David: Going back to an earlier point where I mentioned that the professor of church history took a long view of what is happening in the ACoC: it’s one thing to take a long view in an academic sense, but for the average ANiC parishioner, all they want is to be part of an organisation that has the same religion as them – right now. What other practical option is there than to get out?
Rev. Dr. George:  Obviously I’m someone who believes that there is a valid calling to remain in the ACoC and to work for and be hopeful of its renewal. And I believe that the ACoC in its formal prayer is an orthodox church.

David: You haven’t attended any Diocese of Niagara synods, have you?
Rev. Dr. George: You go back to Melancthon – wherever the Gospel is truly preached and the sacraments rightly administered; I think that scope remains. At the same time – and I understand that this may not be how it looks to lay people – I would agree with my colleague about taking the long view. The evangelical movement within Anglicanism began in the early 19^th century in England, when, in many ways, the church seemed moribund. So I think that option still remains, but I share the traditional view of the doctrine of Christian marriage and realise that that poses challenges for Anglicans in the ACoC. My hope is that in the long term the evangelical witness will prove to be important.

David: OK, well let me take an extremely long view, then: the final destination of our immortal souls. If one believed that by remaining in a diocese that is less than orthodox it could jeopardise the souls of the parishioners, would that be a justifiable reason for leaving? Hypothetically.
Rev. Dr. George:  All of us would agree that we have to take a somewhat long view. To give an extreme example, no-one would leave a parish every time the rector came up with some wacky notion. But the real question is that, for Reformation Christians, the article on which the church stands or falls is justification: as sinners are we saved by the grace of God in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. A church where that can be heard is – a church. It may be a sleepy church or a confused church. There comes a limit case, an extreme case, where you can no longer recognise Christianity in a church, so I’m not saying that there could never be such a case. I don’t think that’s where we are; I think the prayer books of the church are recognisably Christian. My exhortation to conservative Anglicans in Canada is to set about the business of building up parishes, dioceses and schools and understanding themselves as servants of the renewal of the church.

David: I presume you’d agree with the assertion that the fact that some conservatives have left the ACoC has probably weakened the conservative cause within the ACoC.
Rev. Dr. George:  Well, yes, obviously there are fewer of us. It’s not my place to judge. These people were all friends, so one hopes that continues.

David: Has the friendship been broken by what’s happened?
Rev. Dr. George:  Institutions make most sense when they are functioning well – properly. When things break down everyone is placed into various kinds of conundrums and that’s stressful for everybody. I can only speak for the particular kind of vocation of those who remain within this branch of the church catholic.

David: The issue that seems to have caused the split appears to be same-sex blessings. It seems to me that underneath that there are worse problems – it goes back to the meaning of words again. For example, I’m moderately convinced that when I say I believe in Jesus’ Resurrection it doesn’t mean the same as when some clerics might say it; if probed a little, it becomes quite clear that we don’t mean the same thing at all. That is a bigger problem than same-sex blessings. It’s the same for the Virgin birth, many clergy don’t believe in it, yet, not believing undermines the whole logic of Christianity – it all starts falling apart. How can church leaders be talking and believing such nonsense?
Rev. Dr. George:  One of the interesting offshoots of the same-sex debate was the agreement of the ACoC in its theological commission with the point you’re making. The primate’s theological commission – whatever one doesn’t like about the distinction between core doctrine and doctrine – was at least saying that. That there are things whose denial are problematic straight away. And you’re right…. in the debate, that was used as a way of saying the same-sex issue isn’t so big a deal because it’s not that [core doctrine]. So one of the offshoots would be to say, if you hold one of those views of denying a central creedal point – that would be out of bounds. That always interested me; although I’m not sure that everyone followed that trajectory. That being said, it isn’t true that just because something isn’t in core doctrine that it doesn’t touch on important doctrinal matters. One of the reasons the whole debate is unfortunate is it’s a symptom of these deeper wider problems. Moderns have an idea of autonomy which renders some of these traditional moral commitments difficult; it’s hard for moderns to really make sense of the doctrine of sin. Those are pervasive questions that come to express themselves in a variety of ways. The desire for tolerance and charity, which is part of this whole thing – that’s a good impulse. The notion that everyone who comes through the door is broken in some way or other is just Christian doctrine.

David: In some cases it’s difficult to pin down what a liberal believes, but in others, it’s quite clear. There is at least one bishop who has stated he doesn’t believe in the Resurrection in the orthodox sense. So we have a church which allows a bishop to disseminate beliefs that are contrary to those of the church he belongs to; there’s something radically wrong, isn’t there? It would be like an executive from McDonald’s preaching on the virtues of vegetarianism.
Rev. Dr. George:  The only answer is the vigorous support of Anglican theological colleges and their theological work.

David: I wanted you to say he should be booted out.
Rev. Dr. George:  (laughing) And I wanted to give my pitch.

David: Carry on with your pitch.
Rev. Dr. George:   At the end of the day the church needs those peculiar communities of scholars who are prepared and able to articulate the Nicene faith in a winsome and coherent way.

David: Diversity also seems to have become something of an idol. Diversity in, say, style of worship – style of almost anything – might not be a bad thing. Now, though, it seems that diversity also includes heresy. We are a church that is so diverse that we even encompass things we are not supposed to believe.
Rev. Dr. George:  There’s no getting around the fact that the books of the Old and New Testament are Scripture in the sense that they are a norm for the church’s life. That doesn’t remove the necessity for reading and interpreting them; that can be done with the normative guidance of tradition. There will be arguments about what they mean, but the question of the limits of diversity leads inexorably to the hearing of Scripture as an authority for the life of the church.

David: Quite a few years back, I met J. I. Packer and asked him, “What’s gone wrong?” He said one of the problems is that theologians stopped believing that Scripture is God’s propositional revelation. When I met him recently and reminded him of that, he said he wouldn’t necessarily put it quite that way now.
Rev. Dr. George:  I think he would probably agree with this: to be a Nicene Christian requires that one be a realist in the sense that one believes that the words the tradition has used to describe the world conform to how the world really is. That is propositional in the wider sense. And it requires some kind of doctrine of perspicuity, that is to say, the Scriptures can be heard. There are hard bits and one verse bumps against another but, at the end of the day, what matters most is clear; and that it can be read as a whole. Both of those statements have some relation to the idea of assertion: I think Dr. Packer is being careful because it’s harder to claim that some things are propositions than others when you read the Bible. But it can assert how the world really is and it can do so clearly and coherently – those are things you need to be able to say.

David: Is part of the problem in the ACoC caused by the fact that we no longer believe that?
Rev. Dr. George:  Allowing for the fact there will be debate about interpretation, where the Bible does not so function – where that isn’t true – the church will be left to its own devices. And it will struggle to find criteria that are truly edifying.

David: Thank you very much.
Rev. Dr. George And thank you very much.