Famed Theologian Quits Anglican Church of Canada!!!
I was interested to read this article by Lillian Kwon, Christian Post Reporter dated Mon, Apr. 28, 2008, on Packer (not Jamie, but James I) quitting the Anglican Church of Canada.
“Packer, who has outlined a conservative Christian theology in his 1973 bestseller Knowing God, described the Bible as "absolute" authority on divine truth and that it clearly describes homosexuality as a grave sin, reported by The Vancouver Sun. The Rev. Kevin Dixon, priest at St. Mary's Anglican Church in Kerrisdale, meanwhile believes Packer is adopting a "literalistic" reading of the Bible. "It's important for people to understand that the Holy Scriptures is a very nuanced document. I think we need to allow people room to come to a new understanding," said Dixon, the local newspaper reported.
I’ve got to stick up for our dear brother here. He is reading the Bible ‘naturally’. The term ‘literalistic’ has a bovver boy pejorative flavour that sets out to discredit one's opponent. Here it consciously disregards Packer’s great learning and intellect, as well as his spirituality, I dare say. The term also betrays a hollow dismissive rhetoric at work, not engagement or real debate. It says that we're sewn up before we've cut the cloth.
But how amazing it is, that when it comes to the Spirit’s revelation about creation, the SADs do just what Dixon does!
I could hear any Sydney Bishop say: oh dear, those ‘creationists’ (as though there is an alternative in Christian theology), they adopt a "literalistic" reading of the Bible. "It's important for people to understand that the Holy Scriptures is a very nuanced document. I think we need to allow people room to come to a new understanding," For instance, we need to absorb the conclusions of materialism into our theology; we need to be able to disregard those parts of the Bible that attract the scorn of people who deny that God is or that he can speak clearly to us; we need the freedom to be able to blur people’s generative relationship with their creator and help them head to hell on rails. We just need to relax, unhinge, and be cool about the prophets, apostles and our Lord’s teaching, because, after all, science proves…”
And there we have it. A critical disengagement from what ‘science’ is, a failure of intellect in cultural analysis, and a refusal to bear the prophet's burden and speak God’s words, instead of man’s.
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7 comments:
It's not just bishops, old pal. Add Sandy Stone (opps, I mean Grant), Gordon Cheng, Kung Fu Craig, Peter 'bible believing churches' Jensen, Michael 'boo hoo' Jensen and most Moore graduates: what a great way to evangelise, just deny the natural meaning of the most basically important parts of the Bible!
Unfortunately, Packer has long been part of the problem. His theology is not that different from SAD: denying, in effect, that Genesis is authoritative history. Then he is shocked that people think that marriage, sourced in Genesis, is likewise "re-interpreted". He endorsed that trashy Mark Noll book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which is full on hostility toward biblical creation (see reviews by Carl Wieland and Andrew Kulikovsky.
It is amazing how some 'leaders' in the Church compromise with the world and become a hindrance to the faith of others. Yet there are some who go the other way i.e. they get stronger in faith and are a help right up to their time of passing from this world and even beyond their passing. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones excelled in this respect. He rejected evolution early in his ministry but still held to a long age for the earth. However, he later rejected the long age view to trust the Word of God completely in its chronology.
Neil Moore
The irony is deep and rich! Packer is lamenting the result of denial of the normative teaching of scripture. He denies it, so does his Canadian pal. After all, the assured results of (social) science are that people are not to be denied their sexual choices.
But when will he see that the outcome he deplores is the outcome of the path he espouses?
I used to admire Packer, but there are termintes in his foundations, it would seem.
I expect we'll see this sort of thing creeping into Sydney in the coming decades!
Well, Packer is much honoured by many SADists so they are likely to be influenced by his thinking. They are so easily influenced by the thinking of men.
Neil Moore
I once again point you all towards what I *think* is Genesis 30. Again I'm still at a house with dial-up so you will have to research the passage to which I am referring.
The one where the guy breeds coloured goats from non-coloured by having them look at coloured sticks while they feed and mate?
It quite specifically says that, nowhere does it say "and God made them coloured".
So, you think it's the right thing to do to dismiss reason and what little common sense remains to you and believe that looking at coloured things while you mate produces coloured offspring?
Please, PLEASE explain to me how THAT passage, THAT particular story, works in the real world.
I once again point you all towards what I *think* is Genesis 30. Again I'm still at a house with dial-up so you will have to research the passage to which I am referring.
The one where the guy breeds coloured goats from non-coloured by having them look at coloured sticks while they feed and mate?
It quite specifically says that, nowhere does it say "and God made them coloured".
So, you think it's the right thing to do to dismiss reason and what little common sense remains to you and believe that looking at coloured things while you mate produces coloured offspring?
Please, PLEASE explain to me how THAT passage, THAT particular story, works in the real world.
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