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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
In the light of recent theological controversies, the Anglican Communion urgently needs what Archbishop Rowan Williams has described as an ‘agreement over a common accountability’. Such an agreement must differentiate the things that define the essence of the Anglican Church from those that merely imparta distinctive cultural flavour. It will be built on a nuanced theological debate involving questions of self-definition that recognize the social, economic, political and cultural contexts enveloping the Communion's various national churches. In the same way that social structures and economic conditions bear directly upon the shape of religious organizations, it will become apparent that political pressures and cultural mores influence doctrinal commitments. The church-sect-mystic group typology developed by Ernst Troeltsch has the potential to help the Anglican Communion understand the origins of its theological diversity as part of a larger project that seeks to maintain corporate identity and to preserve organizational unity. His attempts to define the ‘essence of Christianity’ in the context of what might otherwise seem random, chaotic and possibly irreconcilable responses to Christ's teaching offers some interpretative insights that will assist Anglicans achieve a consensus on which ‘agreement over a common accountability’ might be based.
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6. Stephen Sykes has commented on the many significant changes that Troeltsch made to this essay before its re-publication with the same title in the second volume of his Collected Works in 1913Google Scholar. Troeltsch neither highlighted nor explained the changes which had their origins in the ‘essence of Christianity’ debate which was current at the time. Sykes discusses the shift in the debate from ‘essence’ to ‘identity’ in contemporary thought in his ‘The Essence of Christianity’, Religious Studies, 7 (1971), pp. 291–305Google Scholar and the changes to Troeltsch's second version of 1913 in ‘Ernst Troeltsch and Christianity's Essence’, in Clayton, John (ed.), Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), ch. 5Google Scholar. A slightly expanded version of the same article appears as ‘Troeltsch and the Relevance of Epistemology’ in Sykes, Stephen, The Identity of Christianity (London: SPCK, 1984).Google Scholar
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31. In his introduction to Troeltsch, 's Absoluteness of ChristianityGoogle Scholar, Adams, James Luther notes that the German theologian was accused of presenting a ‘Christless Christianity’Google Scholar, such was his liberal reduction of Jesus' teaching and ministry. Sykes is also critical of Troeltsch's depiction of the centrality of Jesus for the Christian community depending not on revealed Christology nor on doctrine but on the Church's socio-psychological needs. See Sykes, , The Identity of Christianity, p. 173.Google Scholar
32. The most detailed assessment of Troeltsch's Christology and his conclusion that Christ was not the ‘absolute’ revelation of God is offered by Coakley, Sarah, Christ without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar. Her explanation of Troeltsch's relativism is particularly helpful in understanding some of the internal contradictions and conceptual difficulties Troeltsch created for himself. Her analysis is similar to the central argument of this paper. Troeltsch also struggled in his description of Christianity's relation with what he termed the ‘other religions’. However, his efforts in that area do not contain any major departures from those parts of his thinking outlined here. See Pye, Michael, ‘Ernst Troeltsch and the End of the Problem about “Other Religions”’, ch. 6 in Clayton (ed.), Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology.Google Scholar
33. Troeltsch noted ‘two sociological forms of the sect-type, the religious order and the voluntary association’ in Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, p. 723.Google Scholar
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36. See Wright, J. Robert (ed.), Quadrilateral at One Hundred Essays on the Centenary of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral 1886 (Oxford: Mowbray, 1988)Google Scholar for a more recent series of interpretative essays.
37. Maurice, F.D. develops a similar line of thought in The Kingdom of Christ, two volumes originally published in 1837 (London: J.M. Dent, 1928)Google Scholar. There is no evidence that Troeltsch was aware of Maurice's thinking nor that he borrowed from it. However, the following extract from the second volume reveals a clear parallel: ‘Our consciences, I believe, have told us from time to time that there is something in each [competing theological system] which we ought not to reject. Let us not reject it. But we may find, that there is a divine harmony, of which the living principle in each of these systems forms one note of which the systems themselves are a disturbance and a violation [p. 308] … these systems, Protestant, Romish and English, seem to me each to bear witness of the existence of a Divine Order [p. 314] … Men have been asked to receive these institutions merely as such, and then to hope for spiritual life through them. Little attempt has been made to prove to them that the institutions are themselves living portions of the divine kingdom’ (p. 320).
38. Pye, Michael, ‘Troeltsch and the Science of Religion’Google Scholar, in Morgan, and Pye, (eds.), Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, pp. 234–52 (251).Google Scholar
39. I am indebted to Dr Scott Cowdell for this neat description of the polarities to be avoided in preserving Anglican diversity. See God's Next Big Thing: Discovering the Future Church (Melbourne: John Garrett Publishing, 2004), p. 1.Google Scholar
