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.
-30-
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Cheers!
I should have said Strong’s Concordance, defines all Hebrew and Greek words
I'll take awhile to digest it.
Cheers!
Their professors didn’t have a clue either, LOL.
Amen! Saved BY grace THROUGH faith.
It seems to me, dear 1000silverlings, that you cut man down to the size of your doctrine, rather than let him be as "big" as God wants him to be. Your definition of "sinner" seems to be: anybody who doesn't agree with your doctrine. And these "ungodly" can only be saved by accepting your doctrine — which is a heretical notion in the context of a doctrine that proclaims salvation in Christ only.
There is no salvation outside of Christ. Certainly there is not any kind of doctrinal salvation.
Holy cow. So now there's no personal sin? It sounds socialist. It's one thing to be our brother's keeper, it's another to know we need to examine the log in our eye, and not the splinter in our brother's. Well, welcome schism, because I hope she doesn't have a lot of followers who think this is sound theology. I'm Catholic, and this sounds to me like her own version of Liberation Theology, and that can't be a good thing.
To me, Christ is no "object." He is Eternal Subject. To "objectivize" Him is to cut Him down to the size of what the human mind can grasp. THAT is not Jesus Christ.
LOLOL grey_whiskers! You'd have to be a very strange "sister" indeed to go by the screen name you use! :^)
Plus you don't "think like a girl." :^)
Actually the "second sister" I was thanking in the context of my post was Dr. Eckleburg....
But I must thank you as well for your beautiful essay/post at #209. And also for #210. Perhaps needless to say, I so agree with your insights.
The Jewish mystics attribute the problem of anthropomorphizing God to the limitations of mortal language. Or to put it another way, when a mortal attempts to describe God in his mortal terms he is superimposing his own mental limitations onto God. What he ends up with is a small 'god' his puny, mortal mind can comprehend.
Michaelangelo's "Creation of Adam" - beautiful though it is - is an anthropomorphism of God.
Instead of trying to describe God in terms of space or time or appearance or character the Jewish mystics use the term Ayn Sof to describe God The Creator. Roughly translated it means "no thing" - the negation of human terms or that human terms do not apply to Him, e.g. timeless instead of time without end. Or to put it another way, God created time, it is not a property or limitation of Him.
A similar problem arises whenever Christians attempt to debate what I consider to be the three theological "hot buttons:" the origin of evil, predestination v free will and in the case at hand, works v faith.
The bottom line as always is to love God surpassingly above all else. That is the one and only Great Commandment. If we do that, obviously we will believe Him and trust Him - and also as a distant second, love our neighbor as ourselves.
At that point, we needn't "sweat the details" - e.g. whether we are correctly emphasizing between faith and works - because all the law and the prophets hang on those two commandments.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40
His comment spoke to the fact that all faith and grace belong to Christ alone, the only object of our worship.
Protestants and Roman Catholics have fundamental differences that needn't be glossed over.
RCs believe men are justified, in part, by their own good works while Protestants believe men are justified by faith in Christ's work on the cross alone. This faith is a free, merciful gift from God which identifies and sanctifies His own.
"...and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts." -- Haggai 2:23
RCs believe objects today have intrinsic holiness and the power to redeem. Protestants believe that only Christ is perfect, holy, without blemish and capable of redeeming men from sin and that this redemption has already been won for His flock by His death and resurrection.
RCs believe in additional, human, dead and living mediators while Protestants believe that Christ is our only mediator.
As 1000silverlings said, faith in Jesus Christ is simply knowing, believing and trusting that Jesus Christ is God, our only Lord, King and Savior. The ability to understand this is from God alone. We must be born again spiritually by the Holy Spirit in order to know the things of God.
And grace, although it's a word that can be used colloquially as any sort of goodness, is biblically a very specific thing. Grace is God's predestining favor wherein He has determined to mercifully adopt and save all those whom He has chosen from before the foundation of the world to be among His family who will be acquitted by His Son's sacrifice for their sins.
We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to the will of God alone and made known to us through God's holy word alone (Christ being the word made flesh.)
It is true that all men benefit by Christ's life, even if they don't know it. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and no man is without excuse.
Yet all the world sings of God's saving grace to those whom He has called to Himself, and only those men from among the world hear that music with new ears and behold this life with new eyes and understand Christ's sacrifice with a renewed mind and believe in His name with a heart of flesh. And all that equals our salvation BY grace THROUGH faith. Such is the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, "by whom all things consist."
Amen.
It does seem a valid use of time and thought, however, to determine whether or not our "love of God" lines up with who God really is and is in accord with God's instructions.
From a Protestant viewpoint, to say we contribute to our own salvation with our own good works of righteousness literally detracts from the complete love that is due God's unearned mercy He has manifested in us and which alone saves us.
Therefore we are saved by the righteousness of Christ's work on the cross graciously imputed to us, and not by our own good works in any way. All glory to God. That is love.
William Buckley said "gratitude is the proper perspective of man." And IMO he was even more correct than he knew. We are grateful for what we cannot accomplish in ourselves. Otherwise it's not mercy; it's debt. And a sovereign God is in debt to no man.
As to the "Faith v. Works" conundrum: I think Tony Capoccia (of Reformed Church persuasion) gets it just exactly right:
Please explain James 2:20, "...that faith without works is dead."In these lines, I think Capoccia gets it just exactly right. FWIWAnswer:
“But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” What does this mean: "Faith without works is dead"? Does this mean that to be saved we have to do works? Well let’s find out.
Back up, verse 14. We have got to get the context. “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?”
Now what {James} is saying, ... that’s why Martin Luther said that the Book of James was a right strawy [something of little value] epistle, he didn’t like it, because it kind of fouled up his doctrine of justification by faith. But that is only because he didn’t study it in deep detail to see what was really being said.
What does the Bible teach about salvation? Abraham was justified by works? Romans four, is that what it says? "Abraham was justified by what...? "Faith." Abraham was not justified by works. Romans chapter three says, "No man is justified by works. By the deeds of the law shall..."what? "No flesh be justified," none. There is no way that we can be justified. In Romans 3:28, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.” Salvation is by faith, not by works. Galatians chapter three tells us the same thing, that you cannot be justified by works, you cannot be saved by what you do, in terms of deeds. He says, “…they that are of faith,” Galatians 3:9, “are blessed with faithful Abraham.” It’s all a matter of faith. The man that is justified, he says in verse 11, “But no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, … The just shall live by faith.” Now the Bible teaches that you are saved by faith, well you say, [then] what in the world is James saying?
Can faith save him? James is looking at this from the stand point of evaluation. He is looking at a man who says, "I have faith!" And he is saying, all right if you have true saving faith then I ought to see some evidence of it, right? “By their fruits you shall...” what? "...know them.”
He is simply saying, if your faith is genuine then it’s going to manifest itself. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation, old things are passed away and behold all things become...” what? "…new.” There is going to be a manifestation. And so he says, what kind of faith have you got my friend, I don’t see any evidence?
For example, he says, “If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you who claims to have saving faith says "depart in peace, be warm and filled.” Just what he needs. Condolence. Hope you feel better, hope you find some food. But [if] you don’t give him the things needful to the body, what kind of faith is that? If you’re really saved, it’s going to be a working kind of salvation that will bear fruit. That’s all he’s saying. So, in verse seventeen, “…so faith, if it doesn't have works, is dead, because it's alone.” So it’s a dead faith not a living faith....
One kind of faith is the faith that doesn’t have any works and it is dead faith and the other faith is the faith that produces something and it's living faith. One saves and one doesn’t. That’s what he is saying, "Oh," but he says "I believe, I believe," "Yeah," he says, "The devils believe and they tremble." It’s not enough to believe unless that believing results in an act of commitment to Christ that results in a changed life that bears fruit. That’s his whole point. [Itals and bolds added]
...
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board.
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
With a nod to Tony, the question that needs to be asked is are we saved (even in part) by our own good works or 100% by Christ's work on the cross freely imputed to us?
As always, I appreciate your spirit of charity and hope I convey the same to you. Yet concerning this particular discussion, there is either one mediator between men and God or there are more. One perspective is correct and gives all glory to God and one perspective is wrong and does not.
As Grace's doctrinal statement reminds us..."We teach that, whereas there may be several applications of any given passage of Scripture, there is but one true interpretation."
Michaelangelo's "Creation of Adam" — beautiful though it is — is an anthropomorphism of God.
Beautifully and truly said, dearest sister in Christ!
God does not reduce to anything human, mortal. But it's easy to see why that concept may be difficult to grasp, on first hearing or even later.
Put another way, we are in His Image, not the other way around (as, e.g., Feuerbach insisted).
You wrote:
The bottom line as always is to love God surpassingly above all else. That is the one and only Great Commandment. If we do that, obviously we will believe Him and trust Him — and also as a distant second, love our neighbor as ourselves.God's Name is I AM!At that point, we needn't "sweat the details" — e.g. whether we are correctly emphasizing between faith and works — because all the law and the prophets hang on those two commandments.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.This is the first and great commandment.
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. — Matthew 22:37–40
His Name is I AM!
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. - Psalms 91:14
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. – Matthew 10:32-33
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God. – Deut 12:3-4
Emphasis mine:
And, as betty boop’s excerpt explains (thank you, dearest sister in Christ) - of course we cooperate with the indwelling Spirit, we follow Him, we surrender to God’s will. (Romans 8, John 15, et al) Some might call that a contribution. From my perspective, we could do no less for the One we love with all our hearts and minds and souls and strengths and understanding. For that reason I wouldn’t call it a contribution but a sanctification, a “growing up” in Him.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. – Galatians 5:22-23
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. - Matthew 7:17
(I have some things which require my attention at the moment, but I look forward to reading your replies this evening.)
Dear sister in Christ, you are always charitable towards me! And I'm glad you find me likewise towards you! People can disagree without being disagreeable. Yet the fact remains, on the core issues, I keep finding we mostly agree.
WRT to your question above, it seems the main difficulty between us is you tend to separate "faith" and "works" into two separable, mutually exclusive boxes while I tend to see them as dynamically, organically interrelated. Because I do, I don't have to "choose" between them.
Yet I do believe, on the one hand, that no amount of "good works" can save if we have no faith in Christ, or worse, outright deny God. At this level of the problem — call it "the level of gross description" if you will — it seems justified to speak as if the terms faith and works are indeed separable in a certain sense.
On the other hand, at the personal level, to sort faith and works into their two boxes again, and to ask which one of the two is "efficacious," seems like a bad way of proceeding. My point is at this level of the problem, such a separation creates a false dichotomy. For at this level, faith and works go "hand-in-glove," so to speak. Which is the very point I thought Pastor Tony made so very eloquently (as quoted in my last).
Your question raises a more technical point, one that seems to go to the doctrine of justification, the mystery of how Christ's work on the cross which constitutes the hope of our salvation is "freely imputed to us." By "us" I gather you mean individual souls. I can't speak very well to this issue; I don't know the details. All I know is there is no salvation outside of Christ! And that He alone purchased our redemption from eternal damnation by means of His suffering and death on the Cross.
"We teach that, whereas there may be several applications of any given passage of Scripture, there is but one true interpretation."I so agree! Yet I recognize that the "one true interpretation" is, paradoxically, probably not something that can be reduced to a pure doctrinal form of any kind. Or at least, that is my suspicion regarding the matter. I rather suspect that, although the one true intrepretation is definitely known to God (after all, these are His own statements), the distance between God and man (cognitively speaking) is so vast that I strongly doubt that any man can ever know what God knows. At least, not in this life, in this world....
In other words, human reason — as magnificent a gift of God that it is — cannot take us "all the way home" on this issue.
And that is why we need faith — a living faith.
Just some thoughts, reflections, FWIW.
The TRUTH is there is no salvation outside of Christ.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear Dr. Eckleburg!
Amen. Most every one of us starts out with a mustard seed of faith. If that is what we end up with, that still suffices to bring us to Him, if God so wills.
One of my favorite sermons by Charles Spurgeon begins with the Bible verse "For who has despised the day of small things?" -- and concludes with...
"...We don't want the seed forever in the corn-bin: let it be scattered and it will give us more. Oh! brethren and sisters, wake up if any of you are asleep. Don't let an ounce of strength in this church be wasted--not a single grain of ability, either in the way of doing, or praying, or giving, or holy living. Spend and be spent, for who hath despised the day of small things? The Lord encourage weak believers, and the Lord accept the efforts of feeble workers, and send to both his richest benediction for Christ's sake. Amen.
Aye, what was that line about
"Who although He be God and Man; yet He is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God."
Athanasian Creed, or somesuch?
Cheers!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.