Lisa Fox Doesn’t Get It

The reason is that they often serve as opportunities to show new readers why we take the positions we do, and how to refute similar arguments they will inevitably be faced with in vestry meetings, diocesan conventions, and so forth.

Absolutely. One thing that you can count on with the revisionists is that after you categorically dismiss their “arguments”, three months later they will bring them up again. How many times will we need to respond to the shellfish argument?

“fruitful” people who happen to be gay or lesbian.

Speaks for itself Ms. Fox
Intercessor

Some veterans will wonder why I bother linking to and commenting on certain revisionist blog entries (indeed, some of my own fellow bloggers wonder the same thing). The reason is that they often serve as opportunities to show new readers why we take the positions we do

Exactly.  Here, for instance, is the absolute essence of revisionism:

To me, the decisions of GC03 were Spirit-filled

As you can see, it always comes back to “me”—the self as ultimate authority.  When Dean Wall married two lesbians in a clandestine ceremony at the Niagara Diocese’s cathedral, he justified his rogue action by explaining that he was following his own conscience.  His official statement, as I recall, abounded in the words “me” and “I”—with the word “we” appearing not once.

Revisionism is a religion for narcissists.  It is the polar opposite of Christianity, which is all about community and the sacrifice of self.

I’m sure this is not a huge revelation to most here - but it keeps hitting me that another paradigm difference between the reasserters and the revisionists is that they like their god distant and impersonal, historic, but not meddling.  To be repentant, you must be in RELATIONSHIP with a living, engaging Diety.  You must submit yourself to his authority, and you must change your behavior, based on his commandments, by his grace.  None of this do I see in the liturgy, philosophy or theology of revisionists.

I watched (like a terrible dose of castor oil) the lesbian wedding that Kevin posted at Anglican TV.  I was interested in hearing just what that was all about for them.  It was all about “love” and “faithfulness” and “goodness” rooted in each other and in the community (even in “the earth,” in the words of one of the partners).  There is no vertical relationship with a God who might ask us to do things differently than we would naturally be inclined.  Or even a living God who was the source of any goodness or virtue, who might bestow us continually with the grace and strength to carry out his will.  It’s all here on earth, and up to us, with some vague “spirit” by which they get permission to change stuff from the past—the “new things.”  This was not the Christian religion being practiced at All Saints, Pasadena.

The sermon I heard yesterday at my parish, by contrast, was all about Jesus and how he speaks to us and how he moves in our lives, and how he wants us to follow him daily - not just his example set 2k years ago in Israel, but to follow his guidance that comes to us continually as we spend time in prayer and study of his Word.  I heard how prayer changes things: that God hears and responds, and that we can have meaningful dialog with our Creator.  This is a Living God, not a lifeless wooden statue.

So, it’s no wonder that they cannot see the distinction between repentant sinners and people who do X, Y or Z.  To them, you are what you do and there is no changing it.  And why should you if your “god doesn’t make mistakes?”  You’re fine the way you are and you deserve, by virtue of your ticket punch at baptism, to be eligible for holy orders.  Or whatever.

Romans 7:24-25a “What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

I’m sure this is not a huge revelation to most here - but it keeps hitting me that another paradigm difference between the reasserters and the revisionists is that they like their god distant and impersonal, historic, but not meddling. <snip> It’s all here on earth, and up to us, with some vague “spirit” by which they get permission to change stuff from the past—the “new things.”

Precisely.  Their God exists solely to vindicate them, their politics, and their lifestyle choices. He has no other function.

And yet…

How many reasserters have remarried after divorce, claiming that it is not sin to do so?

If the reasserters role back the clock on gay ordinations, they MUST DEAL with this issue too.

She might accept the conservative stance

...if “the other side” would agree to be equally literal on other parts of Scripture, such as these:

§ We will ordain no one who has divorced and remarried, as they are adulterers.
§ We will ordain no one who gossips or commits slander. We will consecrate no man whose wife commits these sins, either, in keeping with I Timothy

As a non-ordained pewsitter, I could go along with that. Now she should accept my position, (and maybe step down and sit in the pews).

And yet… the witness is this, that none of them has claimed it is not a sin (that I have heard) - only the “extenuating circumstances” under which they did it. What what exactly is the correlation of divorce/remarriage to gay ordinations? None. However, Derek makes an inadvertently excellent point - the revisionist viewpoint is in fact “progress at all costs” (re:“role back the clock” comment). If you look carefully, you will see divorce applauded in revisionist circles (easily as widely as it is practiced), so the protest here is specious - “you all can’t practice any sin - because that would give lie to your ‘holier-than-thou’ stand”. Derek, none of us is without sin. The fact remains still, in spite of your attempt to point the finger, that it is the celebration of gay sexual activity and the declaration of unbridled eros ( arguably the least of the loves) as virtue and functionally equal to God’s love that causes the discomfort that forces revisionists to go sin-hunting among the reasserters. It’s just that we are not proud of that sin and we repent as oft as we are found to commit it.

I’ve never heard of a Gossip-Blessing liturgy.

Perhaps such rites take place privately.

Lisa is correct as to the divorced and remarried ordinand.  But then, of course, you can ignore those parts of scripture and 2000 years of Tradition which don’t fit your cultural agenda.  Or in other words there are your “new things” and then there are our “new things”.

How many reasserters have remarried after divorce, claiming that it is not sin to do so?

If the reasserters role back the clock on gay ordinations, they MUST DEAL with this issue too.

There is no clock, O Derek Smith.  God exists from eternity: whatever is true is always true.  It is not the case that once upon a time gay ordinations were bad, and then passing of time somehow legitimized them.  Homosexuality has no place in the Divine Order.

p.s. the word you meant to use was “roll” not role.

OK, Lisa, let’s start with Barry Beisner, the twice divorced, and thrice married bishop of Northern California and kick his butt out of office.

DS,

You’re quite right that the other innovations since 1930 (artificial contraception, the watering down of marriage, women’s ordination, and the whole attitude toward our place in Creation) will have to be revisited.  (There’s a separate discussion going on on SF about WO, so let’s leave that alone here.)

We’ve clearly been drawn too far away from the biblical picture of marriage, but remember that the biblical picture isn’t limited to the Sermon on the Mount.  In general there are two levels of Christian ethics: the Proverbs level, and the Matthew 5 level.  The one we mustn’t sink below, and the other we strive to attain, with lots of help from the Holy Spirit. 

The Sermon on the Mount has a lot in common with “Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect”.  We can’t actually live at that level, not consistently anyway, but the Holy Spirit is getting us closer, and the blood of Christ covers our many failures. 

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Thanks Robroy…case closed.
Intercessor

Sick people go to hospitals and doctor offices all the time looking for help.  I doubt hospitals and doctors would welcome them if their purpose was to infect others and cause an epidimic and forbid the doctors to treat anybody with their disease.  Now sin is worse than a disease.  IMHO

PM - If you will allow me to add on to your analogy ....
It is like a sick person coming to the hospital and asking the doctors to bless the disease because God made them this way.

DaveW and Masternav

I happen to agree with you on the gay issue, and if you check my previous posts you will see that I am by no means a reappraiser. My finger-pointing in this case is to my fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. This is an area that must be revisited, and I was pleased to see Peter Jensen make a note of this in a recent meeting. It must certainly be dealt with among the clergy, and eventually extended to the laity.

Another Pew-Sitter here, and one that is a remarried man.

I’m among those agree that we must return to bishops being “the husband of one wife”.

Perhaps, if he was the ‘injured party’ and not the ‘guilty party’ in the dissolution of his first marriage, a remarried man might be qualified for the position.  But on the basis of ‘traditions and teachings of the whole ‘catholic’ church’, and the ‘plain reading of Scripture, I’d be content to let it be that one who has been remarried is ‘ineligible’ for Holy Orders.  (In fact as anything not done from faith is sin, as I’m not convinced that I would qualify, I’d certainly not take up the role even of deacon at this point, much less think myself qualified to be a bishop!).

The point about divorce is fairly made.  A believer who is divorced should be disqualified from ministry unless it can be established that he is an innocent party.  Repentance does not mean that all consequences are erased.  Some faults must permanently debar a man from a leadership role in the church.  Otherwise we end up with scandals like Jimmy Swaggert - who gets caught with a prostitute, weeps on TV, and spends three months in time out.  It holds the church up to contempt, and provides an opportunity for scoffers to point the finger and say “Hypocrites!”

carl

Like the drunkard who loses his arm in a bar fight.,,,,,

God will forgive the penitent, but He rarely gives him the arm back.

Perhaps if the church took its requirements for holy orders this seriously, people in challenging marriages might be inspired to work just a little bit harder to work it out.  And perhaps the church might offer more support to folks in challenging marriages, and not write them off until it was clear that there was no more hope for them.  Not all marriages can be saved, but any motivation we can give people to keep trying, might be a welcomed thing.

Personally, marriage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done (and continue to do, by the grace of God), so I know that this challenge is faced by thousands of faithful Christians.  Let us lift each other up as we seek to live faithfully into the vows we have made to each other and to God.

“...if “the other side” would agree to be equally literal on other parts of Scripture, such as these:

§ We will ordain no one who has divorced and remarried, as they are adulterers.
§ We will ordain no one who gossips or commits slander. We will consecrate no man whose wife commits these sins, either, in keeping with I Timothy”

Oh! Thank you Lisa for not asking us to also “pinky swera” as well! Geesh! She really needs to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and come out from the fog!

Lisa, I am willing to be equally literal on the points you mention.  entering this priesthood is not a right.  Someone who is divorced and remarried (and I fall into this category) should not be ordained in the ministry and certainly not consecrated as a bishop.  In fact, anyone in a sexual relationship outside of sacramental marriage should not be part of the clergy.  Unrepentant gossips should likewise be disqualified. Let me know when you want to go to work with me to bring these changes about in our church.

Where exactly was it that Jesus made clear that divorce was the unforgivable sin?

He Identified that as the giving credit to the Devil for God’s work (best I can tell from the passage).

St. Paul does say that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife.  In my book that puts me one over the limit, and the Pope one under the requirements.

If your wife cheated on you, in the old days you could have turned her over and had her stoned.  Adultery resulted in covenantal death, and physical death too back then.  At that point, you should be free to remarry shouldn’t you? 

Not that we should be light on adultery but if you take too strict a stance on adultery, then you must defrock the priest or bishop whose eyes simply stray to a woman’s low cut blouse.  Jesus made absolutely no distinction between looking at that woman’s breasts and fondling them. Thus that clergyman is, as far as Christ is concerned, as guilty as if he had sex with her.

That #26 reminds me of Jimmy Carter’s famous “Lust in my heart” quote.

Maybe women should wear Burhkas to keep the clergy from lusting.

TEC still has clergy who lust after women?

Sure Tim. Mother Russell & Mother Kaeton for starters.

The illustration of the lusting rector was to make the point that one can be too pharisaical about things. We are all sinners, constantly, which is why we beg mercy for and strengthened hearts in the litany of the ante-communion. There is only one unforgivable sin - it is not divorce.

Jesus states that the adulterer and the one who marries her commits adultery, he does not speak to the faithful party.  To place a faithful spouse who was cheated on and divorced by an adulterous spouse (common with today’s no fault divorce)in the position of being an adulterer is to call sin what Jesus did not.

You know, I have a problem with a group that, when confronted with a critique of their behavior, doesn’t actually address the critique.  They simply play the game of throwing allegations back at the person doing the critiquing. 

Address the critique first.  Why can’t they do that? 

And, while I’m on the soapbox, why is it that the GBLT lobby can’t find a bunch of straights to be their front men/women?  Absent those people, they are just a bunch of people desperately trying to justify their own lives.

I’ve never heard of a Gossip-Blessing liturgy.

Perhaps such rites take place privately.

But you’d think we’d have heard rumors. . .

Carl (19) wrote:

Repentance does not mean that all consequences are erased.  Some faults must permanently debar a man from a leadership role in the church.

If true, God help us all because this is a wholly inadequate concept of grace. Yes, consequences of sin, in this case divorce and remarriage, can and often do remain here on earth. But by your very definition, no one is qualified for ordained ministry because God’s grace is not mightier than sin’s consequences that you attempt to generalize well beyond specific situations in which it occurs.  Divorce is surely a sin and to be avoided if at all possible; but the God I know forgives it for those who repent of it and in doing so wipes their slates clean, just as he does for any other sin.

Sorry, but you have no good news to offer anybody by your definition of grace. Moreover, it is this very attitude that helped create the revisionism with which we must deal today.

Fr. Maney, I can’t speak for Carl, but when I read what he says, I read it to mean that in the case of divorce, one of the lasting consequences is that the kids now live in a broken home and the ex-spouses will have different lives ahead of them, sharing custody.  Also, their financial situations can change drastically, and that is a consequence that just has to be dealt with.  Of course, the repentant divorcees are justified before God, but there are different facts on the ground in their lives, as a consequence of the divorce.  God’s grace is still sufficient, but circumstances have changed.

Correction.  I actually went back and read Carl’s post.  (Teach me to go off half-cocked.)  I see that Carl had more permanent, punitive consequences in mind.  But my point, though tangential, stands.

The ‘ban’ on ordination of those who are twice or never married is not likely to be in place because of any inherit evil in the persons so banned, but rather because such persons would not be able to truthfully speak to the struggles of those who are attempting to maintain a faithful marriage (which is the allegory of the church and Christ most common in Scripture).  The never married has no clue, and the twice married didn’t manage to save his own relationship - how can he be received as a ‘good councilor’? 

Remember that the Bishop must also keep his children in subjection and charity. Again not be cause childlessness is sinful, but because the family is the center of the story - and who would take the word of an old bachelor seriously when faced with the troubles of today’s youth?

He is not be a Novice (again no sin in being young to the faith - often they are the most pure and zealous…)

These requirements aren’t so much about setting up a ‘less sinful’ man as bishop, it is about making sure the man chosen is able to Shepard the Flock.

If the Bishop-applicant doesn’t demonstrate the ability to do well in his own house, why would the household of the faithful be trusted to him?

Re #37:

It sounds as though you want to require priests or bishops to be married and have children.  That would have disqualified the Apostle Paul.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Kevin Maney+

In my life, I have witnessed the following:

1.  A pastor who deserted his wife and three sons to move to Minneapolis with his homosexual lover.  He was defrocked.

2.  A pastor who wandered into a store and walked out the front door with a personal computer while astonished store staff looked on.  He was arrested, defrocked, and committed suicide.

3.  A pastor who was arrested for soliciting male prostitutes in a local park.  He was released for lack of evidence, and defrocked.

4.  And then there was the pastor who left his wife and kids to run off with the church secretary.  In this list, his offense is not so shocking.  He was just defrocked.

Under what circumstances could any of these men credibly return to the pulpit?  There is a difference between forgiveness and remission of consequences.  David was forgiven, but the child of adultery died, and the sword never departed his house. 
I also know a man who woke up one morning and found a note from his wife saying “I don’t want to be married any more.”  She disappeared and was never seen again.  He was left with two little kids.  He persevered. He was not defrocked.  He is the only divorced pastor I have ever met. I trust you see the difference.

Truthfully, I have never been in a church where a pastor would not be immediately removed for getting divorced (assuming he is at fault). 

carl

And of which see was he bishop?  (Chapter and Verse, if you please…)

The Apostle’s ‘requirements’ list is given:
Acts 1:21-26; I Corinthians 15:5-8; II Corinthians. 12:12.

The Apostles appointed Bishops (Titus being an example), the former are no longer with us, (None meet the requirements), but the latter we have in received in the laying on of hands from the first of them until now.

40 was in reply to 38.

I don’t mean to make that poor pastor’s life more of spectacle…

Carl, I don’t think it’s the divorce, per se, that is the sticking point.  I believe it’s the remarriage that creates the problem.

I believe that the “other side” has points that they think are valid, and do seem valid on their face.

If a person is divorced and then remarries, a fairly literal reading of Matthew 5 indicates that they are committing adultery.  How does one obtain “forgiveness”  to continue in the second or third marriage?  What, exactly, is the sin being forgiven?

The Catholics address this by determining if a valid, sacramental marriage took place originally.  If it did, you may not remarry.  If it did not, you are free to marry again. 

Is there an equivalent here?  I am conservative, but Lisa does have a point that if a literal reading of the “clobber” passages forbids gay activity, Matthew 5 forbids divorce and remarriage.

Divorce and Remarriage, under Mathew 19:9 conditions is not sinful.  My wife and are are not living in sin. 

(well, not because of being married to each other.  I’m guilty of sin every day, but my relationship with my wife isn’t sinful….)

I still think I’m ‘disqualified’ as I am now a man who has had two wives….

Carl, I remember an incident where an associate pastor shacked up with the parish school principal, both were married to other people, and had the nerve to ask the vestry to allow them to live in a church owned house.  The vestry kicked them both out, but the bishop found a church for him to pastor in San Francisco, wouldn’t you know!  But that’s been California for a long time!