Pluralist, I may have misunderstood you, but you seem to be ignoring Anglicans in the American colonies before and after the American Revolution.  Very different from Puritans.  A recent biography of Samuel Seabury (based on a number of primary sources) gives a good picture of the times in New England, university level discussions and arguments, etc.  Letters, etc. are quoted.  (Author is +Paul Marshall, of the Diocese of Bethlehem in PA.  Title is _One, Catholic, and Apostolic_.)

2000 ministerial Puritans were ejected from the Church of England in 1662, and as a number of these and others ended up in the United States, then Puritanism and Anglicanism in the US had a different history. Puritans formed the parishes, relying on the Bible and little else, and so (as in England for Bible-only Presbyterians) most of these ended up as liberal congregationalists and indeed went via Arminianism to Unitarianism. The first ideological Unitarians were different, coming to these spaces, but were also biblical literalists. It is fascinating (well to me) that a new bunch of Unitarians arising in Kenya (and elsewhere) are also biblical literalists.

There is a sort of self-styled ejection going on now, over a longer period, of not biblical but credal and Articles-based purists, as well as differently those who cannot accept women in the highest of serving orders of ministry. It is when you look at history, and those who really were Bible based, that you realise that today's so called Biblical Christians are rather people who heavily filter how they read the Bible first, coming at it with pre-set doctrines.

As for me, I've hung around Anglican Churches on and off since 1984 via relative peaks and troughs, and now would be a trough. I made a few moves in the direction of its ministry from time to time, but just have to accept that I'm not really in the fold to treat that seriously, and could not make the more than compromises - even though the C of E contains people thinking like me that have compromised and do compromise - sometime because they start thinking like me after they have gone through ordination and the rest. And there are a number of us just in lay terms hanging on in terms of attendance, and put in what we do and get out what we can. Obviously I have no interest really in anything Phil Almond keeps pressing people about, as I come at this from a religious humanist point of view, but it strikes me as interesting he doesn't sign on the Anglican dotted line and slightly peculiar that he wants to keep it a secret. People who are outside the Anglican fold even if hobnobbing with it tend to be a bit more up front in terms of personal positions and even, dare I say, honesty.

Celinda

I think you are referring to a post Clare made on the ‘Tim Goodbody’s….’ thread and I plan to answer that post on that thread.

‘I do think we all would answer "yes" to your questions’.

I consider this to be an open question until parties say what their answers would be: not only Fulcrum leadership but the leaderships of Forward in Faith, Church Society, Anglican Mainstream, North West Partnership, Word and Spirit, Reform etc. I have indicated elsewhere why I think it doubtful that Ian Paul would answer ‘yes’ to all 4 questions. If I am wrong he can easily humble me by making a post saying so. There are four exceptions: wggrace whom I have already mentioned; Clare: although she probably has not said explicitly ‘my answer is no’ it is clear from her postings that her answer is ‘no’ to all four questions, with this important clarification: in the four questions ‘wrath’ is the wrath of God which God will inflict ‘on every soul of man working the evil’ who is not delivered from that wrath by the death and resurrection of Christ, not ‘wrath’ as understood by Clare; and Nersen and you who would probably answer ‘yes’ to all 4 questions.

You are probably right that when Paul said ‘save some’ he had in mind more than the wrath of God; quite probably he had in mind not only the penalty of sin but, as it is often put (perhaps somewhat inexactly but more or less true) increasingly the power of sin and finally, when Christians receive the adoption, the redemption of their bodies, the very presence of sin. Everyone who believes that Christianity is in some sense true believes that Christ saves us from something. You will have perceived that as I see it there is widespread denial (again, all you out there, contradict me if I am wrong) both that one of the things we all need saving from is the wrath of God, that it is the propitiatory death of Christ and his glorious resurrection which thus saves us, and that this need is the infinitely important need and the foundation of all the other blessings that the reign and kingdom of Christ brings to those who trust him and to the entire cosmos, which awaits with eager expectation the manifestation of the sons of God.

‘It seems like an emphasis coming from a different branch of Christianity, although it is certainly part of the Bible.’

I take it you mean ‘different from Anglicanism’? I am not an Anglican (for reasons I am keeping to myself) though I attend an Anglican Church. But just to say: Canon A5 of the CofE says:

The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures.

In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the Articles and I know from personal traumatic experience how devastating it can be when we come across the articles seriously for the first time. The Articles dealing with salvation are generally acknowledged to be 9-18. The wrath of God is mentioned in Article 2 (by implication: ‘reconcile his Father to us’); explicitly in Article 9 (see my question 2); implicitly in Article 17 (‘deliver from curse and damnation’).

Christ’s words about wrath take us back to my controversy with Clare and the statements by Christ which to me show beyond doubt that ‘yes’ is the right answer to question 1. I stress again, as I have tried to say more than once, that throughout the Bible are the two intertwined great themes; the anger of God and Christ against sinners and sin; and the amazing love grace and mercy of God and Christ seeking to save sinners from that anger, penalty and guilt and bringing them to everlasting salvation and felicity (to quote again from Article 17), which seeking culminates obviously in the Father planning and sending, the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, the gift of the Holy Spirit, reign and return of Jesus Christ the Lord. Since Jesus came on a mission of mercy to lost and broken sinners there is great emphasis on his mercy compassion and love, but the righteous anger is there as well in the sayings with which I have challenged Clare.

Phil Almond

I refer to my 1 May 2009 post and 5 May 2009 post on Cross v. Resurrection.

As far as I know (please correct me if I am wrong) nobody has explicitly said that they agree that ‘yes’ is the right answer to any of the four questions in my 5 May post apart from wggrace who ‘thinks that (he) can say yes to all four questions’.

If ‘yes’ is the right answer to even questions 1 to 3 how can deliverance from the threatened wrath not be the supreme need of every human being, infinitely more important than all other needs? Which is not to make light of those other needs, some of which are harrowing. And if so how can doing all we can in total dependence on God to bring about that deliverance fail to be the top priority of the ‘job’ for all of us? Which is why I don’t agree that ‘The Gospel punch line is surely so much more creative and dramatic and beautiful and wonderful than getting (some) people into heaven’ because the people who don’t go to heaven face God’s wrath in hell. But I do agree that such a deliverance is the foundation for all the other blessings which the mercy and grace of the Trinity have in store for Christians individually, as a community and for the whole cosmos.

If we could all (especially those who want to be known as evangelicals) agree that ‘yes’ is the right answer to at least questions 1 to 3. But in the quote from Tom Wright in the opening post from James Mercer on this thread there is no hint of such agreement at all.

Phil Almond

Justice & Beauty - now that really is good news --and to think we heard it here first !   (on Fulcrum of all places !)

Inspiring - and of how much stuff on 'an Evangelical ' website can that be said ?

Job description thread, my error--should have said I Corinthians:13, not II Corinthians.

Fr. Mercer--thanks for your "job description" and all the specifics, which do make Christ the center, and which echo much of what St. Paul was saying not only in II Corinthians:13 but in the passage Phil quoted.  Christ has done the work of salvation and is the cornerstone of the kingdom (which builds, I think, on the passage at the end of Ezekiel about the streams of living water, of justice, flowing out for everyone).  The things you mentioned all have to do with following Christ.  Phil emphasizes that we do this in order to show people how they must turn to Christ be saved from the wrath to come, and I imagine if he were a priest, since for him that's the "punch line," he'd spend more time on repeating those words than you do. You emphasize that we do it to build up the kingdom.  Phil--I'm assuming you think that's important too, since we look at scripture as a whole.  But I can't tell from what you said to Fr. Mercer if you think the kingdom passages are as important to be mentioned as the wrath passages.

The Apostle Paul put it rather differently did he not?

What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.

And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;

To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.

To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

The punch line being ‘save some’. Save from what? The wrath to come.

Phil Almond

'What's the job?'

When I started my training for ordained ministry the question upper most in my mind was 'What's the job?' That question remains: 'What's the job?' - both for the Vicar and for the parish church. At one level, of course, the answer for the Vicar is straightforward. The parish church expects its Vicar to lead services; preach; teach; visit (albeit set up, more often than not, to fail with that expectation!); pray; take funerals; lead school assemblies; ensure finances are sound; chair the PCC; conduct weddings; run courses; be available; host the parish BBQ; cut the churchyard grass(!) etc., etc.

That's fine - to a point. But what is the real job of which these are subsets, the job of the Christian community within the wider community of which the local church is an integral part? What is the task to which we are all called, the task we are to explore creatively and cheerfully and seek to articulate?

Well known words from 1 Corinthians 13.13: 'So faith, hope and love abide; these three. But the greatest of these is love'. Words, revolutionary when first written, echoed time and again in the New Testament letters - themselves an echo of the teaching of Jesus. Three key qualities that frame the task and identity of a Christian community. As St Paul puts it elsewhere, the Christian life is about 'faith expressing itself through love' (Galatians 5.6). But how is this to be expressed distinctly and practically and indeed, prophetically, by the worshiping community?

Contributing to the 2009 York Lent Course, Tom Wright is characteristically unequivocal, and yet as always imaginative, as to the task to which the church is called: 'The Church has to be involved in two things. One which we can loosely call 'justice' - making the world reflect the wise justice of God. And the other of which is basically beauty. If God is the Creator, he created a world lavishly filled with beauty. And if we as Christians are doing justice and doing beauty, whatever that's going to mean, then when we start talking about Jesus it will make more sense, than if we just say 'Oh forget the world, you need Jesus', because then you invite people to look at their own navels, 'Oh, do I need Jesus? Am I feeling unhappy, happy, or what?' That's not the point. When you are invited to get on board with what God is doing in and for his whole world. That's how it works'.

Absolutely. Here is clarity to bring to the task of the worshiping community - to be involved in two (complementary) activities: 'Justice' and 'Beauty' and so to be agents of God's Kingdom in putting the world to rights. And putting the world to rights is what Jesus accompanied once for all through the cross. Supremely in the resurrection on Easter Day, when all that was wrong with the world was over come and God's justice and beauty finally won the day. That is the story we are a part of. That is the story within which we are invited to write and act out an as yet unfinished chapter titled 'The local church: a servant community; following Jesus; for the good of the world' -cheerful and creative agents of God's justice and beauty.