Kendall Harmon has posted a link to paper posted by Prof. Christopher Seitz that discusses some of the challenges inherent in designing an Anglican Covenant.

I’m particularly taken by this quote:

“It is not the task of those who undertake to compose a covenant, and those who obligate themselves, in Christ, to do what it asks, to imitate some precise form or event from within scripture’s panoramic account. This would be an odd kind of Biblicism, and may explain in part why the New Testament can refer reflexively to a new covenant with all high seriousness, without getting caught up in the provision of inventive new forms. The same holds true for the Anglican Communion in our day. To do this would be to undercut the dynamic and personal character of covenanting.

In the case of Anglicanism, it is the divine initiative in spreading the Gospel through the world to which we make response. We have never truly faced this moment with the kind of seriousness now required—due precisely to the success of missional expansion and the rapid character of communication and personal communion—and so it is not surprising that our time calls for a recognition, solemn and joyful, of God’s work, and of our concern to acknowledge and live within its gracious provision. That is why an Anglican Covenant is proposed by the Windsor Report and why we should undertake its relational, missional and reconciliatory calling in this present season.”

If you follow the link below it will take you to a link to the full article (a pdf download.)

Much of the article is an investigation into whether or not the design of a covenant is in of itself disrespectful of the role that Holy Scripture plays in informing the community. But the quote above seems to me to be calling for a covenant that would seem to affirmatively create a bonded community rather than act to create a wall to keep certain folks out. And as such, I surely hope this view becomes ascendent.

Read the rest here: Christopher Seitz–Covenanting in the Church and in Scripture – Congruent or Discordant?

(Via TitusOneNine.)