Rowan Williams was Archbishop of Canterbury when the Anglican Communion, the third largest Christian communion comprising over 85 million members across the world, was about to split over disagreements about, among other things, homosexuality.

In this two-part series of essays, written to fulfil the taught portions of the Master of Arts degree programme (2015) in Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, I unpack some of Williams’ thinking.

In part two, I compare William’s position with representative views from the conservative evangelical camp. It is hoped that through this series, people can better understand the differences of opinion in this acrimonious conflict. There is a summary table at the end. Both essays received distinctions.

For this course, we were given seminars to learn more about the English Reformers. Even though there were only a few of us who signed up for this particular course on Anglicanism, our lecturer Professor Alec Ryrie showed up and patiently worked through the literature with us.

I was struck by the depths of Professor Ryrie’s learning, but more than that, I was amazed that he was happy to spend that much time with just a handful of us. Dr Banev once shared a story of a Korean Mega-Church pastor he knew who would decline speaking engagements unless there were at least several thousand people in attendance. This story evoked ineffable feelings in me. Here was someone (Prof Ryrie) whose knowledge and value were in an entirely different league from a run-of-the-mill peddler of pious platitudes who was in it for personal glory and gain (this nameless Korean Mega-Church pastor); yet he (Prof Ryrie) was content to have his time wasted by teaching nobodies like me. It is indeed a strange world we live in where the ones least deserving of attention seem to receive the most.

Scripture, Sin and Homosexuality in Global Anglicanism: The Contrast between a Traditionalist Evangelical Position and Rowan Williams’

The formative assignment centred on describing Rowan Williams’ views on homosexuality within the larger framework of his understanding of sin. The exploration situated itself in the contemporary context of a global Anglicanism divided into an ideological North and South on this very issue. Although the historical currents that have led to the fateful schismatic events in the Anglican Communion in the first decade of the 21st century have been, retrospectively, rather palpable indicators of impending trouble, [1] the straw that broke the camel’s back were three events that took place in that decade: the election of Gene Robinson, a divorcee and homosexual pastor, as Bishop of New Hampshire by the Episcopal Church in the United States in 2003, the blessing of a same-sex union in Canada’s Diocese of New Westminster in that same year, and the announcement ‘in the spring of 2003 that Jeffrey John had been appointed Bishop of Reading’ in the United Kingdom. These were enacted even though it had been stated in Resolution I.10 of the previous Lambeth Conference in 1998 that ‘sexual abstinence [is] the right course for those who are not called to marriage’, marriage being defined as a union between a man and a woman, and that ‘homosexual practice [is] incompatible with scripture’. [2] The Anglican Primates later ‘declined to receive communion together […] at the Dromantine meeting of 2005’, and other special meetings were undertaken ‘to create a new kind of worldwide conciliar process such as Anglican churches never had before’, out of which came The Windsor Report. [3] Even though the report favoured Traditionalists, a conscious realignment among them began to emerge. In one notable example in 2008, ‘more than 1,000 persons of traditionalist sentiment participated in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem and Jordan’, many of whom then boycotted the Lambeth Conference convened a month later. [4]

There has been a plethora of publications in the last decade and a half which have offered to analyse this phenomenon from a variety of overlapping perspectives, including sociological, geographical, and historical ones. It has been pointed out for example, that the North’s embracement of homosexuality and same-sex marriage would raise problems with global South Christian-Muslim relations and engagements in Africa since their ‘sister church was seen to be condoning moral conduct widely condemned in the Islamic world’. [5] It has also been suggested, less sympathetically, that conflict was perpetuated because, as financial support withdrew from the generally richer Progressive camp to the poorer Traditionalist camp as a result of this conflict, ‘conservative American bishops […] befriended like-minded leaders of the Third World churches [and] had given them a considerable financial incentive to remain “like-minded,” particularly on issues of women’s ordination and homosexuality’. [6] Any investigation into this issue would reveal the multiple layers and complexities. Except for a lucid account of the historical reasons for the divergence in theological development between the North and South in William Sachs’ book Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism, relatively little has been written on the possible doctrinal differences undergirding this conflict. Accordingly, this essay proposes to form one account of the relevant doctrinal views of the Traditionalists besides the theology of Rowan Williams—who, having been the presiding Archbishop during the controversy, will be the fitting representative of progressive thought in this essay—as a case study to lay out what those differences could be. It seeks to show that for the Traditionalist, Christian faith begins at a different place, that is, with a transformative encounter with scripture as God’s word. This, in turn, leads to a firm conviction in the contemporary relevance of the scripture’s straightforward depiction of sin, homosexual prohibitions, and gender relations, and consequently, a rejection of any progressive theological thought that offers alternative perspectives on these issues. [7]

Williams, being a student of Eastern Spirituality—which rejected Augustinian Original Sin—and knowledgeable in modern theology—which encompasses the liberal developments of the 20th century as well as 19th-century historical-critical scholarship—argues that Christian faith begins with the ‘experience of being reconciled, being accepted, being held […] in the grace of God’. [8] Conversely, for global South Traditionalism, faith begins in a different place. Sachs notes that the ‘Negro Christian religion was bibliocentric’ because to them the Bible offered ‘road maps in their search for identity and racial dignity’. Philip Jenkins, the Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University concurs, writing that the Global South encounter with the Bible was profound:

The Bible offers a certain explanation of spiritual forces that pervade everyday life for millions of people in Africa and Asia. The Bible became the fulcrum of the rise of indigenous Anglicanism in a way that eluded missionary intentions. […] The Bible was able to explain the dynamics of local life at a depth and in a manner that could not have been foreseen.

As a result, global South Traditionalists tend to hold to a high view of the Bible’s divine inspiration and literal authority in a way that resembles the views of evangelicals and which ‘differed from the prevailing pattern of the global North, a gap that has increased since the colonial era’. Sachs also writes that in 1935, ‘East African Anglicanism was decisively shaped by evangelical revival’. It is not surprising then, that, with the exponential improvements in communications technology in the late 20th and 21st centuries, Traditionalists, or evangelicals from the Global North who themselves ‘found innovations in biblical scholarship troubling’ [9] have been able to form vital connections with those similarly disposed in the South. [10] Consequently, this essay will take the Northern evangelical position as normative for Traditionalism as a whole, conceding that while proponents in the global South may not be able to defend their position as rigorously, they would nevertheless be largely in agreement with them. [11]

In the evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem’s book Systematic Theology, he sets forth the traditional fourfold evangelical understanding of scripture: its authority, clarity, necessity, and sufficiency. He writes that the scripture’s authority is self-attested in II Timothy 3.16 for the Old, and in II Peter 3.16 and I Timothy 5.18 for the New Testament. He notes furthermore, with I Corinthians 2.13-14, that it is the Holy Spirit who convinces the reader that the scriptures are God’s word. By connecting the truthfulness of God’s word with the scriptures with Titus 1.2, he then uses John 17.17 to argue that ‘God’s words are the ultimate standard of truth’. Concerning the clarity of scripture, he writes that ‘the Bible is written in such a way that its teachings are able to be understood by all who read it seeking God’s help and being willing to follow it’. He notes that its clarity may be evidenced by the Psalmist’s proclamation that God’s words ‘imparts understanding to the simple’, and that Jesus ‘never responds to any questions with a hint of blaming the Old Testament Scriptures for being unclear’. Concerning the necessity of scripture, Grudem notes that ‘Bible is necessary for knowing the gospel, for maintaining spiritual life, and for knowing God’s will’. He goes on to write that all worldly knowledge is necessarily contingent and therefore open to revision, but because the scriptures are derived from someone ‘who does know all the facts in the universe, and who never lies’, it ‘could tell us some true facts that we can then be sure will never be contradicted’. Finally, concerning the sufficiency of scripture, he writes that it contains ‘all the words of God he intended his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains all the words of God we need for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly’. He goes on to write that ‘we are to add nothing to Scripture, and that we are to consider no other writings of equal value to Scripture’. [12] It is from these core principles of scripture that the evangelical understanding of sin is produced.

Compared with Williams’ understanding of scripture, vast and almost irreconcilable differences emerge. Although Williams, as an Anglican Archbishop, accepts the authority of scripture, it is clear from many instances in his writings that he finds the desire to erect any monolithic interpretive strategy to be a serious distortion of the Christian tradition of prophetic interruption and change attested throughout its history and even in the scriptures themselves. [13] He writes that ‘Scripture […] is not simply an oracle, it is not simply lapidary remarks dropped down from heaven and engraved on stone’. [14] He distinguishes between diachronic, or literal, and synchronic, or non-literal, methods of interpreting scripture. Concerning the diachronic method, he notes that its emphasis on authorial intent, which Fundamentalism embraces, risks an unhelpful ‘totalitarianism’ of historical-criticism. Concerning the equally problematic synchronic method, which he likens to Canonical Criticism, he notes that it ‘threatens to prohibit or ignore any questions about meaning that arise from a refusal to take the homogeneity of the canon for granted’. He argues that neither will be ‘capable of effectively challenging or changing the reader’. The interpretive frame that he proposes, therefore, is a dramatic and gospel-centred mode of reading, [15] where the community’s ‘appropriation of the story is not a static relation of confrontation with images of virtue or vice, finished pictures of a quality once and for all achieved and so no longer taking time, but an active working through of the story’s movement in our own time’. [16] Consequently, because Williams views scripture as a guide to be re-appropriated through this dramatic reading, this prevents him from locating any law-based doctrine of sin in it. This then results in a difference in the core concept of sin between him and evangelicalism, leading to differences in their understanding of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

According to Grudem, the evangelical definition of sin, taking the phrase in I John 3.4, ‘sin is lawlessness’ into account, ‘is a failure to conform to God’s moral law not only in action and attitude, but also in our moral nature’. William Lane Craig, an evangelical philosopher of religion points out that sin has historically been understood to possess three main characteristics: pride, concupiscence and unbelief. [17] Being literal exegetes of the scriptures, Craig and Grudem affirm the historicity of the fall narrative in Genesis and the consequent affirmation of a slightly weaker version of Saint Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin derived from Paul’s writings. [18] The two relevant passages of scripture that Craig brings up are Romans 5.12-21 and I Corinthians 15.21-22. These passages indicate that ‘as sin came into the world through Adam and lead to condemnation for many, so Christ’s single act of righteousness – his death on the cross – brings acquittal and life to many’. He notes that the crucial verse legitimating Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin is based on a mistranslation of Romans 5.12. Craig notes that Augustine translated ‘ἐφ’ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον’ as ‘in whom all men sinned’ rather than ‘because all have sinned’, the latter being more accurate. This more accurate translation would place the responsibility of sin more squarely in the volition of the human agent rather than somehow in Adam. Therefore, rather than understanding Original Sin as a kind of ‘sexually transmitted disease’, [19] Craig and Grudem see this doctrine as affirming ‘the guilt and tendency to sin with which we are born’ [20]by virtue of being a member of Adam’s race. As expected, Craig and Grudem affirm Penal Substitution, which is the view that ‘Christ’s death is thought to be a vicarious punishment that he undergoes in our place’ as the orthodox theory of the atonement because it is attested numerous times in scripture. [21]

Conversely, Williams’ construal of sin begins at a different place. As the formative assignment has laid out, his method’s emphasis on apophatism, reflection on Trinitarian theology, and creation ex nihilo leads him to stress the primacy of the relational aspects of the faith, and the seriousness of that contravention, manifested in a refusal to recognise one’s created-ness and finitude, to represent the root cause of sin. At face value, there is much in common with Williams’ and evangelicalism’s concept of sin. Although Williams would emphasise the self-centred aspects while evangelicalism would emphasise the lawless aspects, both would affirm that the pride of wanting to be like God, self-centredness, and unbelief are instances of sin. In their understanding of Original Sin, there are similarities as well. Williams does not hold to the concept of inherited guilt either. He sees Original Sin as describing a picture of the world that has already adopted the ‘system of oppressor victim’, ‘the sense of a primordial “diminution” from which we all suffer before ever we are capable of understanding or choice’. [22] Where the differences emerge most obviously are in sin’s effects. For Williams, the recovery from the damaging and painful effects of sin begins with re-cognizing one’s original identity as being unreservedly and unconditionally loved by God. According to Mike Higton, this knowledge enables humans to have the ‘freedom to do what comes naturally, freedom from the delusions and distortions that have twisted our lives into unnatural, sin-ridden shapes, and blinded us to how unnatural they are’. [23] The human will is here described in positive terms, full of potential to experience and appropriate redemption. Accordingly, Williams holds to the doctrine of the atonement as a kind of moral influence rather than as a propitiatory sacrifice. [24] It is no stretch of the imagination, given his training in Eastern spirituality, [25] to also suggest that he views the incarnation itself as somehow having an ameliorative effect on humanity. [26] By contrast, evangelicalism holds that sin darkens the mind, such that by nature ‘there is no one who seeks God’. [27] Furthermore, because of the Old Testament’s affirmation of propitiatory sacrifice, ‘Christ’s sacrificial death does serve to avert God’s righteous anger and wrath’, [28] and it is only through his shedding of blood in humanity’s place that brings reconciliation between God and humanity. Therefore, evangelicalism understands sin to be a lot more serious and to run much deeper in human nature. They would therefore tend to downplay any appeal to an “emotional essentialism” that they would believe Williams has implicitly affirmed. This, in turn, leads to their differing views on homosexual acts and same-sex marriage.

Craig lists the six places in the scriptures, including Romans1.24-28, where homosexual acts are forbidden. He formulates his argument as such:

1. We are all obligated to do God’s will
2. God’s will is expressed in the Bible
3. The Bible forbids homosexual behavior
4. Therefore, homosexual behavior is against God’s will

For Craig, the debate between the naturalness or unnaturalness of heterosexual or homosexual individuals engaging in homosexual behaviour is irrelevant because

what the Bible condemns is homosexual actions or behavior, not having a homosexual orientation. The idea of a person’s being a homosexual by orientation is a feature of modern psychology and may have been unknown to people in the ancient world. What they were familiar with was homosexual acts, and this is what the Bible forbids. [29]

By contrast, for Williams, the idea of being ceaselessly desired by God, and the amelioration of inter-personal relationships through an imitation of that self-giving desire stand at the centre of what it means to be a redeemed creature. [30] Therefore, for him, homosexual behaviour among individuals who are so oriented, enacted in a committed relationship and characterised by true self-giving desire, can reflect God’s self-giving, relational love in Christ. [31] His approach’s appeal to the inherent goodness of nature—having been given ex nihilo by God—gives him great sympathy for the ‘homosexually inclined person who does not see their condition as a mark of rebellion or confusion’ [32] and who wish to engage in genuine self-giving sexual relations with another similarly gendered. So while evangelicalism would charge Williams for subscribing to an unbiblical “emotional essentialism” wherein a person’s feelings and desires, as opposed to the injunctions in the scriptures, possess mitigating theological weight, Williams would charge evangelicalism with failing to comprehend the true nature of Christian faith as being at heart ameliorative and relational. Adopting his aforementioned dramatic Gospel-centred mode of interpretation, Williams argues that a strict parallel between the injunctions against homosexual acts in Romans 1— which is situated literarily within the context of condemning idolatry and historically within the context of cultic prostitution and pederasty—[33] and the ideal contemporary situation to which he refers and defends, cannot be made. [34]

Concerning same-sex marriage, Williams concedes that the traditional conservative response is to point out that ‘the covenantal imagery of Scripture always presupposes the order of creation as between man and woman’. [35] Indeed, Craig notes that the creation narrative in Genesis emphasises ‘God’s intention for marriage’ in which he ‘made woman as a suitable mate for man, his perfect, God-given complement’. He writes that this is ratified in the synoptic gospels and applied to the relationship between Christ and the Church in Ephesians 5.32. [36] Greg Johnson, a professor of biology and evangelical Christian, wrote an influential article titled ‘The Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior’, [37] wherein he argues that the union of man and woman ‘is a marvelous God-given pattern that enhances pair bonding, dual parenting, and extensive division of labour, characteristic not only in humans but of many of the higher social animals’. He points out that it is reasonable to think that ‘that there are fundamental differences in the structure and function of the brain and nervous system that predispose the sexes to certain behaviors and capacities’. After providing a list of the empirical evidence supporting his claims, he concludes by writing that

the admonition in Ephesians 5:28-32 for husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands reflects a deep, important need of each sex. Men […] can find fulfilment and daily stress relief through the admiration of a wife who respects her husband. A wife needs to have a sense of complete and healthy relationships with all of her significant social members. She needs an outlet for her nurturant urges and a sense of fulfilled communion. At the center of her social relationships is her husband and her family. [38]

It is for these cumulative reasons, then, that evangelicalism, and by extension, global South Traditionalism would generally consider homosexual acts and same-sex marriage to be in nature discouraged and in scripture forbidden by God.

Concerning this line of argument, the astute observer will remember that Williams considered this conservative appeal to natural law and gender complementarity in the Bible to be ‘problematic’ and ‘nonscriptural’. For him, the fact that God gave creation ex nihilo for no instrumental reason, opens the possibility that sexual relations that are risky, perilous, and demanding, as homosexual ones certainly are, bring up the ‘possibility not only of pain and humiliation without any clear payoff, but, just as worryingly, of non-functional joy – of joy, to put it less starkly, whose material “production” is an embodied person aware of grace’. [39] In other words, the experience of homosexual love may mirror and reflect humanity’s risky experience of the divine, whose relationship with them is non-instrumental. Therefore, Williams would respond to Johnson’s article by conceding that a male-female pair may have a greater instrumental function in certain social roles, but cannot for that reason alone possess veto power against the concurrent acceptability of same-sex relations since same-sex relations also express a facet of God’s nature, as a gratuitous, unconditional and non-instrumental lover of his creation. This, taken in conjunction with his dramatic non-literal approach to scripture [40] and focus on the relational aspects of creature-hood, enables him to see ideal instances of homosexual acts and same-sex marriage as theologically permissible.

By using Rowan Williams and Northern evangelical doctrine as a comparative case study, this essay has attempted to show that the Global South’s transformative encounter with scripture and their consequent emphasis on its clarity and authoritativeness has been a major theological factor that has led to their opposing views on homosexual acts and same-sex marriage with their Progressive counterparts. [41] There are admittedly many other factors that have contributed to this division and shift in theological consensus within the Communion in the 21st century. [42] In characteristic latitudinarian fashion, Williams therefore accepts the inevitability of conflict in a Communion as large and as successful in international mission as Anglicanism. In fact, he would view the present crisis optimistically. In his book On Christian Theology he writes that the existence of conflict and even conscientious division may not be a sign of eschatological polarization but a necessary part of that movement of the story of God’s people and their language towards the one focus of Christ crucified and risen that is the movement of Scripture. [43]

Although divisions remain, Williams observed in retrospect that the [2008] Lambeth Conference succeeded in rebuilding the trust and relationships of the participants “to a remarkable degree” especially since there remained considerable agreement among them on ‘matters of church life and mission, especially in response to war, poverty and human suffering’. [44] Therefore, despite their differences, Williams recognizes the sincerity in the global South’s commitment to the gospel, even in their proclamation of the unacceptability of homosexual acts and same-sex marriage, and for this reason would be open to being in communion with them. [45] The prominent Christian ethicist Oliver O’Donovan has suggested, rather sensibly, that even if these disagreements never go away, in time to come ‘it might be possible to set [them] in what the ecumenists like to call “a new context,” and (who knows?) learn how to live with it’. He provides a parallel example of the conflict ‘between indissolubulist and nonindissolubilist views of marriage’, which have been ‘a traditional point of tension between Catholic and Protestant’ but which now ‘no longer evokes threatening resonances’ because time has ‘reduced [the issue] to its true shape and size’. [46] Whether or not the same will hold with the controversy over homosexuality in the Anglican Communion, time will tell.

Endnotes

1. William L. Sachs’ book, Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), offers a comprehensive history of Anglican mission leading up to the current disagreements between the global North and South on the issue of homosexuality. In it, he provides nuanced reasons for the contemporary conflict. These include the cultural shifts and syncretism in theological understanding arising naturally from international missions, the growth of large Global South Traditionalist networks facilitated by the rise of communications technology, and their reaction against perceived colonial hegemony.
2. See also the amendment to the “Statement of Human Sexuality” sponsored by Global South bishops from their meeting in 1997 at Kuala Lumpur, describing homosexuality as ‘a sin which could only be adopted by the church if it wanted to commit evangelical suicide’, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, ‘An Anglican Crisis of Comparison: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Religious Authority, with Particular Reference to the Church of Nigeria’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72 (2004), 344f.
3. Oliver O’Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Happen (London: SCM Press, 2009),pp. 1, 2, 27-8, 3, 3.
4. Sachs, Homosexuality, pp. 1, 1, 1, 2, 244-5.
5. John Anderson, ‘Conservative Christianity, the Global South and the Battle over Sexual Orientation’, Third World Quarterly, 32 (2011), 1591.
6. Rubenstein, ‘An Anglican Crisis’, p. 349.
7. They would charge Progressives, including Rowan Williams, with subscribing to a problematic form of “emotional essentialism”. See Andrew Cameron, ‘Desire and Grace: Rowan Williams and the Search for Bodily Wholeness’, in On Rowan Williams, ed. by Matheson Russell (Oregon: Cascade Books, 2009), p. 144, even though Williams himself would deny it, see Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement (DLT, 1994), p. 163. If this essay seems relatively light on the theology of Rowan Williams, it is because it sees the Formative Assignment as its complement to be read alongside it.
8. Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (London: DLT, 1990),p. 2.
9. See Sachs’ helpful chapter in his book on the rise of theological Liberalism in England.
10. Sachs, Homosexuality, pp. 150, 151, 156, 158, 155, 173, 12.
11. Global South Anglicans themselves, at their South-to-South Encounter in 2005, have recognized the importance of theological education as a means to defend themselves against ‘what they regard as ‘adulterated’ theological education of the Western churches’, Joseph D. Galgalo and Esther Mombo, ‘Theological Education in Africa in the Post-1998 Lambeth Conference’, Journal of Anglican Studies, 6 (2008), 33.
12. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (England: InterVarsity Press, 2000), pp. 75-6, 77, 82, 83, 108, 106, 106, 116, 120, 127, 131.
13. See Williams, Wound of Knowledge, p. 52-4, concerning Athanasius’ linguistic break from the Arian past in order to secure a new language concerning the orthodox nature of Christ that is nevertheless truly in continuity with it. See also Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), p 54, he mentions the theological differences between the Deuteronomist and the Chronicler as one example. He also mentions the conflicts within the roughly contemporaneous books of Ruth, Jonah and, Ezra concerning inter-marriage and Israel’s relationship with the unregenerate “other”: ‘In both Ruth and Jonah, the integrity of the covenant, which Ezra’s circle seeks to preserve by an enforcement of ‘purity’, separateness, is made to rest primarily on God’s single-minded will to show mercy and to raise up new things, rather than on a narrow interpretation of human single-mindedness’.
14. Williams, Open To Judgement, p.158.
15. See Mike Higton, Deciding Differently, (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2011), p. 12. For Williams, ‘the characteristic form of moral guidance in the New Testament is not simply the giving of rules, but the giving of rules that are established on the foundation of good news’.
16. Williams, On Christian Theology, pp. 19, 271, 48, 48, 48, 50.
17. Scripture references include Genesis 3.5; Romans 7.7; 14.23.
18. The doctrine of Original Sin was proposed by Saint Augustine and later re-emphasised by the Reformers. Nevertheless, modern evangelicals would choose to hold to a concept of Original Sin not based on authority, but because the scriptures seem to plainly teach it, and have therefore made modifications to some problematic aspects of that historic doctrine.
19. William Lane Craig, ‘The Doctrine of Man’, Defenders Podcast Reasonable Faith, Part 13, 14, 15, 15, 15.
20. Grudem, Systematic Theology, pp. 490, 495.
21. Craig presents twenty-four instances in scripture where Christ’s death is presented as a ransom, a sacrifice, and a form of propitiation, in keeping with the scriptural emphasis on God’s righteousness and justice, and consequent requirement for the punishing of sin, See Craig, ‘The Doctrine of Christ’, Defenders Podcast Reasonable Faith, Part 9.
22. Byron Smith, ‘The Humanity of Godliness’, in On Rowan Williams, p. 124. Also, Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Christian Gospel (London: DLT 1980), p. 18.
23. Mike Higton, Deciding Differently, (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2011),p. 8.
24. Rhys Bezzant, ‘The Ecclesiology of Rowan Williams’, in On Rowan Williams, p 12.
25. See Wound of Knowledge and Williams, On Christian Theology, p. 233.
26. Following the Eastern formula of Deification: God became Man so that Man might become God. See Williams, Wound of Knowledge, pp. 51, 56. For him, ‘deification includes washing the feet of the poor’.
27. Romans 3.11
28. Craig, ‘Doctrine of Christ’, Part 10
29. Craig, ‘A Christian Perspective on Homosexuality’, Reasonable Faith. Craig elsewhere writes that ‘in Paul’s day most of the people involved in homosexual acts were probably people who were heterosexual in orientation, as such acts were condoned by prominent ancient philosophers’, Craig, A Reasonable Response (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2013), p. 346.
30. See Rowan Williams, ‘The Body’s Grace’, in Theology and Sexuality, ed. by Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007)
31. Paraphrased from my formative assignment
32. Rowan Williams, ‘Knowing Myself in Christ’, in Timothy Bradshaw, ed., The Way Forward? Christian Voices on Homosexuality and the Church (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), p. 17.
33. Mike Higton, Deciding Differently, p. 19.
34. Williams, Rowan, ‘New Testament Sexual Ethics’, in Martyn Percy, ed., Intimate Affairs: Sexuality & Spirituality in Perspective (London: Darton Longman Todd, 1997), p. 30.
35. Williams, ‘Knowing Myself’, p. 19.
36. Craig, ‘A Christian Perspective’.
37. The article was part of a book that won the 1993 Christianity Today Book of the Year.
38. Gregg Johnson, ‘The Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior’, in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. by John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Illinois: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 281, 284, 293. See also George W. Knight III ‘Husbands and Wives as Analogues to of Christ and the Church: Ephesians 5:21-33 and Colossians 3.18-19’, in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. by John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Illinois: Crossway Books, 1991), wherein Knight expands on the symbolic connection between male female marriage and Christ and his Church.
39. Williams, ‘The Body’s Grace’, pp. 320,318.
40. A closer examination of his scriptural objections can be found in my formative assignment.
41. This has been summarized in Table 1 below for convenience. Sachs has also cast the theological conflict in optimism / pessimism and monolithic / evolutionary paradigms which are rather helpful: ‘Traditionalists emphasised that the faith is unchanging and must be received and conveyed whole and intact. Progressives presumed that Christian faith is dynamic, unfinished, and unfolding’. ‘One perceives the world and a church riddled with sin and needing redemption; the other sees a world and a church that are essentially good and still in the process of realization,’ Sachs, Homosexuality, pp. 22, 205.
42. One would be the fact that Anglicanism has historically not been a confessing church or relegated a certain geographical location as the centre of ecclesial authority, and has consequently given substantial ecclesial autonomy to the provinces that they helped found in the colonies. See Sachs, Homosexuality, p. 246.
43. Williams, On Christian Theology, p. 57.
44. Sachs, Homosexuality, pp. 245, 245.
45. Williams would say that Traditionalists do possess the grammar of obedience, which is the willingness to be ‘dispossessed by the truth they are engaging with’, see Rowan Williams, ‘Making Moral Decisions’, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics ed. by Robin Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 11.
46. O’Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin, p. 119.
47. It is possible for the reverse to be true. It may be possible for a serious exegete of the scriptures to conclude that contemporary homosexual acts are not forbidden in Scripture, and for a Progressive thinker to believe that a sincere application of the gospel in contemporary life necessitates a self-denial that would exclude certain kinds of sexual relations. But that would be atypical.

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