Members of the Church in Wales may be anxious not to exacerbate existing tensions over the issue. A senior source close to the election told The Times: “One member of the college is going to put Jeffrey John’s name forward. It will be a very close thing.”
Another Church in Wales insider said: “He has a good pastoral record. He might well be considered.”
The Rev Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Mary’s Putney, a friend of Dr John and founder of the Inclusive Church lobby that champions the gay cause, said: “Jeffrey John would make an absolutely splendid bishop. This is not before time. This is a man who does not contravene the guidelines on human sexuality at all.”
But in a joint statement, Canon Chris Sugden and Philip Giddings, of Anglican Mainstream, the conservative lobby set up in response to Dr John’s appointment to Reading, said: “If he is being nominated to a Welsh episcopate, the obstacles remain the same as to his previous candidacies for senior appointments.”
Since when does having a good pastoral record trump sound doctrine?
My life- regardless of what one thinks about the subject, or how good or bad he is- to do this at this moment in time would be criminally insane and totally inflammable. Why deliberately antagonise simply to role out your own agenda. Anyone who puts his name forward needs to think long and hard about the possible implicaions….and answer before God.
Isn’t the Anglican Church in Wales rapidly disappearing? How will this help? It sounds suicidal to me.
2, because he can and can get away with it? The goal is legitimitize homosexual behavior and defend the idea of homosexual orientation (a concept that not only is not proven but is also deterministic (our behavior is solely determined by our genes or what ever)). All must submit to this guiding principle.
The late bishop of Bangor was a divorced & remarried liberal. He got on rather tetchily with his clergy.
Another bishop in Wales resigned this year after an affair with his (female, married) chaplain.
A small church in a lot of trouble.
If the Church in Wales is tiny and in trouble than, based on his record, Dr. Jeffrey John might be just the man God uses to turn things around.
He is erudite, catholic oriented, pastoral and manifests gifts for leadership. None seem to deny that he is a man who strives for personal holiness, bears good fruit in his ministries and is a celibate man in a chaste relationship.
My prayers are with and for him. God’s will be done.
“None seem to deny that he is a man who strives for personal holiness, bears good fruit in his ministries and is a celibate man in a chaste relationship.”
So why does he share a home with the priest he had a physical relationship with for over 20 years? Isn’t that courting temptation? Priests should be above suspicion in their lives.
He’s also on record for ridiculing belief in penal substitution as ‘child abuse’.
“He’s also on record for ridiculing belief in penal substitution as ‘child abuse’. ”
Penal Substitution is ONE theory of the atonement, there are others:
Ransom & Christus Victor
Origen of Alexandria
Gregory of Nyssa
Gustaf Aulén
Irenaeus of Lyons (“Recapitulation”)
Satisfaction
Divine satisfaction: Anselm of Canterbury and salvation in Catholicism
Substitution
Substitutionary atonement and Penal Substitution
Penalty or punishment satisfaction: John Calvin, Calvinism, & imputed righteousness
Vicarious repentance, John McLeod Campbell and Robert Campbell Moberly
Governmental
Hugo Grotius, James Arminius and John Miley
Jonathan Edwards and Charles Grandison Finney
Moral influence
Pierre Abélard (It is questionable whether Abélard himself taught this model of atonement)
Hastings Rashdall
Scapegoating
William Tyndale (who invented the word from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts), René Girard, James Alison, Mark Heim, Gerhard Förde
Rite of Healing
Margaret Barker
Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism have a substantively different soteriology; this is sometimes cited as the core difference between Eastern and Western Christianity. In contrast to other forms of Christianity, the Orthodox tend to use the word “expiation” with regard to what is accomplished in the sacrificial act. In Orthodox theology, expiation is an act of offering that seeks to change the one making the offering. The Greek word that is translated both into propitiation and expiation is “hilasmos” which means “to make acceptable and enable one to draw close to God”. Thus the Orthodox emphasis would be that Christ died, not to appease an angry and vindictive Father, or to avert the wrath of God, but to change people so that they may become more like God (theosis)
I wrote my dissertation on Jacobus Arminius. He did not teach the “govenmental” theory of the atonement.
#9 – Maybe it’s more accurate to say that Grotius developed the theory of governmental atonement based upon the teachings of Jacobus Armimius?
#10, that would not be accurate.
#10 – You might want to edit the Theopedia article on governmental atonement:
http://www.theopedia.com/Governmental_theory_of_atonement
From that article: “This view of the atonement was developed by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) based on the teaching of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609).”
#8: and your point is?
#13 and my point is…
that not subscribing to the Penal Substitution theory of the atonement is certainly not grounds for attempting to poke holes in one’s orthodoxy.
The point, #13 is that a Christian need not subscribe to the Penal Substitution theory to be a Christian.
A person named Jeffery John wrote an excellent book titled the Meaning of the Miracles is a delightful book. Is it the same person?
John,
Yes, the very same (and you’re right, it is an excellent book), and that is why this issue is so complicated.
This story is out of date. Accirding to Wales Online
“THE new Bishop of St David’s has this evening been named as the Very Rev Wyn Evans, the current Dean of St David’s.
After less than a day locked inside St David’s Cathedral, 46 members of the Church in Wales named Rev Evans as their choice.”
Wrong Diocese – Dr John is up (allegedly) for Bishop of Bangor.
Yes, it has not been a good year in the Church in Wales for scandals – St David’s, now Bangor and today there is this
#14: and my reply is that labeling proponents of PSA (a very ancient understanding, as detailed in the book ‘Pierced for our transgressions’ and upheld, in his own way, by Tom Wright) as upholders of ‘cosmic child abuse’ is cheapjack journalism, not serious theology. The idea that Jeffrey Johns is some kind of theological wunderkind is quite silly. The confusions in the man’s thought have been brought out very clearly by English priest John Richardson on the ‘Anglican Mainstream’ website, where he dissects Johns’ apologia for homosexuality.
As #19 points out, this has not been a happy year for the Welsh Anglican Church. Like its sister church in Scotland, it faces oblivion, but do they really have to speed up its death throes?