Gafcon IV

Who's following the conference? Today was the first day, some strident words against the CofE errors... Seems incredible so far

 

Somewhat dated, but still relevant in important ways:
Some concerns about GAFCON

 

It’s clear from her article that she shares GAFCON’s stance on the issues you mentioned. What concerned her then, and what has worsened dramatically since then, was the schismatic tendency inherent in the approach GAFCON has adopted.

 

I queried our Archbishop/Metropolitan of the ACC as to whether or not anyone would be representing the G-3 at the Conference. He gave me an emphatic "NO". He did not elaborate, except to say that our stance on Apostolic Succession will not be compromised. I did not make any further inquiry.

 

That seems to be the standard excuse.

 

I have the livestream running in the background as we speak. It's good stuff so far. Archbishop Ben Kwashi is just killing it.

You mean reason, the standard reason for separation from the churches who teach a false Gospel. We did not seek this separation and did not want it. It was thrust upon us. If the erring churches repent, they will be welcomed with open arms and happy hearts.

Archbishop Beach made a good point in his opening remarks: he said that the Anglican Communion needs a reformation regardless of the contentious issues of the day. It could not go on taking direction from a mother church in thrall to a secular western government. The Communion, being global in fact, must also be global in organization and confession.

There is also the constant undercurrent in all the opening speeches -- that Global Anglicanism should be a confessional church. A Church based on the historical Anglican formularies: the 39 Articles, the Prayer Book, the Ordinal, and the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008. I think this is the most important take-away of this conference, that the Anglican Communion will at last be grounded upon a common doctrinal confession. The Anglican creeds and confessions point to the Biblical scripture upon which we order our lives and to which our souls are chained. This is a final (and long overdue) rejection of the "walk together in good disagreement" canard espoused by Canterbury for so long. There are certain doctrines that are not negotiable for any Christian church, and in placing the historical Anglican creeds at the center of our tradition, Global Anglicans now have a True North for our Communion. If our compasses swing away from this fixed point, we know we have erred. Church discipline will now have a common basis for adjudication. We will no longer be confused when someone ask us, "What does it mean to be Anglican?"

The confessional Anglican Communion will face new challenges. Rather than define ourselves by what we oppose, we must focus on the work God gave us to do -- to live out our lives in the Church, and spread the Gospel to all the corners of the earth. Being now unified in doctrine, we must strive to be unified in practice (allowing for regional and cultural distinctives that do not violate doctrine). We must present ourselves to the world as every Christian church should: as a loving and generous (though fractious) global family. If we wish to carry the Anglican banner to future generations, we must present the best of our tradition so that young people the world over will see us and think, "How wonderful! How can I be a part of that?"

 

The Fathers did not separate and form their own hierarchies when the Church was controlled by Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Monothelites, Iconoclasts, and all the other heterodoxies in between. Disagreements, even bitter ones, over what are matters of discipline, not doctrine (and even ones that are over matters of doctrine), are not legitimate causes for schism. The foundation must be firm or the building cannot stand.

 

And yet you belong to a church that itself was born in schism from Rome.

So clearly you believe that there is some point at which a community of believers must separate themselves (if you didn't, I assume you'd be a member of the church of Rome, yes?). What is a "legitimate" cause of schism in your view, if it is not doctrinal? Who decides what is a "legitimate" reason, if not by reasoning from Holy Scripture? If you put the church ahead of Scripture, have you not made an idol of the appurtenances of the church over Jesus Christ, whom the Church is here to worship? A false teacher cannot honor Christ -- disobedience to Holy Scripture precludes honoring He whose very Word the Bible is.

What holiness can be found in a church that has fallen away from the plain word of God? And not only that, but a church which preaches this sin as virtue, thus drawing others away from God and barring them from entering heaven themselves.

 

The Church of England did not establish a parallel hierarchy alongside Rome's.

Allow me to quote the 26th Article of Religion:

"Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such as by faith, and rightly, do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men."​

You appear to be denying the truthfulness of Art. 26. The Church may err in matters of Faith (cf. Art. 19), and its ministers may be wicked (cf. Art. 26). The righteousness of the Church consists in those who "by faith, and rightly, do receive the Sacraments." A genuinely confessional church cannot simultaneously affirm and deny the very thing it claims to be confessing, and expect its mission to be a coherent or sustainable one.

 

You're stealing a rhetorical base here and I'm calling you on it. Article 26 refers to personal salvation, not church order or practice. Your own salvation is not affected by the worthiness of the giver of the sacrament, that is true -- but unworthy delivery of the sacrament is not at all the same thing as deliberate teaching of false doctrine from the pulpit or through the liturgy. You are essentially saying that it's ok to attend a heretical church as long as your own personal salvation remains intact (somehow) and that is not and has never been the position of the Anglican church. (I suspect a lot of this doctrinal confusion stems from misreading of Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity by liberals back in the 19th century who then cemented these misunderstandings into received wisdom. I get that Hooker's prose is rather bespoke, but it's not that hard to read.)

But this misunderstanding of Article XXVI does go a long way toward explaining why Episcopalians suffered a heretic like John Spong to preach and teach for so many years.

 

To make my point about Article XXVI more explicit, consider these two scenarios:

1. A certain priest, John Smith, a known drunkard and fornicator, continues to act as Rector at a given parish, including conducting services and adminstering the Eucharist on Sundays. His sermons are often perfunctory and sometimes barely coherent, and he is suspected of copying some of his sermons from other ministers and preachers without attribution. Discontent has been growing about his behavior for sometime and some have even complained to his Bishop.

2. A certain priest, Samuel Good, Rector of the parish church, is a quiet and friendly man by all accounts, sober and diligent in his duties, well-liked by all the congregation. However, of late he has begun to preach sermons indicating that he advocates a modalist belief of the nature of God rather than the traditional Trinitarian belief. This is unsettling to some in the congregation, but most simply let it pass by without remark.

Article XXVI of the 39 articles applies to scenario #1, not scenario #2. The fornicating drunkard priest still teaches good doctrine, regardless of his personal habits and conduct. A parishoner may in good conscience continue to receive the sacrament from this priest while at the same time admonishing him and even recommending discipline against him from the Bishop. The priest in scenario #2 is teaching heresy (a false Gospel) and is putting the souls of unwitting congregants at risk if they follow his flawed teaching. Believers who accept the sacrament from him while holding to the true doctrine are not affected; but those who accept his heresy and accept the sacrament thereby are not saved and must be retrieved from their error by a Godly pastor.

 

You are asserting a distinction that not only does not exist in the Article in question, but is implicitly denied by it, and I'm calling you on it. The "evil" ascribed to "wicked ministers" in the Article's plain sense applies to both the "preaching of the Word" (doctrine), and the "administration of the Sacraments" (discipline). Attending "heretical churches" was exactly what the Fathers did, sometimes for extended periods. Don't they teach church history at seminary? You also have shown neither that the Churches from which you are separating have actually taught heresy, nor that such a finding was made by a legitimate authority. Laypeople do not determine what is or isn't 'heresy'; lawful ecclesiastical councils do.

Obviously a person in your position as a seminarian, who is so heavily invested emotionally and financially in the fate of ACNA, can't be presumed or expected to be truly objective or unbiased when treating opposing theological arguments. I don't expect anything I say here to convince you. But perhaps these discussions will help to demonstrate to others who passively follow these discussions here that ACNA and GAFCON aren't as traditionally "Anglican" as they appear, that their doctrine amounts to a new "orthodoxy", and that the future of Anglicanism still remains with those Churches who have been around more than 15 years.

 

Church-attendance numbers from TEC, combined with demographic trends, make that statement highly unlikely. The future of Anglicanism is in Africa because that's where most of the living and worshiping Anglicans are. And most African Anglicans (nearly all, in some way or other) reject the path that Canterbury and the associated provinces are walking. Ignore it at your own peril; this Anglican realignment isn't going away.

You need to understand that ACNA is a very small part of the GAFCON family -- our numbers would hardly make up a diocese in Nigeria! This isn't some dastardly plot of a bunch of American bible-thumpers to "steal" the Anglican moniker from an Episcopal church that never cared much for the tradition anyway. We didn't leave the western churches; they left us. They abandoned Anglican doctrine -- you can retcon this all you want, the history of this mess is plain and well-documented (the most recent outrage from the CofE only being the most recent of a decades-long decline). The future of the Anglican tradition, by definition, lies with people who practice the Anglican faith through Anglican doctrine. It's not a matter of real-estate or established titles. You can keep the buildings; we'll take the doctrine and consider it a fair trade since our share will bear the greater fruit.

 

There did indeed pop up parallels churches in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, India and such places. You beliefs did indeed dictate where you went to church. Yeah some might have just kept going to the church they always went to but a sorting a separation did happen. There is at least Bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. There used to be two bishops of Constantinople. There were Arian Churches and Chalcedon Churches in the areas conquered by the Arians. When the Arians came in and took over the best churches the local Chalcedon people did not continue to attend that church but when to the new local Chalcedon Churches and eventually converted the Arians. I would have to look into the Iconoclast controversy more but I bet we see the same thing I just described in other areas. The history just does not hold up as neatly as you described it.

 

Interesting. Would you be so kind as to direct me to the primary (or secondary) sources for that?

 

Could we please stay on topic? I did not ask about opposition to Gafcon from our Episcopalian friends

 

Yes, you did, when you made the snide remark about so-called “CofE errors.” All Anglicans should feel welcome here. If you don’t want people to respond to that sort of thing, not posting it to begin with would achieve that goal. Obviously the point of the OP was to have an excuse to bash mainstream Anglicans. Otherwise you’d have to eliminate the whole thread at this point, not just those comments from your Episcopalian “friends.”