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In a strongly-worded speech to the General Synod this morning, Dr Williams said the church had ‘a lot of explaining to do’.

‘We have, to put it very bluntly, a lot of explaining to do,’ he said.

‘Whatever the motivation for voting yesterday, whatever the theological principle on which people acted and spoke, the fact remains that a great deal of this discussion is not intelligible to our wider society.

‘Worse than that, it seems as if we are wilfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that wider society.

‘We have some explaining to do, we have, as a result of yesterday, undoubtedly lost a measure of credibility in our society.’

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I find all this rather problematic.

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If the faith changes - and let's be honest, much of the changes "wider society" would like to see from the Church essentially amount to complete u-turns - then it's not the same faith, it's not Apostolic and not from God. After all, God is truth or then he is something altogether rather whimsical in nature.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The Holy Spirit is God who is truth and therefore does not change.

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
Relevant to the thread, if not to the actual discussion!

New pope and Anglicanism

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Since when does truth not change? It used to be true that humans cannot fly, and then we invented the airplane.

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Our problem is our fracturedness. We don't have ongoing ecumenical conferences to look at this sort of stuff. And as a result of both schism and reformation, we've gone down different roads. Which means we don't have a united way of coping with the vexed problem of what the Spirit of God is saying to the churches today. And that is a big issue.

But it is no excuse for denying the dynamic of necessary change. The tradition is a valuable source of principle and wisdom. But if we lose the ability to be critical of its relevance to changed circumstances, of determining which principles should apply, then we gradually lose our ability to speak sense to the Babel of our times.

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AdOrientem, if/when it becomes possible to give humans gills to live underwater, will you still hold to the Universal Truth that people can't breathe water?

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I would argue that the Church is able to be infallible, that the Holy Spirit leads the Church into all truth.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Since when does truth not change? It used to be true that humans cannot fly, and then we invented the airplane.

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And it's still true that humans cannot fly. That humans can fly aeroplanes is a different thing altogether. What is true is always true.

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Originally posted by Jane R:
Barnabas62:

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Our problem is our fracturedness. We don't have ongoing ecumenical conferences to look at this sort of stuff. And as a result of both schism and reformation, we've gone down different roads. Which means we don't have a united way of coping with the vexed problem of what the Spirit of God is saying to the churches today. And that is a big issue.

But it is no excuse for denying the dynamic of necessary change. The tradition is a valuable source of principle and wisdom. But if we lose the ability to be critical of its relevance to changed circumstances, of determining which principles should apply, then we gradually lose our ability to speak sense to the Babel of our times.

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AdOrientem, if/when it becomes possible to give humans gills to live underwater, will you still hold to the Universal Truth that people can't breathe water?

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Originally posted by hatless:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I would argue that the Church is able to be infallible, that the Holy Spirit leads the Church into all truth.

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Isn't that observably and obviously false?

Perhaps you mean that in certain special circumstances in relation to certain limited matters the Church is able to be infallible. But that isn't a useful statement.

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You do realise that here you ate referring to a new and different species.

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I daresay a biologist will be along to dispute this with you in a minute, so I won't bother.

How about astronomy? The ancients (some of them anyway) believed that the stars were fixed on a heavenly sphere and the sun revolved around the earth. Nowadays we know that is wrong. The sun and stars have always been huge balls of flaming gas a very long way away from us; our understanding of them has changed.

Should we have held to the Ptolomaic model of the universe, even though it's wrong?

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
I'm not sure about this business of secondary truths, whatever that pans out to mean.

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In fact what is going on is that the whole way the issue is looked at has been re-framed. Its external viewpoints of examination have been changed.

No problems with that in general. In fact I would encourage it. But in practice people doing that seem frequently unable to address the weaknesses or limitations of their own way of framing things. You (generic you) need to be as hard on yourself as you are on others.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
What one thinks is true and what actually is true can indeed be two diffetent things

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I would have thought it obvious that when speaking of the Church and infalliblity that it relates to the faith and not, say, tomorrows hockey scores. I believe that this is demonstrable, however, first we must look for the Church.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
What one thinks is true and what actually is true can indeed be two diffetent things

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How sure are you that what you think is true is actually true?

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What one thinks is true and what actually is true can indeed be two diffetent things, but however erroneous the former is it doesn't change the latter.

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Originally posted by hatless:
If you have to identify the right bit of the church to find the infallible bit, then we have the problem, as I said, of a statement that has no use: a bit of the church is infallible, and the bit it is is the infallible bit. Either it's infallible because it's the church, or we're not saying anything, and infallibility is not an obvious characteristic of the church.

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Originally posted by hatless:
Ad Orientum said

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I would have thought it obvious that when speaking of the Church and infalliblity that it relates to the faith and not, say, tomorrows hockey scores. I believe that this is demonstrable, however, first we must look for the Church.

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It's not just hockey scores, it's supporting crusades, it's violence towards doctrinal enemies, it's all sorts of spiritual and moral error that is evident in the history of the churches. Apart from the denomination that came into existence this afternoon, I'm sure no church can claim to be free of this sort of error. It doesn't say much for our knowledge of the truth of the faith when we live it out very badly, but we do. They did in New Testament times, as well.

If you have to identify the right bit of the church to find the infallible bit, then we have the problem, as I said, of a statement that has no use: a bit of the church is infallible, and the bit it is is the infallible bit. Either it's infallible because it's the church, or we're not saying anything, and infallibility is not an obvious characteristic of the church.

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The Holy Spirit is guaranteed to assist the Church on certain occasions

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Almost definitely.

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My crazy theology in novel form

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Originally posted by IngoB:
As embarrassing as for example the Galileo affair may be...

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This is what I mean when I say it boils down to ecclesiology. For instance, when you talk of "bits" of the Church this betrays the reason why you cannot see a Church that is protected by the Holy Spirit from error.

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Originally posted by hatless:
Ad Orientum said

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This is what I mean when I say it boils down to ecclesiology. For instance, when you talk of "bits" of the Church this betrays the reason why you cannot see a Church that is protected by the Holy Spirit from error.

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No, I'm happy to talk about the church as a whole. I would argue that from the Council of Jerusalem onwards, if not from that day when James and John got a bit ambitious, the church has been characterised by fallibility. Also grace, of course. I thought you were talking about bits when you said first we have to look for the church.

I'm excited that doctrine develops. I'm delighted that the New Testament preserves for us the story of Peter being dragged to a new understanding of God, and therefore gives us a model of the church reaching a new understanding of God.

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Each person has to work out for themselves who and what the Church is. Only then does the relationship between the Church, the Holy Spirit and Tradition become clear. Then you have to find it and test the fruits.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Again, the way you speak of the Church betrays why you cannot conceive of the Church being guided into truth. The reason you think that is probably because you hold to some form of branch theory. I wouldn't, rather I see the Church as a visible body professing the same faith and sharing the same altar. Those who do not are outside. But, I do not bring this up as an opportunity to be partisan, only to show that we all need to work out how we view the Church first before we can understand its relationship with Tradition.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The reason you think that is probably because you hold to some form of branch theory. I wouldn't, rather I see the Church as a visible body professing the same faith and sharing the same altar. Those who do not are outside.

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Originally posted by GreyFace:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The reason you think that is probably because you hold to some form of branch theory. I wouldn't, rather I see the Church as a visible body professing the same faith and sharing the same altar. Those who do not are outside.

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Just for clarification, can you please confirm you're saying that of the approximately two billion Christians currently on the planet, only a maximum of seven percent or so are actually in the Church? That the rest of us haven't been baptised into the Church and have never actually received any sacraments, that our holy communions are at best lacking in the presence of Christ and at worst travesties of the real thing?

If so, well I'm Anglican so I'm used to that but I thought I'd ask for the benefit of the Ship's complement of Catholics.

If on the other hand you're prepared to say that you don't know the status of the non-Orthodox churches, you might want to withdraw that final sentence.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I thought this might start getting all partisan. That was not my intention however. If anyone knows what Orthodoxy believes concerning this then they will already have the answer.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
If anyone knows what Orthodoxy believes concerning this then they will already have the answer.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The Holy Spirit is guaranteed to assist the Church on certain occasions, lending her Divine infallibility on these occasions. Everything else is the usual human mix from near certainty to near arbitrariness.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Tradition, from an Orthodox perspective at least, is not something seperate from the sacred scriptures, rather it is the scriptures properly lived and understood by the Church. It's the Apostolic teaching and practice realised in the Church's worship, canon, creeds and the lives of the saints - it is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The Holy Spirit is God who is truth and therefore does not change. It is the same word that was delivered at the beginning only our understanding grows (not change).

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that the Holy Spirit is seeking to guide the Church into the fullness of truth, it draws upon everything in human experience and thought which will give to the content of revelation its fullest expression and widest application. It is primarily concerned with the growth of the seed of God's word from age to age

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But tradition is a dynamic process with inevitable admixture of truth and error; and formulations of faith change through the ages, not least because of changing contexts and situations

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We are agreed that the development of doctrine and the production of confessions of faith is a dynamic process.

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An engagement and struggle with what is given. Orthodoxy makes us critical, it provokes questions. It is 'what keeps the Church free to question its traditions'

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The tradition..and in particular the doctrinal tradition, is truly itself only when it throws itself away. That is, it is not the last word, just as it is not the first word. It is only within the dynamism of history as the place and the time of irreversible personal decisions that the Word is truly heard, and faith truly active

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Originally posted by Zach82:
It's what the Catholic, Orthodox, Copts, Oriental Orthodox, and lots of other claims for themselves, SCK.

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