Posted on 07/10/2009 5:04:53 AM PDT by Frumanchu
ANAHEIM, Calif. (ABP) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.
Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group's triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with "the great Western heresy -- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."
"It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus," Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected as a primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion three years ago, said. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."
Jefferts Schori said countering individualistic faith was one reason the theme chosen for the meeting was "Ubuntu," an African word that describes humaneness, caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation.
"Ubuntu doesn't have any 'I's in it," she said. "The 'I' only emerges as we connect -- and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no 'I' without 'you,' and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the One who created us."
Jefferts Schori said "heretical and individualistic understanding" contributes to problems like neglect for the environment and the current worldwide economic recession.
"The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many, as greed and dishonesty have destroyed livelihoods, educational possibilities, care for the aged, and multiple forms of creativity," she said. "And that's just the aftermath of Ponzi schemes for which a handful will go to jail."
She said in order to be faithful, "we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones."
"Ubuntu implies that selfishness and self-centeredness cannot long survive," she said. "We are our siblings' knowers and their keepers, and we cannot be known without them."
"We have no meaning, no true existence in isolation," she said. "We shall indeed die as we forget or ignore that reality."
About 200 Episcopal bishops and 850 clergy and lay deputies were expected to convene for the 10-day meeting. Business items are set to include debates over human sexuality, politics and poverty.
One resolution being considered calls for "generous discretion" to be extended to clergy in exercising pastoral ministry in six states -- Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- where the civil marriage of same-gender couples has been legalized as well as other states that may follow suit in the next three years.
The 2.1-million-member denomination has argued vociferously about homosexuality since 2003, when the group approved the election of its first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Many more conservative Episcopalians and a handful of congregations have begun breaking away from the church in the years since.
Southern Baptist mega-church pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, took sides in his sister denomination's debate recently by showing up in Texas to encourage about 800 Episcopalians attending the first annual meeting of a conservative breakaway group calling itself the Anglican Church in North America.
Warren, who spoke out last fall against legal gay marriage in California, said in January that any nearby Anglican congregation that loses its property after breaking with the U.S. Episcopal Church was welcome to meet on the campus of his Saddleback Church.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Agreed dear brother in Christ!
I do not lay globalism at the feet of the Catholic church and certainly not at the feet of this Pope.
Man's desire for one world governance has always been there, but Daniel reveals that only a few attempts will actually succeed. A one world governance today would be a neon sign flashing that Christ is coming again, soon.
Future history converges to that very end. Just look at the hugely successful marketing of global governance by the Star Trek programs. People are being prepared to accept it, suspending reality as if they were watching a movie, expecting it to cure all kinds evils (e.g. love of money) they refuse to accept personal responsibility for, and all without batting an eye.
I see no reason for Catholic or Protestant to cease evangelizing the world, trying to turn it into place where God is loved surpassingly above all else and as a distant second, where every man loves his neighbor as himself. Notably, if they were to succeed, that itself would be a one world religion and a one world governance, a moral and ethical one.
The difference of course is that the one world religion and one world governance that will precede Christ's return will only start out looking peaceful and Star Trekky. Within a few short years it will be revealed as Satanic. (Revelation, Daniel)
And that, too, is according to God's will.
Yes. Exactly. What Pope Benedict is speaking of is a specifically Christian, God-centered humanism.
_____% A) CAN be so humanized according to Christian priniciples and moral criteria
and/or
_____% B) WILL be so humanized according to Christian priniciples and moral criteria
I don't much concern myself with handicapping the odds, Quix. I do know that I can of myself do nothing — nor can universal humanity. But what we can do is live in His Truth, do what we can, and then leave the rest up to Him.
INDEED.
It is humanized to the full extent of man’s fallen nature, already.
QUITE SO.
Absolutely.
I agree with every word.
Thanks.
True enough.
However, in a sense,
you make my point by refusing to give a percentage on the chance of each option.
I’d put A) at 0.0000% in this End Times, modern era context.
I’d put B) at minus 100% in this END TIMES MODERN ERA context.
The Pope can scream it from the housetops and every parish church in 3D technicolor holographic video encyclicals every half hour.
What does it matter?
What would it matter?
Given that there’s not a fog’s chance in hell of it ever being even briefly more than microscopically true before Armageddon . . .
What’s the point?
What’s the purpose . . . REALLY?
The realization of such a "moral and ethical" one-world religion or system of governance by means of our own human powers would be impossible. We are made in the image of God, to be moral actors in this world, to cooperate in His Law. We have reason and free will; but these gifts of God are never sufficient to establish a global moral and ethical order, either religious or secular.
But if we bear witness unto the Lord, and do His Will — above all loving Him wholly, heart, mind, and soul — then He can work in and through us. We can start; but only He can "finish" what we start, if we begin in Love and Truth.
Of course not.
However, seductive false hope can be amongst the cruelst things to perpetrate on innocents and unawares.
To the degree that this encyclical gives any RC or anyone else even a hint of a convincing notion that globalism can be moderated, softened, civilized, . . . or worse, sanctified
then the good Pope ends up playing the enemy’s destructive game.
However, Scripture appears to emphatically insist
that all such starts, this side of Armageddon will fail 100% utterly.
And only Christ leading HIS BODY post Armageddon will achieve such a thing.
We CAN help add to the members of His Body such as will be saved by our right living and sharing His Love and Gospel.
That has little to nothing to do in the remotest sense with any sort of globalism beyond the fact that Christ’s Body is made up of believers from all over the globe.
And He has already declared how it will ultimately be, the new heaven and new earth:
God's Name is I AM!
I do not see where that is playing into the hands of the evil one but rather testifying to what we should be but are not. Darkness does not overcome light; Light overcomes darkness.
Concerning the evil in this world, Christians, all of us, must stay alert, always keeping the Great Commandment, so that we do not become like the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus rails against in Matthew 23, permitting something God made for good to become perverted or corrupt.
This is not only a tragedy, but a scandal, kalee. My heart goes out to your mother — and my prayers, for her, your auntie, and you.
I do not see where that is playing into the hands of the evil one but rather testifying to what we should be but are not.
Oh so beautifully said, dearest sister in Christ! We must stand in Faith and Love and Truth — and Hope. That is our Christian calling, our vocation, as Pope Benedict puts it.
To God be the glory!
Thanks dearest sister in Christ! I've been an admirer of his since the early '90s, when I first became aware of him.
Oh, this is really off-topic in a way, but I wonder if you noticed how "Rosenian" some of Benedict's remarks were in Chapter 5. In particular, his emphasis of "relationality" and the idea of natural causation as involving a hierachical (rather than linear) system of entailments....
James 4:4 - Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
1 John 2:15 - Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
AMEN!!!
As Alamo-Girl reminds us so often, our job is to ”Love God.”
And how do men show their love to God? By obeying Him and worshiping Him in truth and love.
If that is done, everything else falls into place.
But if we worship something other than the Triune God and swear allegiance to part of the creation instead of the only Creator, we can never be right with God because that skewed trajectory is only taking us ever farther from Him.
Creation is ontologically good because it was created by God for His glory. Because of the Fall Creation has been sickened over by the curse of sin which is experienced by mankind as an ethical derangement where we now see things backwards, mistaking evil for good.
The resurrection power of Jesus Christ removes this spiritual inversion, perversity and self-destruction from those whom God has chosen to acquit of their sins by the sacrifice of Christ. These men and women will, at a time of God's choosing, experience creation as intended, joyfully and good. We sing "Joy to the world...the Lord is come."
The question, distilled through the Reformation, is how do men become acquitted? The RCC gets much of this correct. Its dogma of acquittal by the blood of Christ is correct. Its method of acquittal is heresy. Men are not acquitted of their sins through the mojo of "another Christ." As Luther stated, men are justified by grace through faith given by God to whom He will.
How is God's grace dispensed? Through the priestcraft and mystical rituals, or through the Holy Spirit working directly on the heart of the believer?
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