Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-14T10:07:51.575Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agreeing on a Common Accountability: What Can the Anglican Communion Learn from Ernst Troeltsch?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Tom Frame
Tom Frame
Affiliation:
tframe@ozemail.com.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the light of recent theological controversies, the Anglican Communion urgently needs what Archbishop Rowan Williams has described as an ‘agreement over a common accountability’. Such an agreement must differentiate the things that define the essence of the Anglican Church from those that merely imparta distinctive cultural flavour. It will be built on a nuanced theological debate involving questions of self-definition that recognize the social, economic, political and cultural contexts enveloping the Communion's various national churches. In the same way that social structures and economic conditions bear directly upon the shape of religious organizations, it will become apparent that political pressures and cultural mores influence doctrinal commitments. The church-sect-mystic group typology developed by Ernst Troeltsch has the potential to help the Anglican Communion understand the origins of its theological diversity as part of a larger project that seeks to maintain corporate identity and to preserve organizational unity. His attempts to define the ‘essence of Christianity’ in the context of what might otherwise seem random, chaotic and possibly irreconcilable responses to Christ's teaching offers some interpretative insights that will assist Anglicans achieve a consensus on which ‘agreement over a common accountability’ might be based.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 2004 , pp. 106 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) and The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Williams, Rowan, ‘The Structures of Unity’, New Directions, 09 2003, pp. 4–7 (5).Google Scholar

2. Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (trans. Wyon, Olive; London: Allen & Unwin, 1931 [1911, in German]).Google Scholar

3. Troeltsch, Ernst, ‘What Does “Essence of Christianity” Mean?’ in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion (trans. and ed. Morgan, Robert and Pye, Michael; London: Duckworth, 1977 [1903]), pp. 124–80.Google Scholar

4. Troeltsch, Ernst, ‘The Social Philosophy of Christianity’, in Religion in History: Selected Essays (trans. Adams, James Luther; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991 [1922]), ch. 14, p. 221.Google Scholar

5. Troeltsch, , ‘The Social Philosophy of Christianity’, p. 225.Google Scholar

6. Stephen Sykes has commented on the many significant changes that Troeltsch made to this essay before its re-publication with the same title in the second volume of his Collected Works in 1913Google Scholar. Troeltsch neither highlighted nor explained the changes which had their origins in the ‘essence of Christianity’ debate which was current at the time. Sykes discusses the shift in the debate from ‘essence’ to ‘identity’ in contemporary thought in his ‘The Essence of Christianity’, Religious Studies, 7 (1971), pp. 291–305Google Scholar and the changes to Troeltsch's second version of 1913 in ‘Ernst Troeltsch and Christianity's Essence’, in Clayton, John (ed.), Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), ch. 5Google Scholar. A slightly expanded version of the same article appears as ‘Troeltsch and the Relevance of Epistemology’ in Sykes, Stephen, The Identity of Christianity (London: SPCK, 1984).Google Scholar

7. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 137.Google Scholar

8. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 138.Google Scholar

9. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 140.Google Scholar

10. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 140.Google Scholar

11. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 140.Google Scholar

12. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 141.Google Scholar

13. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 143Google Scholar. Sykes is highly critical of Troeltsch at this point. Noting that Troeltsch was 38 years old when he produced this essay, Sykes remarks that ‘we look in vain for any self-effacing disclaimers about [Troeltsch's] competence to fulfil the task’. He is also surprised that Troeltsch seems oblivious to ‘the enormity of the claim he is making on his own and his like-minded contemporaries’ behalf’. See Sykes, in Clayton, , Emst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology, p. 150.Google Scholar

14. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 144.Google Scholar

15. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 145.Google Scholar

16. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 148.Google Scholar

17. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

18. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 151.Google Scholar

19. Sykes is rightly sceptical about Troeltsch's claim that ‘religious subjectivity can find its inner rapport confirmed by conscientious historical research’, Clayton, , Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology, p. 161Google Scholar. Troeltsch's argument here seems to rely heavily on special pleading for an apparently inviolate historiography.

20. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 152.Google Scholar

21. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 153.Google Scholar

22. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 154.Google Scholar

23. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 156.Google Scholar

24. Kaye, Bruce, Web of Meaning: The Role of Origins in Christian Faith (Sydney: Aquila Press, 2000), pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

25. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 162.Google Scholar

26. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 163.Google Scholar

27. Troeltsch, , ‘Essence of Christianity’, p. 163.Google Scholar

28. Troeltsch, , ‘Logos and Mythos in Theology and Philosophy of Religion’, originally completed in 1913Google Scholar, republished as ch. 3 in Adams, , Religion in History: Selected Essays, p. 52.Google Scholar

29. Troeltsch, , Absoluteness of Christianity, pp. 85.Google Scholar

30. Troeltsch did not believe that syncretism must invariably be a bad thing for the Christian theology. Some generally positive outcomes are explored by Pye, Michael in ‘Syncretism and Ambiguity’, Numen, XXVII (1971), pp. 83–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar while Donne, J.S. addresses the potential for mutual exchange and benefit in The Way of All the Earth (London: Sheldon, 1974).Google Scholar

31. In his introduction to Troeltsch, 's Absoluteness of ChristianityGoogle Scholar, Adams, James Luther notes that the German theologian was accused of presenting a ‘Christless Christianity’Google Scholar, such was his liberal reduction of Jesus' teaching and ministry. Sykes is also critical of Troeltsch's depiction of the centrality of Jesus for the Christian community depending not on revealed Christology nor on doctrine but on the Church's socio-psychological needs. See Sykes, , The Identity of Christianity, p. 173.Google Scholar

32. The most detailed assessment of Troeltsch's Christology and his conclusion that Christ was not the ‘absolute’ revelation of God is offered by Coakley, Sarah, Christ without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar. Her explanation of Troeltsch's relativism is particularly helpful in understanding some of the internal contradictions and conceptual difficulties Troeltsch created for himself. Her analysis is similar to the central argument of this paper. Troeltsch also struggled in his description of Christianity's relation with what he termed the ‘other religions’. However, his efforts in that area do not contain any major departures from those parts of his thinking outlined here. See Pye, Michael, ‘Ernst Troeltsch and the End of the Problem about “Other Religions”’, ch. 6 in Clayton (ed.), Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology.Google Scholar

33. Troeltsch noted ‘two sociological forms of the sect-type, the religious order and the voluntary association’ in Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, p. 723.Google Scholar

34. Troeltsch, , Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, p. 242.Google Scholar

35. Hill, Michael, The Religious Order: A Study of Virtuoso Religion and its Legitimation (London: Heinemann, 1973), pp. 33, 49.Google Scholar

36. See Wright, J. Robert (ed.), Quadrilateral at One Hundred Essays on the Centenary of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral 1886 (Oxford: Mowbray, 1988)Google Scholar for a more recent series of interpretative essays.

37. Maurice, F.D. develops a similar line of thought in The Kingdom of Christ, two volumes originally published in 1837 (London: J.M. Dent, 1928)Google Scholar. There is no evidence that Troeltsch was aware of Maurice's thinking nor that he borrowed from it. However, the following extract from the second volume reveals a clear parallel: ‘Our consciences, I believe, have told us from time to time that there is something in each [competing theological system] which we ought not to reject. Let us not reject it. But we may find, that there is a divine harmony, of which the living principle in each of these systems forms one note of which the systems themselves are a disturbance and a violation [p. 308] … these systems, Protestant, Romish and English, seem to me each to bear witness of the existence of a Divine Order [p. 314] … Men have been asked to receive these institutions merely as such, and then to hope for spiritual life through them. Little attempt has been made to prove to them that the institutions are themselves living portions of the divine kingdom’ (p. 320).

38. Pye, Michael, ‘Troeltsch and the Science of Religion’Google Scholar, in Morgan, and Pye, (eds.), Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, pp. 234–52 (251).Google Scholar

39. I am indebted to Dr Scott Cowdell for this neat description of the polarities to be avoided in preserving Anglican diversity. See God's Next Big Thing: Discovering the Future Church (Melbourne: John Garrett Publishing, 2004), p. 1.Google Scholar