Source:  Virtue Online

Reflections on the inadequacy of the Proposed Anglican Communion Covenant and what might be done to address it

February 6, 2010

by the Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers Jr.

This writer believes that the proposed Anglican Covenant is flawed, and too weak to meet the needs of worldwide Anglicanism.

In Scripture we are exhorted to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the Church; this requires effort, clarity and discipline. I will lift up a few of the paragraphs of the proposed Covenant and then make a comment on them in order to illustrate and present my concerns.

If this proposed Covenant were strengthened and simplified, it could become a workable covenant for the Anglican Communion. I will indicate how this might be done. In its' present form it is inadequate and would only do more harm than good.

Introduction to the Covenant Text

"This life is revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us - we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have communion with us; and truly our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be complete." (1 John 1.2-4).

"1. God has called us into communion in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1.9). This communion has been "revealed to us" by the Son as being the very divine life of God the Trinity. What is the life revealed to us? St John makes it clear that the communion of life in the Church participates in the communion which is the divine life itself, the life of the Trinity. This life is not a reality remote from us, but one that has been "seen" and "testified to" by the apostles and their followers: "for in the communion of the Church we share in the divine life"[1].

This life of the One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shapes and displays itself through the very existence and ordering of the Church."

This profound statement has clear implications for the proper nature of the Anglican Communion. Since the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are united in the one substance of the God-head and so interpenetrate one another that there is but one God, there is no autonomy on the part of any of the persons of the Godhead. This inner unity and interdependence is reflected in God's works in creation and redemption. . . 

Read the entire article here. 

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