Here we go with edit-mania…

Gordon Cheng - 30 April 2008 04:01 PM

Luke, I’m glad you’re reading and re-reading my comments.

Well they are very fascinating.

You don’t seem to have understood the point, or the specific reasons why Venables represents an exception to a still-valid rule, but the quotes you highlight are a good summary of my position.

No, rather I don’t think you understand that your position has shifted quite substantially. Above you quite clearly painted it as attending Lambeth to be fellowshipping with false teachers, no exceptions, because the bible teaches that to fellowship with false teachers is wrong, and, as you said previously it is impossible “to go to Lambeth and not be seen to fellowship with the others who are present”.

Now, however, it appears those claims were, well, rather wrong.

You now appear to have created a new category to fit new information where these rather hard and fast rules no longer apply, completely contradicting your previous claims. Yet you insist this is somehow consistent.

This new space must have some quite interesting properties, as it seems it is a place where mutually exclusive things can both be true!

Perhaps up is down and people read while standing on their heads, who knows what other mysteries it holds? It’s The Gordon Cheng Twilight Zone, where opposites are both true!

Luke Stevens - 30 April 2008 04:19 PM

Above you quite clearly painted it as attending Lambeth to be fellowshipping with false teachers, no exceptions, because the bible teaches that to fellowship with false teachers is wrong, and, as you said previously it is impossible “to go to Lambeth and not be seen to fellowship with the others who are present”.

Although you frequently generalize, Luke, you don’t seem to understand the concept of a generalization as applied to others.

It is indeed impossible to go to Lambeth and not be seen to fellowship with the others who are present. This remains a true generalization, and is still a reason why evangelical bishops ought not to attend.

Venables has provided a fascinating and notable exception, and it will be good to see what happens next. He’s going to Lambeth for a fight, I think. It may be that this will change the situation, but I prefer to follow the Sandeman wisdom and wait and see.

Speaking of opposites being true, I suppose you’re familiar with Proverbs 26: 4-5? I often find myself struggling with which one to apply, as they are both frequently on the money.

Right, so, help me out here - a generalization can be a statement which offers no exceptions, but it’s ok when an exception comes along to disprove the original statement (given it was one with no exceptions), because the original statement was a generalization? As opposed to say, a blanket statement that turned out to be false?

Also, if someone contravenes what you describe as a ‘scripturally unassailable’ position, then that doesn’t matter if it was just a ‘generalization’? That’s an interesting way to apply scripture.

As you can see, I’m struggling to get my head around the concept. It seems that if you claim a statement is a generalization, then no amount of contrary information can prove it wrong, simply by claiming the original statement was a generalization? I’ll have to remember that one.

He’s going to Lambeth for a fight, I think. It may be that this will change the situation, but I prefer to follow the Sandeman wisdom and wait and see.

Sure, but you didn’t know that before when you attacked all evangelical bishops - by inference or otherwise - for merely attending. You didn’t know what was on Venables mind then and you don’t know what is on the mind of all others now. Yet you made many rather unsavoury claims (again by inference or otherwise) about all of them.

You certainly didn’t ‘wait and see’ before, but I’m glad you’ve decided to do so now, it seems like a far wiser course of action.

Venables trivia (for Mark Tough): Greg Venables is second cousin to Terry Venables. The family resemblance must have confused one of our more prominent posters.

I’ll give this one more go.

Here’s an example of a generalization:

Statement A: “The night sky is always dark.”

Here’s an example of an exception:

Statement B: “The sun shines at midnight, in the north of Sweden, at midsummer.”

Statement B does not overturn the validity of statement A, in the way most normal language and communication operate. That is, both A and B are true, even though an unsympathetic reader might be able to say that a contradiction is involved in holding both ‘A’ and ‘B’ to be the case.

In the same way…

well, maybe some kind person like John Sandeman will come along and explain the rest of it for you. I might go and spend a bit of time on the Olympic thread or something. My brain needs a break.

Sure, but readers, unsympathetic or otherwise, might have thought that when they said (to paraphrase):

‘Some orthodox bishops may go to protest - their presence alone doesn’t mean they are fellowshipping with false teachers’

and (paraphrasing) you said..

‘Orthodox bishops who attend will, [to quote directly] “by the very fact of their attendance”, be upholding unity with false teachers and therefore will be disobeying the bible.’

and then someone pointed out that..

‘Hey, looks like the orthodox bishop near the center of the controversy is attending in protest’

and you said..

‘Cool!’

Some readers might be kind of, well, stumped, regardless of the sun in Sweden. Enjoy the other thread!

Actually, we’re getting close to something here, so I might just push on for one more post.

Of the 800 or so bishops who were invited to attend the Lambeth thingy, Venables is one (I understand the guesstimate of numbers actually attending at this stage is about 600, which is quite a big and suspiciously GAFCON-shaped hole that has appeared right there. By way of comparison, there were 850 or so at the last L-fest).

Now why is Venables such an exception? And this goes to the nub of this question.

Is it because, like a large number of others (including NT Wright, and arguably even including Druid Rowan Williams himself) he is saying ‘I’m off to launch a great big protest against the US and the Canadians at Lambeth ‘08!’ ?

No.

He is an exception because

by his continuing and ongoing action in defiance of TEC Uber Command and friends, and by his public (and actual) support for Short and Packer

he has almost single-handedly (of those actually attending Lambeth), managed to right royally cause the liberal bishops to blow their collective episcopal stacks, and as every day goes by, makes it clearer and clearer that he is set on the path towards radical realignment of the Anglican communion, and that he hopes others are too.

Now virtually all of the other bishops who have managed to annoy Jefferts-Schori et al in this way are—note this—not going to Lambeth.

Which is what makes Venables such a rare and compelling exception.

If any other Lambeth-attending evangelicals manage to follow his lead, then I will not only take my toupee off to them, I will eat it as well with spotty mustard and sweet chilli sauce. But if they can’t, they should jolly well stay away, and for all the reasons that you have so conveniently collected together by careful reading and quoting of what I’ve said in other places. That is, because any evangelical bishop who goes to Lambeth 2008 under present circumstances, and doesn’t manage to do a Venables, is going to look as if their evangelical credentials are tarnished. And not to me (whose opinion in this matter basically counts for zero) but more importantly, to the reformed evangelical laypeople and clergy in the dioceses they would supposedly be representing.

In this situation, Venables is as exceptional as the sun shining at midnight. Which does happen, my Swedish uncle assures me. But it’s, you know, exceptional. And doesn’t usually happen.

Gordon, thank you for articulating your shift in position, and finally, finally, finally acknowledging what people were arguing as far back as February - that it is possible for an orthodox bishop to go to Lambeth and not by default be disobeying the bible, or automatically fellowshipping with false teachers, or looking like a weasel, betrayer, or other adjectives you used by inference. Who knows what other support and protest will be offered by evangelicals at Lambeth, but at least they have Venables carrying the torch, so to speak, and not reneging on his invitation with his tail between his legs as was broadly suggested elsewhere.

At long, long last you’ve seen the light. Hallelujah.

Your thanks are appreciated, but misplaced. I have not changed my position. But thank you for your progress in understanding the argument. So far, the work has been worth it.

Gene Robinson continues to keep the spotlight on the gay issue.

While in the US, the evangelical Diocese of Fort Worth tells the head of TEC to butt out.

Gordon, I followed the link in your reference to our Archbishop of Canterbury as Druid Rowan Williams and was intrigued by a story that had obviously passed me by.  My intrigue though is about what you are trying to make of it by reference to it.

Just wanted to show that he was a Druid, that’s all. Otherwise people who didn’t know the story might have thought I was mocking him. But truth is stranger than fiction. Some things are beyond mockability.

[Edit:]

To clarify further, part of the difficulty that bedevils discussions like this seems to be that because we are dealing with fellow Anglicans, we are also dealing with people who share a biblical faith. That someone could be Archbishop of Canterbury and see no incompatibility (even at the symbolic level) with becoming a leader in a pagan and polytheistic religion, should sound alarm bells.

Here’s an interview with Venables (not the soccer one) where he tells Ruth Gledhill why he changed his mind and decided to go to Lambeth as well as Gafcon. It is because he belives that the Anglican Communion is dividing. And that someone needs to explain that to the media from Lambeth, and be gentle even in the act of leaving (in a Sandy Grant manner - see the sola blog).
Gledhill and Venables : http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/05/archbishop-greg.html#more

RG (journalist): So how many Gafcon attendees will also be at Lambeth?

ArchB Venables: ‘I don’t know how many are going but there will be some. There are those who think as a matter of conscience they should not be there, those who think it is not worth while. But I think we have got to go, to continue working at this.

This raises the question who Venables means by the “we” in the last sentence above. Is this a ‘royal’ we, or does he mean that everyone attending GAFCON should also attend Lambeth? Judging by the context of the following paragraph it appears he’d like everyone at GAFCON to also attend Lambeth - “I think it would be wrong for us to get to a point where we acknowledge a division and try to organise it without being together and talking about it.”

John, I believe there are other ways to communicate the same message graciously and forcefully, without attending Lambeth. Venables may assert that it is ‘wrong’ to acknowledge a division without being together and talking about it, but I don’t see that he is arguing this from Scripture; indeed I don’t really know where you would go in the Bible to prove such an assertion.

And for Venables to even imply that there hasn’t been a lot of getting together and talking is just silly. Lambeth ‘98, 80% vote. Windsor report, defied. Lots of other stuff, but all amply covered in the historical material surveyed by Robert Tong and linked in the OP.

Courageous he may be, but on this point he is simply mistaken. Still, it is good that he is taking the fight to Lambeth as it further robs the liberals of the possibility of saying that no-one warned them of what was coming.

If Lambeth ‘08 was occurring in vacuo, those who urged attendance as an imperative might have a case. But it isn’t. And the case for non-attendance actually appeals to Scripture, which remains an area of conspicuous silence among those who think evangelicals should be there.