Theologians offer response to Windsor Report request

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_63039_ENG_HTM.htm

[Episcopal News Service, Nottingham] June 21, 2005--Answering a request of the Anglican Communion's international Lambeth Commission, the Episcopal Church has today released a paper titled "To Set Our Hope on Christ: A Response to the Invitation of Windsor Report Paragraph 135."

The essay can be found at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/ToSetOurHopeOnChrist.pdf.
You will need an Acrobat Reader to download the file.

"To Set Our Hope on Christ" assembles in one document the arguements that the revisionists in the Episcopal Church have been using to rationalize their innovations - the blessing of same sex unions and the consecration of a bishop openly involved in sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a woman. It does not break any new ground. However, it does offer a glimpse into the defective theology of the Episcopal Church and its most recent prayer book, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

The authors of the essay brazenly suggest that the Episcopal Church has received a new revelation from the Holy Spirit. Those who are opposing the revisionists' innovations are opposing God. It equates the opponents of these innovations with the Pharisees and teachers of the Law who opposed Jesus.

The document is thoroughly revisionist in its approach to Scripture. It takes up a favorite mantra of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold that Scripture has many meanings. It is also post-modern in its assertion that what may be wrong for one church may not be wrong for another.

From what I have read so far, the arguments in the essay are based upon a number of false premises. For example, the essay presupposes that sexual activity between members of the same sex involved in a loving, committed relationship is not a sin. Homosexual couples living in such relationships are holy. And so on. The basis of these presuppositions is not the Bible but the conviction of "some members of the Episcopal Church." This conviction is given the authority that Anglicanism has traditionally reserved for the Holy Scriptures.I am looking forward to a thorough critique of the essay by orthodox theologians, one similar to the Australian Church League's critiques of the Windsor report. Like the Windsor Report, "To Set Our Hope on Christ" is a highly flawed document.