By Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali
www.virtueonline.org
October 10, 2010
When we express our commitments in terms of the human person, in terms of human relationships — in all of these ways — we need an ecclesial way of being that supports and encourages and promotes this way of being a church in mission.
We are people of revelation. We do not believe our faith is simply about the human faculty of religiosity.
There are many Anglicans in England who believe that the Church of England is an expression of English religiosity. So the next step then is to believe that whatever the English people think — in terms of values — the Church endorses them. This has been said to me explicitly by members of Parliament: “You should be teaching the values of the English people.” And I have said: “No, I am teaching the values of the Gospel.”
But this is a moot point, and it has to be brought out into the open. When we say we are people of the revelation we mean that this is not just about human religiosity, although we want to connect and engage you. The Gospel both challenges and affirms what people aspire to.
This “revelation” is inscribed on human hearts and minds. In spite of the Fall and human rebellion and sinfulness it is still discerning. The testimony of conscience, “to accuse or excuse” as St. Paul says, still is there. It is inscribed in the nature of the universe.
The very fine reply that (Oxford) Professor John Lennox has given to Stephen Hawking recently, where he (Lennox) has said that Hawking is “mistaking the descriptive nature of the laws of the universe for the cause of it”.
Well, it’s an easy mistake to make. But Christians should not make it. They should not make it in their relationship to the world.
There are implications, of course, when we say that the Divine Law is somehow inscribed in the human heart and the human mind. And there are implications to saying there is a revelation in creation and the nature of the universe, itself.
But of course, we are people of the revelation, in a sense that transcends such notions of revelation. Even if you think there might be some kind of primeval special revelation left in the hearts and minds of men and women. When I relate to other faiths I sometimes think, not just about general revelation, but also about primeval revelation. Destiny — some kind of primeval revelation of God among us. He has not left Himself without witness anywhere, as it says in the Acts of the Apostles.
But of course, all this, it is possible to say only, because we know how God has revealed Himself in the history of a people. First of all, the miracle of Israel. I often think of Israel. When you think of Israel — dispersed nomadic tribes wandering around the Middle East … despised and oppressed by their neighbors. The word Jew was a word that was almost an insult, despite the fact that so many empires have tried to rub out the people of Israel — the Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and then the Nazis.
George Steiner says that the fact that Israel has survived is itself a miracle. It’s the miracle of Israel. But even more it is the miracle of Jesus.
In Jesus Christ we find that God has revealed, not only Himself and His Love to us, but His purpose for us, and our destiny in a way that is definitive.
That doesn’t mean that God does not reveal Himself now to us in prayer, or through a friend, through the Bible, or in preaching. Of course He does.
But it does mean, as someone who used to be called Cardinal Ratzinger … I’m not quite sure what happened to him … (laughter).
But in a very fine paper in which he related what he called “special revelation” to “definitive revelation”, he said: “If special revelation is the word of prophecy given to you, or a vision you might have, or an apparition — in Roman Catholic terms, of course — if that does not agree with the revelation in Jesus Christ then it is not authentic.”
That’s the point about being definitive. If you want to know if any spiritual experience, any vision, any religious thought is actually according to God’s purpose, then you have to test it against the revelation in Jesus Christ. I suspect this is one of the reasons you’re here at all and not somewhere else.
So we are people of revelation. Unashamedly so. Having said that, we also want to say that we are people who want to relate this revelation to the world around us precisely because of what revelation tells us regarding the nature of us all — of the human person … of human society.
When we relate to the revelation around us we find resonances in culture, in people to what God has revealed in Jesus Christ. Resistances, yes, but also resonances. We have to be very careful in differentiating between what is an authentic resonance — an echo of the Revelation, a vestige of God’s purpose, if you like — and what is a resistance.
We must emphasis this relational aspect of revelation if we are not to get closed up in some kind of fiats. Where we authenticate things for ourselves is what we already believe to be true. There has to be an openness of this definitive revelation to what is around us.
And then thirdly, we are people of the renewal. This is not just about going back to some kind of dead letter. Any structure we create must be to release movements of the Spirit. In fact the Church would grow as a result of these movements.
When I was at GAFCON, I don’t know what other brothers and sisters think, I felt that GAFCON was actually a movement. It had come from nowhere. It was a most remarkable experience of spiritual fellowship that I’ve had for a long time. I didn’t go there expecting it to be. But I certainly found it.
The future I think for things like the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is not to get too much into structure and organization and institutionalization, but to be aware of how God has constantly renewed the Church through movements.
The same Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict (XVI) said his Regensburg address — it’s a claim I dispute — he said something about how Christian faith had providentially developed and been articulated in its contact with what he called “purifying Hellenism”.
“Except,” he said, “for some significant developments in the East…” and then he went on with his lecture, and I thought: “What significant developments in the East is he talking about?”
Of course the one that sticks out in mind is monasticism. (St.) Athanasius was an example of the sophisticated Hellenized bishop. He knew his Greek and worked in it and was cosmopolitan in every sense of the term. But his close friend (St.) Anthony, the founder of monasticism, knew no Greek, was theologically unschooled, and yet he gave the world this gift of monasticism, which has been so important in so many ages for the mission of the Church.
It’s the 18th Century with the Evangelical Revival in the Church of England. The movements the Clapham Sect, the Campaign for the Abolition of the Slave Trade; the campaign to improve the working conditions of men, women and children in England; and of course the formation of the Church Missionary Society. These were movements, not structures. But they were mighty movements for God. And certainly, as far as Britain is concerned, they changed Britain in a way that was absolutely fundamental.
Many of the things we take for granted today are the result of the Evangelical Revival. Take for one example, universal education.
So, if we say, that we are people of revelation; if we say that we relate that revelation to God’s world around us; and if we say that we are people of the renewal, that means that we are saying that the Great Tradition in which we stand, in which the Scriptures are the norm, they provide the motive for us in our mission. We are saying that we need structures in the Church that are light enough and Biblical enough to enable the mission of the Church — nothing more and nothing less.
We are saying that as People of the Bible, we are not here simply to come together in holy huggies — comforting as that is, and it is for me sometimes — it’s not just about that, but it is to be driven out into the world for the sake of the Gospel. It may well be in God’s Providence — let us pray that it is — that these very disturbing things that have happened all around us and indeed to us, that this is God’s way of releasing us for mission as He has done so often in the past.
The Arian heresy; the deadness of the Church of England in its latitudinarian sort of period in the 18th Century, how that brought about the Evangelical Revival; the way in which the Missionary movement has completely changed the nature of the global church.
I was at a Pentecostal event — a worldwide Pentecostal event — with old time Pentecostals and new kind of Pentecostals and all that. It was very interesting to see how the people from the old time Pentecostals Welsh churches — you know where it began, certainly in Britain — were relating to the new Pentecostal churches in Africa. They just would not have said it in 1908, or whatever it was, what they were doing in their little Welsh towns would result in this incredible explosion in Africa.
We know this in our own (Anglican) Communion. I was in Nigeria in July, preaching at an ordination that lasted for four hours, and I was not bored for single minute, well people might have been bored during the sermon (laughter), but everything else was just wonderful worship of God. Teaching … worship … celebration … giving and receiving …
Who could have said even 50 years ago that the Church in Nigeria would have so much to teach the worldwide church? But that is because of this Renewal in Mission that made it possible.
Missionaries took their coffins with them to West Africa when they went. We may criticize the missionaries and some think rightly so. But what allowed them to do that kind of incarnational ministry?
— This address was delivered at the Anglican District of Virginia’s recent Synod Council 2010. VOL is grateful to Mary Ann Mueller for transcribing the tape of Bishop Nazir Ali’s speech.
You can hear Bishop Nazir-Ali here: http://www.anglicandistrictofvirginia.org/uploads/michaelnaziralikeynote.mp3
Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans 