|
| Christian news worldwide |
 Home |
 Archives |
 Subscriptions |
 Adverts |
 Find a church |
 About us |
 Contact us |
 Site Map |
 PrintableVersion Reform and revitalise!An interview with Jim Packer (Professor of Theology in Vancouver) on evangelicals and the Church of England (Part 1)Jim Packer is the Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College Vancouver. His books, especially Knowing God and Keep in Step with the Spirit, have been an immense help to many Christians over the years. He gave an interview to EN while on a visit to England in September. EN: Welcome back to Britain. What are you doing on this visit?JIP: I am celebrating J.C. Ryle, first bishop of Liverpool who died in 1900. The diocese had not existed before he arrived and he was a classic evangelical bishop, who deserves to be remembered as a great man. EN: What is Ryle's relevance today?JIP: Ryle insisted that Anglicanism is to be defined in terms of the doctrine of the 39 Articles and the 1662 Prayer Book as an expression of that doctrine. Those who seek to marginalise this historic Protestantism were the eccentrics in Ryle's view. It is Ryle's Anglicanism that I seek to maintain myself. I see Ryle as a beacon, showing for all time that if you are prepared to stand alone it is possible to be a consistent and fruitful evangelical even in the Church of England where evangelicals are a minority. Ryle believed it worthwhile to seek to reform, renew and revitalise the Church of England because of the richness of the Anglican heritage when it comes to life. Frankly, that is my position too. What's gone wrong?EN: At the Keele Congress in 1967 Anglican evangelicals took a decision to be more involved in the workings of the Church of England, with this same vision of achieving greater influence for the Biblical gospel. What has gone wrong? JIP: 'Gone wrong' is too harsh. In 1967, in the full flush of enthusiasm, evangelical clergy and lay leaders committed themselves to involvement of a more direct sort than before, in the belief that this could be blessed for the changing of the Church through the 'evangelicalising' of all its inner life. What has happened since is that evangelical leadership has not been quite strong enough and resolute enough to maintain that vision. Leaders gained a wider involvement in the running of the Church but have been swamped by the day to day pressures of maintaining the administrative responsibilities they carried. When you are swamped by detailed work it is hard to maintain a strategic vision. Doctrinal indifference?EN: So are you saying it is simply practicalities that have thwarted the vision of Keele? Don't you feel that evangelical leaders in the Church of England have slipped into doctrinal indifference since the 1960s? JIP: I have to give a cautious answer. I am not sure I am entitled to generalise. My impression is that in 1967 the majority of evangelicals in the Church of England were doctrinally as loose as they are today. I think the leadership group out of whose thinking Keele came were doctrinally clear-headed, but were atypical. The Keele vision included education to produce the kind of doctrinal sharpness that Bishop Ryle embodied and advocated. But that part of the vision has not been entirely fulfilled. In 1967 the full strength of the charismatic tidal wave was being felt all over the country in Anglican evangelical parishes. Some welcomed it, others were unhappy. But, either way, the agenda for evangelicals was being set mainly by the Charismatics, and it had to do with the reality of life in the Spirit. That's an important matter for discussion, but the charismatic approach to it was not usually associated with careful doctrine. In those days the charismatic leadership used to insist that the charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit was ecumenically significant precisely because it transcended doctrinal differences. Those days are history now. And I feel this a bit because from the 1950s, drawing on the Puritans, I and others had been campaigning for a great deal more doctrinal awareness among Anglican evangelicals. We thought we were making headway. But when the charismatic tidal wave broke, all that was swept away. Because at the time of Keele there was no general strong doctrinal concern, I'm not sure you can say that things have gone backwards. My impression (and remember I've been out of the country for 21 years), is that throughout my life Anglican evangelicals have settled for not being strong on theology. I am sorry about that, and I still hope to see a change for the better. C of E contendersEN: How should Anglican evangelicals be contending for the faith within the Church of England today?JIP: Let me say three things. The basic unit in Anglicanism is the local congregation. There the faith needs to be taught consistently, regularly and thoroughly. The people need to be educated in such a way that they are able to reason theologically, and grapple, for example, with the social problems of the day in a biblically-informed way. I would love to see Anglican evangelicals produce what I call 'higher catechism' books of biblical and doctrinal exposition: thoughtful popular books for adults like those of Ryle himself. I hope to see evangelicals of theological competence engaging at a good level of serious reflection with matters over which both the Church and the wider community are lapsing from the right way. Corrective controversy is sometimes very necessary. Gay theologyEN: Can you give an example of that last point?JIP: The pressure which comes from outside the church to accept gay sexual ethics and lifestyle as on a par with the classic heterosexual ethics and lifestyle of celibacy and marriage needs to be stoutly resisted. But it is not being resisted anything like as forcefully as it should be, at a theological level. EN: What about gay pressure groups within the Church?JIP: I know all about this from Canada. People are urging the Church to go all the way with the secular community and accept the rightness of gay ethics. That needs to be opposed theologically with a thoroughness that we haven't yet seen. We have seen books of special pleading for the gay way, trying to show that the Bible doesn't in fact rule it out - as I think it most certainly does. But we haven't seen equally weighty vindications of classic biblical sexual ethics. What needs to be shouted from the rooftops is that this is not a discretionary issue. This is a matter of doctrine on which we are not free to do anything other than obey the truth. The truth starts with the doctrines of creation and sin. Are you going to say that homosexual inclinations were made by God from creation, or that they are one of the many forms of disorder that sin brought into the human system? When you get to the incarnation, are you going to allow for the possibility that Jesus' sexual instincts may have been homosexual or bisexual on the grounds that homosexual instincts are just as good as heterosexual instincts? What are you going to say about the new birth whereby the Holy Spirit begins to renew us in the image of Jesus? And about the process of sanctification whereby a Christ-like moral character is being built in us? Does regeneration impart openness to homosexuality? Does sanctification include cultivating a gay side to one's being? All these doctrines, creation, sin, Christology, regeneration and sanctification, are involved, and if the gay thesis is accepted then all of them have to be changed. EN: Christianity would become unrecognisable!To be continued . . .Dr John Benton© Evangelicals Now - October 2000 |
|
