The Archbishop of Canterbury will be meeting with the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church on 20 and 21 September. Later, the Common Cause of Bishops in the Americas, including Canada and Recife, Brazil will meet as the September 30 deadline for the response of The Episcopal Church to draw back from its apostate stance draws near.
While the captain and officers on the bridge of the good ship The Anglican Communion work out how to avoid the rocks for which it is heading, and others recommend improvements to improve its superstructure, below decks some American passengers are being persecuted for holding, promoting and sharing the faith which the Communion has held dear. This outrage, in defiance of the clear requests of the Primates in Tanzania in February, should be continually before us as we read the news of proposals, covenants and new bishops being consecrated for America.
Meanwhile orthodox parishes in the United States are being sued by the central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church for property which the local church has invested in for generations but which the central bureaucracy now claims as it own. People may leave The Episcopal Church, but buildings or property may not. In some cases churches are being sued for the crayons from the Sunday School. In other cases a pastor moving to a parish cannot get a mortgage to buy a house because he is named in a lawsuit and the mortgage company fear that all his assets might be seized including “their” house. One Diocese is spending £20,000 to £25,000 a month just to defend itself from lawsuits emanating from the central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church.
These are good words to read if we are going to continue to claim to be catholic in any sense of the word. Either we are together in our faith as received or we are all inventing new ways to do our own thing.
Unfortunately those new things are rapidly degenerating into culture wars and conflicts over territorial borders. There is a difference between cultural expressions of our faith and denying the faith because our culture doesn’t think our faith is relevant for the 21st century. I think Chris Sugden has put his finger on the problem quite well.
This conflict has evolved from simply being a dispute concerning the faith we have received to now being a serious struggle to make sure that no _____________ (fill in the blank with your favorite Anglican monster) is going to tell me what to do.
I think Sugden needs to consult his dictionary. By no stretch of anything other than a disordered imagination can the present position of TEC be called “apostate.” “Heretical,” I could live with, though I would strongly disagree with the characterization; but “apostate” is simply a falsehood. An apostate is someone who has rejected his/her faith, e.g., in God and Christ. No one in TEC has done that. One may impute, as so many has done, false notions about Christ and God to Episcopalians, but such charges would fall under the heading of heresy, not apostacy. Sigh!
[blockquote] Globalisation as the judgement of God [/blockquote]
Wow.
I’ll have to think about that one for a while.
#2 Schori could be accused of apostasy in her watering down of the nature of the incarnation and Christ’s unique salvitic role. I realise that is an argument that has to be rigorously proved, but it is not a matter of “disordered imaginations”. Griswold pulled other similar theological shennanigans, though his errors were cloaked in opaque “Griz-speak”. Given that ecusa has slept with theological dogs, its waking up with fleas is something that should be expected and not dismissed lightly.
Generally, I suspect that ecusa has thrown in the towel in any attempt at keeping in communion with any faction of the Anglican churches whose interests are skew to the interests of the “central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church”. We are seeing now a typically bureaucratic response, replete with ENS propaganda agitprop and polemic support by various “fellow travelers” and “useful idiots”.
“No one in TEC?” Bishop Spong once told my former parish “the only part of the Nicene Creed that I believe is he suffered death and was buried.” Spong isn’t the whole church–but the whole church failed to discipline him.
#5 – Thank you! You took the words right out of my mouth.
Shalom,
T
#4, Tom, what you describing about ++JS’s theology of the incarnation, if accurate, is not apostacy, it would be catalogued as “heresy.” (Though I don’t know what you mean by “watered down.”) Let’s give things an accurate labeling. I would also try to find out exactly what her views on the incarnation and Christ’s saving work are; so much of what I read from her critics is garbled. What I’ve read on salvation by her is very much in line with what the RC Church presently teaches (and she has referred to Vatican II documents to support her position). To summarize the statements from the Papal Commission on Interreligious Dialogue, endorsed by JPII: Since the Word enlightenes every one coming into the world (John 1) and the Spirit blows where it will (John 3), it is possible that every human being, including those who know not Christ directly, participates through the work of the Word and the Spirit, in a way known only to God, in the Pascal Mystery (the crucifixion and resurrection). I see nothing in this position which ought to be condemned, but it requires moving past a limited Jesuology, which I think many of our correspondents display, to a full-blown Christology. The PB and TEC have not abandoned Christianity, so, as I said, earlier, the “apostate” label is simply false.
#5, please don’t tar the rest of TEC with the Spong brush. That really gets old. See my comment re such charges after the article of ++Sentemu’s warning about the AC.
Bob from Boone–I didn’t see any comments re: Spong in your post on the Sentamu thread–maybe I looked in the wrong place. However, since the current Presiding Bishop is a self-professed admirer of Spong, it is obvious that his influence is still quite strong in TEC.
Tom, are you going to respond to Bob from Boone?
LM
Re: # 7 and 9–there is a world of difference between the RC position and +KJS’ statement that “Jesus is our vehicle to the divine.’ The church has held from very early days that those who do not know Christ might still be redeemed THROUGH HIS SAVING MERITS. In the eyes of the RC church, salvation only comes through Christ, whether one knows Him directly or not. What Schori has said (and I think this is a pretty close paraphrase) is that we come to know the divine through humans;that for Christians, Jesus is that human, just as Mohammed is for Muslims, and Buddha is for Buddhists. In every statement I’ve seen, she has sidestepped the question of the divinity of Jesus, while creating an equivalancy between Jesus and other important religious figures.
#9 Larry, I actually work for a living. But the simple answer is the reproof in 1 John 4:3. The uniqueness of Christ with respect to salvation is a seemless part of his incarnation and his divine nature offered for our sins. Schori has explicitly abandoned that as a requisite for salvation. The “Spong brush” merely adds entirely consistent texture to this general portrait. I would dismiss offerings of new found “a full-blown Christology” as either inconsistent with Tradition or simply speculative.