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Tuesday
Jun282016

Geoffrey Kirk's Concluding Paragraphs

From his demolition job Without Precedent: Scripture, Tradition, and the Ordination of Women.  Speaking of the vote in the Church of England that allowed the ordination of women, he writes (bolded emphases mine):

A speech that passed almost unnoticed in the course of the debate was that of David Lunn, then Bishop of Sheffield.

The supporters of the legislation are divided on this issue of revelation, perhaps more than they realise. Some (the majority, I suspect, though we have not heard much from them on this matter today) . . . do not believe that there is a revelation with a given, known, tangible, authoritative content: the Holy Spirit leads us without embarrassing encumbrance from the past. Others, while believing in the reality of God's revealed truth, have convinced themselves that the revelation is silent on this "indifferent" matter of ministry. Oh, my deaf friends, hear me. If this legislation is approved this afternoon the authority of Scripture in the decision-making processes of the Church of England will have been inexorably and fatally weakened. Let me speak particularly to the House of Bishops.

The bishops are appointed to be the guardians of that faith once delivered to us.  To me it is both astonishing and distressing that the first fruits of the coming to prominence of so many Evangelicals among the bishops has been the steady carrying forward of this profoundly – at best – a-scriptural and probably unscriptural legislation. All of you, laywomen, laymen, deacons, presbyters, bishops, who believe that there is a concrete reality in God's revelation of himself, and that this is guarded, lived and handed on in Scripture and in the life of the Church, must hesitate for a very long time indeed before you vote for this legislation which, however its supporters may decorate it with quotations from Scripture, has its roots in a very different system of belief.

It was a speech that, in the eccentricity of its delivery, lost the impact it should have had. But it is packed with phrases prophetic of the future of the Church of England. "The Holy Spirit leads . . . without embarrassing encumbrance from the past." "The authority of scripture in the decision-making processes of the Church of England will have been inexorably weakened and fatally flawed!' "This legislation, however its supporters may decorate it with quotations from scripture, has its roots in a very different system of belief' Time has tested and proved the sagacity of those remarks. Though the Church of England continues, twenty years on, to celebrate the pain of those women who felt themselves denied their rights, the wisdom or otherwise of the innovation will be seen, not in its immediate fruits—the ministry of those women--but in the residual ability to deal with the social and ethical challenges which lie ahead. The immediate issue is that of homosexual marriage. No one in 1992, I suspect, envisaged a Conservative Party which would initiate changes in the understanding of marriage which would radically challenge the ipsissima verba of Jesus, the immemorial teaching of the Church, and the global cultural consensus of many millennia. But Vivienne Faull is right: "things are changing quickly in the country." And David Lunn was also right: the scriptural resources in the decision-making processes of the Church have been fatally weakened. (Michael Adie, you will recall, cited Jesus's own words about marriage, not to defend marital fidelity between a man and a woman—the burden of the texts—but to uphold a doctrine of sexual equality, which cannot be inferred from them.) It is not difficult to predict what the outcome will be. The real arguments in favor of women's ordination—anxiety about relevance and an un-nuanced attachment to human rights – makes the embrace of same-sex marriage only a matter of time.  The present Archbishop of Canterbury has said as much.  The church will be seen as “increasingly irrelevant”, Justin Welby told the General Synod, and as promoting attitudes “akin to racism.”  On another (and, some had maintained, unrelated) topic he has nothing better to say than George Carey.

David Lunn was also right about the origins of these ideas:  “legislation which, however its supporters may decorate it with quotations from Scripture, has its roots in a very different system of belief.” The language of inalienable and self-evident rights is very far from the unvarying vocabulary of the scriptures, which speak of divine will and gracious gift. It is the language of Jean-Jacques of Geneva, not of Jesus of Nazareth.

One is reminded here of the words of C.S. Lewis: "Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion."  Indeed.  Sad that so many Evangelicals, all of whom believe themselves to be "biblical Christians" par excellence, have conspired to support such an unbiblical and uncatholic practice as women's ordination, so unbiblical and uncatholic in fact as to constitute a different religion, a difference in kind, not just degree.  We might be able to forgive Evangelicals who do not have a Catholic ecclesiology or a Catholic view of ordination.  Anglicans, however, cannot be forgiven.

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Reader Comments (1)

Indeed, it's startling to consider that a church overrun with women trying to act like men ceases to be meaningfully Christian. Every time I see a "Mother" So-And-So listed among the clergy on an Episcopal website, it's grating because it reeks of phoniness, the height of play-acting, thumbing the nose at Tradition and the received theology of Scripture. It's grating because it is unbiblical. I won't bother to comment on the satanic, cultish, creepy feel I get also -- it's far too subjective but seems consonant with the objective data.

July 4, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterThe Haunted Bookman

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