Miserable Morals
Mark Harris is completely skew-whiff in his arguments:
Archbishop Venables of the Southern Cone is quoted in the Living Church as saying, “We will have no problem ceasing interventions once we see repentance and a return to biblical principles.”
This is a shaky moral stance: "We will stop doing x (which the Archbishop considers a "secondary" issue) when you stop doing y (which he considers a primary issue.) What if he is wrong in what is primary and secondary, or deluding himself?
I want you all to note Harris’ line of argument. He’s given up defending same-sex activity as being in line with Scripture. His argument is actually over whether it’s of primary or secondary importance.
But it gets better:
Let’s try this out: We will stop beating you when you stop talking back to your father. (Secondary issue: when is beating with a cane OK; primary issue the commandment about honoring your father and your mother.) This is the Archbishop Akinola moral example.
And the link to where Akinola says that it’s OK to beat a child? URL? Magazine interview reference?
Non existent, but let’s not stop smearing people with vicious allegations with no evidence whatsoever:
Or this: We will stop calling you worse than dogs and criminal when you say you are sorry you ever engaged in homosexual acts and get married to a person of the opposite sex. (secondary: insult; primary, biblical principle as defined by the accuser) An Akinola example again.
Where does Akinola say that? Where does Akinola demand that all men should be married to women? URL? Magazine or Newspaper reference?
Non existent, but that doesn’t stop Harris slandering Akinola.
This is a miserably pathetic line of argumentation and a clear example of the TEC principle of "It’s not what the text says, it’s what I choose the text to say" evidenced only yesterday in KJS’ approach to the Canons.
Gee, and here I thought he was making a point about how our brother’s sins don’t excuse our own sins regardless of the relative severity of the sins.
Jon
Remind me – which sins were did he confess that “we” were committing? Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think confession works if you just confess other people’s sins. Of course, if you’re actually making even those up, then you may well be adding to the actions of which you need to repent.
Alas Greg Venabales simply demonstrates what he has demonstrated many times before: that he is picky about which biblical principles he adheres to. He seems never to have read Luke 18:9-14 for example……. pray for him….
Quite right – after all, humility is such a major part of the way the Episcopal Church relates to the rest of the Communion.
Sound, you are going to have to elaborate. Please explain how Greg Venables is being Pharisaic. If you can find a quote from Greg Venables glorying in his own righteousness and claiming that he is without sin, then please share it with the rest of us. Or are you one of these revisionists who like to suggest that any rebuke whatsoever is “Pharisaic” or “judgmental”? if so, then how are we meant to discuss anything?Â
It is like arguing about the colour of a horse with someone who doesn’t even accept that the horse is there.
Wicked conservative perahps you did not read what Greg Venables said.
“We will have no problem ceasing interventions once we see repentance and a return to biblical principles.â€
Is he not saying here, ‘they’ are in the wrong, ‘we’ are in the right? Â Then read Luke 18:9-14 …Â
I agree, arguing with Greg Venablrs is indeed like arguing about the colour of a horse with someone who does not even know we have a horse…Â we pray for him.
Sound your point may have some force were Venables (whose actions I too disagree with – though on rather different grounds than your own) not responding to the actions taken, and truth claims made, by the “prophets” in the Episcopal Church.
He is of course saying that the Episcopal Church is mistaken. In this he seems to stand with a great many other Anglicans around the world.
Your point surely can’t be that any truth claim is in itself prohibited by the humility taught by Jesus in the Gospels since it would undermine the very truth claims on which the Episcopal leadership based their actions and even the truth claims at the very centre of the christian Gospel.