From the Editor Scripture, Conversation and Anglican Identity

This editorial piece considers the implications of Scriptural Reasoning, a method of inter-religious exchange that is the subject of the present number of the journal, for contemporary Anglicanism. It suggests that the character of Scriptural Reasoning as a conversation held across and despite religious difference offers a challenge to contemporary Anglicans to maintain their own conversation about Scripture. Whoever then appears to understand the divine Scriptures or any part of them in such a way that by their understanding does not build the twin love of God and of our neighbour, does not yet understand. Anglicanism has rarely been well served by introspective quests for its own identity. The great movements and moments in Anglican history, contested as they may be – the Reformation, the Oxford Movement – have been to do with the character of the Church catholic, of Christian faith, of the sacraments, of Scripture – not of Anglicanism. Current quests for Anglican renewal, unity and identity often risk missing this fact, and the basic insight it offers into the character and mission of Anglicanism. Anglicanism can only be defined, let alone renewed, by focusing on larger questions of Gospel, Church and world rather than on those of Anglican polity and identity. Anglicans tend not merely to respect but to love the Bible. If at the present time it is evident that they differ about its meaning in certain 1. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 1.36.40. Journal of Anglican Studies Vol. 11(2) 139–146 [doi:10.1017/S1740355313000314] r The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2013 https://doi.org7/S1740355313000314 D ow nladed fom hts://w w w am bridorg/core . IP adress: 54.1.40.80 , on 10 ep 2017 at 0012:53 , suject to he am bidge Core term s of use, avilable at hts://w w w am bridgeg/core/term s . cases, this is not a new or unusual phenomenon; it is the willingness on the part of some to depart from conversation, even and especially about Scripture, that most distinguishes the present Anglican crisis. The essays that form the bulk of this edition of the Journal of Anglican Studies emerge from the remarkable project known as Scriptural Reasoning. David Ford’s piece more than suffices as an introduction to and account of the project; but Scriptural Reasoning embodies and offers more to the Anglican Communion and to those interested in the mission of the Journal even than these important essays make explicit. What is most striking about Scriptural Reasoning to this Anglican outsider is that it manages to draw into fruitful conversation a set of participants whose commonality relative to faith is actually far less than that of the diversity of contemporary Anglicanism. There are of course other commonalities, of culture and of academic discourse, among those in conversation. Yet the abiding implication of these creative exchanges is a sort of a fortiori scandal – if these can not only speak but learn and celebrate together, how much more those who do share a particular history and profess a common faith? Scriptural Reasoning, Anglicanism and Difference Although it has roots in a form of textual reasoning developed by Jewish scholars, there is something unmistakably and characteristically Anglican about the Scriptural Reasoning project, not despite but arguably because its scope is far wider than Anglicanism. It exemplifies the need for an Anglicanism that pursues its integrity and identity in terms that look outward rather than inward. Scriptural Reasoning is not inter-faith dialogue in the usual sense. While there are genuine and profound conversations involved between adherents of different faiths, these assume or allow the persistence within each tradition or interpreter’s world not only of faith itself as given, but particularly of the relation between text and reader specific to each world. This persistence nevertheless grants the possibility of new relations between the ‘given’ and the ‘found’, as Ben Quash observes with reference to Peter Och’s work. There is an unresolved tension within Scriptural Reasoning about where commonality itself lies. In its earlier forms the commonality of Abrahamic tradition was an assumption. Despite Dan Hardy’s suggestion that the Abrahamic traditions at least have in common the 2. ‘Abrahamic Scriptural Reading from an Anglican Perspective’, this issue, 199–216. 140 Journal of Anglican Studies https://doi.org7/S1740355313000314 D ow nladed fom hts://w w w am bridorg/core . IP adress: 54.1.40.80 , on 10 ep 2017 at 0012:53 , suject to he am bidge Core term s of use, avilable at hts://w w w am bridgeg/core/term s . notion of Scripture as ‘public form of primary discourse of God’, even such attempts at a general theory of how Scripture functions are held to lightly. Quash’s observation that the relevance and authority of commentary traditions varies, and can be a source of tension in practice, exemplifies how these textual encounters do not really assume even a common morphology regarding readers and texts, let alone a shared theology. Relative to Abrahamic tradition, participants could share if not quite a theological epistemology then at least a sense of history. Yet the history of Scriptural Reasoning reflects a tension between this particular common ground and more general notions of reading ‘Scriptures’ with ‘other religions’, as reflected in the Generous Love interfaith document, and in Chinese developments. This does not mean that theology is unimportant to the conversation, or that the conversation is not theologized; Francis Clooney’s contribution here, while formally from outside the Scriptural Reasoning project itself, helpfully instantiates how a more specific understanding grounded in one tradition – in his case ‘comparative theology’, understood as a characteristically Roman Catholic theory and practice – can engage with other faith positions, not despite but because of its own particular theological understanding of what is taking place. Elements of a complementary Anglican reflection are found in Ben Quash’s account here which, while affirming that a theoretical common ground is not a necessity for the conversation constituted by Scriptural Reasoning, nevertheless seeks to articulate a trinitarian post-liberal understanding of that conversation. Scriptural Reasoning thus exemplifies the possibility of a conversation that not only allows for difference but can celebrate it; yet it does not require the effacement of the specifics of faith or hermeneutics in each case. Anglicanism in general can learn from this; the manifest and increasing diversity within the Communion need 3. Daniel Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, in David F. Ford and C.C. Pecknold (eds.), The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006),