Consider this extract from a Chris Sugden article in an upcoming edition of Evangelicals Now. Towards the end he quotes Vinay Samuel, “one of the leadership team at GAFCON in Jerusalem” who is asking the right questions at the GAFCON end of things:
The real issue continues to be evangelical uncertainty in some areas of ecclesiology. The first is Christian unity. What do evangelicals mean by it? In practice they tend to limit it to common faith assertions and convictions. But unity is much more than that if we take the Divine Trinity as the model for unity. It is “Communion” with all its implications of being one “Body”, relating as the Persons of the Trinity relate with one another. And that includes the global body of Christians. The model of unity that evangelicals often work with is narrowly propositional and leads to the kind of denominational fragmentation we are rightly notorious for. I am not sure GAFCON/FCA has tackled that adequately in spite of the promise of Jerusalem 2008.
Sugden himself asks
Can all the orthodox in the Anglican Communion, who are indeed the majority, work together so as to form a truly global orthodox fellowship that will remain both orthodox and lead the Anglican Communion into the future?
These are the right questions and get to the heart of an evangelical understanding of “Communion” and how that might differ from “Federation of Local Churches that believe exactly the same thing” on the one hand or “Loose engagement of institutions with a common history” on the other.
This is an issue I want to engage with in the near future. Can anyone point me to the full comments of Vinay Samuel in some online format?
