The
Pastoral Care of God the Holy Spirit
Introduction
This is the fifth and
final post on the pastoral care of sinners in light of the Church of England’s
present crisis over the proposal to accept the practice of same-sex
relationships through a so-called ‘pastoral accommodation.’ Earlier posts have countered that what is
needed is ‘pastoral care,’ and that this care must be understood as pastoral
care for sinners. They have, further,
suggested that the Church is ably instructed in such care by the mission of the
Triune God toward a sinful world.
In this post, we begin with
some words about the pastoral care of God the Holy Spirit. Then we turn to examine the close parallels
that the early Church (particularly in the General and Pastoral Epistles) faced
to what the Church faces today: false teachers seeking an accommodation of
Christian faith to the sexual culture of the Greek and Roman world of the first
century. Finally, we conclude with a
comment on present proposals about pastoral accommodation that, instead of healing
the Church, actually substantiate the need for a truly Christian, Anglican
mission in England in light of the present-day heresy.
The
Pastoral Roles of the Spirit
The Holy Spirit’s pastoral
role, according to the Scriptures, is evident in a great variety of ways. Indeed, the Spirit functions as God’s abiding
presence in the life of the believer and Christian community. The Spirit is the giver of life at the time of creation (Genesis 1.2 and 2.7) just as
the Spirit gives spiritual life to
God’s redeemed people (Ezekiel 37.10-14; John 6.63; 20.22).[1] The Spirit is the source of divine revelation in prophecy and Scripture (1 Peter
1.11-12; 2 Peter 1.21; 2 Timothy 3.16).
The Spirit is the ‘Paraklētos’—translated
as Advocate (NRSV), Counselor (NIV), and ‘Helper’ (ESV) (John 14.6; 15.26)—for
the disciples. The Spirit intercedes for the saints (Romans
8.27). He is the ‘Spirit of truth’ (John 14.17; 15.26; 16.13). He is the power
by which Jesus lived His earthly ministry (Matthew 12.18; Luke 4.18) and the
Church lives out its missionary purpose (Acts 1.8). In such ways, and more, the Holy Spirit of
God is said to be the divine presence
that reveals God (cf. Ezekiel 39.29) and
empowers God’s people to live for Him (cf. Ezekiel 36.27).
A counsellor may offer
wisdom. A pastor may give divine
guidance. But the Holy Spirit does both and empowers a person to live according
to God’s commandments—to live the spiritual life. As John says,
Whoever keeps his commandments
abides in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the
Spirit whom he has given us (1 John 3.24).
Indeed, the Spirit restores
the sinner and returns him from the brink of death to a renewed ‘Spiritual’
life (Psalm 51.11). This is the imagery
for Israel’s being restored from death in the transgression of the Law and
captivity due to their sins in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones
being resurrected by God’s Spirit (ch. 37).
It is also what Paul says of the Christian life that is not lived in the
power of the flesh and by means of the (powerless) Law—which can only lead to
sin—but that is lived in the power of the Spirit (Romans 7.5-8.17).
The Christian life is a
life turned over to the indwelling Spirit of God. One is not so ‘possessed’ by the Spirit, as
it were, that one loses control and can no longer sin. Rather, believers discover the power of God
at work within (Ephesians 3.20), experience the freedom of the Spirit of life
(Romans 8.2), willingly yield to the Spirit (unlike Israel—Acts 7.51), and walk
in step with the Spirit, setting their minds on the things of the Spirit
(Romans 8.4-6). Indeed, the Spirit is the
life-giving power of God living within believers that overcomes the sinful
flesh and makes it possible to live righteously before God (Romans
8.9-11). The Christian life is a
Spirit-filled life. Paul can say of the
work of Christ and the Spirit that ‘you were washed, you were set apart for
holy use, you were made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in
the Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 6.11, my translation). Thus, the believers ‘Spiritual’ worship is to
present their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Romans
12.1). Believers are to ‘sow to the
Spirit,’ not the flesh, and so reap eternal life from the Spirit (Galatians
6.8). Or, as Paul elsewhere says, the
body of believers is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6.19). The promises of the Spirit restoring sinful
Israel from captivity in their sins (Isaiah 59.21; Ezekiel 36.26-27) are thus
fulfilled in the lives of believers through the work of Jesus Christ, who gives
us the Spirit (Matthew 3.11; Luke 3.16; Acts 1.5; 11.16; 19.4-6). The Church is a holy people on whom God has
poured out His Spirit (Joel 2.28-29; Acts 2.17-18, 33; Titus 3.6).
The
General Epistles (especially Jude) and the Crisis of Accommodation to Culture
How blasphemous, then,
those who claim to know the Spirit and yet live profligate lives indulgent of
the sinful flesh! In our day, the
message of the General Epistles (Hebrews through Revelation) is increasingly
becoming relevant precisely because these New Testament books focus on the two
challenges facing the Church in the West today: persecution of a minority
Church from outside and false teaching from inside. Increasingly, the false teaching that the
early Church faced came from teachers distorting the Christian faith by letting
the non-Jewish and non-Christian culture and its practices seep—even pour—into
the Church. This expressed itself
especially in the Graeco-Roman sexual ethic.
By way of example,
consider the little letter of Jude. It
might just as well have been written to the Church of England today, which is
also allowing the neo-pagan culture of a post-Christian world into the Church
and celebrating it as some sort of experience of divine grace. Hear, then, the words of Jude to his
compromised Church.
First, Jude is distracted
from writing about Christian salvation because of the error he must address, an
error that has entered into the Church.
He finds that he has to contend for the Christian faith even within the Church, a faith that was once
for all entrusted to the saints before a Church intent on revising that
faith. This Church has allowed intruders
to steal in among them, who preach a perversion of the Christian faith. They teach that God’s graciousness gives them
the freedom they desire to live according to their own sexual perversions
instead of according to their Sovereign Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude then warns these false Christians
directly, saying that God is ready and willing to destroy the likes of them,
for he did so in the past to the Israelites who did not believe, to angels who
did not keep their proper positions, and to Sodom and Gomorrah, cities that
chose to depart from natural desires and instead pursue ‘other flesh’ from what
God intended in creation—unnatural, homosexual unions.[2] Such people are grumbling and malcontent
persons who divide the Church and indulge their own lusts. They are loud-mouthed boasters who do favours
for others in order to gain an advantage for themselves. They are, in fact, the people that the
apostles themselves had earlier warned the Church about: scoffers who would
arise in the last times and indulge their own ungodly lusts. Note that Jude says that they are devoid of
the Spirit and cause divisions in the Church.
Jude also gives a word to
the faithful believers caught in this terrible situation in the Church. They are to do several things, including:
- Find strength in the orthodox faith: ‘Build yourselves up on your most holy faith’;
- Seek help from God’s empowering Spirit: ‘Pray in the Holy Spirit’;
- Persevere in God’s love, knowing that they will receive mercy from the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life;
- Show mercy to those wavering in the faith as though snatching them from the fire but hating even the undergarment soiled by the flesh.
In this most pertinent
letter for our own day, we specifically hear Jude distinguish the two parties
in this divided Church: one is devoid of the Spirit and lives a filthy life of
sexual debauchery, while the other prays in the Holy Spirit. Jude has more to say about the false
Christians: they are blemishes at their love feasts, fearless, fruitless,
creating chaos, and destined to deepest darkness. He minces no words.
A
Pastoral Accommodation?
This brings us, then, to
the proposal for the Church of England that a ‘pastoral accommodation’ be sought
in the current crisis. The current
crisis dividing the Church, as in Jude’s time, is a revisionist interpretation
of the orthodox faith that ‘perverts the grace of our God into licentiousness,’
a culturally determined sexual ethic that rejects Biblical sexuality. Permitting homosexual relationships within
the Church, blessing these false unions, and even going so far as to propose
that same-sex couples marry with the Church’s blessing have been ways to twist
the faith once for all delivered to the saints about God’s grace and mercy into
a sanctioning of sins of the flesh advocated by our culture.
What is the so-called pastoral
accommodation for the current crisis? According
to the proposal in ‘Grace and Disagreement: Shared Conversations on Scripture,
Mission and Human Sexuality,’ a
pastoral
accommodation is a way of recognising that not every situation resolves itself
into a clear delineation between virtue and vice – people often find themselves
caught up in circumstances which fall short of God’s intentions and have to
make choices which minimise harm or which rescue as much as possible that is
good. In such circumstances, the church’s pastoral obligations come into play,
offering support, prayer and love. A pastoral accommodation is a way of making
that pastoral offering without endorsing the circumstances through which the
situation arose or giving moral approval to every element in a messy state of
affairs.[3]
Applied to matters of
moral indifference and religious devotion, such as food laws, celebration of
special days, particular practices such as circumcision, a pastoral
accommodation makes sense. We see this
in Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Welcome those who are weak in
faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. 2 Some believe in eating anything,
while the weak eat only vegetables. 3
Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must
not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on
servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And
they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. 5 Some judge one day to be better
than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully
convinced in their own minds. 6
Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat,
eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who
abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. 7 We do not live to ourselves, and
we do not die to ourselves. 8
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then,
whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's (Romans 14.1-8).
In
no instance, however, do New Testament writers apply such a pastoral
accommodation to matters of sexual ethics.
On the contrary, laxity towards sexual ethics is always opposed. Indeed, God’s transforming grace can be seen
precisely in an area such as this. To
continue in sexual sin is to be in danger of eternal damnation (cf. 1
Corinthians 6.9-11; Ephesians 5.5; Matthew 5.29). Specifically, same-sex relations are
condemned as sinful and leading to eternal separation from God in the Old and
New Testaments and throughout Church history everywhere, always, and by all.[4]
The
document continues:
Yet
the concept of pastoral accommodation was intended by the Pilling group[5] to reflect the enduring
nature of the church’s teaching whilst recognising that some Christians, in
conscience, do not believe that this teaching reflects adequately the love of
God in the context of same sex relationships. In other words, pastoral
accommodation was intended to maintain the tension between the authority of the
church and the demands of conscience.[6]
Rather than seeking a
pastoral accommodation with those unwilling to listen to the authoritative
teaching of Scripture and the clear affirmation of the Church through the
centuries, the Church needs to recognise that there are persons about whom it
must be said:
overwhelmed by their sins and
swayed by all kinds of desires, 7
[they] are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the
truth. 8 As Jannes and
Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith,
also oppose the truth (2 Timothy 3.6-8).
Citing such passages from
the Pastoral or General Epistles is really not an application of Biblical texts
to a new situation in our day: the present situation is of essential similarity
to that faced then, with pagan culture in both contexts pressing in on the
orthodox faith. The whole purpose of a
pastoral accommodation is to side-step moral judgements where there is
ambiguity. The problem the Church faces,
however, is not one of ambiguity but of obedience to Scripture. Consciences may, and often are, rejected and distorted
and not a reliable basis for moral judgement (1 Timothy 1.19; 4.2; Titus 1.15;
Hebrews 10.22). Nor is the solution remotely
pastoral if the consequence of continuing in such sin is eternal
damnation. Would it be pastoral to
support someone’s decision to get onto a plane with a terrorist because one did
not want to appear judgemental and wanted to support a person whatever his or
her decision? Would it not rather be pastoral
to warn the person of impending doom should the wrong decision be made?
Any Church refusing to
affirm its faith in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church cannot go
about representing itself as the Church.
It is, rather, divisive, unholy, factional, and dismissive of apostolic
teaching. It is a false Church. The so-called ‘pastoral accommodation’ is an
attempt to try to hold these two, diametrically opposed Churches together to no
good end.
Conclusion
In these five posts on
the subject of a ‘pastoral accommodation’ of same sex relationships in the
Church of England—and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion—we have sought to
identify the lie in the political arrangement being proposed, which only
undermines the Christian faith and offers nothing in the least pastoral. It amounts only to an accommodation of
heresy.
Yet we have also been somewhat
able to explore a truly pastoral care of persons struggling with besetting
sins. Such care can only begin by
acknowledging that the care needed from the Church is for sinners. It is a care that the Church learns from the
Triune God’s own mission among us to, as Paul says in Colossians, reconcile to
himself all things through Jesus Christ (1.20).
Thanks be to God, it is a care that includes not only God’s direction and
grace but also His empowering presence in the Holy Spirit to transform us into
a cleansed, holy, and righteous people.
[1] In both Hebrew and Greek, unlike
English, the same word is used for ‘spirit,’ ‘breath,’ and ‘wind’—the NRSV
translates Gen. 1.2 with ‘wind’ instead of ‘Spirit,’ as in the ESV and
NIV. In Gen. 2.7, all three translations
rightly translate that God ‘breathed’ into the man, but note that the same verb
for ‘breathed’ in the Greek (emphysēsen)
is used in John 20.22 (enephysēsen),
where Jesus ‘breathes’ on His disciples for them to receive the Holy Spirit.
[2] While some interpreters suggest
that ‘other flesh’ means non-humans, i.e., the two angels of the story of
Genesis 19, this seems to us impossible.
The focus here is on sexual irregularity, not wrongfully desiring
angels. Moreover, 2 Peter 2 uses Jude in
such a way as to focus on sexuality, not angels. Finally, angels do not have ‘flesh.’ Readers will find various interpretations of
the phrase ‘other flesh’ in translations, but we take the reference to mean, as
the story of Genesis 19 suggests, homosexual practice.
[3] ‘Grace and
Disagreement: Shared Conversations on Scripture, Mission and Human Sexuality’
(p. 19) [online: https://churchofengland.org/media/2165235/grace1.pdf]
[4] Through numerous primary source quotations
and analysis, S. Donald Fortson and I have demonstrated this in Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian
Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Church Tradition (Nashville:
B&H Academic, 2016).
[5] See this 224 page report of the ‘House
of Bishops Working Group on Human Sexuality,’' produced in 2013, online: https://www.churchofengland.org/media/1891063/pilling_report_gs_1929_web.pdf. Professor Oliver O’Donovan proposed a
pastoral accommodation to the group, which is really a political accommodation. Thankfully, Bishop Birkenhead offered a
dissenting opinion, starting on p. 119, but his solitary dissention from the
working group’s rejection of orthodoxy is sadly telling on the state and
direction of the Church of England.
Indeed, as this commitment to falsehood continues, the need for a new
and truly Christian Anglican mission in England becomes increasingly urgent.
[6] ‘Grace and Disagreement,’ p. 20.