A RESPONSE TO GEOFF THOMPSON FROM +

THE BASIS OF UNION

By John Gunson

The Uniting Church is this year celebrating the fortieth anniversary of our
formation, our coming together. One of the things worth focusing on must surely be the
Basis of Union - the expression of the faith of the church upon which three separate
denominations came together.

Geoff Thompson has done us a service here in his recently published book about the
Basis entitled Disturbing Much Disturbing Many Theology provoked by the Basis of
Union. I would like to continue the conversation, both because it is important to the future
of the Uniting Church, and because Geoffs analysis expresses only one point of view in
our churches and because it is factually wrong about aspects of the Basis, while other
aspects of his theses need challenging.

The title of Geoffs book is apt. I was certainly greatly disturbed by what Geoff has written.
The framers of the Basis expected their work to disturb much and disturb many, probably
because they knew it was much out of kilter with how many of those in the three churches
would have expressed their faith, but there is very little evidence that such an expected
theological disturbance took place, or lasted for long.

As one who was involved (not on the Joint Commission itself, but in other ways preparatory
to union), I have a different understanding of much that Geoff asserts about the Basis and
its function and significance.

Geoff believes that the Basis of Union was intended as the forever definitive theological
basis of the Uniting Church. Some of those on the Joint Commission may well have
believed that, or at least hoped that would be true.

What in fact determined the theological position expressed in the Basis of Union was the
pragmatic need to find a basis upon which three very different denominations with widely
diverging theological positions could come together in union. In other words it had to avoid
looking like a normative/typical statement of any one of the three negotiating churches.
e.g. Thats Presbyterian. We cant agree to that. That is a takeover. So lets agree on
one of the historic creeds that we give lip service to as part of the churchs history a kind
of neutral ground. Nicea is more or less recognized across the major expressions of the
church as the first definition of faith to come out of an ecumenical council and its attempt to
unify the many different theological positions of the time.

Lets conveniently forget that this supposed divine revelation was implemented under
Roman Imperial threat for the convenience of the Roman state and empire, and its
consequent continuing orthodoxy for the next 1300 years also imposed by the State which
everywhere controlled the church.

/2
Geoff refers to Gods inscrutable ways to explain the otherwise nonsensical and
inexplicable. The God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth is here seen operating totally out of
character with what he reveals in Jesus, and in terms of a revelation that he obviously
denied to his only-begotten incarnate Son. Geoff quotes some lonely scholarship that
suggests that even if Jesus didnt claim Messiahship he acted Messianically. But he
makes no case that Jewish messiahship is seen by Judaism as implying anything vaguely
approximating the incarnate son of God dying for our personal salvation.

Since the Reformation, with the church increasingly freed from the control of the State, and
with the benefit of the European Enlightenment(s) and Biblical and theological scholarship
freed from church control and censorship, many branches of the church were moving on
from Nicea.

Our union 40 years ago happened at a time when neo-orthodoxy/Barthian theology was
resurgent (that doesnt mean it was right). Had we come together in the 19th century we
would have had an entirely different Basis of Union, and Geoff would have been arguing
my case that the Basis of Union was certainly not for all time, but simply the best and
most pragmatic way to get agreement/union between the churches at the time, and thus
subject to review and change.

The second factor at work 40 years ago was the ecumenical spirit of that time. Dominant
in the life of our three churches, it brought home to us powerfully the scandal of
denominationalism and disunity. I, along with many others, was heavily involved in
ecumenical activities and the work and scholarship of the World Council of Churches and
the Australian Council of Churches.

Congregationalists (my background) historically did not look on themselves as a

denomination but as a reforming movement in the life of the church, and we urgently
desired and worked for both the continuing reformation of the churches and the unity of the
church. That was a much higher priority than a particular choice of a confession of faith
we could all agree about at the time.

We believed that the Basis was a necessary pragmatic concession, in order to achieve
union which we could each interpret in our own way, in spite of its Greek philosophical
thought forms, themselves incomprehensible to most.

The majority of Congregationalists would probably not have entered into the Uniting
Church if they had not believed that the Basis of UNION was a starting point on which we
could come together, not a permanent once and for all expression of the faith of the
Uniting church. Such a confession would have been called The theological basis of the
UC, not the basis of UNION.

To make absolutely sure this was the case Congregational representatives on the Joint
Commission insisted on the inclusion of Paragraph 11.

To those not privy to the background I have described above, Geoffs interpretation of Para.
11 may seem reasonable. But, in fact he explains away its essential meaning and
purpose, and in fact is quite wrong.

/3
I knew personally the Congregational representatives on the Joint Commission.

Geoff mentions both Henry Wells and Maynard Davies and refers to some of their
correspondence. Maynard was a member of my congregation and I knew his thinking
intimately over nearly a decade of close association. Maynard believed that modern
scholarship was giving us new knowledge and understanding of our sources and our faith,
and that he expected the Uniting Church to take it seriously and not reject it because it did
not happen to reflect literalist interpretations of Bible or creeds or Barthian or any other
interpretation of the faith of the church.

For Maynard (along with most Congregationalists) the church was always a church under
reformation, and not to be imprisoned by a 1000 year old statement of faith, nor a 1000
year old interpretation of it. He didnt believe, as Geoff does, that God wants to be
understood in a way that makes no sense to most people today - that while scholarship
and knowledge has moved on, yet God and his works are best understood expressed in
the limited knowledge and ancient Greek thought forms forced on the church by a Roman
Emperor.

Maynard Davies would have approached each meeting of the Joint Commission with the
words of Pastor John Robinson ringing in his ears, as Robinson farewelled the Pilgrim
Fathers on the Mayflower, fleeing persecution from orthodoxy in England for a new life in
America in 1620.

Robinson urged them : I charge you before God to follow me no further than you have
seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as
ready to receive it as you were to receive truth from my ministry, for I am persuaded that
the Lord has yet more truth and light to break forth from his holy word. .. The Lutherans
cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw and the Calvinists stick fast
where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery
much to be lamented.
A third and powerful factor also determining the Basis of Union was the vision expressed
in the deliberate wording of our name the Uniting Church in Australia, not the United
church. In coming together we all believed that this was only the first step in a larger on-
going process of union, beginning with the Anglicans with whom preliminary discussions
were already underway, and ultimately, some dared to hope, even with Baptists and
Roman Catholics. (See paras 1&2 of the Basis.)

To even start conversations with Anglicans and Roman Catholics we knew we had to have
a theological/creedal basis with which they would readily agree. Nicea made obvious
sense. Further, in support of this goal, great consideration was given on the Joint
Commission as to the possibility of including Bishops in the polity of the new church.

Again, all of this was about achieving a starting point, and assumed an ongoing
reformation and reformulation of the faith, not a capitulation to the churches with whom we
hoped for union, but from which we had since the Reformation distinguished ourselves.

/4
Ecumenism, unity, and the scandal of denominationalism was the driving
motivation, formulation of the faith secondary and pragmatic.
Ecumenism and ongoing church union is no longer a central priority of the Uniting Church.
The priorities of 40 years ago need no longer delay our urgent attention to a fresh
confession of the faith and the ongoing reformation of the church.

These then are the major misunderstandings and misrepresentations in Geoffs position,
but other aspects of his book are perhaps even more disturbing.

While Geoff rightly refers to and recognises the diversity within the unity of the Uniting
Church, he believes that any departure from what he sees as orthodoxy, orthodoxy based
on a once for all revelation by God, is somehow a capitulation to what he calls a modern
relativist culture which characterises the intellectual world of today.

He declares his belief that the Creeds homoousios points us to the real intellectual,
ethical, cultural and spiritual radicalness of the Christian faith. It is a reminder that
Christianity has reasons for arguing that the love of enemy, generosity to the poor, a
relationship with God based on mercy and grace, the universal scope of Gods love, the
summons to resist all dehumanizing and unjust ideologies, the realities of freedom
and hope .have a ground in the one who is the Creator and Lord. And that God is not
especially impressed by religion or spirituality, that true lordship is servanthood, that
forgiveness is unconditional ,
Geoff contrasts this orthodoxy which he believes points to the radicalness of Christian faith
with a number of contemporary scholars whom he believes are captured by the relativist
spirit of our age, and whose intent, he declares is either to dismiss the church and its
faith, or some like Crossan (widely regarded as probably the leading New Testament and
Historical Jesus scholar today because of his meticulous and objective research) whom he
claims has a deliberate intent to modernise or re-invent the faith.

This is so far from an accurate and honest assessment of Crossan that one is tempted to
wonder whether Geoff has actually read his research.

But the more important point here is that many, if not most, progressive Christians give
assent to precisely that radicalness of the Christian faith that Geoff refers to above,
except that they trace its genesis, not to the one who is creator and lord, but to the
historical Jesus himself.

If the result of the best contemporary scholarship that Geoff finds so threatening is a
radical Christianity that is agreed by both orthodox and progressives, then to make such
a fuss about the importance of orthodoxy is to suggest that our particular theology is more
important than the life lived.

The Church in Australia moves inexorably through decline to imminent death. Geoff sees
no need to work at reforming the church to reverse this decline because it is the world that
is the problem, not the church and its practices and its theology. As a teacher of theology
training our future ministers for the frontline, I believe Geoff has an obligation to present
impartially all the best scholarship, not just that with which he agrees, and certainly not to
denigrate that with which he disagrees and is in fact outside his particular discipline.

Does the Uniting Church have a strategy and program to ensure that both/all versions of
radical Christianity receive equal exposure and are in active dialogue both in our
churches, and in particular in our theological colleges?

Both interpretations of faith involve Jesus at the centre. Lets start from there, or just
accept that so long as we live what the Christ- life means, whether we find Nicea central to
that is a matter of personal choice.

At least the secular world, that has turned away from a Nicean statement of Christianity,
needs a chance to hear and respond to a more contemporary version, based on a more
historically accurate version of the man from Nazareth.

That is why Para 11 is in the Basis of Union, and why Congregationalists came into the
Uniting Church.
John Gunson