The faith of the questioning saints
Submitted by Heather on November 30 2000 14:31:41
In reply to Being faithful to the faith of the saints submitted by Forgiven on November 30 2000 13:46:09
And when [Paul and his company] arrived, they gathered the church together and declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they remained no little time with the disciples. But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised according to the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved." And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissenssion and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. That's from Acts 14:27-15:2, back in the "Golden Age" when questions of whether the Church should accept the "prevailing social orthodoxy of the cultures which it conquered" never arose. :) "By contrast the early church had a very clear discipline" Oh, how I wish. :) No, I'm afraid that arguments over sexuality have always been afire in the Church. For the first few centuries, the big argument in the Church was whether it was immoral for Christians to marry. The only reason it seems "obvious" to modern-day Christians that the answer is no is that the pro-marriage party won. :) Leaving aside the matter of remarriage for widows (see the link below), it's clear also that early Christians disagreed on such matters as whether divorce was permissible, whether priests should be celibate, and various other topics on which the Bible was ambiguous. Disagreements on such fundamental matters makes clear that the Church has always undergone the trials described in Wesley's hymn: Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed, By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed; Yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes up, "How long?" And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song. I really don't think that you're being fair in characterizing all people who dissent from the traditional interpretation of biblical sexual morality as having "surrendered to the consensus [that regards] sexual intercourse as virtually a right." To use a hackneyed example, there are certain passages in which the New Testament appears to give unqualified statements – that slaves should obey their masters, for example – which later Christians came to feel were not in keeping with the overall intent of the Bible. Of course, it's all too easy to manipulate this into the type of argument that says, "It's obvious that slavery is wrong; therefore it's obvious that homosexuality is right." That sort of simplistic approach is clearly to be shunned. Yet it seems to me that someone who thoughtfully suggests that a biblical passage has been misinterpreted, or that the biblical author was not addressing the type of situation that traditional interpretations have thought him to be addressing, should not be sneered at for his efforts to dig deeply into the meaning of the biblical text. Evangelicalism is littered with examples (the pro-slavery movement, for example) where Christians protested against the traditional interpretation of a text. That nonmarital sex has not been the subject of division in the Church before now is not so much a reflection of consensus as it is a lack of societal factors leading to a questioning of such matters. I don't want to draw any hasty conclusions as to what the Church will ultimately decide; I do want to protest against the sort of view that considers questioning of traditional interpretations to be heresy in itself. In the words of The St Andrew's Day Statement (issued by a work group of the Church of England Evangelical Council), "Of those who, nevertheless, find that they cannot agree, it is asked only that they should be precise about their disagreements, so that the extent of common ground available to the church may become clear."
|
Follow ups: