Archbishop of York John Sentamu has been quoted as saying, “”¦I haven’t found that in Ecusa (sic) or in Canada, where I was recently, they have any doubts in their understanding of God which is very different from anybody. What they have quarrelled about is the nature of sexual ethics.”
John Sentamu hasn’t looked or listened hard enough. The battle, at least in North America, is over core doctrine and belief: who Jesus is and what authority Holy Scripture has. Although in a brief article there is not ample space for a full-length dissertation on the extent of the problem, let some of the North American and especially Episcopal Church leaders speak for themselves.
In an interview with TIME magazine, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori remarked, “We who practice the Christian tradition understand him (Jesus) as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.” When CNN questioned Jefferts Schori about an afterlife, she opined, “What happens after you die? I would ask you that question. But what’s important about your life? What is it that has made you unique individual? What is the passion that has kept you getting up every morning and engaging the world? There are hints within that about what it is that continues after you die.”
Bishop John Bruno, Diocesan of Los Angeles, in my presence and speaking to a church gathering said Jesus was a savior, his savior, but not the only one and other religions had their own way to God. His predecessor, Bishop Frederick Borsch had said much the same thing, also in my presence, cautioning that people in other religions had their own way to God and should not be evangelized with the Christian Gospel.
Bishop John Spong, retired Bishop of Newark remarked, “I would choose to loathe rather than to worship a deity who required the sacrifice of his son.” From Canada, Bishop Michael Ingham of New Westminster predicted “The next battle will move beyond sexuality to focus on the exclusivity of Christianity and the need to recognize Jesus as a way, but not the only way.” The problem for much of the Episcopal Church leadership is they do not hold an ancient and Anglican view of Jesus Christ.
On the topic of Holy Scripture, the Bishop of Pennsylvania, the Rt. Rev.Charles Bennison has remarked, “We wrote the Bible and we can rewrite it. We have rewritten the Bible many times.” The Episcopal Diocese of Utah stated, “Judgments about ethics by appeal to the Holy Scriptures alone are foreign to our Anglican traditions, which have always included other sources of authority in their deliberations”¦ There is no single biblical morality”¦”
Some may wish to say that these voices are isolated instances but not representative of the core leadership of TEC. The remarks here included are from the Presiding Bishop of TEC, a bishop of one of the largest Episcopal dioceses and his predecessor, a retired senior bishop of TEC, a bishop of a major east coast TEC diocese, and a former dean of the officially established TEC seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hardly voices on the margin of TEC, their voices and other leaders who have said similar things have gone unchallenged from the main body of the Episcopal Church. Not only that at General Convention 2006, the House of Deputies refused to consider Resolution D-058 which declared the Episcopal Church’s “unchanging commitment to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only name by which any person may be saved,” and which acknowledged evangelism as “the solemn responsibility placed upon us to share Christ with all persons when we hear His words, ”˜I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6).”
The Episcopal disdain for absolute and historic beliefs about who Jesus is and what he accomplished, together with views on Holy Scripture that contradict the Anglican formularies is carried over into other areas where liturgy and practice are built on these views. Most of the liberal/progressive Episcopal dioceses tolerate on a wide scale fully open communion to all present, regardless of being baptized or not, and regardless of whether they are Christian, Jewish, agnostic, animist, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. There is a pervasive disbelief in sin and the need for atonement, disbelief in the unique and essential person and work of Jesus Christ, the wide spread unease in using the historic Trinitarian formulary or ”˜Lord’ because it is seen as narrow, sexist, and exclusive. Formularies such as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer substitute for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The mantra of faith for TEC is openness, toleration, inclusiveness, and progression into new ideas and new ways of looking at God. So what about the orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church that Archbishop Sentamu assures us of? One of their own leaders puts it very well. The Very Rev. William Rankin, former Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, remarked about heresy, “Heresy implies orthodoxy, and we have no such thing in the Episcopal Church.”
–Church of England Newspaper, August 3, 2007, page 8
He says all this like it’s a [i]bad[/i] thing . . . .
Good for Canon Anderson for letting TEC’s leaders speak for themselves. TEC’s departure from the Gospel has to be exposed – TEC leaders have become adept at using Biblical images and traditional theological language for public consumption, but in unguarded moments they slip and you can find the apostate cant that this article reveals.
Here in the Diocese of South Dakota, the Diocesan Vision Statement mysteriously changed (around April, as near as we can reconstruct – there was no public discussion and it never came before convention).
Old Vision: “A sacred circle of love, prayer and service gathered around the Gospel.”
New thing: “The Episcopal Church in South Dakota is a sacred circle gathered around Jesus in prayer, loving and serving God and our neighbor in Jesus’ name.” Sounds good, but now the institution, rather than the ministry, is the “sacred circle” (that’s a Lakota/Dakota sign of community); we are gathered around “Jesus” rather than “the Gospel”, meaning we have a symbolic figure rather than the Word of God revealed in Scripture; and “prayer” is some esoteric thing that is not part of loving and serving God.
I’m sure they have wonderfully academic answers for these objections, but since this wasn’t part of a diocesan wide discussion many of us never got to sit at our betters’ feet and hear them.
On another string on this blog, over 200 comments, ‘and climbing,’ have been made regarding Dr. Radner’s resignation from the ACN.
Here, with just several key citation’s from ECUSA’s leadership, David Anderson presents the proof that much of ECUSA has departed “the Faith once given” and is no longer a Christian body.
Those leaders, and those who support them, who have made these departures from “the Faith once given” are stating in their very own words that they are no longer Christian.
I know, it’s distasteful and very unEpiscopalian to tell the truth in a manner that might cause an ‘ado,’ but there we are. These heretical words have been stated, and many cases reiterated, and they have not been ‘taken back.’
Our general convention will not even vote to affirm essentials of “the Faith once given.”
So, I believe that +Duncan is a courageous defender of “the Faith once given” and that Dr. Radner is wrong when he believes that ‘making nice’ with ECUSA’s current leadership might bring about a conciliar attitude towards orthodox Episcopalians on the part of that revisionist/progressive leadership.
Documenting the heresies, why they are heresies and who has proclaimed them is very important work. We may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project, but gathering this together is necessary work.
No, those statements have not been “taken back,” because the speakers — and many of us in the pews — believe in them firmly.
You obviously feel that this makes us prima facie non-Christian. We, of course, disagree.
What I’ve seen in the past is that the “reasserting” side of this discussion will often fix on some particular doctrine developed by the church over the course of time — say, the strict inerrancy of Scripture, or penal substitutionary atonement — and assert that this docrine is obviously definitional to being Christian and has been since the days of the Apostles… even if the doctrine post-dates the Apostles by centuries. The root of this attitude — embodied in much-abused phrases such as “the faith once delivered to the saints” — seems to be the belief that Christianity was delivered by revelation, perfect and entire to the early church, and that the slightest deviation, innovation, or evolution from that primitive dogma is ipso facto rank heresy.
But it’s clear that the church has evolved and changed, pretty continuously from day one. That doesn’t mean that any given change is necessarily right and good; but it does mean that the mere fact of innovation does not make someone non-Christian.
Kudos to David Anderson!
I found ++York’s statement ridiculous myself. I really thought he had more sense than that.
I applaud the AAC and Fr. David Anderson for their determined diligence in recording these and other current heresies for all to examine. Why is it that our ‘Windsor-compliant’ bishops are so reluctant to do the same? Where is the prophetic voice of Orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion? It is here, with men like Anderson and with the courageous bishops of the Global South provinces. It is clear enough who is looking out for the spiritual well-being of their flock.
IN addition, AAC has done excellent work documenting the various statements by bishops that intend to violate the primate’s requests and/or Lambeth I.10 (ex: statements opposing agreement to not further celebrate SS blessings, and stated oppostion to the moratorium on consecrations of non-celibate homosexual bishops). See: [url=http://www.americananglican.org/atf/cf/{0124EFED-8D9A-4067-9C7C-969A768F1648}/CCO-Report_to_Primates_No4.pdf]Report to Primates #4[/url]
Ross,
You are correct, heresies have existed from the beginning of the church and need to be corrected. Praise God for Fr. Anderson!
#7 – Bishop MacPherson of Western Louisiana is a Windsor Bp. who attended the Primates’ meeting and is quoted as being the most direct and forceful witness about the theological innovations of TEC – and he did this with the PB sitting right there.
I’ll admit that as a movement the “Windsor Bishops” have proved to be pretty fragile, but certainly there are solid orthodox leaders of solid dioceses in that mix.
All that said, I stand by my comment #2 and my gratitude to Canon Anderson for this statement.
#8:
I have to be honest… I find that attitude frightening.
Why, Ross? Are you expecting a kind of Spanish Inquisition? 😀
Nobody expects… well, you know 🙂
Seriously, though… if you look at the history of the church, many of its more shameful moments (including the Spanish Inquisition) began when the church got a bee in its bonnet about “correcting heresy.”
But aside from that, what I find troubling about the idea of heresy is that it betrays on the part of the “orthodox” person a rigid, unyielding certainty — a bone-deep conviction that they cannot be wrong — and that kind of certainty really does scare me. Such certainty admits of no possibility of error, so there is nothing that can prevail against it — no evidence, no experience, no insight, no revelation. It signals the end of thought rather than the beginning. It is to faith what a piece of petrified wood is to a living tree.
Ross, heresy is simply a false teaching, a departure from the faith. Any organization defends the principals (teachings, rules, etc) upon which it is based. One who sincerely takes a position at odds with the doctrines of the Christian faith (resurrection Jesus, etc.) should have the intellectual honesty to say they can no longer believe the doctrines of the faith and profess that they no longer consider themselves to be Christian.
Ross, there is change and there is change.
I would not object overly much to your last paragraph, that not all changes are necessarily bad. And I share your concern about the overuse of the “faith once delivered” buzz phrase. Phrases have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own.
But be careful about how you respond. I reject “strict inerrancy” outright and am not a fan of “penal substitionary atonement”. But I also am convinced that the current TEC leadership has indeed departed from core Christian teachings – even if one leaves room for different interpretations and understandings of those teachings. Thirty Nine Articles anyone? Part of their genius is not just what they say but that they do not say too much. To put it bluntly methinks you mischaracterize reasserters by associating them with overly narrow stances. I am not a fundamentalist. Within my current Southern Baptist context I am a “liberal heretic” and am effectively shut out of denominational life. Yet I associate and identify with Anglican reasserters. Go figure.
Reply to #5.
Ross, in my comments relating to “the Faith once given,” my antecedants were citiations of clear departures in David Anderson’s article regarding “the Faith once Given.”
However, one places oneself in the position a non-Christian when one seeks a secularly comfortable interpretation of Scripture, when one edits the Creeds according to one’s inclination and when one decides that the secular pressures of today’s world justify abandoning church tradition.
There is a Scriptural, creedal and traditional basis for “the Faith once given” and trying to argue that people argue does not present a rational basis for departure from Scripture, the creeds and the traditions of the Church Catholic.
Christ coming to us as Messiah was not an “evolutionary” event. It was God coming to us in a very singular manner through the person of Jesus Christ, born of the mortal virgin Mary.
The words of the prophets are the word of God spoken through the prophets. The words of Christ are the teachings of God through Christ.
And no, I am not a person who accepts Bishop Usher’s calendar for the total history of Creation.
The Nicene Creed does express the agreement of the entire Church about the teaching of the Apostles and the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Newer “revelations” that teach something different are not viewed by Christians as “revelations,” — at least, not revelations from God.
The Inquisition had its beginnings in southern Europe in the 13th century against a genuine heresy, the Cathars. Its problem was that nowhere in Scripture or early Christian tradition can we find support for killing heretics. Shunning, yes. Burning, no.
#15:
You say “clear departures.” I say “reasonable variations.”
I found it interesting — and telling — that the transcripts of the CCP meeting seemed to invariably use “innovation” as a pejorative. I’m used to thinking of innovation as a good thing.
But of course if you think that something reached its height of perfection in the past, then you will want to go back to that and you will abhore any innovation. I just don’t happen to think that Christian theology peaked back in the patristic era.
Ross is a prime example of what is wrong with TEC. Jesus isn’t the ultimate expression of God’s revelation, just part of God’s evolution.
Br. Michael:
“Prime example”? You flatter me.
Nevertheless, the careful reader will note that I did not say anything about Jesus in my remarks above. Jesus may well be the ultimate revelation of God; but Jesus did not deliver us the church in a neat package wrapped up with a bow. He gave us three years of teachings, the Resurrection, and after that twelve guys frantically trying to hold together something they’d never imagined. I mean no disrespect when I say that they seem to have improvised a lot of it as they went along — and the church has continued to do so ever since.
Yes, but the problem lies where the Church innovations are contradictory to the foundational period. Where they build upon that firm base, or at least don’t work against it, then no problem. This is how, for instance, I can tell that Joseph Smith and Muhammad were not receiving revelations from God. Their “revelations” directly contradict the ones given previously through the Israelites and supremely through the Incarnate Lord.
The trouble with “reasonable variations” is that this is not a statistical issue and therefore has no standard deviation from the norm. Christianity deals in absolutes,as it must, so change must be in the order of extirpation of an absolute, not deviation from the normative. Garrison Keillor made the case well, when he was saying of the Lutherans in Lake W that they didn’t deal much in qualifications, they didn’t say, Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery, Although This Is Open To Discussion. If you qualify all behavioral standards, the erosion of the standard is inevitable and inexorable. We do not and dare not say in tennis, “That ball is out maybe, although I can’t be sure, so let’s dialog about that, OK?” It is heresy and destructive to the game’s identity to say, the problem of being sure if a ball is out is best solved by leaving the call to the player nearest the ball. Won’t do, will it? Heresy is that which, if received, will inexorably alter the church’s identity and favor the growth of further alterations.
You don’t want to play by tennis’s rules? Don’t play.
It may be that no one knows when a ball is out, but the call must be made. The purpose is not to get every call exactly right, although that is the wish, but to keep the game’s identity unbroken. LM
Larry Morse [#21] writes: [i]”The purpose is not to get every call exactly right, although that is the wish, but to keep the game’s identity unbroken.”[/i]
That’s an interesting claim, but it sounds like something a Pharisee would have said, as opposed to anything Jesus is recorded as saying. How does it square with the Summary of the Law?
Ross said,
He gave us three years of teachings, the Resurrection, and after that twelve guys frantically trying to hold together something they’d never imagined. I mean no disrespect when I say that they seem to have improvised a lot of it as they went along—and the church has continued to do so ever since.
I am sure this post is dead, but I am just getting to the site for the first time in a few days. (Do any of the rest of you have jobs?)
I find Ross’ thinking bizarre. Jesus did not ‘give’ us the resurection. This is not some really neat but puzzling event. The resurection is God’s saving act, and the proof and ground of all our faith. You seem to be positing a new kind of deism. Instead of God creating the world and then leaving it to work its way through time, you have Jesus somehow giving us the resurection and then leaving us to make of it what we will.
You seem to accept the resurection. Why not the implications of this event?
Your criticism of the idea of heresy is more moral or, even less, aesthetic. You have not dealt with any of the particular charges of heresy, but only with the misuse of the term and the abuse of power this has sometimes brought in the past. The variations in teaching you point out are quite subtle compared to the radical changes that we see in the Church today.
#22: Would you call my definition of heresy essentially correct?
As to my remark which you cited, I am looking at the issues before us as a set which will produce a variety of translations. We – you and I and the rest of the Anglicans – cannot be sure which ones are all correct, which are half truths (the harest nuts to crack) and which are probably wrong. WE can be sure of A, let’s say, but hesitate on B, and are head-to-head on C. Does this hurt the church? My answer above was this, that heresy hurts and should be dealt with vigorously, because the church’s identity is central and that, since we can’t get all the calls right, we have to keep our identity intact, for if we do not, then we quite literally will not know who we are. The loss of identity is, is it not?, the archetypal human calamity, for without our identity, we cannot know we exist. So with the church.
Is the church’s identity prior to and superior to Scripture? Of course not, and see my earlier on the necessity of purging Anglican doctrine of powerful but unscriptural elements.
I don’t understand your reference to the Pharisees.
Larry