I have been watching this thread out of the corner of my eye - sort of half ignoring it and sort of half hoping it would just fade away.  I knew if it didn't that I would eventually be provoked into saying something.  This subject isn't strictly theoretical or philosophical to me.  When I served in the US military, my job was to commit nuclear weapons against their targets.  There is no doubt in my mind that I would have done so if I had been so ordered.  Therefore I speak on this thread with unique authority. There is much I could say on this subject, but I want to focus on two specific topics.

The first topic deals with the consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is an historical fact that the bombings ended the war.  The Emporer said as much in his surrender speech, and only the Emporer had the power to compel the Army to surrender.  So it is also a fact that the bombings saved the lives of a considerable number of American soldiers.  But those numbers are dwarfed by the non-American and  non-combatant lives saved.  Against the death total in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be placed the 400,000 (not just American) POWs in Japanese custody who were all planned to be killed by the end of 1945.  We must also include the Chinese victims of the war.  Every additional month of war increased Chinese casualities.  And finally, we must include the fearsome toll that would have been extracted from an invasion of Japan on the Japanese population.   The people most spared by the bombings were the Japanese - who faced the alternatives of either massive famine or massive bloodletting in the invasion.

Second, I want to bring some measure of reality to this discussion.  Arms control does not work.  It has never historically worked.  It can never work with nuclear weapons.  They provide too much military capability.  They provide too much military advantage.  Wars are won by achieving strategic objectives.  This traditionally means closing with and defeating the enemy's military.  Nuclear weapons allow a nation the ability to directly achieve those objectives without closing.   A nation can go over the head of its adversary.  That's why no major power can afford to be without them.  Nations will always find a way to make them.  To be caught without is to be caught in a fatally compromised position.  The risk is too great.

I realize that intellectuals and philosophes like to play intellectual games with ideas.  What needs to be understood is that all this talk of nuclear disarmament is just that - an intellectual game.  You haven't a snowball's chance in hell of bringing it off.  The UK can do what it likes with Trident.  Just understand that it won't be forsaking nuclear defense.  It will be trusting itself tho the US.  You may think that a signiificant different.  But to me it is a distinction without a difference.  You are implicitly accepting the protection offered by my service even as you condemn me for providing it.  It's not a noble position.  It just an exercise in keeping your hands clean. 

carl

Bowman

If the "impasse" in the village is that its two extremes of opinion cannot agree, one can understand that impasse in one of two broad ways

There is another option.  There may not be a village.  In which case, there is no reason to try to find a reconciling center.   The opinions are no longer 'extreme' because they are no longer measured relative to a false spectrum.  Instead they are consistent and mutually exclusive.  This is why the boundary of the Christain faith must be defined.  If you want to use the metaphor of 'village' then you have to accurately describe who lives within it.  The correct answer is not "Everyone who claims to live within the village."

carl

Origen Adam

In your opinion surely?

No, my opinion on the matter would carry no authority.  I merely state the fact on the authority of Scripture.  Now, you may not accept that as an authority, but that is of no concern to me.  Authority does not require acknowledgement.  The man who declares his little mountain top in Montana to be a sovereign state is still under the authority of the US government whether he likes it or not.  

The fact that the earth goes round the sun is provable, but the virgin birth is not!

Well, of course not.  The Virgin Birth is a unique event, and science is incapable of investigating unique events.  The scientific method demands repeatability.  Unique events are by definition not repeatable.  It thus becomes a matter of testimony.  And the testimony for the Virgin Birth is unimpeachable.  

But do you really believe only in things that science can prove?  Perhaps then you should go into the laboratory and scientifically prove to me the equality of men when every single observable you can possibly imagine - without exception - will demonstrate precisely the opposite.  Or perhaps you could synthesize 'Good' for me from such materials as you might find lying around.  If your standard of truth is "That which can be proved by science"  then there are many thing you have swept onto the floor besides the virgin birth.  And many of thiose things you will want to quickly pick up and dust off and put back into place.  But how can you do so consistently?

carl

DavidR

I might have thought it was understood from the context that I was referring to special revelation.  If you think there is still special revelation being received, then we have just uncovered yet one more issue that makes this idea dead on arrival.

carl

It didn't take too much research for me to conclude that 'Progressive Orthodoxy' is a kinder, gentler form of progressive religion with a veneer of orthodoxy smeared across the top.  What did I find?  A de-emphasis of doctrine in favor of a subjective relational experience.  A desire to hold to the form of doctrine while changing the substance.  Heretical re-evaluations of settled doctrine.  A desire to be 'relevant' in the opinion of the post-modern world.  This is all standard progressive fair.  I didn't find anything remotely orthodox about it.

But it wouldn't matter if I agreed there was some hope for it.  The conflicts that drive the current impasse will immediately surface over the definition of the 'best in Christianity.'  As always, this is a conflict over authority.  Specifically, this is a conflict over whether the Scripture is a norm that cannot be normed, or a norm that can be normed.  There is no way to find common ground between two such mutually exclusive positions.

Count out such as me from any such adventure.  We would spend about 20 minutes with such an effort before its true spiritual nature became clear.  It's a non-starter.

carl

Bowman

Those who abstained testified to the truth as they saw it, had the same influence on the ultimate outcome, and did not hurt the national church.  

Assume they had abstained.  Then the measure would have been approved.  And what would have happened to the minority?  It would have been expunged.  How long would it have been before the last opponent of WO in the clergy would have retired or died?  That is why I chose the metaphor of falling on the sword.  You would demand they actively participate in their own eradication for the good of the national church - the very same church that is willfully and knowingly tossing them out the front door.  This suggestion reminds me of the Old Bolshevik 'Right Deviationists' in Stalin's Russia who were convinced to falsely confess 'for the good of the Revolution.

And how would an abstention have testified to anything?  It would have been an act of cowardice - instantly forgotten had the measure passed.  For all intents and purposes it would have counted as a 'Yes' vote.   (That is why the 'Yes' campaign so cynically pushed the idea.)  The majority would get what it wanted.  The unbelieving public would be satisfied.  The church could present a happy face.   The Traditionalists would still be expunged, of course.  But there is that heroic abstension on record for anyone who cares to look it up in the church records.  If they can find it beneath the dust.

This is what the 'No' vote achieved.  It revealed the heart of the majority.  It has forced the majority to do openly in the light what it would have preferred to do in darkness.  It has forced the lies and the deceptions to stop.  Is there still any doubt as to what the majority meant by 'provision?'  Yes, this will do great damage to the national church.  But not because some members of Synod voted 'No' according to their conscience.  Rather the damage will come from the reaction to the vote when men act upon their true intentions.  The Traditionalists will be driven out, and then you will have to live with what remains.  You will have to live with a church that thinks it has a lot of explaining to do to an unbelieving world that rejects the very God the church purports to preach.

Well, you will have many other things to explain if that is your standard.  Because there are things within the Christian faith that are far more offensive to the unbelieving world than Complementarianism.  The Cross, for instance.   They hate that, too.  And far more vociferously than male headship.

carl