Orthodoxy at GAFCON

A quick quiz: Which one of the following statements is most essentially de fide (of the essence of the Christian faith)?

1. There is one God, in three persons (in human language most frequently designated Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

2. God the Son (or the Word, Greek Logos) became incarnate (became flesh) in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah or Christ.

3. Human beings are saved (restored to fullness of life eternally) by God's grace through the Holy Spirit, and not by any action of our own.

4. God hates fags.

The correct answer for the "orthodox" folks at GAFCON is, of course, No. 4.

Hey, why not?

Bible-Believing Christians

I was reading Matins this morning, and the first lesson was the latter part of Numbers 14. Afterwards, I noticed that the first lesson tomorrow morning will be from Numbers 16. "Hmm," I thought to myself, "what's in chapter 15 that we're leaving out?" Perhaps this. (I understand why certain verses don't get read, but I'm not always sure that's the best idea.)

Numbers 15:32-36: When the Israelites were in the wildnerness, they
found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. Those who found him
gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole
congregation. They put him in custody, because it was not clear what
should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, "The man shall be put
to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp." The
whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as
the Lord had commanded Moses.

All you "Bible-Believing Christians," please help me understand what to make of that. Especially all you Bible-believing Anglicans over there at the GAFCON conference.

Is there anyone who can help me understand why "Bible-Believing Christian" isn't an oxymoron? Please let me assure you: I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation. But it seems to me that first we must believe in (have faith in) Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God in the first instance, and only then are we able to understand how the Scriptures are the Word of God.

And if you GAFCON folks and your associates are of the opinion that Numbers 15:32-36 is not binding upon us now, then was it ever binding upon anyone? Why, or why not?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Teamwork

Pentecost, and our Lady

Yesterday my wife and I were out on a daytrip and we visited the local art museum of a nearby city.

[Excursus: If you don't already do it, I encourage you to visit your local art museum. It's amazing how many really wonderful paintings there are by artists you've never heard of. End of excursus.]

One of the paintings I saw was a "Descent of the Holy Ghost" by Juan de Juanes, a Spanish painter of the mid-16th century. (No, I'd never heard of him before either.) (All you art history majors: you don't count!) I liked it a lot; it was, I think, typical of that era. The painting depicted the twelve apostles (St. Matthias being #12), together with the Blessed Virgin Mary, gathered together in the upper room. At the top of the painting was depicted the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and from the Spirit were emanating tongues of fire, lighting upon the heads of each of those present. The twelve apostles; and also St. Mary.

So.

+Jack, and +Keith, yes and you too, +Benedict, and even you, +Rowan: Get over it!

Orthodoxy and Heresy

A colleague passed on to me today a copy of an article from the April 22 Christian Century, by Garret Keizer, entitled "Reasons to Join: In defense of organized religion."(*) (http://www.christiancentury.org/; but this particular article is available online only to subscribers.) Many excellent things in this article, but I was particularly struck by a quote from Kenneth Leech (Keizer did not give the exact citation):

The rejection of paradox and ambiguity is the characteristic of heretics in all
ages. Heresy is one-dimensional, narrow, over-simplified, and boring. It is
straight-line thinking, preferring a pseudo-clarity to the many-sidedness of
truth, tidiness to the mess and complexity of reality. Orthodoxy by contrast is
rooted in the unknowable.

Keizer goes on to comment, "I realize that such a passage may be offensive to some heretics, but imaging how offensive it must be to religious believers who fancy that their heretical simplifications are orthodox!"

(*) With due respect to Mark Twain: "I don't belong to an organized religion. I'm an Episcopalian."

Biblical Morality

A couple of weeks ago, or so, I was reading in Exodus (these verses aren't part of the daily office lectionary; I must have been doing some lectio divina) and ran across this passage. (I must have read this many times before, but for some reason it never "stuck.")

21:2-4: When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. [So far, so good.] [Well, sort of.] If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's and he shall go out alone.

That's swell.

It goes on to say, by the way, that if the husband loves his wife and children and does not want to abandon them, he can stay with them, but at the price of committing himself to servitude for the rest of his life.

Ain't that nice? Very moral.

I sometimes wonder whether the folks who talk so much about "Biblical Morality" (especially "Biblical Sexual Morality") have actually read the Bible.

An awful lot of the sexual goings-on in the Bible, apparently with divine approbation or at least divine indifference, are by our standards pretty appalling.

Of course there are many passages, in both the Old Testament and the New, that can be appealed to for the foundation of genuinely godly and Christian sexual morality. So by what principles do we distinguish between that "biblical sexual morality" which is genuinely godly and Christian, and that (also) "biblical sexual morality" which is cruel, abusive, exploitative, etc.? (Is there anyone out there who really wants to try to defend Exodus 21:2-4?)

Maybe a genuinely godly and Christian sexual morality requires more than just quoting Bible verses.

Just saying.