Cracks in deal to avert Anglican schism over homosexuality – Daily Telegraph

1 thought on “Cracks in deal to avert Anglican schism over homosexuality – Daily Telegraph”

1. Deeper than the sexuality disagreement:

   In order to assess what is happening in the Anglican Communion it is necessary to consider three closely related but distinct questions:
   Who are the Christians? What does each Christian believe? What are the truths of Christianity?
   On the assumption (amply supported by the New Testament) that God’s action on a person is necessary to make that person into a Christian, then whether a person is a Christian or not (question 1) is an objective fact, known to God. (How and whether that person can be sure he or she is an ‘objective fact’ Christian is a 4th. distinct question).
   Such a Christian who possesses the necessary and developed faculties will have beliefs and experiences. These, in each individual case, give the answers to question 2.
   The answers to question 3 are the essential objective revealed truths, true for God and true for us, which together make up the truth of Christianity as a whole. It is possible, because we may fall into sin in what we hold to be true or false as well as in moral matters, for an ‘objective fact’ Christian to believe things which are ruled out by the truths of Christianity and/or to reject some or all of the essential truths of Christianity. In that case, on the day of judgment described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 3, such a person’s convictions will be the wood, hay, stubble which are consumed by the fire which will try every person’s work; that person will suffer loss but will be saved ‘yet so as through fire’. Conversely it is possible for someone to give merely intellectual assent to all the essential objective revealed truths of Christianity and not be an ‘objective fact’ Christian.
   These distinctions should be born in mind as the beliefs of members of the Anglican Communion (their answers to question 2) are surveyed. That survey will reveal two broad groups.
   Group 1 believe that each person born into this world is faced from birth onwards with the holy wrath and just legal condemnation of God, a wrath and condemnation which will result in eternal punishment for those whom God has not saved before they die. Group 2, whatever they may believe about man, God and salvation, do not believe that this view of Group 1 is true. This means that the two groups are seeking to proclaim different versions of a fundamental Christian truth – the basic objective diagnosis of the human condition before God – to the watching world. Both versions cannot be true. One is right and the other is wrong. There is no overarching synthesis whereby both can be right. Because of this fundamental disagreement, the note of warning, so evident in both Testaments, not least from our Lord’s own lips, is not being clearly heard.
   It is true that ‘….it is not the Law but the Gospel, not the revelation of wrath but that of love, which saves the world. Wrath may prepare for love; but wrath never did and never will save a soul’ (Warfield on Elijah’s experience in the cave). But wrath may prepare for love. And we are told elsewhere that if the watchmen do not warn the wicked (all of us) they will be held accountable for their blood.
   It is also true that while the need to be delivered from the wrath and condemnation of God and to be brought into a new, forgiven, living relationship with God through the blood and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Spirit is every person’s greatest objective need, subjectively it is sometimes/often not the need that people feel most. The self-disclosure God has given us has something to say about all human needs and problems, many of them harrowing. In preaching the gospel, in whatever way, obviously space has to be found to bring that revelation to bear on all these needs and problems and to show that in one way or another, sooner or later, now or in eternity, the great salvation the Triune God has brought about and is bringing about will meet those needs and solve those problems.

   The Archbishop of Canterbury’s opening address to the Primates Conference on Monday 11 January 2016 included these words, ‘All of us here need a body that is mutually supportive, that loves one another, that stoops to lift the fallen and kneels to bind the wounds of the injured. Without each other we are deeply weakened, because we have a mission that is only sustainable when we conform to the image of Christ, which is first to love one another. The idea is often put forward that truth and unity are in conflict, or in tension. That is not true. Disunity presents to the world an untrue image of Jesus Christ. Lack of truth corrodes and destroys unity. They are bound together, but the binding is love. In a world of war, of rapid communications, of instant hearing and misunderstanding where the response is only hatred and separation, the Holy Spirit whose creative and sustaining gifting of the church is done in diversity, demands that diversity of history, culture, gift, vision be expressed in a unity of love. That is what a Spirit filled church looks like.’
   But does this disagreement between Group 1 and Group 2 about what is the position of all of us before God not ‘corrode and destroy unity’? What part should love play? Well, we are commanded to love even our enemies. Are those in Group 2 the enemies of those in Group 1? They are certainly, Group 1 would say, among those who are ‘preaching a gospel besides what ye received’ because the wrath and condemnation of God is part of the gospel that Paul preached, and therefore they would seem to be faced with Paul’s anathema. On the other hand we are commanded to pray for and persuade and seek to restore in love those who are in error, and that is the attitude of Group 1, from its point of view, towards Group 2, and, no doubt, the attitude of Group 2, from its point of view, towards Group 1. How did Paul seek to convince those who disagreed with him. In two ways: he prayed for them (kinsmen according to the flesh – Romans 9) and he disputed with them (Acts 9:22). This disputation is a matter of exegesis. That is what we should do. But do it with total and painful honesty, (for lack of honesty also corrodes and destroys) and, in my view, it can only be done by open debate on the internet. It would involve those Anglicans in Group 2 being ready to say that they do not believe that Articles 9 and 17 are true, and being ready to support that view with exegesis, and those in Group 1 being ready to say that these terrible doctrines are true, and support their position by exegesis.
   I am not advocating at this point the fragmentation of the Anglican Communion. I am advocating total and painful honesty about fundamentals –ceasing to ignore the brontosaurus in the room, the undoubted fact that while we are using the same words we are, like Humpty-Dumpty in ‘Through the Looking Glass’, using them to mean different, irreconcilable, things. After we have had such a debate then we will be in a clearer position to decide what the honest course of action is.
   My prayer and hope is those in Group 2 will by God’s grace come to realize that the Group 1 convictions are true, so that the Anglican Communion can speak with one united voice to an unbelieving world about diagnosis, sin and salvation.

   Phil Almond

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