WHY ORTHODOX ANGLICANS MUST NOT LISTEN TO LIBERAL TALK OF LISTENING

Via VirtueOnline:

by Julian Mann
http://cranmercurate.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-orthodox-anglicans-must-not-listen.html
2/23/2009

The previous generation of theological liberals were keen to lecture us on the assured results of critical biblical scholarship, but the new generation now tend to talk about their 'listening ears'.

And in many ways it's a clever tactic when used to disarm orthodox Anglicans because, well, how can any Bible-believing Christian criticise listening? After all, St James says: 'Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak' (James 1v19 - RSV).

Listening is surely godly, so when a liberal talks listening perhaps they're not so bad after all. Maybe, we do need to listen a bit more - and yes they're quite right: Lambeth Resolution 1.10 does talk about listening to the experience of homosexual people.

Perhaps indabbling (see Cranmer's Curate's article in February's New Directions - Woe to Indabblers: http://www.trushare.com/0165FEB2009/18%20woe_to_indabblers_julian_mann_on.htm) is not such a bad thing after all. Maybe we are being a bit harsh to refuse to take Holy Communion with liberal US bishops from The Episcopal Church. And perhaps we do need to sit down and 'listen' to Changing Attitude.........

It all sounds ever so 'umble. But without careful biblical analysis, this liberal talk of listening is a road to perdition.

Certainly, listening is thoroughly biblical when the ear that does it is powered by a brain filled with the revealed Word of God. That is a very strong theme in St James' Epistle when he exhorts his Christian readers to 'receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls' (1v21).

Furthermore in James, listening informed by divine revelation is contrasted to self-seeking, self-serving, sinful anger in the Christian community - to quote v19-21 of James chapter 1 in full: 'Know this my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for anger does not work the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.'

That is the context for James' exhortation in v22-25 that Christians should be 'doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing'.

Listening in James is thus emphatically not a charter for compromising with sinful, unbiblical liberal strategies for the Anglican Communion. Just the opposite in fact. Jamesian listening involves practical submission to the revealed Word of God, the meek receiving of which is essential to our eternal salvation.

END