Hypocrisy on the Anglican Right?
Strictly Bible-based evangelicals who believe in the Incarnation and Trinity, making creeds a test for orthodoxy: that's already odd. Worse: when these Bible-based evangelicals complain that the Anglican left means to willfully contravene Scripture in advocating GC2003's acts, et al.
It seems to me that they cannot avoid going around against Scripturethemselves.
When do you celebrate the Sabbath, as we are clearly commanded to do in the moral law of the OT? Saturday or Sunday? I do not think there is ANY scholarly debate about the period of time the Decalogue picks out--here, if anywhere, the Bible comes close to a plain sense.
You show me where the Bible itself says in black and white the Sabbath commandment is no longer binding on Christians, who may instead simply celebrate Sundays instead of Sundays and Sabbaths or merely Sabbaths. Hmm--can't find it?
Wait--you mean to say when it comes to that commandment, and ONLY that commandment disobedience is a live option? Where in Scripture, in black and white, do we find the qualification and especially the "only."
Hang on--what's that? Somehow the clear call to obedience and Bible-based belief around the Scripture's plain sense can be trumped by nonbiblical inventions? Hmm, interesting.
posted by The Anglican Scotist @ 4:29 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
I read an article in Interpretaion a few years ago where the author said that we should not use the Bible as a rule book. What he had seen from both liberals and conservatives is that "if" the Bible supported what they already believed, then people were quick to point to it as God's Word/Law. But if on the other hand the Bible did not support what they believed, they were quick to just ignore that part of Scripture.
How about Luke 14:33??
Don't forget polygamy. It's not as clear a case as Sabbath observance, but it certainly seems to have been permitted to the people of the Old Covenant, and you won't find a blanket prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament -- just the injunction in 1 Timothy 3 that bishops and deacons be "the husband of one wife."
People really are too quick to dismiss this sort of hypocrisy as somehow an unhelpful part of the debates raging in Christianity. I can't see how one can do this. If you don't stone someone for planting his crops in the wrong order or if it's ok for a woman's head to be uncovered (despite Paul's defense of "because of the angels"), then please stop fracturing your index fingers pointing emphatically at other somehow inviolable passages.
To be fair (which may not be part of your remit) the sabbath law applies explicitly in the Hebrew Bible to the People of the Law and people living in the Land.
anon,
Like you, I place high value on the good-ol' Liberal virtue of Procedural Fairness. I am always happy to entertain one more cynical Liberal like yourself--note how I permit you a hearing, cynicism and all, unedited. After all, well, I admit I can be a bit cynical too. We all are probably prone to this vice given the current state of our dear old communion.
But even cynical liberals like us have to make an argument once in a while. After all, we don't wish Habermas' ideal seminar room to degenerate into a shouting match (or a big sloppy hissy fit with each of us sulking off our separate ways), do we?
So, please show me where in the Bible preferably in the NT it says that the Law--the whole law, every jot and iota, including the entire Decalogue, of course--applies only to the Israelites. I dare you--I DOUBLE dare you. You have a wonderful opportunity to embarass me on my home turf by trouncing me, proving me wrong now that I've gone off on such a long limb!
You may be right--I honestly do not know in the sense of having certainty and closure. But if you have that argument, let's hear it.
The neat thing is, if you really are right, then my overall case against the Anglican right becomes even stronger.
O English Scottish one,
Are we now permitted to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in terms of the New Testament? The rules of the game keep changing. Your problem with the Sabbath is resolved in Paul (however for those keen to keep the sabbath it might perhaps be considered adiaphora: one could even try the Ethiopian Orthodox Church). Other matters don't seem adiaphora. The hard business is distinguishing the one from the other.
I am not keen to rejoin the barbed world of the graduate philosophy seminar. I doubt it fruitful and for me unlikely to encourage virtue.
Apologies for having strayed onto your territory. Adieu.
anon,
Hang on a sec; the reference to Habermas was not a veiled invitation to carry on a graduate school seminar. Rather, he pictures the possibilit yof discourse implying a community founded on mutually accepted ethical principles, such that if these were lacking, any conversation would be impossible. Thus, my allusion to Habermas was merely exhortation for us each to carry on with due ethical regard for the other as we open a debate, rather than either sulking in silence or storming on in anger--moves that would defeat the purpose of exchange.
I am intrigued by the fact you so confidently consign an inconvenient part of the Decalogue to adiaphora--that seems to me to be a misuse of the term, but I may be wrong. Go ahead and make your case from Paul. I am truly curious.
As to the rules of the game--if you can prove that the Sabbath is no longer binding on Christians from the Old Testament alone, well you go right ahead. I had thought that only the NT would serve, but then again, I may be the one mistaken.
As things stand, I suspect your hand waving at Paul is a meaningless gesture.
I've always thought it presumptuous to think that God's will and the order of the universe could ever be completely contained in a man made book, written down by men and never be open for further interpretation.
As flawed as we are, don't people think that maybe some things went at least a little askew 'back in the day' when people were trying to figure out all this God stuff?
anonymous said,
"O English Scottish one,
Are we now permitted to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in terms of the New Testament?
This is done regularly and has been the case since the time of....Jesus Christ.
The Admiral of Morality
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