In late 1991 the former Saint Luke's Journal of Theology became the Sewanee Theological Review. The following is an extract from Christopher Bryan's editorial, "Reflections on Reflection" for Michaelmas, 1991:

Here then is the first issue of our journal under its new name, Sewanee Theological Review. It is to be "an Anglican journal of theological reflection." What does that mean? What do we want?

For my part, I want the Review to be, in its own way, a faithful heir to that exercise of mind and heart under God which, by reasoned reflection on scripture and tradition, produced the foundational theological achievements of the first Christian centuries, the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and the canon of the New Testament. So let no one accuse me of not aiming for the best! No doubt the implied comparison is in some respects ludicrous. Yet it remains a fact that the life and witness of the undivided church offers a model to which Anglicans have often referredthe classic example being, of course, Bishop John Jewel's famous "challenge sermon.." Not that such reference necessarily implies conservatism. Quite the reverse. As has more than once been pointed out, in disputes between Catholics and their opponents during the early centuries of the Christian era, it was in fact Catholics who were often the innovators, appreciating the need for evolution in understanding and practice, and their opponents who were the conservatives (see John Bauerschmidt, "Cyprian, Augustine, and the Pars Donati: Reflections on the Eames Commission and the Fort Worth Synod," SLJT 34:3 [1991], 15; R.F. Evans, One and Holy [London: SPCK, 1972], 95.). Indeed, such willingness to innovate is no more than a continuation of that attitude to sacred text and sacred tradition which has marked the people of God from its beginning. A truly biblical theology is always an ellipse about two foci. One focus is the text, which may not be abandoned. The other is reasoned reflection on the text in the faithful community, with all the dangers and challenges that such reflection brings. This, too, may not be abandoned.

By "reasoned reflection" I mean, of course (as did Anselm and Richard Hooker), not human reason trusted as if by its own power it could compass divinity, but reason in the service of faith, reason exercised by those who pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance, fides quarens, intellectum ( Anselm, Proslogion 1, 104, 5ff; cf. Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity I.2.5; III.8.18). (It is, I assume, unnecessary in this context to apologize for advocating a critical method that is avowedly not "objective." Human claims to objectivity, in academe or anywhere else, are largely romantic constructs, and the wonder is not that such constructs should be demolished, but that in some cases the demolition took so long, and that the heavy guns of structural linguistics, Marxist theory, or deconstructionism were needed to do the job. Common sense should have sufficed).

There is no such thing as theology (in the church's sense) without prayer. Those who exercise reason in this wayin the service of faith, praying for the Holy Spirit's guidanceneither fear nor may refuse any honest question which intellect raises. They do not fear such questions, because they believe that the Catholic faith is true, and therefore can only profit by honest inquiry. They may not refuse such questions, because to do so is to treat an area of human experience as if it were not subject to God's sovereignty, and such a concession is finally atheistic, however reverent its motives. For this reason, incidentally, a truly Christian theology cannot be divorced from life or any aspect of it. Christian theology bears on the Incarnate and therefore must have regard to the world; Christian theology bears on the God of Sinai and therefore must have regard to justice.

I am sure that an Anglican journal of theology does not mean a journal of theology written only by Anglicans. Anglicans have never claimed to be the whole church, and it is not Anglican to claim monopolies of faith or truth either for ourselves, or for the Scriptures (though we gladly acknowledge that Scripture "containeth all things necessary to salvation": Article VI, Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation; cf. Hooker, Lawes I.14.1.), or for anything created. When all is said and done, as Hooker pointed out,
 

Whatsoever either men on earth, or the angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountain of Wisdom, which Wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures into the world. As her ways are of sundry kinds, so her manner of teaching is not one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred books of scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influence; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind admire her, that we disgrace her in any other; but let all her ways be according unto their place and degree adored (Lawes II.1.4).

It is not Anglican, I think, to look for certainly, or anything like it, in every question that vexes or concerns us. The Christian church is, indeed, infallible in several important ways. It possesses the truth it needs, and it is finally promised guidance into all truth. But that does not mean that we can have certainty in all our questions now. For the present, we know in part. Only hereafter shall we know as we are known. So in our theological reflections, and especially in questions doubtful and debated (and what age does not have them?in this we are not different from those who were before us), we do our best to be faithful and accurate, we treat courteously those who differ from us, and we leave the rest to God. How else can we behave, who believe that we and our theological opponents are finally justified no more by the accuracy of our opinions than by our works, but only by God's grace through Jesus Christ our Lord?

Being who we are and being what we have made of ourselves, we do not and shall not live up to this. Sometimes we look to our heroes and heroines to remind us of our hope and of the One before Whom we stand. We have many such: from the Bible, from ancient and medieval Christianity, and from within and beyond the sphere of the Anglican reformation. Yet even as we look to the saints, we know perfectly well that they, too, did not consistently live up to the vision by which they inspire us. And although in one way this matters very much (so that we must constantly strive for the perfection which will, nonetheless, ultimately be God's gift), yet in another way it does not matter at all. As Lady Julian observed,

God did not say, "You will never have a rough passage, you will never be overstrained, you will never be uncomfortable," but God did say, "You will never be overcome." God wants us to pay attention to these words, so as to trust him always with a strong confidence, through thick and thin. For God loves us and delights in us; so God wills that we should love and delight in him in return, and trust him with all our strength. So all will be well (Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love: Short Text 12. Translation cited from Brother Kenneth CGA, From the Fathers to the Churches: Daily Spiritual Readings [London: Collins, 1983], 681).

Here we pass beyond religion to the Living Presence. On what else, finally, shall theological reflection, Anglican or any other, take its stand?