Martin Davie on his new book 'Unity and Truth -An Ecclesiological Approach to the Church of England Debate About Human sexuality' LT 2024
My new book Unity and Truth – An Ecclesiological Approach to the Church of England Debate About Human sexuality is a theological response to LLF: Moving Forward as One Church (GS 2358), the paper on the LLF process which was produced by the House of Bishops for the July 2024 meeting of the General Synod.
In my book I do not undertake a detailed analysis of the contents of the House of Bishop’s paper because this task has been undertaken by Andrew Goddard in his excellent paper ‘What is now being proposed for Living in Love and Faith?’ which is available on the Psephizo website.
What I do instead is review what is being proposed by the House of Bishops as the way forward for the Church of England in the light of what is said by Bishop Martyn Snow in the Preface to the bishops’ paper, namely, ‘Unity matters – it really matters.’ That the bishops as a whole agree with Bishop Snow is shown by the fact that these words are included in the Preface to the paper and by the fact that the title of the whole paper is LFF: Moving Forward as One Church. The word ‘one’ indicates that what the bishops want is for the Church of England to remain united as one church and that they are presenting their new proposals as a way to achieve this.
In my book I argue three things in response to the bishops call to maintain unity.
First, what the bishops are proposing in their paper as the way forward for the Church of England on the issue of human sexuality, is not compatible with a proper theological understanding of what the unity of the Church of England requires. This is because the unity which the Church of England is called to exhibit, as part of the visible Church, is unity in accepting, teaching, and upholding in practice, the truth about who God is, what God has done, and how he wants his human creatures to behave. All that He has revealed in the Holy Scripture, and to which the writings of the orthodox Fathers and the historic formularies of the Church of England bear faithful witness. The bishops’ proposals in GS 2358 for the blessing of same-sex couples to continue, for standalone services of blessing for same-sex couples to be introduced, and for the Church of England to consider whether the current prohibition on clergy being in same-sex marriages should be abandoned, are incompatible with his kind of unity.
Secondly, even if the Church of England should continue to move in the direction that the bishops have proposed, it would nevertheless remain part of the visible Church of Christ, and this fact presents orthodox Christians in the Church of England with two obligations. The first is for them to remain in some form of Christian fellowship with others who belong to it. The second is for them to do this while also visibly differentiating themselves from errors in teaching and practice with regard to marriage and human sexuality.
Thirdly, a structural re-organisation of the Church of England involving the creation of an orthodox third province is the best way to allow orthodox Christians in the Church of England to meet these two obligations. It would mean that they could continue to remain part of the Church of England, and in some degree of fellowship with those in its other more liberal provinces, while at the same time being permanently free to believe, teach, and live out, the traditional doctrine of the Church of England with regard to marriage and human sexuality. Unity in truth to the greatest degree possible would thus be maintained.
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