Category Archives: Lambeth

Muddle

Can someone tell me how it makes sense for Rowan Williams to on the one hand endorse Anglicans moving to Rome which does not ordain women or homosexuals, while on the other hand allowing these same errors in his own church? I guess praying to Saints and bowing to images is fine to him, it’s just the man sleeping with man thing that Rome needs to catch up on.

Bishop Wright’s World

In Bishop N.T. Wright’s world Lambeth seems to have been a smashing success:


We are insisting that the Lambeth process was a good process and we do not want it to be damaged.
People can make political capital out of anything. Lambeth was a great achievement and we must build on that.

Let’s contrast this ‘great achievement’ that has put off doing anything about abominations and heresies with true Apostolic leadership. A certain Apostle named Paul of Tarsus heard of sin on the part of another Apostle named Peter or Cephas. Paul did not study the issue and refer it to the patriarch of Jerusalem for discernment. He did not write the Antioch Report and dither. He did not wring his hands about the unity of the Church being impaired. He did not enter a listening process with the Judaizers to find out where they were coming from. No, Paul says:


But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

Ah, that Paul, such a fundamentalist! How brash and self-assured he was, as if he alone knew the truth. Why, perhaps the Holy Spirit was simply leading Peter and the Judaizers in a different direction, who are we to say?
Lambeth was rubbish, the See of Canterbury is presently rubbish, and the inability to discipline anyone for anything is the problem. We need to bring back that unfashionable word: excommunication. Asking people to think about and listen to the other side is not church discipline, it is a tactic of anti-church heretics who think that they can buy enough time for society to force the ignorant rubes opposed to them to bend the knee to them. We need Paul, not Rowan or N.T.

Wright vs. Orombi

Two Bishops, two very different ways of approaching the world. In this article Wright spends thousands of words essentially saying that the Bible is complex, we can’t go back to modernity, truth is hard to get at and both sides are probably wrong. Then in this interview, Wright can’t deign to answer yes to a question that I would think could be answered simply:

CT: Do you agree with the content of the Sudanese statement?
TW: What they have done in their statement is simply reaffirm what the Anglican Communion has always taught and what the historic churches in Christendom have always taught. It is sad that these things need to be reaffirmed – clearly they do. So for millions of Christians around the world all that they have said is ‘we are still believing what we have always believed’. So it’s not exceptional.
Wright does accept that homosexual sex is sinful, and yet he can’t seem to just say that. I think this is because it would be too much of a sop to conservatives, and he has to be seen bashing both sides equally. So if one party puts forward a great error and the other defends settled truth, you have to seek some sort of middle ground that accommodates sides both I guess. We have the Unitarian example in New England to see how churches die when they give in to serious error, but Wright seems content to just keep “grappling” and “wrestling” with the text as souls perish.
On the other hand, as a breath of fresh air, we have Bishop Orombi. This good Bishop has apparently had enough of grappling and trying to figure out what the final act of the play looks like. He seems to be committed to that ancient idea of truth – how quaint – quite apart from contours and gestures towards tentative thoughts on a subject. Orombi can actually get to the point:
In every case, homosexual practice is considered sinful – something that breaks our relationship with God and harms our wellbeing. It is something for which one should repent and seek forgiveness and healing, which God is ever ready to do. Not only is Scripture to be taken seriously, but it is to be obeyed, because God intends for us things far better than we could ask or imagine.
How can we go to Holy Communion, sit in Bible study groups, and share meals together, pretending that everything is OK?, that we are still in fellowship with the persistent violators of biblical teaching and of Lambeth resolutions?
The Bible says: “Can two walk together unless they are agreed?” The Archbishop of Canterbury has asked us to “wait for each other”. But how is it possible when we are not travelling in the same direction?
Two Bishops approaching the issues with vastly different ways of speaking and praxis. Guess which Bishop I would rather serve under? It’s not hard to do.


Lambeth – yawn

Is any of what is happening at Lambeth surprising to anyone? The only surprise coming out of Lambeth would be decisive action, say excommunicating American Bishops or affirming orthodox teaching on every subject.

I’m glad the forces of GAFCON stayed away. They were correct in thinking that the entire meeting is a waste of time.

Indaba

Is there anything more touchy-feely liberal than a bunch of groups “listening” to each other at Lambeth? Suppose this was the Arian crisis and the church of that day had just stopped to listen to each other rather than being nasty and mean with those troublesome doctrines. What would the results have been? Certainly we don’t have to fight over everything, but when the church cannot fight over basic principles, it has become the anti-church.