Don't just stand there ... do something! Anything! Even if its the same old thing.
Leaders of Sydney Anglicans are whipping themselves and their flock to achieve their 10% growth by the ten year target date. 'Connect 09' is the jingoistic slogan adopted to inspire pew sitters to get out there and get results.
Having abandoned trust in God's Word written from the very first pages of the Bible, leaders are bereft of new ideas that will work. As such they must resort to things tried previously in the wistful hope it will work.
Oh, that they would take God at his Word rather than insulting him by saying that he doesn't mean what he says. Why should the Lord God accede to those who reject his very utterances? Why should he answer their prayer requests for success in this venture? They are only after an empire built on their devices - not on trust in the Word of God.
So they shall be confused to employ strategies which are a mix of that which has not worked in the past. Remember the bicentenary (1988) evangelistic enterprise whereby New Testaments were printed and purchased by the churches to hand out in door-knocking encounters? It's on again for Sydney Anglicans with the jingoistic 'Connect 09'. Remember the 'funnel' analogy of making contact, relate and feed into evangelistic events? It's on again in the jingoistic 'Connect 09'.
Oh, that they would remember the words of the Lord God uttered to Solomon (1 Kings 9:6-7) "But if you or your sons turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples."
Sydney Anglicans have made up a god who is not the God who has spoken in his Word written. They therefore render themselves objects of the same judgment spoken of by the Lord God to Solomon.
Sydney Anglicans may well put prayer central to their endeavour but if they are not prepared to listen to him why should he listen to them? Indeed, just who or what are they praying to anyway?
Neil Moore
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
18 comments:
Well, Neil, such a timely blog. Good ol' Peter the Archbishop has taken those gay ministers and their supporters to task for...wait for it...wait for it...not taking the Bible at face-value. Well, he must be saying that because he's anti those gay blade ministers because they don't take the passages which perspicuously proscribe homosexuality at their basic best.
Peter you hypocrite!
Here's what Peter wrote:
"The Archbishop [of those liberal Canadians] has revealed his hopes through a lecture on biblical interpretation, ‘The Bible Today: Reading and Hearing’. delivered in Canada in April 2007. In this lecture he addresses the very heart of the controversy, by challenging conservative interpretations of Romans 1 and John 14, and thus raising the issues of interpretation, human sexuality and the uniqueness of Christ as Mediator. He has signalled the importance of hermeneutics for our future. His lecture shows that there is an unavoidable contest about the meaning of the Bible in these crucial areas ahead of us. It is a challenge which must be met at a theological level. We may think that this whole business is about politics and border-crossing and ultimatums and conferences, but in fact it is about theology and especially the authority and interpretation of Scripture."
And further to this is his recent offering concerning his efforts to bring 10% of Sydney to be Christian. He nows says, "Did I say 10%? Did I say 10%? Of course not! You've all misunderstood me. What I was meaning was....." then listing a whole bunch of lame excuses, like
(i) First, it is impossible. {So did Peter actually mislead people and whole bunch of them went around for the last 5 years chanting this 10% mantra? Probably!]
(ii) I sometimes hear of negative views of the 10 percent figure, almost as though people are willing us to fail so that they can make the usual ‘I told you so’ remark. To me this just indicates that they have not understood what is being said. If instead of using 10 per cent we had said that ‘we wish to engage in a dedicated, decade-long evangelistic effort, under God, which will not simply grow existing churches but create multiple new ones and penetrate the community in such a way that everyone will know at least one church-going Christian who can share the gospel,’ I suspect that there would be fewer doubters. But I am not sure that it would have created the same sense of focus and interest. And yet we are saying the same thing in talking 10 per cent in 10 years. [Of course, Peter, we're to blame because of something you said quite unequivocally! Oh, just like that sheik of Lakemba it lost something in translation.]
To see all the other silly excuses check out:
http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/senior_clergy/archbishop_jensen/articles/is_10_per_cent_impossible
John,
So it comes down to which topic you want to sleep with the world over.
For the homosexuals in ECUSA it okay to reinterpret clear Scriptural injunction.
For the Sydney Archbishop and fellow travellers it is okay to reinterpret the clear injunction of Scripture on origins.
In each situation the order of creation as ordained by God is defiled!
Hmmm, mention of Sydney Episcopalians 'sleeping with the world' reminds me of something - harlotry.
If I have time over the weekend I will prepare and post a blog.
Sam
Sam,
Sounds interesting!
Neil Moore
One thing I omitted was whether Peter Jensen would ever say the whole project was a disaster and God-disavowed if they found that there was a negative growth after the 10 years had passed.
John, my wife and I talked with the Archbishop back when the 10% vision was launched and he was quite open then with the explanations that you appear to dismiss as lame attempts to explain away what he said. Given Peter's style, I doubt he said such things only to us, so the things you are objecting to were public back at the beginning.
It was always clear that the 10% was a target to aim for, to focus the Diocese's thinking. It was never presented as something that was in any human being's ability to achieve.
I'm curious as to what leads you to take such a hostile reading of Peter's words. I'm used to that from liberals, but not from conservatives.
in Christ,
Mark Baddeley
Mark,
Sorry I didn't respond quickly but there have been too many things happening in my life away from this blog.
To answer your question, my primary concern was Peter's inconsistently applied epistemology. I wrote that he attacks the liberal stand on homosexuality from a straightforward reading of biblical texts but he refuses to read the verses concerning the historical creation accounts in the same manner. As has been well explained throughout this blog, Genesis 1 et al are not poetic sections and so this non-literal approach that Peter uses is clearly inappropriate.
Hi John,
Thanks for taking the time to get back in the midst of a busy life.
If you're concern is Peter's reading of Genesis 1, why move off target and focus on something that would seem to have little to do with it - the nature and purpose of the 10% goal. And even if you want to, I still don't get why you take such a strongly hostile reading of his words.
As for the homosexuality issue, I'd want to suggest that even if Peter is being inconsistent in his epistemology as he moves from Genesis 1 to the prohibitions on homosexual sex that is a long way from authorising you to call him a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is not synonymous with inconsistency.
And I'm not sure he is being inconsistent. To say 'the Bible has to be adhered to in its truth statements' (his 'epistemoloyg') can be consistently applied even if Peter (in your view) incorrectly assesses the truth value of one bit (by thinking that it was not meant to be taken literally). Unless you think the inconsistency is in taking any part of the Bible other than literally?
I'm curious. Would you consider yourself to be hypocrite because a 'plain reading' of Genesis 1 and 2 is that there are two creation accounts and (I presume) you don't think that God did make humanity twice?
Or are you a hypocrite because you don't agree with Martin Luther that Jesus' words 'This is my body' have a 'plain meaning' that the bread and the wine really are the body and blood of Jesus?
I assume you take the words of institution 'poetically' - why not get upset about that?
in Christ,
Mark Baddeley
Mark,
I can’t remember the exact quote, and I don’t have ready access to it presently, but someone has said that “Evolution is the greatest engine for atheism.” Now you may dismiss this as an inaccuracy or that there is no necessary connection between disbelief in God and a putative scientific process. You could, I suppose, but I would then be more likely to believe that you really don’t understand the modern mind and the events that led up to someone’s making such a statement as the above.
Evolution is a worldview. It isn’t like trying to establish which game they play in heaven or a social policy. It is more akin to G.U.T. Some people, I can’t recall exactly who, have stated that anything can be wrong in science except evolution. Others have said that nothing in science makes sense unless it is understood through evolutionary theory.
Whatever the merit these statements have is an issue I won’t address as they have been taken up elsewhere in this blog (briefly, though, they have ziltch value!). However, what is important is the power of evolution as a philosophy or metaphysical principle to stand in opposition to both the existence of God, Christ’s role as Creator and his ability and the logic of his being able to save through grace. In other words, the whole Christian message is attacked through substituting truth for a false and competing theory of origins.
Now, of course, most Moore College graduates would disagree with this argument. I don’t believe for a moment, however, that they do so because of knowledge but rather because they lack, for whatever reason, an appreciation of both the historical processes that brought this upon us and an understanding, a deep understanding, of the modern mind. (BTW, Moore College doesn’t represent the repository of all knowledge and thought, though I believe that far too many of its graduates tacitly believe this, so at one level I can forgive their total misapprehension of the problem. For that I would attribute blame to their past and present principals.)
I suggest, Mark, that you go back and really read some of the posts in this blog. Much of this information doesn’t come from books, lectures or an anaemic academic life but from spending years and years talking to people day in and day out and really knowing what questions to ask and really listening to them. Most people aren’t fools and thus they have to have some sort of worldview underlying their existence and which interfaces with the physical world. In our 21st century western societies it is evolutionary theory.
Which brings me to raising how evolutionary theory became such a strong underpinning to our society’s search for knowledge. That is to say, how was it that this “creation myth of our age” was able to almost single-handedly “establish” that the God of the Bible is dead in most people’s minds, as most surveys have clearly established?
The answer lies in any number of papers and books, and indeed, the very writings of the men who preceded Darwin. Arguably the most important of these was James Hutton. In a recent book, titled unhyperbolically ‘The Man who found Time’, the author Jack Repcheck (most likely an atheist) writes, “[L]earned scribes, teasing information from the Holy Scriptures, and paying close attention to the Hebrew prophesies, had stepped in to supply the answer [of the age of the earth]. They calculated that Creation had occurred not quite 6,000 years go. Yet the reverence accorded to biblical answers caused problems, the most serious being that it prevented rigorous and systematic examination of the very world that God had created. Scholars who investigated fields that did not touch on church doctrine were clearly unaffected [NB, Mark, the logic of Repcheck’s argument here.], but those who explored the natural world were playing with fire…the real fire of the heretic’s pyre…It required genuine bravery…to promote a position that conflicted with church teachings…[I]t was largely the work of just four men who shattered the biblically rooted picture of Earth and separated science from theology.”
He goes on to list Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. Of Hutton he writes, “[He] boldly confronted this centuries-old wisdom [of the earth being young]…[He] questioned the veracity of the Bible, and second, [he] displaced humans from close to the start of time...Hutton took [man] away from the divine beginning of things. Charles Darwin, writing seventy years after Hutton, took the concept of the divine away from man altogether. Darwin’s thesis was that far from having been created miraculously by God, the species Homo sapiens was simply descended from an ancestor shared with the common ape. No divine intervention was needed.”
Hutton had written elsewhere of the importance of long ages to his understanding of world history, a history which conflicted with a straightforward reading of Genesis and Luke’s genealogy. Rather than expect God to accomplish the creation of the world (BTW, Hutton was a deist) he laid that responsibility upon time, or more correctly, Time: “As there is not in human observation proper means for measuring the waste of land upon the globe, it is hence inferred, that we cannot estimate the duration of what we see at present, nor calculate the period at which it had begun; so that, with respect to human observation, this world has neither a beginning nor an end. [i.e. the earth was unknowably old]”
Although Hutton had not intended an eternal earth the effect was little different from if he had. A book at the time attacking Hutton’s weak scientific arguments, ‘The Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom’, pointed out that Hutton’s ideas “lead first to skepticism, and at last to downright infidelity and atheism.”
In his final chapter Repcheck argues that “[t]he first and arguably most important insight for Darwin on his journey of discovery was that the earth was old beyond calculation; how else would evolution have had time to work? And this is James Hutton’s ultimate contribution.”
To this concluding statement of Repcheck could be tacked Hutton’s ultimate contribution to undermining the Christian Gospel. I say this because any theory which deliberately seeks to reduce God’s role and propinquity is dangerous. Furthermore, if any theory replaces God’s divine character of being supremely loving, wise and knowledgeable with time, fortuity and necessary mistakes leading to death, then that constitutes heresy. The Gospel message rests upon the former not the latter. Hutton’s and Darwin’s theories are premised upon all of the latter.
Theories that overturn Ptolemaic and Aristotelian ideas of the universe, as far as I can understand, do not impinge upon matters of Christian theology or soteriology, despite the widespread misinformed belief today that the then Church’s protests that they do were exclusively based on biblical argument. The Sydney diocese’s attacks on biblical truth and Peter Jensen’s support for them, as shown by his overt belief in evolution, is a direct challenge to God’s revelation and can only draw people away from the Church. After all, if the Church supports a theory of origins that says death is natural, that it was there from the beginning, that our Jesus uses harmful mutations to create, why bring in a superfluity called God, so the atheist reasons, if the universe can survive on time and chance alone
Thus even if their logic is wrong, Jensen and his flock have not, by their espousal of evolution and long ages, aided someone’s coming to our Lord but rather have pushed a stumbling block into their path and prevented them from reasoning to God’s existence.
John,
Thank you for taking the time again to give a fuller statement of where you (personally) are coming from. So in your case the fundamental issue is evolution, not the authority of Scripture, or a young earth as it is with Sam, I take it from what you've said here?
I notice that you haven't really answered any of my questions, but I would appreciate an answer to them.
1. Why are you making comments about the 10% goal if evolution is what you care about?
2. Why take such a hostile reading of Peter's explanation of the 10% goal?
3. Is Peter automatically a hypocrite for incorrectly reading a part of the Bible non-literally?
4. Why aren't you a hypocrite for not taking a plain reading of Gen 1 & 2 or the words of institution?
These questions are as important to me as your statement about evolution is to you. Please answer them.
In terms of what you've laid out:
“Evolution is the greatest engine for atheism.” Now you may dismiss this as an inaccuracy or that there is no necessary connection between disbelief in God and a putative scientific process.
I think you are right on both scores about my response. I think your quote is mostly right--evolution is an engine for agnosticism (I'm not so sure about atheism, atheism still seems a bit too decisive for most unbelievers who seem to prefer to hedge their bets a bit). I'm not sure it is the main engine though. Western society's move away from Christianity began centuries before evolution. Evolution seems to have been picked up because it can justify a step that our culture wants to take. If that's the case, it isn't the engine, it's self-justification.
And I can't see a necessary connection between unbelief and evolution because both can exist without the other. I certainly agree that there is a link, but like Sam, you are stating things without any qualification when I think the picture is more complex.
Now, of course, most Moore College graduates would disagree with this argument. I don’t believe for a moment, however, that they do so because of knowledge but rather because they lack, for whatever reason, an appreciation of both the historical processes that brought this upon us and an understanding, a deep understanding, of the modern mind.
I suspect it is comments like this that is the reason why people end up calling a halt to talking with people like your little band, despite what seems to be the self-perception that you are all very gracious and reasonable in your discussions.
You just know that all Moore College graduates disagree with you because they are all ignorant? You aren't prepared to acknowledge any reason at all (even if you disagree with it) as to why they might hear your argument and say 'that's wrong'?
Why would you think they should listen to you or talk with you under such circumstances then?
(BTW, Moore College doesn’t represent the repository of all knowledge and thought, though I believe that far too many of its graduates tacitly believe this, so at one level I can forgive their total misapprehension of the problem. For that I would attribute blame to their past and present principals.)
Well yes, I figured blame was going to figure in this somewhere.
Is Moore College the repository of all knowledge and thought? Of course not. Do it's graduates think this? Well, not the one's who talk to me who are often raising questions as to why we don't look at topic X in the curriculum.
Do they have a lot of confidence about the rigour of the course and it's usefulness to set them up for a ministry of the Word of God? Generally yes. As a graduate and teacher there I think that's a judicious conclusion.
But the fact that Moore's theology changes in places over time is itself an indication that it doesn't consider itself a repository of knowledge and wisdom. As does the fact that it sends its faculty overseas to get their doctorates.
Much of this information doesn’t come from books, lectures or an anaemic academic life but from spending years and years talking to people day in and day out and really knowing what questions to ask and really listening to them.
I'm as unmoved by anti-illectual snobbery as by intellectual snobbery. Both academia and everyday life and valid spheres of knowledge, each with their own strengths and limitations.
The weakness with 'everyman' knowledge is that it is essentially an argument from experiece. My experience is that for every person for whom a young earth has delivered them from a secular view of the world, I have found far more for whom they have only been able to consider Christianity plausible if that was off the table. But I hardly see that as an argument against the truth of your position. And the same is true in reverse.
I found your discursus on Hutton and Darwin a bit hard to follow in places, but I think again that I don't find it convincing. You seem to be saying:
1. Why did Darwin's views take hold so easily?
2. Because Hutton said there was a long time for the earth to exist.
And your evidence is one (hardly disinterested) commentator who shows that a long period of time is conceptually necessary for evolution to be possible.
That a view needs an idea to be internally coherent is no explanation as to why its contemporaries find it plausible and so give it widespread support. You haven't explained Darwin's success at all. You've just explained that there was a building block that his theory needed that was (you think) provided by Hutton. (Why Hutton, when the Church has had to fight the idea of the eternal existence of the world for a long time I have no idea, but let's credit Hutton with it for the sake of argument.)
Furthermore, if any theory replaces God’s divine character of being supremely loving, wise and knowledgeable with time, fortuity and necessary mistakes leading to death, then that constitutes heresy.
So your definition of heresy isn't Sam's? What is 'heresy' for you?
You're writing quickly, so I'll pass over the fact that you've begged what's at the heart of the point of this statement.
I will point out that unless you don't take Gen 1 literally, you also think time is a factor in creation. God made the world in six days. He made Adam by moulding dirt. He took a rib and made Eve out of it. These things took time.
Do you really want to make time such a big deal?
The Sydney diocese’s attacks on biblical truth and Peter Jensen’s support for them, as shown by his overt belief in evolution, is a direct challenge to God’s revelation and can only draw people away from the Church.
Surely Peter Jensen's position is, at worse, an indirect challenge to revelation. If Peter said, "the Bible clearly teaches what Sydney Anglicans Are Heretics say it does, but it's clearly wrong," that would be a direct attack on Biblical revelation. But if he says, "We hold to what the Bible says, and the Bible doesn't say that," then the absolute worse he can be guilty of is an indirect attack, isn't it? Or is this another one of those areas where 'you just can't believe for a moment' anything positive about someone who disagrees with you?
You say that it can only draw people away from the Church. These statements always make me curious. How would you know if this was happening John?
I come from Brisbane where your views on this one issue are held quite widely. In my subjective experience I think churches in Sydney are healthier, have more mature Christians overall, keep more of their young people in the faith, produce more leaders, and demonstrate a faster rate of numerical growth. And I think Sydney is a harder context than Brisbane--Brisbane has a natural conservativism to it. It's hard to see what that proves one way or another, even if it's true.
After all, if the Church supports a theory of origins that says death is natural, that it was there from the beginning, that our Jesus uses harmful mutations to create, why bring in a superfluity called God, so the atheist reasons, if the universe can survive on time and chance alone.
Do you believe death is natural and from the beginning for plants? If so, I think you also think death is natural and from the beginning. But I have never known anyone in Sydney to countenance the idea that death of human beings is anything other than the result of sin.
As far as the atheist reasoning goes, I couldn't care. There were atheists before evolution and when evolution is (as I suspect it will be) rejected we will still have atheists--how many will have to do with whether society opts for a religious or secular form to express its rejection of the living God.
But as far as saying, 'if time and chance can do it why bring in God'? Isn't that an argument against God's general providence across the board? You're just manifesting the very problem we have with the modern scientific outlook: People think that if something can be explained without appeal to a miracle, then we don't need God to understand it. (And so there's no place for God or prayer because science has explained everything). You're answer to this stupidity seems to be to agree with it, but hope that you can prove that everything began with a miracle-winning that battle but conceding the war over all.
And then there is this:
and prevented them from reasoning to God’s existence.
This is the one place where I think you've grasped us at all. We have no interest in natural theology. People cannot reason to faith in God, God must disclose himself. Knowledge of God is a gift of grace, not an achievement of the intelligent.
As much as one can speak of Sydney as a single entity, I think it would be fair to say that what you've just said there would put the hackles on the spine of most clergy. Most of us would think that you've just displayed a lack of confidence in the power of the word of God (and too much confidence in the power of human reason) similar to the one you seem to accuse us of.
in Christ,
Mark
Mark,
1. Peter's epistemology is inconsistently applied because he has never provided any sound reason why you must not take Genesis 1 as a straightforward historical account, yet he expects everyone to take the homosexual passages straightforwardly.
It has been sufficiently documented elsewhere that ALL the reasons that have been offered by the Moore College apologists to bolster their heretical view of God and creation are in fact false.
2. You ask, "Why aren't you a hypocrite for not taking a plain reading of Gen 1 & 2 or the words of institution?"
Sorry, Mark, but this is one of those rather hackneyed Moore "rebuttals". One of the reasons that we creationists become so exasperated is that Moorites routinely read back into ancient documents modern expectations. You'll need to do your own research on this, but, in a nutshell, it was an AME writing characteristic to record a series of events chronologically, then take the most important event and write another account with less chronology. Hence Genesis 2's emphasis on man.
3. You stated that "We have no interest in natural theology. People cannot reason to faith in God, God must disclose himself. Knowledge of God is a gift of grace, not an achievement of the intelligent."
And elsewhere you imply or claim that we are pushing another gospel. So, if we aren't Christian, then why are you trying to reason with us?
4. Please explain how evolution could work without much time.
John,
I notice you didn’t answer three of my four questions, even though I asked and indicated how important they were to me. Don’t worry about answering them now, but I thought I’d note that you passed over them.
As to the issues that you mention:
1. Peter's epistemology is inconsistently applied because he has never provided any sound reason why you must not take Genesis 1 as a straightforward historical account, yet he expects everyone to take the homosexual passages straightforwardly.
I don’t think this counts as a good argument. On this argument any and all of us have an inconsistent epistemology as soon as we make an exegetical mistake. You seem to be saying that Peter misreads Genesis 1 as not being a straightforward historical account for a bunch of wrong reasons and so he doesn’t really believe in the Bible.
John, can a reason be ‘sound’ and yet mistaken? That is, it is possible to make a mistake? And if one does, is one automatically inconsistent or heretical?
It has been sufficiently documented elsewhere that ALL the reasons that have been offered by the Moore College apologists to bolster their heretical view of God and creation are in fact false.
Well that’s a relief, here I thought I was going to have to work through the issues again, but now I know I can just trust you guys.
Sorry, Mark, but this is one of those rather hackneyed Moore "rebuttals".
Anything that is repeated and is not convincing is ‘hackneyed’ to the person hearing it. Much of what I’ve read on this blog feels ‘hackneyed’ but if I patted myself on the back about that there would be no chance for genuine conversation. Can I suggest that you swallow your contempt for what I’m saying and just tell me why you think the argument is poor?
One of the reasons that we creationists become so exasperated is that Moorites routinely read back into ancient documents modern expectations.
Heh, we would say that of your position—you expect Genesis 1 & 2 to give answers that can be correlated to science. You implicitly see truth as ‘scientific truth’ and so our attempt to read Genesis 1 & 2 as not giving scientific answers you see as ‘not true’. For something to be ‘true’ for you, it must make sense according to the modern expectations of contemporary science.
Why do you think that this criticism you make of us is not true of you?
You'll need to do your own research on this, but, in a nutshell, it was an AME writing characteristic to record a series of events chronologically, then take the most important event and write another account with less chronology. Hence Genesis 2's emphasis on man.
I assume you mean ANE (Ancient Near East)? I wasn’t quite aware of this being an ANE trait broadly—my impression is that the OT’s approach to historical writing is considered to be quite unique in many ways.
Still, doesn’t that mean that you are preserving the literalness of chapter one by sitting loosely on the chronology of chapter 2? You think chapter 2 is ‘poetic’ (a poor term in my view) in that it isn’t meant to be taken as giving a strict chronological account.
So the problem is that we take chapter 1 the way you read chapter 2?
And your defence to my suggestion that you are also reading Gen 1-2 non-literally is to agree that you are reading them (as a unit) non-literally. Chapter 1 literally, chapter 2 non-literally and the two as a whole non-literally.
And elsewhere you imply or claim that we are pushing another gospel. So, if we aren't Christian, then why are you trying to reason with us?
I’m not trying to reason with you. Because I’m a heretic in your eyes, I feel that my obligations to you are dissolved. You don’t consider me your brother, and there is something mutual about the distinctly Christian obligations of love. I can’t be your keeper if you aren’t my brother, at least at some level. As I read your blog, I believe (rightly or wrongly) that any overture to engage you in a mutual debate where we try and reason together would be interpreted as a hostile attempt to attack your faith. So I’m not reasoning with you in the sense of trying to convince you of anything – not even of my own non-heretic credentials.
But for my own sake, I need to take the time to listen to people who fundamentally disagree with me and accuse me of various nasty things. Given that I’m reformed, conservative evangelical, and from the Sydney Diocese, I have a fairly large number of mutually antagonistic groups who all think I’m a heretic for one reason or another to choose from (and think the same about each other). I don’t weigh their accusations all the time (otherwise I’d never get anything done). But I do take the time to do it on a semi-regular basis. And when I do so I am mindful of the principle:
Let God be true and every man a liar.
That applies to me us much to everyone. I’m convinced that God is Truth. That doesn’t mean that I am right. And God may be pleased to correct me through the words of another person rather than directly through my own personal study of his Word. So, I take the words of James seriously:
James 1:18-21 18 In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures. 19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.
The admonition to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger is nestled in amongst the statements about the Word of God and the need to receive it in humility. Hence, I think there’s a link between the willingness to listen to other people, and wait before getting angry and a willingness to listen to the Word of God.
To be blunt, I don’t find evidence that the contributors on this blog follow this admonition in anything other than self-perception. Nonetheless, God is free to speak through whom he likes, and so I can’t just dismiss your words even as I don’t want to emulate your example. God can speak through a Jonah, and even a Balaam.
And so, this for me is ‘listening’—not just reading your blogs, but challenging, asking questions, pushing you to give answers, restating points that I think you’ve dismissed too easily. None of it is done with the intention of bringing you to a different mind. But it is done with the intention of making sure I have treated the very serious accusation you have made against me with the seriousness it deserves.
For the record though, although I don’t think it matters what a heretic thinks about you, I don’t think you are heretics. My analogy with Lutheran, Anabaptist and Reformed should have made that clear. I see you more as schismatics if anything. It’s one of the reasons why I decided to come and spend some time with your blog. Given that (from my point of view) your views about Scripture and the gospel broadly agree with mine, if I am guilty of heresy somewhere, based on my current understanding of the word of God a group like you’d be more likely to be right than, say, a group that didn’t consider Scripture to be the word of God.
My point about ‘another gospel’ that I think you are alluding to, was to indicate why we might be resistant to what you are doing in making creation issues salvation issues. In the Sydney Diocese you have a group of Christians that hold to the classical Protestant/Reformer/Evangelical gospel: bodily resurrection, Jesus is God and man, penal substitution, justification by grace through faith alone. Our gospel is pretty clearly the same one that comes down from the Reformation.
And you think we aren’t going to Heaven.
As Sam has agreed, that’s what’s involved in calling us ‘heretics’. That must mean that the things I have enumerated there are not enough for someone to have saving faith in Christ. Hence, ‘another gospel’, because you seem to be adding to the classical gospel by the importance you are placing on this issue.
But I don’t think that makes you a heretic. If you keep going down this track then it is possible that your theological descendants might become heretics in a generation or two. But this would fit under Sam’s rubric of a seemingly harmless move that turns out to be more significant than was realised at the time. In this case, the fatal step was elevating creation to become part of the gospel, and so losing the gospel. In your attempt to defend creation, you went to another extreme.
That’s more what the comment was getting at—it’s a far way from seeing you guys as heretics. Although, as always, any kind of doctrinal error (even emphasis) can reap a harmful harvest in time.
4. Please explain how evolution could work without much time.
It can’t.
That was supposed to be implied by my paragraph:
That a view needs an idea to be internally coherent is no explanation as to why its contemporaries find it plausible and so give it widespread support. You haven't explained Darwin's success at all. You've just explained that there was a building block that his theory needed that was (you think) provided by Hutton. (Why Hutton, when the Church has had to fight the idea of the eternal existence of the world for a long time I have no idea, but let's credit Hutton with it for the sake of argument.)
The idea that evolution needed to be internally coherent was the idea that the earth has been around a long time. I agreed with you that this idea was necessary. I disagreed with you that having that idea explained Darwinism’s success all on its own. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.
In Christ,
Mark
Jphn
Sorry to double post, I missed Sam's first response to me where he seems to reject my definition of heretic.
So I withdraw the implication that the definition I'm working with is common ground. That might need a bit more discussion to see if some can be reached.
I still hold that the view I'm running with is what 'heretic' means and that Sam has agreed to it already, so you can take that up if you think it's important to your case.
in Christ,
Mark
Fair comment about the 10%? That belongs, perhaps on another blog. But heck, we're here, so let's get into it.
I think that the issues about origins, 10% and homosexuality, go toegher, perhaps as some sort of cluster of confusion (in the collective mind of the Sydney hierarchy) about the place of the scripture and its authority.
It struck me, when the 10% goal was announced, and in church committees I was on about that time, and soon after, that we were insufficiently prayerful, insufficiently reliant upon the Spirit of God, and insufficiently humble as to why our mission had failed hither to. After all, we are a church in continuous mission.
The trouble is, I think, the mission has not achieved its puny goals becuase the 'leaders' have not adhered to scripture. Why would the Spirit bring people into a church where his creative acts were blasphemed (ref Roms 1:25).
That's where it comes together. Melding evolution: a doctrine that sets out to deny the loving personal creator, with the creative acts of that same loving God approaches the height of syncretism.
I don't think the 10% goal was puny. 500000 people in bible-believing churches; plus getting the 70000 anglicans to join Baptist churches: a huge goal!
Critias,
If it's a modest goal, then feel free to show me a group of churches with your views on creation that are meeting it.
I'd suggest that the gospel itself is the power of God for salvation, not our doctrinal purity. Over the last two thousand years God has repeatedly shown a willingness to use people with opposing theologies from each other to advance his kingdom. Some of those had pretty serious theological errors.
Maybe God desires the salvation of a sinner more than you give him credit for?
Eric,
I hadn't realised that the other agenda going on here is Sydney based Baptists thinking they were the only Biblical churches. It cements my impression about the schismatic nature of the regular contributors to the blog. It's also another thing that undercuts Sam's claim that you are all motivated by love for the Diocese.
I suppose some kind of thank you is in order for that piece of information.
in Christ,
Mark
Whether Mark believes in theistic evolutionism (like Jensen and most Moorites) or progressive creationism, he has the problem of a 'loving God' using (or allowing) millions of years of death, disease and mutations to create.
But death is the "last enemy", and a real problem with Homo sapiens "dated" by the "dating" methods that Mark uncritically accepts as fr older than Adam could be.
But we also see the absurdity of these compromises in the actions of the Creator Jesus Christ. We recognize the 'good things' that Jesus did when he healed disease, stopped natural disasters (calmed storms) and brought people back from the dead.
They were 'good things' because He fixed the bad things. But if Jesus used evolution to create, then he was fixing bad things that he made that way on purpose which He declared 'very good' upon completing His creation!
It's somewhat like breaking your computer into its component parts, waiting for you to come into the room, then fixing it myself, so you could see what a nice guy I really am. Of course, what Jesus was doing was undoing the effects of the Curse.
Well stated Kt.
The absurdity of the non-creationist position is furthered highlighted by the shortest sentence in the Bible. When "Jesus wept" you can't help but sense the whole evil of death and his hatred for its intrusion into the creative order.
Romans 8 clearly points out that death passed through to all of the creation as a result of man's fall.
I sometimes think that the non-creationist view has so much in common with the New Age in that it too readily accepts death as somehow being "natural". The New Age makes a lot of embracing the good and the evil. It's also easy to see why they believe that God's original world was not perfect, hence their acceptance of evolution, because of the inclusion of death in creative order.
Post a Comment