The Niagara Rite is intended for the voluntary use of priests who wish to offer a sacrament of blessing regardless of the gender of the civilly married persons who wish to receive the blessing of the church and wish to affirm their life commitment to each other before God in the community of the church.
As such it does not imply nor is it intended to suggest that those who do or do not make use of this rite are excluded from the economy of God’s salvation. The rite is a means for the church to extend affirmation, support, and commitment to those who present themselves seeking a sign of God’s love in response to the love and commitment they express for each other and have already affirmed in a civil ceremony.
I took a double take then – I misread the headline as ‘The Nigeria Rite’!
The first essay in the document BLESSING SAME GENDER COUPLES: THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES produced for the Anglican Diocese of Niagra addresses the “Theological Justification of Blessing Same Gender Relationships”. The author writes:
“Richard Hooker derived a model of theology from St Thomas Aquinas. It involves attention not only to The Bible, but also to reason and tradition.”…” The threefold approach of Scripture, reason and tradition by itself yields no support for a move toward ecclesiastical blessing of committed, long term same gender sexual relationships. And yet, we feel a strong desire to move in this direction because of our experience.”
To paraphrase : If the threefold approach does not lead us to the conclusions we want, out it goes. We will do what we want!!
And that is called the Theological Justification? And I thought TEC’s To Set Our Hope on Christ was bad!
Moheb, actually it is worse than that. Hooker did not view, scripture, tradition and “biblicaly inspired” reason as equal. Scripture comes first and when that is silent, then tradition and finally “biblicaly inspired” reason.
Correction. The actual quote is: “What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever†( Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).
So the actual order is Scripture, then “biblically inspired” reason and then tradition.
Niagara falls.
Fresh Hell.
I find it ironic that the biggest picture on the website link is two wedding rings, but not of the same size. One is definitely smaller than the other, suggesting the masculine and the feminine.
I also note that reading through the actual text of the liturgy, “God the Father” is never used. There is one reference to “Father and Mother of us all” but never in the full Trinity invoked.
Food for thought given its a same sex blessing.
I’ve skimmed the 28 page document that attempts to provide theological justification for blessing same sex unions, and I plan to review it more carefully later. But I actually found it refreshingly candid in admitting that there is no support in Scripture, Tradition, or reason for overturning the traditional Christian condemnation of homosexual behavior. But the diocesan paper simply resorts to allowing personal experience to trump all three.
Unfortunately, that experience is treated very uncritically, and the authors are quick to throw out the clear, consistent, and emphatic abhorrence of homosexual activity in the Bible on the basis of very flimsy, unsubstantiated appeals to contemporary “common experience.” It amounts to what I’ve called in an essay I wrote several years ago, [i] “The Trivialization of Scripture.” [/i]
The whole argument is pathetically weak. But at least it’s clearer and more honest than most such attempts at justifying the unjustifiable that I’ve seen from the “progressive” side. It’s also shorter. All in all, I think it might make a very good sample of a pro-gay essay to use for discussion purposes in a serious adult study group, as an illustration of how the liberals get it wrong so badly.
David Handy+
NRA,
It’s the logical progression of things. The whole thing is a rebellion against God, as you know. Such rebellions always start in subterfuge and then reveal themselves when the moment is auspicious. Back when it got going, society, lukewarm as it was, was still essentially undergirded by Christian belief, so they had to tread carefully and resort to deceit and twisted arguments to try to show that their New Thing was somehow consonant with orthodox Christian belief. The pretense had to be kept up as long as Christian bona fides mattered. After 40 years of this acid bath on society at large and on the established churches (RCC and mainline Protestant), belief and adherence to orthodoxy and orthopraxis have greatly declined, such that it is increasingly less necessary to maintain the charade. We will see more of this, until soon the entire pretense of being Christian will be dropped, at the moment of institutional capture, where your domination will be dissolved as a Christian church even just in name, and the state (also captured) will round on the Christians left in society.
You say liberals get it wrong, but I don’t think they ever really intended to get it right. It was simply a matter of whatever was expedient at the moment. Now we’re seeing this increasingly revealed in real time.
I’m sorry, the only thing that I can visualize here is the Three Stooges:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yJBhzMWJCc
My favorite part of the theological justification is this:
“At the same time The Bible is a great deal more than categorical moral prescriptions. It shows changes and development in theology for instance from the jealous tribal God of early Israel who relies heavily on violence and magic, to the creator and sovereign Lord of the whole earth in the period after the return from the Exile (e.g. Isaiah 40-55).”
But it fits with the BP’s speech. There is a upward spiral toward knowing God. God is constantly revealing more of himself and Jesus was simply a way point on that continuing revelation. Only those who live here and now can perceive the latest update in God’s revelation and those to follow will get newer updates. Thus revelation is ever changing and ongoing superceeding past revelation.
#13 Br. Michael,,,,,,,,,man you got the speech nailed perfectly! The implication being that as past revelation is superceeded, it is also abandoned or declared moot. Gotta admire the self-consistency of their delusion for sure.
#9
When the meaning of Anglicanism, based on the narrow hierarchy of scripture, reason and tradition, is changed to the broad stool of radical, inclusive and accommodating, then surely the chief source of spiritual authority will denigrate to the lowest common denominator: personal experience. Martin Thornton predicted as much a quarter century ago.
I am baffled as to how someone as bright as Brian Ruttan could with a straight face publish so sloppy a theological justification. He completely annihilates his own argument on the first page.
I will give him points for intellectual honesty, as he admits that neither scripture, tradition, or reason can justify church blessings on same sex relationships. A lot of times scholars try to wiggle out of what the bible says on the issue, either invoking the “the bible doesn’t really talk about monogamous same sex relationships as we understand them today so we are free to make up our own rules about it” or the “if the bible does talk about them, its talking about Purity laws and we don’t follow those” line of reasoning. (Some people refer to this latter one as the ‘Shellfish argument.’) So I will give him points for actually calling a spade a spade. I actually found that refreshing. And likewise, he makes the same case for Tradition.
But then he goes on to say defuse the Reason argument, which I found completely underwhelming. While I am not in favor of blessing of same sex relationships, I think if I was playing the proverbial devil’s advocate, I would hammer Reason as a possible segway into a logical form of accepting it from a Christian perspective. I think such an argument could be made from that facet. Perhaps not a convincing argument in the end, but an intellectually coherent Reason defense could be I think be articulated on some level.
Instead, Ruttan dives right in by chucking all three and going with the unprovable, wishy-washy experiential “It feels right to me so it must be right to God” argument, which as I read the document, seems to encompass the entire remainder of his argument, as well as subsequent essays included in the PDF which seem to build on his premise.
Very odd indeed. I feel if this paper had been submitted in a Theology, Logic, or Rhetoric class, it would not have gotten passing marks.
Am I missing something here? This sentence from the introduction doesn’t seem to make sense:
“As such it does not imply nor is it intended to suggest that those who do or do not make use of this rite are excluded from the economy of God’s salvation.”
Why would the Church put forward a rite, the use of which might be taken to suggest that someone was excluded from the economy of salvation?
Or am I being very thick here?