(Please note that the blog first covered this story in the post and comments you may find here).
“I describe myself as a non-theistic Christian,” Hall confided to Quinn, echoing infamous retired Episcopal John Shelby Spong, who once routinely regaled an approving Phil Donahue and other talk shows with his provocative disbelief of Christian orthodoxy. “Jesus doesn’t use the word God very much,” Hall insisted. “He talks about his Father.”
Hall asked: “Where I am now, how do I understand Jesus as a son of God that’s not magical? I’m trying to figure out Jesus as a son of God and a fully human being, if he has both fully human and a fully divine set of chromosomes.”¦ He’s not some kind of superman coming down. God is present in all human beings. Jesus was an extraordinary human being. Jesus didn’t try to convert. He just had people at his table.”
ugghhh
The more non-Christian Episcopal clergy are in leadership at prominent TEC churches, the better — particularly Washington Cathedral!
[i]Faster Please.[/i]
Ah, clarity is a good thing. Like Sarah, I paradoxically welcome the way that the new “non-theistic” dean makes no pretense whatsoever of being moderate, much less orthodox. He’s totally open and honest about his extreme liberalism. He even relishes being avant-garde, like some other infamous celebrity gadfly’s such as the notorious +Spong that Tooley naturally mentions in this piece.
As I did when commenting on the earlier thread Kendall alluded to above, I’ll simply point to the highly significant fact that this “very hip” dean was formerly dean of Seabury-Western Seminary in Evanston. Now he shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for the closing of that illustrious school, as if he alone were to blame for its demise, in an era when all residential, stand-alone seminaries are under severe financial pressure. But the fact remains that Gary Hall hastened the death of Seabury by his foolish policies and his reckless promotion of unmitigated liberalism, including his brazen endorsement of “the Sexual Revolution.”
Yet the demise of Seabury seems to have taught him nothing.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. The delusional fantasies that enthrall Dean Hall and his ilk have been ably described and lampooned by Mark Tooley of IRD. Well done, Mark.
David Handy+
I’m not a very good student of the history of heresy, but isn’t this: [blockquote]He’s not some kind of superman coming down. God is present in all human beings. Jesus was an extraordinary human being.[/blockquote] a version of either Arianism or Psilanthropism?