In late 2003 a minority within the ECUSA is regretting that this Church's teaching and practice are not consonant with Scripture, and they have in mind particularly the area of sexual ethics.
To be consonant with Scripture has always been the aim/claim of the Church in her desire to be orthodox. And, surprisingly, it has also been the claim of those who have in sincerity introduced innovations into the Anglican Way since World War II - e.g., marriage of divorcees in church, new styles of liturgy, new language of prayer, the ordination of women, the blessing of "gay" couples & so on.
How can there be this unanimous commitment to CONSONANCE with sacred Scripture but yielding very different results? The answer is relatively simple - it all depends on the premises underlying the claim of consonance (i.e. that which underlies that teaching & doctrine which is said to be in agreement or harmony with the intent and doctrinal content of the Bible).
Let us note that whether we make the traditional conservative claim that the Scriptures are inerrant and infallible as God's Word written in their original autographs, or we make the modern claim that the books of the Bible witness in some way to the Word of God, we have still the task of interpreting the Bible to find the Word of God.
While the classic Anglican approach to interpretation of the Bible has allowed for the function of sanctified reason & careful exegesis, it has set this in the context of bringing to the Bible a Christian mindset that is formed through commitment to the major aspects of Tradition created in the Early Church (the Creeds, the Dogma of the first ecumenical councils, the way the Bible is used in Daily offices & Public Liturgy etc.) and at the Reformation (e.g., the principle of justification by faith & the Reformation Formularies). Further it has said that there is One Canon of Scripture wherein are Two Testaments and thus the unity of Scripture is very important as a principle in terms of interpreting both Testaments and using Scripture in Liturgy and preaching.
When this mindset reads Scripture and applies what it finds to the contemporary church it is very unlikely to desire to introduce any major innovations. Its sense is always to look up to the exalted Lord and in so doing also to look back to the foundational documents and their use in the past. Thus it seeks to find ways of making what is received from the past into living reality in the present and for the future. To introduce anything for which there are no strong hints and a sound basis in the past, would be seen as not being consonant with Scripture as received.
In contrast, if the approach to the Bible is dominated by what we may called "critical theory", if the search is always for what it meant to those who originally wrote it and received it, if all kinds of critical questions preface any claim of unity between the OT & NT, and if the doctrinal understanding of the Bible in Tradition is discounted or is sidelined as being too culturally conditioned to be taken seriously into account, then obviously what the Bible is said to teach and what is applicable to the present are very open questions. So it is possible to claim that the real, inner message of the Bible is this or that theme or position and on this new basis justify innovations in the Church's doctrine and practice (e.g., import into the church as innovations that which in secular society is regarded as good and right).
The big questions for Evangelical & Charismatic Episcopalians in this time of crisis in the ECUSA and in world Anglicanism are how they actually view the Scriptures, how they interpret them and how they apply the results of that study to the burning questions of the day. For they need to remember that it is much the same type of reading and interpreting of the Bible that has justified the innovation of same-sex blessing that also has justified and continues to support women's ordination and the blessing of serial monogamy by the church. And the use of Scripture in modern Lectionaries and Liturgy is very different from that usage in the older Lectionaries and Liturgies. So to use the latter is to imbibe the "modern" outlook even if without intending to do so.
In this complex situation which version of the Bible is regularly used tells one a lot about where a given person or group really is! If one uses a Bible which translates Psalm 1 as "Happy are they" or "Happy is the one", for example, then the unity of Scripture is basically lost for Jesus Christ, the new Adam, has been taken out of the Psalter! And if out of the Psalter then out of the basic prayer of the Church. In the unity of Scripture the Psalter is the Prayer of Christ in, with and through His Church and the prayer of the Church in with and through Him! Finally, the classic Christian doctrine of sexuality (which forbids all "gay" sex as all fornication & adultery) wholly depends upon the unity of the two Testaments
in One Canon.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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