Subversive Christian Unity

Interesting summary in the online Washington Post about the ongoing soap opera that Anglicanism has become. Those interested in Christian unity are well advised to study schisms taking place right in front of them, in their own lifetimes, not just historical schisms. Excerpt: The Anglican Communion is already divorced  By Trevin Wax | Religion News Service September 21   Is the Anglican Communion about to split over different views of sexual ethics?   You might think so after reading headlines about the archbishop of Canterbury’s proposal to “loosen” the structures of the Communion — a way of retaining his relationship to the liberal wing of the Western churches as well as the traditional Anglicans of the Global South.    But to interpret the archbishop’s recent announcement as a split over sexuality is to miss the bigger picture. . . "  Read more:  The Anglican Communion is already divorced (COMMENTARY) - The Washington Pos...

Nice takeoff on the rather vapid "I'm a Christian, but..." theme that is running around on the Interwebs these days. Hat tip to Lutheran Satire  for skewering this silliness right where it deserves.  .

I was going to write a post to explain that traditional Christianity's opposition to homosexual practices is no innovation, for it dates back to Christianity's beginnings. The church began within the gay-friendly Roman Empire of the first century AD. The nascent church denounced homosexual conduct among church members and called on them to forswear it. But I found that someone else had already written the article I had in view to write. You may read it here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/gay-marriage-and-homosexuality-were-part-of-moral-landscape-in-ancient-rome What I am getting at is that the people who say it's 'only a matter of interpretation' whether the church can adopt cultural norms in this matter, and now approve of homosexual practices after having all along opposed them, have it wrong. If we were going to go along with the culture we had a fine chance about 2000 years ago. Of course the comeback to that is to say our times are somehow diff...

By Charles Marsh Secular society has wrecked itself utterly in the matter of how, typically, women and men in love relate to one another. The secular view is that love is all about attraction and affection and that it is measured by the strength and urgency of our feelings. Quite often the secular thinking is echoed and believed by people in the church, to their detriment. I would like to draw this to the attention of both women and men. We need to reexamine relationships and how they work. What we do, based on wrong expectations, is find someone who sparks our flame and stokes our fire and think we have thereby found a candidate to give us lifelong bliss. We have the qualifications wrong because the job of wife or husband is actually a bit more involved than tab A into slot B. The wrong understanding is the result of a secular worldview that excludes the supernatural, exalts the merely material and physical, and sees people as meaty machinery rather than liv...

Blogger Michael DeShane Hinton, M.Div. has proposed a startling way of escape from the predestination controversies of Protestantism: "The solution proposed by this study is that God ordains what happens but not who does it." Article here . There are, I would say, points yet to be clarified in that idea. A line of questioning I would like to see explored more fully runs like this: God foreordains what happens, and God has perfect foreknowledge of what each of us will do. Is it too fine a distinction to say that does not constitute lockstep determinism in which God dictates each individual's choices? He already knows who will do what, and he set the plan in motion in which each of us will do so. In what way does that not determine our choices as an iron decree? Such a line of questioning calls us to examine the link between what God decrees and what he foreknows. How do they differ? I am glad to see some fresh thinking on this old quandary. I have my own, different t...

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does spotlight the more common fallacies. I hope the connection that these rules have to certain matters touching on Christian unity is self evident. Stop assailing each other with crap arguments. You owe it to your theological opponents and your own self respect.