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Polity and Polemics: The Function of Ecclesiastical Polity in Theology and Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2015

Paul Avis
Paul Avis*
Affiliation:
Chaplain to HM The Queen and Editor-in-Chief of Ecclesiology
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Abstract

This article affirms the importance of ecclesiastical polity as a theological–juridical discipline and explores its connection to ecclesiology and church law. It argues that the Anglican Communion, though not itself a church, nevertheless has a lightly structured ecclesiastical polity of its own, mainly embodied in the Instruments of Communion. It warns against short-term, pragmatic tinkering with Church structures, while recognising the need for structural reform from time to time to bring the outward shape of the Church into closer conformity to the nature and mission of the Church of Christ. In discussing Richard Hooker's contention that the Church is a political society, as well as a mystical body, it distinguishes the societal character of Anglican churches from the traditional Roman Catholic conception of the Church as a societas perfecta. In the tradition of Hooker, the role of political philosophy in the articulation of ecclesiology and polity is affirmed as a particular outworking of the theological relationship between nature and grace. The resulting method points to an interdisciplinary project in which ecclesiology, polity and church law, informed by the insights of political philosophy, serve the graced life of the Church in its worship, service and mission.

Keywords

Church of EnglandecclesiologypolityRichard Hooker
Type
Articles
Information
Ecclesiastical Law Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 2 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2015 

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References

1 H Henson, Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 2: 1920–1939 (London, 1943), p 277. Henson was reporting on the Lambeth Conference 1930.

2 W Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits: basic aspects of Christian Faith in ecumenical dialogue (London and New York, 2009).

3 N Doe, Christian Law: contemporary principles (Cambridge, 2013); see also Doe, N, ‘The ecumenical value of comparative church law: towards the category of Christian law’, (2015) 17 Ecc LJ 135–169Google Scholar; Koffeman, L, ‘The ecumenical potential of church polity’, (2015) 17 Ecc LJ 182–193Google Scholar.

4 The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion (London, 2008), especially Principle 15 (p 31) but also passim.

5 See P Avis, ‘The Book of Common Prayer and Anglicanism: worship and belief’, in S Platten and C Woods (eds), Comfortable Words: polity, piety and the Book of Common Prayer (Norwich, 2012), pp 132–151.

6 P Avis, The Anglican Understanding of the Church (second edition, London, 2013); Anglicanism and the Christian Church (second edition, London and New York, 2002); The Identity of Anglicanism: essentials of Anglican ecclesiology (London and New York, 2008).

7 On the use of consensus fidelium and related concepts in the history of the Church and Anglicanism specifically, see King, B, ‘“The consent of the faithful” from Clement to the Anglican Covenant’, (2014) 12:1Journal of Anglican Studies 7–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. King points out that in the Anglican Communion Covenant the phrase is translated as ‘the common faith of the Church's members’ (p 8). On reception, see P Avis, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology (London and New York, 2010), ch 5: ‘Towards a deeper reception of “reception”’.

8 But the report of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), The Gift of Authority (1999), is a partial exception, and not the only one.

9 L Örsy, Theology and Canon Law: new horizons for legislation and interpretation (Collegeville, MN, 1992), ch 10: ‘Theology and Canon Law: an inquiry into their relationship’; M Reuver, Faith and Law: juridical perspectives for the ecumenical movement (Geneva, 2000), p 3.

10 L Koffeman, In Order to Serve: an ecumenical introduction to church polity (Zurich and Berlin, 2014), part 1.

11 Ibid, p 23. An insightful analysis of ecclesiastical government, with a bias to the American scene, is E LeRoy Long, Patterns of Polity: varieties of church governance (Cleveland, OH, 2001).

12 See Koffeman, In Order to Serve, p 63.

13 The importance, salutary nature and dignity of church law is finely affirmed in ‘Reforming church legislation: a response by a working party of the Ecclesiastical Law Society to the Archbishops’ Council's Consultation Document GS Misc 1103’, available at <http://www.ecclawsoc.org.uk/documents/ELS-Working-Party-Response-Revised-13-July-2015.pdf>, accessed 22 July 2015.

14 K Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed G Bromiley and T Torrance (Edinburgh, 1956–1975), IV/2, pp 693–5.

15 D Hardy, Finding the Church (London, 2001), pp 158–9.

16 Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p 707.

17 For variations of polity within the Communion see N Doe, Canon Law in the Anglican Communion: a worldwide perspective (Oxford, 1998); Doe, Christian Law, ch 4; Podmore, C, ‘A tale of two churches: the ecclesiologies of the Episcopal Church and the Church of England compared’, (2008) 10 Ecc LJ 34–70Google Scholar, reprinted in (2008) 8:2 International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 124–154. What Dr Podmore refers to as diverse ‘ecclesiologies’ in this article, I would regard, to some extent, as differences in the sphere of polity.

18 For the vital distinction between the Christian (including Anglican) Enlightenment and the secular, anti-clerical Enlightenment of the philosophes, see P Avis, In Search of Authority: Anglican theological method from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (London and New York, 2014), chs 7–9.

19 Granfield, P, ‘The Church as societas perfecta in the schemata of Vatican I’, (1979) 48:4Church History 431–446CrossRefGoogle Scholar; H Witte, ‘“Ecclesia, quid dicis de teipsa?” Can ecclesiology be of any help to the Church to deal with advanced modernity?’ in S Hellemans and J Wissink (eds), Towards a New Catholic Church in Advanced Modernity (Zurich and Berlin, 2012), pp 121–45, esp pp 123–8.

20 Reuver, Faith and Law, pp 3, 16–17, 44, 103–4. See also Avis, P, ‘Contested legacy: an Anglican looks at Vatican II’, (2015) 118:3Theology 188–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 P Avis, Church, State and Establishment (London, 2001).

22 See further on the Instruments of Communion: The Windsor Report (London, 2004); the report of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-14); S Pickard, Seeking the Church: an introduction to ecclesiology (London, 2012), ch 7; I Markham, J Hawkins IV, J Terry and L Nunez Steffensen (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion (Malden, MA, and Oxford, 2013), chs 4, 7 and 8; P Avis, ‘Anglican conciliarism: the Lambeth Conference as an instrument of communion’ in M Chapman, S Clarke and M Percy (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies (Oxford, 2016), ch 3.

23 As Philip Turner has underlined: ‘Communion, order, and dissent or “The revenge of Puss and Boots”’, 7 February 2010, <http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2010/02/communion-order-and-dissent>, accessed 5 October 2015.

24 E Radner, A Brutal Unity: the spiritual politics of the Christian Church (Waco, TX, 2012), p 403.

25 R Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, I.xv.2–3, in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed W Speed Hill, 7 vols (vols 1–5, Cambridge, MA and London, 1977–90; vol 6, Binghampton, NY, 1993; vol 7, Tempe, AZ, 1998), vol 1, pp 131–132. See further W Cargill Thompson, ‘The philosopher of the “politic society”: Richard Hooker as a political thinker’, in W Speed Hill (ed), Studies in Richard Hooker: essays preliminary to an edition of his works (Cleveland, OH, and London, 1972), ch 1. My central point, that the Church necessarily has to take a political form (polity), is not affected by the fact that, for Hooker, church and state in England (and Wales) were coterminous, in that all subjects of the crown were required to be members of the Church of England, though the two realms were not conceived as being identical either in thought or in reality.

26 On Hooker's taxonomy of law, see further Avis, In Search of Authority, ch 3, esp pp 99–102.

27 The question of the polemical intention and character of Hooker's work is much discussed. See, eg, W Patterson, ‘Elizabethan theological polemics’, in T Kirby (ed), A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden, 2008), pp 89–119; for further references see Patterson's n 107 on p 111. To those sources we should now add the discussion in A Joyce, Richard Hooker and Anglican Moral Theology (Oxford, 2012), Part I. I give my view of the matter in Avis, In Search of Authority, pp 94–95.

28 See, eg, the studies of Richard Hooker, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Edmund Burke in Avis, In Search of Authority.

29 L Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church: An Historical, Theological and Political Case, Ecclesiological Investigations 16 (London and New York, 2012).

30 See B Lonergan, Insight: a study of human understanding (London, 1983; first published 1957) and Method in Theology (London, 1973; first published 1971).

31 As does Teresa Morgan in Roman Faith and Christian Faith: pistis and fides in the early Roman empire and early churches (Oxford, 2015), esp ch 12.

32 Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, p 123.

33 Ibid, p 101.

34 F Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300–1870 (Oxford, 2003).

35 Badini Confalonieri, Democracy in the Christian Church, p 130.