“The infinite truth that is in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a matter which can be exhausted by one set of formulae or one set of practices.” It is precisely for this reason that I am an ardent Anglican, even with hope remaining for the Episcopal Church to repent and be renewed, and cannot imagine going to magisterial Rome.

What did he say?

In short and in conclusion, belief in the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ – for all the assaults made upon it in the modern age – remains for the Christian a way of speaking about hope for the entire human family.

So why does RW need twenty one paragraphs of listening to others to get to this point? Would he replace Billy Grahm with Carl Rodgers? “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Rom. 1:16

While I do believe that it is important to leave, in some sense, the salvation of souls outside the Christian community up to God, I think the ABC’s statements go so far as to remove the need to spread the gospel.

We are very rightly suspicious of proselytism[...]

I agree with the rest of the sentence (the part I didn’t quote), but I think that Jesus is very clear that we are to go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It seems like the Archbishop is saying that people of other faiths will in some sense come to God through Christ without knowing it and we don’t have a duty to preach the Gospel. We just need to supplement their understanding of God when we can.

What do you guys think. Am I reading it wrong?

#4. John C.B.
I believe you are correct and don’t see a great deal of difference between this and TEC PB KJS.

#4: I don’t know how you can separate the first part of the sentence (which you quoted) and the 2nd part.  I read it that there is a particular form of proselytism of which he is suspicious.  It’s the type of “evangelism” that involves members of a local church coming to my door not believing I could be saved if I had been baptized as a child.  The type of “evangelism” that Brennan Manning might call “conversion by concussion” - beat somebody into becoming a Christian.

#1, saying that the infinite truth of the Holy Trinity cannot be exhausted by humans is something in which “magisterial Rome” would surely concur.

The finality of Christ in a pluralist world

As is my custom, I have taken Rowan’s latest statement, changed all the nouns and adjectives to their cognate forms, shuffled the words, reassembled them in random order, and tried to see if they make any more or less sense than what he said.  To wit:

The finality of Christ in a pluralist world.
The pluralism of Christ in a worldly finality.
The pluralism of finality in a worldly Christ.
The finality of the world in a Christian plurality. (I like that one best)
The Christianity of the world in a pluralist finality. (that’s pretty good too)

Anyway, you get the idea.  Rowan Williams is just a Random Word Generator, and the gullible think he has something profound to say.

What the New Testament does not say is, ‘unless you hold the following propositions to be true there is no life for you’. What it does say is, ‘without a vital relationship with Jesus Christ who is the word of God made flesh, you will not become what you were made to be. You will not live into the fullness of your human destiny.’ And it’s this claim—not so much about unique truth in a form of words but about unique relationship with Jesus—which I want to explore a little with you.

In general I rather like this article and agree with it - the ABC affirms all the orthodox claims about Christ’s finality - but I’m intrigued by the rather strong contrast he draws above and and elsewhere in the piece between speech (described as “propositions” or “forms of words”) and relationships. In itself, as stated, I think it’s probably incoherent (and that he would nuance it given more time and space) - not least because he follows his denial of the need for truthful words with, well, truthful words. That is, his argument that at the heart things lies a unique relationship with Christ is itself a proposition that he clearly thinks is true. (And of course the NT is rather clear that it is all too easy to speak false words about Christ - hence the task surely isn’t to deny the necessity for truthful words - but to learn to speak carefully, as Nicholas Lash says somewhere).

#9 driver8—As I read him, what the Archbishop is saying in the passage you quote is that salvation is not accomplished simply by believing a set of facts about Jesus.

Someone who was not addressing a crowd of postmodernists might talk about this by distinguishing between belief and faith.  Faith connotes a great deal more than simply accepting some propositions as true.

Of course salvation isn’t accomplished by us at all, is it? Neverthless we are reasoning animals, and Christ, the Word, has condescended in his love to speak our words - so that truthful speech as both Our Lord and James, the Lord’s Brother say is hardly optional for those being drawn more deeply into the life of God.

The Scriptural contrast is not between propositional speech and relationships but between wise and unwise speech, speech which is fitting and speech which is double minded or foolish. So the problematic is not around the epistemology/knowledge but around words that gesture towards what is real against words that cover over reality.

#8. driver8,

In itself, as stated, I think it’s probably incoherent (and that he would nuance it given more time and space) - not least because he follows his denial of the need for truthful words with, well, truthful words.

Maybe you wouldn’t mind clarifying this statement yourself. Also, ask yourself this question. “In a random sample of 100 individuals, how many would understand this presentation”? Here’s my guess. It would be less than the individuals who bothered to read and respond on this thread.

I’m happy to try to clarify, if I can - is there a particular question that you would like me to address?

Yes, I think that’s right - it’s ruminative and philosophical, it’s abstract and allusive - so that it rightly justifies it’s description as a “lecture”. I suspect it’s tailored to the audience he thought may attend a lecture entitled, “The finality of Christ in a pluralist world” rather than a random sample of the population. I’ve heard him preach (very well) at an “ordinary” parish and lecture at a university - and he does try to tailor his remarks to his audience.

lec·ture
–noun
1.
a speech read or delivered before an audience or class, esp. for instruction or to set forth some subject.

ser·mon
–noun
1.
a discourse for the purpose of religious instruction or exhortation, esp. one based on a text of Scripture and delivered by a member of the clergy as part of a religious service.

The Archbishop knows the difference.

For ++Rowen the ultimate expression of intellect is the skill he has refined to distill his precious and ineffable thoughts into a mass of seemingly randomly arranged words whose meaning is comprehensible to none. And he does it so very, very well and with exceeding consistency.

John (#4), yes, you’re reading it wrong.  Here’s the “but” that you didn’t quote: 

But God save us also from the nervousness about our own conviction which doesn’t allow us to say that we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters.

  I think he’s saying that we do have a duty to preach the gospel, but that to do this we need not be combative or anxious, as if the truth of the gospel depends on us.  Overall +Rowan offers here an excellent account of Christian orthodoxy that questions both liberal suspicion of Christ’s uniqueness and conservative suspicion of interfaith conversation.

I wish some of the commenters on this thread would not use their obvious distaste for Rowan Williams as an excuse to write him off as incomprehensible.  Granted, this is a lecture, and such a lecture is even more difficult to receive when read online than it would be in person.  Still, I don’t see how the text could avoid speaking to anyone who has both a basic acquaintance with theological vocabulary and a basic sense of liberal/secular objections to Christian orthodoxy.  I’m not saying that every sentence is gold, but generally this is a beautiful exposition of the universality (aka catholicity) of Jesus, and the non-anxious stance of Christians towards the world.  My summary for those of you who don’t feel like reading the whole thing:  we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, having come to this faith through the unique and perfect revelation of Jesus; yet having this “finality” gives us the confidence to learn from others, as well as to proclaim God in Christ through persuasion rather than coercion.

16,

The problem is that even though it is a lecture, and we’re reading it rather than hearing it, it isn’t that dense at all.  I just skimmed the damned thing and it made perfect, logical and reasonable sense to me.  I wouldn’t want to write an essay question on it at this point, but I got the larger point he was making. His On Christian Theology is dense, to be sure.  But this isn’t.

It’s amazing to me that people who spent 3 years in seminary, function as ‘community theologians’ in their parishes, reject Williams outright as a theologian simply because the hermeneutic is both one of suspicion and, frankly, anti-intellectualism.  In this case, he’s affirming orthodoxy, but he’s attacked because he’s not affirming it LOUDLY ENOUGH.  Wha?  The mind boggles.  Ecclesiastical McCarthyism strikes again.

Isaac:  Exactly.  Amen.

FWIW I thought it wasn’t terribly hard to understand, though I can see that others disagree. He states what is to be discussed (the “uniqueness” of Christ), then objections to such a view and then why the objections are not persuasive.

Thank you, Isaac.