{"id":1017,"date":"2007-04-17T17:29:09","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T17:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1017"},"modified":"2007-04-17T17:29:09","modified_gmt":"2007-04-17T17:29:09","slug":"good_comments_from_the_abc_row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1017","title":{"rendered":"Good comments from the ABC Rowan Williams in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a very good lecture to seminary students in Canada. He lectured on the Church’s dealings with Scripture – it seems a fair and evenhanded treatment and a good corrective.
\nFrom the Archbishop’s 16th April 2007 Larkin Stuart Lecture, Toronto, Canada, entitled,
\n
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Bible Today: Reading & Hearing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n“Popular appeals to the obvious leave us battling in the dark; and the obvious \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not surprisingly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c looks radically different to different people. For many, it is obvious that a claim to the effect that Scripture is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGod\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Word written\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 implies a particular set of beliefs about the Bible\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inerrancy. For others, it is equally obvious that, if you are not that savage and menacing beast called a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfundamentalist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, you are bound to see the Bible as a text of its time, instructive, even sporadically inspiring, but subject to rethinking in the light of our more advanced position. As I hope will become evident, I regard such positions as examples of the rootlessness that afflicts our use of the Bible; and I hope that these reflections may suggest a few ways of reconnecting with a more serious theological grasp of the Church\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relation with Scripture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire lecture.<\/a>
\n———–
\nFrom the, From the Anglican Journal<\/a>, Anglican Church of Canada:
\nWilliams bemoans loss of listening to Scripture<\/strong>
\nMarites N. Sison, staff writer
\nApr 17, 2007
\nThe Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has lamented what he called the lack of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rootedness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the Anglican approach to Scripture and said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lost quite a bit of what was once a rather good Anglican practice of reading the Bible in the tradition of interpretation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nHe added: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We read the Bible less in worship. We understand and know it less\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6(we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re) either underrating it or misrating it, making it carry more than it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s meant to, as Richard Hooker says \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a very clear sense that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reading the Bible in company with its readers from the centuries and indeed, at the present moment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Archbishop Williams made the observation in response to a comment about a seeming lack of theological tradition among Anglicans, following a Larkin-Stuart lecture delivered April 16 before an audience of mostly theology students from Wycliffe and Trinity Colleges in Toronto.
\nArchbishop Williams also said that he wished the current debate on sexuality that has bitterly divided the Anglican Communion would be framed in terms of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153biblical justice and biblical holiness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of the prevailing conservative view of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153biblical fidelity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the liberal view of justice.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I share the unease about simply opposing biblical fidelity and secular justice,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, adding that what was needed was a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153proper theological discussion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the issue.
\nIn his lecture (named after Canon Cecil Stuart, long-time rector of Toronto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s St. Thomas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Church, and its benefactor, Gerald Larkin), Archbishop Williams examined the current practice of reading the Bible and said Christians need to be reminded that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153before Scripture is read in private, it is heard in public.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThose who assume that the typical image of Scripture reading is a solitary individual poring over a bound volume should remember that for most Christians throughout the ages and in the world at present the norm is listening, said Archbishop Williams. This, he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153underlines the fact that the church\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s public use of the Bible represents the church as defined in some important way of listening: the community when it comes together doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t only break bread and reflect together and intercede, it silences itself to hear something.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nArchbishop Williams also described the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fragmentary reading\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the Bible as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153highly risky,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d citing as an example Saint Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s use of same-sex relationships (Romans 1:27) as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an illustration of human depravity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c along with other \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcunnatural\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 behaviours such as scandal, disobedience to parents and lack of pity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nHe said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What is Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s argument? And, once again, what is the movement that the text is seeking to facilitate? The answer is in the opening of chapter 2: we have been listing examples of the barefaced perversity of those who cannot see the requirement of the natural order in front of their noses; well, it is precisely the same perversity that affects those who have received the revelation of God and persist in self-seeking and self-deceit. The change envisaged is from confidence in having received divine revelation to an awareness of universal human sinfulness and need.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThere is a paradox in reading that Scriptural passage \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as a foundation for identifying in others a level of sin that is not found in the chosen community, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Archbishop Williams said, adding that this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gives little comfort to either party in the current culture wars in the church.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nIt is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not helpful for a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcliberal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or revisionist case, since the whole point of Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rhetorical gambit is that everyone in his imagined readership agrees in thinking the same-sex relations of the culture around them to be obviously immoral as idol-worship or disobedience to parents,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is not very helpful to the conservative either, though, because Paul insists on shifting the focus away from the objects of moral disapprobation in chapter 1 to the reading\/hearing subject who has been up to this point happily identifying with Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s castigation of somebody else.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nArchbishop Williams said the point he is making \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is not that the reading I propose settles a controversy or changes a substantive interpretation, but that many current ways of reading miss the actual direction of the passage and so undermine a proper theological approach to Scripture.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nBefore his lecture, the Archbishop of Canterbury received honorary doctor of divinity degrees from Wycliffe College and Trinity College during a joint convocation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a very good lecture to seminary students in Canada. He lectured on the Church’s dealings with Scripture – it seems a fair and evenhanded treatment and a good corrective. From the Archbishop’s 16th April 2007 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}