‘A time of uncertainty’ – LLF, doubt and certainty.

I have been at General Synod of the Church of England this week, where the vast majority of the time was given to more discussions around same-sex relationships. I have found myself to be at the centre of a debate which feels like an argument between two sides, but which is I think in reality a conversation across a whole spectrum of opinion. I have sat and listened to impassioned speeches from either ends of this spectrum, at times feeling quite isolated in a position in the middle. But I wonder if actually the space in the middle of this debate is a fruitful space – because it is so often the space we inhabit as human disciples of Jesus – wrestling between our sense of conviction and our doubts and the challenges of living out those convictions in the complexity of the world. This seems to me to be a more realistic theological position to be honest about.

This position is to some extent articulated by the language the Bishops used in their latest document before Synod. The prayers of love and faith were consistently referred to as ‘a pastoral provision in a time of uncertainty’. Some call this heresy. Others a classic Anglican fudge. But theologically and ecclesiologically it seems to me to be a rather common position to take, a fair picture of the reality we are in as Christians between the inauguration and fulfilment of the Kingdom.

This was therefore the gist of the speech I ventured to offer this week, which didn’t get given, but is offered here.

“Reflecting on the debate we had in this chamber in February, I went away asking the question: When a community of Christ’s disciples prays, explores Scripture and debates together – and yet comes to place of profound disagreement – what is doctrine? What do we mean by it? Who owns doctrine?’ And on what basis?

One theme of the Bible is of a people for ever succumbing to a tendency to fix the nature of God within their own limited perspective. And of a God who challenges his people to relinquish these fixed perspectives in the light of his revelation. Job in the whirlwind. Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. Jonah in the belly of the whale. Jesus with Samaritan woman, with the Syro -Phoenician woman, Jesus on the cross, Paul on the road to Damascus. In each case the poverty of our doctrine is revealed through the revelation of experience. The Spirit continually invites us beyond our certainties into the wildness and uncertainty of the person of God. As John V Taylor said ‘The Holy Spirit has not read the rubrics’

So when we speak of ‘a period of uncertainty’. A space of disagreement. A space somewhere between the apparent certainty of doctrine and the uncertainty of its pastoral implications, I think ‘isn’t that the space we are always in?’ Is it not always the case that there is a space between our articulation of the revelation of God in Christ and our practical expression of that in the midst of the world. Is it not the case the doctrine must always be worked out with fear and trembling. Must always be held between hands that are on the one hand certain and on another doubt. As Leslie Newbigin said ‘Only statements that can be doubted make contact with reality’.

So I for one am grateful for the space the Bishops have offered us to inhabit. It may not be easy. It may not convenient. It may not fit with our timetable or plan. But it is consistent with the experience of God’s people. It is consistent with our task as pilgrim disciples and a pilgrim church, walking haphazardly into the Kingdom of God.

And its appropriate for the context we are in, one not unlike the exile where we have to experiment and learn again how to be the church in a culture at odds with many of our values and assumptions.  Of the exile Walter Brueggemann said that far from being an unmitigated disaster the exile ‘evoked the most daring theological articulation in the Old Testament.’

‘A period of uncertainty’ is the church’s experience of reality. It is only hardened certainties that blind us to that. So we should not be afraid of it. So nor should we seek to hurry through it. Some things are too important to do quickly. But we can and should seek to walk together in it. “