Collapsing Angels and Echoes from Eden - is this good Theology?

It isn’t odd at all. The Pericope Adulterae crept in via the Latin tradition, from which modern Western Christendom - both Catholic and Protestant - derives. No surprise it would be in the Vulgate, or most printed English Bibles.

The answer to your question is “tradition.” The ending of Mark is typically included in printed Bibles even though it wasn’t part of the original book. Same goes for the final chapter of John, and (arguably) certain passages in the genuine Pauline corpus. Their use is hallowed by tradition and is part of longstanding Christian piety and practice. I don’t think anyone here is suggesting these passages should be excluded from printed Bibles.

The Pericope Adulterae is also one of the best known and most loved stories about Jesus in all the Gospels, and is well known even among non-Christians. Nobody wants that story to be removed from Bibles outright, and to do so would be a drastic and unwarranted overreaction. As I stated above, it’s merely a question of status rather than membership.

 

Maybe because so many readers LIKE the character of the Jesus that is portrayed in the story and don't care if it was abitrarily declared 'canonical' or not by some men in the church back in 356 AD. It's a story about Jesus, and it's a GOOD story. Why not let everone read it and know it? I'm certain God would want that. We aren't Marcionists, wanting to ditch most of what has been included in the New Testament.
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When I first joined this forum, I was informed that Anglicans are Bible believing Christians who also respect the first 5 centuries of church tradition. The pericope appeared in the church's Bibles in the first 5 centuries. The belief that it and certain other passages (such as the ending of Mark 16) don't belong in the Bible is the product of "modern Bible scholarship" (a phrase which I equate with evil epithets), of people who think they are oh-so-wiser than all of the Christians who went before them despite being much further removed timewise from the original evidence. The so-called "modern scholars" base their thinking on the current existence or non-existence of ancient manuscripts to support their position; they overlook obvious fact that some of those currently nonexistent manuscripts could very well have been extant during the 4th and 5th Century time period, and for this very reason we should esteem the judgment of Jerome and the early church regarding Bible content much more highly than the judgment of 19th or 20th Century "scholars" who think they know more than the people who once possessed more information.

The very presence of the pericope and of the Mark 16 ending in the Bibles in the many centuries prior to the Westcott-Hort era of Bible "scholarship" is incontrovertible proof that they are Canonical Scripture.

The fruit of so-called "modern Bible scholarship" is doubt and unbelief. It has caused millions of people to have lower regard for the Bible's reliability. After all, when one cannot trust whether the portion one reads is actually the word of God or not, this concept casts a shadow of doubt upon the entire collection of books and upon the Christian belief that they are divinely inspired & divinely preserved by the Holy Spirit. This has grown a crop of theological liberalism, for when people doubt divine inspiration and preservation, it becomes rather easy for them to accept all sorts of new doctrines and denials of old ones. The 'faith once held by all the saints' has become perverted and twisted so that it bears less and less resemblance over time to the beliefs taught by the Apostles.

When I first joined here, this forum was a blessed haven for orthodox Anglican Christian faith and practice. Now it has devolved and succumbed to the modernists. Of course the modernists think this is an improvement.

"...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)

 

"First 5 centuries" is arbitrary, as is "the first 4 councils" or "the first 6 councils." Why stop there? A far sounder approach is to respect all 20 centuries (and what we've experienced of the 21st so far). The Christian Tradition is one continuous whole across time and space. All of it matters. We cannot understand where we are today unless we understand where we were yesterday, and so on, going all the way back to the beginning. Assigning historical or geographical cutoff points - like pretending the Middle Ages never happened - is simply arbitrary. The medieval Catholic tradition, however it may have been modified during the Reformation, is nevertheless just as much an inalienable part of our Anglican heritage as is the patristic era. The Fathers and Doctors of the medieval period are just as much ours as they are Rome's, and they are as relevant today as they were 500 years ago. One cannot understand the writings of, say, Richard Hooker, without a thorough familiarity with St. Thomas Aquinas. By the same token, the modern era is ours as well. Schleiermacher, Bonhoeffer, and Tillich belong just as much to the Church's orbit as do Kuyper, Brunner, and Barth.

Again, no one here is saying this.

We may be dealing with slightly different understandings of what "canon" means in this context. The word "canon" occurs twice in the body of the Articles of Religion, but is never defined.

There's no real definition here. Nevertheless, the 6th Article employs the term to refer exclusively to books rather than to individual verses (or words). What the same article has to say about the Deuterocanonical writings is interesting:

It is intriguing to note that the Article does not go so far as to deny that these books are "canon," but it does assert a difference in authority between these books and all the others (a difference which was not always strictly adhered to in the early Church). So there is at least the principle, however one defines the term "canon," that (at least) not every book within a printed Bible has equal authority as a basis of doctrine (or morals). The Church has in fact altered its canon multiple times throughout history. The idea of a rigid, fixed canon is itself a modern invention, as is the prevalence of printed Bibles in single volumes rather than in lectionaries. (The way most educated people were exposed to the Bible was in Books of Hours, like the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which mimicked the secular and monastic daily offices but consisted only of the fixed elements like the Common of the BVM, which could be easily memorized, and which contained a number of verses from various OT books as well as the traditional Gospel canticles which we still use in our own liturgy.)

These basic nuances would exist (and did exist) apart from any considerations stemming from modern scholarship. If the oldest known manuscripts or the majority of manuscripts don't contain this or that verse or chapter - which is all textual criticism is telling us - why would anyone not want to know that?

This is a loaded statement, and the truth of it depends on what "Bible believing" actually means. The Reformation supported much of its opposition to certain medieval practices on the basis of new biblical scholarship that had only come into existence over the previous two centuries. A classic example is Luther's critique of the medieval Sacrament of Penance:

Simply put, the rediscovery of the older, Greek text of the NT altered what had been the traditional practice in the Latin West, based at least in part on what was the received, traditional Latin Bible at that time. (Interestingly, the Orthodox have more or less the same operational concept of penance as Roman Catholicism, yet never lost contact with the Greek text.) Protestantism began with an openness to revisionism, and that openness remains core to the praxis and ethos of Anglicanism today. The English Reformation in its early years may have been overly iconoclastic, but it was never fundamentalist in the modern sense of that term. The Bible itself is not an object of faith in Anglicanism, and the Anglican approach to the Bible is and always has been flexible. Jesus as the Redeemer of humanity is the central figure in Anglicanism, not the texts which were written about him.

There are plenty of evangelicals in Anglicanism, but this doesn't mean what the term came to mean in, e.g., Methodism. (Because grace is understood to flow through the Word and the Sacraments, Anglicanism never asserted the necessity of revivals or intense personal conversion experiences.) In any case, the ideal of a State Church meant that, without intending to oversimplify the historical reality, the Church of England strove (and still strives) to be "a church for the whole nation," and this has arguably contributed to a rather broad understanding of churchmanship. The Episcopal Church, despite always being small relative to the American population, and not being established, nevertheless inherited, and to this day preserves, the English ideal of "a church for the nation." There is certainly variety along a spectrum, but the central tendency is toward broad churchmanship within a traditional liturgy and calendar, rather than a rigid insistence on doctrinal purity.

 

I agree. Like I said earlier, the owners of this forum should update their door sign. This is not an orthodox Anglican place, it seems.

Some have suggested that the good manuscripts wear out, and so they do not exist. Whereas the ones with mistakes get tucked away somewhere, and so centuries later they are still around. We know they did not have copying machines back then and did it by hand. Mistakes were made. Yet, they still revered the manuscripts with mistakes because they were still the word of God and would not destroy them.

Judge a tree by its fruits, the good book teaches. Your comments are true, and the fruit is bad. I will add that much of the progressive theology is based on things outside of the Bible, things that are NOT inspired. I have a few friends that went to seminary and profusely read. They point this out, and so this is not just some opinion I hold.

I don’t know about you, Invictus. I have not read enough of your writing to know where you stand. But, Tiffy, though I enjoy your comments, your view of freedom is incomplete… because you base it on PART of what Paul wrote without believing the WHOLE. I know that I only had a slice of your pie, but that’s what your pie tastes like. And your aversion to any rule, even if it is one from Jesus himself, does not serve you. You prize the “new commandment" to love one another, but you throw all the others away. If I gave you a new coat, would you throw all the other ones away? Maybe you shouldn’t. MAYBE you do that to accommodate things, like WO, blessing same sex unions, and other things under the rainbow flag.

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You are too kind. I say the serpent is in the church and is corrupting God’s word… just like he did in the garden. He did the same thing with Jesus in the desert, on the mountain, and on the temple. Partial truths. Twisted scriptures. Language from the Bible to achieve an unholy agenda. I remember when Christian Forums was a good place. It's a dumpster fire now.

And yes, it causes simple Christians to drown in doubt, while arrogant “scholars” scoff.

 

You will probably find me frustratingly difficult to categorize. Labels in general in my view are best avoided; they tend to obscure more than they illuminate. I will tell you that on the one hand, I fully accept modern scholarship, modern science, and modern medicine. On the other hand, I do not feel any particular need to try to force the liturgy or traditional theology to conform to modern sensibilities. They each have their proper place and particular purpose to fulfill.

 

Take it from the new guy. It sounds like you are saying this. You say it, and then dance around and around.

There. Right there. That's the dancing I'm referring to.

You nuance yourself into oblivion. And take others with you, as Satan, the dust eater, licks his lips.

You imagine that older is better. This “majority of manuscripts” could just be manuscripts with mistakes piling up over the centuries, because nobody uses them. Whereas the correct ones get worn out and recopied.

Spectrum. Rather than doctrinal purity. Oh, now I see.

Be honest. Is this mainly a TEC and C of E website?

 

It is interesting that you would say that. If you take a look at the Forum pages Terms of Service and Anglican Orthodoxy, it will hopefully become clear that the site was actually created by and for ACNA/GAFCON members. I was not aware of this when I first happened on the site some years ago, and I thought at the time, mistakenly, that “Anglican” in the forum’s name simply referred to the Anglican Communion.

Over the years I have increasingly come to find harsh controversy in general and religious polemics in particular to be extremely distasteful, and, dare I say, un-Anglican. All I will say here is that I do not accept the Jerusalem Statement of 2008 as an accurate expression of historic Anglican teaching, irrespective of the issues that form its background.

What initially caught my attention in this thread was actually the art. The discussion has since moved on to other topics. Although some of the exchanges have been constructive, at this point it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the thread has run its course. I’ll leave the rest to whoever wishes to contribute further.

 

You write that. But it is an empty move. I claim that because I previously put the thread back on my ART and TOPIC.

YET, your response was this below, empty of your claim, showing no REAL interest in the art.

You did not want to talk about the art, or the message of it... only your things. But that’s okay by me, buddy. I appreciate you participating. It seems like you are smart, and I hope you keep moving toward God, through Christ.

Your profile picture. It looks like a cross missing half of the cross bar. When Christ called you to take up your cross and follow him, I hope you picked up your whole cross.

 

I thought it was meant to be a claymore (claidheamh-mor) although it is slightly the wrong design-with which Invictus was going to use to fight for God, Jesus, truth, justice and the American way of life.

 

Thanks for explaining that. When I zoom in, it does look like a sword. HOWEVER, at the existing resolution, it looks like a broken cross. Pictures can have surface meanings and deeper meanings. His is a contradiction. A duality.

Obviously, art, symbols are interesting to me. It is interesting how before the Bible was in the hands of the people, believers engaged with God more via RELATIONSHIP rather than READING. Jesus. Mary. Saints. Angels. Priest. Confessor. Liturgy. Icons. Confession. Candles. Incense. Etc. People were more visual, and so symbols had more significance, and they encountered or communed with God in this way, rather than reading the Bible. Narratives had more meaning than the individual words that make up the narrative itself. The ancients and those before the printing press lived in that world. We think differently now, or most do. We don’t comprehend the symbolic as easily, or at least it is not the natural way of processing things, and is more like a second language that we barely understand.

YET, these things have power. Big power I think. Having a broken cross as a profile picture is like saying something is broken in my faith. Most don’t hear it. But it sounds out nonetheless.


Look at yours. AnglicanAgnositc. So, you are a blind mole. Digging around in the dirt. Dirt, or dust, symbolizes chaos. God made the animals and us, at least man, from the dust. God took chaos, brought order & meaning to it, breathed life into. You crawl around in chaos. Digging down deep. Blind. You feel your way. You must touch it. Only then do you believe. That meets the definition of an agnostic. The message, or embodiment, is there, though some may not see it. If I am completely off, you and him should get new profile pictures. We can lie with our symbols just like we can lie with our words.

To moderns, who tend to NOT think this way or readily comprehend symbolism, they might say that such people are superstitious. Or, they may refer to them as crude and unlightened, like Tiffy did to me at the start. But it is they that do not see. It is they that are trapped in a reality made of mostly words. Actually, reality does not lay itself out this way. Sure, God created with the spoken word. And Christ is the word made flesh. But that is the spoken word of God, not the written word. Christ did not write down, like Moses or Paul. And here is the thing: though humans today may be ignorant concerning this “language”, the demons are not. This is why churches should NOT have the rainbow flag, because of what it means. This is why a woman should cover in church and man should not, because of what it means. For the sake of the angels. We are beguiled by our own intellect, not them.

Narratives create a story that defines reality, more so than the individual words of the story. That is why Christ often taught with parables. Looking at the fall of the angels and what happened in Eden, the narrative shows us things. These things are ONLY there if other parts of the Bible also define them. Like I wrote before, you can lie with symbolism. For example: I could not say that Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus means she was learning to be a rabbi. Sorry, Tiffy. NT Wright may say that. But it is his flawed opinion. You could even rightly say that it is a lie, a false teaching. And so, NT Wright is often "NT wrong", LOL. Not because I say so. But because the WHOLE of scripture says so.

 

Engaging on the human level might be a little too uncomfortable. No woman wants to cover in church, and no man wants to lead and teach his wife about covering, according to the liturgy given to us by the Holy Spirit through Paul. And no bishop, priest or deacon wants to bring it up either. Especially if the clergy is a female, because she would rather wear the collar showing her authority than a veil showing her submission to her husband and to Christ. None wants to address the head covering liturgy or WO in a real way. We want to look the other way or just accept progressive theology, and pretend we are traditional or conservative because we are against gay marriage. But really, maybe we all should just put up the rainbow flag in the church. If all the scriptures about gender are now like stale bread no longer eaten since the 1960's, then maybe we should accept LGBTQ as well, because they go together. That way, at least we won’t be hypocrites… because they are BOTH out of line with the scriptures. We can just tell ourselves that none of this matters. We can just say to ourselves and others that only Christ matters… while leaving out the things He Himself says about this… like we MOSTLY already do. Yes, let’s just do that, and be LUKEWARM.



Unwilling to examine this on the human level, let’s consider the angelic level. Ezekiel 28:11-19 and Isaiah 14:11-15 tell us about kings that became corrupted and fell. The verses move from the natural to the spiritual, and point to something more than earthly kings. We accept that figures in the OT pre-figured or pointed to Christ, like Moses, for example. So the pattern is there. For those that see Ezekiel and Isaiah as ONLY referring to earthy kings, you still have to contend with what Christ said in Luke 10:18 and also Revelation 12:3-9. Angels fell. They left their assigned place, out of pride. And we see that the serpent in the garden invited humans to do likewise, and they did. Feminist pride and gay pride are the manifestations, and so is the effeminacy of men a manifestation. Manifestations of not accepting identity according to God’s call, the Divine order.

Are there any other traditional or conservative believers here that see this in the scriptures? OR, do I need corrections? And what are they?

 

From Wikipedia: "Christian headcovering with a cloth veil was the practice of the early Church, being universally taught by the Church Fathers and practiced by Christian women throughout history,[35][2][39][40] continuing to be the ordinary practice among Christians in many parts of the world, such as Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Ethiopia, India and Pakistan;[41][42][43][44][45] additionally, among Conservative Anabaptists such as the Conservative Mennonite churches and the Dunkard Brethren Church, headcovering is counted as an ordinance of the Church, being worn throughout the day by women.[4][31] However, in much of the Western world the practice of head covering declined during the 20th century and in churches where it is not practiced, veiling as described 1 Corinthians 11 is usually taught as being a societal practice for the age in which the passage was written."

About the latter claim, I have read that the Greek women in Paul's day observed no such societal practice, which would have made Paul's counsel a counter-cultural statement concerning Christian women.

I remember when I was about 7 or 8, going to Catholic Church with family, my mom really got onto my sister (who is 10 years older than me) for not bringing her head covering. My mother was telling her how disgraceful it was for her to come to church without a veil or a hat.

About a decade later, my mother was going hatless in church herself as were the other women of the parish (except for a few "stada babas," elderly women). Obviously the priests had stopped teaching about it. Not sure, but maybe the change from Latin Mass to Novus Ordo had some effect on perceptions. I wonder if femal TLM attendees are more likely to be adhering to the age-old practice?

Out of curiosity, I looked just now to see if there are any Mennonite churches in our metro area. Indeed there is one.... however, it bills itself as "progressive" and "open and affirming," and their webpage states: "In the scripture translations, readings, and other printed material we tend to avoid masculine pronouns for God and masculinizing language for humanity." So I doubt the women are covering their heads!

 

When my priest was out of the country, I visited an Eastern Orthodox Church and only the wife of the clergy covered. It’s just not being taught in the West right now. Most that grew up in the 1960’s have an aversion to it because of their upbringing, their flesh. It’s interesting how the majority of the women of that generation have indeed cut their hair off, as the scriptures mention.

Moderns NOW say head covering was a cultural practice of a bygone place and time, while ignoring the recent history showing that it is NOT. Actually, the West has rejected the meanings of the head covering liturgy, rejected the image of God. Feminists in their pride changed it. Effeminate men in their weakness went along. Demons lie and we listen.

The fact that Paul connects this with Adam and Eve as well as the angels makes it something that is timeless and cross-cultural. It was cross-cultural for centuries, just like the bread and the wine are cross-cultural.

I grew up knowing nothing about this. Later, I became Anglican and a few ladies at my church veil. I started asking about it, learning about it, talking about it. A few years later, my wife decided to start veiling. I did not ask her. In fact, when she said she was going to start, I thought she was joking. The impact was interesting. As she stepped more into her femininity as is described in the Bible, I found myself becoming more masculine in the manners that the scriptures teach. I started understanding, or REMEMBERING, things about male and female. Deep things. Spiritual things. Forgotten things.



I encourage every husband to study this. Eventually, you will be able to push aside modern false teachings and understand. Then gently talk to your wives about it. PRAY. If your wife does not like it, let it go. The fault is more on our leaders that BEND like reeds in the worldly winds, and/or false teachers that teach against Paul. Christ covers her if she is under bad leadership like that. It’s not ONLY “because of the angels” that we do this. If the church returned to this liturgy widespread it would have an impact on marriages, the church, and even the culture around us. It’s not a magic ritual. However, when the Holy Spirit empowers believers to obey God’s word and walk in the spirit and not according to the flesh, we become more like Christ. Not because of the works themselves or outward appearances, but because of what the Lord does in our hearts.

 

Not at all, just look at what's required of the oath of subscription to be recognized as an Anglican on this site: https://forums.anglican.net/pages/orthodoxy/#oath-of-subscription

 

Thank you, Fr. Brench. Though the oath takers get a nice banner on their profile, unfortunately they do not rule here. Progressives do. Maybe it makes for good entertainment. And I see that my thread is no exception, for the same occurred here.
https://forums.anglican.net/threads/head-coverings-for-women.2625/page-8

I pray Psalm 147:14 over this forum:

“He makes peace in your borders and fills you with the finest of wheat."

 

You need to step out more. The Continuing churches and most of the Lutheran micro synods are all over this practice because it helps them send their churches back to whatever the perceived golden era was. Some of them no more about these practices than the Gospel. Some of them even think this IS the Gospel.

 

Maybe the heartland is different from other parts of the country. I hope that what you wrote is true and I pray that obedience moves out to all the churches, everywhere. The head covering liturgy, the headship of men, and the other ways of worshiping God according to our identities as male and female as described in holy scripture. Certainly true Christians know that these things are NOT the Gospel. But we SHOULD, with the help of the Holy Spirit, embody what the scriptures teach, even the hard and unpopular parts.

In the past, councils and creeds were responses to issues and problems, to heresies. Now, our sons are getting their penises cut off and our daughters are getting their breasts removed. This is not hyperbole. Meanwhile, churches wave the pride flag, bless going after strange flesh, and have cross-dressing ladies as leaders and teachers, and/ or deaconesses that wear the collar of authority rather than the cover of submission to God, AND effeminate men that are hooked on sloth and porn. And as we blur gender roles we wonder why gender confusion spreads like Covid.

The good news is that we do not need another church council nor a new creed. We already have the proper response, and the proper response is to follow the scriptures. But first we must retrieve them from the false oblivion created by the lying rebels that we call progressives.

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