whole church. Each church calls its bishop who may “preside in love.”

With Zizioulas there is a wide ecumenical recognition that primacy is the sharing of the partrimony of the church’s teaching tradition.

Fr. Erickson continued, Roman Catholics emphasize the hierarchal side of communion but neglect communion in holiness, baptism and martyrdom. One aspect alone of communion is not definitive, a holistic approach is needed. He asked the question, “What structures of communion and unity are necessary?” There appears to be a need for a universal ministry of unity, and from an Orthodox perspective the structures of communion need to be more than administrative and juridical but also sacramental.

The Orthodox have a high regard for Peter and the faith of Peter but are resistant to a localizing of the Petrine office in one bishop but rather see each bishop as an inheritor of the office of Peter. “Each faithful bishop derives his ministry from Peter.” Fr. Erickson pointed out that Peter ordained the Bishop of Rome but the Pope does not nominate his successor. “There is a difference between Peter and the Bishop of Rome. “The faith of Peter is the heart of Primacy.” Fr. Erickson quotes the Orthodox theologian Myendorf that, “Papacy has no indelible character and depends on the orthodoxy of the Pope’s faith.” Fr. Erickson said that, “the bishop is a concilliar being and the question of primacy is what makes one of these first?” He quotes Simeon Thesalonika to the effect that pre-eminence in episcopacy is not from an apostolic foundation but from practical considerations and the pragmatics of history. “Primacy exists for the good order of the church and primacy exists for service.”

In the Orthodox tradition an important concept with regard to primacy is the concept of solicitude or concern. “The metropolitan is charged with concern/solicitude for the whole province.” This solicitude has an extra-provincial dimension and extends to a solicitude for the whole church. This is the way in which the Early Church understood the nature of Roman primacy, as a caring after the conformity of the whole church with the patrimony of the faith. This is best understood “as leadership in love rather than juridical.” Fr. Erickson continued that Rome began to see decisions as juridical and “solicitude gives way to potentia.” This leads away from primacy within a concilliar context where the primate acts as the head of a council of bishops. In theological statements Orthodox and Roman Catholics agree on this vision of primacy but the actual practice of Roman primacy contradicts this vision.

Fr. Erickson warned against a superficial appeal to the church of the first millennium, for from the same historical record very different conclusions can be drawn.

He ended his talk with the hope that the new Pope’s ecumenical openness could lead to a new Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic consensus on the issue of primacy.

Notes on

The Way, The Truth And the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage To A Global Anglican Future

By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

I have had a quick look at the GAFCON theological document. The first thing to say is that there are no ultimatums. There is no announcement of a new Anglican Communion with a headquarters in the Global South. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not anathematized. Nothing has been said which makes a solution to the present crisis which includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth and the existing instruments of unity impossible.

The paper opens with a recounting of the history of the crisis by Peter Akinola. This chronology brings out in a painful way how the actions of the North American churches appear to purposefully contradict and defy the efforts of the churches of the communion and the instruments of unity to resolve the crisis. The unilateralism of the North American churches is put forward in a very stark way.

The bulk of the paper puts forward in broad strokes the outlines of Biblical, Creedal and missionary Anglicanism. Three stream language is used throughout, though the document is clearly dominated by Evangelical Anglican voices. Catholic minded Anglicans will find little with which to disagree but much that concerns them that is not as carefully expressed as they might wish. The section on the sacraments could use beefing up and might sound in some ears as though the sacraments were being put forward merely as sort of audio-visual aids to the Gospel. On the other hand there is an explicit embrace of ecumenical engagement and a stated desire to cooperate with Roman Catholic, Orthodox and other Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians in repairing the divisions in the church. This is I think vitally significant and I commend the drafters for including this statement. There is also a rejection of any superficial distinction between mission as proclamation and mission as practical neighbor love. The term used is from South America, mission integral.

The 1662 BCP, The Ordinal and 39 Articles of Religion are reasserted as the confessional center of Orthodox Anglicanism. The paper issues a call to return to a confession of Biblical faith centered on these formularies and criticizes the move in some provinces away from requiring clergy to subscribe to the articles. I think the critique of using Anglican to mean a style without content is long overdue. I value immensely these traditional formularies but I do think caution is needed here. When I teach theology of controversial issues I make a distinction between interests and positions. The union has a position that it wants an increase of hourly pay for the workers. The company offers profit sharing instead. It is sometimes possible to fulfill your interests with an even more adequate position. The Articles represent the reassertion of very important theological interests. I am not sure that the future of Anglicanism wants to bind itself in exact detail without any room for interpretation to the precise positions taken by the Articles on every issue. We do not I think want to establish the Articles as infallible. For instance with regard to sacramental theology the Articles stake out positions which represent the best way to protect an interest in having an understanding of sacrament that avoided Medieval superstition on the one hand and a Zwinglian emptying out of the sacrament on the other hand. But do we want to bind ourselves forever to the way in which sacramental issues were discussed at the time of the Reformation when all parties could only discuss the question in terms of Medieval philosophical Nominalism or when the notion of sacrifice was hampered on all sides by inadequate exegesis when there now exists a new consensus on the meaning of this Biblical term among both Evangelical and Catholic exegetes. I hope the realigned Anglicanism doesn’t position itself as if no ecumenical theology has taken place since the time of Cranmer. This is not to reject a central role for the classic formularies, just to advocate that acknowledgement of historical context and some freedom of interpretation be given an appropriate role.

Another interesting aspect of the document was the assertion of the reality of the supernatural realm for Anglicans in the Global South and how their encounter with principalities and powers is vivid, and how the anti-supernaturalism of Western intellectual culture creates real barriers in understanding.

I also had a quick look at Bishop Duncan’s opening statement. Again no bombshells were dropped. But there was a sober assessment of the “failure of the Elizabethan Settlement” and a call for “a post-colonial Anglicanism.” The most significant part of Bishop Duncan’s remarks was his expressed hope that given the impotence of the existing instruments of unity to exercise discipline in the church, new post-colonial instruments of unity would emerge out of the gathering of orthodox Anglicans.

I hope very much that the work of GAFCON will result in a strong presence of Orthodox bishops who will put forward concrete proposals for the renewal of the communion at Lambeth and that this gathering of Orthodox Anglicans will rally the vast majority of the communion to a renewed Anglicanism.

Notes on the Talk by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, June 5, 2008

at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary

June 5, 2008

Patrick Henry Reardon has had a remarkable personal history. He was a Trappist monk with Thomas Merton, was trained in theology in Rome, became an Anglican and was professor of New Testament at Nashotah House Seminary and of Old Testament at Trinity. More recently he has become a priest of the Antiochene Orthodox Church and the pastor of All Saints parish in Chicago. His parish was an independent Evangelical congregation for twenty years before it decided to become Orthodox. His congregation has a number of parishioners who have been associated with Moody Bible Institute and Fr. Reardon occasionally teaches at Moody.

His topic was “The Holy Scriptures and The Evangelization of America.” Fr. Reardon began with a reference to Luke 24:45. Jesus opens the minds of the disciples that they might understand the scriptures. “That is the context of ‘go make disciples.’ Those who receive the Gospel become part of the narrative.” Fr. Reardon pointed to the reiteration of the connection between Jesus and the scriptures in the Gospels. “He died for our sins according to the scriptures. He rose again according to the scriptures.” Fr. Reardon continued, “We get light on Jesus through the scriptures and light on the scriptures through Jesus. The Old Testament should be read as Christian scriptures. My family history has been engrafted into the Biblical history and there is no way to become a child of God without becoming a child of Abraham.” Fr. Reardon critiqued the disconnect between kerygma and incorporation in church practice and argued that kerygma or proclamation should lead to Baptism which then should lead to catechesis which leads to Eucharist. Catechesis is grounded in the representation of the fundamental Biblical narrative which is also the narrative of the spiritual life as we find ourselves somewhere between the Exodus and the promised land. For this reason Fr. Reardon reads Hebrews through every week at the pace of two chapters a day.

The next section of Fr. Reardon’s talk was on the Bible and History. “The Bible not only records history, it also creates history. We ourselves are part of the history created by the scripture.” A break between the Bible and its interpretation is “a break in salvation history.” This is what heresy is. Holy tradition is the handing on of the identity of the church which has been created by the scripture and it is therefore a handing on of the Holy Spirit. “Biblical history is the first part of church history.”

Fr. Reardon’s talk then turned to “The Evangelization of America.” Culture is the handing on of identity. The Bible is inextricably interwoven with the identity of the American people, “underlying the cultural expectations of the American people.” Fr. Reardon challenged the Orthodox to take Biblical preaching more seriously. He pointed out that many of the Church fathers preached daily, expositing the Bible in a systematic way and that much of the Patristic material consists of these daily sermons. In his parish fifty people come out every Wednesday night for a service of Orthodox Vespers with a chapter by chapter exposition of a book of the Bible in course. “If the Orthodox are to evangelize America they must reject the ideas that the liturgy will take care of it.” Preaching is required and this should include the tropological and moral sense of the scripture as it is applied to daily living.

In the question and answer time Fr. Reardon gave his opinion that Evangelicals are the primary mission opportunity for the Orthodox. When asked about the unchurched, he said that our times are like the times of the Apostles and that much of the Apostolic mission started with those who were already familiar with the scriptures of Israel, were monotheists and Godfearers and thus open to the Gospel and that was the mission to which the Orthodox were being called.

Notes on the Talk by The Rev. Canon J. Robert Wright

At St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, June 5, 2008

By

The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

Fr. Wright has been the professor of Patristics and Liturgy at General Seminary and a major figure in ecumenical dialogues. His paper centered on the history of the primacy of Canterbury.

Fr. Wright started with a quote from the Psalms, “I shall not give my glory to another.” This psalm was invoked by an early holder of the See of Canterbury when it was suggested that the primacy be moved. Today, Fr. Wright said, charity and humility are needed, not pride of place.

In 596-597 Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Canterbury with the Papal pallium, a form of the stole which signified archepiscopal authority. In 601, Bede refers to Augustine as the Archbishop of Britain. The term Metropolitan was first used at Nicea as outlined in Canon 28. The Metropolitan was to be a bishop chosen by all the bishops of his province and who then had the power to confirm subsequent episcopal elections and to perform the consecrations.

By a Papal decision of 1326 the Archbishop of Canterbury was styled the Primate of all England and the Archbishop of York the primate of England. Diocesan bishops were understood as suffragans or helpers to the primate “forming a college or chapter under his primacy.” Both Archbishops Ramsey and Runcie thought that York and Canterbury had been given providentially to England to keep Canterbury from becoming a papacy.

The Lambeth Conference of 1908 rejects jurisdiction for the Archbishop of Canterbury outside of England. In the language of the conference, “a primacy of honor but not jurisidiction.”

The presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church is not styled primate until 1982. The presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church is unique in not having a diocesan cure.

Fr. Wright summarized that the Archbishop of Canterbury has had by wide acceptance a primatial role in the Anglican Communion that is similar to the moral and spiritual primacy of the Roman See but dissimilar in that Canterbury claims no universal jurisdiction like Rome.

The paper ended with a summary of ecumenical documents on the Primacy of Rome and noted both Orthodox statements and ARCIC agreed statements that were willing to entertain the possibility of a non-juridical primacy for Rome even before full organic reunion takes place as a sign of unity among Christians. Fr. Wright ended with a provocative proposal that if one of the historic primatial sees of Canterbury, Rome and Constantinople needed to make a sacrificial move in order to allow the emergence of a primate who could speak for a uniting Church, let Canterbury make the first offer as a service to the Church universal.

There were a number of questions that discussed the difference between a diaconal primacy and one that was primarily juridical. Kallistos Ware rose to object to the fundamental distinction saying that he thought the distinction overdrawn and that in Biblical terms that jurisdiction was the authority to exercise one’s diakonia.

Notes on the talk by Bishop Keith Ackerman

At St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, June 5, 2008

By

The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

The second presenter at the conference was Bishop Keith Ackerman, bishop of the Diocese of Quincy in The Episcopal Church and president of Forward in Faith, North America, the Anglo-Catholic society which is best known for its opposition to the ordination of women. Bishop Ackerman opened with the proclamation that “Christ is Risen” in Greek and Russian and was heartily answered by the assembly that Christ is Risen indeed. He spoke of the mystical oneness of the church. That despite the apparent divisions of the church, the church can only be one because Christ is one. The bishop identified three sorts of authority in the church; magisterial, confessional and synodical and proposed that all three of these types of authority are properly exercised for the continuing reformation and renewal of the church in faith, love and service. He quoted Richard Hooker about the reality of the church that “from Him who is its head it has descended to us now.” Bishop Ackerman said that the bishops properly have the spiritual jurisdiction in the church but that this jurisdiction must be exercised for “the health and salvation of souls.” He quoted the monk of the East, “where Jesus is there is the church.” The proper exercise of authority in the church is, to quote Cranmer, “that we might evermore dwell in Him and He in us.”

Bishop Ackerman gave a precis of the thought of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey from Ramsey’s book The Gospel and the Catholic Church, “institutionalism fails without mindfulness of the faith and the faith fails without mindfulness of the historic church.” Ramsey emphasized the vital connection between a consciousness of the passion of Christ and a consciousness of the church as the Body of Christ and the tendency in Protestantism to lose this connection. The Bishop made a case that a Eucharistic church that longs for union in Christ “must be a church with spiritual disciplines.” Unity must be based on doctrinal agreement that is made real and practical in spiritual discipline.

Bishop Ackerman spoke of the longstanding connections between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy in this country, including the relationship between Bishop Grafton of Wisconsin and St. Tikhon the great missionary of Alaska and later Patriarch of Moscow. Bishop Ackerman quoted Bishop Grafton that “in times of confusion Anglicans turn East for inspiration.”

The Bishop then spoke about the doctrinal incoherence of The Episcopal Church, and the emergence in the midst of the ecclesial chaos of North America of an “extra-denominational church on pilgrimage” that is truly “convergent,” that seeks to be truly catholic, orthodox, confessing and renewed for the sake of mission. The Bishop expressed hope in the power of God to overcome the divisions of the churches and to use the Fellowship in fostering ecumenical convergence amongst apostolic Christians of all denominations. “How God will use our divisions for reform and renewal God knows.”

Notes on the Conference at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary

June 4 through 7, 2008

Meeting of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius

Rome, Constantinople and Canterbury, Mother Churches?

By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

The Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius is eighty years old. It was founded in England to encourage person to person ecumenical dialogue and fellowship between Anglicans and the Eastern Orthodox. The fellowship publishes the highly respected journal Sobornost. The mission of the Fellowship has been expanded over the years to include Christians of other traditions who are committed to East-West dialogue. The Fellowship website is http://www.sobornost.org/. MP3s of all the talks are available at http://ancientfaith.com/specials/svs_jan2008/.

The conference was held at St. Vladimir’s in Crestwood, New York which is in a leafy suburb just outside New York City. The facilities were lovely. The conference began and ended each day with Orthodox liturgies in the beautiful but intimate chapel and on Saturday there was an Anglican Eucharist celebrated in the Anglo-Catholic style by Bishop Keith Ackerman in the Church of St. James the Less in Scarsdale, N.Y. The rector there, Fr. Tom Newcomb is an old friend from S.E.A.D. days. The conference was international with many attendees from England who were supporting the re-launch of the Fellowship in North America. There was quite a wonderful atmosphere of genuine Christian hospitality and charity generated by the Orthodox and one could not doubt the genuine desire on the part of our hosts to have real koinonia with Christians of other traditions. Of course this fellowship could not extend to sharing the Eucharist. There was a good showing of Anglican participants both as presenters in attendance. I saw many friends from S.E.A.D. days and from Mere Anglicanism. There were faculty from Trinity, Nashotah House and Berkeley at Yale.

The topic of the conference was the meaning of primacy both in terms of the primacy of a mother church and the meaning of episcopal, regional and universal primacy. The topic is pertinent to the ecclesiological crisis in the Anglican world. The Orthodox world is split into competing jurisdictions which means that a given city may have as a dozen or so different Orthodox bishops. The Orthodox are painfully aware of the negative impact of this reality on mission. There is also a hot discussion in the Orthodox world about whether the Ecumenical Patriarch, the first among equals of all the Orthodox primates, should be the bishop of an old imperial capital with a dwindling flock and who is compromised by the interference of a government hostile to Christianity.

The first speaker was Metropolitan Phillip (Saliba) of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. This is the Orthodox jurisdiction that has ordained a number of former Evangelicals including Peter Gilchrist, the former Intervarsity worker. They have also developed a Western rite liturgy that is oriented toward former Anglicans. His topic was “Canon 28 of the 4^th Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451, Relevant or Irrelevant Today?” Canon 28 of the Council proclaimed that Constantinople as the new Imperial capital or the New Rome should have the same dignity and authority as the old Rome in ecclesiastical matters and that the Metropolitan of Constantinople should be Patriarch and Primate of the churches in the old Eastern Roman provinces and that all the metropolitans of these provinces should be ordained by him. Metropolitan Phillip identified three kinds of canons; dogmatic canons, contextual canons and dead canons. He identified as dead canons several canons that were essentially anti-Semitic including a canon that forbade the Orthodox to consult Jewish doctors or bathe with Jews. He said that he had Jewish doctors and also bathed in the ocean where certainly Jews had bathed and so had run afoul of these “dead canons.” Dogmatic canons are things such as canons defining the Incarnation. Contextual canons are canons developed to respond to particular historical situations and ++Phillip put Canon 28 in this category. He pronounced the idea of Rome, second Rome (Constantinople) and third Rome (as Moscow is called) “absurd.” These sees have had pre-eminence in the past because of their political significance. These canons defining their primacy have been historical and administrative and they are no longer relevant. Jerusalem alone has a claim to primacy which is not contingent on changing historical and political circumstances.

The application of Canon 28 in North America has created chaos and led to a proliferation of competing jurisdictions. Metropolitan Phillip gave a very scathing indictment of the ethnocentrism of Orthodoxy in North American and their lack of missionary and evangelical zeal. He spoke very forcefully against the notion of the Orthodox in North America as a diaspora. This concept encourages overlapping Orthodox jurisdictions. He spoke of the need for a united Orthodox jurisdiction in North America and of the failures of SCOBA (Standing Committee of Orthodox Bishops in America). He ended by saying that the church in North America was mature enough to govern itself and should not be organized ethnically and encouraged the beginning of unity with the clergy and laity on the local level. He called for the creation of an inter-Orthodox commission in Geneva to vigorously address these problems.

As an aside in his lecture Metropolitan Phillip told the story of Peter Gilchrist coming to him. It was very moving story told with great humility by a man with a warm missionary heart who felt that the Lord was presenting him with a clear challenge to respond to the Great Commision.

After each talk there was a time of questions and answers. There were a number of thoughtful comments but I noted the response of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware who is one of the most widely published Orthodox authors in English. He has been a long time Oxford Don and supervised the thesis of Rowan Williams among others. His comment was that the purpose of the church is to celebrate the Eucharist which unites all people of all races. He said that the Orthodox needed to get away from autocephalous ecclesiology (each national church as independent and self-governing) and should not practice canonical fundamentalism, taking canons out of context.

I will be putting up over the next several days notes on the recent conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. I encourage my readers to join the society which exists to promote one to one ecumenical fellowship between the Christians of the East and West. I believe that it is vital for missionary purposes to cultivate an ecumenical consciousness. The spiritual skills and disciplines which are necessary for ecumenical fellowship and dialogue are the same skills and disciplines needed to hold local churches together. The unity of the churches is vital to the Gospel mission.

You can find out more about the Fellowship and join by paypal here 

Report from the Conference, “Rome, Constantinople, and Canterbury, Mother Churches?” Sponsored by The Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius

Held at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, June 4 through June 7, 2008.

I have been attending a really fascinating conference at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, New York the last few days. The topic of the conference has been the meaning of mother churches for the identity of local churches and how primacy is to be properly understood. There have been Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican speakers including such luminaries as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Bishop Keith Ackerman and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. I hope to put up a summary of the conference at a later time. This morning we were addressed by Fr. Jonathan Goodall, the chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who read us a paper by Rowan Williams which the Archbishop had hoped to give in person. Rowan Williams has belonged to the society of St. Alban and St. Sergius since he was nineteen and is a patron of the society which exists to promote ecumenical fellowship between the Eastern and Western churches. Below I am putting up some quick impressions of this talk. It bears importantly on the crisis of authority in Anglicanism. As of yet I do not see the text of the talk on the internet. MP3s of all the talks are available at http://ancientfaith.com/.

Rowan Williams’ paper read by Fr. Goodall was extremely clear and lucid. It began with greetings to the society and a commendation of the theme of the conference, the meaning of primacy. “The subject matter could hardly be more timely.” The ABC repeatedly made the point that every church is a daughter church except the church in Jerusalem. Each church receives the Gospel from elsewhere and this dependence on that which is received is vital because it reminds each local church that it is not self-sufficient.

There followed a recommendation of the communion ecclesiology of John Zizioulas and others which emphasizes the church as local Eucharistic fellowship gathered around a bishop and which critiques institutional and bureaucratic understandings of church authority. “The church is not an organization controlled from a single point.” However, the ABC went on to say in his paper that “the pendulum has swung too far.” Communio ecclesiology is sometimes taken in a way that encourages an understanding of the church which misses the necessary interdependence of local churches and their existence in an economy of giving and receiving the Gospel. “One bishop is no bishop.” I didn’t get the exact words in my notes but the ABC said in effect that one local church is not the church, again stressing the interdependence of churches.

The paper continued with a reflection on the role of the bishop and of primacy. “The bishop sustains and nourishes his churches’ dependence on the larger church especially as the celebrant of the catholic oblation.” “Identification of primacy apart from the fellowship of all the bishops is questionable.” Primacy should be exercised in terms of sharing the gift of the Gospel and the Spirit. The exercise of the primatial office in the promulgation of a Gospel that cannot be shared outside of the context of one local church and culture is a contradiction of the office of episcopacy and primacy and this is a problem on both the left and the right in Anglicanism.

The paper then went on to criticize Roman Catholic conflation of primacy with legalism and juridicalism and the rigidity of the Orthodox limitation of primacy to the ancient sees. He critiqued Anglican understandings of primacy for not having thought through the necessary structures that would be required to allow an appropriate primacy to work and for the consequent inadequacy of the current structures of church discipline. He urged all three traditions to rethink episcopacy and primacy in terms of mission.

This is my best reconstruction on the basis of my notes. I will be happily corrected by others who were in attendance or by the subsequent publication of the text. It was a very lucid and well reasoned paper that gave an encouraging display of Rowan Williams talents as a theologian. It was also very clear and not couched in excessive theological jargon. In my view though no explicit mention was made of the American House of Bishops, the vision of the church and the episcopacy and primatial ministry that was outlined in this paper describe recent actions of the House of Bishops of TEC, beginning with the consent to the ordination of Gene Robinson and subsequently, as culpably communion breaking and a contradiction of the proper role of bishops in the church. In Rowan Williams’ ecclesiology as articulated in this paper there is no room for such unilateralism as has been exercised by the American church. How the ecclesiology of Rowan Williams the theologian is expressed in the actions of Rowan Williams the primate remains to be seen. I pray that this paper represents a vision for which he is willing to give the most robust leadership in the coming weeks.