The Anglican Time Bomb

There is no doubt that many are troubled by current goings on in the Anglican Communion. The weblog of one of the evangelical parishes of this Dioceses, St Matthew's Kensington, points us to this, and leads us to another site "World Magazine" [which amongst other things has a very nice picture of Primates Akinola (of Nigeria) and Venables (of the Southern Cone).]
One of the things this "crisis" in the Anglican Communion ostensibly is about is the struggle to understand the place of homosexual Christians in the life of the Church. It is a complex issue. It had a climax in the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Bishops and one Australian commentator made the comment that he was deeply disturbed about the way the Bible was used in this discussion. For some it would seem to be a fixed rule book and for others a point on a journey.
As a fixed rule book it has a few problems since it has internal contradictions. It also has whole areas of life which have been ignored for centuries by Christians as being culturally obsolete, whilst others (like the attitude towards homosexuals) have been strictly, narrowly and even cruelly enforced. .
As a point on a journey it has problems too. The Anglican formularies are strong on the place of Scripture.
Article 6 of the Thirty Nine Articles says, for example..
....
VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church................

A particular discussion is whether the Hebrew Scriptures are binding on Christians..continuing

VII. Of the Old Testament.
The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.

What this suggests, at the least, is that our understanding of the Scriptures is evolving and that already at the time of the Reformation it was being understood that some things in the Bible were temporal and others were not. The debate is about that.

What, might we ask, does the last clause of Article 7 mean.....what is "moral" and what is not? Why has the Church chosen to fixate on the sexual dimensions of morality and yet regarded most other aspects of the Mosaic law as non-binding? What, for example, of the prescriptions in the Mosaic law about inter-marriage between races...is this moral or not?
Most would find these ideas totally repugnant today, but we hear little about them.

What is it about homosexuality that brings forth such condemnation? Some Christians would say we do not condemn homosexuals, but then they make such pervasive sanctions against them that it is difficult to think otherwise.
What do we say, for example, about those who choose to give themselves in committed relationship (see for example the journey of Luke Gahan and Matthew Culleton here).
The Bible says little, dare I say nothing, to this situation which would not even be spoken about by the Scriptural authors. It is not dissimilar to the issue of contraception, which can only be addressed by inference because it is only in the last 40 years that the real possibility of non-procreative sexual intercourse ........I am straying from the subject, so I will save more comment for a later post
continuing