Shifting Authority

http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=3460

[The Living CHurch] 27 June 2007--But with great respect for Bishop Steenson and the Windsor bishops, just to say something doesn’t make it true, and to say it often doesn’t make it less false. The Archbishop of Canterbury has never been the focal point of unity in the Anglican Communion. Instead, the focus of unity has always been a theology, what the prayer book calls “the substance of the Faith,” of which the archbishop is obligated to uphold. To give Canterbury control over our identity gives him far more power than he was ever meant to have.

According to Ian Douglas (Understanding the Windsor Report, coauthored with Paul Zahl), the four “instruments of unity” described in the Windsor Report were never identified as such before 1987. The Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Singapore in 1987 considered a paper that brought the four together for the first time. Yet, in reading the Windsor Report, one would get the feeling that these four — the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council, the primates, and Lambeth Conference — have always been authoritative.

What the Windsor Report does is very subtle, but it should concern every traditional Episcopalian. Windsor shifted the authority of the church from the scriptures and Anglican theology as preserved in its formularies to four modern entities. This makes “the heritage” almost incidental to the hugely expanding role of Canterbury.

This development puts many orthodox bishops on a collision course with biblical Christianity. To put Canterbury on such a pedestal puts the church over the written word. But the Articles of Religion clearly state that the church is the servant of the word (XX), that the councils of the church may and sometimes have erred (XXI), and that the traditions and ceremonies of the church are subordinate to the authority of God’s word (XXXIV). To give Canterbury primary authority (or even the four instruments together) diminishes what Anglicans have historically believed.