The God sex guide

What is the Christian understanding of human sexuality, and how does this affect the ‘debate’ over same-sex relationships? I offer the following as a brief summary of what I think the Bible shows us. This was meant especially for Sunniva, but others may find it of benefit.

Early in the Bible we read that God made man “in his image”. Ancient Near Eastern culture would have understood this instantly to mean that man is the earthly representation of God and the physical ‘embodiment’ of his presence. The same passage, however, adds that man (adam) is “male and female”, but it doesn’t explain how this works.

Genesis 2 then describes in detail the interrelationship between the first ‘male and female’ culminating in two observations —first, that this is a pattern for all such relationships (“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, etc”, 2:24), and secondly, that this is an ‘unspoilt’ relationship (“The man and his wife were both naked, etc”, 2:25).

The events of Genesis 3 (the Fall) strike at the heart of this inter-human relationship (esp 3:16b), as well as at the vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationship with the rest of creation.

From here on, things go down hill, so that by Genesis 4 we have polygamy, tinged with violence, bullying and aggression. By the end of Genesis, we can add to that incest with one’s own children (Lot’s family), social rape (Sodom and Gomorrah) and prostitution. By Exodus and the giving of the Law we can add to the list of observable behaviours bestiality, homosexuality, the sexualization of worship and so on. Polygamy and concubinage are commonplace.

In short, human behaviour has moved from an original ‘binary’ model (male and female, made for each other), connected with the image of God, to a ‘polysexual’ pattern of diversity. We might diagram this as follows:

Image (male and female) < diversity and perversity

The Law provides some prohibitions and some accommodations. Thus various forms of sexual activity are prohibited and worship is never sexualized, but divorce is only slightly moderated and polygamy is still tolerated. In simple (simplistic?) terms:

The Law ≠ all perversity outside the Genesis paradigm

The Law = some diversity outside the Genesis paradigm

The impact of this, however, is a biblical trajectory which returns towards the original model. It is not absolute, nor is it complete, but it is there. During the Old Testament era, we also have a developing theme of God as the Bridegroom of Israel (Hosea, bits of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), whereas unfaithfulness to God is pictured as ‘whoredom’.

By the time we reach the New Testament era, Jewish society is monogamous, with some debate about the grounds on which divorce can take place. Moreover, it is separated from the surrounding Gentile world by its strict standards of sexual morality generally. The ‘accommodation’ of the Law, however, is still very real.

The arrival of Jesus brings the trajectory to its culmination and yet also challenges the framework of the Law. Jesus describes himself as the bridegroom, and the same description of him is used by John the Baptist, thus placing himself in the same relationship with Israel as was God. At the same time, though, he confronts head-on the limited scope of the Law, insisting that Genesis 1-2 provides the model for understanding sexuality. Just as in the Sermon on the Mount, the Law is presented as being limited to human capacity: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt 19:8).

The culmination of this is a new understanding of Christ in relation to the people of God, based in the Genesis account, which sets human sexuality back within this framework.

In Ephesians we see the theological implications spelled out for us. Specifically, Genesis 2:24 is applied to Christ and the Church, hence “husband is to wife” as “Jesus is to Church”. Thus we also understand Genesis 1:27 to mean that the male-female relationship of husband and wife ‘images’ the ‘Creator-Creation’ relationship of God to his redeemed people. This may be presented in diagramatic form thus:

Law-based accommodation gives way to Gospel standard >Christ and the Church = God’s ‘image’ in human sexuality

Putting the whole thing together, then, the biblical picture is thus:

Human Sexuality
OT Image (m/f) { divergence - Law - convergence } NT Image (Xt/Church)

This has profound significance for our understanding of salvation, as the ‘union’ of marriage represents the union of Christ with the believer, through which what is his becomes ours - “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with” (Rom 6:5-6, see also 7:4, 1 Cor 6:16-17). But it also has implications for our present understanding and practice of human sexuality.

John P Richardson
30 May 2009

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Unity, the Church and denominations

What is to prevent the fissiparation from which Protestantism has historically suffered? What is to provide the way back into that unity which is the essence of the gospel and the subject of so many urgings from Christ and the Apostles?

To quote a traditional Irish saying, “If I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here.” But here is where we are, so how might we get there?

I have suggested in previous posts that we need to be very careful about ‘private judgement’. Though this is much beloved of Protestants (linked as it often is to the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture), it is a grave error to suppose that the individual should be encouraged to make decisions about doctrine —especially the untrained and inexperienced individual.

As history has shown, sometimes individuals —Athanasius or Luther —must indeed take a stand, and some individuals —Augustine, Calvin, etc —have made massive contributions to doctrinal understanding. But history has given us the chance to sift their contributions and generally doctrine is something for us to receive, not to discern.

To move from our divided ‘here’, to a united ‘there’, then, our first need is humility and our second need is historical awareness. We need to know what the Church has said in the past and learned from the past. And in this respect, if the ‘Gamaliel principle’ has any validity at all it must suggest that history is on the side of the theological conservatives.

A classic example of theological history in action would be our acceptance of the Creeds —particularly the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds, which are the most widely known and used. The issues they addressed were deeply controverted at the time, and the conclusions they reached on the nature of the Trinity do not follow immediately from a ‘plain’ reading of Scripture. Yet they have stood the test of time and resisted efforts to reject or recast them, and we now expect Christians to understand doctrine and read Scripture in the light of them.

This is not to set the Creeds above Scripture. The Anglican Articles, for example, say they are only to be believed because they may be proved from Scripture. But they do set aside alternative —for example, non-Trinitarian —readings of Scripture. And they do this with the general agreement of the vast majority of Western Churches and Christians.

This brings us, however, to a third ‘stepping stone’ from here to there, which is the recognition for many of us that we also stand in a denominational tradition which ought to provide an agreed theological basis for unity.

Historically, denominations have generally arisen over differences in our understanding of the truth —what it is, and how it should be applied. When these differences have become too great for an institution to cope with them, a split has taken place. That being the case, however, we would expect to find within the denomination a substantial agreement on the truth and thus a high degree of unity. We must, therefore, take very seriously the fact that this is observably not the case in many Protestant denominations, including, of course, the Church of England. Indeed, Robbie Low writes,

Anglicans have no common doctrine, no common liturgy and no common orders. In short, Anglicanism lacks the fundamental qualifications to make the bold claim that it is a Church.

Gerald Bray has similarly written in the same vein:

Incompatible beliefs about the ministry, the sacraments and almost anything one cares to name can and do co-exist under the Anglican umbrella, and nobody seems to be able to say what the boundaries of the church’s faith are.

This situation is, frankly, ridiculous! What is the point of being a denomination if the disagreements amongst ourselves are greater than our differences with those outside our supposed ‘boundaries’?

And there is another insidious factor arising out of this. For if unity is not maintained ‘in the truth’, then it must be maintained, ultimately, by force. The denomination which tolerates an ‘anything goes’ approach to belief must, in the end, use its institutional rules, regulations and sanctions to preserve its unity despite disagreements.

We need to remind ourselves —certainly Anglicans need to remind themselves —that our denominations do, for the most part, have confessional origins. In the case of the Church of England, this produced not only the Thirty-nine Articles but also the Book of Common Prayer which expressed a theology in sharp contradistinction to what had gone before.

In short, in denominations with a confessional basis, we are entitled reassert the importance of the confessional statements in the interests of gospel unity. Anglicans should be especially glad that the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement and Declaration reassert doctrinal significance of the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, and those of us in the Church of England with a concern for the gospel should do all we can to align ourselves with this, because they give a clear signal both that we do not embrace unlimited theological diversity and also that we do not regard such diversity as inherently Anglican.

GAFCON, however, also reminds us that provided the boundaries of the Church have some substance and definition, you can actually work with a diversity of expressions of the faith. So, to the annoyance of many of its critics, GAFCON saw Anglo-Catholic Africans sharing the same platform as Puritan Australians.

Some saw this as a betrayal of principle. I would want to argue, rather, that it is entirely principled, provided there is a common acceptance of a shared confessional heritage. In the same way, evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in this country can work together —albeit in a sometimes-limited way —provided we do so as confessionally committed Anglicans.

Unity in the truth, however, does not come automatically. It has to be deliberately sought and systematically maintained through the structural provisions of the institution, and ultimately the responsibility for it rests with those who are empowered to be the doctrinal ‘gatekeepers’.

In short, the clergy of a denomination are the first line of defence regarding the unity of the Church. Or at least they should be! Yet in some denominations —sadly including Anglicanism —the clergy are the last people to whom one would look for an understanding of the historic confessions and formularies. Indeed, ordination seems to be regarded as an official license to believe and teach whatever takes your fancy.

This is the ‘elephant in the living room’ for liberal Protestantism. Disunity is fostered and caused by the very body charged with establishing unity in the faith through the teaching office. What might be done about this will be the subject of a later post.

John P Richardson
28 May 2009

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Labour MP accuses churches over rise of BNP

Via Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream, here.

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Why Open Evangelicalism damages gospel unity

Not my suggestion, but coming from the pen of Cranmer's Curate in a hard-hitting e-mail to me. I suggested he post it on his website if he wanted to invite public discussion. You can find the letter here, and if you want to comment, post there.

You can read what I've said before on Open and Conservative Evangelicalism by checking the labels below.

Bishops and MPs, pots and kettles?

With all the ‘brough-ha-ha’ currently in the press about MP’s expenses, it might be worth reminding ourselves as a Church that when you point the finger at someone else, there are three more fingers pointing back at you.

Hence, I was reflecting this morning on the fact that the only other time I faced legal action (apart from a mix-up over who was actually paying my Council tax —it turned out, for a short while, no-one), was when solicitors acting for the Church Commissioners threatened to sue the editorial board of New Directions, of which I am a long-standing member.

It was back in early 1999 that the Church Commissioners were approached to see if some idea could be gained of the nett cost of bishops to the Church of England, including their expenses:

Rather predictably [came the response], the policy of the Commissioners is not to make such information available. It would be difficult to abstract... varies widely from bishop to bishop... and, if given, would only prove to be ‘misleading’ ... etc., etc., etc.

Naturally, this did nothing to assuage journalistic interest which, if not devoid of a dislike of the bishops, was driven also by the way these expenses seemed to be increasing when clergy numbers were not. Questions continued to be asked, at Synod and elsewhere —always to be met by the same basic response. The expenses, enquirers were assured, were supervised by the Church Commissioners and there was nothing to worry about and no need to know any more.

To cut a long story short, however, what eventually happened bears a striking resemblance to the situation with MPs —namely that a copy of the expenses fell into the hands (simultaneously and from different sources) of a member of the New Directions board and a journalist from the Daily Telegraph.

And the Commissioners’ response? To threaten to sue the New Directions board (though not the Daily Telegraph) under the Data Protection Act (although ND had only threatened to give figures, not actual names).

Eventually, though, the pressure paid off and bishop’s expenses are now published.

You can read this rather sorry saga here, should you wish to be reminded.

John Richardson
24 May 2009

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Mayor Livingstone? You wish ...!

Googling around for something else (as you do), I came across Ken Livingstone's diary for the New Statesman. I was just having a happy time reading what he'd been up to in the last week (not supporting the IRA this time, I was glad to see), when I noticed at the top of the page some news I'd obviously missed:

Ken Livingstone

Ken Livingstone is the Mayor of London.

So all that stuff about a strange man called Boris with wild hair was just a dream?

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If not private judgement, then what?

A couple of days ago I posted about the ideas I explored at the Oak Hill Annual School of Theology on the subject of ‘Truth, Unity and Schism’.

I began by acknowledging Robbie Low’s critique of Protestantism published a few years ago in New Directions, and agreed that Protestants do indeed suffer from divisiveness. Contrary to Low’s suggestion, however, I do not believe the problem is sola scriptura. Indeed,‘sola scriptura’ may be seen as part of the gospel itself. Thus Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ... (1 Cor 15:3-4)

It is only as the death and resurrection of Christ are understood “according to the Scriptures” that faith is able to save us from sin and coming judgement.

The difficulty, of course, is in deciding what Scripture says, particularly in cases of dispute. And it is a Reformation principle that we cannot simply say that the Church tells us what Scripture says. Article XXI, ‘Of the Authority of General Councils’, recognizes that,

... when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometime have erred, even in things pertaining to God.

This is where private judgement tends to come in, but as I argued last time, that is also not enough —indeed, if it makes the individual the final arbiter of truth, it is positively dangerous.

Our first need is rather to see that we do indeed enter the Church (which is to say, we become Christians) as learners —as disciples.

And the second thing to see is that there are those given by Christ to his Church to be its “pastors and teachers” (Eph 4:11). Indeed, the New Testament reveals a community in which teaching and being taught were key elements of the Church’s daily life. Paul describes the Christian life as ‘learning Christ’ (Eph 4:20) and being “taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21).

That being the case, we need to set aside any idea that you can give a new convert a copy of the Bible and rely on them finding their way to the truth. Instead, we must recognize that the teaching ministry is a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (1 Cor 12:7,28) and that teaching is a singular gift of the few, not the many:

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (Jas 3:1)

By all means, let us encourage people to use their critical faculties. Like the Bereans of Acts 17:11, we must all learn to ‘search the Scriptures’. Nevertheless, the Bereans’ noble character consisted not in their scepticism but in their receiving Paul’s message “with great eagerness”, and they examined the Scriptures not to refute what they heard but to confirm it.

In short, we need to generate a new culture in which we value learning in others and in which we have humility towards our own opinion. Specifically, in the Church we are not all entitled to our opinion when it comes to matters of belief.

It is worth reading John Wesley’s ‘Address to the Clergy’, written in 1756. He makes this challenge, for example, about the minister’s need for a grasp of biblical languages:

Do I understand Greek and Hebrew? Otherwise, how can I undertake, (as every Minister does,) not only to explain books which are written therein, but to defend them against all opponents? Am I not at the mercy of every one who does understand, or even pretends to understand, the original? For which way can I confute his pretence? Do I understand the language of the Old Testament? critically? at all? Can I read into English one of David's Psalms; or even the first chapter of Genesis? Do I understand the language of the New Testament? Am I a critical master of it? Have I enough of it even to read into English the first chapter of St. Luke? If not, how many years did I spend at school? How many at the University? And what was I doing all those years? Ought not shame to cover my face?

Other subjects with which the minister should be acquainted included history, Ancient Near Eastern culture, biblical chronology and geography, sciences, metaphysics and the Church Fathers. On the subject of basic philosophy, he had this to say,

Can I even reduce an indirect mood to a direct; an hypothetic to a categorical syllogism? Rather, have not my stupid indolence and laziness made me very ready to believe, what the little wits and pretty gentlemen affirm, “that logic is good for nothing?” It is good for this at least, (wherever it is understood,) to make people talk less; by showing them both what is, and what is not, to the point; and how extremely hard it is to prove anything.

We have become a Church in which ‘Jack’s as good as his master’ (and, of course, every Jane is as good as her mistress), in stark contrast to Judaism and Islam where the learned teacher still warrants respect.

Many Protestant churches have what I would call a ‘charismatic’ view of the ministry (although quasi-Roman might be a better term), where the qualification to minister to, and especially to teach, others is given through the laying on of the bishop’s hands on the candidates head, rather than through what George Carey once described to a tutorial group I was in as the application of the seat of the trousers to the seat of the chair.

The ‘ordained’ are then entitled to direct and govern congregations, despite them having fairly minimal qualifications to do this in the way that the Anglican Ordinal directs:

And seeing that ye cannot by any other means compass the doing of so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of man, but with doctrine and exhortation taken out of the Holy Scriptures, and with a life agreeable to the same; consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures, and in framing the manners both of yourselves, and of them that specially pertain unto you, according to the rule of the same Scriptures; and for this self-same cause, how ye ought to forsake and set aside, as much as ye may, all worldly cares and studies.

Expertise in the Scriptures is not all we need to be effective ministers, but it is essential to effective ministry. Paul’s instruction to Timothy provides a sound basis for any ministerial work,

set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. ¹³ Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. (1 Timothy 4:12-13)

If there were more acknowledgement that this is the backbone of the Church’s life, there might be less divisions in the Church —but that will only work if the ministers are themselves reliable, and that is a topic to which I will return later.

John P Richardson
23 May 2009

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One day, there'll be a knock on the door ...

Reading the Religious Intelligence report on the recent conference in the UK, Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Human Rights - building positive alliances for equality and sexual diversity, I have no doubt that if not for me, then for other Christians soon, the knock will come on the door, and I will need to make sure I've got my toothbrush and some sugar cubes in my pocket. (The last was a hint I remember reading about for people living behind the Iron Curtain who faced arrest.)

These are the words of one Ms. Eagle, the British Government Equalities Minister,

“The circumstances in which religious institutions can practice anything less than full equality are few and far between. While the state would not intervene in narrowly ritual or doctrinal matters within faith groups, these communities cannot claim that everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law. Members of faith groups have a role in making the argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment.”

And here are Conference Chairs, Maria Exall, Sharon Ferguson, Richard Kirker and Martin Pendergast:

“Principles of faith are being twisted to foster irrational fears of human rights, sexual diversity and social equality, to pit people of faith, including LGBT people, against all who seek the common good,”

Canon Giles Fraser, newly appointed Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral, said,

“Hateful attitudes towards LGBT people, sometimes aired on football terraces, are no different to those found in supposedly religious settings. We must not allow homophobia to disguise itself as any sort of legitimate religious belief – it isn’t! Homophobia is a sin and its eradication from churches, mosques and synagogues is one of the most urgent challenges for people of faith in the 21st century.”

(Oh, so its not saving people from coming judgement, then?)

Marilyn McCord Adams, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University declaimed,

"Adult believers have a responsibility to weed tradition, to identify systemic evils that are ripe for uprooting, pre-eminently human rights violations, and to go after them with a shovel and trowel."

Whilst Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Equality & Human Rights Commission, "spoke candidly about his position in the face of the controversies over the appointment of the Rev Joel Edwards, former General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, to a Commissioner role for faith issues [and] told the conference that had he known at the time of the appointment what he knew now, how deeply people had been hurt and alienated over this, maybe there would have been a different outcome."

So here's my two-penn'orth. Same sex attraction is a form of sexual disorientation, 'not orientation'. Same sex sex is a sin. The society that condones these things and attempts to rewrite sexuality in blatant disregard of biology has lost its intellectual and moral bearings and is destined for disaster. The Church which says otherwise is under judgement and does not deserve to be called a Church.

Now, where's my toothbrush?

John P Richardson
21 May 2009

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The evil poor

And, via the Independent Newspaper website, this award-winning policeman's blog, to get your juices flowing ...

Actually, it is pretty scary. Try reading 'A Survival Guide for Decent Folk'. One day you may be glad you did.

But via the same blog, the blog of a prison chaplain to cheer you up.

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Unity, schism and private judgement

I’ve not touched the blog for the past couple of weeks as, between other commitments, I’ve been preparing a paper for the Oak Hill School of Theology, which this year was on the subject of ‘Truth, Unity and Schism’.

My brief was to look at some of the practical issues from a ‘grass-roots’ level. What I presented in the end was an attempt to look at the issue of unity and schism from an ecclesiological perspective. How we live the life of the Church, I suggested, affects fundamentally how we handle and, if possible prevent, division.

My starting point, however, was an acknowledgement of the divided nature of Protestantism, observed by my old friend Robbie Low in an article he wrote for New Directions, back in 2004. “The curse of Protestantism,” he declared then, “is division.” And this is because, according to him,

The very nature of [Protestantism’s] origins, self-understanding and approach to the Word of God are inherently schismatic.

And this he blamed on Protestantism’s problem with authority:

In rejecting the authority of the Pope the Western reformers did not abolish autocracy but rather set in train a process the logical end of which is that every man is a pope in his own parish or in his own front room.

The chaos resulting from this is familiar to many:

The upshot is hundreds of ‘churches’, most of them with their own bizarre subdivisions (low, strict and particular, Southern, open etc, etc). In addition, there are thousands upon thousands of one-man band conventicles brought about by the falling out of Brother Smith with Pastor Jones. Pastor Smith, as he has now appointed himself, has the ‘real’ truth and hopes shortly to be needing to rent a bigger Scout Hut than the gravely misled Pastor Jones, his former guru.

Robbie blamed this on the principle of ‘sola scriptura’ —the Bible alone as the Church’s authority. I’m sure this is one reason why he and his wife Sara have now become Roman Catholics. Whilst his criticisms are fair, however, I find myself disagreeing with this part of his analysis. I am sure the problem has to do with our understanding of the truth. However, I find myself rather more drawn at this point to the critique of another Anglican turned Roman, namely John Henry Newman.

In 1849 Newman had published a collection of Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (‘mixed’, in this context, meaning ‘made up of Catholics and Protestants’). In one of these, ‘Faith and Private Judgement’, he made this stark assessment:

Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word ... and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change.

But, as Newman observed, people (or at least Protestants) undoubtedly do change their beliefs, and this he attributed directly to the combination of Scripture and private judgement:

Since men now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher, you may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their own deductions more strongly at one time than at another, they will change their minds about them, or perhaps deny them altogether; whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is, belief that what a preacher says to him comes from God.

Once again, the criticism seems fair enough —and not least when it comes to evangelical Protestants, who fancy themselves to be completely committed to the ‘authority’ of Scripture, but who seem to be rather prone to change their minds about what Scripture ‘authoritatively’ says. Now it teaches penal substitution, now it doesn’t. Now it is anti-homosexuality, now it isn’t, and so on.

By contrast, according to Newman, the primitive Apostolic preaching called for obedient faith:

Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgement.

Compare this, Newman argues, with the person who goes by their own estimation of the Bible:

Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or acts of mind quite distinct from each other; —to believe simply what a living authority tells you, and to take a book such as Scripture, and to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you choose to see in it, and nothing more?

Is this not exactly what we see in many Protestant churches and amongst many evangelical individuals? Previously ‘received truths’ about what Scripture says have been in overturned as a person has ‘seen the (new) light’ and decides they can no longer believe as they once did.

There is much about Newman’s approach which may be criticized, but there is something in it, and particularly in what he wrote about the attitude of new converts and the rôle of the Church in relation to them:

... when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them.

This is not, frankly, an attitude much in evidence today. Instead, we have taken as our guiding principle that advocated by J C Ryle, writing at almost the same time as Newman:

Reader, this is private judgment. This is the right you are to exercise if you love your soul. You are not to believe things in religion merely because they are said by Popes or Cardinals, —by Bishops or Priests, —by Presbyters or Deacons, —by Churches, Councils, or Synods, —by Fathers, Puritans, or Reformers. You are not to argue, “Such and such things must be true, because these men say so.” You are not to do so. You are to prove all things by the Word of God.

Now I am much more a fan (and a reader) of Ryle than Newman, but I think Ryle is mistaken. It is true that we mustn’t believe something just because someone ‘in authority’ says so —the Apostle Paul gives the same caution in Galatians 1. And it is also true that we must “prove all things by the Word of God.” But we cannot always and invariably look, finally, to our own private judgement for a verdict.

On the contrary, as Gerald Bray has recently written,

What is easy to overlook in the history of Christian doctrine, though it becomes clear once it is pointed out, is that no individual has ever been given the authority to determine what orthodoxy is.

That being the case, we must surely check our private judgement against the authority of the wider Church, rather than the other way round.

Our problem, in other words, is not that we give too much credence to the Bible, nor is it (as Newman and Low both suggest) that we don’t give enough to the Pope. It is rather that we give too much to our own opinions. After all, if not just those naughty popes and cardinals, but bishops, priests, presbyters, deacons, churches, councils, synods, the Fathers, the Puritans and the Reformers all come down one way, and I come down another, where does the balance of probability lie?

I hope to post later on what I went on to say this means in practice.

John Richardson
21 May 2009

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Ugandan delegate refused admission to ACC, correspondence published

One of the Ugandan delegates to the ongoing Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica has been refused admission on the grounds that he is part of the Ugandan 'cross border' intervention in the US. The Archbishop of Uganda has appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and released the correspondence into the public domain. It can be accessed here:

Orombi appeals to Canterbury over refused Uganda delegate to ACC: Correspondence

In his letter to Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Uganda writes,

We, therefore, appeal to you, in your capacity as Chair of the Primates Standing Committee and President of the ACC, to help the Joint Standing Committee understand the limits of their authority and to recognize the appointment of the Rev. Philip Ashey as clergy delegate to ACC-14 from the Church of Uganda, and to accord to him every courtesy expected of any delegate from any Province of the Anglican Communion. This is a matter of urgency, and I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest opportunity.

If the Church of Uganda’s appointment of Rev. Philip Ashey is considered by you to be unacceptable, then we will be forced to take the steps necessary to bring this unbiblical, unjust and unconstitutional precedent to the attention of the rest of the Communion.

(Presumably the release of this correspondence represents those 'necessary steps'.)

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