Sydney should hold its head high...you are more authentic to the spirit of Reformed Anglicanism than any of the revisionists elsewhere in the Communion.
Have you re-introduced prayers for the dead...NO
Have you introduced prayers to the Saints… NO
Have you re-interpolated the Anglican Holy communion Service as the Sacrifice of the Mass. and interlarded it with borrowings from the Catholic Church....NO
Have you introduced he sacerdotal vestments...NO
Do you worship the consecrated communion elements and reserve them....No
No, Sydney is nearer to the Anglican Church settlement than others, whether they be liberals or self-proclaimed “traditionalists.”
For instance Bishop Iker has a rosary group in his own cathedral..Did you watch the Fort Worth Convention “Eucharist .”..with its “Romanist “ritual.
Why do I support you.? Sydney have been able to witness to the authentic historic Anglican understanding amongst all the ecumenical chimera and double -speak of ARCIC. You have never pretended to make Anglicanism anything other than it was historically, and theolociaclly a Priotestant and Reformed Church.
Back to the original question, while I don’t think that we can be certain of the GAFCON leadership’s final response, I don’t think that the Synod was naive about reactions that might occur. In fact a good deal of the debate was taken up with discussion on the impact on GAFCON of us passing the motion.
I was convinced by an argument similar to Gordo’s, where we know that there will be a reaction but if we were going to do something like this it was better to do it now while GAFCON is young so that everyone knows where we stand sooner rather than later.
Also, I don’t think that pointing out that lay presidency was legal before the motion was passed will do us any favours. The chief objection is that it is not catholic, and therefore not Anglican, The mechanism by which it is enabled is irrelevant.
I disagree Malcom..honesty is the best policy...it only leads to further problems down the line. This I foresee over not only in the Anglo-catholic inclusion but the esential compromise on the role of women.
To run with the hare and the hounds is very dangerous.
Emma,
the documents you linked, point in turn to many other papers and reports which are not linked. The legal aspects (which mainly concern only Australia) are covered in depth, but the doctrinal issues are summarised. It would be good to get the original papers, so that something like a coherent account of how the argument for lay presidency has been mounted in Sydney can be captured.
It rfeminds me of TEC saying that the arguments for gay blessings have been going on for three decades in their province, but it is hard to find any attempt to communicate what they were saying to each other during this period, to people beyond their boundaries. I think we have a similar problem… even though i am more sympathetic to the Sydney point of view, I think our failure to communicate is similar to theirs.
I think Emma’s post goes some considerable way to answering your objections. The Lay and Diaconal Administration debate has been in part an internal Sydney thing, but it has also been ‘published abroad’ in general theological debate and in arguments at General Synod.
As well as the substantial summary report from 2007, the other reports (usually by the Doctrine Commission) it refers to are all online (all Synod Docs back to 1993 are on the SDS website). So, for example, the 1994 report is here:
Richard,
For an insider, whether someone at General Synod or a Gafcon bishop, or better still a Sydney synod habitue, as you point out, things are fine.
But we have not made it at all easy for someone who is not very familiar with the processes of the Anglican church.
For example to find the reports you refer to, as far as I can tell, you really need to know the date of the Synod that the report was presented at.
The debate appears to go back before 1993, so that is a problem.
Using the search function on the SDS site is enough to make me turn calathumpian.
Here’s a suggestion: get someone (who is not across who said what when) to try to locate the key lay presidency documents (without knowing what they are, called, or when published).
Then see how easy it is!
If Sydney synod was truely interested in making the case for lay presidency, we would have made this stuff easily accessible.
I have very lttle respect for Anglo-Catholicism, but even I do not believe that however attractively packaged the book will convert persons committed to the idea of the Apostolic succession.
However the Reformed Episcopal church is to join the new Anglican ( ?) province in North America. here are their deckarration of principles....
This Church condemns and rejects the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God’s Word:
First, that the Church of Christ exists only in one order or form of ecclesiastical polity:
Second, that Christian Ministers are “priests” in another sense than that in which all believers are a “royal priesthood:”
Third, that the Lord’s Table is an altar on which the oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ is offered anew to the Father:
Fourth, that the Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is a presence in the elements of Bread and Wine:
Fifth, that regeneration is inseparably connected with Baptism.
Could some one tell me how Bishop iker will reconcile his conscience with that!
Robert and Gordo are both right that there are some tensions within GAFCON between reformed evangelical and anglo-catholic understandings of ministry and sacraments and so on. A big question will be which matters are understood and accepted to be secondary matters as per the Jerusalem Declaration.
Seeing John has provoked people to try and put some resources together to explain the case for lay administration, I will add to the Doctrine Commission Report and the historical summary mentioned above, two articles by Peter Jensen, extracted from a paper he originally delivered to the Anglican Dicoese of Newcastle, when Roger Herft was their Bishop, and was trying to promote an understanding of the Sydney view.
Sandy is it a Biblical principle or is it expediency that there is such a thing as secondary issues? I remember reading as an Evangelical Martyn lloyd-Jones , “What is an Evangelical” and my jaw dropping when he designated baptism as a secondary issue. A solemn commandment of our Blessed Lord.
So how do we determine secondary issues...it is when we cannot agree!
Robert, I am sorry that at this time of year, I do not have the time for a long discussion on this. In brief, I would say it’s when the gospel of the Lord Jesus is under threat and/or when the authority of God’s Word, the Bible, is continually denied. But this is an inadequate answer because it is rushed and brief. As I say, I cannot do more now.
I should explain that I have been trying to make the case for lay administration, or at least the case that In Sydney we have discussed it carefully and in detail. But with the links hard to find this has not been easy.
The missing link seems to be the 1983 Doctrine Commission report. Anyone have a pointer to that?
(edit)
a little later....Hey here it is! http://www.sds.asn.au/assets/Documents/reports/103238.pdf
The magic trick is NOT to use the SDS search function but to use Google. But you still need to know the dates things were reported to Synod. I am sure some of you do!
Sandy is it a Biblical principle or is it expediency that there is such a thing as secondary issues? I remember reading as an Evangelical Martyn lloyd-Jones , “What is an Evangelical” and my jaw dropping when he designated baptism as a secondary issue. A solemn commandment of our Blessed Lord.
So how do we determine secondary issues...it is when we cannot agree!
Certainly the Bible teaches many times that there are primary and secondary issues - gnats and camels, if you wish. Of course, both should be believed/obeyed - it’s just that the consequences of failure to do so are different!
That applies even within the category of “solemn commandments of our Blessed Lord” - e.g. he solemnly commanded cleansed lepers to go show themselves to the priest and make the offering Moses commanded for that situation. No Christian ranks that as a first-order matter today.
Your final observation is witty and all too often right on the mark. Obviously GAFCON have taken a political decision to place women’s ordination in that lesser category, but as you’ve mentioned here many times, it’s more surprising that the 39 Articles as a whole should be consigned to it as well, viz a viz the Anglo-Catholic component.
