Free Church Self Righteousness over Women Bishops Vote?

New Testament Window (Photo credit: Henry McLin)

Reading some of the comments and articles by those in the so-called free churches, new church networks and non-denominational churches, I must confess to feeling somewhat uneasy at the tone some have taken on last week's vote in the Church of England Synod over women bishops.

Phil Moore, leader at Queen's Road Church Wimbledon, is fairly typical of this strand of comment when he writes that

"the debate is revolving around entirely the wrong question.

The big question is not whether there should be women bishops. It is whether there should be bishops at all."

Good in parts, his article is something of a curate's egg (another ecclesiastical office which I'm fairly sure Phil would take exception to).

On the one hand, and against the idea that the monarch is the "head on earth" of the Church of England, how can anyone who takes the New Testament seriously fail to agree with his statement that  

"the New Testament is very clear that Jesus is the Head of the Church and that anybody else who tries to usurp his title had better watch out"?

On the other hand, Phil insists that,

  

"The New Testament tells us that [Christ] has chosen for his Church to be
led by teams of elders (not by bishops, regardless of whether they are
male or female)."

Can anyone fail to miss the irony of inserting a word which is not found in the New Testament ("team") at the expense of one which is ("episkopos", translated as overseer or bishop)? 

I appreciate that many of my free-church brethren will respond that the term episkopos denotes something very different in the pastoral epistles from its later and more developed meaning of a senior leader of clergy and churches in a defined geographical area. I would agree with them. Ignatius may have been motivated by noble ideals, but his episcopalian solution was probably misguided, in my opinion.

This, however, is an issue of definitions rather than terminology in an absolute sense. It is quite legitimate to argue (from 1 Timothy for instance) that the churches should indeed be lead by bishops, as long as we define the role in terms of "eldering" and overseeing and strip it of its clergy-laity connotations.  

The tone of some of the comments from my part of the church is also hard to hear when my type of church is quite happy to use terms never found in Scripture to describe some of its leaders: "lead elder" and "senior pastor" are two that come immediately to mind. Our hesitation to use the biblical word "deacon" might also be worth pondering.

An additional concern I have is with the implication that the Synod debate is "not an issue for us" since we are not Anglicans. Krish Kandiah of the Evangelical Alliance correctly (in my view) addresses the fact that this concerns the whole church, since the name of Christ is publicly invoked in the discussion and its outcomes. Matthew Hosier, although no fan of the episcopalian system, gives a somewhat broader, missional view of the matter from a non-conformist perspective.

I am sure that I am not alone as a member of one of the newer strands of the church in affirming the unity, catholicity and universality of the church. It's just that this message has not been sounded very clearly by some in my neck of the woods in the last week or so. 

Inspired by Ignatius

I'm in the process of discovering Ignatius of Antioch, and what a wonderful discovery he has been.

The letters from the early-second century bishop of Antioch (not to be confused with the C16 founder of the Jesuits with the same first name) are a treasure of inspiration and insight.

The elderly bishop-martyr certainly had a way with words - think Spurgeon with a toga. The fact that his letters were largely penned on the road in AD 107 during his final journey as a prisoner to be executed in Rome, adds a powerful quality to both his content and style.

A few highlights so far, all taken from the letter of Ignatius to the Ephesians:

"It is true that I am a prisoner for the Name's sake, but I am by no means perfect in Jesus Christ as yet; I am only a beginner in discipleship."

Ignatius is often cited as giving evidence of a proto-episcopalianism in his writings, and thus providing a theological rationale for the gradual emergence of the monarchical bishops who ruled the churches by the fourth century.

In fact, there is a strong case to be made that the emphasis Ignatius places on the role of the bishops in the churches is not because he is fixated on an episcopalian model as such. Rather, his focus is doctrinal. In the absence of a closed canon of Scripture, much less any universally agreed creeds or confessions by the church, the body of gospel truth handed down by Christ and the twelve was (dynamically and intellectually) resident in the lives and teachings of the overseers and shepherds of the church, some of whom had been appointed by the original apostles and prophets, or by their delegates, during the preceding half century.

His comments on the role of the bishops should, in my view be read, in this context.

"Your justly respected clergy, who are a credit to God, are attuned to their bishop like the strings of a harp, and the result is a hymn of praise to Jesus Christ from minds that are in unison and affections that are in harmony. Pray, then, come and join this choir, every one of you; let there be a whole symphony of minds in concert; take the tone all together from God, and sing aloud to the Father with one voice through Jesus Christ, so that he may hear you and know by your good works that you are indeed members of his Son's body."

Commending the church in Ephesus for its recent refusal to entertain false teachers who had visited them, Ignatius notes:

"You stopped your ears against the seed they were sowing. Deaf as stones you were: yes, stones trimmed ready for God to build with, hoisted up by the derrick of Jesus Christ (the Cross) with the Holy Spirit for a cable; your faith being the winch that draws you to God, up the ramp of love."

Perhaps the most intense (and deservedly famous) quote of Ignatius from these letters is a comment on his impending martyrdom, in which the bishop exalts:

"I am God's wheat, ground fine by the lion's teeth to become purest bread for Christ."

It's heady stuff.

I'm discovering Ignatius through reading the Penguin edition of Early Christian Writings, translated by Maxwell Staniforth.