An Example of Synodality in the Episcopal Church

The seventh in a series on theology, practice, and history of Anglican Catholicism in The Episcopal Church.

I have written a few time about the authority to bind and loose in the church (here, in a reflection on Proper 16, and here, in a newsletter issue about Apostolic Succession), and I recently had the occasion to give a series of lectures on the English Reformation for the Diocese of Arizona’s Diaconate Formation Academy. My third lecture was on recent historical and theological developments in Anglicanism, and I included Apostolic Success as one of my main topics, but also spent a few minutes discussing synodality and how it has been employed in the polity of the Episcopal Church with regards to the development of doctrine. Below are my comments from that part of the lecture on this topic:

Speaking of the use of the keys of the kingdom to bind and loose, the Episcopal Church has exercised this authority in a way that holds continuity with the theology of Rome, while also departing from it in other ways. The Catholic Church’s promulgation of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, and then the Pope’s use of that authority to promulgate the Marian dogmas, has been dubbed, “the development of doctrine” by Catholic theologians. Through the concept of the development of doctrine, the Catholics have argued against the Orthodox and Church of the East that they may use their two epistemological sources, Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture, to further develop doctrines from these sources. The use of the keys to bind and loose, and the synod of bishops gathering together to use the Anglican tools of epistemology: Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, and Reason, is nothing more than the furtherance of Rome’s idea of the development of doctrine. When the bishops came together and examined the text of Holy Scripture as we now have it, the holy traditions of the church historically, the scholarship of historians, theologians, and textual critics on these issues, and how that scholarship informs discussions of theology, the bishops determined that in fact, the Biblical text, when properly interpreted in community, does not bar the ordination of women. They further determined that the Biblical text, when properly interpreted in community, is not speaking of mutually committed, loving, same sex relationships when the word often now translated as “homosexuality” was written in the text. 

If the Episcopal Church deems itself to be a true church, with valid apostolic succession, which has attempted to hold to the warrants of holy scripture and holy tradition, balanced through the faculty of reason, then it must not be afraid to describe its actions theologically in order to stake out the truth. I have met Episcopalians who have said, “it doesn’t matter what the Bible or Tradition say about this topic, our opinion is right.” This is a very post-structuralist way of thinking. While modernity has plenty of pitfalls, it at least can recognize that words have actual (if shifting) meanings, that truth actually exists, and that if we as the church determine that we have been up to this point wrong on some matter, and that we must look at things anew, that there is precedence for doing so, and that the church has the authority through its own historical understandings of the Episcopate, councilarity and synodality, the development of doctrine, and the use of reason to explore God’s truths, and therefore, to use the power of loosing and binding that Jesus granted to Peter and the Apostles. We must be unafraid to define the decisions of the church theologically, and to own that theology. It will not only help us to defend the decisions of the church, but it will also help to keep us grounded to the sources of our theology so that we might know the truth and be set free.