{"id":4163,"date":"2009-05-13T10:00:08","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T14:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=4163"},"modified":"2009-05-13T10:00:08","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T14:00:08","slug":"anglicans-synthesising-muddle-from-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/anglicans-synthesising-muddle-from-the-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Anglicans synthesising muddle from the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian Bishop Sue Moxley had this to say<\/a> about bible study at ACC-14:<\/p>\n

We began this morning with Morning Prayer as we were to have a closing Eucharist at 4pm. The Bible Study focus was Mark 16: 1-8. One question was \u201cIf you were Mark, would you have ended with verse 8, or would you have ended the Gospel differently?\u201d That was a nonstarter as some members refused to even think about tampering with the Gospel. The last question was \u201cWhat will you be taking home to share in your churches about the Gospel of Mark or how Anglicans read the Scripture?\u201d That discussion included the realization that Anglicans with different views of Scripture can read and share ideas together as long as no one thinks they<\/strong> have the only<\/strong> truth of the reading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This approach to reading the bible is symptomatic of the muddle we find ourselves. It treats the bible as a thesis whose meaning is in question. Then, in using what appears to be a Hegelian dialectic of discussing thesis and antithesis, we come to a synthesis \u2013 an Anglican middle ground.<\/p>\n

The problem is, the bible does not present a truth which changes depending on who perceives it or the culture in which it is read: it is a statement by a person \u2013 God \u2013 who had something particular in mind when he caused it to be written. When Bishop Sue says \u201cas long as no one thinks they<\/strong> have the only<\/strong> truth of the reading\u201d<\/em> she is making at least two mistakes:<\/p>\n

The first is that a reader of scripture can have a \u201ctruth of the reading\u201d. <\/em>It is the writer that has the truth of the reading and it is the reader\u2019s job to understand that truth.<\/p>\n

The second is the implication that if a reader firmly claims to have understood the truth that the writer was conveying, he is necessarily wrong. He could be mistaken, of course, but the purpose of discussing a reading is not to come to a middle ground of dissenting views, but to determine what meaning the writer intended.<\/p>\n

Rowan Williams and most of the Western Anglican church is determined to find reconciliation through this kind of synthesising to a middle ground. It isn’t going to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian Bishop Sue Moxley had this to say about bible study at ACC-14: We began this morning with Morning Prayer as we were to have a closing Eucharist at 4pm. The Bible Study focus was Mark 16: 1-8. One question … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,16],"tags":[2030,2032],"class_list":["post-4163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican","category-anglican-angst","category-anglican-church-of-canada","tag-anglican","tag-anglican-church-of-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}