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Ending the Cycle of Vengeance
by Graham Kings
The Church of England Newspaper, 2 May 2008
Part of an address, ‘Faith and Fellowship in Crisis’, published in full on Fulcrum, given at the Pre-Lambeth Conference of the Diocese of Lichfield
University of Stafford, 26 April 2008
 A friend and I were trying to meet up at Spring Harvest. We hadn’t seen each other yet, although we both knew we were there. We arranged to meet at the front of the main white pavilion. ‘I can’t see you yet, Pete. I’m just by the main entrance’. ‘So am I’, he said. We still could not find each other. Then, in a moment of inspiration, he asked: ‘You’re not in Minehead are you?’ ‘Yes.’ He replied, ‘I’m in Skegness!’ Well, at least we both thought we were at the same conference – not rival ones, one in Canterbury and another in Jordan and Jerusalem.
The splits in The Episcopal Church of the USA are in danger of becoming a cycle of vengeance and spiraling outwards. Currently, The Episcopal Church and the churches of the ‘Common Cause Partnership’, who are splitting away from it, have got themselves into a crazy situation of suing and counter-suing. This litigation is appalling.
The communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam (February 2007) spoke, in particular, against litigation and yet the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, and others who read it and knew the mind of the Primates, still went ahead with it. The Bishop of Virginia, Peter Lee, was negotiating with the breakaway parishes in Virginia to bring about a settlement and agreement. Then he was overruled by the central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church and legal cases were started, and defended, and are costing millions of dollars - which belong to God.
Where is the central Anglican voice of Scripture interpreted by tradition and reason? In the USA, it seems to me, it is the ‘Windsor Bishops’ who are conservative on issues of sexuality but are not going to split from The Episcopal Church. They have met several times at Camp Allen, facilitated by the theological work of the Anglican Communion Institute. The web site ‘Covenant’ (www.covenant-communion.com) which was launched in September 2007, is also a valuable resource in a similar tradition.
Who can cry ‘stop this madness of litigation’? For this drama, we need a Greek Chorus to comment on it and cry ‘shame’ and ‘cease’.
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I saw an amazing play at the Barbican theatre in London, ‘Molora’. It is a South African version of the three Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, known as the Oresteia trilogy. A young director, Yael Farber, has recontextualised the tragedies into the setting of apartheid South Africa and subsequent events. It is very powerful, and the Chorus are the heroines.
For they are played by South African mamas who use traditional drums, a basic one- stringed instrument of a calabash and a bow, and twangy metal mouth instruments. They create a ‘soundscape’ around the action, sing in split tones and come out with deep groans – sighs too deep for words.
As they appeared, I whispered to Alison, ‘remember the Mothers Union in Kenya?’ We served in Kenya with the Church Mission Society for seven years at a theological college at Kabare, just south of Mount Kenya. The Mothers Union there, and throughout Africa, are a powerful, unstoppable movement. One day, Bishop David Gitari, who later became Archbishop of Kenya, was threatened by a Cabinet Minister for his challenging sermons advocating justice. He was ordered to turn up at the Cabinet Minister’s office. Bishop Gitari said he would be delighted to do so, and he would attend wearing his robes, together with all the Mothers Union, wearing their robes. Nothing further was heard about the matter.
These three tragedies of Aeschylus are based on a cycle of violence and vengeance. In the first play, Agamemnon, the King and leader of the Greek soldiers who captured Troy, is murdered by his wife, Klytemnestra. In the second, their son and daughter, Orestes and Elektra, plot revenge on their mother, and Orestes kills her. He is then threatened by the Furies for doing so and flees. The Furies are mythical, very scary avengers of crime, especially family murders. The third is the trial of Orestes who is accused by the Furies. When the Athenian judges have a split vote, Athene gives her casting vote to Orestes.
Now ‘Molora’, at the Barbican, weaves this tragic story into new patterns. It begins with the trial scene, but ‘not as we know it’, for this is the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, which was chaired by Desmond Tutu. Tutu does not appear in the play, but is mentioned with awe and appreciation in the programme. The mother and daughter face each other across the stage, behind desks with microphones on them and speak of what had happened.
Later we see what they were talking about when the white mother, Klytemnestra, abused her black daughter, Elektra, using apartheid-era torture methods, including holding her head under water in a bowl and keeping her head in a wet plastic bag. The arrival from exile of the black Orestes, the son, and the recognition of him by Elektra, is very moving. The plot of vengeance is frightening.
However, in ‘Molora’, amazingly the ending is changed. The cycle of violence and vengeance, according to the ancient written tragedy, is stopped. And there is hope.
There is not blood and death all over the place at the end. Orestes can’t bring himself to kill his mother and the axe dramatically does not come down on her head. When Elektra takes it up to kill her mother herself, because Orestes has bottled out, she is wrestled away by the Chorus of mamas. They carry her, still struggling, to the side of the stage and over a few minutes of singing and soothing, murmuring and caressing, calm her down.
The wrong is righted by the end being rewritten. The Chorus enters into the drama, physically, and does not just comment on it. ‘Molora’ is the Sesotho word for ‘ash’. When fire is met with fire, all that remains is ashes.
Now the Anglican Communion is caught up in a cycle of verbal and litigious violence and vengeance. It is not physical as in this trilogy, but is still heart rending and shocking. The litigation and splits that are happening in the USA, and which are being planned to extend to the Anglican Communion, need to stop.
Some of the leaders of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) have plans to set up a non-Canterbury centred Communion. This is openly being discussed on conservative web sites in the USA. Recently, the Bishop of Bungoma in Western Kenya, Dr Eliud Wabukala, was reported as saying about GAFCON, ‘Does it mean we are starting our own church? The answer is that we are going there to seek God’s will.’
It is a crucial time and some of the other leaders of the Global South Anglican movement who may be there, but are also deeply involved in the Lambeth Conference, need to persuade them against this act of vengeance. For that is what it would be. To set up a rival Anglican Communion, not centred on Canterbury, would be an act of vengeance. You have done that to me, so I will do this to you.
There is another way. It is the way of faith in the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, where wrong was righted and the end was rewritten.
Rowan Williams, in his Advent Letter of 2007, referred to his earlier invitations to the Lambeth Conference and wrote that: ‘a refusal to meet can be a refusal of the cross – and so of the resurrection. We are being asked to see our handling of conflict and potential division as part of our maturing both as pastors and as disciples.’
In his video, released this week on YouTube, the Archbishop says: ‘What I would really most like to see in this year’s Lambeth Conference is the sense that this is essentially a spiritual encounter. A time when people are encountering God as they encounter one another, a time when people will feel that their life of prayer and witness is being deepened and their resources are being stretched.’
As the bishops gather this summer, may God have mercy on the Anglican Communion and may the Anglican Communion delight in God.
Canon Dr Graham Kings is vicar of St Mary Islington and theological secretary of Fulcrum. This is part of an address given at the Pre-Lambeth Conference of the Diocese of Lichfield, 26 April 2008. The full version, ‘Faith and Fellowship in Crisis’, is on the Fulcrum site.
Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum
Forum Posts About This Article:
Posted by: Clare
Tuesday 27 May 2008 - 12:25pm
do either the barmen declaration or the kairos declaration teach us anything about faith and fellowship in crisis?
Posted by: Clare
Tuesday 27 May 2008 - 11:25am
the conversation that Phil, Iconoclast and others are having is fascinating but I think should be on a different thread - so I've carried on my conversation with them on a new thread 'God of Christ and God of wrath'
Clare
Posted by: Iconoclast
Sunday 25 May 2008 - 03:08pm
Clare,
Thank you for your long and reasoned response to my last posting. I will attempt (inadequately) to respond to the important issues you raise.
I think my motivation to be drawn to God is primarily driven by that of what C S Lewis described as sehnsucht a German word meaning 'longing' . If you go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht_(C._S._Lewis)
it explains more about what I mean. It is 'some other country' that I look forward to that is infinitely preferable to the consequences of remaining in this one and totally separated from God.
On the question of judgement. I think that we both agree that it is a central motif throughout the Bible the question is what does the judgement of God mean and to whom is it directed?
I would like to offer the following based mainly on the parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22. I never really understood the significance of this parable until someone pointed out to me that in the Ancient World, it was the custom of the hosts to provide a wedding garment. Seems strange to us - imagine being invited to a wedding where the brides parents buy your wedding outfit! .
The individual who turned up in their own garments were insulting the host by effectively saying that their own garments were good enough thank you very much, and they would prefer to wear their own. I think you have to be able to appreciate the depth of Jewish custom to realise just how insulting this action was - Jesus evidently knew that the hearers would understand but this parable is about self-righteouness and pride.
And here therein, lies a clue as to what and to whom judgement is directed. The parable of the wedding feast is showing us God's attitude to someone who is proud and self-righteous. I think it is rather like say, the Government's attitude to someone who decides to print their own money. They would soon be arrested as their own money would have no value and would soon contaminate the genuine money supply . They would have to be imprisoned and taken out of circulation.
Jesus's harshest and most judgemental words were reserved for those who were self-righteous and proud but tender to those who knew humility. They were also reserved for false teachers (see letters to the seven chuches of Asia in Rev - re the Nicolaitians)
Another illustraion of what I mean is found in Luke 23 where of two criminals punished next ot Jesus on the cross, one displays proud arrogance and the other humillity. I doubt that the humble criminal understood very much of Jesus ' mission and who He was, but his attitude of heart and acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord 'Remember me when you come into your Kingdom' - was sufficient to enable him to enter paradise.
I often wonder as to how God will judge people. You often come across individuals who have done dreadful things yet they have had dreadful lives often being abused themselves especially when they were children So where does the boundary regarding their personal responsibilty lie?
I think part of the answer to that question is to do with pride and self-righteouness and that there comes a point in everyone where these take over and determine our choices and it is at this stage that God holds us personally accountable. I have often found that humility is a stumbling block when talking to people about Christianity. I have heard all too often the number of reason that people give as why God should accept them for the works they have done. One lady insinuatedto me recently that she was a Christian because she was born into the Church of England- and God is an Englishman.....
God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble The of of Jesus cleanses us from sin (the effect of pride) but to be free of pride we must humble ourselves (James 4 v6). That is hard for a lot of people. However we must be careful that we don't get proud of the fact that we are humble!
Speaking as one myself, I think that Evangelicals often make it too difficult for people to get saved. In Acts 10 we read about the conversation that Peter had with Cornelius. What is interesting here is that was Cornelius attitude of heart that made him acceptable unto God and I am not convinced here that Cornelius was a 'christian believer ' in the sense that we might understand it , but humility he most definitely had.
Near where I live there is one of the largest communities of New Age people in the UK . many of them are earnestly seeking God and displayfar more humility than many in the Church. In fact the tragedy is that many have rejected the church because they find it unreal and hypocritical. Having talked to many of them I cannot agree with some of their doctrines but but there is no denying their fervency in seeking God and I can't help thinking there are a few Cornelius's among them.
We read Jesus admonition (Matt 721-23) of those who claimed to do many mighty works in His name but Jthen esus gives then short shrift. Their attitude reeks of pride does it not? I think that some who we thought were sheep and some goats may turn out to be the other way round at the last Trump.
You mention goats becoming sheep. Are you advancing here the Roman Catholic concept of Purgatory ? It seesm to me that it is difficult to read the passages in the NT about judgement without getting the impression that there is a certain finality about it.
Apologies for this long post but I am sure you will agree these important issues don't have short answers!
Posted by: Art
Saturday 24 May 2008 - 02:11am
If a week was once upon a time a long time in politics, what is a month in the blogosphere?!
Pete Hobson questioned me at the start of this thread about friendships and their fate within the current “crisis” of the AC. My answer was deliberately loaded, by referring to the civil war in Zimbabwe (even that way of describing it eludes other inferences: I do not for example use the Shona word for “Struggle” though some of friends would very naturally ...). But how does such an analogy of ambivalent armed struggle colour our picture of the AC’s present plight, one might wonder? And what of the nature of friendships in such a view?
The blogosphere reaction(s) to Abp Mouneer Anis’s letter re GAFCON are full of talk regarding betrayal of friendships, alliances and such. And while I myself deplore such lack of basic Christian charity, especially when there is no face-to-face meeting (blogs have this nasty tendency of abstraction and so little immediate accountability ...), it is sadly an indication that the civil war analogy is probably apt.
Mr Hobson, I’d prefer it to be otherwise, but clearly all we now lack are Cyril of Alexandria’s bands of marauding monks ... But perhaps, just perhaps, knowing well his own locale (which I guess a good number in cyberspace just do not), that is exactly what the Abp is wanting to try to avoid - amongst other things ...?
Posted by: Phil Almond
Friday 23 May 2008 - 09:17pm
Clare
Thanks for your posting of 21 May 2008 11.33 pm.
I think we may be at cross purposes in some respects so I would like to clarify these before finally agreeing to have a conversation on this.
1. I agree that I am ‘rushing (well, perhaps rushing is the wrong word because I try to construct my postings with great care) to show you the error of your ways’. But that does not mean I am not listening to what you say or not really engaging with what you say. I have got to give a frank opinion (as you have given frank opinions about me:
“I said it before and I'll say it again, I really believe your doctrine of biblical authority gets in the way of actually being able to hear the gospel. ultimately, it's idolatory.”
“Please take what follows as an attempt not to be patronising or point scoring. Forget debating, let’s talk. I am not sure you have actually encountered Christ yet. (Lots of God, but no actual Christ). I say this respectfully and with fear and trembling and in no way suggesting that my own encounter with Christ is anything other than at the initial stages.”)
and say that I can’t find anything positive in what you have said. That is because our present convictions on who God is, what he is like, the condition of man before him, the heart of Christ’s saving work – are utterly irreconcilable.
2. Yes. I did not mean to imply that you ‘deny that there is any harmony between the Christ event and the God the Old Testament’. It is already clear from your earlier postings that you recognise some harmony. What I should have said is (changes in italics)
‘But before I spend quite a bit of time doing that I am seeking Clare’s assurance that she will then respond, on the assumption that all that is true, either trying to show that on that assumption the Bible does not paint a consistent picture of God (especially about the wrath of God), or acknowledging, on that assumption, that it does.
3. The point about using what the apostles said, wrote, did as well as what Jesus said and did. From your point of view the ‘Christ event’ stands in judgment (OK these are my words, they might not be your words, but I hope you know what I mean) on – well, there is a spectrum of possibilities:
All the OT. We already know from what you have posted that the OT is judged by the Christ event. Some passes the test, some is discarded or corrected.
The question now is: how much of the NT is judged by the Christ event and how much is included in the Christ event which is the judge. Obviously (well, obvious to me, say if you disagree) each part of the NT, however defined, must either be in the Christ event or judged by it. We already know from what you have posted that some of the NT is judged by the Christ event. Clearly at one extreme is the position that all of the NT is judged by the Christ event. For this to be the case the Christ event which is the judge must be constructed, derived (choose a word) from sources (literary, direct from God, Christian community, advancing world consciousness, whatever) outside the NT. I was choosing a position on the spectrum where we agreed to debate as though all that the NT says Jesus said, did, allowed to be done, is true. When I posted
'I [Phil] am not allowed, on Clare’s terms, to use what the apostles and early followers of Christ said, wrote, did as recorded in the New Testament’ I was referring to the teaching and acts of the apostles whether recorded for instance in the Acts or the letters, or Revelation. If we were to include this, alongside the words and acts of Christ, in the Christ event as ‘definitely true, definitely happened’ I would be able for instance, in the conversation/debate to say ‘Paul writes that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against…..’ and ‘So therefore whom he wishes he has mercy, whom he wishes he hardens’ and you would, in the conventions of the debate we agreed, have to accept that God is really like that.
So I would like to ask the question: do you want the Christ event, the ‘definitely true, definitely happened’ to be just the words and acts of Christ as recorded in the NT, or the whole of the NT? Do you want to proceed with the debate on one or the other of these?
Phil Almond
Posted by: Clare
Friday 23 May 2008 - 09:08pm
Iconoclast – thank you for the generous and respectful tone of your last post. I am glad you have reassured me that you believe from motives of love and not fear. I really do find it hard to square your comment that you are attracted to God because of his beauty with your belief that he does some very unbeautiful things though.
This judgement thing…..I think there is a problem here for both liberals and conservatives. The problem for conservatives is that it is hard to reconcile a loving God with one who would consign huge numbers of people he created to eternal suffering. I don’t think it is wet and fluffy to find this utterly immoral. No one deserves this – not Hitler, not Ian Huntley, not Fred West. Being made to confront the consequences of one’s actions and take responsibility for them – definitely. Punished? Maybe? Maybe really facing the full consequences of what we have done is punishment enough. Liberals have the opposite problem. You are right that liberals often downplay our being called to account to an extent that makes God seem indifferent to the abysmal depths of human suffering that we can inflict upon each other. We need something that embraces the strengths in both positions while rejecting the weaknesses.
And yes, at this point, I am going to bang on about the Girardian perspective again which may be one way of making sense of this. This acknowledges the dire, deadly consequences of sin. It explicitly believes that the whole of human culture is constructed on sin and that human beings cannot escape this destructive web in which we are caught without God’s intervention and rescue. So far, so conservative.
But then it departs from the familiar script. It analyses what sin is. If you read the 10 commandments backwards, you get a pretty good idea of the girardian idea of sin. We start off coveting what our neighbour has (just because they have it and we do not), which leads to us lying and misrepresenting to ourselves and others our virtue and their vice, which can them lead to stealing of other people's goods, reputation, wellbeing (psychological, economic, social and cultural) or significant others. It certainly leads to murdering people in our hearts through hatred, and too often, to real violence and murder – not only through individual violence but also through this rivalistic acquisitiveness writ large in the collective violence of war, economic exploitation and oppression. And it can also lead to the breakdown of harmonious intergenerational relationships and to scapegoating – one person or group of people become the convenient bad guys who need punishing for commiting the very same crimes we all commit, one way or another.
The remaining 4 commandments underline that coveting is ultimately idolatry –and the antidote to this is worship of God which detoxes our disordered and envious desires. It agrees that all these things are bad and cause us to perish at one another’s hands. This is the perishing that Jesus came to rescue us from. Sin is undeniably scary and frightening in its consequences – but it is the consequences that we meet out on one another that are the real problem. How can we live alongside other people in the Kingdom of God when we are infested with a violent, rivalistic envy? What is worse, we are completely blind to this envy and violence in ourselves but can spot it a mile off in other people, especially our scapegoats who exist solely to prevent us ever having to face up to the truth about ourselves. The message is not ‘we are all victims’ rather ‘we all make one another victims’.
The cross ‘judges’ this sin by showing up its consequences on an innocent victim. It is a sacrifice offered to propitiate an angry violent god, the angry violent god that lives in each one of our hearts. Our judgement of one another is judged and found wanting and replaced with this antidote – forgiveness. Yes, Jesus and the apostles talk about judgement and winnowing and fire and destruction, but then, what actually happens is that the destruction happens not at the hands of God upon sinful humanity, but at the hands of sinful humanity upon an innocent God. And this ‘judgement’ is met with gentle forgiveness – not retribution. Jesus in his cross and resurrection turns the language of judgement on its head. We judge, God is judged. We convict, God forgives. We blame, God perishes. We sin, God faces the consequences.
Does everyone get into heaven in the end? Only when we can forgive those who sin against us and acknowledge our need for forgiveness from those against whom we have sinned. When we want a final justice against those who have hurt us, Jesus declares – here – have it – take your desire for retribution out on me – but I’ll not let you take it out on this my child Adolph/Ian/Fred/Clare/Phil/Iconoclast/etc. You can stay outside heaven disgusted at my weak, generous forgiveness and demanding your right to justice for as long as you like, or you can accept that I have paid whatever price it is that you demand these people deserve. So there may, after all, be sheep and goats, although let’s hope the goats give up and become sheep eventually. And there may well be two gospels –the gospel of those – whatever their theological and ecclesiastical hue – who have really begun to live from this forgiven and forgiving place and the gospel of those who would rather be right. Those who find themselves justified by their trust (faith) in Christ’s way of forgiveness and those who justify themselves by their doctrinal/political/liberal/personal correctness.
Now, you may not go along with this interpretation. You may think it is a complete travesty of the gospel. But it does take sin seriously. It is not wishy washy. And it does not make God vicious.
When we listen to each other in generosity and with a little epistemological humility (as you evidently do) let us hope that we are showing our faith in the 'right' gospel.
here's hoping,
Clare
Posted by: Iconoclast
Thursday 22 May 2008 - 02:44pm
Clare you wrote,
This is how I read this. Jesus scares you. You fear judgement, hell and eternal damnation. So you believe in him and will do whatever he says. You’ll say that you love him. You’ll tell him he is so kind to let you associate with him. You’ll even believe you deserve his contempt and it is only his amazing generosity that lets him bear being with you. You’ll try really hard to get other people to say this too- whatever it takes to protect yourself from the anger of this scary, frightening God. But you don’t actually like God, or really freely love him. Because the love you profess is exacted under duress, under threat of damnation –so it isn’t really love at all.
Then you read me completely wrong. I am attracted to God because of his beauty (and certainly not because of the Anglican Church!) - but I also realise that I am a sinner and that if I remain in a sinful state I will not be able to enter into his presence that is why I need a Redeemer.
My love for God is not exacted under duress -it is my choice. I am a Christian because I love Jesus. I am not frightened into the Kingdom of God. However that choice necessarily involves consequences in both in my personal life and eternally.
One analogy of salvation that I have found helpful, is to think of it as God sending Jesus on a rescue mission - if I agree to be rescued then I will be saved if I don't - well then I won't! There is no duress involved here - one option may seem more attractive than the other - but in the end it is my choice to be rescued or not. Jesus implored people to make the right choice and follow Him but never forced them to but nonetheless warned in no uncertain terms as to what the consequences would be which are undeniably scary and frightening.The Apostles did the same.
As to preaching the Gospel , we should be telling people that there is a judgement to come as well as preaching the love of God. John 3:16 says that God "so loved the world" -- but desires that "no one should perish" implies that some will perish does it not? Not everybody is going to make it. Following Jesus is not a lifestyle choice. At , there will be goats as well as sheep
(BTW, I think we might be surprised what kind of people will fit into those categories - that is for God to decide). However, we will all have to give an account of ourselves before God with Jesus as our Judge.
The teaching of God's judgement does not sit well with modern notions of tolerance, non-discrimination and non-judgmentalism but Jesus and the Apostles preached it. Most liberals I have met and read would deny any kind of eternal judgment. My impression is that they treat passages about the judgement of God in a figurative or metaphorical sense with everybody as a victim and that we must all try and become 'better' people. That God could hold us personally responsible and may call us to account at is anathema to them.
BTW, I do not think you have been point scoring between Liberals and Consevatives and I don't think Phil Almond does either. I respect your point of view, but the nature of this discussion does I think, provide yet another illustration of the gulf that exists between liberal and orthodox theologies which led the Bishop of Rochester to talk about "two different gospels" in the Church of England. It is very difficult to see how this can be resolved, although one would hope that exchanges on the forum may be conducted in a spirit of generosity and courtesy that in the main, has been a hallmark of the Cof E.
Peace.
Posted by: Clare
Wednesday 21 May 2008 - 11:33pm
Phil and my last posting obviously crossed in the ether. Yes Phil, I'll have that conversation with you if.....
you also listen to me. this isn't just about you setting the terms of reference and me trying to refute them and then you trying to prove how wrong I am. you need to try and find what is positive in what I say. it often feels you are rushing to show me the error of my ways without really engaging with what I say. other wise really all we are saying to each other is 'but I'm a conservative' or 'but I'm a liberal'.
we do this on a new thread - maybe 'Phil, Clare and friends discuss God' or, less self referentially - conservatives and liberals trying to listen to each other. that way - people who are completely bored by us can avoid us and can use this thread for its real purpose. I'll leave it to you to choose a new name.
just to clarify a couple of things, you say that I deny that there is any harmony between the Christ event and the God the Old Testament. No - that is not the case at all. I argue that there are harmonies and disharmonies throughout the Bible. Within the Old Testament itself there are conflicting images of what God is like. Some of these are in harmony with the Christ event and some are not. The same could be said to a lesser extent of the New Testament.
You also say, 'I [Phil] am not allowed, on Clare’s terms, to use what the apostles and early followers of Christ said, wrote, did as recorded in the New Testament. Er, where did you get that idea? That's what the NT is, a record of what the apostles and early followers of Christ believed that Christ did/said/meant/means. Of course you can use it. Of course I can use it. I am just saying that just because John- for example - says that Jesus says something, does not necessarily mean that Jesus actually did say it (or didn't say it) - rather it tells us that that was what John thought he said or meant. And John may well be right.
Clare
Posted by: Clare
Wednesday 21 May 2008 - 10:52pm
Phil, Iconoclast, I am sorry if I’ve contributed to this thread degenerating into liberal versus conservative point scoring – I am genuinely bewildered and perplexed and want to understand why you believe as you do and to be challenged as to why I believe as I do – and I want to convert you of course ! But I really don’t get it.
Iconclast writes: There are many things that Jesus said that were downright scary and frightening regarding the judgment to come and the winding up of history that I wish were not there. If someone could convince me that there was not a final judgement, that all this hell and eternal damnation talk was the product of primitive ideas ………..then I would embrace it.
This is how I read this. Jesus scares you. You fear judgement, hell and eternal damnation. So you believe in him and will do whatever he says. You’ll say that you love him. You’ll tell him he is so kind to let you associate with him. You’ll even believe you deserve his contempt and it is only his amazing generosity that lets him bear being with you. You’ll try really hard to get other people to say this too- whatever it takes to protect yourself from the anger of this scary, frightening God. But you don’t actually like God, or really freely love him. Because the love you profess is exacted under duress, under threat of damnation –so it isn’t really love at all.
It’s like those bully boys in the playground who surround themselves with scared followers who do his every bidding and feel proud to be his friend –because the consequences of being his enemy are just too dreadful to contemplate. And what the scared boys really want is for someone to come and show the bully up for what he is, and help them not to be scared of him anymore so then can walk away and be friends with everyone and just get along with some good, creative playing.
That’s what I believe Jesus was about. No an avuncular uncle or cuddly Zebedee (caricatures too, incidentally) but someone who came and showed up the bully for what he was, and was destroyed by him, but who rose again, and wholehearted and warm spiritedly forgave the bully and his flunkies and understood them without hating them and liked them and wanted them to enjoy the playground in the same warm spirited, generous way.
The bully in all this is not and never has been God. It has been our projections of our own bullying and violence onto the heavens as a means of self justification. That’s what Jesus came to show us. But to believe in this does mean you have to read the bible in a different way – one that seeks to discern through the Holy Spirit where God-the-risen-victim-of-the-bully is speaking over and against where god-the-idol-construct-of-our-own-violence is speaking. The bible, unlike all other texts before it, is NOT a purely human construct. It is a partly human construct. It is the revelation of God exactly because it points to, uncovers and demythologises the parts constructed through human violence and reveals what God is really like. It detoxes our theologies of a retributive god. In this it is unique. All other texts – save those who have had their hearts broken by this message - hide our complicity in violence.
So repentance of our own bullying and our hiding from the truth about our bullying is at the heart of the bible. And the god of punishment and condemnation that Jesus sets us free from is not ‘primitive’ or ‘quaint’ but ever so contemporary, always present in every subculture (religious and secular) until Christ the liberator sets it free.
a lot more nuanced a position in other words than the caricature of 'liberals making it up because it feels good'.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Wednesday 21 May 2008 - 09:52pm
Taking Clare’s postings of 7 and 8 April 2008 on the thread “Surprised by Hope – not surprised by ‘The Rapture’” as a statement of her position, I will try to critique that position, though it involves some repetition of what I have already said. I take it that Clare is saying that what she calls ‘the Christ event’ must become what I would call the controlling principle. That is, the Christ event corrects misapprehensions and half truths in both the Old and New Testaments. I assume that the Christ event includes what Jesus said, what he did, and what he allowed to be done to him. So in order to challenge Clare’s position in its own terms I have got to show that on the sole basis of what Jesus said, did, allowed to be done to him, there is harmony between the Christ event and the God the Old Testament gives us. I am not allowed, on Clare’s terms, to use what the apostles and early followers of Christ said, wrote, did as recorded in the New Testament. OK.
That brings us to the issue of ‘Did Jesus say and do all that the New Testament says he said and did?’ Clare’s 7 April posting gives her view. I said at the time that her view does not provide enough common ground with my view for a debate. But perhaps we could try it this way.
I am ready to try to spell out in detail the evidence, from what Christ is recorded in the New Testament as having said, done and allowed to be done to him, on the assumption that all that is true, that the Christ event is in harmony with the God the Old Testament gives us. But before I spend quite a bit of time doing that I am seeking Clare’s assurance that she will then respond, on the assumption that all that is true, either trying to show that on that assumption the God of the OT and the Christ event are not in harmony, or acknowledging, on that assumption, that they are. I stress I am not asking Clare to agree that Christ said and did all that the NT says he said and did; only to respond on the assumption that he did.
Clare – are you agreeable to proceed on that basis?
Phil Almond
Posted by: Adam
Tuesday 20 May 2008 - 10:07pm
Could the answer rest not in the extremes, but in a middle way, that seems to be standard evangelical teaching - God's wrath in the Bible refers not to a nasty, out of control, vindictive anger as we know it in ourselves and in other but as his just and right response to sin, at the systemic and the personal levels. Looked at from this angle, God's wrath is a product of his love. A loving God looks on a world out of joint with a desire to destroy all that destroys and mars his good world. Surely love desires to rescue the object of love from damaging and corrupting forces and influences.
This is where the love of God is expressed in God in Christ bearing the consequences of sin (wrath) and evil on himself.. and of course what happens on the cross is wonderfully multifaceted and can be described via all of the atonement models in scripture such as penal substitution,christus victor, christus exemplar, recapitualtion theory.. etc etc.
Why drive a wedge between God's love and God's wrath when there seems no need to separate these two vital aspects of his character?
Posted by: Clare
Tuesday 20 May 2008 - 08:54pm
Phil, of course it was a caricature - I talking talking tongue in cheek!
But seriously, you admit that the implications of taking every word of the bible literally are terrible. I would agree. Believing in a God like that would be immoral. What I don't understand is why you believe that just because something is ascribed in the bible as being commanded by God, that makes it good and morally right - even though were anyone else to do it (genocide, burning people alive, ordering stoning, drowning people, ordering people to murder their children, condoning rape for example) they would convicted of either crimes against humanity or declared mad. honestly, if God were really like that I hope I would have the courage to refuse to have any thing to do with him. however, were I to not be quite brave enough for that in the face of a brutal monster, my submission would be one based on pure fear. that sounds pretty much like hell to me.
I said it before and I'll say it again, I really believe your doctrine of biblical authority gets in the way of actually being able to hear the gospel. ultimately, it's idolatory.
Posted by: Iconoclast
Tuesday 20 May 2008 - 08:51pm
Clare,
I am not at all perplexed by what Phil Almond says and you do unfairly caricature his position. It is very difficult to read the gospels and indeed the NT without coming to the conclusion that the judgement of God features very much in Jesus 's teaching and in that of the Apostles. Jesus' preached the love of God - yes -but also the wrath of God and a final judgement for us all. I do not think that it is a question of making God 'horriible to everyone' but one of how each of us obtains right standing before God. Jesus died so that we might be reconciled to God. Jesus is not an optional extra - there are consequences for those who reject Him.
There are many things that Jesus said that were downright scary and frightening regarding the judgment to come and the winding up of history that I wish were not there. If someone could convince me that there was not a final judgement, that all this hell and eternal damnation talk was the product of primitive ideas and that God actually is rather a cuddly Zebedee like figure, an avuncular uncle, who welcomes all every regardless of what they believe or what they have done without any need for repentance then I would embrace it, but I fear you would be hard put to find that in the NT.
Then of course I could regard the NTas a purely human construct with some rather quaint ideas to the modern mind that we shouldn't take too seriously with all the advantages of our modern textual criticism - a view I would perhaps expect Pluralist to take -- but then, we've grown out of all this rather silly discrimatory judgement stuff now haven't we?
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Tuesday 20 May 2008 - 07:29pm
I agree with Clare and Pluralist.
-- And Julian of Norwich, when she said that, 'the wrath is in ourselves -- not in God.'
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 20 May 2008 - 06:52pm
Clare
I am trying to face all that the Bible says, however terrible that is in its implications. You must know that your last post ‘making God horrible to everyone’ caricatures my position, which does indeed say that the true diagnosis of the human condition is that we are all by nature facing the wrath of God, condemned and guilty before him, and on our way to everlasting punishment; but also says that God spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, that he commends his love towards us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son a propitiation concerning our sins’.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Tuesday 20 May 2008 - 12:07am
There has been so much focus on the bureaucracy (ie Church and Communion structures) than on the people (as in "pray for minorities but especially pray for the Lambeth Conference") that you end up losing both.
Stand Firm in Faith says that Christopher Seitz's recent ACI article is a model of clarity. Has anyone read it? It has now become farcical. He says the Anglicn Communion could break into two. Given the rejection of the restrictive Covenant by many Churches, there ought still to be a Covenant by those who want it and with it the Church can divide. So now the purpose of the Covenant is a division it was meant to prevent. You can tell when an argument is on its last legs.
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/05/covenants-new-purpose-division.html
Posted by: Clare
Monday 19 May 2008 - 08:41pm
well Phil's come up with one way of making God fully inclusive - making him totally horrible to everyone!
I am sure I am not the only one who is perplexed that Phil appears to read the same gospel as I do and yet hear it speak as if it were written by a taliban!
Posted by: liddon
Monday 19 May 2008 - 04:59pm
these politicians in the church think they're so clever and they think they're doing us such a favour, but look at the mess they've got us into. the anglican communion has never been in such a state, and the church of england has never been such a disgrace. vacuous calls for justice? someone hasn't read the prophets. someone hasn't paid attention to the ministry of jesus.
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Monday 19 May 2008 - 06:49am
No Phil, 'homosexuality' is not a sin, nor is the authority of women.*
Now, anything else I can help you with ?
*However, homophobic practices are against the laws of our land.*
Posted by: Pete Broadbent
Sunday 18 May 2008 - 11:02pm
The threads are getting mixed up here - and I'm sorry if I've contributed to this. In answer to the question "who made promises to whom?" - the answer is that the General Synod, the House of Bishops and the Legislative Committee made definitive statements about the future position of those opposed to the ordination of women. There may be people who don't feel bound by that, but that doesn't make it not so. A naive individualism that says we can change our position and renege on those promises makes us less like the Body of Christ and more like a political party - not the other way round!
But politics does come into all this. Unless you can get the 2/3 majority in all three houses that you will need, all the listening processes in the world won't get you anywhere. My goal (and, I hope, the goal of the Church of England) is the full inclusion of women in all three orders of ministry. The only way that will happen is if we can convince the Bishops to back and vote for a proposal which they are prepared to introduce into Synod. A little bit of reality would help us all. Vacuous calls for justice won't. Justice is always obtained and delivered in a socio-political context - it's never just an abstract construct.
And, no, I don't believe in "sacramental assurance". It's a doctrine of a church (that I don't happen to be a member of) that has been shipped into the Church of England when we swallowed the need to prove that we were kosher and that Apostolicae Curae was wrong. It will continue to be a huge bugbear in these present discussions. Which may be why we have to go into negotiation with the conservative catholics for a different solution.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Sunday 18 May 2008 - 10:20pm
Including and excluding
The tax-collector said, (Marshall’s Greek-English) ‘God be propitious to me the sinner’. Jesus said to the impotent man he had made better, ‘Behold, you have become whole; no longer sin lest something worse happens to you’. Jesus said to the woman caught in the act of committing adultery, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, from now no longer sin’.
Paul says, ‘…for we previously accused both Jews and Greeks to be all under sin…’.
Assuming it is common ground (is it common ground?) that Jesus did say the words of this parable, the words to the impotent man and the words to the woman; assuming it is common ground (is it common ground?) that Paul’s words are true, then:
The tax-collector realised he was a sinner and needed God’s mercy. Doesn’t it follow that he realised that certain deeds, thoughts, words, attitudes were sins and he was guilt of doing/having some of them?
Jesus commands the man and the woman not to sin any more. Doesn’t that make it clear that Jesus is looking for them to stop sinning? Paul is saying all men are sinners.
The inclusive/exclusive issue now looks like:
God regards some acts, thoughts, words, attitudes as sins, supremely our universal failure to love him with all our being and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We are all by nature excluded from God’s presence and faced with his condemnation because we are sinners. This is true regardless of our intelligence or lack of it, our race, age, class, gender, culture, our respectability or lack of it, the degree of our degradation, our social or religious standing, our sexual orientation. God and Christ invite all men to repent and turn to him: ‘I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’; ‘Turn to me and be saved all you ends of the earth’. This is a universal invitation addressed to everyone regardless of their intelligence or lack of it, their race, age, class, gender, culture, their respectability or lack of it, the degree of their degradation, their social or religious standing, their sexual orientation. And it may often be true, as Jesus said to the chief priests and elders, ‘The tax-collectors and prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you’. All are invited to repent and obey Christ as Saviour and Lord. All are called upon to ‘let not sin reign in your mortal body to obey its lusts’. This is the totally inclusive gospel. But those who obey it are called upon, in a life-long process, to totally exclude sin from their lives.
So the key question is: what is sinful and what is not; particularly, in the present situation, is homosexuality a sin? and, is it sinful for a woman to ‘exercise authority over a man’?
Phil Almond
Posted by: liddon
Sunday 18 May 2008 - 09:16am
shakespeare got it right most of the time. he said 'a politician is one that would circumvent God'. we see this most clearly in the general synod. those who pride themselves on being church politicans are absolutely the last people we need running the church of england. look at the mess they made over giving us flying bishops. it's also a terrible mistake to say 'we promised this, we must stuck to it', if what we promised is wrong and is tearing the church apart and humiliating women - and it is.
Posted by: Art
Sunday 18 May 2008 - 03:35am
Further to Clare’s contributions, for which my thanks.
While I am aware that Msr René Girard is the current flavour of the month and to a degree rightly so, as one whose theories may cast light on ‘the logic’ of the atonement, if I may comment upon other elements of her posts.
What is more interesting, I think, about the John 3 story set within the first round of miraculous signs, From Cana to Cana, Jn 2-4, is the contrast between Nicodemus coming to Jesus “by night” and the encounter of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at “the sixth hour”. The subsequent conversations between the two parties and who gets what and who doesn’t (yet), and who should get it and who is never presumed to know that much, together with the contrasts between the darkness of night and the brightness of noonday, and between being in on the inner most circle and being on the outer of Jewish outers - all this, and more I suspect, knowing the Fourth Gospel’s polyvalency, renders our very use of the inclusion versus exclusion dynamic, I have come to see, as being really rather unhelpful, as popular as it currently may be!
For fascinatingly, the Gospel is both inclusive and exclusive all at once. Once we realise this, then perhaps we need to explore why such apparent opposites can both apply to the same reality. Perhaps because the very terms are simply based on false common assumptions or couched from within an inadequate framework? For this is often the case when presented with a perceived polarity (like the fabled socialism versus capitalism: perhaps both systems as systems are profoundly ambiguous, as expressions of mere human economic practice without a theology of creation). Contrariwise, the Church would be comprehensive in its scope, catholic in its goal, and this mission based on the singular and particular event of the One human being, Jesus of Nazareth, whose destiny as totus Christus (the whole Christ, Augustine, after the vision of the Church in Ephesians and Colossians) embraces those aspirations - but only aspirations, and as such unfulfilled - evident in the two terms “inclusive” and “exclusive”.
For finally, the singular light of the triune God itself banishes the entire religious dynamic of ‘ritual purity’ which is such a powerful engine in most religions, focussing instead not only on the humility of “reborn” “little children” (John 3:3,5 has its flip-side in Matt 18:1ff) as the means to insight into such a light’s working - as Clare (perhaps/probably) infers - but also crucially on what constitutes “true worship”: Jn 2-4 sets up the narrative structure of chs 5-10, unpacked beautifully in 13-17, just as 1 Jn ends ever so nimbly with “Little children, guard yourselves from idols” - after noting of course the departure of those who “were not of us” (1 Jn 2:19), whoever exactly they might have been!
What caps fit whose heads is for people’s own insights to discern, a discernment that mimics nonetheless the kind of ‘logic’ tightly dramatised by the Johannine corpus, choruses and all.
Posted by: Rosemary
Sunday 18 May 2008 - 03:05am
My apologies to the forum for two things, for being user 1477 when my name is Rosemary, and for taking this board .. which has been fascinating reading .. off topic. So because I would like to continue to read responses, in particular to Art, and from Art to Clare, I move my replies to Jeremy, Clare and Fern to what I hope is a more appropriate page.
http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/forum/thread.cfm?thread=6719
Posted by: Mark Bennet
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 10:57pm
Bishop Pete
I'm not sure who has given what assurances to whom. You use the word 'we' - which begs the question rather.
As I understand it there was a general understanding, which seems to have gone missing, that the natural meaning of Canon A4 would apply - that all "loyal Anglicans" would at least recognise that the Church of England was lawfully and canonically ordaining women as priests.
Yet there are people who claim the title 'loyal Anglican' who seem to reject this, and who would reject the same in respect of women consecrated as Bishops in the Church of England - and in spite of the fact that reordinations and reconfirmations are ruled out of court on ecclesiological grounds, would cast doubt on the ordinations and confirmations carried out by female bishops, and even (at least in the case of ordinations) by some male bishops. Now that sounds like a different "church" to me.
It also seems to me that our sacramental theology is going amiss in some of this. Now I think this is not quite an evangelical issue, two sacraments not seven, and all that. But there is a notion of "sacramental assurance" gaining credence in some circles which is hugely Pelagian (for want of a better word) - depending almost entirely on human action, and not at all on God's gift and grace.
Personally, I acknowledge a responsibility to those to whom previous assurances were given - I was not really engaged in the process at that time, no-one consulted me. But I do want to explore the limits of what it is to be a "loyal Anglican" and the mutuality which makes one church rather than two.
But maybe there are other perspectives. It would be useful to see them teased out on the forum here.
Posted by: Clare
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 08:47pm
I am warming to Art's 'moths and cockraoches' theme. Consider the following:
Three Christians went to church to pray, two considered themselves moths, the other a cockroach. The 'first moth' prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: false teachers, heretics, gay apologists and even these two cochroaches here. I am a moth, I fly towards the light, I stand up for the gospel and I am not hostage to the spirit of the age'.
The second 'moth' prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: homophobes, misogynists, fundementalists and even these two cockroaches here. I am a moth, I fly towards the light, I stand up for gospel values of liberation and am not arrogant, intolerant and certain of my own correctness, unlike some moths I could mention'.
But the 'cockroach' standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying 'God, be merciful to me, a cockroach!'
Meanwhile the true light, which enlightens everyone, moths and cockroaches alike, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He had become a cockroach you see, and that wasn't what anyone expected.
Posted by: Pete Broadbent
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 07:34pm
Whether you like it or not, we made commitments to those opposed back in 1993. Any provision has to take account of those commitments. I want to see women bishops - preferably tomorrow! - but I'm not prepared, unlike the liberals, to sell the conservative catholics and evangelicals down the river. So there's a straightforward choice. Go with legislation that will make provision for them, or exclude them. Now, if the women are saying that they won't countenance such legislation, so be it. Synod needs a majority in all three houses. If the House of Bishops bring legislation with arrangements for transfer to the Synod, it may well be that it will be voted down in the House of Clergy. If arrangements with a code of practice alone are put forward, that won't carry the Synod either. And only a minority want a separate province or diocese. So that won't get through either.
It's no use doing all this easy illiberal liberal tosh about dishonesty and lack of integrity. Dishonesty and lack of integrity is reneging on what we have previously promised. And, the women are saying to us, there is a lack of integrity in allowing for no go areas for women. Fair enough - it's not possible to square that circle.
Politics isn't a dirty word; it's the way that we make things possible. None of the changes in society that you applaud in terms of liberalisation for LGBT people would have taken place without politics and compromise. Theologically, the realm of the political is given by God - to be exercised for the common good.
So - back to the issue at hand. If neither the women nor the ultra conservatives will accept a compromise, we shall have to find another way through.
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 04:17pm
I found Clare's contribution has Godly simplicity and clarity. If only the 'real politicans' of the Church could listen to the message of Jesus --becoming simpler, like 'little children' in fact, as Clare makes clear. It's not 'real politic' Pete, it's down-right dishonesty. The same garden variety that pretends "Windsor is not homophobic" (Eames) and that there is 'a listening process'.
Woman need to be included in every aspect of ministry --"but not at any price."
I particularly love these lines of hers that hit the nail on the head :-
'From the gospels.... Jesus includes precisely those people whom religion and polite society exclude –foreigners, people of other faiths, women, prostitutes, collaborators, disabled and diseased people and excludes the religious experts, know-alls and hardliners who are so keen on excluding other people and who preach an excluding God. In the middle are his followers, who are slowly learning to be penitent former excluders. '
Now That Would be Some Covenant !
Posted by: Fern
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 01:31pm
user 1477, you write:
"There are considerable numbers of women like me, who believe we are 'called by God' to serve the church, but not in an office that would include having authority over the men God has called us to 'help.'"
I'm afraid I can't agree with your interpretation of Genesis. Surely, all women are not called to 'help' all men merely because of their gender?
Genesis 2: 18 opens with the words “Then the Lord God said “it is not good that the man should be alone: I will make a helper fit for him””. So the creation of Eve is presented as a solution to Adam’s solitude; marriage and a wife rescued him from this and not merely the existence of womankind. All the women in the world could not assuage Adam’s loneliness until he experienced a conjugal relationship with one of them. Corinthians says that Eve was created “for the sake of Adam” but a single woman does not help a man out of his loneliness and, therefore, does not exist “for his sake”.
The description of the creation of Eve gives the impression of a wife being created for her husband and God personally joining them in marriage. When Jesus quoted from Genesis 2: 18-25, he did so not to teach about two separate sexes and their relationship to each other but the unity of a married couple. Eve was not created as a single woman but as the wife of the first man; the ‘one-flesh’ relationship that already existed between Adam and Eve by virtue of their creation was the same as the one-flesh relationship that would be brought about for all succeeding couples by their marriages.
Now, since men are to become one flesh with their wives and not any and all women, it seems clear that this passage in Genesis refers to marriage and not to the relationships of men and women in the wider community so I cannot see that ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ can represent mankind and womankind.
Posted by: Clare
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 10:23am
Forgive me, user 1477, if my intentionally self deprecating words about ‘mucking in’ and ‘feeling dirty’ offended. I used them merely to highlight my own struggle to come to terms with including those I would more naturally exclude, were it not for the demands of the gospel. Going back to my previous post, I am, at best, on the way out of excluding people - a James or a John - wanting to bring down fire upon those with whom I disagree and needing the rebuke of Jesus. Like Peter, I continually need God’s inspiration to help me stop dividing the world into the ‘clean’ and the ‘unclean’. This thread seems to me to be about that struggle writ large.
Actually, I find it much easier to accept women who want to submit to men -though frankly I find it a bit weird – then men who want to impose submission on us women. It is so tempting to want to call such men ‘unclean’ and want to bring down metaphorical fire upon them, but the part of me that has turned to Christ knows this is no longer an option.
Which brings me to Art’s thoughts on 1 John 1: 1-4…..in God there is no darkness at all. Um…..no wonder Christians can never agree on anything. We seem to read this in diametrically opposed ways. Art (I think) reads this as ‘God is so pure he cannot tolerate any sort of impurity at all –thus the danger to us of his rejection and judgement from which we are saved only by Jesus’ and I (along with other Girardians, to hark back to one of my hobby horses) read it as ‘there is no darkness, no violence, no retribution, no condemnation in God, only light, only forgiveness, only love’. When the light comes into the world, is switched on to use Art's metphor, the judgement of God is to show us our evil and complicity in judging others, in justifying ourselves through contrasting ourselves with the ‘coakroaches’ rather than admit we are all scurrying away and hiding and only learn to be moths in fits and starts, if at all. Being a Christian is the call to be a penitent cockroach! What a lovely thought!
Posted by: Deleted user 688
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 07:52am
"considerable numbers" of submitted women???
I would be interested to have a figure on this. It must be a drop in the ocean compared to those who are interested in full equality and freedom in Christ.
Posted by: Rosemary
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 03:27am
I'm in total agreement with Clare's thoughts about the inclusive nature of Jesus' church. I would go further and say that the role He gave women, expanded that which the 'trunk' of our tree, Judaism, had given women. The early church is an amazing difference from the Judaic culture that preceded it. As a result, I'm inclined to shout .. "Go you women."
However Clare and I would find ourselves .. still sisters in Christ I hope .. but on different sides when it comes to the ordination of women. There are considerable numbers of women like me, who believe we are 'called by God' to serve the church, but not in an office that would include having authority over the men God has called us to 'help.'
That doesn't make us unable to 'muck in together' I would hope. And surely 'distaste,' or any 'feeling of being dirty' really shouldn't come into it. This sort of reference must surely stop in the name of the second commandment to love our neighbours.
Posted by: Art
Saturday 17 May 2008 - 02:39am
“Faith” and “Fellowship” in “Crisis”: three nouns and two other wee little words, powerful words, as Graham Kings has wisely pointed out. And which now others have taken up in their various ways, wishing to join all sorts of things together.
1 John 1:1-4 (yes; a seminal piece of Holy Scripture ...) nicely captures what all three nouns are referring to and arranges them in a particular way, one that may well orientate us to steer clear of a number of presenting difficulties. For once the writer has laid down his platform, he immediately launches into the core of “the message” - there is quite simply NO darkness where God is concerned. And this precipitates its own Judgment, its own Crisis, one which theologies of the atonement have been trying to unravel for centuries (2:1-2, 4:9-10); and see below.
As a result, the Johannine corpus would see truth and love, love and truth - and an understanding of both that is grounded in the sheer concrete particularity of reality; no fluffy abstractions here floating in some gnostic stratosphere - firmly and irrevocably united, and united for the singular purpose of “fellowship”, covenant fellowship what’s more (so many a view on the Hebraic background to “grace and truth” of Jn 1:14,17, and now a thesis on Johannine Discipleship by Rekha Chennattu).
But because Jesus was sent by his Father to enact the divine judgment on the world on the one hand, and to solicit our human fellowship as participants in the divine fellowship - eternally! - on the other, there is a Crisis for us humans too. I call it the theology of moths and cockroaches: turn on a light in any African kitchen at night and the moths will flutter their way towards the light and the cockroaches will scuttle for the darkness of the cupboards and skirting boards (Jn 3:16-21 & passim).
So this “and” becomes in effect “either/or”. For sadly, tragically (yes; back to that word from Graham Kings’ original Newsletter) there is a severe division that runs right through the Johannine corpus. In recognition of this, one of the finest theological reflections ever composed, von Balthasar’s The Last Act of his Theo-Drama, revolves around a resolutely Trinitarian eschatology via the “pain of God” yet without finally “any playing with apokatastasis”. For, with Geoffrey Wainwright on von Balthasar, “no conclusion is possible here except God’s own”.
And so while it may not be ours to play this Judge - that seems to be reserved for the triune deity’s weighty glory - ours is most certainly to be a Witness to “that which we have heard etc from the beginning”. We simply may not live-and-let-live, therefore, since that is most likely to be the most unloving thing we could do in some circumstances. The crux, however, is what circumstances especially? And are they adiaphora or are they definitive? And which is which?
What represents “the world and the things in this world” in the particular circumstances of our early 21st C? Though Graham Kings’ desire for a due catholicity reminds us that the likes of Augustine’s late 4th C commentary on 1 Jn 2:15-17 still has much to offer! These questions can only be answered by a deeply humble spirit and a profoundly “transformed mind” (Rom 12:1-2), one that seeks to engage not only in listening to others and witnessing their lives, but in a form of self-judgment that is positively searing. For “the fire of love” is an effulgent light, brooking no darkness at all. Just so, our human need of the divine Advocate ... 1 Jn 1:6-2:2. And such a probing in his Presence will require a hermeneutical sifting of the root paradigms of our cultures and subcultures, mostly merely assumed and to which we are therefore mostly simply blind - “the available believable” in Ricoeur’s words.
To offset such myopia, the missionary witness of the AC across six continents would appear to place us in a remarkably providential ‘space’ - if we could but see it! Yet one that not only exhorts us as does Paul in Phil 2:1-13 and to which Turner and Radner orientate us again and again, but one that insists on allowing “iron to sharpen iron”. Our recalcitrant human nature seems itself to brook no other form of learning (back again to the original Newsletter). The trouble however with the current phase of our Communion “crisis” appears to be that we have reached a deep impasse, due not least to not permitting any acknowledgement of ‘mistakes’ made and so avoiding a due search for reconciliation via penitential judgment. “Iron” is backing away from “iron”, as once more we are hell bent on tolerating a consumerist vision of division and not calling it sin - as does, for example, the Princeton Proposal, In One Body Through the Cross (2003).
So; we “sit and eat” (Herbert) at various forums, ingesting both falafel and EBT - (mostly/perhaps?) unaware of the tsunamic, cyclonic and/or seismic Judgment Hour that is about to befall our Anglican Church (remind you of any Gospel scenes and/or words?). For all that, may we “indaba my children” (Mutwa) ... Yet if we refuse to do so, then “the End of the Church” (Radner 1998) is indeed Judgment, a painful conforming to Jesus’ Cross that represents a form of ‘koinonia’ designed to solicit due penitence, as was Israel’s exile. For God’s Name is once more profaned amongst the nations.
So; what’s it to be: moths or cockroaches - in Jerusalem and Canterbury?
Posted by: Clare
Friday 16 May 2008 - 10:29pm
On inclusion, exclusion and the setting of boundaries……a little theological reflection.
What (who) would Jesus exclude? From the gospels it would appear that Jesus includes precisely those people whom religion and polite society exclude –foreigners, people of other faiths, women, prostitutes, collaborators, disabled and diseased people and excludes the religious experts, know-alls and hardliners who are so keen on excluding other people and who preach an excluding God. In the middle are his followers, who are slowly learning to be penitent former excluders. So Jesus rebukes James and John for wanting to ask God to bring down fire on the Samaritans and thus Peter struggles to learn in Acts 10 that foreigners are just as welcome as Jews in God’s economy, because God shows no partiality. Nicodemus makes a wonderful journey from important, well regarded and slightly pompous religious leader in John 3, to beginning to be viewed as a dangerous heretic for standing up against the exclusion of Jesus in John 7, to his final embrace of the body of excluded one –murdered by imperial power on the request those who would seek to keep the religion ‘pure’ of contaminating elements.
Who would Jesus exclude? Jesus chooses the ultimate exclusion for himself and yet rises, forgiving and inclusive, to show us that the only thing that is excluded and cast out, is those who remain wedded to their right, in God’s name, to exclude and cast out. As Paul J. Nuechterlein puts it re John 9
‘Being wrong can be cured. The disciples eventually came to see that they were wrong about [Jesus] and about a lot of things. Realizing that you're wrong can be cured, cured by forgiveness. But insisting that you can clearly see about other people's sins, that's a blindness that even Jesus can't cure, as long as a person keeps insisting on being right’.
Where that leaves us on how to respond organisationally to women in the episcopate, I don’t know. The last thing I think it means is that we have a ‘pure’ church of goody two-shoes inclusive types. This is no better than the neo-Calvinist purity cult that some seem so keen on bringing into existence. I think it means we have to try and organise things so we can all muck along together – however distasteful we find one another. I think that may mean we have to let FiF et al have their own ‘clean’ bishops even though this feels sort of dirty (and not in a good way!) to a card carrying liberal feminist.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Friday 16 May 2008 - 03:09am
The ethical issue is reasonably simple: are women to be fully included or not, and there is a theology there too, and if not excluded from episcopacy they might be included with all sorts of caveats. Elsewhere here it has been called real politik, and I call that bureaucratic.
As for the Covenant thing, I doubt it will even make it into a prayer book. It can't be legal in England anyway if it is recognising an authority from outside. If it ends up as something people are flogging only because they have been for too long, it will be voted down by too many Churches and won't be worth the effort to revive.
Posted by: Tony
Friday 16 May 2008 - 12:13am
I think, Peter, you could be a bit more explicit. Consecrating women as bishops while continuing to provide 'safeguards' to 'protect' those who will not receive them simply excludes women from full participation in the life of the church because they are deemed to be medically or biologically disqualified and so relegates them permanently to a second class status (unless we imagine that the anglocatholic right and its ultraconservative evangelical partners are going to die out or go elsewhere). It's the same of course with the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the priesthood -- they are too ineradicably marked by the Fall (that's the best sense I can make of the position) to be acceptable as representatives of redeemed humanity. the women who will face the price of letting 'yes be yes' and 'no be no' are not I hope pursuing a 'risky strategy',as +Willesden opines, but being honest.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Thursday 15 May 2008 - 10:24pm
Pluralist, is it possible that 'bureaucracy' takes priority over 'ethics' (as per your previous post) precisely because the church refuses to set boundaries in its theology? As I understand one current situation facing the CofE, the 'ethics' of ordination of women to the episcopacy involves a debate between those who say this is ok and those who say it is not. In a boundary-less church both views are welcome and no one is excluded.
The 'bureaucracy' of ordination of women to the episcopacy involves a decision either to not ordain women to the episcopacy or to so ordain (without special arrangements for those who disagree) or to so ordain (with special arrangements for those who disagree). Each possible 'bureaucratic' decision is fraught. To not ordain excludes women from the episcopacy. To ordain without special arrangements excludes those who do not agree with women bishops. To ordain with special arrangements is perceived to present predictable and unpredictable difficulties - potentially less actual exclusion of anyone, it is true, but the difficulties hamstring women bishops from feeling they are wholly included and accepted by the church to which they are ordained.
That is, a boundary-less church concerning views for and against women bishops is nevertheless an exclusionary church as its bureaucracy makes its decision one way or another.
It is at least arguable (IMHO) that the C of E imposing a boundary around the issue of women bishops, whether resolutely for or against the possibility of women bishops as 'the' doctrine of the church, exclusionary though either decision would be, offers the prospect of a consequential bureaucratic decision which follows from rather than dictates the ethics of the church!
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Thursday 15 May 2008 - 08:37pm
As Pluralist implies but is too polite to say, "It is a nonsense." In the unlikely event that a 'covenant' is agreed upon, it will suffer a similar (& swifter) fate to the Thirty-nine Articles.
(Gathering dust in an appendix to a little used 'prayer book.')
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Thursday 15 May 2008 - 02:07am
But these study groups, preachers, and theologians that continue to function are part of the Church, worshipping, lay, ordained, consecrated... We are vocal that there is a division between the conserved liturgy and what we believe. Well I am clear about it anyway.
I know there are liberals who describe themselves as orthodox. I have never known what orthodox means. I have read varieties of theologies all supposed to be by standard, mainstream, full member, Anglicans, who are regarded as within the broad spread of orthodoxy as it is practically understood, as well as theologies by those who also are full members who will say theirs is at some distance from some apparent norm.
The thing is, if when you bring in a covenant that narrows belief (and, OK, it deals with whole Churches, wouldn't you know - how much of a drastic measure is that!) if you don't actually chuck people out to purify a Church it does seem that there is an awful lot of angst to go through if nothing results.
See, in a Church that responds to its members, some sort of official headline position maintained that does not reflect what people really believe is a sham, and ought to be broadened. The Episcopal Church with its qualified episcopacy and democratic elements is one of the most responsive Churches regarding its actual breadth. Whether it is this, or specifically the gay issue - again honesty and accountability - it sounds like duplicity and covering the truth of the situation is preferred to honesty.
This is why we keep seeing bureaucratic motives having priority over ethics and actuality.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Wednesday 14 May 2008 - 08:43pm
Boundaries are difficult things and they have potential to exclude. They also have potential to clarify matters. The 'are you not in danger of excluding people' school of Pluralist thinking is attractive. But I wonder if it had held sway whether much of Christianity would have got going. 'Why only Twelve, Jesus, and all men? Let's talk about a group without such exclusions before we set off.' Or, 'Let's not write down the stories of Jesus, something is bound to get left out.'
I fail to see why the Communion establishing a clearer, even tighter sense of Anglican doctrine need exclude study groups, preachers, and theologians etc from exploring diverses theological possibilities - some of which when brought to the Communion's version of a magisterium might lead to development of 'official' Anglican doctrine (and some of which, after due and fair process, might be rejected).
What I do recognise, sadly, is that there are groups (to the left and the right) within the Communion which, if controlling such an Anglican magisterium, would take the Communion in a sectarian direction. I am confident that ++Rowan has the strength, despite his critics re perceived weaknesses, to lead the Communion away from sectarian temptations.
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Obadiahslope
Wednesday 14 May 2008 - 01:22pm
I hope I won't offend the indefatigable pluralist by agreeing with him. The problem with boundaries is indeed where do you place them. There's no getting round that. Is that a sufficient argument for a boundaryless anglican communion?
One boundary that surprised some here when I raised it was the boundary of salvation. If everyone is saved there is no boundary and no hurt. Part of me would welcome that and another part of me finds it hard to conclude a full heaven and an empty hell from scripture. (This will remind L Roberts of his brethren days again).
And the same applies to the gay issue? I find it hard not to conclude from scripture that there some salvation risk to gay behaviour. So it is a matter of sayong "be carfull". And yes, we all need to take care.
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Wednesday 14 May 2008 - 01:28am
The problem with boundaries is where, precisely, you put them. How is it that someone is just on the good side of the boundary and can stay in, and someone is just on the bad side of the boundary and must be put out? People start arguing about the boundaries. Then there is the problem of policing and who does it. Then there is the problem of how comprehensive is the policing - what about those who are hiding? They say all the right words but don't actually come within the belief boundary (quite easy in a liturgical setting).
In the 1960s we had John Robinson changing metaphors about God and understanding Jesus "from below" and this upset some people. Then in the 1980s there was another bishop who got into some trouble despite being completely mainstream theologically - very Barth and Bonhoeffer, because he thought the bigger picture was more important than the details. Now we have people going on and on because an honest gay man is a bishop and some places bless stable relationships and wish to build stability. The Church of England for one is becoming ever more sectarian, and argues about textual details that no one in the world could care less about. At the same time any contemporary theology course takes one from Thomism right through to nihilist textualism as theologies.
I was in a church group earlier this evening, discussing non-realism, radical theology and the like, with relative degrees of agreement and certainly everyone thought it worth discussing and part of the theological spread of church life. What are you going to do: chuck us out? Even if one or two might one day leave, the question is how are you going to chuck us out, what comprehensive action will you take to draw the boundary well short of where we are comfortable interpreting our beliefs? If what you are discussing here is to be the norm, every single person there would be out of the church. We all go regularly and frequently, and we all have theological education to a reasonable level. We won't confess what you want. It is not going to happen. Such is the reality up and down the line. How are you going to remove this minority? Oh and the gay issue - it is not even an issue for us.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 08:32pm
L Roberts and Tony, I think I personally share a view of the breadth of Anglicanism that is closer to your own views than I may have given the impression (mea culpa). But this particular part of this thread on the Fulcrum Forum started with David Ould's "intra-evangelical" questioning of evangelicals going to Lambeth as an arguably disobedient action in connection with biblical teaching about 'false teaching'. It is that kind of critique of what Anglicanism currently incorporates into its breadth which propels the momentum towards GAFCON and which may be propelling a momentum towards some decisive split of the Communion. While I have disagreed with David Ould I take seriously the possibility that Anglican diversity is now impossible to hold together. A plane can have very long wings but if the wings are too long they will bend at their tips to the ground and prevent flight!
I did say 'Perhaps there is nothing that is unAnglican'! I take that possibility seriously, but in the end it is not true. There are, for instance, theological views espoused by some which are at odds with the minimalist criteria for orthodoxy. We could think, here, for instance, of the Episcopalian priest who tried to espouse the cause of Islam while holding a bishop's licence. Rightly that priest has been asked to take some time out to think again! Or, we could think of the recurring possibility finally taking place that the Diocese of Sydney might institute lay presidency with full legal and episcopal backing. That possibility is widely viewed as unAnglican in the sense that it constitutes a fundamental contradiction of Anglican orders. A third example could be Nigeria's recent recognition that it needed to make a decisive statement against polygamy.
If we agree that there are in fact some things which are unAnglican then the question arises as to how these things are decided and who might decide them. L Roberts makes the case for ad hoc procedures when saying:
"Similarly there has never been 'a forum' to decide and pronounce on these matters. And we have got on without one for a few hundred years --to date ! What has worked quite well is living and letting live, and deaneries and parishes and dioceses and provinces have made quite a good fist of it."
My understanding of Anglicanism is that few disagree with this kind of statement as a description of how we have lived till now. And fairly successfully too. But today's situation has raised the question whether we can continue to live without a 'forum' (i.e. magisterium). Roman Catholic leaders such as Kasper are effectively saying, 'See, we knew since the Reformation that you would need one.' Anglicans such as L Roberts are saying, 'No forum needed.' My modest assertion is that the Anglican Communion should consider the possibility that a forum is needed. I am Anglican enough to be open-minded about what answer we arrive at!
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 03:27pm
Thinking of your despair Tony.
it all reminds me of the Brethren about 40 years ago ! And now even they are coming round to same sex relationships ---just as I prepare to collect my bus pass. I am so so glad I didnt wait for them (or the cofe for that matter). I feel for those who feel they must stick with the national church in all its contradiction and hard heartedness....
Posted by: Tony
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 02:50pm
I guess that lots of things might be unAnglican: the substitution of salvation by correct belief for salvation by faith, for instance; or the neglect of sacraments and their efficacy; but more interesting is the application of your rules of table fellowship: will it be the intention of the separate-yourselves section to exclude from baptism, the Eucharist and the councils of the church everyone who does not hold their doctrines? This seems to be the obvious consequence of the exclusive position. I quite upset an old friend and fulcum-supporter by saying that I thought his way would leave us with chaps at the church door holding clipboards asking us to tick the boxes and sign up before we're admitted to the table fellowship. I can't really see why I shouldn't feel the depsair I did then.
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 01:24pm
Yes Obadiahslope, I now know ! :-)
You speak of salvation. I wonder what you intend by that ? Are you seeking to imlpy that lesbian and gay Christians are not saved ?
Or are you getting at something else ?
(I have collapsed into a chair -- I am so unused to anglicans of any stripe speaking of salvation! I thought speaking of it was the most unAnglian thing of all !)
Posted by: pete hobson
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 12:50pm
The trouble with invoking 'denominations' as an answer to this is that those who think it a matter of salvation would clearly not be content with simply seeing the 'others' as another denomination. They would see them as not Christian at all - and so 'another religion'. Which seems to be the implication of taking the very hard line on gay issues.
In the end, whilst I am personally persuaded that the 'traditional' line on prohibition of sexually active same-sex relationships is biblical/Christian/correct (pick your adjective), I am not persuaded that those who sincerely believe otherwise are ipso facto outside of the Christian faith - as others do apparently believe.
And that's a divide within not only Anglicanism, but most versions of Christianity as far as I can see. And if we not only unchurch but 'unsave' those who differ from us, then it makes for a very different sort of conversation.
As others have noted, of course, many 'revisionists' do the same from their opposite viewpoint - it's just that being more liberal in theology they find it harder to 'unsave' people, and so use different terms of condemnation...
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 12:30pm
Peter Carrell Evanglicals in the CofE have never been too worried about being UnAnglican --until the current obsession with it recently kicked in ! In fact, I think this obsession is itself, very unAnglican !
Anglo-Catholics too haven't been too bothered about what is or is not unAnglican. Nor liberals and radicals. Until recently, I think the emphasis has been seeking to proclaim and live the message of Jesus (or sometimes, the message about him).
Similarly there has never been 'a forum' to decide and pronounce on these matters. And we have got on without one for a few hundred years --to date ! What has worked quite well is living and letting live, and deaneries and parishes and dioceses and provinces have made quite a good fist of it.
Do you really want to go back to the days when (Anglo-Catholic) ministers were put on trial and hounded for the cultus of the blessed sacrament, Mary and the saints ? Do you really think Forward in Faith parishes will give up their use of RC rites and ceremonies, and vestments and tabernacles and statues, because some 'forum; says so ?
Do you really want to see liberals and other thoughtful types persecuted for their creative re-thinking or re-expression of faith and gospel for our times ?
And how the Evangelicals of various stripe themselves fair, at the hands of such a 'forum' ?
I'd leave well alone. I really would. To go to all these lengths just because lesbian and gay people have entered the mainstream of life in Britain, is really quite unnecessary. A bit of introspection and relating and listening would work better -- though rather low key and 'unsexy'. Also important for us all to bear in mind the legal frame work within which civilised life in Britain is sustained & safe-guarded.
F the Forum ! (Forget the forum !)
What about meeting & speaking with lesbian and gay christians in general, and evangelicals in particular ?
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 12:07pm
Obadiahslope I am delighted to hear that you are open to change. 'Correction' even ! I had no idea. But am most encouraged.
It is so good to know that you are prepared to re-consider your 'most cherished' ideas. All power to your elbow. It takes real guts as I have cause to know.
Posted by: Obadiahslope
Tuesday 13 May 2008 - 03:09am
L Roberts - you now know the answer to your last question!
These threads are only worth participating in if one is open to the idea that even the most cherished notion should be open to correction in the light of scripture. All evangelical understanding is provisional in that we are open to the word of God correcting us - even here!
Sometimes we can't "live and let live" however, when something that affects salvation may be at stake. That's the dificulty we face with the gay issue. We are at the limits of Anglican comphrehensiveness here - at least from the conservative viewpoint.
And from the progressive side, the argument that the traditional position tramples on human rights an so should not be tolerated grows louder.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Monday 12 May 2008 - 10:57pm
L Roberts raises an important question about 'live and let live' as a mode of being theologically diverse within Anglicanism. The difficulty I have is that mode provides no criterion for what might not be Anglican. Perhaps nothing is unAnglican. But if that was so, would there not need to be a forum at which that was agreed? If there are some things which are unAnglican, what is our means for applying a judgement on someone who seeks to bring unAnglican things into the Anglican fold?
There is another aspect of 'live and let live' worth noting. It operates in the church in its most universal sense and is called 'denominations'. I am unclear from L Roberts post whether 'live and let live' is a call to divide the Anglican church into two formally separate denominations or a call to remain in the one church without a mechanism for determining whether anything might be impossible for Anglicans to live with! I am not keen on either alternative.
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Deleted user 974
Monday 12 May 2008 - 07:56pm
It is clear from Obadiahslope and others here that so-called 'false teaching' (I had'nt heard that term since my Brethren days) is like 'heresy'. In that it is always the other chap's ideas that are erroneous (it is usually chaps engaged so earnestly in this stuff).
How I wish people here and in the oh so un-false ranks of the self proclaimed orthordox would get on with their own theological, miissiological and other projects, and allow others whom they dislike / despise to get on with theirs /ours ! Why strive to put-the-rest-of-us-right ? Why strive to have us silenced, thrown-out and discredited ? Live and let live (Now there IS an 'And' to heed !) Live & let live not in your lexicon ?
The witness of gay and lesbian people will not be silenced because you hate us. -- We've had centuries to contend with far worse than that, you know !
I wonder whether this will see the light of day here on Fulcrum ?
Posted by: Obadiahslope
Monday 12 May 2008 - 02:47pm
Perhaps this is atime for short words. The first is "and", which as Graham has stated has served Anglicanism well. The has been a range a range of items linked by that word: Anglican and Evangelical, catholic and reformed. And implies "more" that the two thinks linked form a greater whole. We have been fortunate in our history when this has been so.
But Graham mentioned another short word: "less". What happens when two linked things form "less" than one of them on their own might? What happens when something is not a "plus" but a minus".
This is the situation with "false teaching", where scripture tells us not to be linked to something that is a minus. To be linked with false teaching can mean that we are not "more than Evangelical" but "less than Evangelical". This matters, not because it offends against some spiritual pride in sound doctrine, but because the gospel is obscured for those who need it most.
It would be good if we could get the communion to adopt a (biblical) standard on false teaching. It would avoid the problem Peter raises about relatively minor matters causing splits - a communion wide body would be most likely to insist on a generosity of spirit.
We are left with less than perfect solutions. Gafcon is one possibility. It will do well, as Peter says if it applies pressure on the communion to conform to true teaching. As Peter points out Gafcon may well have some voices in it that would rather an outright seperation.
Oddly enough those who go to Lambeth may well determine whether the sepeartist voice is more than a hint. If Lambeth were to bend too far towards the TEC, then the sepeartist voices in whatever Gafcon might form as a continuing structure would get louder. The Fulcrum voices dare I say it will be, um. pivotal in preventing that outcome.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Monday 12 May 2008 - 08:53am
Thanks, Art, for your comment about the 'either/or' of the Gospel.
I agree that that is a key part of the Gospel, and of being Evangelical: but since we are Evangelical Anglicans, it is worth valuing the little word 'and', which has always been important for Anglicanism.
In March 2007 I attempted to sketch its significance in 'More than Evangelical but not Less', which begins with:
The traditional phrase used to describe the Church of England is 'Catholic and Reformed'. Too often the middle word 'and' passes unnoticed. Connecting words are crucial, humble and worth contemplating. They introduce links between polarities by contributing 'threeness' to 'duality'. Try replacing 'and' with the word 'or' and you will see its significance. Maybe we could capitalize on the word 'and' by giving it a capital letter 'And'? But that would detract from its humility and deflect its distinction.
Perhaps we have three patron saints of this little word 'and' in the Church of England. Thomas Cranmer, in The Book of Common Prayer, reshaped patristic prayers in the light of renewed evangelical theology; Richard Hooker, in his Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, countered both Roman and Puritan demands with God's layered wisdom; and George Herbert, in his temperate prose and allusive poetry, expressed profound spirituality in subtle rhetoric. All three, it seems to me, were more than evangelical but not less. Maybe that is the calling of the Church of England.
Posted by: Art
Monday 12 May 2008 - 08:14am
Thanks Obadiahslope; exactly the kind of thing that has prompted me to persist with my lines of discusssion on this thread. And hence too my Proverbial image of "iron sharpening iron": something has to jolt the AC's 'structures' out of a process mentality and more towards an approach that stresses the sheer either/or (yes; Kierkegaard looms!) of the Gospel.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Monday 12 May 2008 - 01:29am
Obadiahslope, I think that SSBs reflect false teaching and bishops promoting them are false teachers. I also agree with you that the current crisis may lead to an embedding of such false teaching (if it has not already done so) due to the time frame envisaged for the establishment of a Communion mechanism for dealing with false teaching. That is a weak point in my position.
Nevertheless 'false teaching' is a tricky judgement to secure. I understand that where a theology has been thought through supporting SSBs (i.e. a theology of wider and deeper reasoning than 'love demands this' or 'justice requires this') then it engages with Scripture and tradition, calls on eminent theologians, and argues that God moves with the times post-Scripture just as, in certain ways, God moved with the times in Scripture (think of the difference between the mode of conquest of Canaan, and the conquest of Rome). I still think this is false teaching, but its proponents are liable to ask for my grounds for declaring it to be so, and to respond point-by-point. Who then makes the judgement and by what authority will they do so?
Charges of 'false teaching' can cut both ways within the Communion which is why it is important to establish a body of greater authority than an individual or series of individuals. You and I might be on common ground in our approach to SSBs. But what about other issues? I know of people who think of N. T. Wright as a false teacher (New Perspective is dangerous and all that); and I can think of one creationist who seems to think of me as a false teacher because I accept that evolution has taken place. Who is the arbiter? [!!]
Then to GAFCON. I see a difference between GAFCON leading to a bloc within the Communion which seeks to exert unified and constructive pressure towards sorting out false teaching, and GAFCON leading to an outright division of the Communion. I interpret your remarks as envisaging the first as a definite possibility. I support that possibility. Its just that in the run up to GAFCON there have been some remarks which hint at the second possibility. I am realistic in recognising that in some sense that may be the only plausible outcome. But I hope it is not so.
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Obadiahslope
Sunday 11 May 2008 - 11:53am
Peter, you offer to those like David Ould who are concerned the some Anglican Bishops are false teachers the response that this might be "certainly a reason to investigate further the possibility of a Communion-mechanism for determining what is false teaching and what is not!" It is not clear in your post whether you think that those bishops who promote or take part in same sex blessings, for example, are false teachers. My reading of Graham Kings's paper on "Faith and Fellowship in Crisis" among other staements is that the Fucrum leadership thinks that TEC is in error when SSB's are performed. The weakness in both yours and the Fulcrum team's position is the long time frame it may take for the Anglican Communion to find a way to deal with this problem, possibly by means of the covenant. Too long a delay and TEC will have established a position that SSB's, openly gay priests and even gay bishop's will be "winked at" (to borrow Graham Kings's phrase) by the Angloican Communion. You make the very strong point that the structures of the Anglican Communion at present make it difficult to act against a province that adopts a position contrary to the mind of the communion even on a grave sin. This is why Gafcon may be viewed as a sensible response - gathering together those who wish to make a strong stand against TEC's innovations even to the point of forming a network which can dissociate itself from TEC. It would be better for the Communion itself to make a stand, but you make a case for why that may not be possible.
Posted by: Art
Sunday 11 May 2008 - 07:06am
It is most helpful for such a site as yours, Graham Kings, to publicise both the likes of Michael Poon’s work and the ATF (Australian Theological Forum); many thanks!
Looks like Poon and I are drawing from similar wells, what’s more. Even more striking is the longer paragraph you cited back in January 2007:
It is important to realise that the pagans were anti-Christian not because the latter were anti-social and anti-intellectual, but for the very opposite reasons. The fourth-century church was competing with the pagan philosophers for the minds and hearts of the people, and was able to offer them a solution that was morally and philosophically more convincing. In giving social and public expressions of their faith, the Christians were raising fundamental questions about the moral and spiritual values of the Roman society and Empire.
If I highlight that again now, it is to stress that, while “structures” and “clearing houses” are one thing, and necessary things no doubt, so power to the Covenant’s arm, the really painful thing for many a western Christian and the western church overall to acknowledge is its deep cultural ambivalence towards and even entrapment by patterns of thought and behaviour that for all the world resemble all too closely those very “moral and spiritual values of the Roman society and Empire” the likes of John Chrysostom were combatting.
Just so, the very deep frustration in many quarters but not least the Global South, the source of “the Next Christendom” (Philip Jenkins), with how very little things have actually moved since 2003 (i.e. the ACC 9 meeting at which George Carey tried to warn ECUSA re GC2003) - moved, that is, to stem profound ‘novelties’ from actually occurring without apparent consequence and accountability. QED GAFCON! So whatever reservations I myself might have towards GAFCON - and I have more than enough, I guess - at least it is recognising and demonstrating that enough is enough. And the ecclesiastical elites of the western church need to get the wax out of their ears - and the stony bits removed from their hearts: it is after all the Feast of Pentecost.
Sorry Graham; but with your time in Kenya I suspect you know very well what I am talking about. May the iron therefore continue to sharpen the iron, not least in Bradford, as well as Canterbury and Jordan/Jerusalem.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Saturday 10 May 2008 - 11:15am
One reason for having a Canterbury-led Communion is provided by David Ould. In posts on this thread he has alleged some Anglican bishops are 'false teachers'. But on what basis is this judgement made? Juridically it is only fair and just that such judgement is made by a properly appointed doctrinal tribunal. Such tribunals exist (I presume) in each member Anglican Church but one does not clearly yet exist in the Communion (though the Covenant is moving us in that direction). Cutting a long explanation short, the calling into being of such a tribunal, and the authority structure around its being convened and its consequent deliberations, determinations and enforcements normally requires someone to be the primary leader of the structure. The case is strong, but not absolute for this person being the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Just before someone makes a response such as 'but some matters are so obvious in respect of false teaching it does not require a council to determine them' David Ould has again provided an example of how some things are not at all obvious to all. He (with slight revision on this thread in a gracious direction) has made some statements about the disobedience of bishops (to the command of Scripture not to associate with false teachers) who are going to Lambeth: presumably this is obvious to him, but not obvious to the bishops themselves (and to Graham Kings and myself and many other Anglicans).
My understanding of the pickle we are in is that some Anglicans think other Anglicans are false teachers but those Anglicans fiercely deny they are anything of the sort. That kind of disagreement could be a reason to divide but it could also be a reason to keep talking, and (in my mind) it is certainly a reason to investigate further the possibility of a Communion-mechanism for determining what is false teaching and what is not!
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Graham Kings
Saturday 10 May 2008 - 11:07am
Thanks, Art, for your thoughtful comments. Yes, ethics and ecclesiology have to go together as you say:
I am firmly of the opinion that any ecclesiology worth its salt (pun intended) is ethical, in and of itself.
This reflects the opening sentence of Michael Poon's Oxford DPhil thesis on John Chrysostom, 'Christian ethics are ecclesial' which I cited in 'Singapore: Intellectual Centre of a Movement'.
To your question, 'If not GAFCON, what?', yes, the Covenant is part of the answer. Another part will be the crucial reshaping of the official structures of the Anglican Communion, which will be discussed at the Lambeth Conference.
In a very significant interview with Paul Richardson, published in the Church of England Newspaper 9 May 2008, Rowan Williams states:
What the debate has revealed is how ill-equipped to deal with such matters are the structures which have evolved in the Communion. There have to be clearing houses where people representative of different views in the Provinces can decide what is a fundamental matter. At the Lambeth Conference we need to think about how we put that clearing mechanism in place and get something that commands trust.
All bishops who would like to be involved in such questions should be encouraged to attend the Lambeth Conference. It is not too late...
Posted by: Art
Saturday 10 May 2008 - 10:13am
Thank you, Graham Kings, for your direct question regarding a non Canterbury centred AC.
I personally would deem it a very sad and unfortunate move if this were to happen. And while I am given to understand that there are some going to GAFCON who consider this a serious possibility, I am far from convinced that many either favour it or will therefore support it - at this stage. But I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet!
There is also the question of any “centre” at all. I do not see why it has to be, say, Lagos versus Canterbury. For if some decide to sever ties with Canterbury, there does not need to be another centre instead. At this point, we have moved well beyond the Reformation’s orbital entrapment to Rome’s ‘sun’ (with apologies to ARCIC). On this score, I agree with our “pluralist”, that a series of autocephalous groups are a possible form of reconfiguration. Though whether such reshaping (I will leave these terms as synonymous for the moment) can be effected without Canterbury and remain “Anglican” also remains to be seen. Historically speaking, the C o E, and thereafter the AC, has surely been centred around Canterbury. No-one disputes that! What is seriously under dispute however is the form of unity bestowed by communion with Canterbury.
For already we have the anomalous situation where TEC claims to be in communion with Canterbury as does the Southern Cone - yet they themselves are at serious loggerheads! And so far I can see nothing in the Covenant Draft that addresses this kind of triangulation (other than perhaps the lesser, associate status option). Yet, in the end, Canterbury must itself decide not only on its historic ties and therefore its role as an Instrument of organizational Unity, but also how it sits regarding its adherence to orthodoxy as a function of sheer truth. [No; I am not for one moment setting off that hare - Rowan Williams’ own particular status confessionis ... nor his deemed competence or incompetence. Though in the fulness of time, some form of collegial as well as conciliar dimension to our reshaped "patterns of ministry" needs to be more rigorously addressed by the Drafters.]
Lastly (avoiding altogether the vocab stuff), I am firmly of the opinion that any ecclesiology worth its salt (pun intended) is ethical, in and of itself. The New Creation in Christ Jesus inevitably stands over against certain forms and codes of life as it adheres singularly to others. Our (western) problem is that ethics has become its own separate matter methodologically (and I am sure you know the history ...). Another, western problem is that “diversity”, so beloved of a culture driven by pluralism, seems - but only seems - to be a good and beautiful Christian thing to many folk. I have argued at some length elsewhere (not in my nom de plume) that this is in fact not the case, since there is, as I have already said earlier on this thread, literally a world of difference between such a view of ‘diversity’ on the one hand and created differentiation on the other The result is that the very premises of the means of our ethical adjudication among various members of the AC are skewed before we’ve even started! Many are simply captured by their secular culture of pluralism and are incapable, it seems, of discerning the difference between that and a robust Christian theology of creation, as this applies to cultural formation among various peoples. To be sure; our “pluralist” will/might not like this line of conversation; but having visited his web site fairly often, he is delightfully symptomatic! Consequently, whatever ecclesiology we attempt to establish needs to address directly the very form of ethics that reflects the character and nature of the triune God - not as some addendum but as the necessary outflow of New Life in Christ Jesus and as this is set over against prevailing currents. Again, I do not see much of these kinds of consideration in the current Drafters’ material. Perhaps their assiduous refusal to look back and to the causes of our current plight, looking only forwards and to supposed ways of future ‘communion’, makes this one-eyed and so half-baked stance inevitable. Sorry folks; there’s a **&^!!^$~~%#* elephant in the room! And for all GAFCON’s possible ills, at least it recognises that! Just so, my own question: if not GAFCON, what? To which the Covenant is frankly only a partial answer ... albeit a necessary partial answer, given the last few years’ actual course of events.
Once more, blessed preparations!
Posted by: Graham Kings
Saturday 10 May 2008 - 08:24am
Thanks, David, for your comments and for this discussion.
I appreciate:
your word 'seems' in the phrase, 'seems to fly in the face of the Biblical injunction'
your word 'appears' in the sentence, 'the GAFCON process when it appears to be an approach that is faithful to Scripture'
GAFCON is a significant conference. The discussion there will be crucial over whether Evangelicals should try to:
split off from a Canterbury-centred Communion
continue to keep up the pressure to reshape the Anglican Communion on the central issues of biblical authority, holiness in sexuality and ecclesiology
I pray and pray and pray for the latter.
Posted by: David Ould
Saturday 10 May 2008 - 02:46am
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the use of the term "dog". ISTM that when Paul wrote to the Philippians there would have been some there who said to him "hang on a minute, Paul. Don't you know that in another context that word means "filthy rotten non-Jew"? Surely you can't expect to win them over with that terminology?"
Nevertheless he used the term. Sometimes we need to have absolute clarity about the seriousness of a situation.
As to contradicting myself, I think some are being too reductionistic with what I'm saying. For clarity:
I think going to Lambeth is a big mistake since it endorses the false teachers who are there. It also seems to fly in the face of the Biblical injunction to not associate with such people. I say this with great sadness since I think the Lambeth Conference is extemely important but that should be an indication of how deep a crisis I (and others) think we are in.
I recognise that some will go, despite this. I understand their motivations but I think they are hopelessly optimistic given the unwillingness of TEC and Canterbury to accede to and enforce many requests that have already been made.
I fail to see how some parties are now criticising the GAFCON process when it appears to be an approach that is faithful to Scripture - it takes seriously both the call to fellowship and the need to delineate the false teachers. It may not be the only faithful approach but it is certainly one. Perhaps we might consider whether it has been the accomodation of those false teachers that has, in actuality, been a catalyst for further disintegration. There is, also, a slight discontinuity in praising one description of false teachers as appropriate, even though it is applied to those who uphold the orthodox faith, while denouncing another even though it is applied to those who are demonstrably opposing the gospel.
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify these matters. I'm not sure if it will persuade your readers but at least I trust it will lead to a greater estimation of the integrity and goodwill of those associated with GAFCON, just as the more conservative amongst us recognise the integrity and goodwill of those who are still convinced that going to Lambeth is a good thing.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Friday 9 May 2008 - 08:50pm
It has been an unfortunate part of current and recent discussions since the announcement of GAFCON that judgements have been made about the event before it has actually happened. Nevertheless, as Graham Kings points out, some statements have been made by the GAFCON organisers themselves which raise the question of what GAFCON may lead to.
I fail to see how two Anglican global organisations - should that be the outcome - contribute to our global mission. At that point we become yet another contributor to confusion in the minds of non-churchgoers (and probably in the minds of many 'ordinary' Anglicans too)!
I can see how GAFCON as an event to rally and enthuse many Anglicans committed to a sound orthodox, biblical evangelical and anglo-catholic theology could be a significant and strategic event in mapping out how those Anglicans committed to such theology continue to work within the Anglican Communion to convince and persuade more Anglicans to share that commitment.
I can also see how the attendance of all bishops at GAFCON at Lambeth as well could lead to the Lambeth Conference being unable to escape facing the fact that the Anglican Communion is currently failing to be truly inclusive of its diversity. I fear that Duncan, Iker, Venables and co might fall short of the numbers to make Lambeth a Communion transforming event. If only Nigerian and Sydney bishops were there to add weight to the scrum!
Peter Carrell
Posted by: Deleted user 1222
Friday 9 May 2008 - 06:16pm
As a lay "dog", who goes only for walkies around the block, the simple answer as to whether certain Anglican Churches will "comply" is no. Those who will say no to any expected shrinkage of Anglican diversity will include, but not exclusively, TEC, Canada, Brazil, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, most of Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong... There will also be large proportions in other places that will not accept some shrinkage beyond what formularies exist now.
The issue for Canterbury then, if anything is done at all, is whether it jumps with those that include the GAFCON crowd, making a group of Anglican Churches have bonds of affection with each other, or whether it accepts the no that comes from many Churches. If then Canterbury is linked by others with the noes, there will then be a non-Canterbury communion of the theological right..
This will not be decided at Lambeth, will it? It will be decided when there is a final draft of the Covenant and synod after synod, bishops after bishops meeting, say no, or when the self-proclaimed orthodox declare the final draft useless for purpose.
However, I'm sure impatience will get the better of the GAFCON crowd.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Friday 9 May 2008 - 03:47pm
David, I am not 'seeking the worst meaning of your words' but am pointing out to you how people on the web may read your words.
Since you admit that you do indeed understand the current contextual meaning of the word 'dog', which you used about some Anglican bishops, it is even more surprising that you do not consider it a mistake to use it.
In your article you state:
But if [Kings] wants to share his meal with wolves, our obedience to what Paul wrote to the Philippians will not allow us to come.
This clearly implies that you believe that those who will attend the Lambeth Conference, (which you know includes Greg Venables, Jack Iker and Bob Duncan) are 'sharing meals with wolves' and therefore being disobedient 'to what Paul wrote to the Philippians'.
In your latest comment on this Fulcrum forum you state:
I am quite happy for people to decide, in good conscience, that they should attend Lambeth.
Those two statements do not match up. Which one do you still stand by?
You also state in your latest comment:
It is uncharitable to paint the organisers of GAFCON as divisive when they are merely wanting to be faithful to the Biblical call to not associate with false teachers.
It may be worth reading again the statement of the Secretary of GAFCON, cited in my 'Substance and Shadow' article:
In other words, since the Archbishop of Canterbury has not provided for the safe oversight of the orthodox in the United States, he has forfeited his role as the one who gathers the Communion.
Posted by: David Ould
Friday 9 May 2008 - 01:51pm
Graham,
It begins to feel to me that you are seeking the worst meaning of my words. I am well aware, since you have brought it up, that the word "dog" means a certain thing in certain contexts. I was however, as you are well aware, referring to the far wider issue of teaching a false gospel. Matters of sexual behaviour are entirely secondary to and only the outworking of these far bigger issues. I am not sure, then, why it is that you want to paint my words in another way.
As for the super-Apostles of 2Cor, Paul has this to say of them:
2 Corinthians 11:4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus different from the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit than the one you received, or a different gospel than the one you accepted, you put up with it well enough! 5 For I consider myself not at all inferior to those "super-apostles."
The super-Apostles, then, preach a different Jesus and those that receive them receive a different spirit. They are not simply "mistaken" but far worse - they promote another Jesus and so those that listen to and receive their message receive another Spirit. The consequences of such reception, obviously, are literally hellish. The term "super-Apostle" may initially sound more pleasant that "dog"or "wolf" but its implication in its Biblical context is much the same. It serves none of us well when you seek to paint one term as offensive but the other not. Readers may wish to consider how these "super-Apostles" are any better or more noble in Paul's eyes than the "dogs" of Phil. 3.
As for GAFCON itself. I most certainly did not suggest that they were deliberately pursuing a non-Canterbury Communion so much as Canterbury's actions (or lack of them) are what is catalysing division. I was very careful in my language to note that the 16th Century Reformers faced much the same accusations that you now throw at the GAFCON organisers. History shows that they were far less interested in pursuing division than they were in remaining consistent with the historic gospel. It is uncharitable to paint the organisers of GAFCON as divisive when they are merely wanting to be faithful to the Biblical call to not associate with false teachers. What is so wrong about seeking to be faithful to such a Biblical instruction that it illicits such opposition? Where is the charity? I am quite happy for people to decide, in good conscience, that they should attend Lambeth. It demonstrates an optimism that I do not share but I recognise that there are some for whom it is still something to be pursued even though they are, to my mind, only serving to endorse the status of those who the Communion should be censuring.
Why can that charity not be extended by your good self to GAFCON? Why are they to be condemned for having a conscience when those orthodox who attend Lambeth and give a place at the table to false teachers are to be praised? I'm beginning to get confused about who is open here and who is not.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Friday 9 May 2008 - 11:37am
David, a few comments in response:
you know very well indeed how the meaning of the word 'dog' in the present context of sexuality has a different meaning from the word 'dog' as used by Paul in Philippians.
again, to refer to certain bishops in the Anglican Communion by such an inflammatory word is appalling.
as to 'super apostles', I assume you are referring to Tom Wright's Fulcrum Conference address, 'Conflict and Covenant in the Bible'. Neither he, nor Paul, imply that 'super apostles' are not Christians. The whole point Paul is making is that they were Christian leaders but were mistaken.
Tom Wright is not making an equivalence between the GAFCON organisers and 'those who deny the gospel in TEC'. As you know, he had some strong words to say in that direction too
You only have to compare the phrase 'super apostle' to 'dog' to see the difference in tone and nuance and it is that to which I object strongly.
It is interesting that in your reply you suggest that some GAFCON organisers are indeed planning a 'non-Canterbury centred Communion' and that you favour that yourself.
Most of the Book of Common Prayer was written by the then Archbishop of Canterbury...
Posted by: David Ould
Friday 9 May 2008 - 11:32am
[apologies, this very last part dropped off my reply]
The desire of GAFCON, then, (as I understand it) is to defend and uphold the gospel held out to us in those formularies. It is a mark of the seriousness of the situation we are in that some would be prepared to countenance a break of any sort with Canterbury. Unless, of course, they are really just "super-Apostles", preaching a different Gospel to that which Paul preached.
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Friday 9 May 2008 - 11:31am
David,
I fail to see how 'dogs' and 'super-apostles' can be equated as similar terms of deprecation even though they may both have been used intemperately.
My point about 'dogs' is that it is not a term which will wake up false teaching bishops to the error of their ways. It will only confirm their estimation of conservative Anglicans which I suggest is not one of praise and thanksgiving, and shut down any receptivity they have to the message we proclaim.
You talk about the Bible's call to action. But the fact that Paul used a term in the first century is not a call to us to use the same term in a different context. Our need at this time is to find language which might win people to Christ and transform the hearts and minds of erroneous Christians to orthodoxy. There are many possibilities for strong and robust language if this is required, as well as for the language of diplomacy if that is apt. But 'dogs' is not one of those possibilities because of its counter-productivity to the goal of transformation of our Communion.
Peter Carrell
Posted by: David Ould
Friday 9 May 2008 - 10:59am
Graham, I do believe I had begun to address your complaint by referring to the fact that Paul used this language. I also raised the issue as to whether we took seriously enough the damage such bishops (a small minority, granted) are doing.
It seems to me that we must be very real about the fact that there are men and women invited to Lambeth who do not hold to the gospel, indeed who teach against it. Scripture seems to be clear on the disaster this is in both the language that it uses and the action it calls us to.
As for language, I wonder how temperate it also is to describe the organisers of GAFCON as "super-Apostles"? Such a title was used by Paul of those who were not Christians. Is that language also not approriate or do we think that the organisers of GAFCON are to be regarded in the same way as those who deny the gospel in TEC?
As for a non-Canterbury centred Communion - when I was ordained earlier this year I swore to uphold the doctrine of the church, a doctrine based on the Scriptures as set out, not least in the 39 Articles and the Prayer Book. When I examine those formularies I don't see any mention of Canterbury.
Now, of course, Canterbury is a link that Anglicans all over the world cherish - but it's not the defining core of Anglicanism by a long shot. At the end of the day if Canterbury chooses not to uphold and defend the biblical Gospel then it is Canterbury itself, one might very well argue, that is setting up an alternative Anglicanism. When the Anglican Reformers of the 16th Century faced their difficult choices they asserted that they had not moved from the biblical gospel but were holding fast to it. I'm sure they were also asked similar questions about their links with Rome.
The desire of GAFCON, then, (as I understand it) is to defend and uphold the gospel held out to us in those formularies. It is a mark of
Posted by: Graham Kings
Friday 9 May 2008 - 10:49am
David, I think you really do need to take seriously my questioning , and Peter's questioning, of you referring to some Anglican bishops as 'dogs'.
Also, you only commented on the first part of my article. What about my warnings about some organisers of GAFCON planning to set up a 'non-Canterbury centred Communion'? Are you in favour of that idea?
Posted by: David Ould
Friday 9 May 2008 - 10:14am
lol, I think you're mistaking Euodia and Syntyche for Junia! And even then, there's some disagreement about whether her passport is valid ;-)
Posted by: Peter Carrell
Friday 9 May 2008 - 09:57am
Greetings!
I am all for using biblical language but I think the Bible writers themselves used language that attempted to be effective communication. Quite what will be achieved by describing Anglican bishops as 'dogs', no matter what we think of their theology, is beyond me. I think its the twenty-first century, not the first!
But I am encouraged to see in David Ould's post that Euodia and Syntyche are welcome at the GAFCON table and look forward to a hearty engagement with the question of the ordination of women at that conference!
Peter Carrell
Posted by: David Ould
Friday 9 May 2008 - 08:46am
Thanks for noting this, Graham, and my apologies for not letting you know personally. I had looked for contact details for you both on this site and at your parish but hadn't succeeded.
You raise a number of issues. Let me just begin to respond:
With regards to the length of Lambeth, thanks for the reminder.
I do agree that the Conference will discuss certain matters - but discussion of the Covenant (which will be useful) is not the same as addressing the direct presenting issue. Also, as we have argued, even if the Covenant is discussed and an outcome agreed; will TEC and others comply?
With regards to the purpose of GAFCON, personally I think we are in some agreement that it is slightly ridiculous not to see some element of it being an "alternative".
I use the language of 'dogs' with respect to the heterodox in the Communion, as you note, since Paul uses the same language of those in his day who claim to be Christian but deny the gospel. Frankly, I think strong biblical language is needed to describe such people these days. We must be crystal clear on the damage such teachers do. If Paul would not accept fellowship with them, who are we to suggest it is now appropriate? This comes down, I think, to us either not taking Paul seriously enough or not being convinced that certain figures in the Communion really are false teachers of a most dangerous type.
Those orthodox bishops who are attending Lambeth must decide for themselves why they are going. Personally I do not see what they can achieve when the Communion is unwilling to discipline those that deny the gospel. More than that, I am increasingly personally convinced that attendance at Lambeth is disobedience to the Biblical instruction to have nothing whatsoever to do with such false teachers, except for continually correcting them and warning the flock.
Thanks again for noting the post. I look forward to seeing what your readers have to say.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Friday 9 May 2008 - 08:00am
David Ould has just published 'Philippi or Corinth: Where is the Anglican Communion? a response to Graham Kings' on the Stand Firm site, 8 May 2008, and on his own site, 9 May 2008. For his context, see here.
He comments on the first section of my article, 'Faith and Fellowship in Crisis' concerning Paul's letter to the Philippians. In his introduction he states:
Why should Lambeth be any different? If the month-long conference were even to address these serious matters that now divide us (not that it is really planning to), if they even came up with serious resolutions - what good would it do? What real good did resolution 1.10 in 1998 do as we look back a decade later? It seems to many of us that all it has served to achieve is the crystallisation of our differences.
A few comments of fact:
the Lambeth Conference is not a month long but 20 days
it will discuss the 'serious matters that now divide us' - that is the context of the Covenant: it has been decided that a group will discuss the Covenant throughout the conference and not leave its consideration to the final few days, as was first announced
although the Conference will not focus on resolutions, some resolutions may well be passed
Concerning the significance of Lambeth 1.10, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote in his 2007 Advent Letter:
the 1998 Resolution is the only point of reference clearly agreed by the overwhelming majority of the Communion. This is the point where our common reading of Scripture stands, along with the common reading of the majority within the Christian churches worldwide and through the centuries.
David Ould, after referring to Philippians 3:2, states:
There is, of course, an alternative. There is another gospel table where the dogs are not invited but Euodia and Syntyche sit side by side. At GAFCON evangelicals and anglo-catholics will set aside their rivalries for the service of a greater agreement. It would be great if Kings would join us, and he rightly notes that Paul would have it no other way. But if he wants to share his meal with wolves, our obedience to what Paul wrote to the Philippians will not allow us to come.
A few comments:
it is admitted that GAFCON has been set up as an 'alternative' conference
using the inflammatory language of 'dogs' -admittedly used by Paul concerning a group many consider to be 'judaisers' - to refer to people he disagrees with in the present crisis in the Communion is not helpful.
Greg Venables, Jack Iker and Bob Duncan are coming to Lambeth: are they being disobedient to what Paul wrote to the Philippians?
Posted by: Graham Kings
Friday 9 May 2008 - 06:35am
Thanks, Art, for your further thoughts and your comment that 'GAFCONs will necessarily also sharpen Canterburys, “as iron sharpens iron”.'
As I mentioned in my article,
It is encouraging to learn that planners of the Lambeth Conference are considering how to discuss positively in Canterbury some of the concerns which may emanate from GAFCON.
Pluralist (aka Adrian Worsfold) has highlighted this section in my article in his response 'GAFCON and Common Cause', though, from his perspective of course, he thinks this is discouraging.
However, you have not yet commented on the plans of some of the organisers of GAFCON for considering setting up a 'non-Canterbury centred Communion'. It would be good to hear whether you would encourage such a move.
You mention the much-used phrase 'reconfiguring the Communion'. This often tends to imply: 'we have given up on Canterbury as a focus for unity, and the Archbishop has forfeited his right to gather the Communion and so let us set up our own 'non-Canterbury centred Communion.'
I prefer the phrase 'reshaping', and certainly the structures of the Communion do need 'reshaping' to cope with the growth of the Communion and of the Web and ethical challenges to ecclesiology. As mentioned before, I hope to consider these in my address at Fulcrum in the North in terms of how do we 'read' the Communion and how should it be reshaped.
Posted by: Art
Thursday 8 May 2008 - 09:37am
You are right, Pete Hobson, to point to the desire that ‘friendships’ might/would be stronger than the structural stuff that is proving just so very vexatious at present. However, I myself have known what it is to live through a civil war with what I thought to be good friends on all sides (I refer to Rhodesia/Zimbabwe). Yet as this war gained momentum, it proved impossible to maintain all of these. And the 1980s, post Independence, were, shall we say, ‘interesting times’. (I refrain from commenting upon the present as it is truly off the map ...) And while in South Africa something similar happened I know, their Truth and Reconciliation Commission could only possibly see the light of day after the end of Apartheid: there were necessarily real losers. Nor has this been the panacea for all ills - even as it has been a truly miraculous work of common grace, and to be justly hailed as such.
Yet again, Graham Kings, your “passionate patience” is exactly the call. It expresses a real form of ‘koinonia’ in Christ’s sufferings. Just so, you rightly point us to Paul’s Letter to Philippi at the start of the Newsletter. However, in this light (Paul was in prison), we can expect real casualties - another form of ‘koinonia’ - as this thing that was once the Anglican Communion reconfigures. That is, even should we desire (that word again) an “end to the cycle of vengeance”, living “beyond judgment” (O’Donovan in The Ways of Judgment) may only be enacted once the reality and truth of the Cross and Resurrection are duly affirmed [in a similar way to the need for Apartheid first to cease before the Commission may exist]. And it does really seem to me that these core Christian affirmations are among the things that are often currently disputed within the Communion. And that is not merely to suggest we may tweak the metaphors for their (our?!) hermeneutical appreciation; Colin Gunton has given us far more to focus upon: their very need and actuality. So much of Anglicanism remains polite bourgeois semi-Pelagianism, by contrast!
We may desire full(er) forgiveness and rich(er) reconciliation among our brothers and sisters. Yet, for all that, that presupposes a grounding in certain things [a rereading has noticed the double entendre ...], things which are at the core of what is being contested around the Communion. So, finally, while we may wish to reframe these matters, as does Philp Turner via TWR and its great communion vision of Ephesians, the likes of Eph 4:17ff firmly declare some things are actually wrong, while others offer real hope! Ancient Greek Tragedy’s fatalism was wrong simply because it was written before Christ - well; er; substantially. Molora’s rewriting may be enacted because Jesus Christ has come! And because we humans needed Christ to come!! And in the light of that judgment, we may discover another course and a new identity in the Spirit. But until that is duly recognised - yes; that key Williams word - GAFCONs will necessarily also sharpen Canterburys, “as iron sharpens iron”. So we may expect further sparks to fly - evil does not go quietly into the night (cf. Mugabe - or San Joaquin ...) - even as we seek patiently to establish “patterns of ministry” (O’Donovan again) that may better deal with our present plight: viz the Covenant, in hope! I guess it is knowing too the joy in that suffering which the real Gospel communicates to us and to which Paul’s Philippians also calls us that undergirds our survival in this very plight. But it is wise to be forewarned in any event ...!
God bless the preparations for June.
Posted by: pete hobson
Tuesday 6 May 2008 - 09:43am
It's a separate point, but why, Art, do you assume (and I think you do - but correct me if not) that friendships will necessarily be fractured or broken if post GAFCON and Lambeth there is am ore significant parting of the ways? I'm not saying some won't be, of course - but surely not necessarily? Isn't the point of both koinonia that friendship (and the overlap/distinction between those two id worth a longer exposition) that they can have the capacity to survive strong disagreements, both in thought and in action? As opposed, perhaps, to their apparent mimics, 'alliance' or 'close acquaintance'?
Posted by: Graham Kings
Tuesday 6 May 2008 - 07:22am
Many thanks indeed, Art, for your two thoughtful comments and for pointing people to Philip Turner's very fine essay.
As you know, I am still an advocate of 'passionate patience' and will ponder these comments. They will help in preparation for my address at Fulcrum in the North, on 1 June, which will be published here soon after that.
We have just published on Fulcrum 'Ending the Cycle of Vengeance'. This is a version of my address to the Diocese of Lichfield Pre-Lambeth Conference which I edited down for the Church of England Newspaper, 2 May 2008.
Posted by: Art
Sunday 4 May 2008 - 06:48am
Venturing a comment upon my own basic questions to Graham Kings.
In the first place, there is now something of a ready answer offered by Philip Turner. See http://covenant-communion.com/?p=708 (or via the ACI site if you prefer). This essay is enormously rich and deserving of careful attention, not least as it continues and applies afresh major lines of thought which both Turner and Radner have been consistently - and I myself reckon rightly, for what that’s worth, even if idealistically - pursuing for a number of years.
Thereafter, however, I wish to highlight (among many possibilities) a delightful shift in meaning that two words carry: “until” versus “unless”. Going to the end of section VI, the second last sentence: “Here it seems to me the covenant ought to call specifically for mutual subjection that entails not taking such an action until such time as the larger body has recognized it as one in keeping with faithful Christian belief and practice.”
The contrast between these two words could not be greater, especially when placed in the context of the events of the last 10 years, that is, since the last meeting of the Lambeth Conference and its Resolutions. For many in the Communion have simply assumed that it is actually ‘only a matter of time before others catch up’, so that the “until” word is correct, while equally another set of folk clearly hold to the fact that the “unless” has been already declared: e.g. the now (in)famous Resolution I.10, Primates’ Communiqué October 2003, etc. And recent actions based on these two differing attitudes reflect probably more a typical human impatience by both camps than a denial of the actual connotations themselves. Furthermore, behind both words and their usage in our current ‘dilemmas’ lie additional and crucial assumptions, it seems to me.
For many pluralists (using Turner’s taxonomy) assume also a progressive, developmental aspect to human history, while many confessionalists see the ambiguities of history continuing unabated irrespective of cultural shifts (to try to capture in simple terms a key difference). And behind both of these stances is an even more basic premise: does Scripture actually offer the tool for cultural assessment; does it really provide the norma normans for reading and interpreting social scripts? For many a pluralist has reached their position almost by default, with pluralism being a significant expression of Western Secular Society in which they happen to dwell [see now Charles Taylor’s brilliant analysis published, finally, last year, A Secular Age]. There is quite literally a world of difference between pluralism’s belief in ‘diversity’, and the created differentiation offered us via a Christian view of reality. The one trades upon a form of social constructionism, while the latter is derived from the Christian theology of Creation. And of course the latter also assumes the kind of high authoritative view of Holy Scripture that guides both Turner’s analysis and TWR throughout. On the other hand, much of the time it really does seem that for many a pluralist their view and use of Scripture is “loosey/Lucy goosey”, to quote a famous Episcopalian. And if that is really the case, then why grant the pluralist view the weight Turner does?! To be sure, contextualization will remain a key missiological question, but the way one assesses such matters need not be prejudiced (a deliberate word!) by the current view that presupposes all cultural traits and codes of life to be merely plastic, to be moulded any which way we humans please. “Created differences” may stand; the plethora of postmodern “others” need not at all!
Given therefore these very different starting positions and base assumptions, as they show themselves via the little words “until” versus “unless”, my questions to Graham Kings, and to some degree Philip Turner, remain on the table. The Psalmist’s cry “How long, O Lord?!” is one that many of us who have a due ‘koinonia’ with the African Church and its mission know all too well. Yet that cry seems all too prevalent also more recently in such places as Dallas, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and/or San Joaquin, let alone Vancouver. Wherein the answer to this cry via the proposed Anglican Covenant? (I’d like to say more readily that it does reside there; but the faith and hope attached to that form of ‘koinonia’ are becoming increasingly dimmed as events unfold and responses to the Drafts emerge.) Apart from, that is, Phil 3:3-16 in the light of 2:1-13 once more. Yet there I am wishing to ground reality in Scripture again! And the section ends 3:20-21, God’s final “answer”!
At bottom, I seek both a grounded realism, given the trajectory of events and responses over the past decade(s), as well as a robust search for what could be termed “global Anglican identity” in our 21st C. I am not convinced from this Newsletter that Graham Kings - and now Philip Turner’s essay - has the options duly tabled ... yet.
Posted by: Art
Thursday 1 May 2008 - 02:17am
Thank you Graham for the vivid descriptions of Aeschylus revisited, mamas and all! Having myself spent some 30% of my life in Africa also, the pictures plus sounds are suitably electric. And then placing these alongside Gillian Rose, some of whose work is also familiar, was bound to generate a certain frisson! I trust this juxtaposition works as well for other readers whose cultural experiences are not that way inclined.
Yet I confess to having a difficulty thereafter. Granting both Rose’s and Williams’ due emphasis upon learning and the role of error in the learning process, from most accounts many in TEC’s leadership are simply not prepared to acknowledge that there has been any error on their part. Just so, your pointing out that while they do apologize for “the hurt caused”, there is steadfastly - my own take - no acknowledgement of the error of “the fact of the consecration”. And while this denial persists - again my own take with both words - how can their be due ‘koinonia’? How can there be genuine reconciliation and a genuine going forward until they own the fact that they have contributed greatly to the present “brokenness” (Rose)?
Thereafter again, to paraphrase + Schofield’s recent distinction, to “recognise the tear in the fabric of Communion is not to cause it”. In which light, to what degree is GAFCON a due “recognition” and to what extent an overreaction and so an undue, rival, and so false response? Your position has been laid out - more or less. My question is simply this: what other forms of recognition (and it is appropriate to note this key word from Williams’ Advent Letter 2007) have been seriously proposed and/or enacted that reflect faithfully what has occurred? To deny an invitation to Lambeth to New Hampshire is but one small response. For in principle, according to catholic order as well as canonically, a host of further TEC bishops were necessarily complicit. Should they still be invited? And what if the apparently imminent “painful letter” of the ABC’s is shrugged off in a similar manner to most of TEC’s recent shrugs? The acts and reactions of TEC over the last five years have established a certain trajectory in some/many people’s minds that warrants far stronger recognition than has been proposed - if not GAFCON. And it is at this point that I suggest your analysis and assessment fails: if not GAFCON, what?
Lastly, I have friends who will be in Jerusalem just as I have friends who will be in Canterbury. I suspect you and many others are together with me in this. My apprehension - even granted a desire to “not fear”! - is that, any which way, come the end of August many/some of these friendships will have reached breaking point. Unless Lambeth seriously recognises and seeks to address the sheer depth of our current, broken (and not merely impaired) ‘koinonia’. And then of course, if it does - miracles might happen! - then I/we probably face a string of broken friendships with those who have chosen/feel called to remain in TEC. Faith in the face of any such prospects may be “a sharing in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings”. Yet if there are courses of action still open that may avert such a form of ‘koinonia’, then it behoves us to seek them and take them. Sadly, however, the last five years has witnessed something of a lack of imagination, it seems to me, which makes the sense of both my faith and my hope even more challenging. Or is that just the necessary precursor to a ‘koinonia’ in Jesus’ sufferings before any due resurrection is possible - given the tragic muddle we are in the Middle of ...?
Peace and Joy this Ascension Day!
Posted by: Graham Kings
Wednesday 30 April 2008 - 09:18am
We have just published my Fulcrum Newsletter for April 2008, 'Faith and Fellowship in Crisis.' The address was given at the Pre-Lambeth Conference of the Diocese of Lichfield at the University of Stafford last Saturday, 26 April.
Add your comments on the Fulcrum Forum
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Top public schools have put it in their curricula and David Cameron has even set out to measure it, now churches are embarking on a drive to teach happiness to the nation. Telegraph 18 May 2013
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WORSHIP
1. The bells of the Church of St.Peter and St.Paul, Tonbridge in Kent- BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01shqss
2. Whit Sunday Worship from Emmanuel Church Didsbury - BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes...
Daniel's exegetical outline below makes more sense of Ephesians 5:21-23 than anything else I've seen posted here. The proposed rings make obvious intuitive sense, though I am still pondering the question what algorithm, if any, could (dis)confirm these intuitions. The rings lead one to see intimacy ...
Daniel-- I was hoping for new light on kephale, but did not expect it so soon! Your "B" ring lends support to the view of Secret Villager 4976 below who sees St Paul emphasising the unity of head and body in Ephesians 5. And as I myself note below, the coinherence of the members of the pairs {God : ...
John Martin reviews Andrew Goddard's timely memoire of the Archiepiscopate of Rowan Williams
Andrew Goddard offers a positive assessment of the recent FAOC document
A comment on the most controversial funeral of the century.......
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