Sometimes loving a denomination requires you to fight.
by J. I. Packer
In June 2002, the synod of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster
authorized its bishop to produce a service for blessing same-sex unions,
to
be used in any parish of the diocese that requests it. A number of synod
members walked out to protest the decision. They declared themselves out
of
communion with the bishop and the synod, and they appealed to the
Archbishop
of Canterbury and other Anglican primates and bishops for help.
J. I. Packer, an executive editor of Christianity Today, was one of
those
who walked out. Many people have asked him why. Though one part of his
answer applies specifically to Anglicans, his larger argument should give
guidance to any Christians troubled by developments in their church or
denomination.
"Why did I walk out with the others? Because this decision, taken
in its
context, falsifies the gospel of Christ, abandons the authority of
Scripture, jeopardizes the salvation of fellow human beings, and betrays
the
church in its God-appointed role as the bastion and bulwark of divine
truth.
"My primary authority is a Bible writer named Paul. For many decades
now, I have asked myself at every turn of my theological road: Would Paul
be with
me in this? What would he say if he were in my shoes? I have never dared
to
offer a view on anything that I did not have good reason to think he would
endorse.
"In 1 Corinthians we find the following, addressed it seems to
exponents of
some kind of antinomian spirituality:
"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom
of God?
Do
not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the
greedy,
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of
God.
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you
were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our
God
(6:9-11, ESV).
"To make sure we grasp what Paul is saying here, I pose some questions.
"First: What is Paul talking about in this vice list? Answer: Lifestyles,
regular behaviour patterns, habits of mind and action. He has in view
not
single lapses followed by repentance, forgiveness, and greater watchfulness
(with God's help) against recurrence, but ways of life in which some of
his
readers were set, believing that for Christians there was no harm in them.
"Second: What is Paul saying about these habits? Answer: They are
ways of
sin
that, if not repented of and forsaken, will keep people out of God's
kingdom
of salvation. Clearly, self-indulgence and self-service, free from
self-discipline and self-denial, is the attitude they express, and a lack
of
moral discernment lies at their heart.
"Third: What is Paul saying about homosexuality? Answer: Those
who claim to
be Christ's should avoid the practice of same-sex physical connection
for
orgasm, on the model of heterosexual intercourse. Paul's phrase, "men
who
practice homosexuality," covers two Greek words for the parties involved
in
these acts. The first, arsenokoitai, means literally "male-bedders,"
which
seems clear enough. The second, malakoi, is used in many connections to
mean
"unmanly," "womanish," and "effeminate,"
and here refers to males matching
the woman's part in physical sex.
"In this context, in which Paul has used two terms for sexual misbehaviour,
there is really no room for doubt regarding what he has in mind. He must
have known, as Christians today know, that some men are sexually drawn
to
men rather than women, but he is not speaking of inclinations, only of
behaviour, what has more recently been called acting out. His point is
that
Christians need to resist these urges, since acting them out cannot please
God and will reveal lethal impenitence. Romans 1:26 shows that Paul would
have spoken similarly about lesbian acting out if he had had reason to
mention it here.
"Fourth: What is Paul saying about the gospel? Answer: Those who,
as lost
sinners, cast themselves in genuine faith on Christ and so receive the
Holy
Spirit, as all Christians do (see Gal. 3:2), find transformation through
the
transaction. They gain cleansing of conscience (the washing of
forgiveness),
acceptance with God (justification), and strength to resist and not act
out
the particular temptations they experience (sanctification). As a preacher
friend declared to his congregation, "I want you to know that I am
a
non-practicing adulterer." Thus he testified to receiving strength
from
God.
"With some of the Corinthian Christians, Paul was celebrating the
moral
empowering of the Holy Spirit in heterosexual terms; with others of the
Corinthians, today's homosexuals are called to prove, live out, and
celebrate the moral empowering of the Holy Spirit in homosexual terms.
Another friend, well known to me for 30 years, has lived with homosexual
desires all his adult life, but remains a faithful husband and father,
sexually chaste, through the power of the Holy Spirit, according to the
gospel. He is a model in every way. We are all sexually tempted, one way
or
another, yet we may all tread the path of chastity through the Spirit's
enablement, and thereby please God.
"Missing Paul's point
"As one who assumes the full seriousness and sincerity of all who
take part
in today's debates among Christians regarding homosexuality, both in New
Westminster and elsewhere, I now must ask: how can anyone miss the force
of
what Paul says here? There are, I think, two ways in which this happens.
"One way, the easier one to deal with, is the way of special exegesis:
I
mean
interpretations that, however possible, are artificial and not natural,
but
that allow one to say, "What Paul is condemning is not my sort of
same-sex
union." Whether a line of interpretation is artificial, so constituting
misinterpretation, is, I grant, a matter of personal judgment. I do not,
however, know how any reasonable person could read Robert A. J. Gagnon's
500-page book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics
(Abingdon, 2001), and not conclude that any exegesis evading the clear
meaning of Paul is evasive indeed. Nor from now on can I regard anyone
as
qualified to debate homosexuality who has not come to terms with Gagnon's
encyclopaedic examination of all the relevant passages and all the
exegetical hypotheses concerning them. I have not always agreed with James
Barr, but when on the dust jacket he describes Gagnon's treatise as
"indispensable even for those who disagree with the author,"
I think he is
absolutely right.
"The second way, which is harder to engage, is to let experience
judge the
Bible. Some moderns, backed by propaganda from campaigners for homosexual
equality, and with hearts possessed by the pseudo-Freudian myth that you
can
hardly be a healthy human without active sexual expression, feel entitled
to
say: "Our experience is˜in other words, we feel˜that gay
unions are good,
so
the Bible's prohibitions of gay behaviour must be wrong." The natural
response is that the Bible is meant to judge our experience rather than
the
other way around, and that feelings of sexual arousal and attraction,
generating a sense of huge significance and need for release in action
as
they do, cannot be trusted as either a path to wise living or a guide
to
biblical interpretation. Rhyming the point to make what in my youth was
called a grook: the sweet bright fire / of sexual desire / is a dreadful
liar. But more must be said than that.
"Two views of the Bible
"At issue here is a Grand Canyon-wide difference about the nature
of the
Bible and the way it conveys God's message to modern readers. Two positions
challenge each other.
"One is the historic Christian belief that through the prophets,
the
incarnate Son, the apostles, and the writers of canonical Scripture as
a
body, God has used human language to tell us definitively and
transculturally about his ways, his works, his will, and his worship.
Furthermore, this revealed truth is grasped by letting the Bible interpret
itself to us from within, in the knowledge that the way into God's mind
is
through that of the writers. Through them, the Holy Spirit who inspired
them
teaches the church. Finally, one mark of sound biblical insights is that
they do not run counter to anything else in the canon.
"This is the position of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches,
and of
evangelicals and other conservative Protestants. There are differences
on
the place of the church in the interpretive process, but all agree that
the
process itself is essentially as described. I call this the objectivist
position.
"The second view applies to Christianity the Enlightenment's trust
in human
reason, along with the fashionable evolutionary assumption that the present
is wiser than the past. It concludes that the world has the wisdom, and
the
church must play intellectual catch-up in each generation in order to
survive. From this standpoint, everything in the Bible becomes relative
to
the church's evolving insights, which themselves are relative to society's
continuing development (nothing stands still), and the Holy Spirit's
teaching ministry is to help the faithful see where Bible doctrine shows
the
cultural limitations of the ancient world and needs adjustment in light
of
latter-day experience (encounters, interactions, perplexities, states
of
mind and emotion, and so on). Same-sex unions are one example. This view
is
scarcely 50 years old, though its antecedents go back much further. I
call
it the subjectivist position.
"In the New Westminster debate, subjectivists say that what is
at issue is
not the authority of Scripture, but its interpretation. I do not question
the sincerity of those who say this, but I have my doubts about their
clear-headedness. The subjectivist way of affirming the authority of
Scripture, as the source of the teaching that now needs to be adjusted,
is
precisely a denying of Scripture's authority from the objectivist point
of
view, and clarity requires us to say so. The relative authority of ancient
religious expertise, now to be revamped in our post-Christian, multi-faith,
evolving Western world, is one view. The absolute authority of God's
unchanging utterances, set before us to be learned, believed, and obeyed
as
the mainstream church has always done, never mind what the world thinks,
is
the other.
"What are represented as different "interpretations"
are in fact
reflections
of what is definitive: in the one view, the doctrinal and moral teaching
of
Scripture is always final for Christian people; in the other view, it
never
is. What is definitive for the exponents of that view is not what the
Bible
says, as such, but what their own minds come up with as they seek to make
Bible teaching match the wisdom of the world.
"Each view of biblical authority sees the other as false and disastrous,
and
is sure that the long-term welfare of Christianity requires that the other
view be given up and left behind as quickly as possible. The continuing
conflict between them, which breaks surface in the disagreement about
same-sex unions, is a fight to the death, in which both sides are sure
that
they have the church's best interests at heart. It is most misleading,
indeed crass, to call this disagreement simply a difference about
interpretation, of the kind for which Anglican comprehensiveness has always
sought to make room.
"Spiritual dangers
"In addition, major spiritual issues are involved. To bless same-sex
unions
liturgically is to ask God to bless them and to enrich those who join
in
them, as is done in marriage ceremonies. This assumes that the
relationship,
of which the physical bond is an integral part, is intrinsically good
and
thus, if I may coin a word, blessable, as procreative sexual intercourse
within heterosexual marriage is. About this assumption there are three
things to say.
"First, it entails deviation from the biblical gospel and the historic
Christian creed. It distorts the doctrines of creation and sin, claiming
that homosexual orientation is good since gay people are made that way,
and
rejecting the idea that homosexual inclinations are a spiritual disorder,
one more sign and fruit of original sin in some people's moral system.
It
distorts the doctrines of regeneration and sanctification, calling same-sex
union a Christian relationship and so affirming what the Bible would call
salvation in sin rather than from it.
"Second, it threatens destruction to my neighbour. The official
proposal
said
that ministers who, like me, are unwilling to give this blessing should
refer gay couples to a minister willing to give it. Would that be pastoral
care? Should I not try to help gay people change their behaviour, rather
than to anchor them in it? Should I not try to help them to the practice
of
chastity, just as I try to help restless singles and divorcees to the
practice of chastity? Do I not want to see them all in the kingdom of
God?
"Third, it involves the delusion of looking to God 'actually asking
him' to
sanctify sin by blessing what he condemns. This is irresponsible,
irreverent, indeed blasphemous, and utterly unacceptable as church policy.
"How could I do it? Changing a historical tradition
"Finally, a major change in Anglicanism is involved: Writing into
a
diocesan
constitution something that Scripture, canonically interpreted, clearly
and
unambiguously rejects as sin. This has never been done before, and ought
not
to be done now.
"All the written standards of post-Reformation Anglicanism have
been
intentionally biblical and catholic. They have been biblical in terms
of
the
historic view of the nature and authority of Scripture. They have been
catholic in terms of the historic consensus of the mainstream church.
"Many individual eccentricities and variations may have been tolerated
in
practice. The relatively recent controversial permissions to remarry the
divorced and make women presbyters arguably had biblical warrant, though
minorities disputed this. In biblical and catholic terms, however, the
New
Westminster decision writes legitimation of sin into the diocese's
constitutional standards.
"It categorizes the tolerated abstainers as the awkward squad of
eccentrics
rather than the mainstream Anglicans that they were before. It is thus
a
decision that can only be justified in terms of biblical relativism, the
novel notion of biblical authority that to my mind is a cuckoo in the
Anglican nest and a heresy in its own right. It is a watershed decision
for
world Anglicanism, for it changes the nature of Anglicanism itself. It
has
to be reversed.
"Luther's response at Worms when he was asked to recant all his
writings
echoes in my memory, as it has done for more than 50 years.
"Unless you prove to me by Scripture and plain reason that I am
wrong, I
cannot and will not recant. My conscience is captive to the Word of God.
To
go against conscience is neither right nor safe [it endangers the soul].
Here I stand. There is nothing else I can do. God help me. Amen.
"Conscience is that power of the mind over which we have no power,
which
binds us to believe what we see to be true and do what we see to be right.
Captivity of conscience to the Word of God, that is, to the absolutes
of
God's authoritative teaching in the Bible, is integral to authentic
Christianity.
"More words from Luther come to mind.
"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every
portion
of
the truth of God except precisely that little point that the world and
the
devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however
boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages is where the
loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield
besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
"Was the protest in order? Was "no" the right way to
vote? Did faithfulness
to Christ, and faithful confession of Christ, require it? It seems so.
And
if so, then our task is to stand fast, watch, pray, and fight for better
things: for the true authority of the Bible, for the "true truth"
of the
gospel, and for the salvation of gay people for whom we care.
Taken from Christianity Today, January 21, 2003.
