Is it OK for the Archbishop of Canterbury to say that he has changed his mind on something the church has traditionally taught? It’s the stuff of clickbait dreams for journalists, but it raises a more interesting, deeper question. Can the church ever change its teaching, and if so, how does it go about it?
From a historian’s perspective, it seems obvious that the church has frequently – indeed, almost continuously – changed its teaching on all sorts of things. And clearly, the church doesn’t move overnight from one state of complete certainty, with all bishops in full agreement on an issue, to a new altered state of certainty which everyone suddenly agrees on. Change usually comes through a process of challenge, debate and theological development, led by individuals – often bishops – who propose new developments for consideration by the wider church.
From its very inception, the church has discussed and changed its teachings, through processes of discussion, argument, and prayerful discernment – whether informal, or increasingly formalised in councils and synods. For those processes to work, they require and assume that the people who are involved in them will have a range of different views, and that these might change over time.
One of the things I find fascinating about the Bible is the way in which it records for us some of the earliest changes in religious teaching and thinking. It’s remarkably undefended about this –the fact that the church (and before that, the Jewish people) have changed their minds on all sorts of things is quite literally an open book. A very early example that you can trace through the pages of the Old Testament is a slow shift from monolatry (the belief that it is proper for the people of Israel to worship only one God out of a pantheon of many) to monotheism (the belief that there is in fact only one God).
Perhaps the most obvious example from the New Testament comes in The Acts of The Apostles, that nascent history of the early church. Peter’s vision of the sheet let down from heaven, in Acts chapter 10, is a particularly stark example of how the Biblical record captures even time-honoured religious teachings being changed, even dramatically reversed, when the Spirit so guides. Acts lays out in considerable detail the way in which the early church grappled with whether Gentile converts needed to first convert to Judaism or not. The process involved both Peter and Paul having personal experiences in prayer, and encounters with others, which changed their own minds, and persuaded them that change was appropriate for the wider church. They first began acting unilaterally on the basis of their new convictions, which then led to a process of criticism, argument, and communal discernment, in the so-called Council of Jerusalem (Acts chapter 11).
Famously, the doctrine of the Trinity as we have received it – now considered a bedrock doctrine of the church, such that it is a defining ecumenical criteria for membership of bodies such as Churches Together – was formed over a 300 year period of argument, proposition and counter-proposition. It’s said that St Nicholas – yes, that St Nick, the Christmas one – punched Arius in the face at the 325 Council of Nicaea, so furious was he at Arius’ insistence – declared by the Council to be heretical – that Jesus was created by the Father, rather than co-eternal with Him. Disputes between bishops over serious points of doctrine are hardly anything new.
Read it all in Modern Church
