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In this age of Australian republicanism
a significant number of people share a natural tendency to be suspicious
of hierarchy and monarchy. This is the case in relation to the political
structures of the State, but it swirls around in the intellectual atmosphere
and raises questions about the organisational structures of the Church
as well. In the future we may expect to experience increasing disenchantment
with such arrangements, particularly in response to the democratic and
egalitarian sensibilities of the modern world. There is today a sustained
and influential theological critique applied to notions of hierarchy and
monarchy in both State and Church. Both from the reformed wing of the
Christian Church, led by very influential and compelling theologians such
as Jürgen Moltmann, and from the ranks of progressive Roman Catholic thinkers.
Most notable amongst the latter is an increasingly vocal band of very
capable feminist theologians, who are determined to put down what they
perceive to be the repressive authoritarianism of patriarchy.
I have in mind such spirited writers as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza,
for example, and Sandra Schneiders, who are very forthright about hierarchical
structures being alien to the Gospel. As an example of the vehemence of
this particular form of the contemporary critique, one of the most impressive
feminist writers of the current theological scene, Catherine LaCugna,
roundly declares that "any theological justification for a hierarchy among
persons…vitiates the truth of our salvation through Christ."1
This theological challenge must be addressed and a response made to it
by those who belong to hierarchically organised Churches. Just as surely
we must grapple with strategies to defend ourselves in the face of the
natural and culturally conditioned suspicion of hierarchy that is so much
a part of the social environment. I believe this poses a major challenge
for contemporary Anglicanism if we are to face the future with any degree
of self-confidence about our inherited structures of ecclesial authority.
In The Trinity and the Kingdom2 Jürgen
Moltmann excludes both the possibility of the monarchical episcopate and
the ranking of primacy amongst bishops in an episcopally ordered Church
from his ecclesiology. It is clear that he views both developments as
Christian aberrations. In so far as he is critical of the notion of primacy,
he particularly has in mind the papal sovereignty of the modern Vatican,
but his argument could apply equally well to primacy in the various autonomous
Churches of the Anglican Communion3.
By
contrast with the debates of the Reformation about Church order, where
the appeal was primarily to the historical norms of the early church,
the modern debate about equality of status versus hierarchy in ministry
is conducted on dogmatic grounds. Moltmann argues that the hierarchical
irregularities he condemns arise out of an insufficiently Trinitarian
understanding of the nature of God. In other words, they flow from a fundamental,
but mistaken commitment to a 'Christian monotheism', which concentrates
attention on the unity of one God as the almighty ruler of all. This position
has lost sight of an idea of divine unity of a different kind - the unity
found amongst the differentiated but equal Persons of the Trinity. To
Moltmann's mind, it is the absolute monarchy of monotheism that "provides
the justification for earthly domination - religious, moral, patriarchal
or political domination - and makes it a hierarchy, a 'holy rule'.4
"As long as the unity of the triune God is understood monadically*…
a religious legitimation of political sovereignty continues to exist.
It is only when the doctrine of the Trinity vanquishes the monotheistic
notion of the great universal monarch in heaven… that earthly rulers,
dictators and tyrants cease to find any justifying religious archetypes
any more."5
Moltmann thus speaks of monotheistic monarchianism as "an uncommonly seductive
religious-political ideology"6 which the early Church was only
able to overcome through the doctrine of the Trinity. Moltmann works with
a very negative and highly stereotypical view of the single ruler, who
is characterised, whether in Church or State, chiefly in terms of 'domination'.
Indeed, "the idea of the almighty ruler of the universe everywhere requires
abject servitude", he says, "because it points to complete dependency
in all spheres of life."7
The monarchical episcopate and the idea of primacy within a college
of bishops thus tend to be corralled with 'political dictatorship' and
'the terror of naked force' which keep people in abject servitude and
dependency.8 By appealing to the doctrine of the Trinity, Moltmann
believes he is able to overcome the notion of a "universal monarchy of
one God" which is the root of what he regards as "political and clerical
monotheism" in State and Church respectively. It is just not possible,
Moltmann says, "to form the figure of the omnipotent, universal monarch,
who is reflected in earthly rulers, out of the unity of the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit." Rather, in the sphere of the State the unity
of the equal Persons of the Trinity will be reflected in a spontaneously
harmonious social consensus. Likewise, if the Church is to be "a community
free of dominion", it follows that "the presbyteral and synodal church
order, and the leadership based on brotherly advice, are the forms of
organisation that best correspond to the doctrine of the social Trinity".9
The monarchical episcopate in a local Church or diocese, and worse,
the primacy of one senior bishop amongst diocesan bishops in a national
or regional Church, not to mention the universalist claims to immediate
jurisdiction of an absolutist papacy, all fail to reflect the essential
reciprocity of distinct Persons of equal status and divinity in the unity
of the Trinity.
In terms of theological method,
Moltmann acknowledges that it is difficult to track the exact nature of
the interdependent relationship between religious and political ideas.10
Whether economic and political realities reflect and reproduce the superstructure
of religion, or whether religious and metaphysical reality is constructed
analogously with the economic and political world is not easy to determine.
Almost certainly, a two-way reciprocal influence and conditioning is more
likely. In the course of his argument it becomes obvious that Moltmann's
tendency is to emphasise the conditioning of the political and earthly
by fundamental religious and heavenly ideas and doctrines, rather than
vice versa. In other words, he begins with the Christian understanding
of the nature of God, and speaks derivatively of the nature of the Church.
For him ecclesiology is a sub-category of Trinitarian theology. This quasi-platonic
approach to an understanding of the Church is grounded in Scripture and
the patristic tradition. Thus, for example, in John 17 Christ prays that
his disciples may all be one, "as I and the Father are one" and that they
may be in the Father and the Son as "you, Father, are in me and I in you".
This means that the newly created human communion in Christ is grounded
in the communion of God. As I John puts it, our koinonia** is not
just with one another; "our koinonia is with the Father and his Son Jesus
Christ" (1 John 1:3, 6-7). As a consequence Cyprian*** could say
that "the Church is the people that draws its unity from the unity of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit".11
It is not just that the Church 'reflects' something of the divine
in its own structures. It is much more a matter of participation by baptism
in an inter-personal relationship that flows from the divine - the Church
being a creation of divine grace. The Gospel is an invitation to have
to do with God, and baptism into Christ is the means of incorporation
into the divine life. As 2 Peter 1:4 puts it: in the Church "we are partakers
of the divine nature". For Moltmann, the doctrine of the Trinitarian nature
of God reminds us that in God there is neither hierarchy nor inequality,
neither division nor competition, but only unity in love amongst a diversity
of distinguishable persons of equal status.
And the Church should express the same reality in its life. On the basis
of this kind of ecclesiological thrust, Moltmann then goes on to argue
that the unity of Being amongst the diverse persons of the Trinity is
a quite different kind of unity from the absolute monarchy of the one
God of 'monarchical monotheism'. Crucially, that it leads to different
ecclesiological and political implications from those that flow from a
rigidly unitarian monotheism. The 'monarchical monotheism' to which Moltmann
takes exception is said to be one of the ancient heresies that constitute
"permanent dangers to Christian theology"12, for it leads to a
form of political and ecclesial totalitarianism.
Moltmann's argument involves
a specific kind monarchianism (the rule of a single person). It is the
kind of monarchianism that, in the ancient Church, denied distinctions
within the inner life of God. Such a monarchianism was a feature of theology,
for example, in the third century at the height of the popularity of modalistic
theories of the kind promoted by Sabellius****, when he reduced
the distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit to different and successive
operations of the one God. The same initial commitment to the absolute
divine sovereignty of one God, without any internal differentiation of
persons, was also a feature of the subordinationism of Arius*****
early in the next century. The
kind of monarchianism Moltmann has in mind thus involves the heresy of,
in one way or another, denying Trinitarian belief as in these classical
ancient deviations from Christian orthodoxy. While we may accept this
point, it is of some concern that at Moltmann's hands Ignatius of Antioch******
also tends to get tarred with the same brush! Indeed, Ignatius is explicitly
identified as one who worked with the kind of defective Christian monotheism
that Moltmann particularly has in mind.13
Ignatius is also said to provide a clear illustration of the ensuing ecclesiological
error that Moltmann wishes to condemn. At a number of points Ignatius
draws an overt analogy between belief in the sovereignty of the one God
and the monarchy of the bishop "presiding in the place of God".14
Monarchianism in the ancient Church accentuated belief in God as an absolute
monad, without distinctions within the unity. This is the specific kind
of monarchical belief that Moltmann contends gets reflected in dictatorial
and domineering political leadership in the State, and in an autocratic
and authoritarian episcopal hierarchy of bishops in the Church. But there
is another kind of monarchianism, which is entirely free of the taint
of ancient heresy. This is not only compatible with Trinitarian belief
but is an essential element within orthodox Trinitarianism. This is the
idea of the monarchy, not of one God with respect to the created order,
but the monarchy of the Father with respect to the other two Persons within
the Divine Unity. Even Moltmann does not take exception to this kind of
monarchianism. For example, in his criticism of the Western innovation
of the double procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the
Son (or Filioque*******), Moltmann unequivocally affirms the sovereignty
of the Father: "The uniqueness of the procession of the Spirit from the
Father (and therefore the 'sole causality' of the Father in respect of
the Spirit)", he says, "has in fact never been disputed by theologians
of the Western Church".15
"It has never been denied in the West that the Son (John 16:27) and the
Holy Spirit (John 15:26) proceed from the Father, each in his own way;
and that therefore the Father is - in different ways - the 'origin' of
them both…"16
This means that the eternal priority, or the 'divine causality,' of the
Father with respect to both the Son and the Spirit is rightly maintained.
Moltmann concludes that the "Filioque was never directed against the 'monarchy'
of the Father…". The Son does the Father's will rather than vice versa.
Despite Moltmann's uncompromising critique of 'monotheistic monarchianism',
there is in the doctrine of the Trinity itself an alternative expression
of monarchy, which he judges acceptable.
This species of divine causation and monarchy does not suggest any kind
of subordination of the Son to the Father. The Father and the Son, and
indeed, the Holy Spirit, are equal in divinity, and of equal status and
dignity. But the Father enjoys a certain priority as the 'origin' or 'sole
cause' of the other two Persons.
"The Father, being himself without origin, was always the first Person
in the Trinity" (my italics). This notion of a legitimate monarchy of
the Father within orthodox belief in a Trinity of diverse and distinguishable
but equally divine Persons, leads to quite significantly different ecclesiological
conclusions from those arrived at by Moltmann in his critique of 'monotheistic
monarchianism'. The priority of the Father as the eternal 'source' and
'origin' of the other two Persons of equal dignity and
status, surely finds its closest ecclesiological expression in the principle
of primus inter pares, or 'first amongst equals'.
This principle in turn allows us to articulate an understanding of the
role of the Bishop in the Church and of a Primate amongst other bishops
that is free of the falsely negative stereotyping engaged in by Moltmann.
The Bishop is 'first amongst equals' in the Church in the sense that he
is not separate from the Church, for he is shepherd and overseer of the
Church and minister of order in the Church. He is one of the baptised
people of God. Also, he is not necessarily present in the Church in some
authoritarian and offensively domineering way, but in a way that respects
the equal dignity of every other baptised member. This particular ministry
of service of the bishop as a member of the Church, rather than as a domineering
and dictatorial ruler who is somehow outside of it and over it, can be
appropriately described as a ministry of order.
As Hooker so vehemently pointed out, it is the bishop who ordains17
and who is thus the 'cause' of ordered and authorised ministry - the one
from whom ministry 'proceeds'. As the 'origin' and 'cause' of the ordered
ministry of others, the Bishop in the Church is the human source and sign
of the unity of the Church. Those baptised either by him or by the presbyters
in ministry authorised by him, become members of a eucharistic community
that is in turn presided over by him. All are in communion with one another
by virtue of their shared communion with him. In this way he performs
a specific and essential function of leadership and pastoral care in the
life of the Church as 'first amongst equals'.
The concept of 'monarchy' is appropriately applied to the unique ministry
of the Bishop because, as teacher, the Bishop is the one who must on occasion
rule with respect to what is right and what is wrong in matters both of
belief and Christian praxis. The function of the Bishop with respect to
the regulation of liturgy and worship, and the ordering of belief for
the purpose of the maintenance of the Church in truth, fall within his
particular responsibility.18
The authority of decision-making
and the power to act in this way is a concrete expression of the Bishop's
monarchy. But it is exercised in humility, with due regard to the equal
dignity and human rights of all of the Church's members, and with an appreciation
of the need to consult, listen and take advice, rather than operate in
the authoritarian and dictatorial manner that Moltmann believes necessarily
flows from 'monotheistic monarchianism'. The doctrine of the Trinity is
a source of fundamental theological principles which may be given ecclesiological
expression. Some useful ideas on the nature of the Bishop's role in the
Church come from Basil of Caesarea's exposition of the relational aspect
of the Persons of the Trinity in terms of the concept of communion (koinonia).
The Christian understanding of God as a Trinity of distinct and distinguishable
Persons in one Unity of Being was expressed by appeal to the concept of
'communion' by Basil in his treatise On the Holy Spirit (374AD). Though
the Trinitarian formula 'three Persons and one substance' was in the air
at the time, the Biblical witness led Basil away from the concept of 'substance'
to speak of God instead as 'three Persons and one communion'.
Basil thus spoke of the three Persons of the Trinity being of one heart
and one mind, sharing a common will and a common purpose. Basil spoke
of a "coincidence of willing" among the Persons of the Trinity. The Son
does the Father's will, but it is not that the Son does the will of the
Father begrudgingly, as a subordinate, out of a sense of duty or under
some kind of duress; rather, the Father finds his own will freely and
lovingly reflected back to himself by the Son, "like an image in a mirror".
The ensuing inter-personal communion
created by a perfect harmony of wills, and the self-giving love of persons
of equal status, is the ground of the unity of the Persons of the Trinity.
If we follow Basil's logic, interpersonal communion is the essence of
divinity, and the Communion of Saints is the communion of human believers
together (whether living or departed) through their shared entry by baptism
into communion with God in Christ. If the relations of the Persons of
the Trinity form the basis for the eternal perichoresis********,
and if this principle of the relationality of the Persons of the Trinity
may be given ecclesiological expression, it is possible to think of the
mutual interdependence of persons within the Body of Christ as a kind
of ecclesial perichoresis.
Moltmann himself says that the "unity of the Christian community is a
Trinitarian unity. It corresponds to the indwelling of the Father in the
Son, and of the Son in the Father. It participates in the divine Trinity,
since the community of believers is not only fellowship with God but in
God too." In other words, the various members of the Church are one in
the same kind of way that the persons of the Trinity are one. Their ecclesial
life together involves a mutual inter-change of gifts within the one harmonious
bundle of life. This is clearly a different kind of unity from that characterised
by Moltmann as the regrettable political and ecclesial outcome of 'monotheistic
monarchianism'. In the context of an ecclesiology of communion, the reciprocal
roles of the Bishop in the Church, and those whom he ordains, together
with the contribution of the laity, working in harmony with the ordained,
constitute an interdependent network.
Between the Bishop and those whom he ordains, for example, there is a
shared ministry which is described as "mine and thine" at the inductions
and commissionings of parish clergy. The total ministry of the Church
as a community of ministering people (instead of people gathered around
a single minister) expresses the same ecclesiological mutuality and interdependence.
This unity can be characterised as a unity of heart and mind or as a "coincidence
of willing" in cooperative effort. So, the teaching ministry of the Bishop
is received by the laity. The Bishop receives advice from theologians
who are priests, or qualified and insightful members of the laity. The
Bishop's leadership and pastoral ministry as shepherd and teacher and
guardian of faith in this way constitutes a distinguishable function as
'first amongst equals' in the exercise of a diversity of gifts of the
Spirit. The ecclesiological application of these Trinitarian principles
thus takes us a long way from Moltmann's stereotyping of the Bishop as
a domineering oriental potentate. Within Anglicanism a Metropolitan or
Primate presides over gatherings of colleagues in the episcopate as 'first
amongst equals' in a province, or autonomous regional or national Church.
The universal primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in relation to the
bishops of dioceses of the constitutionally autonomous, but not independent,
churches of the Anglican Communion operates according to the same fundamental
principle.19
Once again, this is first established within an understanding of the relationship
of the Persons of the Trinity, where the First Person of the Trinity enjoys
a form of monarchy with respect to the other two Persons as their origin
and cause, but without overwhelming them to the point where their individual
identity disappears from view. It is hard to see that Moltmann can argue
as he does concerning the nature of the inner relations of the divine
life, and the monarchy of the Father with respect to the other two Persons,
without going on to allow that in a Trinitarian ecclesiology some
ministers in the Church may after all exercise a kind of rule in relation
to other members of the Body. Indeed, in a throw away line, Moltmann concludes
his stinging critique of the 'clerical monarchism' of episcopal order,
by saying "Of course most churches will in actual fact have mixed forms,
with episcopal and synodical elements.'20
It may well actually be the case that in some churches, not least the
churches of the Anglican Communion, a balance has very successfully been
struck between episcopal leadership and synodical government! This alerts
us at once to the fallacy of Moltmann's over-simplified and stereotypical
portrayal of a domineering and utterly authoritarian episcopate. While
Moltmann admits the idea of the monarchy of the Father in relation to
the other two Persons in the doctrine of the Trinity, he will have difficulty
in arguing against the idea of the episcopal leadership of the 'Father
in God' in the Church. In the decision-making of the bishop-in-synod,
where distinctions between the roles of Bishop, clergy and laity are preserved
in the Houses of Bishop, Clergy, and People, we may have a very agreeable
approximation in this world to the ideal relations of the distinct persons
of equal status of the Trinity. In our synods any House has the right
of veto over the others. On the other hand, when the consensus of "a coincidence
of willing" prevails, the ensuing unity of heart and mind holds before
the entire world the ideal of the resolution of tension between the one
and the many, but without a totalitarian elimination of the distinct and
free contributions of individual persons.
1 Catherine Mowry LaCugna,
God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, San Francisco: Harper, 1991,
p. 400.
2 Translated by Margaret Kohl with new Preface, San Francisco: Harper,
1991 (originally published as Trinitat und Reich Gottes, Munich: Kaiser
Verlag, 1980, Ch. VI. Moltmann draws upon the classic treatment of the
political ramifications of monotheistic belief by Erik Peterson in Der
Monotheismus als politisches Problem, Leipzig: Jakob Hegner, 1935 and
Yves Congar, "La monotheisme politique et la Dieu Trinite", Nouvelle Revue
Theologique, (1981), pp.-3-17. See also T. D. Parker, "The Political Meaning
of the Doctrine of the Trinity: Some Theses", Journal of Religion, Vol
60, 1980, pp.165-84 and A. Schindler, ed. Monotheismus als politisches
Problem? Erik Peterson und die Kritik der politischen Theologie, Gutersloh:
Gerd Mohn, 1978.
3 Ibid., p. 200
4 Ibid., p. 192
5 Ibid., p. 197
6 Ibid., p. 131
7 Ibid., p. 192
8 Ibid., p. 197
9 Ibid., p. 202
10 Ibid., pp. 192-3
11 De orat. Dom. x. 3, Patrologia Latina 4. 553.
12 Ibid., pp. 129-30.
13 Ibid., p. 200
14 To the Magnesians VI:1; to the Trallians III:1, where the bishop is
explicitly said to be 'a type of the Father'.
15 Ibid., p. 182
16 Ibid.
17 Richard Hooker, Of the Law of Ecclesiastical Polity, VII ii 3
18 Cf. the Ordinal, particularly the promises made by a bishop-elect in
the examination prior to consecration, 'to banish and drive away all erroneous
and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word'
19 See Gillian Evans
exposition of the Anglican approach to the understanding of the universal
primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Communion and
of a possible universal primacy of Rome in a reunited Christendom in "The
An glican Doctrine of Primacy', Anglican Theological Review, Vol. LXXII,
No. 4, 1990, pp. 363-78.
20 ibid., p. 202.
* monadically = by this Moltmann means a single self-contained unit.
** koinonia = fellowship, communion
***Cyprian = early Church Father, (d 258AD)
****Sabellius (3rd Century AD) taught that Father, Son and Holy
Spirit were three modes of operation of the one God, rather than three
distinct persons.
*****Arius: condemned for heresy of subordinating the Son to the
Father.
******Ignatius of Antioch c35 - c107AD
******* Filioque
= the statement that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father "and the
Son". Added in the Church of the West to the Nicene Creed.
******** Perichoresis = dynamic inter-relatedness and interdependence
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