Drifting from Biblical Truth
25 September 2007 - 14 תשרי 5768 by Huw
Over at The Episcopal Majority, Fr. Thomas B. Woodward posits the question, Who is Drifting from Biblical Truth?
Here are some questions for anyone who wants to charge the leadership of the Episcopal Church with “abandoning the Bible” or failing to acknowledge the real authority of the Bible. I ask these questions not rhetorically, but out of genuine concern:
- Whom did Jesus heal – and which of the healing stories involve repentance or conversion?
- How did Jesus choose Levi, the tax collector, as disciple/apostle – apparently without evidence of personal belief or repentance?
- What do you make of the parables that speak so movingly about sufficient faith outside Jesus’ faith community?
- What is the relationship between Jesus’ community and the religious establishment?
- What is the relationship between Jesus’ community and the marginalized people of his time?
- Is there any group or class of people that Jesus excluded from his welcoming embrace?
- How was it, when scholars tell us that Jesus honored women completely, that our church was able to marginalize them for nineteen hundred years?
- Are there reasons we do not use the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) and Paul’s list of the indications that the Holy Spirit is present in individuals and groups (Galatians 5:22-23) as the basis for our moral judgments on committed human relationships rather than the regulations of the purity code that even Conservative and Reformed Jews have rejected?
These are not difficult questions. They are questions, though, that reveal the ignorance of the attacks of those who believe that the Episcopal Church does not concern itself with the authority of the Bible. I believe it is disgraceful to ignore the teachings, the parables, the healings, and the loving and affirming relationships of Jesus Christ while charging those who not only affirm, but also treasure those realities with disregard of the Bible.
I’m down with these. They rank up there with my quest to define Orthodoxy. - what’s needed and what’s not.
As a province, I think we should do one of two things. We should either come out and say what we’re doing and why (with strong biblical and theological support), or we should stop doing it. If we take the first option, let’s face the consequences, if any. It is neither honest nor helpful to do something and then say we’re not doing it. It smacks of the worst kind of American imperialism to tell the primates that we’ve honored their requests, when we really haven’t.
(Not Fr Thomas, but rather Fr Scott said that)
The issue is not that ECUSA (and others) are doing something new - they are. The Question is Why? It’s easy to understand how some slam them with “denying Biblical authority” and others say “breaking with Holy Tradition”. But the reply, “Cuz we wanna” isn’t a reply. Fr Scott says, “Too often, we progressives in ECUSA have been willing to duck behind polity or otherwise obscure our actions.”
So while the reasoning seems self-evident to the progrssives - I’m down with the name - let’s hear the theology, let’s hear it stated. And people from the traditionalist camp need to back off and wait a while. Let’s call the bluff of the traditionalists who say we’re just following our hormones.
Unless we are. Mind you, I don’t think we are… but I can easily see where others would think so.
It is likewise easy for me - who have been in both camps - to see the assumptions of Justice, Inclusion and Equity. But let’s assume the mind of someone who can’t see those: and they are legion. Think of Justin the Philosopher (as the East calls Justin Martyr). It’s not enough to say “leave us alone” or “let us be”. Apologetics requires deep thought - yes - but it must be explained well in terms the listener can understand. Pull out the scriptures and the saints: build a valid argument.
And don’t expect me to do it, dear reader: I’m good for a certain level of commentary… but we need something of the quality of Fr. John McNeill’s The Church and the Homosexual, drawing on Fathers and Canon Law, to talk to this crowd.
(Props to Fr Scott for the initial links, too.)
Hmm,
Actually, I could answer most of his questions. But, I will spare you. GRIN!
One or two of his questions on personal repentance assume that evangelical Anglicans all hold to an Anabaptist soteriology, which would be wildly untrue. A Calvinist soteriology does not require a personal profession of faith before Jesus brings you in, but actually the reverse! Jesus brings you in (or heals you, etc.), then you repent.
And, of course, the old fully untrue bugaboo that the opposition relies on the Levitical purity laws. It does not, and there are many articles to the contrary, but . . .
I find his hardest hitting questions not to be the theological ones. I find those rather weak. His hardest questions are on the Church’s approach to marginalized peoples of various types. It is quite possible for portions of the Church, like the Pharisees, to be correct theologically yet totally out of the stream of God’s works.