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Lambeth 1.10 Needs Revision

Evangelical and orthodox Anglicans continue to hold up Lambeth Resolution 1.10 as the agreed teaching on homosexuality for the Anglican Communion.  They use this to push back revisionists who have no concern for the resolution, let alone Scripture, to achieve their agenda of inclusion in the Church of persons flaunting their internal disorders and sinful actions.  This brief post is a comment on this, not about how unorthodox and post-Christian Anglicans ignore the resolution and press ahead with Western culture's values, but about Resolution 1.10 itself.

Of concern is the second part of resolution 1.10 that states that the Church assures 'homosexual persons that they are loved by God and ... that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.'

The wording is too open-ended and permits various, heretical interpretations.  We know that orthodox Christians voicing these words mean something like, 'sinners are loved by God, who sent His Son to die for their sins, not leave them in them.' This needs clarification, though, as others can read this to mean that people coming to faith do not need to change their sinful behaviours and have no reason to hope that the power of God that saves is also the power of God that transforms sinners.  This is, at best, only half a Gospel.  

Also, the quote claims that homosexuals 'are full members of the Body of Christ.'  What is this supposed to mean?  First Corinthians 6.9-11 cannot be squared with that statement, where the emphases are: (1) those who continue in their sins are excluded from the Kingdom of God; and (2) believers, with the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, break away from that way of life.  They have been washed, sanctified, and made righteous (as the Greek should be translated, in my view).

This means that:

(a) we cannot tell people living in sin that they are members of the Body of Christ (Paul told them the opposite in 1 Corinthians 5 as well as 6.9-11); 

(b) we cannot accept the view that Christians retain their sinful identity ('gay Christian,' e.g.; cf. 'blaspheming Christian' or 'rapist Christian'); 

(c) we believe that God's grace is not just forgiving but also transforming, not just touches acts but also transforms hearts (desires, orientations); 

(d) we need an ecclesiology that more closely aligns what we say about the Kingdom of God and with what the Church is (rejecting a view of the Church that more closely resembles the world than the Kingdom or includes the world, as the misreading of the parable of the wheat and the tares has it [the field in the parable is the world, not the Church]), and 

(e) we must not speak of the baptised to include those who willfully retain their sinful, sexual orientation.  Baptism is about repentance and new life, not inclusion of an old life into life in Christ (Galatians 3.27: 'For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ').

Lambeth 1.10 managed to put a stake in the ground for 25 years (it was passed in 1998).  As the Anglican Communion becomes the Anglican Federation at best, if not a totally divided denomination, Evangelicals and orthodox Anglicans need to clarify this resolution.  The clarification needs to exclude the 'Spiritual friendship' heresy touted by people like Wesley Hill that has arisen since then as well (the affirmation of a 'gay' identity without physical intercourse, that accepts the very new notion in Christianity that ethics is limited to acts and is not about the transformation of sinful desires as well).  Lambeth 1.10 might be the finger of the little Dutch boy stuck in the leaking dike, but it will not hold back the ocean for long.


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