The anglican church like the ancient church teaches that people need to be baptised for example. If we love God we got to obey him. There is a list of things we got to do.
With respect Fr. Bill I disagree - I mentioned elsewhere that where there is tension between what Jesus taught and what others have written then I will always go with what Jesus taught. Jesus taught love and was a friend to the righteous and the unrighteous - 'his words your faith has made you whole, go and sin no more' echo loudly in my heart. I highly recommend a book called 'Love Wins' by Rob Bell it is available for kindle and iBooks if you prefer to read digital media.
Gordon, if you wish to believe someone other than our Lord's express words or those of God in the Old Testament, or Jesus' Apostle, who reminded his readers that what he wrote was the commandment of Christ -- go ahead! As someone somewhere in another thread said "I wish you well in [your] faith journey..."
Fr. Bill - I am confused how do you see in this statement: "I mentioned elsewhere that where there is tension between what Jesus taught and what others have written then I will always go with what Jesus taught." that I said: I would believe someone else words before our Lords words... You have lost me on that one....
Rob bell is a heritic and worst he is leading other in the fires of hell. I follow the apostles. I follow Jesus. Not a false teacher like rob bell who preaches what itchy ears want to hear.
Getting back to the thread's original topic, how does one explain original sin if there were no Adam, in the literal sense, to commit it? How can there be a new Adam (Christ) without an old Adam? If man were not created good and then fell, but rather started as the lowest of lifeforms and continues to become better and better, then why is there a need for a saviour? If mankind will, through evolution, eventually become the better than he is now, then he's not lost just a work in progress. It would appear to me that such a view makes Christ's sacrifice pointless. Sin isn't something that deviates from the original goodness man was called to, something that mars God's original workmanship; it's the ultimate consequence of how low and mean man's original state was, and by evolution alone, is becoming less and less. How is this reconciled?
Gordon, I tried to message you privately on this, to avoid cutting down on thread-drift, but you've got your profile set so that I'm not able to contact you privately. Perhaps others are as lost as I am (and as you report to being as well!), so that this may clear things up for everyone. You write "I would believe someone else words before our Lords words..." If I lost you, then you've lost me with this one. First, there seems to be a couple of lacunae in this sentence. Did you mean to write "someone else's words" instead of "someone else words?" Similarly I think your Lords is meant to be Lord's. Beyond this speculation, I'm truly lost on what you might mean. On the supposition (and it must be a supposition, since I cannot know for certain that else's represents your meaning) that else's is what you meant, this sentence appears to contradict what your bolded words above: I will always go with what Jesus taught. I'm heartened by what you say in the bolded text. I, too, will always go with what our Lord teaches. But, if you do as well, then I'm flummoxed when you write that you would believe someone else's words before our Lord's words. Can you explicate this for me? I'm sure there are others as flummoxed by this as I am.
Jesus spoke and led through His Revelation. 'I am the Way, The Truth and the Life', i.e.? The translation of Christ's utterances have been left, where necessary for Anglicans, indeed by all catholics, to be worked out by the early fathers, the Bishops and the Ecumenical Councils of the Early Church!The question ,'what did He mean?,'is only to be answered by antiquity surely! The private musings of a Bishop of Rome , or a Franciscan Father will not do!
I think Genesis is a parable. There's just too much evidence to support evolution and unfortunately nothing to support creation. It doesnt change anything for me about god, but I have to accept that evolution is more logical.
An Orthodox view of creation and Genesis. http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/towardso.htm It's not that long so have a read. There appears to be no problem with evolution within the EO faith unless it denies God the Creator.
I've never had a problem with the Big Bang Theory , incidentally a very funny show, because God caused the Big Bang
Part I: Reasonably there are only two options I can make sense of. Understand that I don't have every detail figured out, but no theory has every detail figured out. Because there is sufficient evidence (these are my assumptions) of the age of the Earth, and transition of species, I can see: Option 1) Genesis is literal but God created everything in its "adult" state, just as Adam was created as an Adult. From looking at Adam you could judge him to be around 30 running blood tests, DNA tests, or whatever. However, knowing the story, we know that he was created recently so in reality he starts at year 0. So the earth, and it's features are in its "adult" form, looking like it's 4.6 billion years, even though it was a recent creation. My hesitance with this one is it seems a bit deceiving and that we can't trust creation or the Creator, but then again, he has given us what happened in His book so it's our fault for not listening. Option 2) The Earth is as old as it appears, and evolution did happen, and the Bible is a non-scientific account of what happened. It actually lines up pretty well with current scientific theory if you look at it analogically. Certain words need to be understood in their Hebrew sense. For instance, the word "create" on the 4th day in the sun is less about "ex nihilo" creation of the sun, and more a sense of "bringing into sight." Thus, in the beginning God created the heavens (including the sun moon and stars) and the Earth...and the atmosphere from the CO2 would have been cloudy (from the volcanic creation of land mass). But once plants show up, the CO2 is converted to O2 and the atmosphere begins to clear "bringing into sight" the Sun Moon and Stars. (this is the currently held scientific view and how we got our tertiary atmosphere.) Hesitance with this is that it makes a necessity of scholars and scientists in order to understand the bible properly. As the bible was written for Pre-modern Hebrews, it makes some sense to just take it as it is. Finding ways to fit it all together might just be overly complicating it and obscuring the true gospel. For those that enjoy it though, like myself, it is immensely fascinating to fit the pieces together. I just have to remember to keep God's story and not my own in mind. Both views are valid in my mind. So I like to hold both of them with tension and open hands. The main points of the beginning of Genesis that are not compromisable are: 1) God created EVERYTHING (even if he used other processes to bring about that creation.) 2) God called it good. 3) Man is a special creation of God endued with his breath (spirit) and has been given dominion. 4) Man has sinned and is in a fallen state in need of salvation. Part II : That some parts might need more explanation, or if they become allegorical, does not undermine morality. It is very clear which parts are moral and which are not moral. An example might be the multiple wives of Jacob or the concubine of Abraham. Just because people do it in the bible, and it's not explicitly condemned, does not make it right. But remember that Paul took Abraham and Hagar as an allegory. Does the allegory undermine the historicity or morality of that story? It doesn't have to but it's not the end of the bible or morality if it is allegorical.
@Toflemeister I share your preference for option 2 but I don't think it creates problems for us that you outline. The Scriptures mention many facts to us without describing them to their fullest, with which there's nothing wrong with. A passage might say that Jesus walked from city A to city B, without describing to us the biomechanical forces, visual balance and the complex neural cortex which He used to produce locomotion, and that doesn't undermine or deter from the bare fact that he walked, as listed in the Scriptures. Just so in Genesis we are told that things were created but nowhere how in a scientific and exhaustive way, not even Genesis 1 qualifying for that. The reason the Scriptures didn't describe the physics of the universe or the biomechanics of Jesus' walking is that they were not intended by God to be a scientific text but a theological text, a salvific text, which is on a higher level than mere science, and has to be at once intelligible to pre-modern Hebrews and post-modern Europeans.
I believe Genesis should be read literally. I do not think that the universe's completeness should confused with antiquity. I will never abdicate the unchanging truth of God's Word for something as fickle a men's theories and philosophies. God's Word says that that plants and animals were each created "after his kind". This stands in stark contrast to evolution's position that all started as some other, simpler thing and through some strange alchemy of chance slowly morphed into something different and more complex. God's Word says the Man was created "in the image and likeness of God". Yet evolution states humans were mutated from the image and likeness of some ape or ape-like ancestor which no longer exists and has whose bones have yet to be discovered (but you take it on faith that he did exist. Why? Because the theory doesn't work without it). Scripture and ET are irreconcilable. I do not see how the two can logically believed by the same person at the same time. The one negates the other. If one must consign the creation story to mere myth and allegory, then one must do the same to the salvation story. It too is filled with miracles that science says cannot be done. And the latter story finds its source in the former. If Adam is a mere symbol, a mere literary device, then so is the sin he fell into. Mankind then is only symbolically condemned and then only allegorically saved by Christ's death on the Cross. All of these things matter! The truth of falsity of the Gospel depends on whether these things literally happened. Why would Our Lord literally suffer and die to free us from something that was merely a symbol?
I have a problem with some specifics of the ET - and how we get bullied into accepting it with it loopholes e.g are the ET scientists telling us there was once an effect without cause? Other than that I am not that concerned.
Is the fact that "once there was nothing", and now "there is everything, including us", not enough evidence for creation? I am yet to come across a science document that is written in layman's terms , explaining how anything science has discovered negates creation.
Have a look at the quote from Saint Augustine in the key principals section at the bottom of thiis page: http://www.orthodoxresource.co.uk/creator/earth.htm