The New Man at Canterbury

Dr. Rowan Williams is the new Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding Dr. George Carey, and there is considerable dispute about whether this is good news, with sides formed along familiar lines. Dr. Williams has supported ordaining the homogenitally active, although, since being named to Canterbury, he says he will support the decision of the Lambeth conference against that course. He apparently sees no theological problem with having women bishops. Some non-Anglicans have a hard time understanding why the latter issue is such a big deal for Anglicans, since they already ordain women as priests. But it is said that women bishops will be the “last straw” for many Anglo-Catholics who will embark for Rome if and when that happens. Anglicanism, however, is the story of last straws beyond numbering.

Then there are those of a more Protestant bent who are accusing Williams of “idolatry” because in a recent book, Praying with Icons of the Virgin , he encourages devotion to the Mother of God. Williams, a former professor of theology at Oxford, has for the last two years been Archbishop of Wales. He speaks Welsh fluently and is the first Welshman to be elevated to Canterbury. In August he was inducted into the Welsh branch of the druids. The London Times reported, “As the sun rises over a circle of Pembrokeshire bluestones, the Archbishop of Wales will don a long white cloak while druids chant a prayer to the ancient god and goddess of the land.” If he is an idolater, it has been observed, he is an equal opportunity idolater. Robyn Lewis, the Archdruid of Wales, defends Williams, explaining that the Welsh druids, as distinct from English groups, “are more a cultural association than a religious group.” Much like the Church of England, some would say.

It is pointed out, however, that since the virtual abolition of abortion law in 1967, Williams has also been a member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. “I know this will surprise some people who see me as a liberal,” he has said, “but I am very worried about the abortion situation.” In Lost Icons (2000) he wrote, “Reversion to a pre-1967 situation would only be attractive, even morally defensible, in the context of a massive reconstruction of attitudes to child care and nurture, to the professional lives of childbearing women, the availability of other forms of fertility control to women, and many other things besides.” It would seem that Dr. Williams will not be advocating anything specific, such as the legal protection of unborn children, in the near future.

The Tablet , a London-based Catholic weekly, hails Dr. Williams’ elevation under the heading “A Prophetic Appointment.” The editor writes, “Catholics in Britain and elsewhere will welcome the new man at Canterbury, while waiting to see how he will build relations with them. Rowan Williams’ concern hitherto has been more with Orthodoxy—a common trend among Anglican intellectuals, who profess to see in Orthodox ecclesiology a reflection of their own. But in Britain a reunited Church is impossible without Rome.” The editor hopes that Williams will act on the theological advances coming out of the Anglican-RC dialogues. With Orthodoxy as much as with Rome, others have observed, obstacles to ecclesial reconciliation may be posed by issues such as women priests, the moral status of homosexuality, and, despite the latitudinarianism of the Archdruid of Wales, other gods and goddesses. The enthusiasm of the Tablet notwithstanding, it is possible that the “prophetic appointment” of Dr. Williams has added substantially to the list of questions to be addressed in ecumenical dialogue.

Robert Jenson of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton examines Dr. Williams’ book On Christian Theology in the Summer 2002 issue of the distinguished journal of theology Pro Ecclesia . He notes Williams offers a kind of meta-theology that is marked by a postmodernist “distrust of closure.” (See my “The End of Endings,” FT, August/September 2001, for an analysis of postmodernism’s closure anxiety.) “According to Williams,” Jenson writes, “we too readily treat dogmas and other theological propositions as answers to ‘the essential questions’; whereas true theological thinking seeks instead to be brought into the vicinity of truth by opening and reopening these questions, by agitating the doubts and conflicts behind accepted answers. Williams wants to lead us along the shifting contours of actual fractured and multivalent religious and theological language, maintaining our consciousness of the variety and tenuousness of its relations to reality beyond it. In particular, he is concerned to enforce theology’s function as critique , and especially as self -critique.”

Jenson acknowledges that “we need to be led on such paths, and Williams is good at it,” but he also has some problems with this approach. He wonders if “the bishop’s fear of closure begins to seem far too obsessive to be truly helpful in the life of faith.” After all, the confession to which teaching is supposed to lead us begins with “I believe . . . ,” not with “I wonder about . . .” Is it really the proper purpose of dogma and other theology, Jenson asks, “indefinitely to sustain puzzlement?” Thus with respect to the Incarnation, Williams says it is important to “keep the essential questions alive.” This seems to puzzle Professor Jenson, who notes that the fathers at Chalcedon and other early councils “certainly thought they were settling certain essential questions.” Of course, new questions are always arising, but the church fathers “did not suppose that the purpose of their formulations was to keep alive the debates that brought them to the meetings.”

Jenson goes on to express his concern about the ways in which Williams represents a liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, often referred to as neo-Protestantism. He writes, “As a general prescription for theology now to be done, neo-Protestant principles surely come a bit late. Of course Anglican theology in general tends to be anachronistic in this way, having missed out on the uproar of the ‘20s and ‘30s [e.g., Karl Barth’s battles with liberalism]. What is disappointing—at least to this reviewer—is that Rowan Williams turns out to be so typical.” An Anglican colleague tells Jenson that Williams is proposing a “mediating” theology that is actually a defense of dogma and theology directed against the antitheological liberals who dominate the Church of England. If that is the case, Jenson concludes, we must hope that Rowan Williams will not “mediate away the store.”

In fairness, one may suggest that Dr. Williams understands that the task of a bishop and that of an academic theologian are quite different. An academic may explore endlessly interesting theories, while a bishop is to teach the faith. There can, after all, be no worthy critique of faith without a faith to critique. In view of his support for disestablishment, Dr. Williams may even inherit from the monarch the title (originally bestowed by the pope) “defender of the faith.” In candor, however, one must recognize that Dr. Williams has been a bishop since 1992, during which time his many writings and public statements provide slight evidence that he understands these different tasks. As Robert Jenson says, it can be a good thing “to keep the essential questions alive,” and many people are determined to do that. But the considerable talents of the new Archbishop of Canterbury will not, we must hope, be devoted to keeping alive the inevitable question of whether the Anglican communion believes, teaches, and confesses much of anything. On that question, Dr. Williams should set aside his “distrust of closure” and lead in providing an unequivocal answer in the affirmative. Such a welcome turn could result in a fresh and bold articulation for our times of what the New Testament calls “the faith once delivered to the saints.” Pray that Rowan Williams and the communion over which he now presides will surprise us and, in the process, be surprised by the answers that give form and direction to the questions that will not end until, in the words of St. Paul, we know even as we are known. It is the Christian answers that keep alive the questions. Without them, as we should have learned by now, the world will come up with deadly answers of its own.