Recently I posted some thoughts on what I see as the really inappropriate verbal and written attacks being carried out by professing Christians against Mark Driscoll, a pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The inevitable happened, and some people (whether here at the blog or elsewhere) suggested that maybe I would be more supportive of some of those attacks if I didn’t happen to agree theologically with mark. Really, it was suggested, I was being over sensitive when he was being criticised and giving a free pass to anything he says or does just because I’m on his “side,” doctrinally speaking. That, some thought, is why I don’t think he should be called a jerk, an ass, a slime ball, a douchebag and worse. It’s not that I think such conduct is wrong, I’m really just biased and over-sensitive about my theological buddies being disagreed with.

As a response to my concerns about the way Mark is being treated, this is actually a fallacious approach. It’s the old ad hominem fallacy, suggesting that my criticism of the treatment being dished out can be dismissed because of some other feature I have – like agreement with Mark on theological matters. Of course this is a mistake, and even if I agreed completely with Mark on theological matters the concerns that I raised about the conduct of fellow Christians should be taken no less seriously than if I disagreed with Mark on every point of doctrine imaginable. So this kind of reply is a non-starter.

But, as I said in the comment thread of my previous blog entry, I actually don’t agree with Mark at every point, and even some of the things for which he is now lambasted by his spiritual family are things that I disagree with him on. I just choose not to belittle him for them. One such thing his Mark’s concern over the “chickification” of Christianity, and the way he can use that concern to dismiss points of view that really have nothing to do with it. Here’s an area where I think appropriate criticism is required. Although I agree with part of what Mark – and many others for that matter – say about the feminisation of the Christian faith, I think he misunderstands and badly misapplies the principle to which he appeals, in a way that many other evangelicals also do with different principles. So to reassure people that I’m not a “Mark Driscoll sycophant,” I wanted to unpack some of the concern I have here – maybe even for the purpose of modelling the kind of criticism I think is appropriate, having already vented a bit about what’s not appropriate.
Interested? Read the rest.

I don’t know Mark Driscoll. Nor, for that matter, do those who make up the disturbingly enthusiastic crowd of stone-bearers who wait in the wings, apparently hoping for his downfall. They’re calling him a thug, alleging that he suffers from mental illness, calling him a slime ball, a heretic, an “ass,” a “jerk,” and worse.

Genuinely committed evangelicals, who in other contexts would actively condemn hatred and vilification (and would probably never think of themselves as taking part in the like) are lining up on social media websites and blogs to insult, ridicule, belittle and attack Mark Driscoll, and to basically give a pat on the back to their friends who do likewise.
Interested? Read the rest.

Several months ago a Catholic friend of mine made a comment about a church. It was an Anglican church that every year seeks attention by putting up potentially offensive posters that have been known in the past to mock tradition Christian theology (the church has a reputation as being theologically liberal). My friend did not suggest that this showed that Anglicanism itself was wrong (it’s important to add that).

In a rather unfortunately display of something I see far too often when churches and their mistakes are being discussed, a fellow came along and suggested that (my paraphrase) this is what happens when churches abandon God’s true church that Jesus founded, the Catholic church, and they don’t follow the papacy, which is the true repository of apostolic teaching.  Then the argument was clearly stated: Without the English Reformation and the Anglican Church, the above incident would not have happened, and hence the Anglican church shouldn’t exist and the Reformation was a mistake.

So I replied to this stranger:

Greg, maybe a course in philosophy would help here, but the fact that A would not exist without B, and A is bad, does not mean that B should not exist. Sex abuse by Catholic priests would not exist if the Catholic Church did not exist. But clearly that does not mean that the Catholic church shouldn’t exist. Your partisanship is clouding your reason. Put down that hobby horse.

Of course the same is true of any church: Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists and so on. Churches, just like any organisation, provide a place where people can do the same bad things people would do no matter where they were. But this fellow was Catholic, so the above example was more appropriate.

Now what happened next? Was I offered a reason to re-think the logic of this counter-example? No. I received a message from Mr Matheson telling me that he didn’t “like” my comment, and asked that it be removed. Naturally, I declined. The only reasons to dislike the above statement might be that one sees that it undercuts their argument but can’t think of a good way to respond (as I believe was the case here), or one misunderstands the statement to mean its opposite, namely that sex abuse in the Catholic church does show that the Catholic church shouldn’t exist – although I struggle to see how anyone could honestly believe that this is what was meant.

Imagine my surprise then, when I logged into Facebook today and saw this:

There’s no recourse to this – no way of appealing or objecting to this bizarre decision, so that’s really the end of the matter – not that I mind. It’s just a Facebook conversation after all. You can read Facebook’s community standards here, where I think you’ll see that in fact my comment doesn’t get close to violating any of them. As far as I can see this is nothing more than a case of intellectual cowardice in the utmost: Running scared from a rebuttal and then having it hidden from public view so that nobody sees how one’s argument was completely undermined.

But if this incident highlights anything, it offers advice to my Catholic friends: Don’t argue against Protestantism (or anything else) this way. Yes, the Reformation, like the counter-reformation, like Vatican II, like movements within medieval Catholicism, like movements within Protestantism, the scientific revolution, and indeed like the very existence of the Catholic church itself, may have made some unfortunate things possible. But that never, by itself, shows that something is wrong, that it should not exist, or that it should not have happened. If you do, you may end up with somebody offering a response that you really wish the world couldn’t see.

Yesterday on Saturday the 3rd of September 2011, the Auckland Synod of the Anglican Church in New Zealand passed a motion that people involved in sexual relationships outside of marriage but within committed same-sex relationships would not be impeded from being ordained into ministry.

The mover of the motion was Glynn Cardy, notorious for his parish (St Matthews in the City) displaying billboards openly mocking historic Christian belief (I mentioned this a whole ago). Not terribly surprising I suppose!

Here is the motion:

That this Synod
[1] Holds that sexual orientation should not be an impediment to the discernment, ordination, and licensing of gay and lesbian members to any lay and ordained offices of the Church; and further
[2] persons in committed same-sex relationships likewise should not be excluded from being considered for discernment, ordination, and licensing to any lay and ordained offices of the Church.
[3] commits to an intentional process of listening to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, organized by the Archdeacons in consultation with the gay and lesbian community.
[4] commits to an ongoing discussion with the ministry units, asks the Archdeacons to facilitate this, and invites responses to those discussions to be submitted to Diocesan Council by 31st March 2012; and
[5] commits to support the process and work of the Commission to be appointed by General Synod Standing Committee, as resolved at its meeting in July 2011.

It’s absolutely crucial to state: Prior to this motion being passed, there was no ban on homosexuals becoming ordained. None whatsoever. This is not about the church’s willingness to include people who identify as homosexual (some popular misrepresentations notwithstanding). This is about whether or not the church is right to refuse to ordain people who are living in a sexual union outside of marriage, something that the Christian faith has always disapproved of, regardless of anyone’s sexual orientation.
Interested? Read the rest.

I’m a bit late in noticing this. On the fourth of May 2010, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, preached a sermon at Charterhouse, London (the text of that sermon is here). Charterhouse – now a boarding school – is a former Carthusian monastery in London (the Carthusians were a Catholic order), and that’s why Williams was speaking there. Now, why would the Archbishop of Canterbury speak at a Catholic monastery?

The cynical (and often correct) side of me says this: It’s just another case of feel good, watered down ecumenicalism, right up there with “inter-faith” prayer meetings. But it’s not. Williams spoke there because it was the 475th anniversary of the execution of John Houghton, the prior of the monastery, along with fifteen other monks who lived there. Along with a public acknowledgement of the evil of what was done here, Williams threw in this gem: “If Henry VIII is saved (an open question perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.”

That’s right, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that perhaps the head of the English Church, the King, might in fact be lost after all.
Interested? Read the rest.

I was raised in the Roman Catholic church. Now, I’m a Protestant. I am most definitely not one of those Protestants who believes that part of apologetics means telling everyone that the Catholic church is evil. I find that flavour of Evangelicalism frankly embarrassing. The truth is that I have a great respect for the Catholic intellectual tradition, in spite of the disagreements I have with the doctrines of that church. I would gladly work with Catholics, fellowship and worship with them, and in fact I’d rather like to work at a Catholic College/University. I wanted to get that out in the open right away. I am an ecumenical Christian, and I cherish the idea that I am part of the catholic (small c, meaning worldwide or universal) Christian faith. Disagreements that I have with Catholics are disagreements among family.

That being said, every now and then I am exposed to a reminder – quite apart from my doctrinal disagreements – of why I could not become a Roman Catholic again. I was having a discussion recently with a friend about the Canon of Scripture – the list of books that are included in the Bible. My friend – a Protestant – was under the impression that the “Apocryphal” books of the Old Testament (called the “deutero-canonical” books by Catholics, when means “second canon”) were actually part of the Hebrew Bible, and that is why they ended up in the Septuagint. I was able to point out for him that actually, the apocryphal books gained their separate status in part because they are the ones that appear in the Septuagint but which are not found in the Hebrew Scripture.

Bear in mind – the point that I am getting to has nothing to do with which books actually do belong in the canon of Scripture. For my purposes here, it doesn’t matter to me what you think about the answer to that question. This issue just provides the backdrop for what I’m about to say.
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Lately I’ve been seeing some pretty unpleasant discussions at blogs where Christians have been positioning themselves in opposition to other Christians because those other Christians didn’t hold some doctrine that was essential to the faith, or else they did hold it, but they didn’t regard it as essential to the Christian faith. The example I have in mind is the rough treatment that William Lane Craig has received for not holding that an Augustinian take on original sin was essential to Christianity (even though he seemed, in that discussion, to think that something like it was still true). Think about that term: “Essential to the Christian faith.” Essential. Necessary. You can’t have Christian faith without it. Required.
Interested? Read the rest.

This is the Nicene Creed:

1. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
2. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.
3. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
4. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
5. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
6. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
7. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.*
8. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
9. He has spoken through the Prophets.
10. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
11. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
12. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Word count: 223
Points: 12 (although I guess that depends on how you divide it up)

Bear in mind that this statement was written in a time when Christian orthodoxy was taking considerable pains to define itself in such a way as to avoid heresy. A lot of thought and planning went into this creed, and yet there it is; elegant, simple, clear and above all, succinct. If the above describes your faith, and you’re not being sneaky with any of your words, using hidden meanings or anything like that, you simply mean what you say, then as far as your beliefs go, you’re a Christian. That’s what this Creed was designed to determine. Simple.
Interested? Read the rest.

This is a brief comment on something that just caught my eye and jogged my memory. Every now and then someone points out that affiliation with a Christian church has declined steeply over the last half century in New Zealand. Now, I’m not the sort of myopic person to think that trends in my own neighbourhood are global indicators of anything. But my other and perhaps more interesting thought is that this shows much less than one might suppose. The nature of the relationship between Christian faith and official membership of a denomination has shifted significantly. The reality is that this generation, as opposed to that of the mid twentieth century, is much less likely to see official membership as important. This is all the more so in large evangelical or Pentecostal churches where the question of church membership might never even arise.

It was interesting to see this thought reflected in an article in the LA Times today, citing a study that illustrates the fact that a decline in church affiliation is not the result of a lack of religious conviction in young people.

Time to wax theological just a little. More or less all Christians in the Western world – and plenty of people who aren’t Christians as well, are familiar with Pentecostalism. It’s a brand of Christianity born at the beginning of the twentieth century with a strong emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and also the gifts of the Holy Spirit, with a special emphasis on what they refer to as the “gift of tongues.” I might say more about that another time, but for now I just want to comment briefly on the Pentecostal emphasis on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and the way that it relates (or does not relate) to the New Testament.
Interested? Read the rest.