Unity and Truth: Part IV
by Martin Davie:
How should faithful Christians in the Church of England respond to what the bishops are proposing?
Four principles for orthodox Anglicans.
In thinking how to respond to what the bishops are proposing in GS 2358, there are four principles that need to be borne in mind.
The first principle is that even if what the bishops propose comes to pass, the Church of England will still be part of the visible Church.
Article XIX notes that the visible Church is susceptible to error and in similar fashion the Westminster Confession notes that visible churches: ‘are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.’[1]
What this means is that the fact that the Church of England had become less pure because it had committed the error of accepting the bishops’ proposals would not mean that it had ceased to be a part of the visible church of Christ. This would only be the case if it entirely ceased to be a community where the Christian faith is professed, where the Word is preached, and the sacraments are duly administered. There is no sign at the present that this will be the case.
The second principle which follows from this, is that orthodox Christians still have a Christian obligation to continue to be in as much of a Christian relationship as possible with the other members of the Church of England even if they have fallen into error. [2]
The reason for this obligation is helpfully set out by the seventeenth century Scottish theologian David Dickson in his book Truth’s Victory over Error. In this book he addresses the question of whether Christians are obliged ‘to maintain an holy fellowship’ with other Christians who have become corrupt in their theology and/or manner of life. His response is that the example of Christ and the teaching of the Paul and John show that there are a number of reasons why they are obliged to do so:
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