Friday 24 January 2014

Scripture, Tradition and Reason in the Pilling Report



The working group on human sexuality which published the Pilling Report “met with many respondents across the spectrum of viewpoints who radiated great certainty on many aspects of the subject.” But, the authors observe, “wherever we have turned – whether to Scripture, theology, science, or social trends – we have encountered divided views, sincerely and prayerfully held. Any suggestion, therefore, that the arguments are so conclusive that further discussion of the issues is no longer necessary does not do justice to the integrity of the theological convictions that are held or to the significant areas of scientific uncertainty that persist” (par. 68).

The dissenting statement by the Bishop of Birkenhead rightly observes that this “leaves the impression that the Church has no reason to believe the Church’s traditional teaching” (par. 449).

Where does this uncertainty come from? It may be related to different views of Scripture and particularly its relation to “tradition” and “reason” and specifically with different definitions of “reason”. The Report quotes Richard Hooker at two critical points and helps us to appreciate the difference between his take on the relationship between Scripture, tradition and reason and the one frequently promoted in the Church of England under the banner of the three-legged stool.

When Hooker speaks of “reason” he refers “to the human capacity for rational thought” exercised “in order to understand and apply the teaching of the Scriptures” (using the Report’s words in par. 296). Not only is this different from the way “reason” is appealed to today but, as I have hinted in the previous post, the very idea that one might decide on the validity of different readings by way of appeal to reason in this sense is threatened by a tendency to privilege sincerity over evidence and logic.

What is meant by “reason” today? “Reason also refers to the moral awareness that human beings possess because of their creation in the image and likeness of God and the way that this awareness is expressed in the moral convictions of particular cultures” (par. 297).

This does not merely take into account that reason is more “tradition constituted” (Alasdair MacIntyre, quoted in par. 298) than Hooker likely recognised but transforms “reason” from an instrument which is necessary for understanding Scripture to an alternative source of insight.

Is this a matter of allowing our growing understanding of God’s world to inform our understanding of God’s Word? If so, this would hardly be controversial in the Church of England. It is the proposal to put the strand of Reason understood as scientific knowledge and community consciousness “alongside” Scripture which has greater potential to set apart one view of Scripture from the other.

The use of “alongside” in the Pilling Report may signal a departure from Hooker. Nevertheless, the Report counsels against treating strands in isolation and recommends that “we are to exercise reason in order to illuminate God’s self-revelation to which Scripture bears primary witness, in order that it may be rendered the more deeply intelligible and received afresh in every generation. Tradition assists us to see how the Church, the community of faith, has read, received and understood the texts; thus it enables us to hear the Living Word speaking through the written word” (par. 301).

Even so, “the three elements of Scripture, Tradition and Reason are emphasized differently by distinct traditions within the Church itself” (par. 302) and this is one source of disagreement. “The current travails within Anglicanism on the subject of sexuality can be understood in part as a fundamental struggle to allow Scripture, tradition and reason to take their proper place in the quest to formulate a viable ethic. This is taking place in a Church which does not agree what the proper place of each of the three elements should be and in a wider culture where notions of sexuality and sexual behaviour are changing rapidly and are also hotly contested” (par. 304).


Paragraph 317 hints that one disagreement relates to whether Scripture is primary in the sense of being the first source of authority or whether it is also “the final source of authority to which both tradition and reason must be subordinated.” But the Report is not sufficiently clear to conclude with confidence that the authors discern a difference between “first” and “first and final” authority. There is a hint of such a difference in the earlier use of “starting point” (par. 301) and the preference for the qualifier “primary” over “final” whenever the authority of Scripture is in view but ambiguities remain.




While the majority apparently wants to distance itself from the view that “tradition and reason must be subordinated” to Scripture, it also seems offended by the suggestion that if one does not subordinate tradition and reason to Scripture, “Scripture is being treated as an equal dialogue partner with other perspectives.” What a co-ordinated inequality of the dialogue partners Scripture, Tradition, and Reason would look like remains unclear.

The working group accuses Keith Sinclair of reading Scripture “independently of the Church’s traditions and of human reason” (par. 318). I found this such a bizarre and unlikely claim that I had to read the paragraph several times to establish that this claim must lie behind the phrases “a single view of Scripture” and “this single perspective of Scripture”. Keith Sinclair’s later denial of this as a fair characterisation of his view (par. 462) confirms that the working group had indeed come to this conclusion about the view presented by the Bishop of Birkenhead.

This appears to offer the grounds for the fears that following Keith Sinclair’s argument “would, in effect, make one wing of the Anglican family the sole arbiter of Anglican ethics and bring an end to the conciliar approach which has for so long characterized Anglicanism” (par. 318).

Now, the Bishop of Birkenhead clearly does not ignore tradition, nor the use of reason in the sense in which Richard Hooker understood it. Furthermore, I see no reason to conclude that he would distance himself from the process outlined in par. 334 for engaging “Reason” (in the second definition), maybe with the exception of the final two sentences. I exclude these because I do not find their meaning perfectly clear. Maybe they are stating the obvious, that the Church must pay attention to more than scientific evidence, in which case Keith Sinclair would surely agree. But maybe they hint at “an encounter with the Holy Spirit” through cultural trends (cf. par. 337-344) with which Keith Sinclair would likely not agree. 

The working group tries hard to differentiate between hearing the Holy Spirit speak to us “through the shifts in popular culture” (par. 344) and simply conforming to the dominant culture of our time and place, albeit without offering much help for distinguishing between the work of the Spirit and human sinfulness. This would seem to be pretty important, given that most of us can testify in our own lives to the co-existence of both right next to each other.

The fact that we can discern the work of the Spirit in our lives obviously does not mean that all we do and say is holy. The fact that we are still tainted by sin does not mean that the Holy Spirit is not at work in us. What is true for us individually, is surely true for our society.