What is in Kelvin's Head?

Heresy hunting

14/05/2014

One of the big differences between the theological training that I received from the university and the theological training I received from the church was that the former was interested in heresy and the latter wasn’t interested at all.

It may be that things are different now, I don’t know. But quite a lot of the church history that we did when I first did my BD was about defining the limits of orthodoxy. In other words, looking at the controversies of the early church and learning about the key players who determined what was and what was not legitimate for Christians to believe in. And it was useful stuff too – far too easily dismissed by those who think the church should simply have fuzzy boundaries and for whom any theology goes. Useful too for helping one to think through the modern church’s controversies to see whether or not things have changed much.

It also led to the entertaining theological dinner party game of ‘I can’t believe that’s not orthodoxy’. The participants have to come up with a new heresy and the others have to prove that it is in fact an old one.

One way of understanding the trials and tribulations of modern Anglicanism is to see it as a global version of this game. And not just Anglicanism of course, though we are particularly good at it.

Current possible heresies include the following:

Optional Doctrinalism – the idea that a church can have a doctrine which it authorises some people to disbelieve. (This one seems very attractive at the moment – see the latest from New Zealand).

Clerical Morality – The idea that clergy have different moral standards put upon them than the laity. (Yes, this one can be found very clearly in lots of documents, not least the recent pastoral statement and guidance from the House of Bishops in England). The interesting question here is whether clerical celibacy, practised, for example, in some parts of the Roman Catholic Church at some times and in some places is a moral injunction or a pastoral one.

Canonical Antiadiaphoralism – Putting a contested doctrinal statement into the canons of a church by majority vote and then claiming it has creedal authority for all Christians for all time and in all places or claiming that statements which were made in canon law for one purpose actually apply in different circumstances but for for all people. (See for example, this statement by a group claiming to represent the Faith and Order Board of the Scottish Episcopal Church).

How are we to determine whether these are indeed modern heresies or whether they fall legitimately within orthodoxy?

Anglican, modern heresy

7 responses to “The Archbishop, the gays and their sins”

fakepete

25/02/2015

Nicely put, he seems to feel entitled to freedom from criticism. It’s a censorious attitude that I thought the CoE put behind it when most of us learned to laugh at the Life of Brian and it is contradicted by the church’s own call to participation in democracy.

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Andrew

25/02/2015

The poor old Arch. He really is an old school establishment man who cant really understand where the deference has gone. The Green Report, the other Reports on the ‘future’ of the Church of England and the ‘Conversations’ all speak of a deeply controlling man who is deeply frustrated that there is no control to be had any more. When the split comes he will probably want to make what is left into a more confessional and defined group (the evangelicals have always wanted that) but I suspect the Church that will emerge will be more liberal than he likes even if it is outwardly more evangelical and enthusiast than the Church of England has been for a very long time

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1. fakepete
  
  27/02/2015
  
  @Andrew I’d switch that around. Justin Welby is someone who does not show deference to what has in Western society become The New Orthodoxy (definitions on a postcard please), this is why he provokes such puzzlement, and thus consternation and anger.
  
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2. Daniel Berry, NYC
  
  03/03/2015
  
  Andrew, I don’t see how that can be, really: he hasn’t the pedigree to be “an old school establishment man.” He’s a late vocation who had been a high-power figure in the corporate world–meaning he’s undoubtedly accustomed to having the last word.
  
  As to his attitudes toward gay people, I’m disgusted with him and the many others who accept the natural sciences’ contradiction of bible, but just can’t bring themselves to the same place with the behavioral and social sciences, and even with medicine itself–ignoring along the way that homosexuality is found in upward of 450 animal species besides our own. Otherwise they seem perfectly comfortable with dispensing with the savagery found in much of “holy scripture.”
  
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Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert

26/02/2015

I love the line “who am I to judge them for their sins, if they have sins” makes us seem angelic compared to those who have children. Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together. Does this mean that he is disagreeing with orthodoxy, and we are not sinning by being together.
God bless all and may his words of love bring more, troubled, souls to him.

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1. JCF
  
  28/02/2015
  
  “Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together.”
  
  I *think* you meant “according to false translations/interpretations of the bible…” (or should have meant).
  
  “Being together”: can we call sex, “sex”? If not, why not? [And can we call marital sex (same- or opposite-sex) “marital sex”?]
  
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Daniel Berry, NYC

03/03/2015

best line for me:

You say that stuff and you are going to get people observing that there’s a lot more archbishops who claim that gay people are their friends than gay people who claim archbishops are their friends.

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