wfn.org | Address at Lambeth Plenary on making moral decisions

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

[Part 2]

ACNS LC035 - 22 July 1998

Prof. Rowan Williams
Bishop of Monmouth, Wales

6. Can we then begin thinking about our ethical conflicts in
terms of our understanding of the Body of Christ? The first
implication, as I have suggested, is to do with how we actually
decide what we are to do, what standard we appeal to. An ethic of
the Body of Christ asks that we first examine how any proposed
action or any proposed style or policy of action measures up to
two concerns: how does it manifest the selfless holiness of God
in Christ? And how can it serve as a gift that builds up the
community called to show that holiness in its corporate life?
What I have to discover as I try to form my mind and will is the
nature of my pre-existing relation with God and with those others
whom God has touched, with whom I share a life of listening for
God and praising God. Self-discovery, yes; but the discovery of a
self already shaped by these relations and these consequent
responsibilities. And then, if I am serious about making a gift
of what I do to the Body as a whole, I have to struggle to make
sense of my decision in terms of the common language of the
Faith, to demonstrate why this might be a way of speaking the
language of the historic schema of Christian belief. This
involves the processes of self-criticism and self-questioning in
the presence of Scripture and tradition, as well as engagement
with the wider community of believers. Equally, if I want to argue
that something hitherto not problematic in Christian
practice or discourse can no longer be regarded in this light, I
have a comparable theological job in demonstrating why it cannot
be a possible move on the basis of the shared commitments of the
Church. I may understand at least in part why earlier generations
considered slavery as compatible with the gospel or why they
regarded any order of government other than monarchy to be
incompatible with the gospel. I may thus see something of what
Christ meant to them, and receive something of Christ from them,
even as I conclude that they were dangerously deluded in their
belief about what was involved in serving Christ.

I cannot escape the obligation of looking and listening for
Christ in the acts of another Christian who is manifestly
engaged, self-critically engaged, with the data of common belief
and worship. But, as I have hinted, there are points when
recognition fails. If someone no longer expressly brings their
acts and projects before the criterion we look to together; if
some one's conception of the Body of Christ is ultimately
deficient, a conception only of a human society (that is, if they
have no discernible commitment to the Risen Christ and the Spirit
as active in the Church); if their actions systematically
undermine the unconditionality of the gospel's offer (this was
why justification by faith became the point of division for the
Reformation churches, and why the anti-Jewish laws of the Third
Reich became the point of division for the Confessing Church in
1935) - then the question arises of whether there is any reality
left in maintaining communion. This is a serious matter, on which
generalisations are useless. All we can do is be wary of
self-dramatising, and of a broad-brush rhetoric about the
abandonment of 'standards'. As the Confessing Church knew well,
such a case requires detailed argument - and the sense also of a
decision being forced, a limit being encountered, rather than a
principle being enunciated in advance to legitimate divisions.

Unity at all costs is indeed not a Christian goal; our unity is
'Christ-shaped, or it is empty. Yet our first call, so long as we
can think of ourselves as still speaking the same language, is to
stay in engagement with those who decide differently. This, I
have suggested, means living with the awareness that the Church,
and I as part of it, share not only in grace but in failure; and
thus staying alongside those on the 'other side, in the hope that
we may still be exchanging gifts - the gift of Christ - in some
ways, for one another's healing.

One of our problems, especially in our media-conscious age, is
that we talk past each other and in each other's absence; and
even when we speak face to face, it is often in a 'lock' of
mutual suspicion and deep anxiety. But the Body of Christ
requires more of us. It requires, I've suggested, staying
alongside: which implies that the most profound service we can do
for each other is to point to Christ; to turn from our
confrontation in silence to the Christ we all try to look at; to
say to one another, from time to time, hopefully and gently, 'Do
you see that? This is how I see him; can you see too?' For many
of us, the experience of ecumenical encounter is like this when
it is doing its work. I wonder whether we are capable of a
similar methodology when we divide over moral questions. It does
not preclude our saying - in the ecumenical context - 'I can't
see that; that sounds like error to me'; and in the ethical
context, 'I can't see that; that sounds like sin to me'. It's
what I want to say to those who defend certain kinds of defence
policies, as I've noted. But what if I still have to reckon with
my opponent's manifest commitment to the methods of attention to
Christ in Word and worship? I risk an unresolvedness, which is
not easy and may not be edifying, and trust that there may be
light we can both acknowledge at some point.

And I am brought back to the fundamental question of where and
who I am: a person moulded by a specific Christian community and
its history and culture, for whom Christ has become real here
with these people; but a person also committed, by my baptism, to
belonging with Christian strangers (past, present and future - do
we think often enough of our communion with Christians of the
future? we are their tradition...). I am not sure what or how I
can learn from them. They may frighten me by the difference of
their priorities and their discernment. But because of where we
all stand at the Lord's Table, in the Body, I have to listen to
them and to struggle to make recognisable sense to them. If I
have any grasp at all of what the life of the Body is about, I
shall see to it that I spend time with them, doing nothing but
sharing the contemplation of Christ. At the very least, it will
refresh the only thing that can be a real and effective motive
for the making of Christian moral decision: the vision of a
living Lord whose glory I must strive to make visible.

Lambeth Conference Communications-10

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