Biblical Theological Reflection and the Rule of Faith: Threshold Considerations
In order both to set some limits and for clarity's sake-themes to which I shall return-I understand my assignment to be: theological reflection on covenant and the appropriateness of using this term for work presently before us in the Anglican Communion. By 'theological reflection' I mean, giving a comprehensive account of Scripture with concern for its total witness. I take this to be the concern of one of the Articles, with a long prior history, that scripture be read in such a way that its portions be not repugnant, one with another. The same concern also animates what in our present period is called 'canonical reading.'
It is my conviction that this hermeneutical caution is traceable to the rule (kanon) of faith (regula fidei) in the early church, indeed in the period of the formation and consolidation of New Testament writings, and especially relevant in that instance. The rule of faith is an appeal to the total witness of scripture, and especially the Old Testament, as constituting the speech and work of the selfsame and Living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in Israel and in the Apostolic witness to Jesus Christ, now coming to form in the canonical writings of the New Testament, soon to be ranged alongside the Scriptures of Israel. As Tertullian aptly saw in his shrewd analysis of heresy, the rule of faith has its alternative in the rule of skill, or cleverness, in handling the same scriptures in a way which makes their parts compete, excludes texts, or gives false proportion to their total voice. If this be the case, the remedy will not be the construction of 'confessions' but a need for being very clear about the nature of heresy and its providential role, and how heresy deforms and mishears the scriptures because lacking the rule of faith. When the rule of faith-as a basic statement of the relation between the work of God in creation and in Israel, with the work of God in Jesus Christ and the Church-is not animating the handling of scripture, heresy emerges to warn the church of the seriousness of its charge to guard the faith as handed on in the dual witness of prophet and apostle.
I shall have more to say about this in a later section, but it is an important lens on any reflection on covenant from the standpoint of the Bible's total witness. It also makes clear that the work of the Holy Spirit in the church's use of Holy Scripture is not merely identification (or not) with this or that single moment in scripture's economic unfolding, but rather with Scripture as a total, dual witness of prophet and apostle, now informing in that dual form a fresh appraisal of the church's life under the providence of God, who called Israel, sent the Son, and promised to be with the church living in obedience to the Son's commands.
Objections to Covenant - non-biblical transformation or improper application
I believe I have heard two kinds of objections to the covenant, considered from the standpoint of the Bible. I leave aside then, for my purposes, groups and individuals who just don't like the idea in general terms.
1. The covenant conceived by the Windsor Report is one undertaken by individuals and groups. The Bible describes a covenant initiated by God. (To this may be added the argument that when human covenants are mentioned in the Bible, they are not salutary or worthy of emulation.) God-initiated covenants are (potentially) good, other ones are bad (Grieb).
2. Covenants have stipulations, if not also penalties for their breaching. Limits are envisioned. Discipline-call it the judgment of God-is a critical factor. The Anglican Communion is not the kind of grouping which believes in limits. This is of course to beg the question. Is it not in the nature of the case that limits are crucial whenever God makes solemn promises with real people? At issue then, is not limits, which are inevitable, but what sort of limits.
But to summarise: from the standpoint of the Bible, covenant is an inappropriate churchly commandeering of a biblical concept, and where there may be a fit, it is wrong.
I will address these objections but prefer to do so in the context of positive observations about the character of biblical covenants. Here my concern is with the larger picture of covenant in the Old and New Testaments. I will also use the form of the deuteronomic covenant as a lens on what it might mean to reflect theologically on covenanting in the Anglican Communion at this moment in time.
Covenant Dynamic: Mission and Reconciliation
The term covenant and the contexts in which it appears are dynamic in character. There is not a single idea of covenant in the OT, and the word itself cannot be reduced to a single conception or etymological root meaning. The Bible takes up a common ANE notion and transforms it in accordance with the purposes of the God of Israel with his people and through them, with the created order and all nations. The covenants with Noah and Abraham are in the form of a pledge. The Deuteronomic covenant has a very full form (divine address, historical preamble, pledge, stipulations, blessings and curses, solemnisation). In this form it resembles ANE contracts and more general covenants of grant we can observe in antiquity. In the final form of Deuteronomy, however, such a covenant reckons with its own abrogation (see Deuteronomy 31). In that sense Deuteronomy envisions a covenant that participates in all three 'uses' of the law, including the exposing of basic human failure and the overriding grace of God, on the other side of judgment (the theological use of the law). The desisting and forbearing God is the promising and law giving God, foreseeing failure and dealing with it in the very nature of his character, and so demonstrating that character as 'slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.'
The idea of a 'new covenant' is resident in the old in the nature of the case, due to this inherently dynamic character and because so stated expressly in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and elsewhere. The covenant with creation is an extrapolation, where the initiative of God in creating and sustaining the creation is taken to be the divine initiative in foundational terms. So while Genesis 1 does not use the term berit, other parts of the Bible can see creation in terms of covenant. Finally, Isaiah can creatively use the term covenant to speak of the role of Israel as earthly agent in accomplishing the reconciling work of God with the nations. He speaks in Isaiah 42 of a 'berit ' am.'
In sum, there is no single covenant but a pattern of covenanting, with an interlocking and cooperating character, meant to move as dynamically as possible. The inner nerve of covenanting is at once missional and reconciliatory. This is what becomes clear when covenants are considered as a whole, in the comprehensive sense, and not as discrete history-of-religions episodes. However one understands the kind of new covenant envisioned in the Old Testament (see Jeremiah 31), it is clear that something larger and final is envisioned beyond the parameters set for Israel's life with God. From within an elected and internal covenant, there is to be a wider covenant of adoption, fulfilling the promises made to Abraham and Noah and creation itself. This is the missional nerve of covenant.
The reconciliatory aspect is there in Deuteronomy itself, and in Jeremiah's new covenant it takes the form of an address to the very heart and will, in the form of a promise of a new, capacitated kind of obedience. In Christ, that capacity is gifted to the church by the Holy Spirit, and the obedience of Christ becomes the charter for freedom, whereby the church loves to do what it is commanded. In John's Gospel, this is accompanied by a clear sense that not to do what is commanded is not to love God or enjoy the fellowship of charity it is the Son's will to offer and to guarantee.
The 'Covenant Form' and Modern Theological Appropriation
One particular place where the dynamic character of covenanting is revealed is in the historical preamble, which typically grounds and orientates the covenant. This changes because God addresses Noah and Moses and David and Jeremiah in different circumstances. I brought you out of Egypt, therefore.... I pledge to walk with you in promise, therefore....I will make you a house, therefore... I will bring you out of exile, therefore.... I call you friends and will die for you to make good what my Father has promised, do this therefore in remembrance of me. Only an odd Biblicism would ask that the church conform exactly to the form of a covenant which is itself inherently dynamic, and capable of extension precisely in circumstances which are not identical.
The historical preamble is always tied up with self declaration: 'I am the LORD.' For the God of Israel is not 'being' but is as he shows himself to be, as he makes good on promises declared from beforehand. The promising God who covenanted with Noah and Abraham is the fulfilling 'I am who I said I would be' of Moses and the covenant people delivered by his hand. For the apostolic circle, the 'before Abraham, I am' Jesus Christ is the one who in his acts of mercy and teaching and living and dying and being raised on the third day, makes good on promises to worried apostles, which are themselves fulfillments of promises made to creation and patriarchs and prophets. The God who raises Jesus sends forth the Holy Spirit to teach and capacitate obedience to the Lord, who made himself known in historical time to the circle of his Easter apostles, but limited his revelation in just that form, yet who in the church continues to manifest himself via the witness of apostles prophets, by the teaching presence of the Holy Spirit. As is often stated (J. Barr), there are no crude forms of the revelation of God that presuppose nothing and come, as it were, 'out of the blue.' The mystery of the revelation of God in scripture is that he has been known in particular ways, but chooses to promise more, say more, and fulfill more, rather than that we are to imagine a time when he was not known at all and then suddenly appeared (on this mystery, see Genesis 4:26). The self-designations of covenants build upon what is known and enlarge, as God moves missionally outward: 'then you will know that I am the LORD when I....' The already known God promises to be known more all the same -- but only under the terms of his own disposing and as often in judgment (see the divine self-designations in Ezekiel) as in promise and gift.
And so we come to the notion of incompatibility (objection 1 above). It is clear that the covenants within the scriptures are not identical with one another, but belong to a dynamic which allows the providential activity of the triune God to unfold in accordance with his promises and his will to fulfill. So, too, insofar as the church is the location of the Holy Spirit's ongoing work, we should not expect a covenant that imitated a prior moment of revelation and care, but one which participated in the reconciliatory and missional inner nerve of these prior covenants, now as God cares for his Body in our own day.
Strictly speaking, the form of our own covenant life with God today, as it is being considered, is also not at our initiative, but is in response to the prior activity and initiative of the God who created, called and elected a people, and within his life with them both promised and then made good on the promise of a new covenant, with elected and adopted both, made one in Christ Jesus. In this 'one body' form, the covenant of God is the reconciliatory and missional work to which Anglican Christianity bears witness in time and space, as the outreach of the Body has been called into being by the God whose Gospel engendered such response and such growth, 'on a kingdom where the sun never sets.' The 'I am the Lord your God' self-declaration is therefore grounded and declared in the historical facts of missional expansion and reconciliatory charity, which are the emblems, God being kind, of Anglican Christianity in now 38 provinces.
Promises/Pledge. As has been mentioned, covenants in Christian Scripture may be made without reference to specific stipulations. They may lack the full form of Deuteronomy or ANE analogues. The gift of the Anglican Communion is a given, it precedes us in time, and it exists only at God's initiative, as a response in communal form to the gracious gift of new life in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the fulfillment of the promise to Noah, Abraham, David, the prophets and apostles. It is not under our power of becoming, though it is always under our influence to hinder or hurt. It has its own promissory character, in that we receive it as a gift, and find our own sacramental life in Christ within its confines and its life of worship, mission and praise. The Anglican Communion is a gift, already received, and a promise, made by the Triune God, on behalf of his reconciling work for all creation.
Stipulations. Covenants also have stipulations in versions of their form. The Decalogue is a classic example. Stipulations represent that aspect of God's character the Bible calls 'jealousy', which is why stipulations are never that in the strict sense, but are grounded, as in the Decalogue, to concerns for clarity about the character of God. This I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt is the One with whom we have to do in Jesus Christ, and by virtue of that relationship, we are able to understand ourselves before the God of Israel at Sinai, alongside his elected children (we are the sojourners in the midst, as Leviticus puts it and as Acts 15 correlates it). Stipulations are always preceded by acts of grace and mercy, both for Israel and for those of us brought near in Jesus Christ. So it is that the love of Jesus Christ ties us into the commands of Jesus Christ. The 'do this in remembrance of me' is just such a command, and the obedience capacitated by the Holy Spirit makes doing what Christ commands, and what God has commanded in prior covenants, our joy as well as our holy obligation.
So it is that stipulations envisioned in a Communion Covenant are responses to a gift and flow from, and are to be coordinated with, those stipulations that provide the gracious inner nerve-the 'Thou shalt not' which in Christ becomes the 'It is my joy not to do'-of prior covenants. They do not 'update' or 'replace' these stipulations, but live alongside them, now partaking of their own character, given the providential working of God in and with the missional and reconciling work of the Anglican Communion.
The Windsor Report and related documents make clear that stipulations, in Christ, have chiefly-given our providential location-to do with conciliarity and subsidiarity. They are not then new lists of stipulations - these exist already in the covenants of prophets and apostles. The church does not arrogate to itself authority to 'improve' and replace. All such episodes of adaptation and transformation within scripture itself make clear the highest degree of continuity and providential consistency, this grounded in the single will and life of the Triune God, in Israel and in Christ. In the life of the church stipulations, rather, are solemn pledges to remain in the fellowship, as this is expressed at its widest points, in the missional and reconciliatory work of the Communion in 38 provinces, under the authority of Holy Scripture. Stipulations are then, take the form then, in an Anglican Covenant, of forbearance in Christ one for another, in mutual submission to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This submission is enjoined precisely because the gift of Communion has only happened because of prior obedience to the authority of 'the prophets and apostles' and a willingess to receive in joy, in Christ, the commands that ground and orientate our life in God, in Israel in promise, law and figure, and in the Church.
Blessings and Curses and Solemn Pledging. To underscore the solemn character of what is being received and pledged, under God, covenants very frequently have a clear sacramental provision or ritual. This serves as a material marker of what is being entered into. But the blessings and curses in the case of Deuteronomy do not exist primarily as a static 'Sword of Damaclese,' or a kind of eternal Speed Camera posted before hash marks on the M1. In the final form of Deuteronomy, two strict alternatives (blessing for obedience, curse for disobedience) become serial episodes as well. Israel, God foresees, will disobey, will go into Exile, will bring upon themselves the curses which served as a permanent solemn warning on the plains of Moab for that and for all generations to follow. Disobedience is expected, and indeed foreseen, and yet without any lessoning of the seriousness of the solemn, sacramental warning when first it was most urgently issued. God is the LORD, the LORD compassionate and merciful, whether at the plains of Moab, or when issuing commandments at Sinai which are at the very same moment being flagrantly disregarded in the celebrations led by the priest Aaron at the foot of the mountain; or whether broken by fleeing and denying apostles as Jesus makes his way up Calvary. This means, in the case of our own Anglican covenanting, stipulations must be rightly understood: as statements of our forbearance in Christ, which are always open to both our disregard and God's will to restore. We are only ever broken on the holy grace of God, both when he enters into gracious life with us, and also when we err and stray, and he seeks us out and puts his garments of joy and eternal life on our soiled wills and hearts, and welcomes us back into His fellowship, which was only and always ever a gift. So for Israel (see Deuteronomy) so also for His Body the church.
Conclusions
In sum, covenants are deeply personal, relational, missional, reconciliatory expressions of the will of the One God to save, to bring into fellowship, and to oblige. This 'obliging' is crucial, not because God delights in commands, but because commands are given in order for grateful response to be possible. But at the very same time, commands never replace the Holy and Living God, who in his character is the desisting and forbearing Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If the gracious 'obliging' is cast aside, God has made provision for renewal and reconciliation, as part of the very act of covenanting in the first place.
It is not the task of those who undertake to compose a covenant, and those who obligate themselves, in Christ, to do what it asks, to imitate some precise form or event from within scripture's panoramic account. This would be an odd kind of Biblicism, and may explain in part why the New Testament can refer reflexively to a new covenant with all high seriousness, without getting caught up in the provision of inventive new forms. The same holds true for the Anglican Communion in our day. To do this would be to undercut the dynamic and personal character of covenanting.
In the case of Anglicanism, it is the divine initiative in spreading the Gospel through the world to which we make response. We have never truly faced this moment with the kind of seriousness now required-due precisely to the success of missional expansion and the rapid character of communication and personal communion-and so it is not surprising that our time calls for a recognition, solemn and joyful, of God's work, and of our concern to acknowledge and live within its gracious provision. That is why an Anglican Covenant is proposed by the Windsor Report and why we should undertake its relational, missional and reconciliatory calling in this present season.
In order both to set some limits and for clarity's sake-themes to which I shall return-I understand my assignment to be: theological reflection on covenant and the appropriateness of using this term for work presently before us in the Anglican Communion. By 'theological reflection' I mean, giving a comprehensive account of Scripture with concern for its total witness. I take this to be the concern of one of the Articles, with a long prior history, that scripture be read in such a way that its portions be not repugnant, one with another. The same concern also animates what in our present period is called 'canonical reading.'
It is my conviction that this hermeneutical caution is traceable to the rule (kanon) of faith (regula fidei) in the early church, indeed in the period of the formation and consolidation of New Testament writings, and especially relevant in that instance. The rule of faith is an appeal to the total witness of scripture, and especially the Old Testament, as constituting the speech and work of the selfsame and Living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in Israel and in the Apostolic witness to Jesus Christ, now coming to form in the canonical writings of the New Testament, soon to be ranged alongside the Scriptures of Israel. As Tertullian aptly saw in his shrewd analysis of heresy, the rule of faith has its alternative in the rule of skill, or cleverness, in handling the same scriptures in a way which makes their parts compete, excludes texts, or gives false proportion to their total voice. If this be the case, the remedy will not be the construction of 'confessions' but a need for being very clear about the nature of heresy and its providential role, and how heresy deforms and mishears the scriptures because lacking the rule of faith. When the rule of faith-as a basic statement of the relation between the work of God in creation and in Israel, with the work of God in Jesus Christ and the Church-is not animating the handling of scripture, heresy emerges to warn the church of the seriousness of its charge to guard the faith as handed on in the dual witness of prophet and apostle.
I shall have more to say about this in a later section, but it is an important lens on any reflection on covenant from the standpoint of the Bible's total witness. It also makes clear that the work of the Holy Spirit in the church's use of Holy Scripture is not merely identification (or not) with this or that single moment in scripture's economic unfolding, but rather with Scripture as a total, dual witness of prophet and apostle, now informing in that dual form a fresh appraisal of the church's life under the providence of God, who called Israel, sent the Son, and promised to be with the church living in obedience to the Son's commands.
Objections to Covenant - non-biblical transformation or improper application
I believe I have heard two kinds of objections to the covenant, considered from the standpoint of the Bible. I leave aside then, for my purposes, groups and individuals who just don't like the idea in general terms.
1. The covenant conceived by the Windsor Report is one undertaken by individuals and groups. The Bible describes a covenant initiated by God. (To this may be added the argument that when human covenants are mentioned in the Bible, they are not salutary or worthy of emulation.) God-initiated covenants are (potentially) good, other ones are bad (Grieb).
2. Covenants have stipulations, if not also penalties for their breaching. Limits are envisioned. Discipline-call it the judgment of God-is a critical factor. The Anglican Communion is not the kind of grouping which believes in limits. This is of course to beg the question. Is it not in the nature of the case that limits are crucial whenever God makes solemn promises with real people? At issue then, is not limits, which are inevitable, but what sort of limits.
But to summarise: from the standpoint of the Bible, covenant is an inappropriate churchly commandeering of a biblical concept, and where there may be a fit, it is wrong.
I will address these objections but prefer to do so in the context of positive observations about the character of biblical covenants. Here my concern is with the larger picture of covenant in the Old and New Testaments. I will also use the form of the deuteronomic covenant as a lens on what it might mean to reflect theologically on covenanting in the Anglican Communion at this moment in time.
Covenant Dynamic: Mission and Reconciliation
The term covenant and the contexts in which it appears are dynamic in character. There is not a single idea of covenant in the OT, and the word itself cannot be reduced to a single conception or etymological root meaning. The Bible takes up a common ANE notion and transforms it in accordance with the purposes of the God of Israel with his people and through them, with the created order and all nations. The covenants with Noah and Abraham are in the form of a pledge. The Deuteronomic covenant has a very full form (divine address, historical preamble, pledge, stipulations, blessings and curses, solemnisation). In this form it resembles ANE contracts and more general covenants of grant we can observe in antiquity. In the final form of Deuteronomy, however, such a covenant reckons with its own abrogation (see Deuteronomy 31). In that sense Deuteronomy envisions a covenant that participates in all three 'uses' of the law, including the exposing of basic human failure and the overriding grace of God, on the other side of judgment (the theological use of the law). The desisting and forbearing God is the promising and law giving God, foreseeing failure and dealing with it in the very nature of his character, and so demonstrating that character as 'slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.'
The idea of a 'new covenant' is resident in the old in the nature of the case, due to this inherently dynamic character and because so stated expressly in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and elsewhere. The covenant with creation is an extrapolation, where the initiative of God in creating and sustaining the creation is taken to be the divine initiative in foundational terms. So while Genesis 1 does not use the term berit, other parts of the Bible can see creation in terms of covenant. Finally, Isaiah can creatively use the term covenant to speak of the role of Israel as earthly agent in accomplishing the reconciling work of God with the nations. He speaks in Isaiah 42 of a 'berit ' am.'
In sum, there is no single covenant but a pattern of covenanting, with an interlocking and cooperating character, meant to move as dynamically as possible. The inner nerve of covenanting is at once missional and reconciliatory. This is what becomes clear when covenants are considered as a whole, in the comprehensive sense, and not as discrete history-of-religions episodes. However one understands the kind of new covenant envisioned in the Old Testament (see Jeremiah 31), it is clear that something larger and final is envisioned beyond the parameters set for Israel's life with God. From within an elected and internal covenant, there is to be a wider covenant of adoption, fulfilling the promises made to Abraham and Noah and creation itself. This is the missional nerve of covenant.
The reconciliatory aspect is there in Deuteronomy itself, and in Jeremiah's new covenant it takes the form of an address to the very heart and will, in the form of a promise of a new, capacitated kind of obedience. In Christ, that capacity is gifted to the church by the Holy Spirit, and the obedience of Christ becomes the charter for freedom, whereby the church loves to do what it is commanded. In John's Gospel, this is accompanied by a clear sense that not to do what is commanded is not to love God or enjoy the fellowship of charity it is the Son's will to offer and to guarantee.
The 'Covenant Form' and Modern Theological Appropriation
One particular place where the dynamic character of covenanting is revealed is in the historical preamble, which typically grounds and orientates the covenant. This changes because God addresses Noah and Moses and David and Jeremiah in different circumstances. I brought you out of Egypt, therefore.... I pledge to walk with you in promise, therefore....I will make you a house, therefore... I will bring you out of exile, therefore.... I call you friends and will die for you to make good what my Father has promised, do this therefore in remembrance of me. Only an odd Biblicism would ask that the church conform exactly to the form of a covenant which is itself inherently dynamic, and capable of extension precisely in circumstances which are not identical.
The historical preamble is always tied up with self declaration: 'I am the LORD.' For the God of Israel is not 'being' but is as he shows himself to be, as he makes good on promises declared from beforehand. The promising God who covenanted with Noah and Abraham is the fulfilling 'I am who I said I would be' of Moses and the covenant people delivered by his hand. For the apostolic circle, the 'before Abraham, I am' Jesus Christ is the one who in his acts of mercy and teaching and living and dying and being raised on the third day, makes good on promises to worried apostles, which are themselves fulfillments of promises made to creation and patriarchs and prophets. The God who raises Jesus sends forth the Holy Spirit to teach and capacitate obedience to the Lord, who made himself known in historical time to the circle of his Easter apostles, but limited his revelation in just that form, yet who in the church continues to manifest himself via the witness of apostles prophets, by the teaching presence of the Holy Spirit. As is often stated (J. Barr), there are no crude forms of the revelation of God that presuppose nothing and come, as it were, 'out of the blue.' The mystery of the revelation of God in scripture is that he has been known in particular ways, but chooses to promise more, say more, and fulfill more, rather than that we are to imagine a time when he was not known at all and then suddenly appeared (on this mystery, see Genesis 4:26). The self-designations of covenants build upon what is known and enlarge, as God moves missionally outward: 'then you will know that I am the LORD when I....' The already known God promises to be known more all the same -- but only under the terms of his own disposing and as often in judgment (see the divine self-designations in Ezekiel) as in promise and gift.
And so we come to the notion of incompatibility (objection 1 above). It is clear that the covenants within the scriptures are not identical with one another, but belong to a dynamic which allows the providential activity of the triune God to unfold in accordance with his promises and his will to fulfill. So, too, insofar as the church is the location of the Holy Spirit's ongoing work, we should not expect a covenant that imitated a prior moment of revelation and care, but one which participated in the reconciliatory and missional inner nerve of these prior covenants, now as God cares for his Body in our own day.
Strictly speaking, the form of our own covenant life with God today, as it is being considered, is also not at our initiative, but is in response to the prior activity and initiative of the God who created, called and elected a people, and within his life with them both promised and then made good on the promise of a new covenant, with elected and adopted both, made one in Christ Jesus. In this 'one body' form, the covenant of God is the reconciliatory and missional work to which Anglican Christianity bears witness in time and space, as the outreach of the Body has been called into being by the God whose Gospel engendered such response and such growth, 'on a kingdom where the sun never sets.' The 'I am the Lord your God' self-declaration is therefore grounded and declared in the historical facts of missional expansion and reconciliatory charity, which are the emblems, God being kind, of Anglican Christianity in now 38 provinces.
Promises/Pledge. As has been mentioned, covenants in Christian Scripture may be made without reference to specific stipulations. They may lack the full form of Deuteronomy or ANE analogues. The gift of the Anglican Communion is a given, it precedes us in time, and it exists only at God's initiative, as a response in communal form to the gracious gift of new life in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the fulfillment of the promise to Noah, Abraham, David, the prophets and apostles. It is not under our power of becoming, though it is always under our influence to hinder or hurt. It has its own promissory character, in that we receive it as a gift, and find our own sacramental life in Christ within its confines and its life of worship, mission and praise. The Anglican Communion is a gift, already received, and a promise, made by the Triune God, on behalf of his reconciling work for all creation.
Stipulations. Covenants also have stipulations in versions of their form. The Decalogue is a classic example. Stipulations represent that aspect of God's character the Bible calls 'jealousy', which is why stipulations are never that in the strict sense, but are grounded, as in the Decalogue, to concerns for clarity about the character of God. This I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt is the One with whom we have to do in Jesus Christ, and by virtue of that relationship, we are able to understand ourselves before the God of Israel at Sinai, alongside his elected children (we are the sojourners in the midst, as Leviticus puts it and as Acts 15 correlates it). Stipulations are always preceded by acts of grace and mercy, both for Israel and for those of us brought near in Jesus Christ. So it is that the love of Jesus Christ ties us into the commands of Jesus Christ. The 'do this in remembrance of me' is just such a command, and the obedience capacitated by the Holy Spirit makes doing what Christ commands, and what God has commanded in prior covenants, our joy as well as our holy obligation.
So it is that stipulations envisioned in a Communion Covenant are responses to a gift and flow from, and are to be coordinated with, those stipulations that provide the gracious inner nerve-the 'Thou shalt not' which in Christ becomes the 'It is my joy not to do'-of prior covenants. They do not 'update' or 'replace' these stipulations, but live alongside them, now partaking of their own character, given the providential working of God in and with the missional and reconciling work of the Anglican Communion.
The Windsor Report and related documents make clear that stipulations, in Christ, have chiefly-given our providential location-to do with conciliarity and subsidiarity. They are not then new lists of stipulations - these exist already in the covenants of prophets and apostles. The church does not arrogate to itself authority to 'improve' and replace. All such episodes of adaptation and transformation within scripture itself make clear the highest degree of continuity and providential consistency, this grounded in the single will and life of the Triune God, in Israel and in Christ. In the life of the church stipulations, rather, are solemn pledges to remain in the fellowship, as this is expressed at its widest points, in the missional and reconciliatory work of the Communion in 38 provinces, under the authority of Holy Scripture. Stipulations are then, take the form then, in an Anglican Covenant, of forbearance in Christ one for another, in mutual submission to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This submission is enjoined precisely because the gift of Communion has only happened because of prior obedience to the authority of 'the prophets and apostles' and a willingess to receive in joy, in Christ, the commands that ground and orientate our life in God, in Israel in promise, law and figure, and in the Church.
Blessings and Curses and Solemn Pledging. To underscore the solemn character of what is being received and pledged, under God, covenants very frequently have a clear sacramental provision or ritual. This serves as a material marker of what is being entered into. But the blessings and curses in the case of Deuteronomy do not exist primarily as a static 'Sword of Damaclese,' or a kind of eternal Speed Camera posted before hash marks on the M1. In the final form of Deuteronomy, two strict alternatives (blessing for obedience, curse for disobedience) become serial episodes as well. Israel, God foresees, will disobey, will go into Exile, will bring upon themselves the curses which served as a permanent solemn warning on the plains of Moab for that and for all generations to follow. Disobedience is expected, and indeed foreseen, and yet without any lessoning of the seriousness of the solemn, sacramental warning when first it was most urgently issued. God is the LORD, the LORD compassionate and merciful, whether at the plains of Moab, or when issuing commandments at Sinai which are at the very same moment being flagrantly disregarded in the celebrations led by the priest Aaron at the foot of the mountain; or whether broken by fleeing and denying apostles as Jesus makes his way up Calvary. This means, in the case of our own Anglican covenanting, stipulations must be rightly understood: as statements of our forbearance in Christ, which are always open to both our disregard and God's will to restore. We are only ever broken on the holy grace of God, both when he enters into gracious life with us, and also when we err and stray, and he seeks us out and puts his garments of joy and eternal life on our soiled wills and hearts, and welcomes us back into His fellowship, which was only and always ever a gift. So for Israel (see Deuteronomy) so also for His Body the church.
Conclusions
In sum, covenants are deeply personal, relational, missional, reconciliatory expressions of the will of the One God to save, to bring into fellowship, and to oblige. This 'obliging' is crucial, not because God delights in commands, but because commands are given in order for grateful response to be possible. But at the very same time, commands never replace the Holy and Living God, who in his character is the desisting and forbearing Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If the gracious 'obliging' is cast aside, God has made provision for renewal and reconciliation, as part of the very act of covenanting in the first place.
It is not the task of those who undertake to compose a covenant, and those who obligate themselves, in Christ, to do what it asks, to imitate some precise form or event from within scripture's panoramic account. This would be an odd kind of Biblicism, and may explain in part why the New Testament can refer reflexively to a new covenant with all high seriousness, without getting caught up in the provision of inventive new forms. The same holds true for the Anglican Communion in our day. To do this would be to undercut the dynamic and personal character of covenanting.
In the case of Anglicanism, it is the divine initiative in spreading the Gospel through the world to which we make response. We have never truly faced this moment with the kind of seriousness now required-due precisely to the success of missional expansion and the rapid character of communication and personal communion-and so it is not surprising that our time calls for a recognition, solemn and joyful, of God's work, and of our concern to acknowledge and live within its gracious provision. That is why an Anglican Covenant is proposed by the Windsor Report and why we should undertake its relational, missional and reconciliatory calling in this present season.
