Iker Embracing GAFCON?
Iker's endorsement of GAFCON & its communique (6/29) puzzled me. Fort Worth should have, in my opinion, held out for something with a firmer grip on tradition. For it is surely a sign of our troubled times that Fort Worth should trade catholicity for GAFCON's heretical ecclesiology. Should we expect FiFNA-type Anglo-catholics in general to line up behind the Communique?
posted by The Anglican Scotist @ 11:48 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Why exactly are you opposed to the conservatives leaving and setting up an alternative communion? (You seem pleased in your previous post that "they're still in.")
The way I look at it, both sides stand to gain by sticking together and acting civil, even if they despise each other.
Neither side has done even a minimally acceptable job articulating its convictions--I've seen absolutely no growth in theological acumen anywhere in the conflict. That might have to do with the fact neither side has made a sustained effort to debate the other; why debate when there is already a set agenda in place?
Yet articulation is essential to the fruition of faith. So I say: stay together; commit to dialogue and debate; learn to articulate a coherent secondary theology.
Fission in this case--both sides' propensity to break away to form a new communion or undermine catholicty--seems like a vice, an evasion of responsibility
See Katie Sherrod today for hints in this regard!
I believe such "debate" would best be held from different communions in an "ecumenical" way. Conducting debate between irreconcilable worldviews from within the same communion just wastes energy better spent elsewhere.
An ecumenical debate is unlikely to happen--each side will be more likely to want to carry on doing other things. If such debate is mandatory, calling for an ecumenical format concedes transgression.
An intact communion could evolve a structure forcing debate, since such a communion already has an intact institutional apparatus suited to the task--and I am all for minimizing new bureaucracy.
As long as they have a communion in common, their worldviews are not simply disjoint--and thus there is no need for them to simply talk past each other.
Also, the notion that humans could construct disjoint worldviews for themselves is probably necessarily false.
Look at it this way. Either GAFCON is committed to TEC being a church, or it is not.
If it is, then the Jerusalem Declaration is inconsistent with the catholicity required of Christian faith. I think the available evidence points to GAFCON still recognizing TEC as a Christian church. But in that case, Fort Worth would be giving up on catholicity by joining with GAFCON--an odd thing for Anglo-catholics to do.
On the other hand, if GAFCON is not committed to accepting TEC as a Christian church--and the evidence is aginst this, but I suppose it is possible nevertheless--then GAFCON is committed to taking Fort Worth as offering only ersatz--and not full and genuine--sacraments, inasmuch as Fort Worth is what it is, a diocese with a bishop, for the moment at least, only by means of its membership in TEC. Butu that is odd for Anglo-catholics to sign on to: an admission to giving only ersatz Eucharists and ersatz ordinations.
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