Soundbites and Little Else - Liberals and Theological Debate

I agree David.
The reason why there is so little theological debate from liberals is simple; the theological evidence supports traditionalists. This is why the liberals must appeal to the false idea that “gender equality” means “the same as the other gender, and entitled to do everything thatthey can do” but can men give birth? I dont think so.

But David+, you have just got to love the remark, “...if the Church of England’s relationship with some other churches is more important than what it understands to be true.”

<sarcasm>Obviously, the issue is a done deal, and the CoE understands the truth of women’s ordination. You just don’t get it. What we arguing about, again? I think it’s time for my next Valium. </sarcasm>

Thank you for your article.  I was particularly interested yesterday when I read John Richardson’s comments.  The litmus test of WO is a scandal.  Sadly it is a scandal that has existed in the US for quite a while.  I remember well the conscience clauses that were acclaimed in the US when WO was accepted.  Later it was claimed that these clauses only exempted people ordained then or before and not later.  Then GC abolished the conscience clause.  Now it is happening in England.  Am I surprised - no.

Politics is supreme over theology and the winner takes all.  At least those in England can look at what has happened in the US and plan accordingly.  One of the reasons the orthodox have reacted so strongly to the homosexualist/inclusivist agenda (only one of several very good reasons) is that they saw the pattern after WO was authorized.  First permissive, then non permissive, then coercive.  At least we now have FCA etc., and other organized groups.  The fight in the US was against terrible odds as liberals had outnumbered orthodox for a long time and those in the middle simply would not engage and hoped that the “unpleasantness” would go away.  In so doing the Church was handed over to the heretics.  It is my hope that in England, where different circumstances exist, the Church can be rescued.  However it does not look good.  Welcome to the 21st century, which may not become not unlike the early centuries before Constantine, when we fought lions and worshiped underground.

Jesus calls us as disciples to take up our cross daily.  Discipleship is costly.

To me, the real question is whether a theologically illiterate membership is what has been desired by the highest offices of the church since the late 1960’s.  Has it been created on purpose?  After having taught Church school and the catechesis class in an Ep. church, I can tell you the answer is a resounding YES.

In fact, there seemed to be some sense of pride in how little the bible was studied and referenced with the children.  My first year, I had to ask the church to buy bibles for the class.  There were only a couple of older bibles in the class, of different versions, of course.

I put in my request, and they did end up ordering some bibles for the class.  I told them I really needed them.

The children that went to the Pres. Day school, knew alot about the bible.  The children that went to the Ep. Day School knew next to nothing about it.  I mean like didn’t know what came first in the bible, the new testament or the old testament.  In a class of 18, only half knew that Jesus was a jewish boy.  Several thought he was muslim.  I couldn’t believe it.  It was depressing.  We ended up just going over the most basic ideas.  I mean VERY basic ideas.

This illiteracy comes as absolutely no shock to me.  I would expect it.

I should have added that I believe biblical illiteracy was part of the plan to deconstruct the Church.  I first came to the US in 1973.  When I would ask for a Bible in the Church the usual response was - “what would you want that for?”  One of the great successes of the liberal strategy was to separate the people from the Bible.  It worked.  The antidote is LOTS of Bible teaching, Bible reading by the people, discussion about what the Bible says and teaches - undergirded by the bed rock belief that the Bible is the authoritative “Word of God written” and that we as Anglicans are under the authority of Scripture.  I love this section of paragraph 42 from the Windsor Report:

The Anglican Communion does not have a Pope, nor any system which corresponds to the authority structure and canonical organisation of the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion has always declared that its supreme
authority is scripture.

Our response MUST be to bring into being and sustain a biblically literate people who can then see the errors that David puts before us.

Ian [5]
Liberalism is only one of a number of contributing factors to biblical illiteracy in The Episcopal Church. In Anglo-Catholic parishes in which the clergy subscribed to the Tractarian doctrine of reserve, independent Bible reading and Bible study were not encouraged. A friend of mine, now deceased, was a conservative Anglo-Catholic who had been a communicant and lay reader in a number of conservative Anglo-Catholic parishes. He was also a participant in a Bible study group that I led. He drew to my attention that in these parishes the only passages that were read from the Bible were those read from the Prayer Book. These parishes had no pulpit Bible or pew Bibles and saw no need for them. If the priest did any Bible teaching it was related to the propers in the Prayer Books and reflected an Anglo-Catholic understanding of the epistle and gospel for the day, one largely determined by tradition. The congregation was taught to accept the priest’s exposition of the text as authoritative since the priest spoke for the Church. In our weekly Bible studies my friend never got to the stage of reading the meaning of a text from out of the text. He always was reading a meaning into the text. His approach to Scripture was allegorical and reflected the influence of the Anglo-Catholic priests who had pastored the churches where he had been a communicant and lay-reader. Many conservative Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians like my friend had been long seperated from the Bible even before liberal clergy began to speak for the Church. Having been taught not to question the priest’s exposition of a text and not having a basic knowledge of the Bible and sound Bible interpretation to do so, quite of few of them accepted what was an increasingly liberal interpretation of the Bible. By keeping their congregations Biblically illiterate their conservative Anglo-Catholic clergy made them easy prey for liberals and revisionists.

Ian, and Ablaze, here we have one of, if not THE problem in dealing with what Sarah is constantly reminding us about having 2 worldviews within the same church.  This illiteracy is a HUGE PROBLEM in trying to keep the 2 groups together. 

IMO, one group at least tries to stick with, and discern the proper meaning of scripture.  The other group has a much more dismissive attitude, because trying to keep to the meaning of scripture is not their main goal.  Their goals are more political in nature, having to do mainly with getting power within the church structure.  Scriptural sanctity is way down on their list.  Hence the tortured justifications they come up with to support their most important political goals.

6 AA:

In Anglo-Catholic parishes in which the clergy subscribed to the Tractarian doctrine of reserve, independent Bible reading and Bible study were not encouraged.

Well.  In my conservative, Anglo-Catholic, Tractarian parish, we are encouraged to sit down with our Bibles and read the lectionary readings for both morning and evening.  And to do so without a priest hovering over our shoulders!  We are encouraged to read the Sunday lectionary readings before we show up on Sunday and to meditate on them!  We are repeatedly encouraged to practice Lectio Divina either using the lectionary or letting the Holy Spirit prayerfully guide us in our choice of readings.

Oh.  And my parish is not alone in these practices.  Not by a long shot, son.

I will speak no more about this with you, AA; save your bigoted “counter-argument” for someone who wants it.  But I thought it would be helpful to make you (and others) aware of your own illiteracies before you start lecturing others about theirs.

An all-out Prayer Book parish will have been reading the whole BIble, all of it, using the Daily Office lectionary as well as the Sunday propers.  The lack of that discipline, from either low church or high church folks, is the problem.

And to go back to David Ould’s original post here, I agree with him.  We’ve been making changes in response to current secular trends without ever doing the theological work necessary to make the changes in the Church.  Once the changes are made, we drive theological investigation underground and move onto the next issue.

Looking for Leaders [4]
My experience in the Episcopal parish where I was senior lay reader for 15 years was quite different. There was strong interest in the laity in studying the Bible and teaching its principles and truths to the kids. This was largely due to the fact that the church was planted in the 1980s and those who planted the church highly valued the reading and study of the Bible and the application of its principles and truths to daily life. The strong orientation of the congregation to the Bible was one of a number of factors that contributed to the growth of the church and the vicar who recognized a good thing when he saw it did not discourage this tendency.

The church, now a parish, has lost its strong orientation to the Bible in recent years, the result of a departure of a substantial part of its congregation due to a church split. Most of those who left were charismatic or evangelical. Those who remained were Anglo-Catholic or liberal. The church has moved increasingly in an Anglo-Catholic direction with some concessions to the parish’s liberal comunicants. Along the covered walk that connects the church sanctuary with the education building are the Stations of the Cross; the church sanctuary is decorated with icons. Adjoining the garden behind the church sanctuary is an open-air labyrinth.

Katherine, I agree, but go back to the proposition that if you don’t arm people with some basic knowledge when they are young, it is amazing what they can be told when they are older, and not be able to discern when someone is pulling the rug over their eyes.

As an adult, I have been amazed at the number of people that have just shrugged off major tenets of important Christian beliefs, because they had no real or meaningful thoughts or ideas about it themselves.  They weren’t taught anything, so they’re like a blank slate.

Having 12 year olds tell me that they thought Jesus was Muslim was a wake up call to me.  It’s bad out there.

Looking for Leaders, I’ve seen it personally.  We moved around the country when my children were small, and in general, they got their Christian education from me, because in most Episcopal parishes we attended the church school was inadequate, liberal, or absent.  I did volunteer, but in liberal parishes, traditional believers were not well-received as teachers.  Catechesis is supremely important, both for children and efforts to “catch up” the adults who never learned the essentials of the faith.

Katherine #8 I wish this were true.

  An all-out Prayer Book parish will have been reading the whole BIble, all of it, using the Daily Office lectionary as well as the Sunday propers.  The lack of that discipline, from either low church or high church folks, is the problem.

My favorite example would be the omission of Romans 1:26/27 Year One, week of Lent two.  The office lectionary jumps over these verses.  This may be a small omission but IMHO the lectionary is in fact sufficiently edited so as to exclude some passages.  The only part of Romans 1 that is read is verses 1-7 when celebrating the Holy Name.

Further to this I remember taking a course on Luke at Sewanee.  We only studied passages used in the BCP.  The result was a truncated set of studies.

Your point of using the whole Prayer Book is taken - however the whole Bible is not covered.  Just many parts.  This is made worse when all parishioners usually get on Sunday mornings are edited gobbits on a printed sheet.  Meanwhile the Bible is usually only mentioned as a “historical document” and not as the Word of God.

I really don’t think the Stations of the Cross and icons cna be lumped in with a labyrith, which is New Age stuff. The Stations and icons are old, traditional expressions of faith, albeit not Protestant.

Katherine, and AA, it is a terrible legacy as a church to keep young people ignorant.  My experience was that the “youth leaders” the church had were more interested in connecting by “being cool like the teenagers.”  Long hair, unkempt, 24 year olds that could play a guitar.  Now, I’m not saying they weren’t Christians, it’s just as the Dad of teenagers, I was hoping for someone who would teach.  That pre-supposes that the youth leaders know something, which of course I found out they didn’t.
Sex: ‘use a condom.”  Drugs: “hey, we know everybody experiments. Be careful.”  Justice: “Be nice to poor people.”

Discussion of Sin and brokeness and need of forgiveness:  Not alot of that happening.

Ian Montgomery, since I worship in a 1928 PB parish, the whole Bible is indeed covered.  Those of you sticking to the ‘79 and the newer lectionaries need to exercise vigilance, I agree.

The reason why there is so little theological debate from liberals is simple; the theological evidence supports traditionalists. This is why the liberals must appeal to the false idea that “gender equality” means “the same as the other gender, and entitled to do everything thatthey can do” but can men give birth? I dont think so.

Of course, when Stan wanted to be called Loretta becs he wanted to have babies, The Peoples’ Front of Judea voted to support his right to have babies, despite the biological impossibility thereof.

Katherine - #17 - fortunate thou art - verily.  Correct thou art about 1979.  Disculpe

AA and others-
My Dad’s Bible, imprinted “Nashotah, 1941” was in his jacket pocket every day for 20 years, at which point, it was completely worn out- some pages literally worn through, leather covers disintegrated, spine broken in several places- I still have it, although more as a memorial to my Dad than anything else.  It was replaced by one that I still use today, 50 years after he first put it in his pocket on his way to visiting a parishioner.
If you say the daily office every day for 30 years, you know your Bible pretty well- and most real Anglo Catholic clergy do. Now, obviously, if I had that sort of discipline, Dad’s second Bible would be completely worn out too.  But then, I am just a simple country layman.
  Now, are there bad Anglo Catholic clergy?  Indeed there are.  Are there a lot of “high church” revisionists out there parading themselves in fiddleback chasubles?  You bet.  Is the Anglo Catholic point of view on Scripture different from that of a Calvinist?  Sure is. But I believe that to this day, Hebrew and Greek are required in the curriculum at Hashotah.  Why do you think that is?

SMC Michael [8]
I described the parishes to which my friend belonged as he described them to me. I have also talked with others who have had a similar experience. This has not been your experience as you draw to my attention. Is it really necessary for you to end your comment with the suggestion that my observations are motivated by bigotry? Some churches have not emphasized the Bible in the way that you describe.

In my own experience daily office services where they are offered are not well attended. Few in the congregation read the daily offices and daily office lections privately. The congregation’s primary exposure to Scripture is Sunday morning.  Hearing the propers and a sermon on Sunday does not create a Biblically literate congregation.

Anglo-Catholicism has historically seen greater benefit in offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and receiving Holy Communion that it has in the preaching of the Word. Anglo-Catholicism has also taken issue with the use of private judgment in the interpretation of the Bible, and has discouraged the study of Bible except under the guidance of a priest. This is well-documented in the literature.

It has also been my experience that those least likely to attend a lay-led adult Sunday morning Bible study group if it was offered were Anglo-Catholic. They were more likely to attend a class taught by the priest. They are also invariably gave receiving Holy Communion as their primary reason for attending church on Sunday morning. The quality of the sermon or the orthodoxy of the priest were rated much lower on the list of reasons they attended church. As long as they were able to receive Holy Communion, they were willing to put up with abyssmal preaching and priests with heteredox opinions.

“But illiteracy is always the preferred option if you don’t like what you read - especially in the Scriptures”.

Revisionist clergy also love an illiterate laity when they’re trying to get away with saying that Scripture says things it does not say. 

And then there’s always the tools of

“Because we want to”
“Because I’m ‘oriented’ that way”
“You’re picking on me”
“You’re ‘bigoted’”
“Scripture and Doctrine have ‘hurt’ me”

In other words, “I am every kind of victim” so you’re supposed to simply cave and give me my way, regardless of what Scripture says. 

“Validate me, because I need that to feel good about myself and my behaviors”. 

I think not, and kindergartners tend to act the same way. DUH

tj [20]
I was not talking about clergy but laity. The priests of the churches which my friend attended may have said the daily office every day and have been well acquainted with the Bible, but their biblical literacy did not extend to the congregation, even to my friend who was a lay reader. While the daily office lectionary may cover the entire Bible, depending upon what Prayer Book is used, the traditional one year Eucharistic lectionary does not. If the priest preaches a short homily that uses one or both lessons as an introduction to the Holy Eucharist, as I gather from my friend often happened in the churches he attended (and which has been my experience in a number of churches too) the congregation is not likely to give much attention to the Liturgy of the Word except as prelude to the main event—the consecration, offering, and distribution of the Bread and Wine. The congregation, if they were encouraged to read the daily office, were encouraged to do so primarily as a form of devotion, and not as a means of edification. While reading the daily office lections can be edifying, it is not as edifying as the prayerful study of and meditation upon God’s word.

I would be more impressed if a local congregation was introduced to New Testament Greek and shown how to use a Greek Grammar, Greek Concordance, and the like. Having a Biblically literate clergy does not automatically lead to a Biblically literate laity. What Ian was advocating is programs that help the laity to become more Biblically-literate and more able to discern sound theology from theology that is inconsistent with the Bible. Some clergy may not welcome such programs because they perceive a Biblically literate and theological literate laity as a threat to their role as the principal Bible interpreter and theologian of the local church.

I grew up in an Anglo-Catholic parish.  We had Bible studies (yes, even some lay-led).  When I attended an Anglo-Catholic parish in the San Diego area, there was a good emphasis on the Bible in the Sunday School classes and in the parish day school.  We also studied it in the high school youth group that I led.  There are many today who claim the title “Anglo-Catholic” simply because they like high-church liturgy.  Many are liberal revisionists who are far from Anglo-Catholic in their theology, though they still claim the A-C title.  Real Anglo-Catholics have the theology too, not only the liturgy.  Are their real Anglo-Catholic parishes that lack Bible studies?  Unfortunately, yes.  But there are also MANY that DO have Bible studies and parishioners who are very Biblically knowledgeable.

RE: “It has also been my experience that those least likely to attend a lay-led adult Sunday morning Bible study group if it was offered were Anglo-Catholic. They were more likely to attend a class taught by the priest. They are also invariably gave receiving Holy Communion as their primary reason for attending church on Sunday morning. The quality of the sermon or the orthodoxy of the priest were rated much lower on the list of reasons they attended church. As long as they were able to receive Holy Communion, they were willing to put up with abyssmal preaching and priests with heteredox opinions.”

I’m pretty much the same way.  If there is an actually educated and orthodox priest who is teaching a SS, I’d rather attend his than a layperson’s, in general.  My opinion is that—*if* they are orthodox—then a person who has actually troubled himself to go and get an actual Masters degree studying Scripture, theology, church history, and Greek and Hebrew—is probably someone whom I will be more interested in hearing than a layperson who is a banker as his vocation.  Of course . . . I’d be more willing to hear the banker about the financial industry and investments over the priest, as well.

And receiving HC is the primary reason for my attending church on Sundays—it has been for decades now.  I’m always interested in a good sermon, but have found that neither evangelicals nor AngloCatholics are particularly good at delivering sermons.  But it’s hard—very hard—for a traditional evangelical or AngloCatholic to mess up the Eucharist.  I’m far more interested in the sacrament, then in the pontifications of a man about his visions or interpretation of Scripture anyway—though again, I do love a good, informed, well-read, carefully thought through sermon and often find them convicting.

And nobody could possibly describe me as AngloCatholic by a long-stretch either.

AA-

I would be more impressed if a local congregation was introduced to New Testament Greek and shown how to use a Greek Grammar, Greek Concordance, and the like.

No doubt the Biblical literacy in congregations would improve considerably if everyone spoke 3 archaic languages, 2 or 3 modern ones, and had a doctorate in theology from Oxford. We could debate the distinctions of Augustine’s vs Thomas Aquinas interpretation of a given passage in Latin. If your congregation studies Greek grammar it is indeed laudable, but having led Bible studies (under the auspices of Anglo Catholic clergy), I found myself dealing with people with education levels ranging from 8th grade to grad school, and not a theology or classical language class between them.  To try to engage people at the level of Greek scholarship must be a daunting task, you have my admiration for having accomplished it in your parish.  But I note that in the Anglican world, such a task is daunting even for ++Rowan Williams when he is dealing with Anglican bishops, no doubt for most of us lay readers and Bible study leaders, it would prove nigh impossible.
  I think for most of us, the need for “professional” clergy is self evident.  I am reasonably well versed in economics- but faced with an economic question, I will consult with experts and defer to them.  The same is true of Biblical interpretation. The “Catholic” viewpoint that you seem so fearful of is merely that exegesis is a corporate exercise, and not a private one. The reason for a priest to be involved in and to direct one’s study is so that you can be introduced to the work the Church has done on a particular passage over the last 2000 years, and are not solely dependent on your own skills in NT Greek or, for that matter, your own skills in English syntax and grammar.  From the Anglo Catholic point of view, one of the major problems in the Church today is that so many people are interpreting Scripture from their personal point of view, in the context of their personal experience, and ignoring the body of knowledge built up over the last 2 millenia.

Back to engagement with theology for a second. I am wondering what is the right thing to do when people who consider themselves orthodox come to believe that there is Scriptural justfication for an innovation like women bishops, but know that among those who support the innovation people with their concern for Scriptural justification are a small minority. That is, the majority of people supporting the innovation do so for secular/worldly reasons like ‘bringing the church into the 21st century’ or ‘recognizing human rights’. By voting for the innovation, the orthodox person would be supporting a practice he believes to be right, but also indirectly advancing the cause of liberal theology within the church, giving it a triumph and also helping to deliver a defeat to and even driving away other orthodox whose theology in toto is much closer to theirs than is the theology of their liberal allies on this one issue.

A possible solution is a kind of blatant factionalism, whereby an orthodox delegate does not vote for any innovation not supported by a majority of orthodox delegates, even if he himself would favour it. That is: no alliance with liberals. One can imagine the orthodox holding a ‘meeting before the meeting’ and then voting as a bloc at the main meeting itself.

Just out of curiosity, would theologically literate conservatives in late 18th century England have owned slaves, or would they have joined the Abolitionist movement? And who would theologically literate conservatives have supported during the American Civil War, the Union, or the Confederacy?

tj [26]
The “Catholic” viewpoint is more than exegesis as a corporate exercise. Indeed one thing that is often lacking is real exegesis—the reading of the meaning of a passage out of a passage. Anyone who studied the history of Bible interpretation is aware that there are different methods of Bible interpretation. Some of these methods are fairly reliable but others are flawed, for example, allegorization. The “Catholic” approach to the Bible has unfortunately relied too much on flawed methodology and a faulty tradition. The antiquity of a particular interpretation of a passage does not guarantee that it is correct or consistent with what is taught elsewhere in the Scripture. The work on a particular passage that the Church has done over the past 2000 years may consist of perpetuating an error. So what does the priest who is guiding the Bible study do. He perpetuates the error by insisting that the passage should read one way, the way that tradition has come to interpret it and the way that he has been taught to interpret it. The Bible is not so lacking in perpescuity that a layperson with a basic knowledge of the principles of sound Bible interpretation and the help of the Holy Spirit cannot understand the truths and principles that it teaches. They can certainly know what they need to know for their salvation. They can also discern when a priest is leading them down the garden path. Misinterpretation of the Bible is not confined to liberals. The problem today is not that of too many people interpreting the Bible from their personal point of view on the basis of their personal experience as you claim but so-called experts on the Bible distorting, torturing and twisting its passages into saying what something other than what actually it says—doing some of the very things the Church of Rome was doing in the sixteenth century. One of the reasons that the English Reformers translated the Bible into English and gave it into the hands of the people was so that they could read the Bible and see for themselves not only the truth of the Reformers’ teachings but also the falsity of the teachings of the Church of Rome.

I have known priests who have studied three or more years in a seminary and who are not fit to read a Bible story to a small child, much less expound the Scriptures on Sunday morning. On the other hand, I am also acquainted with laymen who have immersed themselves in the truths and principles of the Holy Scriptures through the reading and study of the Bible, and are more than qualified to teach and preach the pure Word of God.

Toral1 - you should be posting that on the Fulcrum boards where they need to hear it.

@28. You can find plenty of well read theological conservatives who were in favour of slavery at the times and places you mention. Perhaps the most famous conservative theologian (of the calvinist sort) of the Civil War period was R. A Dabney who wrote in favour of it in his “Defense of Virginia and the South” which you can find at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=o0rstJK6pNQC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=R+A+Dabney+and+slaves&source=bl&ots=L33ad8YdcV&sig=xaC7DuktMuK5WojFHXpjo2GJeRM&hl=en&ei=5wV7S8LBKdGIkAWVucT7Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Other examples are 1) the Codrington plantation on Barbados owned by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel which branded its 400 slaves with the word “Society”
and 2) George Whitfield.

In a church in which the clergy are most likely to be teaching false doctrine, taking passages from the Bible to suit their purposes and reading into them the meaning that they wish the passage to mean rather than reading out of the passage what it actually means, it strikes me that the view that a clergyperson must be an expert on the Bible because he underwent seminary training is a dangerous one to take and makes those who adopt this view particularly vulnerable to accepting uncritically whatever the clergy teach. It certainly makes the task of introducing and transmitting false doctrine easier and in part accounts for the spread of false doctrine in churches like the Episcopal Church. On the other hand, Bible study groups led by an orthodox lay persons well acquainted with the Bible and the basics of Bible interpretation would help prevent such false doctrine gaining a hold upon the minds of the congregation. Seminary training does not make a clergy person an expert on the Bible but prayer and study. There is a long list of Anglican divines who have recognized this. This is also what the 1661 Ordinal tells us.

A Bible study group leader is, however, not necessarily an expert on the Bible. His task is not to impart what he knows about the Bible but to facilitate a process by which the participants in the study not only learn sound principles of Bible interpretation but also discover for themselves what the Bible says and means. His goal is to develop Christians who can feed themselves from the Bible and in doing so grow in maturity in Christ. His objective is that they not only be hearers of the word but also doers. They take what they learn and apply it to their own lives. This is the kind of spiritual formation and development that takes place best in small groups.

The apostle Paul tells us that faith comes by hearing, that hearing occurs when a sermon is preached. It also takes place when a passage of Scripture is examined, discussed, and applied in a Bible study group. The Thirty-Nine Articles stress that it is by faith that we feed upon Christ in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Those who are devoid of a living faith do not partake of Christ’s Body and Blood. I must wonder whether, in a church where the pure Word of God is not preached from the pulpit, or even examined, discussed, and applied in a Bible study group, there is greater likelihood of those devoid of such a faith receiving the bread and wine to their undoing. This may not be a concern for those whose theology does not require faith in the communicant in order for that communicant to appropriate the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross but does trouble people like myself who subscribe to the view of the Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer that faith is essential.

AnglicansAblaze, the AngloCatholic parish you describe sounds nothing like mine. And the AngloCatholics outnumber any other persuasion of Episcopalian in my parish’s lay-led Bible studies. And my AngloCatholic priest sounded the earliest warning for me of what was going on in TEC, when women’s ordination was forced in. I think you are putting too many pigeons into that hole.

Along the covered walk that connects the church sanctuary with the education building are the Stations of the Cross;

And your problem with this is? How terrible that Christians should contemplate the Way of the Cross.

I share David Ould’s concern and join in his lament over the ever-increasing evidence of massive ignorance (regarding BOTH Scripture AND the classic Tradition of the Church) that we see all around us, inside and outside the Church.  But I’d like to reframe the issue, if I may for a moment.

The appalling ignorance of Scripture and Christian Tradition that has reached such epidemic levels in the US, and reportedly is even worse in Canada and in Europe, is one of the most significant signs that we have truly entered a radically new phase in western/European civilization, a post-Christendom era.  We live in a strange, new world where Christianity has gone from being the favored religion to now being the one that the cultural elite despises most.  IOW, we aren’t dealing merely with woeful ignorance here, but with a deeply entrenched hostility to classic Christianity on the part of many leaders in western society, who have come to believe that traditional Christianity is the biggest obstacle to “social progress.”  And those elites have worked for decades to relegate Christianity to the private sphere and banish it from the public square.

I’m seeking some common ground here between those who would unabashedly describe themselves as Protestant or Reformed or low church Anglicans, and those (like myself) who are equally unashamed to identify oursselves as being at least as Catholic as we are Protestant.  I’m not trying to bait David Ould, or AnglicansAblaze, or Sarah.

For I think that one thing that all orthodox Anglicans can agree on is that we face an immense challenge here that goes far beyond merely educating people inside and outside the Church in order to overcome that massive ignorance and biblical illiteracy that is such a distinctive and depressing mark of our time.  No, the problem isn’t merely an educational one, overcoming that ignorance and theological illiteracy.  Alongside that daunting challenge, and underlying it, is the even greater challenge of re-evangelizing the Global North, and then discipling those new converts so that they become fully mature followers of Jesus Christ.

And that is a tremendously difficult and pressing challenge for ALL Christian traditions in the West these days.  Now that the public square has gone from being pro-Christian to implicitly anti-Christian, we all face an uphill struggle and are swimming upstream against a very powerful cultural current.

But FWIW, I think one of the most encouraging signs of hope is that we are also actually seeing record numbers of American adults today who are engaged in serious, in-depth Bible study programs.  There are literally MILLIONS of Americans who will gather this week in someone’s home, or at a church, to participate in an evening of Bible-based sharing as part of carefully designed programs of comprehensive biblical instruction like Kerygma (Presbyterian), or DISCIPLE (Methodist), or Bethel or Word and Witness (both Lutheran), or Community Bible Study (non-denominational, evangelical).

I think that is a very hopeful sign that while we may indeed be living in a time in which, to quote the prophet Amos, there is a famine in the land, not a hunger for ordinary bread, but for the bread of life and for the word of the Lord, God is graciously responding to that widespread hunger.

So I actually see two opposite cultural movements or trajectories being played out in our time.  On the one hand, yes, we have abundant evidence of that regrettable and disastrous biblical ignorance and illiteracy all around us among the masses in general.  But on the other hand, we also are seeing a growing minority of Christians who are seeking out and receivng better instruction in the basics of knowing the Bible and the Christian Tradition than has been true for at least several generations.  Your average Kerygma or Disciple or Bethel grad these days knows the Bible better than perhaps the average Protestant ever has.

David Handy+

Re#30.

I don’t mean to be argumentative, David. I know it’s not always easy to communicate clearly online. I’m just trying to understand your post.

I agree that there were “plenty of well read theological conservatives who were in favour of slavery.” Is it not fair to say that the Abolitionists were right and that the orthodox who used the Bible to justify slavery were wrong? Isn’t this what history has shown us? In this case, wasn’t the position of the well read theological conservatives abhorrent to the message of Jesus (Matthew 22:36-40)?

@35 I think you mean @31… and I am not David, sorry.

In a church in which the clergy are most likely to be teaching false doctrine, taking passages from the Bible to suit their purposes and reading into them the meaning that they wish the passage to mean rather than reading out of the passage what it actually means, it strikes me that the view that a clergyperson must be an expert on the Bible because he underwent seminary training is a dangerous one

AA, have you noticed that there are a number of AngloCatholics on Stand Firm who have been here for quite a time? That somehow we have managed to recognize when heterodoxy is coming at us from the pulpit? Don’t answer. The question is rhetorical.

My apologies. I meant to comment on post 31.

taking passages from the Bible to suit their purposes and reading into them the meaning that they wish the passage to mean rather than reading out of the passage what it actually means…

Ummmm….right.  What it actually means.  Well, since clearly the Pope, in your estimation (maybe in mine too) is not infallible, who, exactly, is it that determines what “it actually means”?  Me? You? Personally, if I read something in John Chrysostom, see the same expounded by St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, Edward Pusey and Reginald Fuller, I feel like I am on reasonably safe ground- and feel confident that their hermeneutic and exegesis are superior to my own.  So, yes, I take their word for it.  The upside to the Anglo Catholic approach, that you seem to be missing, is that if all the teaching in the Church is consistent, and based on traditional interpretation and method, when some priest goes off on a TEC inspired tangent, the whole congregation knows he’s in left field.  Ask any good revisionist and you will find they HATE old Anglo Catholic congregations- they won’t even let the new revisionist cleric get his NRSV out of his briefcase, much less his Inclusive New Testament.  And no Eucharistic Prayer C, either.

Well, I think I will get an early start on my Lenten discipline (before I lose my temper) and say goodnight to all you good folks, and I will be back after Easter. Perhaps I will allow myself a few comments on T19 if there is another exchange on par with the Noll-Radner discussions recently. And I will allow myself a dispensation in case KJS deposes +Mark Lawrence.

@38 Its also worth noting that Wilberforce the spearhead of the abolitionists was an Evangelical. I think the only lesson to be learnt is that theology is no predictor of being on the “right’ side of a social issue. sadly. It frustrates me that this is so, but it is a useful reminder that we have
1) an infallible bible, not infallible church leaders.
2) A saviour that knows the hairs on our heads, but we know see through a glass darkly
3) we are in a hospital for sinners “of whom I am chief”

oscewicee [33]
Did I say that I had problems with the Stations of the Cross? I draw attention to a description of a number of Anglo-Catholic parishes that a friend gave me, which by the way included a FIFNA flag ship parish, and every Anglo-Catholic on Stand Firm, or so its seems, goes into immediate defense mode. Not satisfied, however, to correct the perceived claim that my friend’s description of the parishes where he was a comunicant and a lay reader represented all Anglo-Catholic parishes—an assertion that I do not make—at least a couple of them go into attack mode. I mentioned the Stations of the Cross and icons to highlight the Anglo-Catholic ethos of the parish and to draw attention to the incongruity of the Stations of the Cross and icons and an out-door labyrinth in the same setting.

What I did in my original post was draw to the attention to Ian Montgomery that conditions existed in the Episcopal Church before the ascendancy of liberalism that contributed to Bible illiteracy among the laity in that denomination. I did not make any claims as to how wide spread these conditions were in the Episcopal Church albeit my conversations with other Episcopalians around the same time suggested that what my friend was describing was not isolated to a few churches. My impression of the Episcopal Church as a youth in the 1960s was that while Episcopalians made much of the Bible readings in the Book of Common Prayer, they were not people of the Book unless, of course, you were talking about the Prayer Book. The Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians studied the Bible in classes on Sunday morning but not the Episcopalians. Their claim to being a people of the Book came down to the lections in the Prayer Book. Their notion of Bible study was something that seminarians and clergy did, not ordinary Episcopalians. The Episcopal chaplain and campus minister at my university presided over a weekly service of Holy Communion. He preached no sermon nor did offer any kind of Bible class or lead any kind of group Bible study. Of the Episcopal students who attended these weekly Holy Communion services, a few of the more devote young women may have attended to receive communion. Most attended the service because a free meal was served afterwards. University students are perenially short of funds and a free meal is always welcome.

David [34]
I am familiar with a number of the programs that you describe. They may help a participant become better acquainted with the Bible. However, are they actually helping the participant to acquire a Biblical worldview and to apply Biblical truths and principles to his life. George Barna’s research indicates that the number of North American Christians with a Biblical worldview is small and is shrinking. Even in denominations which have traditionally regarded themselves as people of the Book, secularism, liberalism, and post-modernism have taken a heavy toll. While knowing the Bible is important, believing the Bible and living the Bible are even more important. A liberal can “know” the Bible from cover to cover. This does not mean that he believes what it teaches and acts upon its teachings.

In the church where I am presently sojourning, we have a clear discipleship process. It begins with attendance at a Sunday morning worship gathering and moves to participation in a ministry team and a small group. An intergral part of this process is relationship evangelism. Members and regular attenders are encouraged to form relationships with non-Christians and to invest in these relationships. Members and regular attenders are also encouraged to read and study the Bible. The focus of the small groups is upon Bible application, not Bible study. In the small groups a Biblical worldview is cultivated and the participants are encouraged and supported in living what they believe. The congregation is largely university students, a substantial number of whom come from Christian backgrounds. Even though many of them have been exposed to a Biblical world view in the churches that they attended before they came to university, they have also been strongly influenced by the prevailing culture in North America. Our goal is to produce fully-committed disciples of Jesus Christ. Many of the young adults who attend the church will go on to be teachers and community leaders or otherwise be in a position where they will have a tremendous impact upon those around them.

tj [39]
May you truly have a holy Lent. May the Holy Spirit during this season of self-denial, fasting, prayer, and reflection draw you closer to Christ and deepen your relationship with him. May God bless you and keep you, and make his face to shine upon you.

AA (#42),

Thanks for a cordial response and especially for sharing what the discipleship program at your church is like.  I’m always encouraged to hear of congregations like yours that have a definite, clear process in place to help seekers become believers, and then help them grow into fully committed and mature followers of Jesus Christ.  Alas, that’s all too rare, even in generally evangelical or orthodox churches.

You asked if serious, comprehensive Bible Study programs like Kerygma, Disciple, Bethel, etc., actually succeed in imparting a biblical worldview and helping participants learn how to apply biblical truths or principles to their lives.  And I’m sure the answer to that question varies a lot, depending on who is actually leading the group.  But the materials do lend themselves to achieving those crucial discipling goals.

At least, I can confidently say that about the program that I know best, which is the Methodist one, DISCIPLE.  As the name suggests, it’s designed with discipleship in mind.  The original architect of the multi-year series was UMC Bishop Richard Wilke, a staunch, fervent evangelical.  The first year is a 36 week course that provides an overview of the whole Bible (Protestant 66-book canon, of course), with half devoted to the OT and half to the NT.  The study materials include personal application oriented questions, not just regurgitate-the-facts or discussion type questions.  And not least, while the Disciple series draws on the expertise of prominent biblical scholars (of a moderate sort) who appear in brief 10 minute or so video clips to introduce the topic for each weekly session, the whole program is built on the premise that you must teach biblical CONTENT, rather than biblical criticism or introduce people to scholarly methods.  It thus stands in stark, welcome contrast with EFM, TEC’s premier form of lay education that’s far more liberal and academically oriented.

Above all, by covering the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in birds-eye fashion, it helps people get “the big picture,” i.e., the grand sweep of the biblical story of creation, sin, and redemption.  That’s perhaps what I love most about such comprehensive introductions to serious Bible study.  Even folks who’ve been devout churchgoers for years often have never been tuaght how the Bible fits together as a whole, since they’re accustomed to hearing or reading only short snippets of Scripture at a time.

Thanks for asking, AA.  And no, I don’t get a commission from Abingdon for pushing their Disciple series.

David Handy+

@40 My take on this is that the Bible is obviously nowhere close to infallible. Church leaders invoked theology to justify slavery, up to the point where the church itself owned slaves, as you point out. I wouldn’t call slavery a “social” issue, but rather one of the great moral issues in world history, which we are still not rid of. I don’t think we can trivialize the American Civil War as a disagreement over a social issue. We now know, thanks to DNA, that the concept of “race” no longer exists in modern day genetics, and that we all came from Africa. Conservatives were horribly wrong about slavery.

Similarly, conservatives are again using the Bible as a club against the LGBT community even after science has proven that homosexuality is part of the normal spectrum of human sexuality. Yes, this fact conflicts with the Adam and Eve myth.

Wilberforce was indeed an Evangelical. Sadly, today’s Evangelicals, in particular the “The Family” of “C Street fame (Sanford, Ensign, Pickering) are exporting their brand of Biblical “infallibility” to Uganda, while others are renewing calls for LBGT people to be imprisoned here in the United States. Rather than being on the cutting edge of progress, as Wilberforce was, most of today’s evangelicals want to turn back the clock and continue to marginalize the marginalized. I don’t see this as having anything to do with the message of Jesus.

I think the lesson to be learned is that theology has been misused repeatedly by Christians claiming to be on the “right” side of an issue. Enslaving our fellow human beings is wrong. Scapegoating the LGBT community based on the awareness of human sexuality possessed by the writers of the Bible is also wrong. It’s not about who determines what a passage “actually means,” it’s about what the writer of the passage knew.

Church leaders invoked theology to justify slavery, up to the point where the church itself owned slaves

I think it would be far more accurate to say a bunch of wrong-headed people, priests among them, more concerned about the norms of their own culture and what their fathers and siblings were doing than the teachings of their faith, used the Bible as a pretext to support their own wrong beliefs. They bought into the zeitgeist of their corner of the world. The fault was not in the Bible, but in those who shamefully attempted to use it to support their own sinful actions. That’s hardly a rarity. Those who will, can twist any good to evil.

Many things are part of the “normal spectrum” of human sexuality. Do you feel that we should approve all of them? Where do you stop at approving the “normal spectrum” of human sexuality. And what is your definition of “normal”? And what did the writer of the passage (whichever one you’re referring to) “know”?

@45 Please be aware that United States evangelicals are not necessarily representative of the social attitudes of evangelicals globally. As a small example: most evangelicals in my country would support the national health system which provides hospitalisation and local doctors for all regardless of ability to pay, and see the common good in this. You cannot say that evangelical = politically conservative globally.
I certainly would not regard the US civil war as trivial, but regard the US history as just one part of the global fight against slavery. which as you rightly point out still goes on today.
It is impossible to prove today but i think history will so that the most effective (not loudest) lobbying against the Ugandan Bill has come from evangelicals.

I am wondering what Anglicans Ablaze would consider to be an “allegorical”  interpretation of scripture that he considers to be false.  He has used the term several times, but with no examples.  I could guess, but I would rather hear his examples first.
Susan Peterson

When I attended TEC (many years ago), I went to adult Sunday School. We studied everything but the Bible. In discussing what we should study next, I suggested the Bible and you wouldn’t believe the looks I got. I then questioned why there were no Bibles in the pews and was told there was one available in the library. Fortunately, I had my own and because I actually read it, realized that this was not a church that my family should attend.
Still waiting for a local Anglican Church and in the meantime attend various other Churches in my area as a guest.

CL, BINGO!!!  I just hope that in all the theological discussion among the adults, the children are remembered.  They need loving teachers that teach them some basics about what it is to be a follower of Christ.

It is a shame for them to get to their 15th or 16th birthday, and wonder what the heck it is that they believe.  Life is hard enough even with a solid grounding in the basics.  Without it, they can reallly wander around and get onto the wrong path.

LFL - Fortunately, TEC children’s Sunday School was run by some good people who did teach the kids to by followers of Christ.
It’s funny you mention 15 & 16 years old because two of my children are those ages!  Since we no longer attend TEC, they have been attending a Wednesday evening Bible study at their friend’s Church, a local Baptist congregation (we attend Sundays at various Churches as guests.

Susan [48]
An allegorical approach to the Bible finds hidden spiritual meaning in a passage of Scripture that transcends the literal sense of the text. It posits that each passage of Scripture has multiple meanings rather than a single meaning—how God intended the passage to be understood. This meaning may go beyond what the human writer may have intended the passage to mean. Hence some passages in the Old Testament are speaking of Jesus Christ even though the human writer predated Christ’s earthly ministry.

It is important to make a distinction between the meaning of a passage of Scripture and its application. A passage of Scripture has one meaning. However. it may have multiple applications. More than one practical inference may be derived from the Scripture passage.

An allegorical approach is seen in the works of a number of Patristic writers. Origen comes immediately to mind. It came to dominant the approach of the later Patristic writers to the Bible. It is also seen in the works of later Medieval theologians.

An allegorical approach to the Bible is characteristic of Gnosticism.  The Gnostics regarded the Bible as a repository of arcane or hidden spiritual truths that only the “enlightened,” those who gained esoteric knowledge of these truths was saved.

A number of the sixteenth century Anabaptists took an allegorical approach to the Bible. They regarded private relevations from the Holy Spirit as superceding the Bible. Consequently they did not feel bound by the literal, grammatical sense of a passage of Scripture.

Those who take an allegorical aproach to the Bible typically claim that the Holy Spirit revealed a particular interpretation of a Scripture passage to them. They cite John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you…,” in support of this claim.

The particular interpretation often may sound plausible—that is, it has the false look of truth or genuiness and appears worthy of belief. However, the plain sense of the passage—its natural sense, and its context—the entire chapter or book in which the passage is found as well as the preceding and following passages, do not support it. It is also contrary to what is read elsewhere in the Bible.

In his book, Scripture Twisting: Twenty Ways the Cults Misread the Bible, James W. Sire identifies the allegorical approach to the Bible as one of the most common ways that people misread the Bible.

The Bible does use figurative or metaphorical language where one or more figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. However, its use of allegory is quite limited. Biblical allegories are invariably accompanied by an explanation of their meaning.

Canon A5 of the Church of England, “Of the doctrine of the Church of England,” displays a cognizance of the dangers of the Patristic allegorical approach to the Bible:

“The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures [my emphasis].

In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal.”

Susan [48]
An allegorical approach to the Bible is similar to the practice of some preachers of using a passage of Scripture as a starting point in a sermon but of quickly going off at a tangent from that starting point. At best the message of the sermon bears a tenuous relationship to the Scripture passage. It may have suggested the topic of the sermon. An allegorical approach to the Bible also resembles the process in psychoanalysis known as “free association.” After directing his patient to say what immediately comes to mind in response to the word, the psychoanalyist says a word. This may result in a string of ideas that were intially suggested by the word but are clearly unrelated to the word except in the mind of the patient. In an allegorical approach to the Bible the principal limit to how a passage of Scripture may be interpreted is the imagination of the interpreter.

The interpretation must also sound Biblical, religious, or spiritual, which requires the use of Biblical, religious, or spiritual language. The use of this language increases its plausibility.

In my experience Anglo-Catholics, charismatics, Eastern Orthodox, liberals,and Roman Catholics show a propensity to interpret Scripture allegorically. This is not to say that evangelicals and other Protestants not conversant with the basic principles of sound Bible interpretation do not fall into the same trap. They do. However, the groups that I have listed display a greater tendency to do so.

A popular Bible study leader at the Episcopal church which I helped to plant and where I was senior lay reader for 15 years used allegory in her interpretation of Scripture. However, her explanation of what the text meant, while sounding highly plausibe, had no connection to text itself. She was reading into or imposing upon the text what could not with certainty be read out of the text.

For a brief summary of the basic principles of sound Bible interpretation I recommend “Interpretation: Christians can understand the Word of God” from J.I. Packer’s Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Belief on the Internet at: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/packer/02interpretation.html

I didn’t ask for a book to read which explicates your idea of the principles of sound Biblical interpretation. 
(I am in general agreement with post #39 and tjmcmahon’s earlier post on this subject. )
What I asked for was an example of an allegorical interpretation of a specific text which AA thinks is mistaken. 

I think JH Newman once said that allegorical interpretation was almost one of the notes of the Church,  but I am remembering this from reading of over 30 years ago.  In any case, I still don’t know if what Newman meant by allegorical and what AA means by it are the same thing,  Some of what AA describes is personal application, not allegorical.  Even without getting into allegory, there are layers.  For instance there is the meaning intended by the human author,  who in Isaiah might have been writing about a local ruler, and the meaning intended by God, Who was telling us about the Messiah to come.  Of course there are now exegetes who say that the “real” meaning is the author’s reference to a local ruler and that it is illegitimate to read into this anything about Our Lord. 

So, anyway, AA please,  give me a specific example of what you consider to be a false allegorical interpretation.

Susan Peterson

Susan [54]
Why the insistence that I provide you with specific examples? What is the point that you want to make? I generally do not keep lists of such examples, and do not feel any inclination to digging for such examples. I am cognizant of their existence. They have been drawn to my attention in the literature that I have read. Whether or not I produce such examples does not invalidate my observations. I think that I have made it clear what I mean by allegorical interpretation—the author of the text is assumed to have intended something other than what is literally expressed—and why I do not believe that it is an accurate way of interpreting Scripture. But to illustrate my understanding of allegorical interpretation, let us look at how an interpreter who uses an allegorical approach to the Bible might interpret Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham refuses to send Lazarus to the rich man’s brothers to tells them how they may be saved. He tells the rich man that they have the Law and the Prophets, all they need to know how they may be saved. If they are not paying attention to what is written in the Law and the Prophets, they are not going to heed Lazarus risen from the dead. An individual who interprets the Bible allegorically will see the parable of the rich man and Lazarus not as a short fictious story intended to illustrate a religious principle but as a treasure trove of hidden truths expressed by symbolic fictional figures and actions. Every detail has a multitude of hidden meanings. Even the dogs licking Lazarus’ sores has a multitude of such meanings. The interpreter becomes involved in guessing game in which he seeks to discover what these hidden meanings of a particular detail may be from the superficial resemblence of the detail with other things. For example the moisture from the tongues of the dogs that licked the wounds of Lazarus bears a superficial resemblance to the waters of baptism. The dog’s licking cleanse the wounds. The waters of baptism wash away our sins. The dogs’ licking of Lazarus’ wounds, he concludes, is a veiled reference to baptism. Since Lazarus who, when he was alive, was a poor beggar is after dying resting on the bosom of Abraham in heaven, he further concludes that those who undergo baptism will despite their mean estate in this life also rest on Abraham’s bosom. They too will go to heaven.

The superficial resemblence may be one that others may notice. But often as not it purely idiosyncratic, reflecting a peculiarity of the interpreter’s character and temperament. The result in either case is that he jumps quickly to conclusions based upon extremely flimsy if non-existent evidence.

Allegorical interpretation often involves the drawing of false analogies—inferences that since two or more things appear to agree with one another in some respects they must agree in others. The apparent agreement may be only in the mind of the interpreter or the interpreter may have been taught to see agreement where no agreement exists. The result is the development of a chain of false logic that goes from one questionable conclusion to the next.  One false conclusion is piled atop another until the interpreter has an entire theory of what the detail means. He then accepts that theory as the truth. If he succeeds in persuading others into accepting his interpretation of a particular detail of the parable, and they hold positions of authority and influence in the Church, then it may in time become the Church’s interpretation of that detail.

To someone who has a high view of baptism, the interpretation I have offered of the dog’s licking Lazarus’ wounds may sound very plausible. But did Jesus intended that this particular detail to have this meaning and other meanings? Or did he include this detail to help bring the point of his story home to his audience who in all likelihood had seen many beggars lying at the gates of rich men with dogs licking their sores—a common site in Roman Palestine?

I just wanted an idea of the sort of thing you are talking about. 

I don’t see any problem with that kind of interpretation done as the result of meditation by holy people.  I think these are among the layers of meaning in scripture.  It doesn’t tell one THE meaning of the text.  I don’t know if you made up this one or if you found it somewhere.  If St. John Chrysostom wrote this in a sermon,  I wouldn’t decide that I could derive no benefit from it.  I would think that this is a minor and idiosyncratic use of the allegorical method. 

I was thinking more of the use of “Egypt”  as an allegory for one’s pre-Christian sinful life,  and crossing the Red Sea as an allegory for baptism,  the analogy between the people of Israel wandering in the desert,  with the pilgrim church on earth,  the analogy of the promised land with heaven.  I think these are more than idiosyncratic interpretations, but part of how God meant the story, as it happened and as it was written, for Christian readers. 

Susan Peterson

Susan [56]
In “The Interpretation of Scripture” in ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God J. I. Packer briefly discusses the three different types of allegorical approaches to the Bible that Medieval exegetes used, and which the Roman Catholic Church continues to use. The full article can be found on the Internet at: http://www.bible-researcher.com/packer1.html

What you appear to be referring to is typology, which some scholars distinguish from allegory. In topology historical reality is interpreted as foreshadowing another, especially the person and work of Christ.

The following is taken fromThe Allegorical Interpretation of the Scriptures:

“J.N.D. Kelly gives a base for the distinction between allegory and typology, saying,

... the word (allegory) led to confusion even in the patristic age, and its accepted meaning to day denotes a somewhat different type of exegesis from typology. Since the fathers employed both typology and allegory (in its modern sense), the distinction between the two methods needs to be clearly brought out…

In allegorical exegesis the sacred text is treated as a mere symbol, or allegory, of spiritual truths. The literal, historical sense, if it is regarded at all, plays a relatively minor role, and the aim of the exegete is to elicit the moral, theological or mystical meaning which each passage, indeed each verse and even each word, is presumed to contain…

Typological exegesis works along very different lines. Essentially it is a technique for bringing out the correspondence between the two Testaments: a technique where the Old reflects the New, i.e. prefigures and anticipates the events and personages of the New. The typologist takes history seriously; it is the scene of the progressive unfolding of God’s consistent redemptive purpose…”

“. . . wrong-headed people, priests among them, more concerned about the norms of their own culture and what their fathers and siblings were doing than the teachings of their faith, used the Bible as a pretext to support their own wrong beliefs.”

Exactly. This is what conservatives did with slavery and it is what they are doing today with LGBT issues.

What the writers of the Bible, New and Old Testaments, did not know was the 21st century scientific knowledge we now have about homosexuality.

uffda51, this article might give you a little historical perspective: http://townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2008/01/14/how_christians_ended_slavery. The slavers were the innovators, trying to introduce a new thing that contradicted scripture. And this highlights the problem with your approach. You see 19th century slave traders trying to justify slavery from the Bible and you evade the question of what the Bible actually teaches by assuming that the Bible can be interpreted correctly to support slavery. But you just assume that. It’s a bit like saying, “None of the children in a particular math class got perfect test scores, therefore there must be errors in the text book they used”.
I think the arguments are quite weak. They equivocate with the term “slavery”, ignore historical context, confuse prescriptive with descriptive, etc. They are about as convincing as the ones that “prove” the Bible endorses homosexuality because of David and Jonathan or the Centurion. Yet as we are seeing right now. These bad, almost laughable arguments are repeated again and again, despite being continually shot down, and people actually believe them, since they tickle their ears by telling them what they want to hear.

What the writers of the Bible, New and Old Testaments, did not know was the 21st century scientific knowledge we now have about homosexuality.

But this is completely irrelevant! Let’s say a thief steals a TV. Could he justify that by saying, “Science today can describe how light from the tv hits my optic nerves and transmits images into the neurons in my brain. The writers of the OT and NT knew nothing of this when they condemned stealing, therefore stealing is OK”

most of today’s evangelicals want to turn back the clock and continue to marginalize the marginalized. I don’t see this as having anything to do with the message of Jesus.

Mark 7:21-23? I repeat Oscewicee’s questions:
Many things are part of the “normal spectrum” of human sexuality. Do you feel that we should approve all of them? Where do you stop at approving the “normal spectrum” of human sexuality. And what is your definition of “normal”? And what did the writer of the passage (whichever one you’re referring to) “know”?

#1 Can men give birth?  This seems like an obvious no to us, but on my college alumni list there was a long thread about someone’s “nephew” who was pregnant and then who had had a baby.  This was a young woman who had decided she was a he and had started dressing that way.  But apparently she was a homosexual he and love having pitched his manor where he did (reference to Yeats)  a baby resulted. 

All of these college educated people talked seriously for weeks about this nephew who was having a baby,  and about the unenlightened OB people who were assuming that having baby=female and not using the correct pronouns with said “nephew.” 

I held my tongue because I knew a fracas would result if I said anything.  Something was said later that I couldn’t hold my tongue about, and a fracas has resulted. 

But anyway, among the politically correct, you can no longer say that a man can’t have a baby.  Because gender is just a cultural construct, you know, and people are free to claim their true gender. 

Susan Peterson

“So who killed slavery? The Christians did, while everyone else generally stood by and watched.”

The thousands who died during the Civil War, on both sides, the majority of them Christian, stood by and watched? The Curse of Ham was never invoked? The Curse of Ham is not still evoked?

What ever the article cited does, it does not provide historical perspective. It does provide enough pretzel logic to feed an entire baseball stadium. And I, for one,  wasn’t referring to atheists.

Your TV argument is rather tortured as well. We don’t treat epilepsy today by casting out demons. We use medicine. NASA didn’t get to the moon by using Biblical knowldege of the universe. Because the Bibical writers (and I mean all of them) did not understand homosexuality, but today we do, why on earth should we continue to consider homosexuality as some sort of sinful behavior when it clearly is not? How is that “Standing Firm?”

I’ve been around LGBT people all of my life. Schoolmates, teachers, colleagues, priests, etc. And so have you. I’ve never been recruited. My marriage has never been threatened. Perhaps it’s because I see these people as more than James Dobson stereotypes.

I won’t try to summarize the last hundred years of research on human sexuality, nor the last two hundred years of Biblical scholarship. If you believe God wrote the Bible, rather than human beings who thought they lived in a three-tiered universe, I can’t help you. Suffice to say that every Christian who supports LBGT equality today was taught the same things that you were taught. They came to believe differently. The Yes on Prop 8 folks cited the Bible in their campaigns. In the court case their “expert” on marriage turned out to be an expert on 19th century labor law. The C Street Family pushed for the current Ugandan legislation, citing the Bible. Biblical illiteracy is alive and well. The disagreement is over which side is illiterate. I’m sure that conservatives will continue to cite Scripture, tradition, canons, rules, doctrine, whatever they can find, to continue to scapegoat the LGBT community. My question would be, in your heart of hearts, is the Holy Spirit calling you to continue this bigotry, or to stop?

P.S. Speaking of Bishop Spong, (apparently you’re a fan) I spent last weekend in Solvang, CA, where Jack presented five lectures to a capacity crowd. An armed security guard was present at all times. In passing, Jack mentioned that he has received 16 death threats - but never one from an atheist. Yes, I’ll keep Matthew 5:43-45 in mind.

[61] uffda51

My question would be, in your heart of hearts, is the Holy Spirit calling you to continue this bigotry, or to stop?

How would we ever know what the Holy Spirit was saying?  How do we even know there is a Holy Spirit?  Perhaps instead we are listening to our glands?  Or our stomachs?  A blot of mustard or an undigested bit of beef?  Or perhaps Spong is right, and the Holy Spirit is nothing more than a metaphorical expression of our own wills and desires?  There is a sound basis for morality - doing what is right in our own eyes.  In the meantime, you might explain who told you what bigotry was, and how they told you. 

No, I didn’t think you could.

carl

My question would be, in your heart of hearts, is the Holy Spirit calling you to continue this bigotry, or to stop?

Conservative Christians may lay claim to the ethic of inclusion, since we are proponents of including repentant gay people (and repentant liars, and repentant thieves, and repentant gossips, etc) in Heaven.  The effect of the so-called Progressive inclusion ethic prevents such people from entering into Heaven, thus it is not a true ethic of inclusion. 

The speech of the Holy Spirit may be discerned by (surprise!) reading the Holy Scriptures, rather than by zero-sum gain naval-gazing exercises.  After all, what if my undigested beef disagreed with yours? 

Arbitrarily Yours,
Elder Oyster

The Curse of Ham was never invoked? The Curse of Ham is not still evoked?

It was invoked mainly by Mormons. That was one of the defining features of their religion until very recently. The Bible has no similar cause for shame in it. Philip had no qualms about treating the Ethiopian eunuch as brother.

Your TV argument is rather tortured as well.

Yes I see it was unclear, sorry. What I was trying to do was to distinguish between the morality of an action and the underlying causes of temptation to an action.

We know that the temptation to commit particular sins is there, we’ve all struggled against some sin. That’s a given. Scientifically analyzing the causes of it might be important in that it may develop treatments that can free people from that temptation in the future. But don’t you see a scientific description of the causes of the temptation to sin have no moral bearing on the action itself? If scientists could analyze the DNA of my hypothetical thief, or the testosterone levels of a violent man and discovered what caused them to be predisposed to act the way they do, that has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of the actions. The Bible writers had all the information they needed to make ethical judgments about alcoholism, violence, man stealing, murder, and yes, sexual sins like adultery and homosexuality as well.

That was all I was trying to say. So bringing up epilepsy is beside the point. I wasn’t talking about advances in treating disease. Disease in itself has no moral significance with regards to whether the individual is moral, but his actions do.

Perhaps it’s because I see these people as more than James Dobson stereotypes.

You don’t have to treat them like “James Dobson stereotypes”, but that doesn’t mean that if you get along with someone very well, you must approve of everything they do. It doesn’t mean you have to support the causes they support if you think they will be harmful to society. You are not betraying them if you stay true to your principles and tell them what they do is wrong. In fact it would be wrong for them to try to emotionally bully you into acting against your convictions, just as it would be wrong for a friend to try to use that friendship as leverage to be complicit in an illegal action.

Jack mentioned that he has received 16 death threats - but never one from an atheist.

Neither has Richard Dawkins nor Christopher Hitchens.
I assume you’ve read his 12 theses and his other works like ‘Sins of Scripture’, etc.?