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Well one of the requirements for knowing God is to keep all of his commandents (1 John). Knowing God and knowing everything about God are two different things.
Beside the point. That you don't see any reason why God should or shouldn't has
no bearing on what God wants.
What makes you think that you know what the bishops were thinking anymore than my knowledge about God? Trust in God is completely different than trusting in men.
First, and simply, it makes a better press release. Even if they don't believe it, it's the best thing to say. But then we're left at a simple question:
Why confirm?
If simple prayer and reflection cannot lead a Bishop to figure out what I can sit here and say off the cuff, well ...
More genuinely, though, one of the benefits of having ditched the post-Christian ideology is the idea that I'm no longer bound by centuries of tradition to seek solely the worst in people by presuming their corrupt and sinful nature. Admittedly, I have an easy standard in some things for establishing corruption, but there's no reason to presume the bad in people. The bad
shows. In the end, though, I have no reason to argue with the notion that the members of the House of Bishops believed genuinely that they were doing the right thing. If their belief is correct, then God is with them. If their belief is incorrect, we must consider the reasons why.
As we are not, despite the nature of your argument, privy to God's immediate thoughts, we cannot know if the Will of God is to shepherd Bishop Robinson by the Holy Spirit or by other means at God's disposal.
Consideration of these other means includes asserting the corruption of the decision and the hearts and minds and souls of the Bishops making it.
If that assertion is correct, then evil is identified. However, not being privy to God's immediate thoughts, we cannot know if that assertion is right or wrong. If that assertion is wrong, the condemnation of the Will of God in the form of the Holy Spirit acting through either Bishop Robinson or the Bishops who elevated him to his position as corrupt treads dangerously close to--as in directly over--the warning in Matthew 12.
Knowing God and knowing everything about God are two different things.
And knowing what God is thinking about any one specific issue is yet a third entirely.
The key issue with me on this point is this odd statement of yours:
I don't but I don't see any reason why God would not look after one of his other churches.
It's only a couple of things that seem wrong with that, but essentially they come down to presumption of God's thoughts. On the one hand, I cannot presume that God "would not look after one of his other churches". To the other, while I agree that I can't imagine why, well ... duh. It's God. I'm not going to figure it out. Neither are you. There's a reason Christians have
faith, namely that they cannot have
knowledge of certain vital points.
I know that my english is not as clear as yours
Fair 'nuff. My bad, actually. I wasn't thinking in terms of that kind of translation.
Sorry to hit these point out of order.
But I think the fact that the Bishops chose to look past the homosexuality indicates that whatever punishment or denial is to be had for those sins is not theirs to give indicates that they are comfortable leaving judgment to God.
Judgment is God's alone. We may judge of the flesh, but true judgment is God's alone. Why would you accuse the Bishops of forgetting this?
The Bishops looked at their candidate and refused to throw stones. This is as it should be.
What makes you think that you know what the bishops were thinking anymore than my knowledge about God? Trust in God is completely different than trusting in men.
Something about faith in Jesus goes here. If I'm not mistaken, the Catholic Church at least protects against the idea that Jesus was not fully human. This is not exclusive to Catholics, and I would have to read up on the Episcopalian take, though the question so puzzles contemporary Christians that it well may not have come up in Episcopalian history.
They can be treated similarly. What one believes is shown by what one does. Unless if Robinson is completely hypocritical, he must believe that homosexual acts are not a sin.
Check the rules for heterosexuals. It's all pretty much a sin. Aside from requiring complete celibacy--an idea whose dangers ought to be obvious by now--every man of the cloth lives in sin. When your brain responds to the chemistry produced by your biology, you have sinned. It's a bit messed up.
However, to keep considerations in their proper scale, we can easily state that the good Bishop has every right before God, humankind, and his own conscience to reckon with his sins.
Choosing which sins to reject and which to endorse isn't really part of the package.
And you know, if Robinson is an utterly shallow human being, he can resort to the well-established premise that one need not believe what they teach. If he chooses to subject his conscience to such discord, well ... being gay in America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will have prepared him well.
However, if we choose to characterize Robinson as something more than the sum of one's xenophobic rejection, it's fair enough to say that a gay man who is bright enough to achieve the rank of Bishop is probably capable of some reasonably innovative thought. In fact, if I reject Original Sin as a presupposition pending objective demonstration, there suddenly opens the possibility that those who by their proximity to him experience part of his reconciliation process with God may find additional benefits hitherto hidden from the church faithful.
To me there is a great difference between the gender of the Bishop's human partner and his ability to teach those elements of faith required of him.
Tell me, does the Pharisee know more of compassion than the leper healed?
:m:,
Tiassa
