What is Anglicanism?. Urban T. Holmes III
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were two or three more. An ecumenical council is representative of the whole church. Such a council in our view has not been possible since 1054, when the church of the East finally broke with the church in the West. Since the Reformation in the sixteenth century an ecumenical council has been even more unlikely, unless like the Church of Rome one claims to be the whole church.
Yet Anglicans have continued to gather in council. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church speaks for this branch of the Anglican Communion. The Lambeth Conference, gathering every ten years and consisting now of all Anglican bishops with jurisdiction, abjures any legislative authority, but it is given authority in many ways by Anglicans throughout the world. Curiously enough, Anglican teaching in a subtle manner takes the statements of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1961-1965) as authoritative. Perhaps this is because what makes a council authoritative is the consent of the faithful to what it has declared, regardless of what that council does or does not claim for itself.
In an admittedly imprecise and sometimes clumsy manner Anglicanism sees the interaction of the threefold authority of Scripture, tradition, and reason as operating in a conciliar mode, which is ultimately a collaboration of the whole church. It is a bit like authority within the family. Somehow it rests within the parents, although not without input from the children. Not every statement made bears the same authority, and one comes to know in an intuitive way how to tell the difference. What is authoritative is what is accepted as reasonable by the whole family. One wishes for greater clarity, while knowing that such clarity would beget tyranny. Therefore, we are uncomfortably thankful for the authority as it is and accept what is vague as the price of freedom.
There is no question that this is “muddy.” For example, as a member of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, I participated in four debates from 1977 to 1980 over whether the Episcopal Church should join the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. For some it appears that if one opposes joining it means they support a constitutional amendment against abortions. It happens that I am one who believes no one has the “right” to have an abortion, but I am equally against a constitutional amendment. Both the ideologues have a clear position who support the Religious Coalition on the grounds that a woman has a right to do with her body as she wishes, as do the pro-life group who argue that every abortion is murder. A more appropriate outlook, consistent with what has been said by Episcopal church councils, is that they are both wrong. The Anglican position is “muddier.” No one has a right to an abortion, it says, because there is a real question about the rights of the unborn human, but there can be circumstances (e.g., rape, obvious deformity, age of mother) where an abortion is the lesser of two evils and is therefore the morally correct course to follow.
Clarity of authority should not be expected — in fact, it should be suspect — when we are attempting to make clear the infinite mind of God for the finite minds of humankind. When Anglicanism is true to its concept of authority, this apparent hesistance to say, “Thus saith the Lord!” — only to have to spend the next hundred years subtlely qualifying “what the Lord said” — is not a sign of weakness, but evidence of strength and wisdom.
Chapter Three
The Bible
Surely among the great Christians of recent times is Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831-1906). He is remembered in the calendar of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (October 15), but when his commemoration rolls around each year there are more jokes about the pronunciation of his name than appreciation for the incredible witness of this saint.
Born a Jew in Lithuania, from his early years he exhibited a remarkable talent for languages. While studying to become a rabbi in Germany he read the New Testament in Hebrew and came to believe that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah. In 1854, he emigrated to the United States and began studying for the Presbyterian ministry. While in seminary, however, he concluded that Calvinistic theology and polity were not biblical and he sought to complete his studies and to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. The priest who gave him the greatest support was Theodore Lyman, then Rector of Trinity Church, Pittsburgh, and later the fourth Bishop of North Carolina. The sponsorship of Schereschewsky was probably Lyman’s greatest single contribution to the church.
While at the General Convention the first Anglican Bishop of China, William J. Boone, visited the seminary and the course of Schereschewsky’s life was set. Leaving in 1859 for China, his goal was to translate the Scriptures for the Chinese people. A scholar without peers, he learned Chinese while aboard ship on route to China (it took twenty-three weeks!). From 1862 to 1875 Schereschewsky was in Peking, during which time he translated the Bible into Mandarin. He also started a translation into Mongolian, after a visit to that part of China.
In 1875 while in the United States on furlough, Schereschewsky was elected Bishop of China. He declined, principally on the grounds that he wished to finish his translation of the Mongolian Bible and do one in Easy Wenli, the classical written language of China. He was elected once again the next year, was persuaded, declined again, and repersuaded. He was ordained bishop in 1877, and served until 1883. During his episcopate he founded St. John’s College in Shanghai, which later became a university and one of the great educational institutions of China. In August 1881, while living in the intense heat of Wuchang, a city to which he had come because of problems in the church, he suffered heatstroke. As a result of the very high fever he was completely paralyzed. He never fully recovered.
The remaining twenty-five years of Schereschewsky’s life were spent struggling with his profound disability while translating the Scriptures into Easy Wenli and editing a reference Bible in that language. He traveled Europe and North America, seeking relief with but the one goal in mind: to complete this third translation. Often he lived in poverty. He could never sleep more than four or five hours a day. His wife, up until the last year or so nursed him through it all, while he typed out the translation with one finger. He finished his Easy Wenli translation in 1894 and then went to Japan to seek the assistance of a Chinese secretary in polishing the translation. There he lived out his final years, often in much pain, but with little complaint. His last words, most reminiscent of Dame Julian of Norwich, were, “It is well; it is very well.”
Schereschewsky was not the “typical Anglican.” He was neither born to it nor did he join as a result of a desire to move socially upward. He was convinced of Christianity and its Anglican expression by reading the Bible. He spent the rest of his life making the Bible available to the people of China, enduring all kinds of strange vicissitudes. This understanding and devotion to the Scriptures is in the best Anglican tradition, and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, a Lithuanian Jew, is the patron saint of all who in our tradition seek to live and teach the Scriptures.
I do not know what Schereschewsky’s convictions were as to the nature of biblical interpretation. He was contemporary with the great Cambridge (England) triumvirate, B. F. Westcott (1828-1901), J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889) and J. A. Hort (1828-1892), who initiated the Anglican tradition of biblical criticism. It is difficult to determine how well Schereschewsky knew their work and shared their viewpoint, although a scholar such as he must have been conversant with Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament and the landmark commentaries of Lightfoot. Schereschewsky believed that the Bible tells a story which can be a means of God’s saving grace changing the lives of those who read it. It is this understanding of the Bible that is characteristic of Anglicanism.
Our tradition understands the cultural conditioning of the books of the Bible as self-evident. Many of the books are products of an oral tradition centuries long and the result of an editorial process. Some of them are like a montage, where different versions and points of view overlay one another. Two different accounts of the same thing can appear side by side, such as the two creation stories (Genesis 1:1-2:4 and 2:5-25). Different points of view, shaped by different cultures, can be readily identified. For example, there are at least three different interpretations of the experience of Jesus in the New Testament: Palestinian Jewish, Greek Jewish and Gentile. The authors and editors of the books of the Bible were historical human beings with the normal biases we would expect.
We know there is no perfect text of the Bible and until modern times every copy of the Scriptures was done by hand. We may have fragments