Doctrine, Tradition and Difficulties

 I have started to read Living in Love and Faith, the Church of England blockbuster on sexuality, marriage and all points beyond that. Unfortunately, before the ink was even dry, and certainly before anyone could have read and reflected on its four hundred and fifty pages of discussion, definition, and acknowledgment of difficulties, it was already being condemned by some parts of the church for attempting to change church teaching and tradition and doctrine and probably all sorts of bits of what some people think that the church is about.

Despite the fact that some parts of the church seem to be playing to stereotype – that the church only exists to stop people from doing things and telling them that they are sinful and will go straight to hell – I am not at this point going to comment on LLF itself. The quantity of stuff in it, from statistics to definitions, is rather too much to be digested easily. Perhaps this is part of the problem – we prefer easy, clear positions rather than the messiness of everyday life.

The part of the discussion I do want to pick up on is the arguments about traditional teaching, doctrine, and so on. This is because I have also read a bit of Robert Doran’s What is Systematic Theology? which includes a discussion of the difference between doctrine and dogma, among other things. I think this might be useful for examining exactly what is at stake in the LLF related discussions.

Doran writes as a Roman Catholic, which in this context is probably helpful as his ideas stand outside the Anglican arguments. He recognises different sorts of doctrine and what they mean. Systematic theology, Doran notes, starts from ‘mysteries of the faith’ and these are non-negotiable elements, which may be dogmatic or non-dogmatic (p. 29). By this Doran means that there is a core of dogma, in the Roman Catholic tradition, that original deposit of faith which the Church guards. Doran does note that there is not really an awful lot of this. For example, there is no dogma of the resurrection per se. There is a lot of church or scriptural doctrine, but no creedal statement of the resurrection which does for it what Nicea and Chalcedon do for the incarnation (p. 21).

Doran, drawing on Lonergan, defines a dogma as a doctrine that expresses a mystery otherwise so hidden in God that it could not be known except by revelation. These form a subset of the church’s doctrine. Some doctrines express mysteries and some do not. Some doctrines which express mysteries have received dogmatic status, and some have not. Systematic theology, on this view, attempts to understand and synthesise the dogmas. Some of the propositions made in this venture might become a church doctrine, which is a truth accepted by the church but not a dogma.

According to Doran, then, there are a number of levels of doctrine to by synthesised. There are dogmas, mysteries of the faith which are not expressed in dogmatic formulae, ecclesial and theological doctrines from tradition which are not mysteries of the faith, and newer theological doctrines which we have encountered in our own thinking, whether or not these become church doctrine.

To this, we have to add the mediation of theology between culture and religion. That is, we have a religious faith that is expressed in particular forms of church, and that church is embedded in, and part of, a cultural matrix. This cultural matrix is not static but evolving and, in order to maintain its ability to proclaim the Gospel in the current age, the mediation between religion and culture, that is, theology, has to evolve.

In terms of the arguments over marriage, tradition, and LGBTI+ people we have to determine, first of all, where in the spectrum of doctrines the traditional form of marriage, that it is between a man and a woman, comes from. Some will argue that it is a creation ordinance (Gen 2:24) and was affirmed by Jesus. There is, however a historical perspective to be considered here: marriage has not been without change over the centuries since the Babylonian exile. For example, during the interdict in England in the reign of King John, marriages could not be solemnized in church. That did not stop people from getting married. Again, in later Medieval times marriages were conducted at the church door. The traditional marriage is as much a cultural construct of our times as it ever has been.

We can therefore argue as to where the concept of ‘traditional’ marriage fits on the spectrum of doctrine. It might be a Scriptural doctrine, from the few things which are said about it in Scripture but, as has been seen in recent debates, just arguing that it is in the Bible and that is not going to work. Scripture too has to be interpreted for the current cultural context; that does not necessarily mean ‘changed’, but literal interpretations are not going to obtain the desired effects just by a straightforward restatement of a Bible verse or two.

The question of marriage thus turns on how core to the doctrine of the church it is seen. If we believe that traditional marriage is a mere cultural construct created by a top-down, patriarchal society and church, then we can quite easily argue that its relevance to today is limited to being of historical interest and not much more than that. If we believe that it is a core church doctrine, we will disagree. Whether any sort of argument, book, presentation of the data, and so on will change anyone’s view of the doctrine is difficult to see.

Dorna comments that ‘the initial attitude of the genuine Christian individual or community is not one of suspicion but one of a readiness to learn’ (p. 60). Doran refers to St Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, section 22:

‘… it is to be premised that every good Christian will be more inclined to put a good construction on another’s statement than to fault it. If he is unable to find a good interpretation, he should ask what he means. If his meaning is unorthodox, the other should put him right, in a spirit of love. If this is not enough, let him use all the means proper to get the proposition rightly interpreted.’

This does not mean just shouting that my interpretation is the correct one, ever more loudly, but engagement. It seems to me that what LLF is trying to do is make the statements clear. Claims that it is leading towards a change in doctrine are premature and unlikely to assist the debate over interpretation, let aside the question of what sort of doctrine we are talking about.