In November I demonstrated by use of quotes from Jacques Ellul's work The Subversion of Christianity that Bp. Adams subverted Ellul's words by his selective use of them in his convention address. Since one of his statements from that address that pertains to this subject has been picked up by The Living Church, I will again show how Adams perverted Ellul's words.
I have been scanning and rereading The Subversion of Christianity and the quotation that Adams uses in his convention address is from the fourth chapter titled "Moralism." Adams is quoting from p. 71, but he seems to have missed this on the previous page: "What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good and evil" (p. 70). This is precisely what Adams and pecusa are doing. Despite what Scripture, Church Tradition, and Right Reason say, despite what has been said by the worldwide church today as expressed by our Anglican Communion, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, Adams and pecusa continue to support the destructive homosexual practices that have been at the center of the crisis in Anglicanism.
In his misuse of Ellul, Adams also skipped over what I quoted in my earlier piece from chapter one. In addition to this, he missed this from the same chapter that he quoted: "Thus, although there is no Christian morality, following Jesus Christ has certain implications for practical life. Living by the love of God and by faith in his Word is incompatible with such vices and irregularities" (p. 84).
What vices and irregularities is Ellul talking about? Go to the top of the same page and you'll find a listing that includes homosexuality. If there is any question of Ellul's view on Adams' current obsession, he makes it clear in chapter one where he writes about the church, "Yesterday it championed a fierce and rigid sexual morality, today it is for abortion, homosexuality, etc. One might continue indefinitely. I have already attacked this plastic portrayal. There is no progress here. The church has simply adopted wholesale the ideas and manners of modern society as it did those of past societies" (p. 8).
Yes, this is precisely the problem with liberals. They adopt the views and mores of modern society and then try to find biblical justification for their "progress." As Ellul says, "We now have a rationalist or liberal Christianity as we used to have an Aristotelian or Platonic Christianity in a mockery of being 'all things to all men' (p. 18).
On the subject of morality, Ellul writes, "The Bible decrees no universal morality. It summons to conversion, and it then postulates a desire to live in harmony with God" (p. 41). But this is precisely what Adams won't allow. He wants to pretend that there is not a continuity between the Old Covenant and the New. He teaches contrary to the biblical trajectory that Ellul outlines, namely that "those who keep God's commandments will live." As Ellul teaches, "Jesus takes up the decisive importance of practice in almost the same terms" (p. 5). As Ellul says in a later chapter when he comments on Jesus and the Pharisees, "Jesus is not attacking the law. The law is still good and true" (p. 172). Without this understanding, we cannot live in harmony with God.
The argument that Ellul presents in The Subversion of Christianity is a sophisticated one and deserves better treatment than the perversion of it by Adams.
Adams from his convention address:
If this faith of ours is going to be a living one, we have to let go of the idea of Christianity as religion, which I understand to be a system of rules and regulations to get people to behave a certain way that we have deemed acceptable. To say it another way, to make Christian faith primarily about being moral and good. By the way, I believe that this approach has direct import on the struggles we have in being and becoming an Anglican Communion. Stay tuned on that one.
There have been differing moral codes associated with Christianity throughout history. Christian faith, in itself, is not a moral code, however. It is a response in faith to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It was the theologian Jacque Ellul who said in The Subversion of Christianity, “When I say that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is against morality, I am not trying to say that it replaces one form of morality with another...Revelation is an attack on all morality, as is wonderfully shown by the parables of the kingdom of heaven, that of the prodigal son, that of the talents, that of the eleventh hour laborers, that of the unfaithful steward, and many others (I would add Zacchaeus in the tree). In all the parables the person who serves as an example has not lived a moral life. The one who is rejected is the one who has lived a moral life. Naturally this does not mean that we are counseled to become robbers, murderers, adulterers, etc. On the contrary, the behavior to which we are summoned surpasses morality, all morality, which is shown to be an obstacle to encounter with God.”
I believe that one of our calls from God in this time is to be a people of the Beatitudes where Jesus speaks in hyperbole and metaphor, not in rules and regulations. We are called to live a life in thanksgiving for all that God has done for us in Christ and out of that primary relationship, live the life we are called to live. Until we make that shift the Church will continue to be death and not life. It will not be a transformative experience leading us to the new creation and Jesus as the new human, but merely a shell of a system of religious formula and prescription. Who needs it and it won’t change anything, including us or the people we are called to serve. After all, what good are the rules and regulations when people continue to be slaughtered in Darfur, schools are collapsing in Haiti, our kids are killing one another in the streets, and people in our neighborhoods right in this diocese are losing jobs, have no health insurance and do not have enough to eat.
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