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About the author: Maxine King is a Ph.D. student in Theology, Ethics, and Politics at Princeton Theological Seminary. She works in systematic theology, Barth studies, and trans studies. She does theology as a member of the laity in the Episcopal Church.
I have recently been reflecting on very basic questions of what theology is and what it is for, particularly due to a current situation in my own life: I have just finished a master’s degree in theology, and I am about to begin another course of study that will last at least another five years this fall. A few months of a break within nearly a decade of study will naturally lead one to contemplate the fundamental purpose of such a commitment!
My reflections have also been shaped by some debates at my Episcopal Church’s triennial legislative meeting this summer. In the churches of the Anglican Communion, one of the most intense theological controversies of the last decades has been whether marriage is only between a man and a woman or two persons regardless of sex. I do not have any interest in litigating these debates here. Still, over the last few years, it seems some Anglicans have tentatively reached a new, precarious stage in this theological debate worth discussing, namely that there are now two different doctrines of marriage within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. It is not a true doctrinal one (we have already been at that stage for a bit), but two coherent yet contradictory doctrines that result from prayerful interpretations of Scripture.
Such a pronouncement would, of course, be contested by many on both sides of this debate. Indeed, statements and acts that have assumed this two-doctrine reality have certainly prompted such contestation. This description was perhaps first “officially” and controversially acknowledged by the Archbishop of Canterbury two years ago at the Lambeth Conference (the decennial gathering of Anglican bishops), and it was similarly the subject of legislative actions and debates a few weeks ago at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention.
Amid these personal and ecclesial circumstances, I have been revisiting one of the texts I was assigned in my first theology class: Augustine’s Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana). Given this two-doctrine context, what drew my attention was a brief passage on mistaken interpretations of scripture in chapter 36 of Book I. Augustine already established his famous claim that scripture teaches the love of God and neighbor. This interpretation means that any rendering of scripture that does not build up this twofold love must be rejected. But his nuanced discussion of a mistaken understanding of scripture that still builds up love for God and neighbor is what most struck me:
But any who understand a passage in the scriptures to mean something which the writer did not mean are mistaken, though the scriptures are not deceiving them. But all the same, as I had started to say, if they are mistaken in a judgment which is intended to build up charity, which is the end of the law (1 Tm 1:5), they are mistaken in the same sort of way as people who go astray off the road, but still proceed by rough paths to the same place as the road was taking them to. Still, they must be put right, and shown how much more useful it is not to leave the road, in case they get into the habit of deviating from it, and are eventually driven to take the wrong direction altogether.1
Augustine likens the mistaken interpreter of scripture—when such a mistake still builds up charity—to the delightful image of someone who accidentally wanders off a path and is forced to bushwhack their way back to the easier trail temporarily.
Now, Augustine does not argue for a kind of milquetoast “big-tent” centrism here—always a peculiar temptation to us Anglicans! For one, Augustine does not budge from holding that there is a correct position and a correct path, and he is clear that one must issue a correction when one believes another has taken even a well-intentioned deviation from the true way. Augustine also makes it clear that thinking of a theological disagreement in these terms can only occur when it is agreed among all parties that each interpretation is genuinely undertaken with the end of building up love for God and neighbor—this alone is certainly not always possible, nor should it be.2 But it does provide a model, if such conditions are met, for the kind of attitude that might make a church that holds two contradictory doctrines possible and even beneficial.3
The point is not to give up pursuing truth or believing that one’s interpretation is correct. However, some things must be given up when accepting this formulation. One must, for instance, give up any absolute assurance that one’s theological position constitutes the correct path. Even if one is convinced that their interpretation of scripture builds up charity, one must be willing to accept that they might be bushwhacking rather than following the correct path. And suppose one can be convinced that one’s theological opponent is also interpreting scripture in such a way that builds up a charity. In that case, the debate should and must occur with a decidedly different timbre.
I hope that in my Anglican context, our disagreements over the doctrine of marriage might now be able to take on this kind of approach as our own. In the Anglican Communion, we Episcopalians who affirm marriages regardless of sex might gratefully receive the relative and hard-won autonomy afforded to us by other churches in our Communion as their recognition that our theological dissent is made in faithful conviction and charity. In the Episcopal Church, we might repay this autonomy to dissenters who remain within our church in further strengthening the canonical protections for theological minorities debated earlier this summer. Such attitudes and acts recognize that we have given up the assurance of knowing which of us is bushwhacking or walking the well-groomed trail. Staying within one church yet having two doctrines represents this commitment to further practicing and theologizing our positions in a trust that rests under God’s providence.
Theology’s task, then, amid this kind of ecclesial disagreement, will not take the form of an attempt to destroy one’s opponent—this will never build up love for God and neighbor. But it will still take on the character of a vigorous exposition of one’s position, yet doing so with an understanding that the historical messiness of theological debate and ecclesial controversy occurs under the providence of God. It will understand itself to be oriented towards that eschatological destination shared by those who take the well-prepared path and those who struggle through the weeds. This kind of theology, undertaken in love and ordered towards building up charity across disagreement, is well worth our study and commitment.
Augustine, Teaching Christianity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2014), I.36.41.
This point is, of course, particularly relevant to theological disagreement around marriage, where it is often difficult (or, to many, often impossible) to disentangle homophobic discourse and politics that will never build up charity from theologies that do not allow for same-sex marriage. See comments on this point from the Rev. Kelli Joyce, a member of the Episcopal Church’s Task Force on Communion Across Difference.