This article takes the form of an extended review of the recently published book (In-tensional: A Way Forward for the Church, 2024) co-authored by the Most Reverend Justin Duckworth, Archbishop Tikanga Pākehā of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and ordained Baptist minister, Alan Jamieson. Engaging directly with the book, the article seeks to reflect critically upon the ecclesiology proffered. The essay argues that not only is the historical and theoretical basis of the ‘in-tensional centre-edge’ model proposed by the authors questionable, but its employment is potentially problematic for the unity and faithfulness of the Church. While engaging with a specific text and a particular context – the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand – the analysis also offers a case study that should be of interest to a broader audience. The ‘centre-edge’ model and an emphasis upon ‘growth’, ‘entrepreneurial leadership’ and ‘innovation’ within the proposed ecclesiology are phenomena observable more widely within the Anglican Communion and other ‘mainstream’ western Church traditions. These emphases, I contend, are illustrative of both the zeitgeist of late modernity and an absence of a theologically robust ecclesiology.

The tension between John Neville Figgis’s pluralist political theory and his defence of the truth claims of Christianity in the public square makes it difficult to assess the social implications of his personalism. This article considers Figgis’s theories of classical pluralism and corporate personhood and how they relate to his theological anthropology. God makes humans for membership in group persons, paradigmatically the Church, and also other associations that should be free to pursue their corporate ends and govern themselves. The just state coordinates and ensures peace between group and individual persons and allows them to freely play as they pursue the good. This perspective on the modern state and free associations offers an alternative to the modern tendency towards state centralization and individual atomism. But Figgis’s conceptions of freedom, love, corporate personhood and the state introduce a challenge for the contemporary reader. He implies that the state should be a neutral arbiter among individuals and groups. Joseph Ratzinger argues for the good of Christians living and enacting laws and policies that reflect their Christian consciences. Figgis’s Christian personalism informs and challenges Ratzinger’s social theory.

Thomas Cranmer appropriated the eucharistic theology of Cyril of Alexandria for the purposes of constructing a Reformed eucharistic theology and in a way that did not do justice to Cyril’s eucharistic theology. Cyril argued for a mingling of both the corporal and spiritual presence of Christ in both the incarnation and the Eucharist, whereas Cranmer affirms such a mingling in the incarnation alone but not in the Eucharist. Ashley Null has recently defended Cranmer’s appropriation of Cyril for the construction of Reformed eucharistic theology. This article concludes that both Thomas Cranmer’s appropriation and Null’s defence of Cranmer are not viable interpretations of Cyril’s eucharistic theology.