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Defying Rowan Williams must have been scary.

Okay. I'm forcing myself to take an interest here, because it may be important to many folk over here.

1) What exactly is the point of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury - beyond making suggestions? Is there anything he can do at the moment?
2) If the Anglican Communion breaks up, what effect would that have on the C of I?
3) If the Anglican Communion breaks up, what effect would that have on Episcopalians in Africa etc.? How much of their funding comes from the US/UK?

GV

The Catholic Church might have its problems but at least lesbian bishops isn't one of them.

The Anglican communion is premised on having the head of state as head or supreme governor. That's how it defined itself. When you don't have that you just have a group of would be catholics or evangelical. or in America would be Oprah guests.

Archbishop of Canterbury has no role in the world communion and never has done beyond post boy for the Lambeth conference.

As regards Q2- I'd say none whatsoever.

Q3 - Lot's but they'd get by.

Well Graham, as LSV and I seem to be about the only regular Anglican contributors here, let me hazard a response to your questions - after expressing my abundant unqualified joy at the election!

Point of the Ab of C - none whatsoever atm. Rowan is little more than a long term Moderator of the Lambeth Conference: as the chair you Presbyterians use at your assembly proclaims he is, internationally, but primus inter pares. Under Rowan the office has added absence of moral authority to absence of legal authority. His is a voice crying in the wilderness, contrary to his own understanding, the way of the Lord is straight.

Impact on the CoI - probably not a lot unless a split in the Communion led to a North/South split in Ireland. I regard the CoI fracturing, however, as the remotest of possibilities.

Impact on Africa - probably considerable - from possible fall in American funding. Suspect most British and Irish funding is from what I would perceive as the evan wing of the Church who would continue their support. Karamoja, for example, despite its non-Christian bishop, has many links with NI. I do not see any liklihood of a disruption in these links.

"The Catholic Church might have its problems but..."

You know, mccamley, I've put my views on the topic of this thread before, I'm conservative on this one, but that opening statement of yours is the sort of thing which puts my brain in a tail spin.

Actually, it's the sort of comment which would kick faith out of me.

Peter - could you ever lighten up. It was a playful reference to the fact the Catholic church doesn't have women priests never mind bishops so at least we don't have this issue. Give me a break.

mccamleyc

Perhaps I did misread you, but honestly it didn't sound like a joke; I'll try and explain some more.

I always pretty much identified with conservative thought within the church. I've used words like gospel, truth, holiness and so on and I've heard them used, lots. We conservatives like to think we're a little more right/righteous, just a little closer to what God requires than everybody else and often we define ourselves in terms of what we are not. (or what we think we're not). We're not liberal, we're not unorthodox, we're not unfaithful, you get the drift I'm sure. But I've noticed something else too, we don't have the best of reputations; there's a mismatch between how we conservatives view ourselves and how we are viewed by others and I've got to thinking that just because the 'others' are 'liberals' and 'atheists', it doesn't mean they're always wrong!

A couple of years ago I came across the following comment, "There is such a thing as sanctification by vinegar.Ìý It makes a man accurate and hard." I heard what it was saying and it bothered me. It bothers me that we conservatives can dot every 'i' and cross every 't', our theological grammar and punctuation is second to none, yet we can, and do, communicate without a heart.

Now maybe you Roman Catholics don't have that problem, but we Protestants do. We say we are people of the word, but you know what, sometimes it sounds like 'just words'. Theologically I disagree with liberal Christianity, but many liberal Christians speak and act with compassion, that bothers me too.

I've seen and heard people speak of how the church, the conservative church of which I am part, has hurt them. I've heard the criticisms which have been levelled at us, and sometimes they are warranted. This sit uneasily with me and for all the 'defending' of Christianity I've done on this blog sometimes I'm not sure which way to turn. Sometimes Christianity looks and sounds like a check box, 'my theology's better than your theology', tournament.

That is why I responded to your comment, it wasn't aimed at you, an individual; the simple fact is this, the church for all sorts of reasons has made people angry and there's something wrong about that.

Whatever the 'problems' of liberal Christianity we conservatives have to deal with our own, and one of them is to 'shut up' and give our 'heart' a chance.

Yeh, Pete. Some people feel and some think.

You continue to describe yourself as a Conservative. You were never a Conservative in your life. Caring and Conservatism are oil and water.

I should qualify the 'caring.' There is caring about an issue and then there is caring about people.

In my therapy, the psychologist asked if I would take part in a one to one with an abuser priest. They told me that they wanted this man to become aware of the damage his actions had caused. (Jeez, I thought, am I such a mess that this guy will be so horrified that he'll never abuse again?!!) I did it anyway. No idea if it worked.

However, what hit home was that, awareness might invoke some sort of empathy for the victim in the perpetrator. Thus curbing the behaviour, possibly. "Victim Awareness", they called it. Not feeling sorry for the victims, pitying them etc.. Being AWARE of the damage caused.

But you weren't at that therapy. You werent in the crypt. You werent abused. You were none of these things. But, you use your imagination, your compassion, your faith, and you FEEL what it must have been like. Compassion - to suffer with. "Victim Awareness."

And thats the difference. You feel.

Others just THINK.

And some never think.

Personally I feel, or is that think, that people have to integrate themselves - their thinking, feeling, imagination, will etc. Prayer can help with this. St Teresa said something along the lines of knowledge of God without knowledge of self leads to presumption; knowledge of self without knowledge of God leads to despair; knowledge of both is the way of perfection.

I do feel sorry for you, Smithy, that you have such a narrow, unforgiving view of what you call conservatives. Most of us are just people trying their best to be faithful to the gospel of Christ. We don't torture people, we don't condemn people - but neither do we condone. Jesus spent time with sinners to bring them to repentance - he even had time for pharisees.

He certainly did, MCC. He even reserved his last words for them.
"Father, forgive them for they dont know what they do."

Exactly.

Exactly x 2 lol!!

"I do feel sorry for you, Smithy."

You missed the point again, MCC, even after I have just pointed out the point clearly to you. You still dont get it. Its not about feeling sorry for, or about having pity on. Its about "victim awareness." I do not need your pity.

"Most of us (Conservatives) are just people trying to live out the gospel of Christ."

Yes, you skip through the meadows, plucking buttercups and spreading lavender. You are so far removed from the gospel of Jesus Christ that your statement beggars belief. MCC, your head is filled with Church, not Jesus.

"We dont torture people, we dont condemn people."

You have condemned me from day one. Liar, blatant liar, idiot, fool, crazy dude. And thats just me. Have a wee look at your own website. What is it that you would do to Catholic liberals again? What have you said about Protestants on there?

Please dont try and hide behind devotion to St Theresa either. You dont get to do that any more, well, not in Ireland anyway. "Look I say the rosary - I'm holy." "Look I quote St Theresa - I'm pious!" "Look, I wear a cassock and white collar - respect me for it."

The game's a bogey, MCC. Your posts on this blog have been amongst the most spiteful of anyones and yet you claim, "We dont condemn anyone..."

Sad.

St Irenaeus talks about looking through grace filled eyes. Sadly few of the readers here seem to have that grace.

Clearly I meant we couldn't have lesbian bishops in the Catholic Church cos we don't have women and there was no connection whatsoever with abuse.

RJB - there but for the grace of God go I. I'll continue praying for you and others hurt by abuse.

mccamely

"The Catholic Church might have its problems but at least lesbian bishops isn't one of them."

Can a transsexual, that is a person who was born a woman but was surgically altered and injected with hormones to become morphologically and horomonally a male become a priest in the Catholic church? What defines geneder, morphology or the DNA that remains unaltered without a Y chormosome? This was never an issue in ancient times because it was never conceived as a possibility when these rules were laid down. The notion would have been considered absurd. One more dilemma for religion and the catholic church created by modern science where the distinction between alive and dead, between living and non living matter is becoming increasingly hazy, open to interpretation, difficult to fathom. They say that when someone's heart stops beating he is dead but many people have been resusitated or even been supported on machines during surgery without their heart beating. Or where brain activity seems to have ceased and then returned sometimes without explanation. At what point does the soul leave the body? If it leaves can it come back or do those returned from the dead live on without souls? What will religions do when life is created in laboratories from inert matter, when human beings are "engineered" without biological parents in the usual sense, and when beings who are not entirely human, not entirely animal are engineered? Will they have souls too? These and other possibilities are not so far fetched or far off as you may think. They may be just around the corner. I think religions should start thinking about them and come up with answers to be ready when it happens or they may find themselves going out of business. That would put a lot of real estate up for sale. I've always thought a gothic cathedral would make for an interesting private house.

You can't surgically alter your soul, which is created male or female.

This is the first time I've ever heard anyone assign a gender to a soul. Is this standard Catholic theology or any other religion's or just your theory mccamely? How do you determine what the geneder of a soul is? People who undergo the process of transsexual transformation say they feel their body is not of the right gender, that they are deep down of the opposite gender and want to bring their body into harmony with their true essence. So what is the answer? When your soul goes to heaven or hell or wherever it goes after you die, is there gender identity there two? Do souls of opposite gender have social gatherings, pair up, the way they do when they are alive? Is the term "soulmate" more than just a metaphor? Is there more to it than those five frightening words "till death do you part" suggest? Is there such a thing as divorce in heaven? Must you pair up with the same soul in the after-life as you were married to on earth? Is there infidelity in the afterlife?

I don't know the answers to your questions save that Jesus said there would be no marriage in heavan - remember the story of the seven brothers who died after each married a paricular woman.

Q: Why do married men die before their wives?
A: Because they want to.

Q: Why do married men live longer than single men?
A: They don't, it just seems that way to them.



mccamely, do you think Jesus might have been gay? He didn't marry either.

The trouble with Christians is...they have no sense of humor, nope, just like left wingers no sense of humor at all. I guess that's what being a true believer in any religion does to you.

Some people used to think Jesus couldn't laugh because he would always have known the punchline which is ridiculous cos I still laugh at the same jokes like "Do you know the Battersea Dogs Home?" "I didn't even realise he'd been away". Possibly my favourite joke, I'm smiling even as I type it.

I doubt that Jesus was gay as he wasn't party to original sin.

Do you know this business where he was talking about Herod Antipas and he calls him a fox. That's how it's usually translated. But the Greek actually has "vixen" and he may have been referring to rumours of his sexual orientation.

mccamely;

"I doubt that Jesus was gay as he wasn't party to original sin."

Are you saying that being gay is a sin? Do you assert that being gay is a matter of choice, free moral choice as Christians so often put it? Choice is after all the basis of sin, if we have no choice then how can there be sin? Even secular criminal law recognizes that insanity is a defense against the charge of murder since the accused didn't take his action as the result of rational choice. Once being left handed was considered sinful I think, at least it was looked on as malovalent. So if being gay is proven by science to be a consequence of biological structure and consequent hormonal or other factors would that change your mind? What would that do to putting the historical position of the church on the subject into perspective? Would they have been proven wrong yet once again just as they were proven wrong when Galileo showed that their assertion that the earth was the center of the universe and therefore the point of all creation was wrong? Is it a sin to eat meat on Friday? Did it used to be? If the souls of people who ate meat on Friday went to hell, did they get a reprieve an go to heaven when it stopped being a sin?

Marcus - take your questions, change "gay" to "paedophile" and then answer your own question.

Still think there's something dodgy about left handers - like Obama.

Peter Morrow

Your phrase sanctification by vinegar communicates a lot!

Please think carefully about this thought-

I am wondering if much of the conflict in these ethics debates is due to the fact that non-Christians are challenging and objecting to tenets of Christian discipleship.

But as far as the NT goes, discipleship was never meant to be pushed at non-believers, was it?

From your perspective, this means that Christ was compassionate and gracious to unbelievers who were open and sincere with him.

Paul never tried to disciple unbelievers but rather to win them to Christ.

Perhaps this would explain your conflict with mccamley? Perhaps he is putting discipleship before incarnation???

I know we have had similar discussions before and I know at times here I have lacked grace I should not have spoken without.

I havent followed your relationship with him, but please be careful not to condemn the motives of believers you are in conflict with.

You make a good example of grace (incarnational evangelism?) and perhaps rightly dont really broach the issue of discipleship in that arena.

But perhaps mccamley might understand where you are coming from better if you put it to him like that.

In other words, perhaps some of the issues he is raising he is actually correct on, but the context and timing are off??

As an outside observer, it appears that you often reject the truth of what people are saying in order to focus on grace.

But perhaps you would communicate better with folk if you acknowledged that truth has its place?

Maybe you profoundly disagree with me on the above, but its just a thought.

Regards

OT

OT, hi and happy Christmas

(Apologies to all in advance for the degree of 'theological' language used here)

I'll start with the full 'vinegar' quote.

Sinclair Ferguson (WTS) was quoting Alexander White:Ìý"There is such a thing as sanctification by vinegar.Ìý It makes a man accurate and hard.Ìý When people come being tempted by sin, broken by it, ashamed to confess the mess they made, it is not a Calvinistic pastor who has been sanctified by vinegar they need, but a pastor who has been mastered by the unconditional grace of God, and from whom iron clad orthodoxy has been torn away and the whole armor of a gracious God has been applied; the armor of him who would not break the bruised reed or quench the dimly burning wick." and Ferguson himself suggests, "Until grace and God himself masters a man, that grace will never flow out to other people.Ìý He will become Jonah under his tree with a heart shut up against sinners in need of grace because he thinks of God in conditional terms.ÌýThe hearts of the neonomians had (have) been shut to the lost."

(and you will understand that coming from Ferguson it's not a criticism of Calvinism per se.)

I understand to point you are trying to make about 'non-believers' and 'disciples' and in trying to address that you will, I hope, see what and why I emphasise. But a couple of general points first.

What I'm going to say here will be considered 'risky' by most of the Christians I know, indeed some of what I'm going to say has had other Presbyterian ministers I know condemned for, supposedly, 'not preaching the gospel'.

Second, I'm not trying to win anybody, as I said on the 'Abomination' thread you referred to in another post, "I'm not setting out to tell people what to believe, I'm only setting out to explain what many Christians believe." (#34)

Third, my comments about grace are deliberate, I hope to explain why.

You have suggested that I, "reject the truth of what people are saying in order to focus on grace." Well yes and no. I'm not rejecting truth (nor the need for it), but I do try to focus on grace. Why? Well, first (and this point is up for debate), I guess most people know what conservative Christianity's ethical truth is and as I've said before in this respect I think conservatively, however it's my view that we're not just so good at the grace bit. Now that's debatable, fair enough, maybe I'm wrong here, however what I'm also going to suggest, and I'm much less prepared to concede this next point, is I also happen to think that 'truth' without 'grace' is pointless. Infact I'll go further, there can be no truth without grace and the trouble is that when we Christians talk about truth it so often sounds as if we are mere moralists, indeed perhaps we are mere moralists. Sometimes the good news sounds like, "You're going to hell", at least it does to me.

Maybe this goes to the heart of what I think the gospel is. For example you said, "From your perspective, this means that Christ was compassionate and gracious to unbelievers who were open and sincere with him." Well, not really. What I'd say is that Jesus is compassionate and gracious and open and sincere to all. You see if Jesus is compassionate and gracious to those who are sincere, well, that's me out; it's either grace or it isn't, it's either Jesus or it's not, and the trouble is that, for us Christians, us disciples, grace robs us of the 'merit' of religious (or any other kind) of sincerity.

I know I've quoted Philip Yancey before, but this time I'll suggest Tim Keller (Redeemer Presbyterian NYC), he deals with this really well in his study of the Prodigal Son, only he calls it The Prodigal God. I've the feeling we're only at the beginning of a conversation here, for example is there a difference between the message for non-believers and disciples (?) but I'll finish with this for now, "Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God." Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, pub. Hodder and Stoughton.

Pete

I fully concur with your vinegar quote. Its really good.

But Christ was not sweetness and light with everyone he engaged with.

Ordinary people tried to kill him on quite a few occasions in the NT after he challenged them morally.

This happened twice in Nazareth, if I am not mistaken, once when he claimed to be God and having known Abraham, and finally in Jerusalem when they succeeded. He also warned us that few would find the road to life and that most of us would go down the road to destruction. Nobody likes to talk about this, but it is foolish to pretend he didnt.


I dont see any conflict between his grace and truth in any shape or form.

I dont buy into merit.

Truth without grace is brutal, without question.

What is grace without truth? Can God's grace actually exist without truth? I dont think so. This in no way bleeds into an argument for salvation by merit.

Sure, law can be used to control and crush, we see that in religion all the time.

But to be honest, I really dont see that much of connection between that and the truth issue in the NT.

Either Christ preached the sermon on the mount or he didnt.

I dont expect it to mean anything to someone who has not met Christ.

But neither do I think that Christians who are seeking to know and follow Christ better can want to live unholy lives - it seems like a contradition in terms.

So much of the discussion about Christ on this blog paints him as a socialist father Christmas who winks at sin. But didnt he die to free us from it? Selfishness, pride, self righteousness?

I wonder if we might be closer than it appears on grace.

Withouth question God wishes us to show unconditional love to unbelievers, including those who are looked down upon by respectable religion, also to other Christians.

But I dont see that this equates to pretending that Christianity is 'easy' and not much different to the worlds way of thinking and living.

Incidentlly, I am not for a second suggesting that God can be pleased by trying to live up to the law... nor that we can anyway.

Sorry it is rushed, not much time.

Happy "Christmas" whatever that means.... :)

OT

OT

I'm thinking that this might be a better place to further a discussion than the 'Haiti' thread. We left off here before Christmas and I had meant to get back but the days passed and it seemed a little late. However, if you wish pursue some of the things we have said a little more, I'm happy with that.

I'm not going to rehash what we've already said on this thread, no doubt we'll come back to it, but a few points for the sake of clarity first.

There is no 'world-wide' alliance! :-) I'm not an agent for the 'dark side'! :-) Just ask Helio, we do rather knock the tar out of each other, but in the nicest possible way of course! :-)

I have never indented to go after you personally. I've said this before but it's important. On that basis then please read my intentions as that of discussion rather than attack.

Any critical reflection of my church world is born of two main things: one, my own personal experience/journey (I no longer know the 'in' word) and two, an inability to get answers to honest questions from people I think ought to be able to give them.

And so with that preamble, let me jump straight into controversy!! :-)

On the 'Haiti' thread you said, "If you did I might be tempted to say that some people only appear to have grace for people who insult them and their faith."

Here's the thing, into that statement I will read the attitude that I know I have had towards God, and that I've learned that I have been shown grace. In other words, I am already identifying with those who 'insult' because I know I have done that.

And now that little word 'only'. Difficult one this, but I'll put it this way; if I were 'righteous', 'right', had the 'right' attitude towards God etc. I wouldn't need grace.

Your thoughts.