tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post8457470069514371174..comments2024-03-30T00:33:32.285+13:00Comments on Anglican Down Under: Bible in the Life of the ChurchPeter Carrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-1508245308227508342012-11-19T06:31:49.473+13:002012-11-19T06:31:49.473+13:00Its obvious that Calvinist ideals have failed. Its obvious that Calvinist ideals have failed. Mr. Mcgranorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12851136550476241757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-34624319782485034212012-11-12T19:17:07.266+13:002012-11-12T19:17:07.266+13:001. The Church wrote the Bible and the Church can r...1. The Church wrote the Bible and the Church can rewrite the Bible.<br /><br />2. The Bible means whatever an interpretative community says it means.<br /><br />3. The real or true message of the Bible is found in these parts which promote doctrine A, and not in those parts which promote doctrine B.<br /><br />Those are the three hermeneutical principles that Tec *explicitly follows (think Bennison, Spong, Schlussler Fiorenza) and are accepted by Tec sympathizers in NZ. They do have something in common with "19th-century German critical method". Even more, I think, with 2nd century Marcion. They have nothing to do with the catholic understanding of Scripture of Cranmer and every Anglican teacher of the 16th and 17th centuries. But these principles certainly resonate with 17th century Socinianism.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-34779798990296091642012-11-12T12:04:04.431+13:002012-11-12T12:04:04.431+13:00That is a good point. The Living Church in the Ang...That is a good point. The Living Church in the Anglican context is the whole of the Communion. <br /><br />It has had a great deal of work to do to correct the "current understanding" of minority western liberal Christians, which is after all not really a current understanding at all, but just a re-hash of discredited 19th-century German critical method. <br /><br />"Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplatethe Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." [2 Cor 3:15-18]MichaelAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-57667900833006217662012-11-11T09:40:25.308+13:002012-11-11T09:40:25.308+13:00"The sheer bevy of (faddish) tools has become..."The sheer bevy of (faddish) tools has become bewilderingly complex—and the gap between the Academy and the Preacher and the Congregation a chasm or series of chasms." - Bryden Black <br /><br />Modern hermeneutic, I, am aware, can be a problem for people schooled in the 'old' way. But, hey, the Spirit is alive and active TODAY, even in the interpretation of the scriptures!<br /><br />Jesus had to correct the current understanding of the Bible for the Scribes and Pharisees. I guess that's an ongoing task for today's Living Church.<br /><br />"Where the Spirit of God is, there is Freedom!"Father Ron Smithhttp://kiwianglo.wordpress.com.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-64254137269011365102012-11-10T15:49:10.520+13:002012-11-10T15:49:10.520+13:00Your selection of actual Scripture, Ron (the parab...Your selection of actual Scripture, Ron (the parable of “two men who went up to the temple to pray”), is interesting - at least, in light of your emphases upon “context” and others. For firstly, the literary context carefully crafted by Luke places it parallel with Lk 11:1-13 by means of the vast chiasm that constitutes Jesus’ Journey to Jerusalem; i.e. it prompts the question, what IS Luke’s overall theology of Prayer? And how does it fit into his understanding and praxis of sonship/discipleship? Then secondly, the contrasting scandal set up by Jesus’ parable is not exactly one of Law vs. Grace - at least, not in Jesus’ social context of 1st C Judaism. That is to impose criteria upon the text derived from later - much later - church history. His initial point is as stated in 18:9.<br /><br />Nor, might it be clearly said, are we to try to extract any deemed “essence” from the Scriptures. The entire enterprise of 19th C theology attempted that and found the process doomed to failure and mere reductionism, the legacy of which still haunts us westerners. Nor are we to extract abstract “principles” from the Scriptures, as if such modernist ethical methodologies would actually enable us to become conformed to Christ’s Image.<br /><br />Yes Ron; we’ve indeed to learn to ‘read’ <i>our very own <b>contexts</b></i> in the light of Scripture’s far richer and denser text of the Theodrama that is the triune God’s Economy of Redemption. But that reading, I suggest, is rather different to the ‘grammar’ of your own comment ...Bryden Blackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15619512328964399016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-34247231294662809822012-11-09T14:17:50.553+13:002012-11-09T14:17:50.553+13:00Thanks Chris; and thanks too for that piece which ...Thanks Chris; and thanks too for that piece which the Welsh Bard wld probably appreciate as well - as succinct a summary as your own!Bryden Blackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15619512328964399016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-33465560143681790552012-11-08T15:47:01.728+13:002012-11-08T15:47:01.728+13:00From Shawn (moderated - please focus on issues, no...From Shawn (moderated - please focus on issues, not people and what they are saying about them)<br /><br />"Only Evangelical/Protestant theology teaches grace alone. <br /><br />Liberalism is not about grace, but about twisting and perverting the Bible to force it to conform to Liberal dogma on sexual freedom. In fact liberalism is a form of legalism, as it replaces grace with the laws of political correctness.<br /><br />Real grace frees people from their sins. It does not tell them to continue to indulge in them. That is neither grace nor Christian liberty, but a mere licence to sin.<br /><br />Liberals love "contextualisation" because it allows them to silence Scripture. Once the culture determines what the Bible is allowed to say or not to say, then any cultural excuse can be used to silence the Word of God.<br /><br />But culture does not determine what the Bible says. When this happens the Bible can no longer stand as a critique of all human cultures. It loses its power to speak prophetically into a culture.<br /><br />This is why the Anglican Church in NZ is so weak and powerless. It has lost it's ability to act as a prophetic voice to the culture, because it has allowed the culture (both Pakeha and Maori) instead to critique the Bible, thus rendering it useless.<br /><br />Context does not change the content of Scripture. Marriage as defined by God remains one man with one women for life. No amount of cultural context can silence God, no matter how desperate liberals are to keep the Lord muzzled.<br /><br />According to [contextual hermeneutics] we should embrace polygamy in Africa, as that is the cultural context.<br /><br />Or what about the cultural context in some places of killing baby girls in favour of boys? Perhaps we should, using [contextual hermeneutics], allow parents in some cultures to murder their baby girls.<br /><br />There are many aspects of all cultures that are evil. Unless the Bible is allowed the freedom to speak to those cultures, then we have no way of determining what Christian justice is.<br /><br />[It is a] straw man argument that conservatives and evangelicals are trying to re-impose the OT Law. That claim is utter rubbish.<br /><br />Most of the teaching concerning marriage and sexuality is in the NT not the Old. The strongest condemnations of homosexual behaviour are in the NT. <br /><br />Thus [invoking] the Marcionite heresy approach to Scripture, which pits the OT against the NT, is contrary to orthodoxy, and does not support his pro-homosexual argument anyway. <br /><br />Biblical moral discipline is not about the OT Law, it is about the Gospel.<br /><br />Grace frees us from sin so that we can live lives of holiness, not so that we can keep sinning. <br />"Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-65749325663151024142012-11-08T15:47:00.659+13:002012-11-08T15:47:00.659+13:00From Shawn (moderated - please focus on issues, no...From Shawn (moderated - please focus on issues, not people and what they are saying about them)<br /><br />"Only Evangelical/Protestant theology teaches grace alone. <br /><br />Liberalism is not about grace, but about twisting and perverting the Bible to force it to conform to Liberal dogma on sexual freedom. In fact liberalism is a form of legalism, as it replaces grace with the laws of political correctness.<br /><br />Real grace frees people from their sins. It does not tell them to continue to indulge in them. That is neither grace nor Christian liberty, but a mere licence to sin.<br /><br />Liberals love "contextualisation" because it allows them to silence Scripture. Once the culture determines what the Bible is allowed to say or not to say, then any cultural excuse can be used to silence the Word of God.<br /><br />But culture does not determine what the Bible says. When this happens the Bible can no longer stand as a critique of all human cultures. It loses its power to speak prophetically into a culture.<br /><br />This is why the Anglican Church in NZ is so weak and powerless. It has lost it's ability to act as a prophetic voice to the culture, because it has allowed the culture (both Pakeha and Maori) instead to critique the Bible, thus rendering it useless.<br /><br />Context does not change the content of Scripture. Marriage as defined by God remains one man with one women for life. No amount of cultural context can silence God, no matter how desperate liberals are to keep the Lord muzzled.<br /><br />According to [contextual hermeneutics] we should embrace polygamy in Africa, as that is the cultural context.<br /><br />Or what about the cultural context in some places of killing baby girls in favour of boys? Perhaps we should, using [contextual hermeneutics], allow parents in some cultures to murder their baby girls.<br /><br />There are many aspects of all cultures that are evil. Unless the Bible is allowed the freedom to speak to those cultures, then we have no way of determining what Christian justice is.<br /><br />[It is a] straw man argument that conservatives and evangelicals are trying to re-impose the OT Law. That claim is utter rubbish.<br /><br />Most of the teaching concerning marriage and sexuality is in the NT not the Old. The strongest condemnations of homosexual behaviour are in the NT. <br /><br />Thus [invoking] the Marcionite heresy approach to Scripture, which pits the OT against the NT, is contrary to orthodoxy, and does not support his pro-homosexual argument anyway. <br /><br />Biblical moral discipline is not about the OT Law, it is about the Gospel.<br /><br />Grace frees us from sin so that we can live lives of holiness, not so that we can keep sinning. <br />"Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-14979194762868558852012-11-08T13:40:22.524+13:002012-11-08T13:40:22.524+13:00Bryden Black, Karl Barth, God as subject, actually...Bryden Black, Karl Barth, God as subject, actually us being read and questioned - Amen.<br />There is a little poem by a friend of mine I like very much in this regard.<br />http://duncandrews.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/study/ Chris Sparknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-21998478185936795952012-11-08T11:23:36.933+13:002012-11-08T11:23:36.933+13:00Peter, my sincere thanks for posting this most imp...Peter, my sincere thanks for posting this most important BILC material. I too loved the Foreword of ++ Rowan’s; your emboldened text highlights key bits nicely.<br /><br />It is clearly a mammoth project; and the likes of Stephen Lyon, the coordinator, are to be seriously congratulated, as are all those who have participated - from North America to South Sudan; even our dear host, Rev Dr Peter Carrell, gets a guernsey! Yet as you yourself suggest, there are some shortcomings in the overall method. I’ll point out merely two for now.<br /><br />1. Your own descriptive vs. prescriptive remark is a fascinating and major observation. For if we take only that beloved 2 Tim 3:16, we clearly have here a “prescriptive” role for Scripture, in the areas notably of both doctrine/theology and living/praxis. Referring also to the ABC’s Presidential Address, it is a classic method to NOT offset authority and freedom, just as it is also classic to propose both Negative and Positive Liberty. Where exactly Christian <i>libertas</i> fits into these schemas is debated of course! For the human autonomy now prevailing in Western culture is something else entirely from Christian ‘freedom’. The relevance of all this is made clear in Anthony Thiselton’s resource, “Can the Bible mean whatever we want it to mean?”, included in the voluminous “Additional material”. For in the end no amount of ‘contextualization’ may usurp either the created objectivity and reality of this world or the Reality of the Living God (<i>pace</i> the delightful Bible Studies on Creation etc herein, re the Fifth Mark of Mission). Which leads me to the second point.<br /><br />2. In fact, the sheer Objective Reality of the Living God is that this God remains ever <i><b>the</b> Subject</i>. Again and again these past decades - and many of those assembled scholarly materials in BILC exemplify this - it’s as if all one has to do is to have assembled all the necessary <i>rational tools for the task</i>: philological, textual, archaeological, historical, literary patterns, form criticism, redaction criticism, rhetoricism, reader-response theory, all coupled with a host of perspectival concerns, liberation theology, feminist theology, cultural contextualization, critical theory, post-colonial theory, reception history readings, etc.—you name it! The sheer bevy of (faddish) tools has become bewilderingly complex—and the gap between the Academy and the Preacher and the Congregation a chasm or series of chasms. But what’s far worse, the gap between the Living God, who Authors Scripture and is the Actor of the Theodrama it declares, is a gapping gulf. For the Scriptures are not there for us to nip and tuck with whatever tools we may devise. What is at stake is a basic attitude towards what the text of Holy Scripture is and what it conveys. Is it only an object before us, to be dissected at will by the reader? Is it in the final analysis under our control and whim? Or, in the final analysis, are <i>we</i> the ones being <i><b>addressed</b></i> here? Are <i>we</i> the ones being <i><b>questioned</b></i> - and down to our very roots? Once more, the story of Karl Barth’s discovery of “the strange new world within the Bible” is to be held up high [see <i>The Word of God and the Word of Man</i>, translation by Douglas Horton of <i>Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie</i> (1925) (Harper, 1957), ch II, originally presented in 1917]. But those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, it seems...!Bryden Blackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15619512328964399016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-2637576621145720422012-11-08T09:36:32.506+13:002012-11-08T09:36:32.506+13:00Hi Ron
The corrective authority of the Bible is pr...Hi Ron<br />The corrective authority of the Bible is precisely its authority to challenge us when we think erroneously. Errors include re-imposing the Law of Moses and acting injustly. I have no comment to make about Mother Hubbard as I cannot recall where in the Bible she is mentioned! I do not think I am much in disagreement with you in your comment here.<br /><br />The question of 'context' is however full of nuances. Context may not have been observed when the missionaries imposed Western clothing customs but it was also not observed when they preached the gospel as the truth relative to the errors of other religions.Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-70166624651746261082012-11-08T09:32:52.848+13:002012-11-08T09:32:52.848+13:00Anglicans love the scriptures of both Old and New ...<i>Anglicans love the scriptures of both Old and New Testaments; these have a central place within our common life.</i><br /><br />Really? Then how come the majority of our Sunday churchgoing members rarely read the scriptures except when they hear them in public worship? And how come many of them would be hard pressed to decide which Testament the Book of Daniel is in, or in fact what is the major difference between the OT and the NT (fact: I've run into this over and over again in Christian Basics courses).<br /><br />Sorry, but when the first sentence of the summary descends immediately into a romantic world of make-believe, I'm not inclined to read much further!Tim Chestertonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13676859074652475474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-85932910784630891582012-11-08T09:16:06.986+13:002012-11-08T09:16:06.986+13:00"Might it not be more urgent to explore what ..."Might it not be more urgent to explore what "the centrality of the Bible in the life of the churches of the Anglican Communion" actually means? In terms of ++Rowan's final presidential address we might ask whether the authority of the Bible is merely enabling or is also corrective." - Dr.Peter Carrell -<br /><br />I think the plain answer to your question, Peter, is that the Bible is already so integral to our understanding of God that we need to get down to the serious task of relating its essence to the place in which we dwell. Contextual use of the Bible is imperitive - if we are to allow its principles to be inculcated into the context to which God has called us.<br /><br />We are not - despite rhetoric to the contrary - necessarily first and foremost, world-citizens; so much as citizens of the place where we 'live and move and have our being'. If we do not apply the wisdom of the Scriptures to our own context first, how can we possibly expect to help others to understand the place of the scriptures in their own culture and context?<br /><br />This was surely one of the problems faced by the early missionaries; where native women were forced to wear their hideous 'mother-Hubbard' bras - in order not to offend the missionary wives! Victorian morality was imposed upon tribal custom - not necessarily because of what is proclaimed in the Bible, but because it was considered 'proper' by the missionaries.<br /><br />This legacy of notional purity, unfortunately, has persisted in some former British Colonial countries - simply because the new ruling elite thought that this was God's way for them, dictated by the Victorian missionaries., I have two clergy brothers-in-law who were former African missionaries, so I do have some idea of what i am talking about!<br /><br />The Scriptures are not about the shibboleths of Old Testament Law, so much as the freedom promised by Jesus on the New - for Christians, that is. <br /><br />If you want to resile to an O.T. legalism, when Jesus has offered us the substitution of Grace for Law, then by all means, behave as the Victorian Missionaries, who had no understanding of gender and sexuality - and how that impacts upon the humanity that Jesus came to rescue from the burden of legalism.<br /><br />Yes, the Bible is corrective - so long as one takes into account the new emphasis of Grace over Law. I'm pretty sure that God had Justice in mind when he sent the Incarnate Son to transform The Law into the 'New Commandment'. <br /><br />Just read the parable of the self-affirming & Righteous Pharisee, and the Acknowledged Sinner. "Who went away justified" asked Jesus!<br />This is the new paradigm that has transformed the scriptures.Father Ron Smithhttp://kiwianglo.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com