Category Archives: theology

Good comments from the ABC Rowan Williams in Canada

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The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a very good lecture to seminary students in Canada. He lectured on the Church’s dealings with Scripture – it seems a fair and evenhanded treatment and a good corrective.
From the Archbishop’s 16th April 2007 Larkin Stuart Lecture, Toronto, Canada, entitled,

‘The Bible Today: Reading & Hearing’

“Popular appeals to the obvious leave us battling in the dark; and the obvious – not surprisingly – looks radically different to different people. For many, it is obvious that a claim to the effect that Scripture is ‘God’s Word written’ implies a particular set of beliefs about the Bible’s inerrancy. For others, it is equally obvious that, if you are not that savage and menacing beast called a ‘fundamentalist’, you are bound to see the Bible as a text of its time, instructive, even sporadically inspiring, but subject to rethinking in the light of our more advanced position. As I hope will become evident, I regard such positions as examples of the rootlessness that afflicts our use of the Bible; and I hope that these reflections may suggest a few ways of reconnecting with a more serious theological grasp of the Church’s relation with Scripture.”

Read the entire lecture.
———–
From the, From the Anglican Journal, Anglican Church of Canada:
Williams bemoans loss of listening to Scripture
Marites N. Sison, staff writer
Apr 17, 2007
The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has lamented what he called the lack of “rootedness” in the Anglican approach to Scripture and said “we’ve lost quite a bit of what was once a rather good Anglican practice of reading the Bible in the tradition of interpretation.”
He added: “We read the Bible less in worship. We understand and know it less…(we’re) either underrating it or misrating it, making it carry more than it’s meant to, as Richard Hooker says … We don’t have a very clear sense that we’re reading the Bible in company with its readers from the centuries and indeed, at the present moment.” Archbishop Williams made the observation in response to a comment about a seeming lack of theological tradition among Anglicans, following a Larkin-Stuart lecture delivered April 16 before an audience of mostly theology students from Wycliffe and Trinity Colleges in Toronto.
Archbishop Williams also said that he wished the current debate on sexuality that has bitterly divided the Anglican Communion would be framed in terms of “biblical justice and biblical holiness” instead of the prevailing conservative view of “biblical fidelity” and the liberal view of justice.
“I share the unease about simply opposing biblical fidelity and secular justice,” he said, adding that what was needed was a “proper theological discussion” of the issue.
In his lecture (named after Canon Cecil Stuart, long-time rector of Toronto’s St. Thomas’ Church, and its benefactor, Gerald Larkin), Archbishop Williams examined the current practice of reading the Bible and said Christians need to be reminded that, “before Scripture is read in private, it is heard in public.”
Those who assume that the typical image of Scripture reading is a solitary individual poring over a bound volume should remember that for most Christians throughout the ages and in the world at present the norm is listening, said Archbishop Williams. This, he said, “underlines the fact that the church’s public use of the Bible represents the church as defined in some important way of listening: the community when it comes together doesn’t only break bread and reflect together and intercede, it silences itself to hear something.”
Archbishop Williams also described the “fragmentary reading” of the Bible as “highly risky,” citing as an example Saint Paul’s use of same-sex relationships (Romans 1:27) as “an illustration of human depravity – along with other ‘unnatural’ behaviours such as scandal, disobedience to parents and lack of pity.”
He said: “What is Paul’s argument? And, once again, what is the movement that the text is seeking to facilitate? The answer is in the opening of chapter 2: we have been listing examples of the barefaced perversity of those who cannot see the requirement of the natural order in front of their noses; well, it is precisely the same perversity that affects those who have received the revelation of God and persist in self-seeking and self-deceit. The change envisaged is from confidence in having received divine revelation to an awareness of universal human sinfulness and need.”
There is a paradox in reading that Scriptural passage “as a foundation for identifying in others a level of sin that is not found in the chosen community, “ Archbishop Williams said, adding that this “gives little comfort to either party in the current culture wars in the church.”
It is “not helpful for a ‘liberal’ or revisionist case, since the whole point of Paul’s rhetorical gambit is that everyone in his imagined readership agrees in thinking the same-sex relations of the culture around them to be obviously immoral as idol-worship or disobedience to parents,” he said. “It is not very helpful to the conservative either, though, because Paul insists on shifting the focus away from the objects of moral disapprobation in chapter 1 to the reading/hearing subject who has been up to this point happily identifying with Paul’s castigation of somebody else.”
Archbishop Williams said the point he is making “is not that the reading I propose settles a controversy or changes a substantive interpretation, but that many current ways of reading miss the actual direction of the passage and so undermine a proper theological approach to Scripture.”
Before his lecture, the Archbishop of Canterbury received honorary doctor of divinity degrees from Wycliffe College and Trinity College during a joint convocation.

Brains, biology, sheep, and Christian ethics

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In my Christianity Today daily e-mail news update, there was a short article entitled “Re-engineering Temptation“ about the controversies resulting from the blog entry by Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, on possible Christian responses to ideas of preventing homosexuality through hormonal therapies that prevent prenatal homosexuality or negate the sexual temptation for one’s own sex in adulthood.
This short article dealt with the Christian ethics if a true biological component is confirmed in the establishment of a homosexual orientation (not preference).
In the article, the author mentioned a five years study being conducted at the Oregon Health and Science University by Dr. Charles Roselli. This paragraph really caught my attention, for one reason that the author of the article didn’t attempt to refute it.

“The story begins at the Oregon Health and Science University, where Charles Roselli studies homosexual sheep (about 8 percent of rams are gay). His research, now more than five years old, has confirmed a link between brain chemistry and sexual preference. But his data does not indicate whether chemistry or preference comes first.”

At least this seems to suggest that if we look to nature for signs of right theological definitions and concepts, then we will need to conclude that within nature, homosexuality is present and a normal part, even if in small percentages.
So, here are two links to press releases by the university concerning the research of Roselli:
BIOLOGY BEHIND HOMOSEXUALITY IN SHEEP, STUDY CONFIRMS
BRAIN DIFFERENCES IN SHEEP LINKED TO SEXUAL PARTNER PREFERENCE
If science is done well, it will tell us what is observably and verifiable factual. What we choose to do with that information, those theories, those facts, is the realm of ethics and theology.
Alan Chambers, president of the ex-gay umbrella group “Exodus International” commented in the article:

“People like me who struggled with it and found freedom are more than sufficient proof that we can overcome our genetics,” he said. “Science will never trump the Word of God.”

Frankly, I agree with him, with a caveat. Science and theology deal with two different realms of knowing. Each, rightly construed, should inform one another, not conflict. After all, good science will help us understand what God has wrought. Good theology will help us understand what to do with the knowledge.
Science will never trump Scripture, but Scripture rightly understood will never contradict good science. This was the thought of those ancient Christian monks who developed the beginnings of our modern understanding of science and the observation of the world as it is.
What science may well do is help us understand whether we have rightly interpreted and understood the Word of God! In this case, if science gives us reliable and verifiable evidence that there is in fact a biological determinate concerning homosexuality, then the way we approach, understand, and apply the Word of God concerning this issue may well need to change – not because God changes or the Word of God changes, but because we are wrong in our traditional understanding and application of the Word of God.
After the science, then theology comes into play. What shall we then do?

Continue reading →

Just wear a patch – take the gay away

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The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, has become a prominent voice in conservative Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity in the U.S. I have seen him quoted not only by Southern Baptists or Pentecostals but even by conservative Episcopalians. He is articulate and unapologetic concerning his particular view of what Christianity is and what is not – and along with that who is and who isn’t a Christian. He is a Fundamentalist.
Last week, we wrote an article in which he seemed to acknowledge that homosexuality will probably be proven to have a genetic or physiological link – not just a decision made by sex-crazed guys. This caused quite a stir in-and-of-itself among a slue of conservative-religious-politicos. He also stated that while he will probably be against some sort of gene-tinkering or therapy, he might be inclined to support a “hormone patch” to be worn by the mother during pregnancy in order to change the unborn baby’s homosexuality.
The Washington Post reports that Mohler in a Friday interview stated:

In an interview on Friday, Mohler said that Christian couples “should be open” to the prospect of changing the course of nature — if a biological marker for homosexuality were to be found. He would not support gene therapy but might back other treatments, such as a hormonal patch.
“I think any Christian couple would want their child to be whole and healthy,” he said. “Knowing that that child is going to be a sinner, we would not want to make their personal challenges more difficult if they could be less difficult.”

Since it will be a terrible thing to know that one’s child is going to be a “sinner,” then we should do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen. Imagine, being able to weed out the sinfulness of us all! Wouldn’t that be great – we will no longer be “sinners.” If we can do it for the sin of homosexuality, why can we not do it for all sins? Lying, adultery, hypocrisy, murder, gluttony, pride, sloth, not loving God with our whole heart nor loving our neighbors as ourselves – all could be done away with through a patch or genetic/hormonal tinkering. Man will truly be his own salvation at that point, right?
I wonder what that will do with the whole issue of the necessity of Grace, Salvation, and the Passion-death-resurrection of Jesus. God should have just waited until our science progressed to the point where we could genetically or hormonally “change nature” to rid us of sin, rather than Jesus’ self-sacrifice on our behalf. Oh well. I know this is not what he means or intends, but it is a logical progression of the idea, is it not?
Link to the Washington Post article
Link to Truth Wins Out commentaries over this issue. TWO was founded by Wayne Besen, author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth” (Haworth, 2003).
Link to Albert Mohler’s original article: Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?
Link to Albert Mohler’s follow-up article

Hard and complete scholarship

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Tobias Haller, priest, member of TEC’s Executive Committee, offers some thoughts on Ash Wednesday and the call of the Primates for adequate response by The Episcopal Church on his blog, In a Godward Direction. Read the post and the comments!
One thing I find encouraging about ++Katherine is that she comes from the “hard” physical-sciences and not the “soft” social-sciences. What I mean is that when she looks for justifications for positions or to prove a hypothesis she will look for actual data, thorough research, complete scholarship, etc. Too many of us from a social-science background or from within the Humanities over the last 30 years have resorted to arguments based on “feelings.” We must do this or that because it “feels right” or so that we do not damage the “feelings” of others, etc. The tendency is to do some studies, but only enough to give us enough confidence to press our point, not enough to persuade critics. Simplistic, I know, but that is a beginning. I have been through too many classes concerning social and personal “develop theories” and listened to too many people give justifications for doing this or that thing based no little more than “feelings.”
This issue of whether TEC has given good and rigorous and complete theological and Scriptural justifications for our attempts to change thousands of years of Tradition and Scriptural interpretation concerning the morality of homosexual relationships has come back to us with the answer of, “NO!” I agree, and I don’t think we have. I think there are too many people in the leadership of TEC (staff-priests-bishops) who wish to make justifications for our actions based too much on “feelings” (reflected in such subjective “proofs” as issues of justice, inclusion, and the like – as important as they are), rather than on hard, rigorous, and complete research and scholarship. The result is that we have been woefully lacking in our response to the challenge of the wider Christian community to our attempts to change Christian Tradition and understanding. We have not done our homework well – perhaps just enough to make ourselves feel good about our effort.
We have acted with hubris, not because our actions are intrinsically wrong, but because our attitudes are paternalistic towards all those “homophones” that refuse to accept our “enlightened” new understanding. It is time for hard theological work, hard research, and hard scholarship! Frankly, because of our arrogance it may be too late to persuade anyone. This is the legacy being realized my too much attention to “feelings” and not hard data and thorough scholarship over the last 40 years.
The hard work is what ++Katherine will hopefully demand of us, as she would demand of someone proposing a new theory concerning octopuses.
Then, from the comments, is the following:

When I was in college, there were several racist incidents on campus. House meetings were held, and campus-wide meetings were held. One of the African-American students in my house said something that struck me to this day. We were talking about how to understand each other better, how to bridge cultures and learn from each other. Several women suggested that we needed to hear from our African-American sisters, hear their stories and learn from them.
This particular lady stood up, crying, and said “WHY do I have to teach you? Why is it incumbent upon ME to educate you about this? I live it, I’m tired of it. Go out for yourselves and find out what we, as black women, are talking about. Take classes, read history, study it yourselves. It is not my job as a black woman to educate you all about racial injustice.”
As a lesbian, I’m feeling much the same way. There are myriad resources for these bishops, priests and congregations to use to educate themselves about our theological position. Why should we have to continually answer the call of “PROVE it to us!” They don’t want it proven to them. They don’t open their ears to hear, or their eyes to see the oppression of GLBT people in the church. I have had to educate MYSELF about this subject, they can, too. The bishops have the same resources (even more, I’ll bet) than I do. They are intelligent and learned. But their hearts and minds are closed.

It is a two-way-street, and what do we do when the other party has no interest in learning or any further study?

It’s all your fault!

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There is a thread on Titusonenine to which I’ve posted a couple comments. One particular poster, who can argue well, posted something along the lines that “we,” meaning those who oppose the inclusion of gay people in relationships in the Church, did not start this mess, and it is the fault of the “innovators” or “reappraisers” or whatever-term-one-wants-to-use, who will not listen to the wisdom of those who will not accept the reassessment of Scripture and Tradition concerning this issue.
Phil Snyder wrote:

“One of my biggest problem with this whole ‘We spending too much time on sexuality when there’s poverty and AIDS and hunger to fight” argument is that the reasserters did not bring this up. We are not the ones who insisted we fight this. We are not the ones who refused to listen to the Anglican Communion. I wish this had never been brought up and that we were able to spend our energy on fighting hunger and poverty and AIDS in America and around the world. I weep when I think of all the money and time that we have spent fighting each other so that a very small group of people will not have their feelings hurt by having their behavior labled “sin.”
If you want to work together to fight hunger and eliminate poverty and work with Africans to solve the problems in Africa, then stop pushing these new innovations in Christian belief and practice and repent of pushing them to start with and learn to listen to the wisdom of people who live in these countries on how to solve their problems.”

My responses follows:
I remember reading various sermons and essays by Christians during the slavery, women’s suffrage, and civil rights battles in this country. I remember the language used and the accusations made against those who advocated and fought for the end of slavery, women’s suffrage, or equal rights and those who opposed such “innovations.” The attitudes of so many during the slavery battles, and then again during the civil rights era were the same as you have stated above. If we just ignore injustice and let things remain as they are, not rocking the boat of centuries of Tradition and “correct” Biblical interpretation, then there will be no need for battles or problems or division, etc. God’s truth will reign in glory everlasting.
The Episcopal Church was pretty much silent about the slavery issue during the Civil War. Some may say that was wise, most now claim that it was not. I really can’t say, only that there does come a point where decisions need to be made and “innovations” like the end of slavery (a biblically justified condition for up to near 1,800 years, despite a very small but growing minority that championed for an end of slavery of various kinds) need to be advanced.
The Church is doing battle right now over what it considers an injustice concerning the inclusion of gay people – those who are chaste and those in mutual, life-long, and monogamous relationships – in the life of the Church. If we understand our history and don’t try to overlay our own current-day perceptions upon those people back then, the comparison between attitudes and actions now (gay issue) and back then (slavery, women’s rights, civil rights, etc), will show that the battles were as venomous and/or virtuous then as they are today over this issue.
Time will tell who is right. Time will also tell whose interpretation of Scripture will prevail and as God’s will is always done, whose opinion is truly “on God’s side” and whose is not. (Frankly, I doubt any of us are right at this point!) But, to say with incrimination that “our side” did not start this battle and that “we” are right in “our” demand to remain as the Church have always been, is like saying that those who self-justifyingly supported the continuation of slavery or the denial of women’s suffrage or racial discrimination virtuously didn’t ask for the fight and social tumult during those battles, but rather sought peace or truth or the continuation of the “Tradition” over the “innovation.”

Process – Free-Will – Postliberal

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From the book,

“This widespread disaffection with Enlightenment rationality opens the door to other approaches to theology. For postliberals, it means that contemporary culture is no longer the norm for Christian thought. Accordingly, the primary concern of Christian theology is not to find other language with which to express the Christian message, but to employ the narrative form of Scripture. In doing so, it reverses the tendency of modern theology to accommodate itself to culture. Instead of letting the world absorb the gospel, its goal is for the gospel to absorb the world. ‘Rather than translating Scripture into an external and alien from of reference, which devalues and undermines its normative position and eventually produces an accommodation to culture, the postliberals call for an intratextual theology that finds the meaning of the Christian language within the text.’
“Evangelical theologians who share the conviction that theology’s primary concern lies within the text will have reservations about Wheeler’s call to employ process philosophy in hopes of getting a larger hearing. IN particular, they will question the very ideas of an independent perspective that corroborates the biblical perspective. As they see it, our most important concern should not be to find conceptual, philosophical ways of expressing the Christian message, but to let the primary symbols and narratives of Christian faith speak with their own power. To make the case he wants to for process thought, Wheeler needs to take into account the shifting theological scene.”

Richard Rice, Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists, editors: John Cobb & Clark Pinnock, p. 158.

Emergent, Orthopraxy, and the Episcopal Church

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In all of our (The Episcopal Church & Anglicanism) troubles of late, all the vast theological and pietistic controversies and differences, it is impressed upon me more and more of late that what Anglicanism provides more than anything is a sustained and impressive tradition of Orthopraxy.
This is the Prayer Book Tradition; and its contribution to world Christianity is still being realized and debated.
We do what God calls us to do in the world – love God, love our neighbors (even our enemies), care for the poor, the weak, and the oppressed, share the Good News of God’s accomplishment and offer of reconciliation with God, with one another, and with all His creation. Have four Episcopalians, and you will have five ideas of what all that means and how to accomplish it all. Our theological positions are hard to pin down and we argue incessantly about it all. This, to Evangelicals anyway, is not a very confidence engendering quality that indicates the “orthodoxy” of The Episcopal Church or Episcopalians.
We do the work of common worship. From one Anglican church to another, the particulars may be different but the form, structure, and purpose are the same! The doing of worship in the Prayer Book Tradition is our way of bringing the Body of Christ together – world before, world present, and world to come – as one body as we worship God and receive from Him our strength and renewal.
Anglicanism, since the Elizabethan Settlement at least, seems more about orthopraxis than a confirmed and official theological orthodoxy. Too many Anglican groups, despite their numbers, are demanding a codification of their understanding of a God ordained, unquestionable and timeless theological orthodoxy – whether the demand is coming from the hyper-conservative or hyper-liberal camps. Yet, what Anglicanism has offered and promised is only this: Orthopraxis as we seek together God and God’s will for us, the Church, and the world. There is an allowance of difference in theological opinion, or at least there has been.
So many people within The Episcopal Church these days, and so, so many within Evangelicalism, what to focus squarely on issues of expressed theological orthodoxy – having everyone all at the same time believe all the right things, but Anglicanism has never been about that.
This aspect of a focus on what we do as Christians (the putting into action what we believe – actions speak louder than words!) rather than all believing the same thing is very attractive to me. I don’t question that there is ultimate Truth, and that the Truth resides with an infinite God, but we as finite creatures cannot fully understand that Truth until we see Him face-to-face. As a few Evangelical pastors like to say, “That’s Bible!” This is also why I really do like the Emergent Conversation!
In a post-modern world and among a majority of people who are skeptical and cynical with regards to the Christian Church in the U.S., and who are looking for authenticity and integrity, our expression of our faith through orthopraxy is only proving and making manifest, real, and visible the Truth we claim to be seeking and living out as best we can, with God’s help. We can say whatever we want, we can demand others or even attempt to force others to believe what we believe, but I think it is only in our doing that we prove any validity to our understanding of things and our words.

Unbearable burden of Evangelicalism

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A quote from Peter J. Leithart, professor, pastor, Presbyterian.
Well??? Considering my Evangelical past and considering my present, I can agree with him!
Unbearable burden of Evangelicalism

“Anti-sacramental, anti-ritual evangelicalism emphasizes a personal relationship with God, but tends to encourage what Anthony Giddens calls “pure relationship,” a relationship that is not tacked down with external anchors and supports. A live-in relationship, without benefit of the rites and legalities of marriage, is a pure relationship. Evangelicalism tends to encourage a live-in relationship with Jesus.
This is wrong, a departure from Christian tradition, and unbiblical. It also places unbearable burdens on the soul. Tempted by the devil, Luther slapped his forehead to remind himself of his baptism. His standing before God was anchored in Christ, to whom he had been joined by baptism.
For evangelicals, assurance cannot be grounded in anything so external and objective. Spontaneous enthusiasm is the test of sincerity, and the source of assurance. But eternal, self-scrutinizing vigilance is necessary to ensure that the enthusiasm is really spontaneous.
Enthusiasm was supposed to liberate the soul from all the dead forms, but it comes with its own set of chains. “

Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 06:55 PM
via: Titusonenine