Over at Confessing Reader, Peter Brown’s article on the future of Anglicanism, in the United States in particular, starts by thinking through the institutional possibilities but quickly gets down to the theological motives and principles.
Here are three of the points he makes:
1 The bond of communion is a sacramental witness to the love of God on earth.
2. The catholic community is a necessary context for authentic exegesis of Scripture
3. To survive as a unified body, Anglicanism will need to develop an authoritative tradition of Scriptural interpretation. In order to provide an effective restraint, this authoritative tradition will need an institutional voice. In short, we will need something very like the Catholic magisterium; indeed, since we have retained episcopal governance, our episcopate is the natural location for such an interpretative function.
These three points are blooming obvious, so it is only a very short time I am sure before we start to hear these points being made by bishops in the United Kingdom. After all it is exactly these three points that make a bishop a bishop.
