Happy Fat Tuesday,
To get ready for Lent you should treat yourself to some good Louisiana Music, like Zydeco.
Category: General
Spong Thesis 2
BISHOP SPONG AND THE FALL
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The second thesis of John Spong we are taking up in this series is the third in his manifesto: The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
Spong treats the concept of the fall and the story of Adam and Eve in a chapter in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, entitled, “Jesus As Rescuer: An Image That Has To Go.” He quite accurately outlines the traditional story of salvation history which begins with a good and loving God freely creating a good creation and as the pinnacle of that creation God creates the man and the woman in his image and likeness. God places the man and the woman in the garden and gives them dominion over the earth. Then the snake appears on the scene and tempts Adam and Eve to break the one commandment that God has given them. Sin enters in and the original relationship with God is broken. From this original sin evil spreads. Traditional theology says that we are all affected by Original Sin and stand in need of an antidote for this sin. God deals with sin and evil by calling Abraham and by giving the law through Moses, by sending the prophets and in the fullness of time, Christ to be the sacrifice for sin. By his death and resurrection Jesus Christ restores our fellowship with God and gives us the gift of eternal life. This basic narrative of salvation Spong calls “Jesus the divine rescuer” which is “dead wood of the past” which “must be cleared out so that new life has a chance to grow.”
Spong’s Theses
MUST CHRISTIANITY CHANGE OR DIE?
A RESPONSE TO BISHOP SPONG
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The first of Bishop Spong’s Theses that we will take up is thesis number 1: Theism, as a way of defining God is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
Theism is the belief that there is a God who is distinct from and not dependent on the cosmos. Christian Theism is the belief that this God has revealed himself in creation and history and perfectly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who has taught us to call this God,” Our Father.” In order to understand more clearly what John Spong means by his theses I have consulted his book, Must Christianity Change or Die? Harper Collins, 1998
Revelation vs Mystery
This is a response that I gave at the first Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Conference at House Of Redeemer in New York in I think December of 2000. All the papers and responses were ultimately published in the ATR. Without too much difficulty you can reconstruct the outlines of the paper to which I am responding. Dr. Pressler is arguing for an inductive definition of communion. That is he is for looking at the churches that claim membership in the communion and asking what are the minimal conditions for communion that can be discerned from this investigation. In this article I identify the reasons that cause first world and two thirds world Anglicans to categorize their opponents as inherently immoral in their approach to theology. I make some suggestions for a theological rationale for a pastoral response by the South to the irregularities in the churches of the North.
A Reply to Titus Presler’s “Old and New In Worship and Community”
by Leander S. Harding
1. Titus Presler and I were colleagues in the Diocese of Massachusetts and I remember being spellbound as he recounted some of his missionary experience. I am very appreciative of Dr. Presler’s capacity to enter deeply into the experience of African Christianity and the art with which he is able to convey that experience to us. I remember many years ago being inspired and challenged by his experience in Zimbabwe. Something vital and refreshing of the Spirit of Christ had touched him and through his talk touched me as well. It is wonderful to have a chance to hear more of that story.
Christianity And The World Religions
A Reflection On Christianity And The World Religions
By
The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.
Lent, 2002
Much of what I have to say in this talk I have learned from the work of the great missionary thinker, Bishop Leslie Newbigin. There is a branch of study called the sociology of knowledge. Sociologists of knowledge, such as Peter Berger, talk about the “plausibility structure” of a society. In every group, in every society, every civilization there are things which “everybody knows” and which are accepted uncritically and in which the rational and conceptional framework of the society are embedded. Recently we have been stunned by polls that show that many people in the Muslim world do not accept that the September 11 terrorists were Muslims but in that world “everybody knows” that Muslims do not do such things. Either they were not really Muslims or they didn’t really do what they are said to have done. It is not that people are being illogical or irrational it is just that they are thinking within the plausibility structure of their own world view. There was a time when everybody knew that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. From time to time things happen which call into question that which everyone knows. The important thing to understand is that there is not such a thing as a pure and neutral rationality and that all reason is carried by a community of understanding and is rooted in fundamental convictions which must be taken on faith, on premises which can not be established on any other basis.
The Biography Of Two Revisionists
This originally appeared in the ATR. The biorgraphical materials supplied by two famous revisionists, Marcus Borg and Karen Armstrong show how strongly biography influences the basic intellecutual stance of a thinker. I sometimes think that the biggest obstacles to classical orthodox faith are emotional rather than strictly intellectual. The series of lectures on which the book is based is advertised by the Episcopal Media Center in its most recent catalog as “five outstanding lectures given at Washington National Cathedral by some of today’s leading theologians”
The Changing Face Of God, Frederick W. Schmidt, Editor.
Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2000.
Review by Leander S. Harding
This is a short little book consisting of the talks given as a lecture series at the National Cathedral in Washington. The premise of two of the most famous of the lecturers, Karen Armstrong and Jesus Seminar member Marcus Borg, is that traditional creedal Christianity is implausible and unbelievable and that they are leading the way in envisioning “the changing face of God.” I found their essays in particular a wearying, depressing combination of neo-Kantian reductionism and effusive enthusiasm for a kinder, gentler, vaguer religion. These two essays could be used as exhibit A of the current class of those who can be described, as my old systematics professor used to say, as believing in God the good and kind gas.
Homosexuality And The American Religion
This was originally published on Titusonenine and picked up and excerpted by both First Things and Christianity Today.
Harold Bloom, an iconoclastic literary critic at Yale, wrote a book published in 1992, with the title “The American Religion.” Using an argument developed by Msgr. Ronald Knox in his magisterial work on “Enthusiasm” and by the Presbyterian theologian Phillip Lee in his book “Against The Protestant Gnostics” Bloom makes a convincing case that the real American Religion that is the unofficial but actual spiritual mythos which gives shape to the American worldview and energy to the American religious quest is some form of Gnosticism. The Gnostics, ancient and contemporary, teach that the true and deepest self is a spark of divinity which has become lost and imprisoned in a corrupt world. The drama of salvation is the drama of rediscovering this secret self and reuniting this spark with the divine one. This is accomplished by access to a secret knowledge or “gnosis” which is unavailable to the uninitiated. Gnostic versions of Christianity have been a problem for the church from the earliest times. The struggle with Gnosticism caused St. Irenaeus (130-200 A.D.) to write his chief work “Adversus omnes Haereses.” Gnosticism is hard to kill and has many contemporary fans including the scholars of the Jesus Seminar who champion the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.
The Ministry And The Center
This sermon was reprinted in the Festschrift for my teacher and former professor of systematics at Andover Newton Theological School, Gabe Fackre. Dr. Fackre’s systematic is called “The Christian Story” and he and his wife have authored a very useful book for use in parishes called “Christian Basics”
The Ministry And The Center
A Sermon Preached At The Evensong Of The Joint SEAD And Confessing Christ Conference, On November 4, 2000, In St. John’s Episcopal Church, Stamford, Connecticut, by
The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding
What is the central task of the church? What is the central task of the church’s ordained ministers?
The official answers to these questions have varied little over centuries: To preach the Gospel, to administer the sacraments, to pronounce blessing and pardon. In practice in the time I have been an ordained servant of the church there have been at least three competitors for the answer to the question what should the clergy do and what should be their central occupation.
What The Clergy Need To Know
This was written for a SEAD series. It bears on some of the responses to my article on “Are Ordinations Too Elaborate?”
What Do The Clergy Need To Know?
by
The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.
The invitation to reflect on this question causes me to be glad and grateful that I know some things and wish devoutly that I knew better some other things. I am very aware that what I have to say about this question has a great deal to do with my context in ministry. I was trained in seminary to provide pastoral care, liturgical leadership, preaching and teaching(in about that order of significance) for a settled Christian people. I now find myself increasingly, in a missionary context in a culture which is at once sophisticated and superstitious, and in which many people have never heard, or barely heard or misheard, the fundamental Christian proclamation. The big thing that clergy need to know is that the calling is shifting to a more explicitly missionary, evangelical calling. I doubt we need an utterly new seminary curriculum but we do need to approach the seminary experience with a sharpened sense of the missionary shape of ordained service in the contemporary church.
Fr. Kevin Holsapple On The Tsunami
God’s Will
January 9, 2005
St John’s, Bangor The Rev. Kevin G. Holsapple
I spent last week in my bed, flat on my back. I was born with a defect in my spine, so I have problems with my back. I was born with five fingers, but some little boys are born with four fingers. We all make do with the body we get. That is God’s will.
The Very Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding 