text: Anglican Down Under: More brilliance from the ACI
  Posted by Peter Carrell at 3:39 PM
  " Toleration and acceptance have replaced the cross as a test of orthodoxy" - Peter Carrell a la ACI -
  I guess, Peter, that this criticism you offer here might well have been voiced by 1st century Pharisees, who judged the liberating actions and teachings of Jesus to be fatally flawed. From the point of view of The Law, Jesus was offering something new - the ethic of the God of Love:
  "A New Commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. This is how they will know you're my disciplies - that you have LOVE one for another."
  The Jerusalem Statement is just that - a 'statement' of Law, which it's advocates are holding out as a standard by which they measure the 'faithfulness' of Anglicans: to a prescribed doctrine of purity, and
  obedience to their interpretation of
  The New Commandment of Jesus was always offensive to the legalists, and one suspects that today's *Puritans* are tarred with the same brush.
  It just won't do for you to say that "Toleration and acceptance have replaced the cross as a test of orthodoxy" - when toleration and acceptance of everyone by Jesus (except perhaps the self-righteous)
  were the very charisms which led Jesus to His Cross.
  "What I want is mercy, not sacrifice!"
  I'm, personally, not to worried asbout ACI's predictions about what the Communion may or may not be in the coming decades. I trsut that God will have something to do with what eventually transpires. I asm not a pessimist - rather, like Saint Francis of Assisi, who declared that, though God used the most wretched of men (like himself) to preach the Good news of redemption by Jesus in the Gospel, the end result would be God's sovereign work.
  I can only wish GAFCON and ACNA "Good luck in the name of the Lord" with their enterprise (biblical), but whatever they determnine to do - probably on their own initiative - cannot possibly undermine God's plan for those who decide to remain what has always been, basically, muddle-headed but intrinsically 'Anglican'.
  This statement points to your rather shallow understanding of progressive Christian theology Peter; "The theological position of TEC and its supporters does not go beyond a commitment to inclusion that they share with citizens of liberal democracies throughout the world."
  You show yourself to be profoundly ignorant of progressive theology and so little qualified to critique. "...as a test of orthodoxy" I am not sure that we care to go around testing orthodoxy, that has always been pretty much a pharisaical/puritan undertaking. We are more interested in orthopraxy, we actually practice our faith, and in that practice you will find the deep theology we embrace as we go about immersing ourselves in our world and embodying the actual teachings of Jesus.
  It is sad how you reveal how little that you really know about the Anglican world as you constantly embrace the Global South, which is little more than the Anglican franchise of the Assemblies of God whose leaders have merely adopted African tribalism as its manifest leadership style (bishop = chieftain), and constantly dismiss those of us aligned with the movement and motives of TEC and the ACCanada because you know nothing of us and so view us as "thin gruel."
  BTW, please unpack this, "Toleration and acceptance have replaced the cross...", obviously "cross" is code/lingo and has some deep conservative evangelical meaning, but I fail to gather what this encompasses from your brush with the concept in your statement.
  You pick up on critique Philip Turner makes of TEC and challenge it. Fair enough. But Philip Turner knows as much about TEC as each of you do, maybe more. Your beef is with him.
  I published the excerpt not because (once again) it critiques TEC but because it is making the point that if one critiques TEC and holds it substantially responsible for the situation the Communion is in, there nevertheless remains a huge theological task to do. In sum: come up with a better recipe for Communion unity than what has been tried to date. The major point of the whole essay, but also of the excerpt is criticism of Global South and GAFCON. My erstwhile friends, even myself are having the finger of judgement pointed at us :)
  Re your joint concern about 'Toleration and acceptance have replaced the cross as a test of orthodoxy'.
  This is a dense statement (or wrongheaded). If it is a dense statement then I assume Philip Turner would unpack it something like this:
  There is a theology in which we understand Christ's crucifixion to address our sin, and to meet our need for divine forgiveness through Christ's blood being shed for us, which, further, enables the power of sin to enslave us to be broken. (Cf. Paul's preaching 'Christ and him crucified.')
  There is a theology of God's love for humanity in which God reaches out to us and accepts us as we are, tolerating our sin without reference to the cross (save, perhaps, for Christ's crucifixion exemplifying that accepting love). That is, God's love is explained in such a way that the cross becomes redundant in an account of God saving us. This theology may also lead to an ethic in which we are encouraged to tolerate sin and accept one another as we are, without any thought of naming sin for what it is, calling people to repentance and so forth.
  I would then assume that Philip Turner is suggesting that the latter theology has replaced the former theology as a test of orthodoxy.
  I further assume that Philip Turner at least thinks he knows the church to which he applies his summary sentence, being a long practitioner within it.
  "There is a theology of God's love for humanity in which God reaches out to us and accepts us as we are, tolerating our sin without reference to the cross (save, perhaps, for Christ's crucifixion exemplifying that accepting love"
  - Peter Carrell (a la Dr. Turner?)
  Csatholic theology would certainly concur with the following words of your statement here:
  "There is a theology of God's love for humanity in which God reaches out to us and accepts us as we are".
  I feel you and Dr. Turner are trying, in the following phrase, to short-change the catholic emphasis on the value of Christ's Cross. The liturgy of the Eucharist dramatizes the place of the Sacrifice of Christ (The Cross) as a symbolic and material *esse* of the redemptive power of the Crucified in the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood.
  Perhaps this is why certain con/evos have no understanding of the Eucharist - some not even bothering to advertise it's celebration in the list of their 'worship' services, preferring rather to elevate the 'preaching of the Word in The Book' (bibliolatry), to the receiving of the Word-made flesh' at the altar.
  One appreciates the understanding of God's Love as being 'unconditional'.
  Your response to my comments above are pushing me close to a decision to stop responding to comments you make here; or even to not publish any comment by you which unfairly takes my words and makes them say something else.
  I regret this firmness but I can only take so much misinformation about me and my views. (To some earlier unfair comments by you to other posts I have responded without any response from you acknowledging the points I have made).
  In this case it is very unfair to take my attempt to interpret something Philip Turner wrote and cast an aspersion on me that I am shortchanging Catholic theology. I was not attempting any kind of explanation of anything other than of a dense remark of Philip Turner's. The proper critique of what I wrote would be to offer an alternative interpretation or to say that I fell short of providing a satisfactory interpretation etc.
  I do not mind criticism and argument over what I actually write, but I am now quite impatient with being criticised for what I do not write.