A short response to Baby Blue’s latest on the Primates

from Stand Firm by Matt Kennedy

I really like and respect BB and consider her a friend. She is a wonderfully creative and engaging thinker and blogger. We've covered many an Anglican event together, sharing the slog of press conferences, the frenzy of live blogging, the "adventure" of becoming dreadfully and increasingly lost navigating the labyrinth of Canterbury roads. We have disagreed about Anglican matters before but I've never found myself so much at odds with her thinking as I am presently as I re-read and reconsider her "showing up" posts. She seems to want all the Primates to show up at the Primates Meeting because, well, they are "Primates" and it is a "Primates Meeting" and God "shows up". Read it here.

I have responded on her blog, but since her post and my response is also related to an ongoing discussion here, I'm reposting my fisk below

"No one is served by such a boycott"

In fact, Someone is quite well served. God, who very specifically and clearly in numerous places commands his people not to meet with defiant unrepentant heretics (2 John 7-11; 1 Cor 5:12; Titus 3:10 etc...)

And it's not a "boycott". It's called "obedience" to God.

"and I hope at this late hour the primates will listen to Archbishop Josiah of Nigeria and reconsider."

I hope they will listen to God and do what he says.

"It's not too late."

Yes they could still turn and decide to violate what God clearly says but let's pray they do not do that.

"We watched the Sudanese people show up to vote, despite the risks - they showed up. They are inspiring."

Utterly illogical comparison of two completely different situations.

"If one is elected or appointed a leader, a major portion of the job is to show up - one way or the other (and there are many ways to show up, by the way)."

Unless of course, the "job" to which you have been called is to be a shepherd of God's people and servant and messenger of the Lord Jesus Christ and "showing up" means violating what Christ's commands commands.

"If we don't like what is happening in the room, then we say so."

And, "we" have.

"Yes, much of the earlier meetings have been ignored, undermined, or overturned. That is nature of the conflict - that is what happens on a battlefield, any battlefield."

Ah, but this is not a "battlefield". This is a venue in which heretics will be accorded the honor and legitimacy of true Christian teachers...a situation that we need not make analogies to describe since we have been given concise, clear, and direct instructions in scripture by our "Commander" on how to behave in this very concrete specific situation and those instructions are: don't show up.

"Soldiers do not boycott."

But they do obey.

"They show up."

Unless their Commander orders them not too.

"God is going to show up after all..."

Yes, God is, in fact, omnipresent. And this Omnipresent God will be present at the meeting. But the Omnipresent God will also be present everywhere else.

And the same Omnipresent God has clearly revealed that Christians should not meet with heretics.

"so why don't we?"

Because God said not too.