Episcopal church without gay marriage

Another instance of Jesus acting as Judge on the wicked is Matthew 23, particularly this bit: "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves!"

 

Are you a double predestination Calvinist then or an Anglican? It might surprise some to learn that they continue in sin every day, through ignorance, through weakness, through their own deliberate fault.

There is no wisdom in sin. It's a stupidly ignorant thing to do if you can avoid doing it. There are some that lack that luxury though, and they mostly need compassion. Jesus had that in spades and trumps with a thirteen trick hand.

That quote still does not indicate that Jesus was either judgmental or condemnatory. Quite the contrary in fact. His judgement is just, which is more than can be said for most human beings who think that they have the "Knowledge of Good and Evil" simply by eating some fruit from a tree. The knowledge of good and evil comes from wisdom and wisdom demands insight, not digestion.

Good quote: and specifically adressed to self righteous, judgmental religious types.
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No. A sinner who persists in his sin needs correction and intervention as much (or more) than compassion. Compassion is an emotion felt by others, Tiffy -- it does nothing for the object of their compassion. Compassion does nothing for the sinner if it does not lead to corrective action of some kind. It ends up just being virtue signaling on the part of the pious. I can have compassion for a homeless person, but all my compassion does not feed him or keep him warm. Compassion may make me feel good, but it does nothing for him. I must intervene somehow to change his situation -- give him food, lead him to shelter, teach him the Gospel.

When it comes down to it, which is of more value to a starving man: my compassion or a loaf of bread?

Christian compassion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective ministry in the world. If compassion does not lead to action, it is useless -- and even can turn into a kind of vain self-regard, if indulged in. Being a "do-gooder" without actually doing good is the very worst kind of hypocrisy.

 

Hah! It's true that some Christians hate Calvin more than they hate the devil. It's weird.

As it happens I am more of a Puritan than a strict Calvinist (I don't really agree with the "persistence of the saints" in the strict Calvinist formulation). Think Jonathan Edwards or John Owen or John Bunyan. Or in more modern times, J. I. Packer or John Stott, good Anglicans both. My beliefs are very much in line with historic Anglican thought.

 

Compassion: A feeling of sorrow or pity for the suffering of another with a desire to alleviate it.

Compassion is not cold charity, it is that which prompts practical action, even when there is nothing immediately that can be done. Matt.9:36, Matt.20:34, Mark 5:19, Mark 6:34, Luke 10:33, Luke 15:20.

Q. What practical action did the Father immediately do for the prodigal son? A. He loved and accepted him without demanding an apology.

Compassion, according to this statement, is made to seem more like a vice than a virtue. Was Jesus a virtue signalling hypocrite, in your opinion? Surely that can't be so, since Jesus often felt compassion for people, as we are led to believe by the scripture.

So are you saying that Jesus having compassion for you would do nothing for you, the object of His compassion? Was he just indulging in an emotion felt by 'do-gooders'? Acts 10:37-38.
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So no actual rejection of open theism, then? Ok.

Whether or not you may want to end up in open theism, all of the logic you've said so far will irrevocably land there. And open theism is heresy and apostasy.

This was never used for doctrine, and if used in this way, it ends in open theism. That's checkmate for Christianity, for the church, and for the gospel. Transgender pro-abortion lesbian priests are just as fine as anything else.

If "Scripture, Tradition, and Reason" are three viable sources for doctrine, then that's even worse than the medieval Roman corruption of "only" scripture and tradition as their sources of doctrine. Adding reason as a source of Christian doctrine is sheer blasphemy.

To confine the doctrine of the Church only to Scripture was a painful project, sealed with the blood of martyrs.

So instead of what you say there, the more Anglican answer would be the one provided b Lancelot Andrews:
-"one gospel, two testaments, three creeds, four councils, and the first five centuries form the bounds of our faith."

 

As Shakespeare would say "Methinks thou dost protest too much". Heresy and Apostacy are words much to big for little minds to safely use.
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I rejected it in no uncertain terms, but I will do so again here. Open Theism is the belief that God and the world are related in such a way that, as the world develops or progresses, God changes along with it. This assumes that the world is somehow “part of” God (also known as panentheism). This understanding of the divine being compromises any straightforward belief in God’s omniscience, and violates the classical theistic tenet that God is the First Cause, by allowing that His creation can effect change within Him. This I deny, and I adhere wholeheartedly and unreservedly to classical theism as it was taught by, e.g., Philo, Plotinus, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine, Ibn Sina, Ibn Maymun (Maimonides), Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Hooker, Descartes, Leibniz, and others. As St. John of Damascus so thoroughly and eloquently put it:

I know of no better statement of classical theism than the Prima Pars of the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, and refer to it often.

Where we do differ is in our assumptions about the link between God and the Scriptures. I accept modern science and biblical criticism, and I do not assume either inerrancy or plenary verbal inspiration. This is something we have covered before on other threads and is, I think, the true crux of the issue. As I see it, Scripture preserves for us local responses at particular times to the conviction that there is a God, that He has a specific will and standards, and that He is our source and destiny. Scripture is the written record of our response to God. I don’t assume that God changes; but we certainly change, and our understanding of God changes with us. Our assumptions about Scripture is where we differ, and the lack of common ground on that subject that has persisted since at least the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy is why discussions of this nature turn out so often to be acrimonious and unfruitful.

 

I've always thought of that motto in this way: Scripture is the foundation upon which tradition and reason rest. That's why it comes first.

 

@Stalwart the question was:

My answer was as succinctly Anglican as it gets:

There’s nothing controversial there. I wasn’t responding to a question about doctrine, so I’m not sure why that even came up. Seeking the guidance of Scripture, tradition, and reason (and whatever else may be beneficial) to help “keep us this day without sin” is what we petition God to help us do every single day.

 

In many cases, it is. It becomes a form of Munchausen by proxy. People do get addicted to that self-righteous dopamine hit. (The upper echelons are full of scolds and nags like this. They're full of opinions on what should be done for the poor, but when it comes to donating time or money, they are nowhere to be found.)

It's the same with empathy. Empathy ungrounded with a moral sense is a character flaw more often than not. Compassion is like that -- compassion without action is basically mental onanism, or at least laziness. It just means that I feel bad for someone, but not enough to actually do anything about it.

Christ certainly has compassion, but he acted, he emptied himself and become incarnate, and taught and preached to the point of torture and death upon the cross, to save sinners. He didn't just tsk-tsk about the shame of it all while going about his own business. And he most certainly did not sanction sinful behavior in the guise of "compassion for weakness". Consider 1 John 3:8: "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil."

Christ is God, and God hates sin as only a holy God can hate sin. He hates sin so much that the penalty for it is death.

 

Which He already bore Himself.

I have no practical use for an understanding of God that sees Him as less merciful, less understanding, and less loving, as even a mediocre earthly parent is toward his or her own children. What is all that omniscience and omnipotence for if in the end He is constrained to blindly follow an abstract rule like a computer program? A loving parent doesn’t hold grudges against their child. If that’s the example one takes from the Scriptures, it’s an execrable one to imitate.

 

The Bible is the Word of God written. We know God from the Bible because it is God's revealed word to us. If it is not that, then Christianity is an empty box.

Was Christ the incarnate person of the Son, both fully man and fully God? Did he heal the sick and walk on water? Did he feed the multitudes with only a bit of fish and bread? Did Christ actually raise Lazarus from the dead? We believe that Christ could be raised because Lazarus was raised, and that we can be raised as Christ was raised -- bodily, as Jesus was. We believe these things because God tells us so in the Bible. If we did not have the Bible we would not know any of these things; and if the Bible is not God's Word but that of men, we cannot know if what we read is true.

If Christ was not raised, we will not be raised and we are all deluding ourselves.

Do you doubt the resurrection of Christ? If not, why not? We only know of it from the Bible; maybe it's just another of those charming myths those ancient Hebrews spun to entertain themselves around the campfire.

1 Cor. 15:13-19:

 

Yet men persist in sin, yes? Or do you say that sin is gone from the world? Do you say that we may sin as much as we like and still be saved as long as we confess Christ?

How does sin persist even in those who have been baptized and claim to be reborn in Christ? We see it all the time -- are these sinners still saved? Do they need to repent or not? Can they continue in their sin or must they cease and return to Godly behavior?

Or perhaps you are saying that the Bible no longer has the final say in what is "sinful" or not. But that just takes us back to the question of authority -- if you're not getting it from the Bible, then where can a follower of Christ get it?

I quoted Romans 6:1-14 up the thread, and I stand by it.

 

Once again, I am being questioned on this thread regarding a topic that’s never been addressed in it, and regarding a doctrine I have never in my life denied. “Debate” doesn’t mean “constantly changing the subject”. Some of the inferences being drawn here are truly out of left field.

 

It didn’t have the final say when it came to the issue of slavery (nor should it have). Granted, some abolitionists saw themselves as basing their views on Scriptural principles when they took the stand that they did, but the plain sense of neither Testament prohibits the institution. It was necessary to go beyond Scripture in order to realize the nobler parts of its vision. With regard to slavery, I don’t think any serious person questions this principle. And if it’s true for slavery it can be true for other issues as well.

 

When you say that "Scripture is the written record of our response to God", it opens a really big box of theological problems that you don't seem to want to deal with. Most of what we're talking about here boils down to the authority of Scripture over Christians, and you are being very evasive on that point. The Bible isn't a buffet where you take what you like and leave the rest.

 

You should probably read Colossians and Philemon again.

 

Why?

 

I agree. That’s what I’ve been saying. In terms of authority, as I see it, books as such have none; people do. When my life is finally judged, the excuse “the Bible made me do it” will not suffice. I, and I alone, am responsible for my actions. Morality is “written on our hearts”. It is not “across the sea” or “in the heavens above”. In Kantian terminology, morality, though objective and universal, is autonomous. The fundamentalist view of the Bible, which I completely reject, implies a morality that is heteronymous. In other words, to follow a command merely because someone else commands it, and not because it is intrinsically right, is no morality at all. That is Kant’s basic insight. And, contra Open Theism, what is intrinsically right (and wrong) doesn’t change: slavery was as wrong 3,000 years ago as it was in 1861 and as it is today. There is no ‘relativism’ in sheep’s clothing here.