Authority and Anglicanism

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1997 by Vogel, Arthur A

Authority and Ar,gl;ca.;smr By Stephen Ross White. London: SCM Press Ltd., 1996.138 pp. $19.00 (paper).

In an easily read, controversial style Stephen Ross White, Dean of Raphoe, County Donegal, discusses the crisis in authority experienced in the Anglican Churches in the British Isles-and by extension throughout the Anglican Communion.

Stating that he wants to examine the authority of the Church rather than within the Church, Dean White, using the Church of England as his model, locates and discusses the traditional sources of authority under the headings of historical authority, structural authority, biblical and doctrinal authority, and moral authority. Some historical development and discussion of current figures are peculiarly English, but the pace of the discussion is fast enough that such specificity does not attenuate the total impact of the book.

Briefly put, the author contends that the authority crisis within Anglicanism has arisen primarily because the Church has used penultimate issues as a means of running away from the ultimate issue. Penultimate issues are such problems as establishment in England, hierarchical authority and models of organizational management, the ordination of women, homosexuality, and to a large degree, even such issues as scriptural criticism, the nature of God, and God's relation to the world.

While there is uncertainty within Anglicanism about the issues just mentioned, the most serious uncertainty is said to be about Anglicanism itself and its own identity. That uncertainty has shown itself in the spotty success, if not general failure, of the Decade of Evangelism called for by the Lambeth Conference of 1988.

The identity lacking in Anglicanism can be found, the author contends, if the Anglican Church will not only accept but rejoice in its present state of relative powerlessness. Stephen Sykes's advocacy of Lambeth 1948's description of diffuse and dispersed authority within the church is commended. True power and authority in the church arise from the power (dynamis) of the Spirit, who is the power of the Gospel of Christ. The radically powerless authority that Jesus displayed throughout his life and capped in his death on the cross is the only proper authority available to the church. Such authority grows out of a living, personal relationship with Jesus, and that relationship-which is "larger than scripture, or creeds, or dogmas" (p. 113)-is the "new" source of the authority White commends to the church.

In the worshipful, experiential primacy of Jesus held up by the author, the living Jesus will animate the church's use of scripture, creeds, tradition, and reason-rather than any of the forementioned abstractly circumscribing and limiting Jesus and the new future into which Jesus calls us.

In the face of-and perhaps even on the basis of-critical scriptural analysis, White affirms that we have enough sure knowledge of Jesus to have an ongoing personal relationship with him. "The centrality of the person of Jesus, rather than any particular dogmatic formulation about him" (p. 127), is the solution White offers Anglicanism-and the whole church-to its problem(s) of authority.

ARTHUR A. VOGEL

Kansas City, Missouri