When Talk Is Cheap.

Amid the deplorable decline in trust in the Word of God within the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, and it is accelerating under the 'young guns' being given more print and lectern space than merit warrants, is the devious shift toward literary devices to explain away the original intent of the author of Scripture.

As pertaining to the Creation account, undue worth is given to pagan creation myths, even to suggesting that the Biblical Creation account is influenced by pagan accounts.

In their whoring after the world these Sydney Episcopalians literally adopt the position of the whoring wife which prophet Hosea symbolically married to expose an adulterous Israel. Their dilution of the authority of the Word of God has no boundary and the effect, while noticeable now, will have devastating consequences for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney in years to come.

I wonder whether the world, in its own strength, is showing Sydney Episcopalians something of the wisdom the Diocese is abandoning. The inheritance from the fathers of the Protestant Reformation is being cast aside and, to some extent has been taken up by the world.

This thought was reinforced in me recently when reading "Facts and Values - An Introduction to Critical Thinking For Nurses" written by Stan van Hooft, Lynn Gillam and Margot Byrnes and published by MacLennan & Petty Pty Ltd, 1995.

On the subject of Elements of Communication the following extracts provide principles which Sydney Episcopalians, especially the 'young guns', have long abandoned when approaching the Word of God. I cite some of these principles herewith:

Even in the event that the text has not been read by anyone, the writer can still be assumed to have had an audience in mind when he or she wrote it .....

Knowing how to send and receive communications includes knowing how some statements imply others and how certain things cannot be logically coherent. It includes knowing that if something is green it must be coloured, and that it makes no sense to say that it could be not green as well. (Logicians call this the law of non-contradiction.) .....

Also relevant, but more difficult to specify, are shared attitudes. Parties to successful communication must share attitudes in order to understand one another fully .....

A fifth element in the context of communication is difficult to describe in abstract terms. It is the ethics of communication. Parties to a communication have certain responsibilities in regard to it. Somebody who tells me something has an obligation to tell the truth. And I have an obligation to pay attention and to take what he tells me seriously. Authors and audiences must have appropriate intentions for a communication to succeed, and these are requirements of an ethical kind. There are values inherent in communication. It is important to notice that these sorts of requirements can make a difference as to whether a communication succeeds .....

This seventh and final element in communication might be described as levels of meaning. Most of the time we take what people say and write at face value. What the text says is what the author wants to tell us.

I would suggest the aforesaid snippets of understanding are a legacy of Judeo-Christian influence of times past whereas the 'young guns' of the Sydney Episcopalian Diocese derive their thinking and application to that vaccuous proposition of thought - Post Modernism.

Sam Drucker

Paganism Dressed in Robes of Scholarship

In 338AD Emperor Constantine died and was succeeded by Julian as ruler of the Roman Empire. Julian was commonly called Julian the Apostate. For some time prior he had professed himself a zealous Christian, was ordained and read the Scriptures before the congregation. By the year 361AD Julian commenced to openly restore Paganism to the Empire.

His strategy was cunning and wide reaching, too wide reaching to mention here but some aspects drawn from his Epistles deserve mention.

A lesson for Atheists who accuse Christianity of being of no good to the world is that of Julian's attempt to copy Christian activity. He "designed and endeavoured to introduce schools for the education of youth in every city, lectures both of moral and speculative divinity, stated times of prayer, alms-houses and hospitals for the poor and cripple, and reception of strangers; and what he most admired, commendatory ecclesiastic epistles, or letters testimonial, from the governors of the church, whereby persons travelling from one country to another, were upon producing these letters sure to meet with a kind entertainment. All which he commends in his letter to Arsacius."

As if to pioneer the practice of many latter day Atheists and several who call themselves Christians "He took all occasions of exposing Christians, and their religion, to ridicule. He was a man of sarcastic wit, and principally turned it that way. When he read the Scriptures, if he met with a seeming contradiction, he made it real, if with an hyperbolical expression, he improved it to blasphemy. He scorned at the simplicity of the apostles and prophets, whom he represented as ignorant and illiterate fellows."

Surreptitiously, (yet unwittingly mimicked in variant form by many Sydney Anglicans today) "In his pictures and statues he represented Jupiter near him, coming down from heaven, and delivering to him the crown and the purple, and Mars and Mercury giving him skill in war. His design in this was, that when his officers paid their respect to the Imperial statue, they might at the same time worship idols, or that he might have the better occasion to punish their pretended contempt." Do not Theistic Evolutionists within the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, in their attempt to accommodate Evolution within Christianity, impose a Pagan image upon the background of biblical representation of the One who alone is to be worshiped?

Paganism is never far from the Church.

Quotes are from John Gillies - "Historical Collections of Accounts of Revival" (1745) page 18 wherein he cites from Julian's Epistles.

Neil