Forum Thread
"Goddard 2 Goddard"

I have just read Giles last response of May 29th, which well expresses his bewilderment (from a perspective of mission and ministry in today's church, similarly to George etc on the Homosexuality thread) at a steam-rollering intransigence on the part of mainstream evangelicals over the issue of sex in faithful homosexual relationships.  The point has now been reached whereby the Conversation seems to be losing its life.  (I wish it were not so! not least in the absence of comment so far on Fulcrum.) 

Yes, the Gagnon correspondence seems to question Giles' theological security for departing from traditional values and assuming a weight of biblical scholarship on either side of the ethical fence.  Is there the freedom of biblical scholarship to follow contemporary experience? to use summaries of biblical theology as licence for widening the remit for sex in faithful relationships to include homosexuality?  However Giles eloquently speaks of the way our biblical interpretation is shaped by experience, and not allowed to rest by the significance of our answers for the mission context.

Regardless of disputed answers at this stage, we should draw confidence from becoming more aware of the strongest arguments, leaving behind 'misrepresentations and caricatures'(ABC).  This is still a conversation that should be alive and active in the communion and in the national church as the demanding practice of discernment across diversity.  

Ending the Goddards' conversation now is something that will be repeated up and down the country, if the Lions of Gafcon carry sway with sympathetic listeners(or not?) at All Souls today.  Although the 'Covenant for the CofE' had already started this separation, Gafcon, even All Souls, anticipates the results of a proper process of discernment such as Lambeth. Can politiking with pastoral responsibility be more blatant than being unable to 'wait for one another' one more month of ten years, and then absenting oneself from the episcopal forum of discernment when it really matters? The current ABC is to be applauded for the authoritative grace that he embodies in official pronouncements, as at times he alone seems committed and not injured by the conversation.

When this split finally happens, may I playfully suggest those of us ‘left behind’ because we refuse to join a purity cult, engage in some non violent resistance to being excluded by default. Or rather perhaps it should be called non violent acceptance!

 We could covertly go along to these new pure churches and take communion there –leaving a calling card in the collection plate saying something like ‘you have been included’ and quoting that poem by ?? that I first came across on some fulcrum thread

 He drew a circle that shut me out.
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.

 What else could we do? (I am only half joking)

 Clare

Ah, well that John Marshall, is different. That would be my ethic, but it really is my ethic. My ethic is that the table is open, and it is for the worst amongst us. But the worst and the gay relationship do not equate, and the honest mutual fulfilling relationship of any kind is those few steps up from the worst. Pannenberg and the whole of this ink-obsessed approach is just about everything I reject - it is bibliolatry and a form of idolising.

John writes:

…the conclusion must be that after five years of careful listening, persuading and pleading the Bishops who do adhere to the biblical norm have to say to the others: You have promoted schism, we can no longer have fellowship at the Lord's table with you.

That I find chillingly contrary to Gospel values. Let me relate a (true) story.

in 1962 the British Council of Churches held an international Youth Conference in Leicester. I was a delegate from my diocese, and in those days a pretty extreme Anglo-Catholic. The Bishop of Leicester invited all the delegates (except the Quakers and the Salvation Army delegates) to a Communion service in the cathedral. about 8 Anglicans, of whom I was one, refused the invitation, not wishing to share table fellowship with heretics and schismatics. I went to the service in the cathedral but did not receive.

I was wrong. I knew at once that I was wrong, that the Lord was doing something bigger than my obscurantist notions allowed for. It was a conversion experience of a kind. I went back to university and revived the inter-church study group attached to SCM, and have spent over 40 years taking my brothers and sisters of other ecclesial bodies as serious disciples of the same Lord (though I find the exclusiveness of some others very hard to bear). I learned then, and have taught consistently since, that in the Eucharist is given grace for sinners, not a reward for the godly, that it is indeed the "medicine of immortality, the antidote to death", and more often than not all that we have in our moment of need.

Might it not be better to say "I disagree profoundly with almost everything you stand for, but I am a sinner too, and at the Lord's Table we both will receive the grace we need to grow more perfectly into the image of Christ"? Christians have an alarming habit of turning obiter dicta into universal truths - including Paul's strictures on the bad behaviour of the Corinthian minority.

Never, never refuse an invitation to the Lord's Table because of the other guests: it pleases only Satan. Go and pray for the grace you need, and for those who receive with you to be given the grace they need. The Lord knows better than you and me what that is for all of us.

I think that's right, Pluralist. When Andrew quotes Pannenberg as saying that

Those who urge the church to change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism. If a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm, and recognized homosexual unions as a personal partnership of love equivalent to marriage, such a church would stand no longer on biblical ground but against the unequivocal witness of Scripture.

 

... then he is saying much the same as the Dean of Sydney as quoted on the GAFCON thread below. His (the Dean's) argument is that division itself is not a sin, divisiveness is. And those who consecrated the Bishop of New Hampshire against the specific request of the Primates not to do so (and the Lambeth Conference Bishops, and the Kuala Lumpur statement inter alia) and who have failed to repent of this action have thus "departed from the biblical norm" as Pannenberg puts it.

I believe Andrew is right here and that the conclusion must be that after five years of careful listening, persuading and pleading the Bishops who do adhere to the biblical norm have to say to the others: You have promoted schism, we can no longer have fellowship at the Lord's table with you.

I take it that the latest view of Andrew Goddard shows that he is one with GAFCON. If acceptance of homosexuality is schism, then to withdraw from those that do is not itself schism because it has already taken place. That material by Pannenberg is appalling.

http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/

There is a 'place' Beyond words ....

I'll use words to hint at it !  ;

'the Silence of Eternity interpretted by Love'

'A skillful or deceptive preacher can become quite adept at using a set of words that mean something to the liberal believer whilst sounding orthodox to others. I've listened to many a sermon that runs in two directions at once'.

Or is it skillful and deceptive?  In my limited experience, the more gnostic-leaning the lecturer or preacher, the more s/he is inclined to uphold traditional forms/language while making it clear to the illuminati, to those who have the ears, that something quite different is meant. 

But of course the temptation must be universal, since we push certain buttons to please a particular group, while not letting on that we can very well push a different set that they may not agree with.  I suppose it's a form of self-preservation.

'I wonder how well even subcultures communicate between each other'.  I don't think this sounds extreme at all.  I expect that the rule is that for those who belong to more than one subculture the cross-cultural communication is primarily an inward one, an inner struggle.  The norm is to remain within a ghetto, which is what I think Alastair may have suggested.

Quite so. We do not speak the same meaning, even when using the same string of words.

A skillful or deceptive preacher can become quite adept at using a set of words that mean something to the liberal believer whilst sounding orthodox to others. I've listened to many a sermon that runs in two directions at once. The string of the same words has a different meaning according to other strings of words that accompany them, and it may be that other strings of words have been spoken at a different time. The Conservative Evangelical and Open Evangelical often use the same string of words, but they can mean something quite variant.

The possibility has to be, however, that someone may never know quite what is meant by the other user. You can only find out by spending a long time with such a person, and developing a full sense of the cross links of all the phrases and their meanings (a sub-culture) and of course even then such absorption prevents telling it to the other. This may sound extreme, but I wonder how well even subcultures communicate between each other.

Alastair Thom

It's clearly good that the conversation goes on, and I hope it can broaden out to issues of how one works out faith. Conversation across the Divide is a thread version of this exchange of letters - though there are a number of divides. Unless you talk, you cannot tell how others think, and know the differences and similarities. I've enjoyed the conversation with Steve Griffin, for example. Each conversation should involve the risk of changing oneself too, even if this happens indirectly.

It does seem to me now that the divide is becoming a chasm. The Issue is narrower and yet the consequence seems to be ever greater. A possible conversation may also be how to conduct an amicable divorce, and what it could look like if it does not end up being nasty and continue to echo on in new issues and futher splits. For example, in what practical ways could a Church of England divide that at least is organised and flexible and treats one another well? Perhaps the Anglican Communion should be treated to this question first (it is easier t[ handle too). I ask this because reading around I see division as simply more and more likely, and the language becoming ever more heated. A better organised division is one where, once the break has happened, the gap won't elarge with quite the same furious intent.

I've just managed to read the current letters (from GG to AG and then from AG to GG) and I am so glad that these have resumed and we are able to view them in the public domain.

I became aware as I read both these letters that the vulnerability of both Giles and Andrew must be/feel immense - they are engaging in a public discourse on a topic which is contentious in the Church context, which is incredibly personal and which has the possibility of creating difficulties in their friendship (which comes across as genuine and deepening)

To Andrew and Giles I ask you to continue this exchange - a few of us may put our tuppenceworth in here, but actually I am gaining much more from simply reading and watching how this discourse actually goes on in practice.  It is something we are all called to do and few have managed - I certainly haven't, to my shame.

As an aside, and much more attributed to my inquisitive nature than theological nouse, I would be interested to know how Giles got to the point he is in terms of his conscientious stance with regards to same-sex relationships - was it a movement?  Did he always think this?  How do you move from one side of the fence to the other, to use a crude metaphor?  Is Giles inviting Andrew towards a path that he himself has walked?  I'm thinking of the 'different languages' metaphor.  If Giles has walked this road then the road itself cannot be completely unknown to him.  If this is the case then it seems to me that Giles is more knowledgable in the 'language' that needs to be spoken (a 'language' that Andrew knows) or, to put it another way, the 'map' needed for the road.  Not because Andrew is not knowledgable (indeed considerably more than I) but because I am assuming he has not made the same transition, and therefore his knowledge is observed rather than lived.

now, of course we can have very good observed knowledge, I don't want to denigrate this in any way, and we cannot have lived knowledge of every way of life or being - that would be simply impossible - and this should not mean we are not free to comment.

So, what am I saying then?  Perhaps that the language metaphor might bring light to how this conversation is unfolding (Giles may be bilingual and Andrew monolingual).

I have asked the question before, on a post on my blog, which Steve picked up on the 'conversation across the divide' thread, as to whether conservatives evangelicals and open evangelicals are speaking different languages and I wonder if this might shed some light on that questions too.

enough for now.

x Jody