(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Giles Fraser's take on the theological problems with the Pope's latest... thing. while we are all spitting tacks, those worryingly androgynous angels are trying to get their own message across: peace on earth and goodwill to all. And all means all.

Stepping back from specific controversy, though, here's the Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas Message: Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles. First comes the action – God beginning to live a human life. Then comes the appeal: do you love and trust what you see in this human life, the life of Jesus? Then the implication: everyone is capable of saying yes to this appeal, so no one is dispensable. You don't and can't know where the boundary will lie between people who belong and people who don't belong.

Comments

[expectare.livejournal.com]

doesn't that actually say peace and goodwill to men of good will?

[expectare.livejournal.com]

wait, no, it's just peace to men of good will...

[(Anonymous)]

As a matter of fact, the correct translation is even less Politically Correct. It is, roughly, "Peace on Earth among those who have His goodwill". There is almost a suggestion of, forget the rest.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

yes...

[(Anonymous)]

"Peace be with you. I bring you peace, My peace I give you. Not as the world gives, do I give peace. Do not let your hearts be troubled, do not let them be afraid..."

"Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the King, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom..."
(TS Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral)

[tree_and_leaf]

But that begs the question of who the people on whom God's favour rests are, and that you can only work out from the rest of the story.. And the Incarnation is about God's unconditional self-giving.

[(Anonymous)]

"Unconditional" means nothing. God came to bear sin on Himself, and that means that sin is an utterly primary reality. There is nothing unconditional about saying that sin is so atrocious a thing that God Himself must die for anyone to have a chance of escaping its destructive empire. To the contrary, it makes any acceptance of or attempt to diminish the meaning of sin a matter of transcendental importance. Nothing guarantees that God's death will have any efficacy for any particular one of us; and the swiftest way to ensure that it is not is to underrate its importance. The worst thing in the world we can do is imagine for a minute that we have any right to be among these mysteriously chosen people. We have no guarantee of salvation whatever - and that being the case, the only thing we can do is live as much as possible according to the dictates of the Gospel. God is not antinomian, ahd Jesus has said time and time again that salvation is bound up with serving Him in deeds. The parable of the sheep and the goats does not describe "unconditional" forgiveness, but forgiveness for those who have lived according to the rule of God. Jesus did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it, and heaven and earth shall pass away before one of His words do. Anyone who palters with this in the name of a supposed universal claim on God's mercy is dancing on the edge of Hell.

[owl]

If the only way to salvation is obeying the law, then we are all damned.

[(Anonymous)]

If there can be reward after death without obedience, then there is no Hell; and if there is no Hell, there is no need for salvation, much less for the death of God. A decent life may not be a sufficient condition for salvation, but it is certainly a necessary one.

[owl]

I was saying that obedience is insufficient; not that it will be absent.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Thanks for those -- especially the first one. :)

[tree_and_leaf]

You're welcome! Giles Fraser is almost always interesting (i.e. except when he's going on about the evils of substitutionary atonement, which he seems to be mildly obsessed with.)

[(Anonymous)]

Forgetting for one minute that the Pope is Catholic, anyone who takes what the Grauniad has to say about religion seriously is, to say the least, a poor judge.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think identifying a comment piece by the Vicar of Putney (who is not a Guardian employee) with the Grauniad editorial line - which I agree is generally characterised by a lack of understanding - is rather misunderstanding how the paper works. They've published articles on economics by Tories often enough.

[(Anonymous)]

At the risk of getting some sort of double banning for troubling your pages once again, this man simply lied about what the Pope had said and went on to build his own mythology about it. And you clapped your hands.

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

Thank you for both those links. I was trying to read the ABC's Christmas message from the noticeboard at Church last night, and it just wasn't working (too many interuptions.)

Merry Christmas!

[tree_and_leaf]

You're welcome!

[easter.livejournal.com]

May I add? We seem to have several friends and many interests in common.

[tree_and_leaf]

Hello - I've seen you on sammee42's journal, I think? Pleased to meet you and friend away, anyway.