An evangelical's journey to Orthodoxy
By Michael Harper
Hodder & Stoughton. 190 pages. £7.99
ISBN 0 340 67861
Michael Harper makes plain what it is in the Church of England that he is leaving. He is leaving The Myth of God Incarnate, the views of Maurice Wiles and Don Cuppitt and the Church of England Synod that passed the legislation about 'women priests'.
In a short review it is impossible to deal with all the detail, but I was left feeling that he has tried to give the Orthodox Church credit for too much. His basic defence of that church, of which he has joined the Antiochan branch, is that it has never needed to reform because it started off sound with the apostles and has not altered since. If it was bypassed by the Protestant reformation, it was also bypassed by the enlightenment. It is not a question of never needing reformation to a biblical ideal from which man so easily strays, but of . . . . .
Although history suggests that the pigments in the Book of Kells speak of trading from the Middle East to Ireland, I think it is going too far to suggest that the Celtic church owes its origins to Byzantium (p. 46). Even if you do not give too much credence to St. Alban, yet it would seem that Christianity reached Britain before Constantine. Again, he gives great weight to General Councils more than the Anglican Church he has left, which says of them in its article XXI: 'They may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.' And his arguments about icons being venerated and not worshipped are traditional but still do not hold water for me.
But why did he not find Evangelical Anglicanism satisfying? The tale suggests that Ridley College, in the days of Cyril Bowles, concentrated on biblical criticism rather than theology or church history. Was there a forgotten Holy Spirit as well as a forgotten Father? How is it that he managed to find the pure water of scriptural evangelicalism in the tradition of Cranmer, Simeon and Stott so unsatisfying? Was it dissatisfaction with the triviality of some styles of charismatic worship? Why have whole congregations of Vineyard gone over to Orthodoxy in the States? One has sympathy with a distaste for the triviality of some strands of Anglicanism but why turn to icons and the Harrowing of Hell when there are the clear waters of orthodoxy with a small 'o'? Why listen to St. Seraphim saying: 'The true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God' (p.166), which would seem to turn aside from grace? Perhaps the clue is to be found when he writes: 'There has always been a longing for certainty - clear and affirming dogmas to drive away our fear that our faith is unfounded after all. Here is the doubt that haunts us. Here, I believe, the Orthodox Church can provide an answer.'
But where is our evangelical witness failing if we do not hear a heartfelt cry like that?
