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Post by Uriel on Mar 23, 2009 11:07:07 GMT -5
Phil - here's hoping anglifan can quickly get rid of "page 4."
I love your logic.
My conservative brethren often that the whole question is one of "the authority of Scripture." I could, in one way, go along with that formulation, except that, of course, no matter which side you take, you will, through your own interpretive leanings, find support in the Bible. It is similar to the practice of law, where adversaries go to court and interpret the law, and then some judge decides. (And then there are appeals.)
The major difference is that the law recognizes that its procedures are an exercise in interpretation and suasion. Those who argue in a religious context tend to argue that their interpretation is right in the absolute. And rather than having a tangible judge on the bench, we extrapolate a Judge who will in all such arguments rule in favor of our preferred view.
I will say quite happily that I do not believe in "the authority of Scripture." The Bible is not even as clear as our statutes in terms of what the "Law" is. It is not a collection of rules, for the most part; it is also stories and parables and histories. It is quite wonderful, but not something, in my opinion, which is exactly clear on all the issues which we face in our time and place. We can look for guidance there, but we must also look in our own hearts and minds - our Reason. For me, it is a kind of back and forth thing - what does my reason say, what can I find in the Bible. ( And for that matter, what is our tradition, but tradition - slavery, etc. - is often just a history of where we have mistakenly been.)
On the subject of homosexuality, I hold the not-uncommon view that what the Old Testament seems to some to say in Leviticus, etc., must be interpreted in light of the culture of the day, in light of the probably massive problems with translation, and in terms of the New Testament superseding the Old Testament.
As for what Christ says on the subject, Jesus says precisely nothing. His answer quoted in connection with the question about divorce is about divorce; it says nothing on the subject of gay marriage. It simply states that marriage - as practiced at the time - is sacred, but you have to allow for divorce because humankind is imperfect. If the question of homosexuality were important, I am sure he would have had something on point to say. As for Paul, same as OT and not Jesus.
My reason and my experience say that God makes gay people as well as straight people and that what God made, and makes, is Love. It seems to me that my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are given a special, hard assignment in this life, one I do not envy them.
But unlike the conservatives, I don't think that the assignment is to learn to live without physical expression of love. I think the assignment is the same for as for all of us, but given a particular kind of difficulty for gay people, to learn to love ourselves as God made us, and to express the love we find within ourselves, the love which is the spark of the Divine in us, in a one-to-one, day-to-day relationship. This is hard enough without society's condemnation.
I have nothing but the highest respect for gay and lesbian people who manage to get to a point - as expressed by Sojourner, among others, where they can say, it doesn't matter what the Church (or society) says, my life is with my partner, and I know God supports that.
I support the legalization of gay marriage. I do not buy "Bible-based" arguments against it.
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Post by christian on Mar 24, 2009 13:46:58 GMT -5
Like most post modernists, Uriel, you indulge in wishful thinking to the exclusion of reason. You seem unable to separate fact from fancy.
let's see:
"We should ignore Leviticus because they lived differently than us" They were people just like us. They lived together just like us. And they had relationships with each other just like us. As a Christian I believe they had one thing over us, they were God's people. I suspect that if they were native Americans living on the Great Plains 3 thousand yeas ago we would be being told that their philosophy was better than ours because they they lived closer to nature.
"Jesus had exactly nothing to say on the subject," Wrong, Jesus says marriage is between an man and a woman. Of course that's probably the parts of the Bible you ignore and you want the rest of us to be forced to ignore.
"My reason and experience says" bla bla bla. This is just your opinion. I'm glad you have opinions. What I don't understand is why anyone should pay any attention to your opinions. I have opinions too, but I also keep my opinions to myself. More facts and reason, less hubris and opining, that is reason's way. If understanding Scripture is beyond your ken then listen to your betters. Please don't indulge your ignorance.
"I will say quite happily that I do not believe in "the authority of Scripture"." How you can say that and claim to be a Christian is beyond me. You are perhaps a Shoriite or a TECite or a pagan or something. The Anglican Church came into existence in response to the Romans straying from Scripture. The alternative to Biblical authority is the authority of the barrel of the gun. Please take no actions, say no words, support no efforts to force that down the throats of we who are Christians.
Stop! Stop! Again I say stop saying that I have said that homosexuals should not do whatever they want together. They should. All I have said is that the physical act between unmarried persons is sinful. It is. Stop trying to destroy my church by forcing a rejection of the clear mandate of thousands of years of Judeo Christian practice and the rejection of the Bible.
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Post by Uriel on Mar 24, 2009 18:02:04 GMT -5
Christian, my friend, you know we will never agree. I'm sure by now Sojourner is having a good laugh. I am sorry that your mother or whoever brought you up failed to teach you that name-calling is one of the childish things we put away in our journey to adulthood. It tends in practice to cause others to dismiss what we say as, indeed, childish.
But what the hey - the people of the OT lived in a different culture, and had a very different orientation from ours. They were humans, just like us, as are the Native Americans, the Africans, the Buddhist Indians and East Asians, and so forth. To argue that the people of the OT were more human than these others is, of course, inaccurate. Perhaps you don't mean that - but they were certainly not culturally "just like us."
Jesus had exactly nothing to say on the subject. A well-drawn Venn diagram might elucidate. Or perhaps not.
"My reason says" that when it comes down to it, reason, heart and experince is all any of us has. Including you, my friend. You interpret the Bible, and your life, as seems best to you. My interpretation is not absolute, but neither is yours. We are both imperfect beings, along with all the other imperfect beings in the human race.
I do not believe in "the authority of Scripture," since Scripture is infinitely interpretable, and is not a rule book. As the old saying has it, "the Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose." The Bible is an infinitely useful and inspiring resource.
"The alternative to Biblical authority is the authority of the barrel of the gun. " I confess this has me stumped. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. It certainly seems to me that there are plenty of "Christians" who would be quite happy, and through history have been quite happy, to enforce "Biblical authority" precisely at the end of a gun barrel.
I guess I am a TECite, no problem with that label. I know what post-modern architecture is, but what it means when you label me, I don't know.
It's "down the throats of us who are Christians," not "of we who are..."
And actually, it's not your church any more than mine. Or vice versa.
Have a good day, my friend.
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Post by Canadian Phil on Mar 24, 2009 19:54:47 GMT -5
Really, this exchange between Uriel and christian makes the point that I was planning on saying yesterday, but simply ran out of hours in the day. It also, I think, proves the Church Father Tertullian right when he pointed out the futility of arguing Scripture with someone who reads it contrary to one's tradition. In Uriel and Christian, we see two distinct traditions which view the Scriptures in radically different ways and there is no way to decide which one might be right because there is no agreement on what constitutes a valid argument. Thus, we get a lot of heat and not a lot of light.
In a sense, Uriel is right, however, in saying that the issue is not really about the 'authority of Scripture' as many conservatives would argue. It isn't because it is rather premature to tack on the 'of Scripture' when we can't agree on what authority means. Indeed, I suspect we won't even agree on the desirability of having a common standard by which we, as a church and a community of faith, can decide how to decide on theological questions. If I'm confusing you, I'm sorry, but the situation we find ourselves in TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada is just as confusing for the same reason. We spend so much time arguing past each other because no one on either side knows what will constitute a valid argument which will be accepted by both sides.
Ultimately, I'm probably theologically closer to Christian, but, unlike him, my reaction to the connundrum posed by this problem isn't anger- it's an overwelming sense of futility. That is why I'm not interested in arguing Scripture with Uriel because I know what is going to happen- we'll go around and around in circles and just argue past each other. Instead, I'm just going to let this argument go and pray.
Peace, Phil
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Post by Uriel on Mar 24, 2009 23:04:17 GMT -5
Thanks, Phil. You know, what I miss - and what will never return, probably, is the Episcopal Church of my youth, where you never really knew what the person next to you in the pew believed. The spiritual search was exhilarating!
I do think that no doubt that was possible because we all agreed on the externals. We used the BCP and otherwise, asked few questions. It appears that it was when things started to change externally - especially, women's ordination and the gay ordination/consecration and same-sex blessing issues - that it got so all-fired important what you believed and whether you were right with "Biblical authority." The people who were against WO and homosexual ordination/consecration/blessing started howling. Well, there are no doubt things that would make me howl, too. But it wouldn't be my style to threaten my opponents with hell (or to feel myself remiss in not doing so.)
But I do miss the feeling of freedom in belonging that was the Episcopal church then. Even now, in a fairly liberal parish, I can't help but be aware of the conflict out in the wider church.
The argument which christian and I have been re-hashing is really very old, and perhaps pointless after all; no one is saying anything that hasn't been said many times and indeed we are talking past one another, probably without possibility of anything else.
Ah well. Peace to you, too, Phil - Uriel
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Post by Canadian Phil on Mar 25, 2009 21:29:27 GMT -5
I'm not sure that I mind so much the conflict. From my reading of church history, that will happen from time to time and either we deal with the conflict well or not. Conflict in church settings is just a given. We're all very imperfect people, so is there any wonder that there is conflict.
What worries me is that we Anglicans don't seem to have any other way of resolving conflict except yelling or resentful silences. A large part of that is frusration with not being able to resolve things.
As we know, I have no answers and I'm too tired tonight (it's been a full day) to come up with any tonight.
Peace, Phil
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Post by christian on Mar 26, 2009 7:41:13 GMT -5
As long as there are people who claim to be Christians and yet claim that the truth is only to be found in their own emotions and hunches there will irresolvable conflict in the church.
It says in Scripture that "Every man did what was right in his own eyes." These pseudo christians are so well described there.
In Uriel's world each new person is a whole new faith which will most likely contradict most other faiths. Babel live on!
The Episcopal Church has turned from the golden rule to mob rule and Shori has turned the Presiding Bishop from great pastor to grand inquisitor. This is the fruit of abandoning the Bible.
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Post by Sojourner on Mar 31, 2009 13:29:44 GMT -5
Phil, I read with interest your comment, "From my reading of church history, that will happen from time to time and either we deal with the conflict well or not." Further, you say, " What worries me is that we Anglicans don't seem to have any other way of resolving conflict except yelling or resentful silences."
The first statement seems to imply that history shows some times that "we" have dealt with conflict well. The second implies that we have not yet found a positive way to deal with the conflict. Perhaps it would be helpful if we could identify those situations which have arisen and have been handled in a more productive way. That might give us a clue as to how better to approach this particular situation.
I have to admit that I am unable to find such an exemplar.
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Post by christian on Apr 1, 2009 7:11:30 GMT -5
Actually the way it has been done in the past is by holding councils. In the Anglican tradition these councils have become the Lambeth conferences. In fact consensus was reached on the subject of same sex unions in 1998 but PECUSA chose to ignore that consensus. The format of the 2008 conference was changed so that no decisions were able to be made, hence the controversy only widens. The natural place for decisions like this to be made is at a general council of bishops. Unfortunately, unless their narrow world view is upheld the liberal fascists controlling the levers of power in PECUSA won't agree to be bound by the results of these councils, hence there will be no resolution. The discussion here is but a microcosm of the self proclaimed superior wisdom of the liberal elite. It is clear that Sojourner and Uriel think they have more wisdom on the subject than an assembly of all Anglican Bishops.
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Post by Sojourner on Apr 1, 2009 17:24:56 GMT -5
Anglican bishops have thumbed their noses and exerted their extraordinary hubris by denying the findings of the First Vatican Council, a true and Holy Spirit led convocation of the one, holy catholic and apostolic church. Adherence to councils does not seem to be a consistent Anglican virtue.
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Post by Canadian Phil on Apr 1, 2009 19:46:43 GMT -5
Hi Sojourner;
I really wasn't restricting myself in the first passage you were quoting to Anglicans as a whole, but rather I was thinking about the the whole 2000+ year sweep of Christianity. Examples to dealing with conflict quite well could be the Council of Jerusalem in Acts or the monastic revival in the 10th century which started from Cluny. Examples of dealing with badly would be the Reformation (catastrophically) and the current situation in TEC. In the former examples, conflict is resolved by sitting down, hashing out the problems and being committed to working this through without either side walking out or working unilaterally.
In the second example, our failure to deal with the same-sex issue well should be clear when we see one side acting before a consensus has emerged in the Communion and the other side packing up its marbles and leaving. Schism is tangable evidence of our failure to deal with this conflict constructively.
Peace, Phil
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Post by Sojourner on Apr 2, 2009 13:08:01 GMT -5
Phil, I'm not sure what outcome metrics one could use to determine whether or not an internecine ecclesiastical squabble was dealt with well or not. I don't believe that complete agreement on an issue is necessarily an outcome that demonstrates something dealt with well. I say that because complete agreement may have been brought about by one group or another separating. While I don't consider schism a bad thing -- if that lowers the flashpoints in organizations, and can allow groups to exist side by side in some form of peaceful co-existence -- I hardly think that you would consider schism a reasonable metric to measure the successful handling of a situation.
Some of this problem relates to how one views the faith. Is it a system of intellectual assent to certain data? Is it belief in a set of propositions? Is it relational and based on a desire to meet God and one's sibling within a system of common worship? Since I understand the faith more in the latter statement, I can propose that the metric might be that a squabble is dealt with best when those involved still gather at the Lord's Table together, allowing God to judge the worthiness of those who come to feed on the Body and Blood. I, too, remember, as Uriel says, "the Episcopal Church of my youth, where you never really knew what the person next to you in the pew believed. The spiritual search was exhilarating!"
However, in order to accept this metric, one has to yield to the supremacy of God, acclaim God's ability to supernaturally order and protect the Church, and recognize that no human can protect the sacrament nor the Church, because it belongs to an All Powerful God who acts within this creation.
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