My mother-in-law lives near Lampeter, where there is a university with a good theological faculty (indeed, should I ever be enabled by God to scratch the theological itch and finish a PhD I may well end up doing it there). Whilst on holiday I attended a lecture given by Professor Paul Badham on Anglican Liberalism. After a promising start, it was deeply disappointing.

The promising start was the argument that Anglican liberalism was not driven by the agenda of the Continental Enlightenment. Badham pointed out that in the dispute over Henry VIII’s divorce, the salient question became ‘what is the authority to interpret Scripture?’ In other words, if the authority of the Pope was rejected, what was to be put in its place?

Cranmer’s answer was: ‘the consensus of the universities in Europe’. From this Badham argued that the Anglican tradition had developed a liberal ethos on a different track to that of the Continental theologians, arguing, amongst other things, that Schleiermacher’s writings were not translated into English until very late in the day (some 20th Century) and that Anglican Liberals “derived their views direct from their Biblical and theological work”. The continental theologian that Badham felt was most influential was von Harnack, whose work ‘What is Christianity’ was apparently the best-selling theological work before John Robinson’s ‘Honest to God’. In addition to that, Badham alleges that the Enlightenment critique of religion had been considered answered within British culture by the writings of Joseph Butler, especially his ‘Analogy of Religion’ in 1736.

Badham sees the Liberal tradition as defined by an acceptance of Modern Biblical Criticism (MBC), and he went on to run through the key stages by which influence of the Liberal tradition within the Anglican establishment developed – so 1862 marked the legal acceptance of MBC by clergy, and 1864 saw the right of clergy to deny substitutionary atonement and the doctrine of hell; 1917 saw the appointment of Henslow as Bishop of Hereford despite his denial of the Virgin Birth; 1938 saw the publication of a Church Doctrine Commission affirming the place of Liberalism within the Anglican church; 1995 saw the same Doctrine Commission denounce the doctrine of Hell as ‘incompatible with belief in the love of God’. So Badham argues that Liberalism is now the broad mainstream of church opinion within the Church of England: all theological faculties accept the validity of MBC, and consequently (after Cranmer), the Church of England is a Liberal church.

Some of Badham’s historical material was interesting, and plugged a few gaps in my knowledge, especially in terms of the 19th century. Yet on the whole his argument seemed weak, almost vacuous. One suspected a desire to protect his flank from contemporary criticisms, given his beginning with a distancing from the continental enlightenment, yet – although I believe a significant argument could be made supporting the point – Badham did not succeed in persuading this particular listener that Anglican Liberalism was not hugely influenced by the mores and assumptions of the Enlightenment. In large part that is because I follow Roy Porter’s analysis of the Enlightenment, rooting it in English culture of the seventeenth century, most especially the influence of John Locke. (The links between Locke and the Anglican church, esp Clarke, are an area of much interest for me.) Badham, for example, cites Paley as being ignorant of the Enlightenment – and thus an instance of the ‘separation’ from the Continent of the English tradition – due to his deployal of an argument from design, despite Kant having ‘demolished’ such arguments a generation previously. This argument does not achieve what Badham wants it to achieve. Irrespective of its relationship to Kant, Paley’s argument is saturated with Enlightenment assumptions, not least the notion that the correct analogue for the creation is a mechanism, viz a watch, thus betraying the thorough-going Newtonian perspective governing his approach. To say that the lack of reference to Kant demonstrates the independence of English thought from Enlightenment presuppositions is vapid.

My suspicions were confirmed at the end of the lecture when I asked Badham about his beginning with Cranmer. Was it not the case, I asked, that when the church accepts an authority outside of itself (the interpretation of Scripture no longer being a matter for the church to determine, but for the ‘consensus of the universities in Europe’ to establish) it has lost something essential, that it has ‘sold its soul’? Badham was robust in his response: No! the church is accountable to Reason!

The voice of the mid-twentieth century could be heard clearly in the seminar room, on this January evening in 2006.

There was nothing in Badham’s lecture that could not have been said and argued fifty years previously. Fifty years previously this may have been stimulating. A young theologian would have found much to ponder – and not much room for disagreement. The theological consensus was overwhelming – there was no middle ground between fundamentalism and the relentless march of MBC – and so Liberalism would indeed have been the accepted consensus.

Yet these last fifty years have witnessed a tremendous transformation of the terms of the debate, and the greatest disappointment of the lecture, especially given the promise of its beginning, was the complete lack of attention given to the way these debates are now shaped, not least through a more developed suspicion of MBC, and an awareness of what the church as a whole has lost through its ‘delegation’ of the authority to interpret Scripture. To make an appeal to ‘Reason’ as an arbiter of Biblical interpretation is vacuous – it merely marks the argument as one long past its sell-by date. More than this, it seems a virtual dereliction of duty to be making such an argument in the context of teaching undergraduates for a university degree in theology. All the most interesting theology of the last thirty years – most especially Alasdair MacIntyre and John Milbank, but there are many others – has been concerned with overhauling this naïve construal of ‘Reason’. In such a context Badham’s arguments meet a far worse fate than being wrong, they have become dull.

Thomas Kuhn argued that a paradigm shifts not so much from force of argument as from a generational change. Where there is a dispute over the most fundamental framings of discussion, the old guard do not change, they die out, and new students coming in to a discipline simply don’t engage with the assumptions of the fading paradigm. The new one holds out much more interest.

It seems to me that the core debate within the church as a whole remains the question which Cranmer pondered – how to interpret Scripture? What authority governs the interpretation of Scripture? Fundamentalism is itself a creature of the Enlightenment, and offers very little in the way of theologically creative hermeneutics – and thus is of no service to the church community, proving by its lack of compassion the terminal absence of the Holy Spirit. Nor does the delegation of authority to the universities meet the need: this may, conceivably, have had some merit in an environment where theological faculties were staffed by committed Christians, where you had to take Holy Orders in order to teach – but now? The vast majority of theological faculties are wholly captured by secularity, both in terms of governing intellectual attitudes and the more obviously malign forces of government funding and bureaucracy. For the church to remain beholden to the interpretations of such a community is for it to remain in Babylon. How can we sing a love song in a strange land?

I am more convinced than ever that the centre of theological gravity must return from the academy to the cloister; that no coherent understanding of the faith can be formed apart from a viable eucharistic community. It is this line of thinking that every so often makes me wonder whether I should become a Roman Catholic, for there the lines of authority are much clearer – it is the Magisterium which provides for the definitive understanding of Scripture (a structure which, despite the most strenuous denials, is replicated in substance within the various Protestant establishments; so it seems to me, and at least the RC has [some] history on its side!).

Yet this offers not much more than the removal of one problem by the imposition of another: the Reformation was not without abiding purpose, after all. So the Anglican system, as developed by Hooker, with its three-fold division of authority between Scripture first and foremost; then the teachings of the early church; and then finally the application of our reason – there is something here that is beautiful, and is perhaps the distinctive gift of the Church of England to the wider church. A way in which to negotiate the hazards of premature closure to discussion; an openness to the continual promptings of the One who leads us into all Truth. That is the via media which seems authentically liberal; not one which takes its bearings from Modernist epistemology and Enlightenment secularity, but one which is centred upon the ongoing inspiration of the church; which takes the fruits of the Spirit seriously, not least in the gift of Scripture itself, the ordering of the church, and the creeds; and is therefore one which gives freedom, for it is for freedom that we have been set free.

This side of the eschaton, the final resting place for the interpretation of Scripture is, for me, the consensus fidelium – the considered and settled opinion of the faithful – and that settled opinion can itself develop over time, and change. It is expressed, most of all, through worship – lex orandi, lex credendi – this is why it must be rooted within the communion, when we sing our love songs to Jesus and renew our marriage vows. It is when we break the bread and renew the new covenant that we are authentically the church, that we are authentically the Body, and that we can authentically listen to His voice. It is when we are enabled to truly hear the word that we are enabled to interpret the word; and then to speak that word within the world. Scripture belongs to the church – it was formed by the church for the church, and it is for the church to interpret it, so help us God.