Don Mathieson responds to the Doctrinal Commission's report

As we run up to the General Synod in less than a couple of week's time, I offer for readers here a critique of the Doctrinal Commission's report. It is written by Dr Don Mathieson QC, a Wellington lay Anglican lawyer.

The full article is here. The Doctrinal Commission's report is in the second half of the pdf relating to the Ma Whea? Commission's work here.

The following is the beginning of Dr Mathieson's critique:

"INTRODUCTION

The bulk of the Commission’s report sets out a rationale for the Anglican Church to conduct same-sex marriages and, if that is not feasible, to conduct same-gender blessings. The objections to that rationale occupy much less space. This critique will help redress that imbalance. The unity of the Church and its acceptability overseas as a church that supports overseas mission are in peril. It is time to speak forthrightly in support of the clear scriptural witness about the sinfulness of homosexual acts and the position adopted without dissension by Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Churches alike for nearly two thousand years.

DISENFRANCHISEMENT?

Since the Doctrine Commission’s Report was delivered the Ma Whea? Commission has elaborated several ways forward. It labels the historic belief and practice of the Christian church the “traditionalist” view”. That adjective itself tends to suggest that the attitude so labelled is suspect because old-fashioned and not in accordance with modern thinking. It is simply wrong to imply that a position held by the church and its theologians of different stripes for centuries is likely to be wrong just because it is old. Ma Whea states  that adopting this view, here called the orthodox view, of the circumstances in which genital sexual activity is to be approved by the Church would lead to the  ‘disenfranchisement”(with all the emotive freight which that word carries)of those in committed same-gender relationships. It would also, so it is said, lead to their “marginalisation”. This is misleading. In the language of the title of Stanley Grenz’s book, there is a wide consensus among orthodox(including but by no means limited to evangelical) Christians  that the Church must be Welcoming But Not Affirming of those in sexual relationship but not married to each other. They are to be loved. They must be accepted as individual believers. They must be encouraged to participate in God’s mission. The same holds for those who are in an adulterous relationship. But their relationship is not to be approved by pronouncing God’s blessing over it. Gay people in active sexual relationship are be treated with loving care, pastorally assisted and welcomed in services of worship. There is no “marginalisation” here. The orthodox approach needs to be accurately stated. Unfortunately, it often is not. The Doctrine Commission, for its part, does not bother to summarise the practical and pastoral position adopted by Anglicans of orthodox persuasion correctly.

SCRIPTURE

Our Church acknowledges the authority of the scriptures for its belief and practice. The fundamental clauses of the Constitution make the supreme place which the scriptures hold abundantly clear. The rationale advanced by the Doctrine Commission ultimately comes down to saying that the  Commission is faced with a situation-the existence of long term committed gay relationships-with which the scriptures do not deal.

This “silence of scripture” argument fails in its first premise –as will later be demonstrated. The Commission claims that arguments for same gender marriages and blessings are a “faithful response to scripture”. Notice its covert move from the claim that the scriptures don’t deal with the supposedly modern phenomenon of same-gender relationships which the parties to them claim to be “permanent” to contending that a “change in practice is required by the revelation of God”. Such revelation must logically be either derived from the scriptures or be extra-scriptural. If it is extra-scriptural, what is its source? The Commission does not directly say. The Commission comes very close to saying that if society now approves of something that something is “required by the revelation of God”. The absurdity of such a proposition is self-evident and its danger to clear and distinctive Cristian teaching and practice must be reckoned as huge. If on the other hand the revelation of God is asserted to be something contained in the Word of God, we must ask how can scripture simultaneously require X but not deal with X? This is self-contradictory. The place of reason is vaunted in Anglicanism. Good reasoning is not self-contradictory."

What do you think?