On the one hand [this week's news] ... the shattered Anglican Communion is once again shattered, this time by news that the new Archbishop of Wales is a woman in a partnership with a woman. Thinking Anglicans report here. The Other Cheek has comment here, including these thoughts:
"The Christians who believe that partnered gay and lesbian people should be treated equally with all others in the church will see a glass archiepiscopal ceiling being shattered – Vann is the first openly gay woman to head a province (national church) in the Anglican communion. They will sympathise with Vann’s three decades of secret keeping.
Evangelicals and others will also have seen a shattering – a further shattering of the Anglican Communion itself. For example, Sydney’s Archbishop Kanishka Raffel describes Vann’s election as “a grievous departure from the teaching of the Bible, inconsistent with the understanding of marriage as expressed in the formularies of the Anglican Church, and a tragic rejection of the words of Jesus.” Some theological conservatives will see the secret relationship as concealment."
On the other hand [not this week's news, but I did notice a mention of it] ... a new way to be the Communion - via a new leadership model for the Communion ... if the Communion is again "shattered", might we ask, "Is this the ecclesial superglue to hold us together albeit as a patched up, fracture lines showing where the glue re-joins us Communion?"
The key proposal here has been made by IASCUFO (Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order), see, e.g. report here, and the most recent guide to a recitation of its strengths/weaknesses that I can find on the internet is this round up of articles, published 2 June 2025, by The Living Church (i.e. listing articles published by this journal earlier in the year). From the IASCUFO report itself, when all the fine and necessary words are said about the theology of our life together as global Anglicans, we get this proposal:
"The second proposal suggests broadening how the meetings of the Instruments of Communion are called, convened, chaired, and presided over, in order to diversify the face of the Instruments of Communion. We propose (a) a rotating presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council between the five regions of the Communion, elected from the membership of the Primates’ Meeting by the same; and (b) an enhanced role for the Primates’ Standing Committee in the calling and convening of both Primates’ Meetings and the Lambeth Conference. Ceding the expectation that the Archbishop of Canterbury convenes and presides at all meetings of the Communion will enable the personal and pastoral aspects of the archbishop’s ministry to be given and received, and fits with the identity and ideals of the Anglican Communion in a post-colonial era. The leadership of the Communion should look like the Communion."
This paragraph boils down to six words about possible change to Communion leadership: diminished role for Archbishop of Canterbury.
Is this a way forward to "mend the nets", to superglue shattered pieces of previously united pottery together? This is a genuine question since the intent is to find a new way forward for the life of the Communion but I have seen (e.g. GAFCON) criticism of the proposal; and - speaking for myself - I am not keen on a diminishment of the ABC's role in the Communion.
Back to the first part of the post, and this week's Welsh news.
One thought has struck me: if such an appointment is "unconstitutional" for the Communion (against Scripture etc), is it time to look more creatively-theologically (than, e.g., ++Sydney has done) at how we treat those who (so to speak) are not constituted in their humanity to enter into heterosexual marriage?
Another thought is this: the issue of being shattered or repaired continues to be our capacity to accept there might be two reasonable, plausible, Christ-based-compassionate views on the matters homosexuality as a human phenomenon raises for Christians, held within a Communion which previously has demonstrated extraordinary capacity to hold two differing views in the one fellowship.
Addendum: As it happens, not long after composing the above paragraph, The Other Cheek reports on and discusses a couple of non-Anglican situations in Australia where some kind of "two integrities" challenge is being worked on - I post the link here without further comment on whether or not any other church Down Under is going about things in a helpful way.
34 comments:
"Is there a new way forward to 'mend the nets', to superglue shattered pieces of previously united pottery together?' - Bishop Carroll.
"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake." - C.S. Lewis, 'Mere Christianity'.
Gerald
In today's Eucharist readings (the most-used systematic Bible reading system), God promises to destroy nations (genocide) and their land. [Deut 31:1-8]
Easier on our contemporary ears is another reading today where our Father in heaven's will is not that one of these little ones should be lost. [Mt 18:12-14]
"The teaching of the Bible" is a fraught phrase. Point me to "the teaching of the Bible" condemning slavery, as just another simple example alongside the genocidal God teaching ...
Why cannot those who seem to have no difficulty in finding unity in the diversity of (and conflicting) texts of the Bible manage to do the same when it comes to human diversity?
Perhaps what is needed is not a search for a new super-glue, but a turning to kintsugi - acknowledging our brokenness as part of our beauty.
Blessings
Bosco
Rev. Bosco's words at the end of his comment.. wonderful!
It is not only the diversity of human beings that has to be taken into account but also the tremendous diversity of human experience.
Whatever leads me to take a course that may or may not be in accord with traditional Biblical teaching, is often the fruit of a long process. Even if I want to retrace my steps, the journey can be very painful and the outcome uncertain. In our very fractured society, it is not surprising that people who have been badly hurt might not be willing to venture on that journey.
I read this morning in Matthew 7: ‘Do not judge…’ Only God knows what leads people into the life they choose and he is both merciful and just. So I can pray a blessing on people I disagree with, which seems to me to be the way of Jesus.
Dear William
Your comment recently submitted has too many ad hominems in it. Pleae stop belittling people you disagree with. I have excised them. Also removed "Dr" because Bosco Peters would be the first to say he is not a "Dr". I won't do thia again. Next time just a simple delete.
Your comment:
Peters asks: "Why cannot those who seem to have no difficulty in finding unity in the diversity of (and conflicting) texts of the Bible manage to do the same when it comes to human diversity?"
Really? Whoever said explaining theodicy was easy? Like playing a piano (well), or doing differential calculus, or even composing in Biblical Hebrew, orthodox exegesis isn't easy - but it is do-able and has been done, many times with increasing levels of sophistication.
Finding formal contradictions in the Bible (as well as moral conundrums) is actually a very easy thing to do [...] and has been the hallmark of liberal Protestant exegesis since at least de Wette in 1806, and before him, the Deists of the 18th century - in fact, Marcion was doing it in the 2nd century, condemning the wicked Jewish deity of the Old Testament.
Peters' post reminds me of what Rowan Williams said about his fellow Anglican bishop Jack Spong: that he asks the kind of questions that an intelligent sixth former asks. (Perhaps Bishop Spong didn't know what a 'sixth former' is.)
Of course, it is not at all difficult in a blog post to ask - rhetorically - old chestnuts about theodicy and the Bible. The internet is full of them, so are the books of Richard Dawkins.
Answering them is not a thing that can be done in a blog post, not because there is no answer but because the answer is detailed and complex and entails the concept of progressive revelation of God's purposes across time, culminating in the sending of his Son. The Trinity wasn't revealed straight away, after all, but progressively. The same with the reality of divine punishment and reward.
But if the questions are asked seriously and not rhetorically, then those who wish to know how intelligent theologians (university professors) have tackled this question only need to spend five minutes on the internet to assemble a reading list - and then get down to some serious reading.
Here are just a few books from my own bookshelves on suffering, theodicy (and marginally on homosexuality and cultural development), which I have read over the past decades. There are all readily available books from the evangelical world which stick fairly closely to biblical exegesis; I could name many more from the Catholic world which take a more philosophical turn, blending Thomism, natural law theory, and the Scriptures.
William J. Webb, 'Slaves, Women and Homosexuals. Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (2001)
Paul Copan, 'Is God a Moral Monster?' (2011)
John Wenham, 'The Goodness of God' (1974)
Don Carson, 'The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God' (2000).
And I could give Peters a dozen texts from the lips of Jesus himself warning about the danger of hellfire! How is that 'easier on our contemporary ears'?
But if he tackles a couple of the above-cited books, he will see that finding the unity in the Bible is only done through careful and patient attention (like calculus or piano playing), and that applies to the NT's teaching on sexual purity for Christians as much as to our Lord's teaching on hell. As Bryden used to say, 'Tolle lege!'
(P.S. 'Human diversity' is a strange and deflecting way of referring to homosexuality. People with SSA - or any number of sexual paraphilias - are no less and no more human than anyone else. The only question is: 'What life of sexual purity is God calling us to in the new creation?')
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Dear William,
You make the Bible's complexity, inconsistencies [whose timetable is right for the cleansing of the temple, Synoptics or John?) and even contradictions (was Manassah a very bad king fullstop [Kings] or a repentant king [Chronicles]?) just a matter of hard work in order to reconcile all such things into a unity, but you seem to have no awareness that not all solutions - evangelical or Catholic - are agreed to by all readers of the Bible. I find some of the best efforts around, in the end, unconvincing: clever, interesting but not persuasive. Further, when you make observation about progressive development in Scripture you are making observations about how we the church have come to read certain passages. You are not making an observation about how the Bible itself suggests we read it. Thus it is likely that we who like trajectories will propose trajectories that get to where we want the trajectory to end!
What Moya said is also very valuable, thank you Moya! I'm 100% with you. Well said.
I was looking for the ant/sluggard verse (Proverbs ch6) and spied this further down the page. It's very clear what the Lord hates and detests:
16 There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19
a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
Also, look how lies/lying get two mentions!
Perhaps we would do well to start with the things that are made perfectly clear in the Bible.
Well, Peter, to say "you seem to have no awareness that not all solutions- evangelical or Catholic - are agreed to by all readers of the Bible' seems a tad like an ad hominem comment, but it's your blog and I must accede to Petrine authority. I thought I had made it abundantly clear that I was acutely aware of (to say the least) a penumbra of disputed questions down the ages, and I could have added more, e.g.the genealogies of Joseph or the names of the Twelve, that seem more immediate to Christians. Of course I am aware of these disputes - that is why you have 40,000 (or is it 80,000?) Protestant sects and you will have more as Protestantism fragments over sexuality. What will evangelical Anglicans in Wales do now? You have put your finger on the very question of authority that so much preoccupied St John Newman, about whom you wrote earlier, and why he abandoned Anglicanism. Newman was focused on the question "What does the Bible really teach and where does final authority for interpretation lie?" The Catholics said, 'With the Pope', the Anglicans said, 'With the professors' - until the next generation of professors contradicts them. And so on. Those Anglican professors H.P. Liddon (Bampton lectures,1867) and Maurice Wiles (The Myth of God Incarnate, 1977) do not seem to be teaching from the same hymn sheet. Which do you Anglicans follow? It can be so confusing.
Because the Christian faith is historical (dependent on the survival of texts and archaeological records), I do believe that some questions of interpretation will remain unresolved until the Second Coming - simply because the information has been lost and cannot be recovered. But nothing that is central to living a godly and faithful life, for that would be to contradict the promise of Christ to his Apostles. To paraphrase a writer whose name I have forgotten, 'The Bible is not the sun in splendour, revealing everything we want to know. Rather it is the moon of our darkness, giving us enough light to travel safely to our destination.'
You know as well as I do that "contradiction" has a number of meanings, actual and formal, and it is often the case that while actual contradictions cannot both be true in the same way at the same time, formal contradictions often are both true. If I said to one person, 'Last Tuesday I was in Queenstown' and to another, 'Last Tuesday I was in Auckland', both statements could easily be true today in 2025 - but not in 1875. Context is everything, and context means knowing a lot of accompanying facts.That is why I am not quick to dismiss harmonisations, even tentative ones.
But as for homosexuality, this question doesn't even arise. Why? Because there isn't a SINGLE text in the Bible that speaks positively about same-sex erotic relationships. Zilch. Nada. So what was the point that Mr Peters (thank you for the correction on titles) was making about 'diversity'? There is no "diversity" in the Bible on this at all! So when you speak of "we who like trajectories", you must make sure that all your texts line up to plot your trajectory. Well, they do - and not in the direction that liberals want them to. Truly a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence (1 Peter 2.8).
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
It is a surprising, though somewhat humorous thought, that the Jesus of the Gospels would have us spend our life-breath ironing out the Bible…instead of, say, eating wheat on a Sunday walk.
As one friend said today, constipation is a serious health issue.
True progress isn’t going back. There is a Christian tomorrow. There is a Spirit that calls us forward. Moving forward is fraught and painful: https://www.tumblingages.co.nz/blog-2/tribal-church-fantasy-and-family
Mark Crozier Murphy
I am wondering, William, can a pope be wrong?
'The Bible is not the sun in splendour, revealing everything we want to know. Rather it is the moon of our darkness, giving us enough light to travel safely to our destination.' ~William
One day long ago Nigel and I tramped to an alpine area at Lake Rotoiti, just a day walk. But over-enthused by the wonderful experience I was reluctant to return - and we got benighted while still well up the mountain and still making our way back through large patches of bush. The moon was out - but this was only of benefit when we were out on the open parts of the path. Under the bush canopy it was pitch dark. I took responsibility for this predicament. How did I get us back to the carpark? I went first, I literally sat on the track with my hands also on the ground, and felt the path with my hands. I felt my way through the darkness, inching my way along, and successfully, eventually, got us back to the carpark.
Some of the time we're inching our way along in the darkness, struggling together in faith, love, hope and trust - and walking by faith and not by sight.
Popes are often wrong, Moya. I know this because Pope Benedict XVI said so. Unless he was wrong in saying that he could be wrong, in which case the logical implications are more than I can make sense of. What he meant of course is that a pope's opinions (and off the cuff remarks made on aeroplanes) are not ex cathedra pronouncements (as I explained at length not long ago), and popes are themselves bound by Sacred Tradition and not at liberty to change it. That is why Francis's statement that the death penalty is intrinsically incompatible with Catholic doctrine is almost certainly wrong. Sacred Tradition from St Augustine to St John Newman is unanimous that the state in principle may exercise the power of the sword. (Whether it should in practice is another question.) But Francis was always inclined to shoot from the lip. I expect Leo to be more measured.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Dear William,
You appear to be shifting from a position about difficulties in the Bible (they can be resolved with hard work) to some cannot be resolved, but all important ones for godly living can and are sorted, especially with appropriate (and necessarily Catholic rather than professorial Protestant) authority.
This shift is fine as far as it goes, but it (in my view) only gets us so far in living that godly life, since (as far as I can tell) Catholics are not agreed on certain matters: what counts in the Catholic marital bedrooms today, Humanae Vitae or more pragmatic considerations about timing and number of children? Is Catholic teaching being upheld by all the Catholics I know who happily love and support their partnered gay/lesbian family and friends in same-sex partnerships? Is annulment actually taught in Scripture as a way to respond to the reality of actual, consummated marriages between responsible adult people breaking down and ending in divorce? The pathway to agreed responses to living out Scripture is long and difficult, and it may be achieved by a succession of professors as much as by "authority" in the Catholic church.
Beautiful imagery, Liz. I am enjoying this moon sub thread. Thanks William.
https://youtu.be/XxKyfPR5nls?si=_JZfovLfT10VxYUy
Wow, Mark! Beautiful song, beautifully sung. And the lyrics are perfect for the time we're in. Thanks so much for the link!
Yes, aren't the lyrics very theologically rich and appropriate, though old folky wisdom.
Sorry, I meant can a pope be wrong speaking ‘ex cathedra’, as I have serious doubts about some more recent doctrines? I couldn’t become a Catholic because of apparently having to accept all that has been spoken ‘ex cathedra’.
(Incidentally when I moved to become an Anglican, I learned about the three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, being the basis of the Anglican Church…)
Peter, I don't think I'm "shifting my position": I have always believed some contextual questions about the Bible will always be uncertain this side of the Parousia, not only because the vast majority of the documentary past (writings, inscriptions, paratextual realia such as the evidence of eyewitnesses) has been destroyed, but because history (as a human phenomenon) entails forgetting as much as remembering.
To give an example from a field more familiar to you than to me, mathematics:
A few years ago Andrew Wiles (incidentally, Maurice Wiles's son) proved Fermat's Last Theorem. But the number of people in the world who could even understand his proof is only a handful and maybe they will all be joining the choir invisible within 20 years. Will Wiles's proof be disproved by the lack of anyone to understand it? I hope humility will say 'Not so.'
In a parallel way, answers have been proposed to the textual conundrums you mention (the repentance of Manasseh, the temple cleansing in John) at least from the days of Augustine and Origen. If their solutions don't command majority support today, that may say more about us than them. Whatever scholars of any age may believe, historical (or theological or moral) truth isn't decided by a majority vote. But one has to be brave (or foolhardy) to swim against the tide of the guild, especially if one is seeking a job or a book contract, or just approval.
Your questions about Catholic moral teaching today are best addressed to your Catholic counterpart in Christchurch, who is a graduate of the Gregorian and equipped to answer these questions in a way I never could. But why would we turn our back on our children even when they live in ways we can't support? Did St Monica ever forget her son during his wilderness years? Moral praxis is always pragmatic, especially where the welfare of young children is concerned.
What I struggle to understand (and I don't think you have answered this in a satisfactory way) is how Anglicans (and other Protestants) maintain theological continuity and coherence across the generations. For Catholics this is Sacred Tradition, which binds every Catholic, from pope to parlour maid. This is why Matthew Fox was deposed as a Catholic teacher and priest, and yet bizarrely he was immediately accepted as an Episcopal priest in California (where else?). Or more recently: how strange - and very disturbing - to hear N.T. Wright defend Marcus Borg, a forthright denier of the divinity and bodily resurrection of Christ. Is every Anglican bishop his or her own personal pope? Your crisis in global Anglicanism is precisely one of authority and I cannot find any answer in your words. This, by the way, is what Newman was all about.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Dear William
I have been working off your statement above:
"Like playing a piano (well), or doing differential calculus, or even composing in Biblical Hebrew, orthodox exegesis isn't easy - but it is do-able and has been done, many times with increasing levels of sophistication."
That didn't seem to allow that some exegetical problems might be unsolvable this side of glory! But in recent comments you acknowledged that not all biblical conundrums yield to hard scholarly work.
It is, in fact, simpler (Occam's Razor?) to suppose that biblical writers intentionally adjusted facts to fit the particular historical view they wished to impart: Kings is a different history of Israel/Judah to Chronicles; John places the Cleansing of the Temple at a much earlier chronological point to the Synoptics to make a theological point (ditto his timing of the crucifixion in relation to theirs).
As for an "Anglican authority" compared to the Catholic magisterium and ex cathedra statements, that sounds like a task for a future blogpost!
To riff a little longer on this theme of the tension between church and academy: consider the different worlds inhabited by English NT scholar John Wenham and his son the OT scholar Gordon Wenham, who died earlier this year. When JW began his work in the 1940s, a high degree of scepticism about the NT prevailed in Protestant academic circles, fuelled especially by Bultmann and his predecessors in Germany. But JW, alongside more critical but essentially orthodox British Neutestamentler like C F Moule, G. B. Caird, Vincent Taylor and F. F. Bruce saw a reassertion of the traditional faith in the historical reliability of the Gospels as pretty much the mainline position in the academy, at least in the anglophone world. Now Richard Bauckham proclaims the death of form criticism. But in Gordon's world, no such consensus yet exists. GW's learned commentaries on the Pentateuch argued for the historicity of the patriarchal narratives and for Moses and the exodus. But it is common in the academy to deny the historical actuality of these persons and events and to relegate them entirely to the realm of "the theological". And to the outsider who is aware of these debates this sounds like so much handwaving. How could Jesus be the fulfilment of the promises to Abraham and Moses if they mever existed? How could his death and resurrection be the second exodus if there was never a first? So, it seems to me, there is a good deal more at stake than whether Manasseh repented in captivity.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
"Those who are opposing Cherry Vann’s appointment as the new Archbishop of Wales on the basis of her sexuality are conveniently forgetting that they once opposed the ordination of women altogether."
https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/im-celebrating-the-uks-first-female-archbishop-i-dont-care-that-she-is-in-a-civil-partnership/19869.article
Excellent article, Mark. Thanks for sharing. The "Jezebel" trope being bandied around again. It makes me want to scream, swear and throw things.. it's not ok. Vile.
Leaving aside my decade of tertiary education in Theology, Biblical Languages, Philosophy, Logic, etc, and my decades of teaching all the way into tertiary level, I will continue with what William calls my sixth form level of questions.
I can be as enthusiastic as William about positing a trajectory in human understanding of God, even from commanding genocide to forbidding it; and from enjoining slavery to condemning it.
“Final authority”, once such a trajectory is acknowledged, is, ipso facto, not final! And that William cannot find “a SINGLE text in the Bible that speaks positively about same-sex erotic relationships. Zilch. Nada.” is, hence, not a final determinant – once his trajectory is accepted that has 180 degree about face.
Even a definition of infallibility, increasing spiritual power in the face of the contemporaneous loss of temporal power, might yet give way to future evolution, in the way that some Tridentine rulings have given way to Vatican II and developing synodality (much to the chagrin of an increasing number of catholic sects).
Blessings
Bosco
Bosco,
I don't think I said anything about 'trajectories'; it was Bishop Carrell who mentioned them in his comment of August 13 at 10:52. Perhaps he thought I commended them, but actually I don't. I consider that strategy subjective and self-serving. I find it is people who want to innovate, changing the Apostles' teaching on sexual purity or ordination, who want to appeal to 'trajectories'. If you say (as I have heard it said many times) 'Yes, the texts say one thing but the "trajectory" of Jesus's teaching', [or praxis or way with people etc] points in a different, "liberating, inclusive" direction', then you are saying the Apostolic church and their immediate successors got the teaching of Jesus seriously wrong - and fair enough, many Liberal Protestants have said exactly this - most eminently Renan. Many other Liberal Protestants have said the Apostolic Church have gone further and said 'the real Jesus' was very different from what the NT reports: e.g., David Strauss,
Dear William,
In a comment above you wrote,
“ William J. Webb, 'Slaves, Women and Homosexuals. Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (2001)
Paul Copan, 'Is God a Moral Monster?' (2011)
John Wenham, 'The Goodness of God' (1974)
Don Carson, 'The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God' (2000).
And I could give Peters a dozen texts from the lips of Jesus himself warning about the danger of hellfire! How is that 'easier on our contemporary ears'?
But if he tackles a couple of the above-cited books, he will see that finding the unity in the Bible is only done through careful and patient attention (like calculus or piano playing), and that applies to the NT's teaching on sexual purity for Christians as much as to our Lord's teaching on hell. As Bryden used to say, 'Tolle lege!'”
I took your commendation of William Webb’s book (about trajectories) to be an endorsement of ‘trajectories” as a means of upholding the unity of the Bible. I further assumed from your comments and general commitment to Catholic theology that you endorsse trajectories, since only through trajectories to we yield the Trinity as an outcome of what the Bible says about God, and the rejection of slavery, since the Bible nowhere commends to us the rejection of slavery.
Aaarrgh, that posted before I has finished. What I was trying to say:
"Many other Liberal Protestants have gone further and said 'the real Jesus' was very different from what the NT reports: e.g. David Strauss, or Albert Schweitzer, for whom Jesus was a disappointed apocalyptic prophet who was proved wrong by the course of events. Others in our day have argued that Jesus' message was lost and is now recovered (by them), e.g. Steve Chalke, or they have moved away from it into universalism, e.g. Rob Bell.
Obviously I don't accept that because I believe the Gospels and Epistles faithfully preserve the teaching of Christ, and I don't set a wedge between Jesus and Paul, as many Liberal Protestants do. If you think Strauss or Schweitzer or Bell is wrong, on what grounds do you dissent?
"Trajectory thinking" is EXACTLY what the Hays do in their book 'A Widening Mercy' and having read a lot of it, I have to say it is a very disappointing piece of work that doesn't engage at all with the texts on homosexuality or indeed anything written in the past 25 years. Preston Sprinkle's review is quite devastating in its detail.
My point about the Bible and homosexuality was most likely the opposite of how you understood it. What I was simply saying was that no text in the Bible supports same-sex erotic relationships (and Richard Hay agrees with this, he just ignores it and argues on different grounds), so if you believe in "trajectories of development" (I don't), the Bible's actual teaching on sex won't help you there. The texts all line up in the same direction. That's why revisionists ignore them and look elsewhere to create a new pro-gay ethic.
The MEANING of the texts cannot change; all that can change is whether you think the texts are true and authoritative or have been proved to be mistaken. As you know, L. T. Johnson, Ed Sanders, Bill Loader etc all agree that the NT texts are AGAINST homosexual relations; and they all say the texts are WRONG. This is perfectly consistent with how Liberal Protestantism looks on the Bible: as a largely true human document with numerous moral and theological errors admixed. But obviously Catholics (and evangelicals and Anglicanism's 39 Articles) reject this view of the Bible.
And in discussing 'final authority', my principal point was actually this: Catholics, while affirming the infallibility of the pope speaking ex cathedra, are VERY CLEAR that no pope can contradict Sacred Tradition. This is clear from the example of Pope Honorius. Protestant churches and bishops may, for example, deny the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection (e.g. David Jenkins, Peter Carnley) or the Trinity (Jack Spong, Katherine Jefferts-Schori), but no Catholic could ever say these things and stay in office. Do you think a Pope may one day declare that the bodily resurrection of Our Lord didn't happen? If that ever happens, he will be deposed at once.
This is what Catholics mean by the 'Final authority' of Sacred Tradition - which binds popes as much as ploughboys. Do Anglicans consider all beliefs to be provisional and subject to revision? Or do you have any concept of a fixed Sacred Tradition?
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
A discussion about what the Bible actually says about 'genocide' and 'slavery' would be useful topic for another thread. Anybody familiar with, say, William Webb's book which I referenced above will know that the meaning of 'avodah' is actually very diverse in the OT, covering a range of conditions (e.g. bond service, debt slavery, POWs etc), while being a 'doulos tou Christou' isn't a negative one for Paul. Until such a thread appears, I encourage readers here to read Webb to grasp just how polyvalent the term is before falling into simple polarities or anachronisms that don't do justice to the Bible's variegated message.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
On timeline of recent comments:
I thought I had posted my comment after your first truncated comment (not realising it was truncated) and then found it needed posting as an "Anonymous" comment; and that you have other comments, just posted now!
Thank you, Peter, the error in posting the unfinished comment was mine. As you may have suspected, I don't possess infallibility.
I trust you had a a blessed celebration of the Feast of the Assumption, which Archbishop Welby said is an Anglican feast now (according to a report in the English Anglican blog 'Psephizo').
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Post about Pope Leo I've just read and enjoyed, two selections.
If the Church is to matter in this brutal century, it will be because we learned to welcome Christ in the poor — and then found the courage to sit, listen, and eat with him.
mercy is not an event but an ecosystem
Link: https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/pope-leo-calls-for-a-church-of-the
A brief reply to Peter's comment above:
"I took your commendation of William Webb’s book (about trajectories) to be an endorsement of ‘trajectories” as a means of upholding the unity of the Bible."
- No, Webb's point is that cultural hermeneutics is a bit more complex than we suspect on first impression and we have to do some serious spade work to avoid misunderstanding the past (more than we actually do).
"I further assumed from your comments and general commitment to Catholic theology that you endorsse trajectories, since only through trajectories to we yield the Trinity as an outcome of what the Bible says about God,"
- No, not through 'trajectories' but through the special incarnational revelation of the New Testament (especially John's Gospel and Paul's Epistles), which teach us 1. that God is One; 2. that Jesus is eternal and divine (John 1); 3. that Jesus is not the Father but is worshipped as Yahweh (1 Cor 8; Phil 2); 4. that the Spirit is divine, eternal and personal (Romans 8, Hebrews 10 etc). The Niceno-Constantinopolitan-Chalcedonic doctrine of the Trinity is not about 'trajectories' but trying to do justice to all these revealed biblical data in a way that avoids the errors of adoptionism, tritheism and modalism. (But if you asked me, 'In retrospect do you think the OT hints at the Trinity?', I would say, 'Probably, yes' e.g., mal'ak yahweh, divine Wisdom etc. This isn't a 'trajectory' but a historical revelation.)
"and the rejection of slavery, since the Bible nowhere commends to us the rejection of slavery."
- as I hinted above, 'avodah' is a polyvalent term in the OT, and being a 'doulos tou Christou' is evidently a good thing. The difference (and overlap) in English between 'slave' and 'servant' reflects the range of meanings. Actually the New Testament does treat human slavery as an evil to be escaped from if one could (1 Cor 7.11) and condemns the slave trade (1 Tim 1.10). But as I also indicated, first century douleia in the Greco-Roman world was a very diverse phenomenon (some was very bad, like galley slaves; some was debt-slavery; some was like being part of a family and usually ended in manumission) and it's easy to retroject ideas about the American South into a complex phenomenon. Webb's book is a good place to start, Peter Williams of Tyndale House has also done a video on this.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
I was pretty busy on 15 August with one thing and another, William, so had to make some assumptions about others carrying the burden of the day on that feast :).
As you know, the views of the ABC are not necessarily authoritative in far off provinces ... :)
Hi William
On trajectories, development, and revelation I have to leave discussing that for another day. Tempus fugit!
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