Following the visit of Bishop Gregory Venables to Canada, there are news reports:
The Vancouver Sun had Argentine Anglican deplores infighting and also Influential evangelical theologian latest to split with Anglican Church.
The Canadian Press had Dissident Anglicans look to South America, Africa for guidance.
Reports of the conference on the Anglican Network in Canada site are here and also here.
The sermon preached is available here.
Chris Sugden also spoke to the gathering.
“Opening his English Standard Version of the Bible, of which he was chief editor, Packer read out passages from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, in which the apostle Paul compares “men who lie with men” to drunkards, thieves, slanderers and adulterers, none of whom will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
So Packer edited {*cough* invented *cough*} his own Gospel? How very convenient.
Lord have mercy!
“That’s a very solemn apostolic warning,” said Packer, a self-described “Calvinist Anglican”
A Calvinist Anglican? Whatever next – a Unitarian Anglican? A Christian Scientist Anglican? Dr Packer’s wild accusations of heresy appear to be lobbed from a glass-house.
“Argentine Anglican deplores infighting.”
“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
PS I suppose that Canon Dr Sugden, like Presiding Bishop Venables, paid his own way to British Columbia.
PPS Our Heroes in Vancouver:
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/pics/glass22.gif
I suppose there are grounds for associating Richard Holloway with John Selby Spong, but RH was never a Church of England Bishop. He was Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
This should be celebrated.
There will never be a progressive Anglicanism whilst people like Packer remain within
Those of you who still think that there can be change whilst conservative evangelicals remain part of the communion are kidding yourself.
There needs to be a split and this should be welcomed as a further step to that end.
I cannot help but pity those who claim unwaivering knowledge of “The Truth.” If one already knows all the answers, there is neither any need for listening nor room for God to speak.
Dear me, reading Sugden yet again makes me wonder what astrological signs and what church life has allowed him to blithely indulge in partisan, self-serving presuppositional frames – usually two-sided either/or categories – which once predicated, settle the discussion pretty much completely ahead of all time and further details – without anyone questioning him much on the limits of such approaches. One guesses his audience was all uniformly nodding in sage presuppositional agreement with everything he said to them. If there is a deep human frailty in the conservative approaches Sugden enacts – and clearly in the sorts of Calvinistic… Read more »
Venables believes there are now two gospels..there are certainly two in his Southern Cone…with room for Anglo-catholic Bishop Schofield and Anglo-Baptist, Jim Packer…two contradictory interpretations of the Gospel.
Chris Sugden’s lecture is abysmal, in that it jumps around, makes logical leaps, tries to slip in a few newsy issues, full of false opposites, bad definitions and it often lacks argument. Perhaps he is too busy these days. I thought I’d look at it as I have at some by Rowan Williams, but not only did I notice the difference but half way in I wondered why I was bothering. I wanted to try and understand the position, but it seems to me to float on the surface of what he is trying to justify.
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/04/sugdens-incoherent-lecture.html
Chris Sugden..is this the man co-ordinating Gafcon and the breakup of the Communion…. Wait for the declaration of U.D.I. in Jerusalem? He was probablly drafting it with Archbishop Venables in Vancouver
In ” Happier” times Sugden would have been made a bishop..the best he can hope for now is an assistant in the Anglo-Catholic (free of women) diocese the Manchester Report suggests.
Hi JCF-
‘Men who lie with men’ is little different from most other translations: check them. Far from being a biased translation it is the most neutral translation possible because: (a) it is merely a literal rendering of the Greek, (b) it picks up the Leviticus reference, (c) it does not go into the specifics of sexual practice unlike some other translations.
Interestingly, I looked up the relevant passage on line, on a site that gives the ability to compare various versions with each other (http://www.biblegateway.com/) and, according to that site, that ISN’T what the English Standard Version says. What the ESV says is “men who practice homosexuality…” So either Packer has some bizarrely different edition of the ESV or he was re-translating on the spot. At any rate, even if the literal translation is “men who lie with men”, that would seem to include–if taken literally–men like Abe Lincoln who regularly “bundled” with other males during his days riding the circuit… Read more »
Christopher, I believe “slanderers” is also little different in other translations. Why is it that the reasons for schism seem to stop once we get to that one? Surely if homosexuality bars one from the Kingdom and if the acceptance of it is worth splitting the Church over, then lying about others and deriding them, which fits the spirit if not the definition of Paul’s word ‘slander’, does the same thing. Yet, conservatives happily go on with that sort of behaviour, as if they just stopped reading that sentence after it excludes the fags. And who ever said that a… Read more »
I disagree w/ all those translations to which you refer, Christopher.
Any translation condemning “men lying with men” which FAILS to account for
1) the PRESUMED heterosexual orientation of all parties involved, and
2) the PRESUMED connection of (male) same-sex sexual behavior to idolatry
does not ACCURATELY REFLECT, in our day, what the Scriptural passages are trying to convey.
Actually, the ESV does not say anything of the above. No “men who lie with men”, no drunkards, thieves or slanderers, only “adulterers” which is a masc. plur. word European Scholastic Academic Theology mis-translated as sexual (marriage breaking of the wife). The ESV says: 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some… Read more »
yet Packer supports divorce and re-marriage…which some other evangelicals see as adultery!