Commentary on Two Separate Gospels
by Peter Cook
Special to VirtueOnline
June 3, 2008
In the Epistle reading the other Sunday, Paul, speaking to the Corinthians said that God had appointed him "a steward of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy."
In today's Episcopal Church two quite separate gospels are being proclaimed. If there is one thing that separates the Gospel of traditional Christian faith from its modern counterfeit, it is the conviction that Scripture really does introduce us to "the mysteries of God". Traditional belief starts from God's diagnosis of our fallen humanity, the wondrous remedy he provides, the mystery of our being transformed into the likeness of Christ, and God's glorious invitation to become citizens of an everlasting kingdom, a kingdom whose power and authority exceed all others.
By contrast, today's counterfeit gospel lacks all clarity, all certainty, all authority. Rather, it has surrendered and bought into a modernistic culture whose value systems and respect for authority are crumbling everywhere. There are many in today's world who automatically view all external authority with suspicion. Authority is only respected if it resonates with personal experience. Moreover, since your experience, or your culture, may be different from mine, we now have to speak of "authorities" in the plural. Pluralism is now the politically correct term to describe the abandonment of any claim to absolute truth, thus the conviction now is that all truth is relative. Plural belief systems, plural value systems, ideals in competition with other ideals. According to this modern counterfeit faith, we must now exercise "radical subjectivity" if in our world we are successfully to live with the relativity of all truth.
In our Episcopal Church it has become commonplace for bishops to say that Scripture teaching accepted in some parts of the Anglican Communion is no longer acceptable, (too unenlightened), for our more progressive United States. If the Early Church out of its own experience "wrote the Bible", then out of our modern experience "we can rewrite the Bible."
As when a sick patient exhibits symptoms pointing to serious disease, so too has the Episcopal Church exhibited symptoms of disease that could well prove terminal. The consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop in 2003, the claim that his leadership offers new definition to the term "holiness", were two very clear symptoms. An equally alarming symptom: the above claim that as the church wrote the Bible, so it can rewrite it. As when a doctor encounters alarming symptoms in his patient, the task is to diagnose precisely the disease now infecting The Episcopal Church, and what caused the infection.
In a recent interview, the Presiding Bishop was asked about her hopes for the coming Lambeth Conference. She spoke of it as Anglicanism having opportunity to redefine itself every 10 years. Her definition of the Christian "church" was particularly interesting. Starting from the ground up she explained: (i) it is the place where Christians "belong", none of course are excluded; (ii) the interaction and sharing of those who belong defines Christian "behavior" - Christian ethics; (iii) finally, from our belonging and behavior there emerges what we call church "beliefs" or teaching.
St. Paul's understanding of church couldn't be more different. Only because the mysteries of God have been revealed in Christ can his church exist at all. (i) It is our belief "in Christ" that incorporates us into "the body of Christ" so constituting us as his church. All Christian "beliefs" are derivative of that. (ii) Christian "behavior" is our expression of the image of Christ into which we are being transformed. Thus "behavior" is governed by "belief" not the other way round; (iii) only by being "in Christ" and living (behaving ) in his righteousness can we even claim to be Christ's church. What today's counterfeit gospel proclaims is the very reverse of this. It reverses the whole order of Scripture whereby God comes revealing himself, and calling us who are disciples to be his church. Instead, starting with human experience, and working from the bottom up, the counterfeit gospel arrogantly claims that the Christian church, by virtue of its own experience and identity actually creates itself, creates whatever Christian ethic it feels appropriate to its age, and decides which of its beliefs it still regards as credible.
In her interview about the Lambeth Conference, the Presiding Bishop was asked how she viewed the Bible study program planned for all Lambeth bishops. Its focus is to be the "I am" sayings of Jesus from John's gospel. She said she was looking forward to them. She felt that the "I am" sayings of Jesus offer: "ONE view of how God becomes incarnationally present in our world. We as Christ's church provide ANOTHER. We now are the incarnational presence of God in the world". This extraordinary downplay of Christ's incarnation, actually ties in very well with what all three of our recent Presiding Bishops have said concerning Jesus as being the truth or way to God. To them, what is exclusive about Christ is not that He alone is the pathway to, or truth of God. Rather, he models a quest each one of us must take personally. All have to find their own personal way, their own personal truth about God. Because Christ's way to God was his own way (not "the" way). the modern counterfeit gospel of the Episcopal Church no longer sees Christian faith as the only option. Christianity can never claim exclusivity. God would never put himself in "that small a box" (recent Katherine Schori observation). Other people, other cultures, find equally valid ways to God.
Voicing a further expectation of the coming Lambeth Conference, Presiding Bishop Schori looks to Lambeth being a New Pentecost, Anglican bishops from all over the Communion coming with the breath of the Holy Spirit blowing from within their very different cultures, their different ethnicities, their different orientations...etc. One thing very apparent whenever recent Presiding Bishops have spoken of the Holy Spirit, is how his main purpose is that of "consensus builder". In this regard the Spirit's present task is to maintain unity between the traditionally othodox and those of radical liberal persuasion; unity of those committed to upholding historical creedal doctrine and those who clearly aren't; unity of those who believe that in Scripture it is God who speaks and reveals himself to men and women, and those who read Scripture merely as a collection of ancient thoughts , ancient experiences of God. To restrict the role of Holy Spirit to this papering over the cracks separating two quite contrary gospels, is to reduce his work to that of finding the lowest common denominator between them. Operating from within the sump of human experience, the Holy Spirit seeks only that minimal faith content that may still yoke those with traditional faith, with those of some Christian faith, or those with virtually no faith content at all?
As for the claim by the Presiding Bishop that Lambeth 2008 heralds a New Pentecost for the Anglican Communion, what is really being called for by the leader of The Episcopal Church is that the virulent disease that has taken hold of her Anglican Province of North America now extend its infection to all provinces of the Anglican Communion. The theological symptoms of our disease have become all too clear: (i) a downgrading of the one truth of God into merely one truth among a plurality of other religious truths - all religious truth thus becoming relative; (ii) the downgrading of the Incarnation of Christ to that of mere model or example for all to emulate; (iii) exchanging the church Christ called into being for a church of mere human creation; (iv) exaltation of human experience and subjectivity over the mysteries of God offered in Scripture; (v) redefining the role of the Holy Spirit, asking that he reconcile the irreconcilable, namely the truth of God as presented in Scripture with those intellectual idols created and displayed in today's counterfeit gospel of The Episcopal Church.
What all this heralds has nothing to do with a New Pentecost. Rather, it is a deliberate return to the arrogance before God that resulted in the building of a first Tower of Babel. It has absolutely nothing in common with the First Pentecost. The Pentecost recorded in the Acts 2 represents the birth of a Christian church; an empowerment of those all too human disciples who followed in the footsteps of the earthly Jesus of Nazareth; the proclamation of a gospel that brought unity (not contradiction) of understanding among different nations speaking different tongues; in all this the First Pentecost came to reverse the effects of human arrogance, the confusion of thought and language, visted as God's curse on the building of the first Tower of Babel. What Presiding Bishop Schori heralds as the New Pentecost for Anglicanism offers not a rebirth, not an empowerment, not a unity of Gospel understanding, but simply a return to the very confusion of thought and speech with which God cursed those original builders of the Tower of Babel. Judging from assertions and claims now being voiced by leaders of the Episcopal Church, the curse which God visited on the original builders of Babel is already being visited upon our church.
At some point in time every Episcopalian is going to have to choose between the "faith once delivered to the saints" and to our spiritual forefathers, and the counterfeit gospel now being proclaimed by so many leaders of The Episcopal Church. The tenuous yoke that still ties these two quite separate gospels together, that yoke is no longer an option.
---the Rev. Dr. Peter J.A. Cook, M.A., is rector of St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, Lake Charles, in the Diocese of Western Louisiana
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