One for all and all for one

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My post at Better Bibles Blog One for all and all for one? discusses how to come up with one Bible version acceptable to everyone in a language group, in answer to some questions from Doug Chaplin and ElShaddai Edwards. In the group I was working with, in which there are only a few churches and a few thousand Christians, the translation team was able to produce a Bible more or less acceptable to all. I don’t hold out much hope for it working for English language speakers. But those of you my readers who are interested in my personal experiences might like to read this post.

How to understand the Bible on atonement

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Andrew has written an important post on the methodology of exegeting atonement doctrine, i.e. how to understand what the Bible has to say about the atonement. He explains what is wrong with the way many others study the biblical teaching on the atonement. The principles he gives here apply to the biblical teaching on any other doctrinal issue.

Andrew also outlines how, through years of study, he came to his own view of the atonement. But he doesn’t actually describe that view; he simply says:

The reasons why I think my view is best are horrendously complicated

I hope he will try to make sense of these complications in clear writing in the near future.

In the light of his own lengthy studies he writes:

I think this makes me truly appreciate works where the author[s] … have long grappled with all the different atonement ideas and really understand the situation. I think this is what made me so contemptuous of Pierced For Our Transgressions as the authors demonstrated ignorance on all the important issues and had set out to prove what they had been taught in response to some else denying the truth of what they had been taught.

Ouch! Read Andrew’s post for some justification for this statement.

UPDATE 26th July: Andrew has followed this up with a post The same cup, which shows clearly how flawed is the argument, used in Pierced for Our Transgressions and elsewhere, that Jesus’ use of the word “cup” for his sufferings implies that God was wrathful towards him.

Silver Rings and Dishonesty

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I do not want to comment on the case of Lydia Playfoot, who lost her court case claiming the right to wear a Christian chastity ring at school. See here, here and here for some Christian reaction; see also Lydia’s own blog.

I do want to comment on the entirely disgraceful campaign which has been waged against Lydia and her family in the aftermath of this case. They have been accused of dishonesty and of being in this for the money. Even the supposedly respectable think tank Ekklesia implies that important facts were not revealed.

UPDATE: Doug has withdrawn his accusation of dishonesty, in response to my comment on his post.

Let’s see some of the truth behind this.

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It takes one colonial power to recognise another

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Russian President Vladimir Putin today, as reported by the BBC in support of his refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, accused of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko:

“They have long forgotten that it is a long time since Britain was a colonial power,” he told Russian TV.

Also on the BBC today:

Russia is sending a mini-submarine to explore the ocean floor below the North Pole and find evidence to support its claims to Arctic territory. … Moscow argued before a UN commission in 2001 that waters off its northern coast were in fact an extension of its maritime territory.

Even if I don’t mention Chechnya, I can say that it takes one colonial power to recognise another one. But whether any country is or is not a colonial power should not be used as an excuse for harbouring an apparent murderer.

Does Canadian Anglicanism have more to do with Anabaptism?

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Maybe quite a few of you my readers, especially those who are not Anglicans, did not read through my rather long essay on the Church of England, despite my attempt to give it a catchy title. Perhaps rather more of you are interested in my various posts on Anabaptism. For your benefit, here is a summary of one of main points of my essay:

According to Rev John Richardson, who takes this idea Bishop Stephen Neill, there is no distinctively Anglican theology, and the only thing which distinguishes Anglican churches from others is their claim to be the catholic or universal church in certain countries, mostly those of the former British Empire. This claim can be traced back to Henry VIII’s presumption in setting himself up as the head of the Church of England. This is thus the very epitome of Christendom, the church being identified with the state. So I wondered how Tim Chesterton could claim that Anabaptism, which stresses the separation of church and state, could have anything to do with Anglicanism, especially in this area.

Tim responded in a comment that his idea of Anglicanism, from a Canadian perspective but also informed by his recent time in England, is fundamentally different from John’s very English viewpoint. For him, the Anglican church in Canada, and indeed anywhere apart from England, is a place for people who are “looking for something more sacramental without the hardline dogmatism of Rome, or something a bit less conservative than the evangelical churches.” So perhaps it is only in England where people are trying to be more reformed than Calvin or more catholic than the Pope while still calling themselves Anglican. This viewpoint is interesting, although I’m not sure it takes into account the position of the Global South group. But it is helpful for understanding the difficulties facing the Anglican Communion.

Meanwhile I am still waiting for the ninth part of Tim’s series ‘What does Anabaptism have to do with Anglicanism?’, in which he has promised in advance to outline “the church as a distinct community from the world” as an area of convergence between Anabaptism and Anglicanism. Perhaps the delay is because he is rethinking his position because of my comments – or perhaps just because he has been taking a weekend break.

The Ugley Vicar on the Church of England

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I have known for a while of Rev John Richardson and his blog The Ugley Vicar. Indeed I have been to a Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream event which he introduced. But I have only interacted with him personally since Wednesday, when the Chelmsford ordination kerfuffle came to my notice. “Ugley” is not a mis-spelled description of him, however ugly some of his ideas might be to some people such as his bishop, but the name of the small village about 20 miles from here where he is the non-stipendiary (i.e. unpaid) vicar.

John has graciously responded to my post here and to my comments on the Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream blog which he also runs. I have also commented about him here. Now he has posted, at The Ugley Vicar, a long essay, originally written in 1997, outlining his understanding of the Church of England. Here is my response to that essay in the context of the current controversy; it is also partially in response to Tim Chesterton’s series ‘What does Anabaptism have to do with Anglicanism?’, which I started to discuss before. Note that I am writing here as a lifelong Anglican, not as an outside critic.

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I want it all too!

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I am right with Adrian Warnock in saying I don’t want balance, I want it all! – although I might have chosen some different role models at the end.

But I also agree with Dave Warnock, no relation, that this all should be for everyone, “Not just white middle class men” like Adrian, Dave and me. So he criticises Adrian for implicitly restricting this by gender and sexuality. On the same basis I agree with Henry Neufeld on this. To be fair to Adrian, I don’t think he disagrees, for he wasn’t writing about leadership, but about matters in which we can all agree that men and women can play an equal part. Of course the entirely predictable responses to Dave’s comments on Adrian’s blog only served to stir up this side issue and detract from Adrian’s real vision, and Adrian doesn’t help by the patronising tone of his comments like

The ladies in our church I speak to feel fulfilled and are serving God in ways consistent with however they are called by God. They can minister, they can lead, they can speak to the church.

– but of course we know that they cannot preach or be elders, and there is no sign of them speaking for themselves on such matters.

But this is not Adrian’s main point. His point is that there is so much that the church is missing out on, because either congregations are going to one extreme at the expense of the others, or they are seeking some kind of balance which pleases nobody. Just as Jesus was not half man and half God, but fully man and fully God, so we should not be half charismatic and half doctrinally sound, or half evangelistic and half socially concerned, or any other half and half balance, but we should seek to be fully all of these things.

A commenter on Adrian’s blog mentioned Smith Wigglesworth’s 1947 prophecy, recently republished by Adrian. Here is part of it:

When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidenced in the churches something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the Word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit. When the Word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest movement of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed, the world, has ever seen.

Whatever we may think of this as an actual predictive prophecy, surely we should take it as wise words for the church today. Those with an emphasis on the Word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit need to come together, to seek together the moving of the Holy Spirit that can bring revival to our nation and to the world. When we stop our public bickering and work together, we can expect to see something truly great happening.

The Oak Hill connection

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One point which I did not bring out in my post on the Chelmsford ordination row (see the helpful comment by Rev John Richardson, and my reply) is that, according to The Guardian, the candidate whom the bishop refused to ordain and his vicar had both trained for ordination at Oak Hill College. This Church of England theological college (“seminary” in US terms), situated in north London about thirty miles from my home, can be linked with several of the issues that have been discussed on this blog. It is certainly a centre for those opposed to homosexuality in the church. Also, the authors of the infamous book Pierced for Our Transgressions are all from this college; one, Mike Ovey, is its Principal. I understand that Oak Hill is also something of a centre for those in the Church of England who oppose the ordination of women, although the college does offer ordination training for women. Somehow it seems to me that these people have a totally different vision for the church from that of the main stream of the Church of England. I can’t help wondering if that different vision would be better expressed in a separate organisation.