Kudos to + Anthony Bangor for engaging with his opponents with far more patience, charity and sound scholarship than I could ever muster -- Wales is fortunate to have him.

Usury and birth control are indeed excellent examples of now generally accepted sudden reversals in "clear and tradtional teaching" in response changing times.

I wish +Anthony Bangor had become ++Anthony Cantuar in place of 'spineless' Dr. Rowan Douglas Williams. The Anglican Communion deserves better and needs a leader who exhibits theological clarity rather than a pawn of ++Peter Abuja and the latter's associates of the Anglican Network in ECUSA. Dr. Williams doesn't even stand by the Windsor Report which takes a dim view of border crossings by the EPISCOPI VAGANTES of the Global South.

I would not be so quick to attack Rowan Williams. Anthony Bangor probably wouldn't have had the time or clear head space to write his paper if he had been Archbishop of Canterbury. It's easy to forget that obligations of office can hinder theological contemplation.

Also, it is highly likely people will look back on these times and be grateful that Rowan Williams is a leader that can cope with ambiguity.

One of the comments from the recent 9th assembly of the World Council of churches is the possible impact of moving to a consensus model of debate, rather than the previous parliamentary model of debate. (See http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/41/00/acns4110.cfm )

When I look at some of the problems some dioceses are having, they reek of the worst kinds of union/political party factionalism and "playing the numbers". Unfortunately in some dioceses this has led to absolute control by one faction whose henchmen have then gone on to reduce the competitors' numbers by removing people from office/restructurings.

There is no remorse or concern about the ethics of their conduct because they perceive what they are doing is "theologically sound".

Their whole strategy is premised on people not recognising the pattern, leaving in disgust (so they can be dismissed as "ungodly") or lacking the strength to withstand the overt and covert character assissination.

However, God has promised that at some point in history He will raise someone and give them the strength to just keep pouring out Spirit and exposing the corrupt thinking that in times gone by has led to burning the opposition at the stake or destroying women as witches.

God has also promised that when He raises that soul, he will strengthen them through the cup of His anger, and at the right time hand it over to their opposition so that they are so drunk with God's anger that they can not help but act out their hate and thus expose themselves for what they are.

My prayers are that Rowan Williams continues to keep his calm, continues to encourage dialogue, and works with ALL reasonable people in the Anglican Communion to develop more constructive ways of communicating and deciding strategies that don't involve the decimation of the "other". I pray that this happens, not just for our own Communion, but for the sake of other peoples of other faiths or movements who are dealing with equally as vexatious issues.

It is worth reading both contributions in full even if they are lengthy. They are very instructive.

Anthony Crockett opens his response by stating how glad he is that his own "robust response" (gladly borrowing Ruth Gledhill’s words) to Andrew Goddard’s "disparaging remarks" has succeeded "in getting him to declare his hand on Calvin’s revision of Christian teaching on usury" – interesting choice of words to refer to the internet publication of an essay which has been in the public domain since 2003 and which a moment later he later calls an "off-the-peg" article. Do phrases like "we can now see" mean that "we" can only see things once they have been published on the internet? Surely not – but what do they mean?

"Despite its regrettable lack of historical context, which would have shown how revolutionary Eck and Calvin were in this respect…" (AC on AG) overlooks the context, purpose and constraints of AG’s essay. There was no need to show "how revolutionary" the revision of tradition was, since the essay leaves us in no doubt about that, and AG’s stated concern with evangelical methodology made Calvin a useful object of study when Eck would not have been. Note in this context how AC misconstrues what AG says about the usefulness of studying Calvin when he claims in the first paragraph that AG thinks that Calvin’s method is irrelevant to the current debate about homosexuality! (This is not the only instance of AC reading against the grain of AG’s essay which is why it is imperative to read both contributions.)

I wish someone did a careful comparative study of Eck’s and Calvin’s method. AC seems to see no difference between the two. In his first response to AG he only references Eck’s 1515 disputation and in this second response, he is happy to be identified with Calvin’s method. What Eck and Calvin advise church members to do and avoid may look the same superficially but the reasoning behind it is a rather different matter, if Lisa Jardine’s Worldly Goods (which AC recommends in his response) can be relied on.

She writes of "an ingenious three-tiered arrangement of contracts" which Eck "had devised for loans. The first contract set up a simple partnership; the second transformed the partnership into a risk-carrying commercial investment, anticipating a profit; under the third contract, the borrower ‘sold’ the investment opportunity back to the lender, for a guaranteed profit (represented as healthily smaller than the profit anticipated from the imaginary speculation." (p.329)

Ingenious indeed, and how different from Calvin. Jardine comments on Eck’s device: "This formula conveniently let the church off the hook." (ibid). Quite so. And one suspects that this was Eck’s intention. A world of difference lies between Calvin’s concern for careful, close biblical exegesis to discern what God really says through Scripture, acknowledging that this may be different from what we used to think, and Eck’s hermeneutics for getting round the teaching of Scripture. Jardine comments that Eck’s formula "accepted the view that the Bible prohibited all money-leading with interest" (ibid). AG quotes Calvin as asserting that "no scriptural passage…totally bans all usury" and concludes rightly from this that for Calvin "were one to conclude that scriptural passages did totally ban all usury then the debate would effectively be closed."

For Calvin and others who hold to the supreme authority of Scripture "Times have changed" is an argument for revisiting our understanding of biblical teaching, not for discarding biblical teaching. The following comment from AC, reading it in the context of the discussion he references (!), makes me wonder whether he appreciates the difference: "And I thought that the argument from zeitgeist, for that is what it is, was deemed by evangelicals to be a profoundly dodgy one and always and without exception to be trumped by what Robert Cagnon calls 'the revelatory authority of Scripture'." (Gagnon is consistently misspelled in AC’s response.)

Crockett gets it wrong again. If Calvin had thought that Scripture banned usury (= interest) in EVERY circumstance, he would have been against it too. But Calvin knew that interest/usury was not absolutley proscribed by Scripture, so he put Scripture ahead of the teaching of Christendom (which still allowed usury in dealings with Jews). Crockett (who knows a thing or two about unpleasant tone) is in a difficult situation. As a remarried divorcee, his appointment was opposed by many in Bangor and raises questions about Jesus' own teaching. In any case, if Crockett spent just a few minutes with a concordance, he would see that there is NO absolute biblical veto on usury. It's a straw man in a mitre.

My comment about AC consistently misspelling Gagnon is inaccurate. He does it only in the passage quoted and spells the name accurately in the other place where he refers to him. I am sorry!