Scott MacDougall

Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Account of Radical Orthodoxy and John Duns Scotus. By Daniel P. Horan, OFM. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2014. ix + 219 pp. $29.00 (paper).Theology, as an intellectual discipline, is highly narrative in character. It often proceeds on the basis of a genealogical, "history of ideas" approach to explicating a particular view-its origin and derivation, context and significance, implications and subsequent effects. When theology is done in this mode, getting the theological story right becomes even more imperative. Daniel Horan argues in his fascinating new book that when it comes to the story that the theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy tells about the medieval Franciscan philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus (12661308), the narrative interpretation afforded his work is simply wrong. It is, in fact, more than wrong. As Horan observes, it is obstinately wrong. And, as his work implies, it may be fatally wrong, as the erroneousness of what Horan calls Radical Orthodoxy's incorrect "Scotus Story" threatens to undermine the validity of the overall theological project that is predicated upon it.In their Scotus Story, Radical Orthodox theologians maintain that Thomas Aquinas's (1225-1274) analogical approach to God-talk preserved the prevailing Neoplatonic participatory metaphysics. In Aquinas, the contingent being of finite entities is held to derive from its direct, analogical relation to the non-contingent Being who is God. In this relationship, "being" must be understood equivocally, as the finite being of created entities and the infinite Being of God are utterly different. By contrast, Radical Orthodox theologians maintain, Scotuss assertion that such an analogy only works if finite being and infinite Being are understood univocally as being of the same kind (and so can be perceived as being authentically and reliably related), though crucially differentiated, is an illegitimate equation of finite creatures' being with God's Being. This makes finite being the same as and independent of divine Being in a way that was never asserted previously. Scotuss univocal idea of being, they claim, permitted the conception of a till-then unknown space standing apart from the divine, a realm that came to be called "the secular." Radical Orthodoxy's Scotus Story thus positions Scotus as the anti-Aquinas, the first philosopher to separate metaphysics and theology and, because of this, as the figure who paved the way for modernity and postmodemity. This, they argue, places Scotus at the head of an intellectual line that led eventually to Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and the various nihilisms of postmodernism. Radical Orthodoxy's overall effort is aimed at defeating the line of thinking that Scotus initiated and at undoing the "secular" world they believe it legitimates.For the theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy, especially its progenitor, John Milbank, who articulates the Scotus Story most clearly in his influential programmatic volume, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (1990), Aquinas and Scotus thus represent the two sides of a metaphysical binary. …

With this book, Katherine Sonderegger has taken on quite a challenge.1 By this, I do not mean her embarking upon writing a multivolume systematic theology, although that is certainly no small undertaking and is a project that Anglican theologians have not typically engaged.2 I do not mean her beginning with an exploration of God’s unity instead of God’s triunity, which has in recent decades been a much more common launch point for thinking through the nature and character of the divine. I do not even mean her starting with an examination of God in Godself, God in se. This is a theological practice of long standing and one that is still commonly followed by some textbooks that introduce systematic theology to contemporary students. As Sonderegger herself points out, however, our confidence in saying anything too specific about God as God is, rather than as God appears to be to our limited and finite minds, has come under an increasingly intense suspicion among theologians. She believes that this has hobbled, where it has not outright silenced via a misplaced apophasis, quite legitimate God-talk in an appropriately kataphatic register.

This article argues that it is insufficient to ask merely whether the proposed Anglican Covenant is confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, or punitive, the themes currently to the fore in the covenant debate. Instead, the Communion must ask what quality of intra- and inter-ecclesial relationality is appropriate for Christian community and measure the covenant against it. An ecclesiology founded upon an anticipated eschatology, an approach familiar to Anglican theology and practice, provides a framework for this assessment. Five characteristics of eschatological ecclesiology and the quality of relationality it promotes are advanced. Aided by the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission's report Communion, Conflict and Hope and the work of Bruce Kaye, it is shown that the ecclesiological values of the Windsor Report and its resultant covenant are at odds with those that arise from an eschatological ecclesiology, providing an opening for the Communion to resolve its "covenant conundrum." Being a global family of autonomous churches, not a worldwide church itself, the Anglican Communion does not have a central figure or body that makes decisions or promulgates doctrine for all Anglican churches. It is not hierarchical authority that unifies the Anglican Communion, but "bonds of affection" that derive from a shared history and identity and that grow from inter-ecclesial fellowship and partnerships, common life and witness, and Communion-wide gatherings, formal and informal, on multiple levels. Recent events in the Communion stemming from fierce disagreements over the role of same-gender sexuality in determining eligibility for ordination have greatly strained those bonds of affection, raising issues of provincial autonomy and interdependence, the proper exercise of theological and ecclesia! authority, and appropriate levels of diversity within the Communion. Central to each of these issues is the question of relationship. The present crisis is fundamentally about how the relational bonds of affection uniting the churches of the Anglican Communion are to be understood and lived. Perceiving this, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, convened the Lambeth Commission on Communion in 2003 and charged it with reporting back to him on "the canonical understandings of communion, impaired and broken communion, and the ways in which provinces of the Anglican Communion may relate to one another in situations where the ecclesiastical authorities of one province feel unable to maintain the fullness of communion with another part of the Anglican Communion."1 The result was the Windsor Report, and one of its key practical recommendations was the development of an Anglican Communion covenant that would outline Anglican identity and "make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion."2 Championed by the Archbishop, a Communion- wide covenant process was launched,3 producing a series of draft covenants and extensive debate about them in provincial and Communion bodies, parish and diocesan meetings, journal articles and books, and the Anglican blogosphere. As a relational response to a relational crisis, it is not surprising that supporters and opponents of the version of the covenant now before the member churches of the Communion for adoption tend to debate the advisability of endorsing it in relational terms.4 Thematically, five broad questions with relational implications appear to dominate discourse around the covenant: the extent to which it is confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, and punitive. An honest appraisal reveals a degree of truth on both sides of each question: the covenant is and is not confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, and punitive. This ambivalence means that answering these extremely important questions cannot be the decisive test for whether to adopt the covenant. …

In June 1845, the faculty of the General Theological Seminary issued its annual report to the institution's board of trustees. It included a roster of current and incoming students, as well as the customary list of those who had left the seminary over the course of the previous academic year. Among the entries on that list: On the 4th of February last, the Dean communicated to the Faculty that Henry McVickar, of the Senior class, had informed him of his having withdrawn from the Seminary...Joseph P. Taylor, of the Middle class, withdrew from the Seminary in April last, on account of ill health...On the 13th of January last, the Faculty resolved that Josh. Newton Wattson and John B. Donnelly, both of the Middle class, cease to be members of the Seminary, and that they be directed to withdraw from the Institution...Clarence Walworth, of the Middle class of last year, who had leave of absence, has not returned.1 To the casual reader, these would hardly seem remarkable: random and unrelated examples of the sort of attrition common at any institution of higher learning. But in fact, the five cases above were connected, and some, if not all, of the trustees knew it. The board wanted more detail about these departures, and on 26 June, they "Resolved, That the Faculty be requested to communicate to the Board any documents or information in their possession calculated to throw light on the cases of those students who have been subjected to the discipline of the Institution during the last year for reason of theological error."2 How could a voluntary withdrawal from the seminary, a withdrawal due to illness, two expulsions, and a failure to return to Chelsea Square after a leave of absence be connected? And how could they be linked to "theological error"? The answer has to do with the fear of Romanizing high churchmanship that the Oxford Movement provoked in some quarters, and the form that reaction against this perceived threat assumed at the seminary. New York City was an important center for Tractarianism in the United States: Dr. Samuel Seabury's influential, high church publication, The Churchman, had its offices there; the bishop of New York, Benjamin Onderdonk, was a vociferous and powerful proponent of it; and several faculty and many students of the General Theological Seminary, located on Ninth Avenue in New York, were also staunch advocates of Oxford Movement thinking.3 Seabury had close ties to the seminary and eventually became its professor of Biblical Learning. Bishop Onderdonk served as its professor of Ecclesiastical Polity and Law. By the mid1840s, the seminary's position as a prime exponent of Oxford Movement principles was firmly established. In fact, a publisher offered to issue the first American printing of the Tracts for the Times and donate all proceeds to the seminary. Seabury, himself ambivalent about the Tracts, thought the benefit to the institution would nevertheless be great. Even so, some of the seminary's trustees objected to the institution profiting by the sale of such material, so the project was taken up by a less generous publisher. Upon their issue in America, the Tracts raised awareness of Oxford Movement high churchmanship, but this also led to increased apprehensions-including questions about the orthodoxy of students and professors at the General Theological Seminary.4 When Arthur Carey, a seminarian, was ordained in July 1843 by Bishop Onderdonk over the objections of Carey's own bishop (who contended that Carey's Tractarian views invalidated him for service as an Episcopal priest) heretofore whispered rumors about Romanizing at the institution were made loudly vocal. Both publications and evangelical leaders within the church faulted the professors and their curriculum for Carey's Roman beliefs, particularly because Bishop Onderdonk, a fiery (if at times unmeasured) defender of Carey's orthodoxy, was a professor there. The trustees launched an investigation of the faculty, the findings of which were to be reported to the General Convention of 1844. …

The thesis of this dissertation is that John Zizioulas\u27 and John Milbank\u27s theologies of the church, understood in terms of the categories of communion ecclesiologies, are marked by an overly realized eschatology and so fail to imagine eschatological futurity and as a result theologically devalue material creation and history, privilege institutions, and emphasize a restrictive and closed concept of the church, and that this attenuated eschatological imagination is connected to both theologians\u27 effective reduction of ecclesial practice to eucharist without paying sufficient attention to a larger range of everyday, social, and political practices that emerge from a more comprehensive understanding of eschatological hope. After providing the background necessary to grasp what communion ecclesiologies are and what is at stake in them, Zizioulas\u27 and Milbank\u27s ecclesiologies are analyzed, demonstrating their consonance with the themes of communion ecclesiologies, situating their own ecclesiologies within the context of their respective overarching theological commitments and projects, delineating the ways in which these are consistent with their eschatological viewpoints, and raising concerns brought to the fore by their construals of eschatology and the church. The final three chapters of the dissertation offer a constructive proposal for recovering the more to communion and ecclesiologies of communion. This recovery helps us to imagine—to conceptualize while living out of and into—a church that is not so much beyond the world (as seems to be the case in Zizioulas\u27 ecclesiology) or over against the world (which appears to be the case in Milbank\u27s) but in and for the world in love and service, as the anticipation of the eschatological perfection of a thoroughgoing four-fold communion—between humanity and God, among human beings, within human persons, and between humanity and the rest of creation. This more generous imagination of communion and of the church as an agent of its anticipation is worked out conceptually in conversation with systematic theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Johannes Baptist Metz, and practically by engaging with an emerging theology of Christian practices being developed by practical theologians Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra and other practical theologians aligned with their work

What is less clear is why it is the church that fills this role and not some other group who is invested in the same ideals. I suspect that the cultic character of Christian life provides some distinction on this matter, but what ritual contributes to liberal Christianity is not adequately spelled out by Hobson. What we learn is that ritual does not necessarily equate to sacramental, and that practices of worship and service are essential to the liberal Christian equation, yet Hobson seems of two minds when it comes to defining what the cultic and ritual aspects of the church are meant to do. At one level, ritual is to be avoided if it becomes the source of “institutional regulation”; at another level, Christianity at its base is cultic, and ritual the central application of this cultic life. It would seem that communal celebration is a critical aspect of Christian life as long as the “institution” doesn’t interfere. This notion supports Hobson’s concern with individual liberty all the while raising a serious question about the worth of the church. In Reinventing Liberal Christianity, Hobson has cleared some conceptual ground in order to promote a vision of liberal Christianity that seeks a closer walk between the life of the church and the liberal state. Critics of this arrangement might not find Hobson’s project convincing, yet he has written an engaging text that seeks to secure a liberal vision as a viable Christian tradition.

Christ and Reconciliation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 1. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. xiv + 453 pp. $40.00 (paper).Trinity and Revelation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 2. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2014. xii + 472 pp. $40.00 (paper).Creation and Humanity. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 3. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. xix + 554 pp. $40.00 (paper).Spirit and Salvation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 4. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2016. xvii + 498 pp. $40.00 (paper).These four books are the first four volumes of a new five-volume systematic theology by the prolific theologian Veli-Matti Karkkainen. Karkkainen has been a professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, since 2000, and also has an appointment as docent of ecumenics at the University of Helsinki in his native Finland.Christ and Reconciliation (volume 1) examines the person (part 1: "Christ") and work (part 2: "Reconciliation") of Jesus Christ, treating along the way such topics as the significance of Jesus' earthly life; evolving conceptions of messiahship; the question of Christ's preexistence; the relationship of Logos Christologies and Spirit Christologies; views of atonement and reconciliation; and their connection to Christian mission. Trinity and Revelation (volume 2) weaves together an approach to the doctrines of God, the Trinity, and revelation by developing theologies of "Triune Revelation" (part 1) and the "Triune God" (part 2), addressing such theological questions as the relationship of revelation, history, and promise; the authority of scripture, tradition, and community; natural theology; and approaches to speaking properly of God, including whether to enumerate divine attributes, within a framework that maintains Gods relationality, communality, and hospitality as Trinity.Creation and Humanity (volume 3) explores the world as God's creation (part 1: "Creation") and the human person as having a special role within it (part 2: "Humanity"), developing perspectives on such crucial matters as the importance of taking the sciences seriously in formulating doctrines of both creation and theological anthropology; cosmological and evolutionaiy perspectives as resources for theology; divine providence; the question of suffering and flourishing of life in general and of human life in particular; the uniqueness of the human person as created in imago Dei; and the nature of human nature. Unlike far too many systematic theologies, Spirit and Salvation (volume 4) articulates a helpful and robust pneumatology (part 1: "Spirit") and connects it directly to soteriology (part 2: "Salvation"), taking up such topics along the way as the deep connections between pneumatology and the doctrine of the triune God and between pneumatology and the doctrine of creation; the discernment of spirits at various levels (personal, social, political, cosmic); the character of salvation as experienced as gift and transformation; the question of justification; and the role salvation plays in effecting two related groups of phenomena: "healing, restoration, and empowerment" and "reconciliation, liberation, and peacebuilding."It will be more than clear from reviewing just this partial list of the topics treated thus far in Karkkainen's systematics that space here will not permit a detailed look at the content of it. What can and ought to be accomplished is a closer look at his theological method. While Karkkainen advances more than a few important theological conversations by offering fresh perspectives on old problems (some of which are pointed out below), a case could be made that the most important contribution that his massive effort makes resides in his overall approach to the theological task. …

What is less clear is why it is the church that fills this role and not some other group who is invested in the same ideals. I suspect that the cultic character of Christian life provides some distinction on this matter, but what ritual contributes to liberal Christianity is not adequately spelled out by Hobson. What we learn is that ritual does not necessarily equate to sacramental, and that practices of worship and service are essential to the liberal Christian equation, yet Hobson seems of two minds when it comes to defining what the cultic and ritual aspects of the church are meant to do. At one level, ritual is to be avoided if it becomes the source of “institutional regulation”; at another level, Christianity at its base is cultic, and ritual the central application of this cultic life. It would seem that communal celebration is a critical aspect of Christian life as long as the “institution” doesn’t interfere. This notion supports Hobson’s concern with individual liberty all the while raising a serious question about the worth of the church. In Reinventing Liberal Christianity, Hobson has cleared some conceptual ground in order to promote a vision of liberal Christianity that seeks a closer walk between the life of the church and the liberal state. Critics of this arrangement might not find Hobson’s project convincing, yet he has written an engaging text that seeks to secure a liberal vision as a viable Christian tradition.

With this book, Katherine Sonderegger has taken on quite a challenge.1 By this, I do not mean her embarking upon writing a multivolume systematic theology, although that is certainly no small undertaking and is a project that Anglican theologians have not typically engaged.2 I do not mean her beginning with an exploration of God’s unity instead of God’s triunity, which has in recent decades been a much more common launch point for thinking through the nature and character of the divine. I do not even mean her starting with an examination of God in Godself, God in se. This is a theological practice of long standing and one that is still commonly followed by some textbooks that introduce systematic theology to contemporary students. As Sonderegger herself points out, however, our confidence in saying anything too specific about God as God is, rather than as God appears to be to our limited and finite minds, has come under an increasingly intense suspicion among theologians. She believes that this has hobbled, where it has not outright silenced via a misplaced apophasis, quite legitimate God-talk in an appropriately kataphatic register.

Christ and Reconciliation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 1. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. xiv + 453 pp. $40.00 (paper).Trinity and Revelation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 2. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2014. xii + 472 pp. $40.00 (paper).Creation and Humanity. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 3. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. xix + 554 pp. $40.00 (paper).Spirit and Salvation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 4. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2016. xvii + 498 pp. $40.00 (paper).These four books are the first four volumes of a new five-volume systematic theology by the prolific theologian Veli-Matti Karkkainen. Karkkainen has been a professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological ...

Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Account of Radical Orthodoxy and John Duns Scotus. By Daniel P. Horan, OFM. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2014. ix + 219 pp. $29.00 (paper).Theology, as an intellectual discipline, is highly narrative in character. It often proceeds on the basis of a genealogical, "history of ideas" approach to explicating a particular view-its origin and derivation, context and significance, implications and subsequent effects. When theology is done in this mode, getting the theological story right becomes even more imperative. Daniel Horan argues in his fascinating new book that when it comes to the story that the theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy tells about the medieval Franciscan philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus (12661308), the narrative interpretation afforded his work is simply wrong. It is, in fact, more than wrong. As Horan observes, it is obstinately wrong. And, as his work implies, it may be fatally wrong, as the...

that faith is not so much a cognitive response to the concrete experience of the Spirit which is identified as ‘the Spirit of the living Jesus’. Rather, reflection on the Spirit of God is simply an item of ‘further understanding’ (p. 285) which is also precipitated in the course of the emergence of faith. As such it claims a place in the (more verbal) post-Easter theological reflection that is ‘imposed on the events of Jesus’ life and death by his followers’ (p. 284). This means that the outcome is a non-cognitive understanding of faith. The first Christians are said to have come to the conviction that Jesus was in some mysterious way ‘in heaven’, but this was not an outcome of a post-mortem encounter with him. What gives content to the experience of faith is not exactly an encounter with the Raised Jesus himself, but ‘encounters with Godself mediated though visionary “seeings” of the gloriously transformed, heavenly Jesus Christ’ (p. 284). It is thus primarily the revelatory activity of God that is pointed to when the first Christians affirmed that ‘God raised Jesus from the dead’. Clearly, it is no accident that Gant’s book bears the title of Seeing Light rather than Seeing the Raised Christ. The crucial question is whether this understanding of things is an adequate account of the origin of resurrection faith amongst the first Christian believers. Some of us would frankly want to mount a case for a more cognitive understanding of things. Even so, this is a significantly interesting and challenging book. It would be a mistake to underestimate its importance.

In June 1845, the faculty of the General Theological Seminary issued its annual report to the institution's board of trustees. It included a roster of current and incoming students, as well as the customary list of those who had left the seminary over the course of the previous academic year. Among the entries on that list: On the 4th of February last, the Dean communicated to the Faculty that Henry McVickar, of the Senior class, had informed him of his having withdrawn from the Seminary...Joseph P. Taylor, of the Middle class, withdrew from the Seminary in April last, on account of ill health...On the 13th of January last, the Faculty resolved that Josh. Newton Wattson and John B. Donnelly, both of the Middle class, cease to be members of the Seminary, and that they be directed to withdraw from the Institution...Clarence Walworth, of the Middle class of last year, who had leave of absence, has not returned.1 To the casual reader, these would hardly seem remarkable: random and unrelated examples of the sort of attrition common at any institution of higher learning. But in fact, the five cases above were connected, and some, if not all, of the trustees knew it. The board wanted more detail about these departures, and on 26 June, they "Resolved, That the Faculty be requested to communicate to the Board any documents or information in their possession calculated to throw light on the cases of those students who have been subjected to the discipline of the Institution during the last year for reason of theological error."2 How could a voluntary withdrawal from the seminary, a withdrawal due to illness, two expulsions, and a failure to return to Chelsea Square after a leave of absence be connected? And how could they be linked to "theological error"? The answer has to do with the fear of Romanizing high churchmanship that the Oxford Movement provoked in some quarters, and the form that reaction against this perceived threat assumed at the seminary. New York City was an important center for Tractarianism in the United States: Dr. Samuel Seabury's influential, high church publication, The Churchman, had its offices there; the bishop of New York, Benjamin Onderdonk, was a vociferous and powerful proponent of it; and several faculty and many students of the General Theological Seminary, located on Ninth Avenue in New York, were also staunch advocates of Oxford Movement thinking.3 Seabury had close ties to the seminary and eventually became its professor of Biblical Learning. Bishop Onderdonk served as its professor of Ecclesiastical Polity and Law. By the mid1840s, the seminary's position as a prime exponent of Oxford Movement principles was firmly established. In fact, a publisher offered to issue the first American printing of the Tracts for the Times and donate all proceeds to the seminary. Seabury, himself ambivalent about the Tracts, thought the benefit to the institution would nevertheless be great. Even so, some of the seminary's trustees objected to the institution profiting by the sale of such material, so the project was taken up by a less generous publisher. Upon their issue in America, the Tracts raised awareness of Oxford Movement high churchmanship, but this also led to increased apprehensions-including questions about the orthodoxy of students and professors at the General Theological Seminary.4 When Arthur Carey, a seminarian, was ordained in July 1843 by Bishop Onderdonk over the objections of Carey's own bishop (who contended that Carey's Tractarian views invalidated him for service as an Episcopal priest) heretofore whispered rumors about Romanizing at the institution were made loudly vocal. Both publications and evangelical leaders within the church faulted the professors and their curriculum for Carey's Roman beliefs, particularly because Bishop Onderdonk, a fiery (if at times unmeasured) defender of Carey's orthodoxy, was a professor there. The trustees launched an investigation of the faculty, the findings of which were to be reported to the General Convention of 1844. …

This article argues that it is insufficient to ask merely whether the proposed Anglican Covenant is confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, or punitive, the themes currently to the fore in the covenant debate. Instead, the Communion must ask what quality of intra- and inter-ecclesial relationality is appropriate for Christian community and measure the covenant against it. An ecclesiology founded upon an anticipated eschatology, an approach familiar to Anglican theology and practice, provides a framework for this assessment. Five characteristics of eschatological ecclesiology and the quality of relationality it promotes are advanced. Aided by the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission's report Communion, Conflict and Hope and the work of Bruce Kaye, it is shown that the ecclesiological values of the Windsor Report and its resultant covenant are at odds with those that arise from an eschatological ecclesiology, providing an opening for the Communion to resolve its "covenant conundrum." Being a global family of autonomous churches, not a worldwide church itself, the Anglican Communion does not have a central figure or body that makes decisions or promulgates doctrine for all Anglican churches. It is not hierarchical authority that unifies the Anglican Communion, but "bonds of affection" that derive from a shared history and identity and that grow from inter-ecclesial fellowship and partnerships, common life and witness, and Communion-wide gatherings, formal and informal, on multiple levels. Recent events in the Communion stemming from fierce disagreements over the role of same-gender sexuality in determining eligibility for ordination have greatly strained those bonds of affection, raising issues of provincial autonomy and interdependence, the proper exercise of theological and ecclesia! authority, and appropriate levels of diversity within the Communion. Central to each of these issues is the question of relationship. The present crisis is fundamentally about how the relational bonds of affection uniting the churches of the Anglican Communion are to be understood and lived. Perceiving this, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, convened the Lambeth Commission on Communion in 2003 and charged it with reporting back to him on "the canonical understandings of communion, impaired and broken communion, and the ways in which provinces of the Anglican Communion may relate to one another in situations where the ecclesiastical authorities of one province feel unable to maintain the fullness of communion with another part of the Anglican Communion."1 The result was the Windsor Report, and one of its key practical recommendations was the development of an Anglican Communion covenant that would outline Anglican identity and "make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion."2 Championed by the Archbishop, a Communion- wide covenant process was launched,3 producing a series of draft covenants and extensive debate about them in provincial and Communion bodies, parish and diocesan meetings, journal articles and books, and the Anglican blogosphere. As a relational response to a relational crisis, it is not surprising that supporters and opponents of the version of the covenant now before the member churches of the Communion for adoption tend to debate the advisability of endorsing it in relational terms.4 Thematically, five broad questions with relational implications appear to dominate discourse around the covenant: the extent to which it is confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, and punitive. An honest appraisal reveals a degree of truth on both sides of each question: the covenant is and is not confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, and punitive. This ambivalence means that answering these extremely important questions cannot be the decisive test for whether to adopt the covenant. …

The papers in this forum offer an interdisciplinary assessment of the state of the field of Anglican Studies and perspectives on future trajectories. The first three papers, on liturgy, history, and world Anglicanism, offer an assessment of the respective state of these areas of Anglican Studies. The second set, on theology, sociology of religion, and biblical studies, stake out positions on how these disciplines inform the work of Anglican Studies. A concluding essay offers a synthesis of these papers, focusing on the themes of local contexts for Anglicanism, a further complexification of decolonizing processes in Anglicanism, and the critical role of conversation in Anglican Studies regarding disciplines, languages, and power dynamics.

Overview This course is the first in a two-course sequence that introduces students to the core topics and methods of Christian systematic theology. Although special emphasis is placed on the Anglican tradition, students encounter the central theologians and theological perspectives necessary for an adequate foundation in Christian theology. In this first course, the theological topics considered are: God, creation, Trinity, christology, theological anthropology, sin and salvation, grace, and pneumatology. The course is taught as a mixture of lecture and seminar, with the instructor presenting material at the start of each session that is then discussed by the class. Active participation in class discussion, writing assignments consisting of responses to class readings, and three short synthesis papers, also based on class readings, are the central requirements.

This course examines the work of several Anglican-identified theologians situated in the North Atlantic, treating a variety of themes and topics from their respective vantage points in their respective locales. This allows us to encounter various ways in which Anglican theologies are engaged theologies, theologies that challenge us to rethink how we imagine and interact with both church and world, and that provoke deep transformations in the lived life of faith. This is a seminar course focused on close reading and discussion of texts by

This course is the second in a two-course sequence that introduces students to the core topics and methods of Christian systematic theology. Although special emphasis is placed on the Anglican tradition, students encounter the central theologians and theological perspectives necessary for an adequate foundation in Christian theology. For non-Anglican students, Anglican-specific readings may be replaced with appropriate material from the student's own tradition, at the discretion of the instructor. In this final course, the theological topics considered are: church, sacraments, eschatology, Christianity's relationship to other religions, hermeneutics, and theological method. The course is taught as a mixture of lecture and seminar, with the instructor presenting material at the start of each session that is then discussed by the class. Active participation in class discussion, writing assignments consisting of responses to class readings, and three short synthesis papers, also based on class readings, are the central requirements.