Posted on 03/14/2006 3:47:54 PM PST by sionnsar
Wolves or Tares?
"Living with Tares; Why I stay in a Church that has seriously strayed from biblical teaching," Rt. Rev, Edward S. Little CT 03/07/06
A response by Fr. William De Arteaga
The Episcopal Bishop Edward Little has given us a thoughtful explanation of why some orthodox believers, including himself, stay within the Episcopal Church. To many Evangelicals it seems incredible why any orthodoxy brother should choose to do so.
Those of us who came out of the Episcopal Church recognize Bishop Little's dilemma, to stay or to leave a denomination that for years nurtured us. Many orthodox Episcopalians are "hanging on," awaiting with great expectation that Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburg, with the blessings of the orthodox Archbishops of the Africa and Asia, will lead a renewed orthodox North American Anglicanism separated legally and theologically from the Episcopal Church.
And yet I am bothered by Bishop Little's argument. Instead of saying he is fighting a rear guard action, protecting his flock, and waiting for a renewed Anglicanism to form, he tries to stake a "higher ground" based on John 17 prayer for Christian unity. This moves his argumentation, I believe, from tactical necessity to erroneous theology by reason of failed discernment and misplaced identity.
Bishop Little frames the argument in terms of letting the good "wheat" grow among "tares," and then allow for God's judgment at it proper time (Math. 13:24-29). Thus the responsibility of separating or not from an apostate church is postponed indefinitely. More to the point, as Bishop he is not looking out for the spiritual safety and security of those entrusted to him. Scripture is very clear about false prophets and teachers as danger to the immature sheep. In Mathew 7:15-19 Jesus warns us of false teachers and prophets in the strongest of terms:
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (NIV)
This passage is particularly appropriate for the present situation in the Episcopal Church because those who advocate legitimizing homosexual unions posture themselves as prophets who for a while must suffer calumny, but in the future will be revealed as having pioneered a new truth form God. This delusion is based on liberal theology and its assumption that Holy Scripture is tentative, and the Holy Spirit can go contrary to the plain understanding of the Bible.
Paul reinforces Jesus' warning about such wolves with words that are equally strong, directed to his disciples at the church in Ephesus (Acts 20:28b-30):
Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. (NIV)
Every Church has tares, hypocrites and non-believers. Indeed, we must live them until God's judgments come in the last day. However, church leaders are enjoined to protect their congregations from wolves - false prophets and apostate teachers at all times.
Sadly this is now impossible to do in the Episcopal Church since the majority of Bishops have become wolves - apostate and revisionists who have accepted every "wind of teaching" that has come along in the past half century (Eph. 4:14). When I was a young man in college the current fashionable apostasy was the "death of God" theology which claimed that there was no evidence for the miraculous, and that churches should become more secular. This was followed by new waves of heresy such a Liberation theology which believed "Marxist insights" would lead the Church to a new relevancy and enhanced social justice. In the last decades we have been subject to the heresy of "pan-sexuality" in which psychology has trumped Biblical standards of sexual behavior. In all these apostate movements the Episcopal Church theologians led the way or had prominent input. In this environment, and with Bishops too timid or too unorthodox to correct, the seminaries became vehicles of heresy, rather than transmitters of Biblical truth and orthodox Christian teachings. Wave after wave of new priests entered ministry as wolf-ministers, and many have been promoted to wolf-bishops.
This has been and continues to be a source of confusion and heresy for the laypersons that we clergy are charged to protect. This was impressed upon me about a decade ago, before I was ordained into one of the Anglican "continuing" denominations. As a lay Episcopalian and Christian historian I was asked by my parish priest, a very orthodox churchman, to go as delegate to our state Episcopal convention. I went with four other laypersons and the assistant priest. Since this was the state of Georgia I assumed in that most of the liberal/revisionist theology making headlines in other parts of the country would not be strongly influential in our state. I was wrong. The public discussions, book tables, and organizational booths were predominantly revisionist/apostate.
What disturbed me most was the convention's influence on the other lay persons from our church - in particular, a wonderful elderly lady who was a very goodly person and a polite, gracious woman. She took in every brochure available, heard every argument politely and with an open mind - and was influenced by the deceitfulness of the liberal/ revisionist arguments. She never became an outright heretic, but certainly her orthodoxy was injured by that convention. I am sure similar incidents have occurred thousands of times among godly Episcopal lay persons.
I spent the next several years trying to persuade our rector to prepare to leave the Episcopal Church. He was aware of the apostasy of the church, and indeed a leader of the orthodox camp. However, like Bishop Little he chose not to prepare our church for separation (as in various legal strategies to protect or property from seizure by the Bishop) nor leave the Episcopal Church himself. The ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson was a final straw for a group of us, and we left to form an Anglican congregation under the protection of the orthodox Anglican Bishop of Bolivia.
Our rector stayed. Like Bishop Little, he claimed a loyalty to the denomination that nurtured him in his youth, that could not be betrayed. Orthodox churchmen who hold this view are clearly in error. Our principal identity must be in Christ, not in a denomination. An Episcopal orthodox priest or Bishop may have a legitimate reason for staying within the Episcopal Church to this day, as in holding out for a good settlement with the national church or local bishop. He best be extremely careful in guarding his flock against continued apostate influences. (I spent two years as Hispanic pastor at our Episcopal church meticulously screening what my flock received from national headquarters, and did we did not go to national or state wide events.) In any case, personal "warm fuzzies" about former times is not a valid reason to continue to expose the flock to heretical and revisionist influences.
They may be a darker side to Bishop Little's reasons for staying in the Episcopal Church, which unfortunately is rarely spoken of publicly, the economics of separation. When I was about to leave the Episcopal Church our rector tried to persuade me not to do so with a barrage of wrong reasons. I was taking a risk and endangering the economic security of my family. Medical insurance and pensions in ECUSA were excellent, and as Hispanic pastor in the congregation I was just beginning to accumulate a pension. Most of my congregation (of about 200) would not follow me, but stay within our Episcopal Church because it was a beautiful building, and we could only offer hotel space.
Most of that turned out to be true. God has provided for our basic economic needs, but I make less now. I have a very inadequate insurance plan and no pension. My congregation, after two years of struggle, has 70 members. But none of that is of any spiritual significance. We are free from the oppression (even the name) of the Episcopal Church and its apostate hierarchy, and our services are marked by a special presence of the Holy Spirit in healing and the other gifts of the Spirit.
The main point I am making is not our success or failure, but the "carnal" nature of the rector's argumentation. I hear echoes of it in many other Episcopal clergy who are "hanging on." To which I remind them of James' admonition: "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." (Jam. 3:1, NIV) Sure, don't try to separate the wheat from the tares, but their primary responsibility to protect they flock from spiritual harm.
-- The Rev. Bill DeArtega, is the Hispanic Pastor of Light of Christ Anglican Church (Capilla San Lázaro) in Marietta, Georgia. This article first appeared in "Pneuma Review".
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. He talked a good game (and was prominent at the AAC meetings where I saw him frequently) but when it came time to pay or play he got cold feet.
Ping to read later
I'm quite sure that Mother is referring to Fr. DeArtega's former Episcopal Church rector...the one who tried to convince DeArtega not to leave the ECUSA because of the "All Mighty Dollar" implications.
Thanks -- now that makes sense.
I am unable to disagree with your post.
A friend of my is an ELCA Lutheran. He was in seminary, and almost lost his faith as a result. About the time of my wedding, he fled, and is now working at a retreat.
Despite all that he has seen, he will not leave the ELCA. He wants to help "save" it, although he no longer feels that he could be a pastor in it since he doesn't believe anything the leadership is saying.
I keep asking him why he stays in communion with a group that no longer really believes in the God of the Bible.
I was talking about the man who was the rector of the old church before Vicki Gene even came on the scene. The one who said he was orthodox and went to all the AAC meetings, but decided to stay with the old ECUSA church . . . . with no staff and a handful of congregation. According to my friends, he had issues years ago, and his behavior certainly bears that out.
Better to meet in an office park with a folding table for an altar with the orthodox (which is what the new congregation is doing) than in a multi-million dollar church building with the heretics.
I will say in this guy's defense, whatever my friends think of him, I can understand his quandary. He's an older man, probably unemployable in anything else, and he's got a family to support. If he leaves, his pension, insurance, and everything else go down the drain.
That said, what profit it a man if he gain the world and lose his soul?
"They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
"They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
"They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
"They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
"They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
Yes
Are you saying that the orthodox who find themselves in the heat of spiritual battle with the Lord in an attempt to help guard God's children from the stealing of souls by satan and his minions from the Father are worse than heretics.
To the extent that they are in communion with them, yes. By being in a church or in communion with a church you are accepting its teachings or at least saying there is nothing there that is not compatible with Christianity.
If I am reading your post correctly, you should reevaluate your statement and look a the big picture here. We battle not against flesh and blood, but principalities. In other words, this is a spiritual battle.
The Big Picture is that ECUSA is institutionally apostate. They have repudiated or questioned almost every article of Christian Faith. When you are a member of ECUSA you are in communion with V. G. Robinson, Bp Spong, and Bp Griswold.. Would you join the Mormon Church to try to save it? Your position is simply contrary to the ancient canons and teachings of The Church.
This is not about homosexuality, nor is it about scriptural authority as much as it is about satan attempting to tear down what is rightfully God's from within, using the very persons that vowed to uphold scripture.
Satan has used those methods to break this denomination. The fight must continue, but from outside of it.
Look around, it's happening in just about EVERY mainline denomination.
Hmmm. Kinda makes you wonder about Protestantism in general. No?
"That one must not join in prayer with heretics or schismatics." Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea.
"That one must not accept the blessings of heretics, which are rather misfortunes than blessings." Canon 32 of the Council of Laodicea.
St. Maximus the Confessor said: "Even if the whole universe holds communion with the [heretical] patriarch, I will not communicate with him. For I know from the writings of the holy Apostle Paul: the Holy Spirit declares that even the angels would be anathema if they should begin to preach another Gospel, introducing some new teaching." The Life of St. Maximus the Confessor.
"Chrysostomos loudly declares not only heretics, but also those who have communion with them, to be enemies of God." St. Theodore the Studite, Epistle of Abbot Theophilus.
"All the teachers of the Church, and all the Councils, and all the Divine Scriptures advise us to flee from the heterodox and separate from their communion." St. Mark of Ephesus.
St. John the Almsgiver said: "We shall not escape sharing in that punishment which, in the world to come, awaits heretics, if we defile Orthodoxy and the holy Faith by adulterous communion with heretics." The Life of St. John the Almsgiver.
"Some have suffered final shipwreck with regard to the faith. Others, though they have not drowned in their thoughts, are nevertheless perishing through communion with heresy." St. Theodore the Studite.
See my last post for some quotes on that.
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