Episcopal Church bishop says: "God has given us a new revelation"

"God has given us a new revelation not shared with our forefathers in the church."

According to Fr. George Conger in an article written for Anglican Ink, this is what one bishop said about the move towards embracing same-sex marriage in The Episcopal Church.

Regardless of where one stands on this matter, this is a striking statement to make.  

"A new revelation not shared with our forefathers."  

In other words, God has given The Episcopal Church a revelation that cannot be found in Scripture or Tradition, a revelation that Jesus, St. Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers, the Church Fathers, the Reformers, the Anglican Divines, etc., did not have access to.  Because only in our time has God been gracious enough to share it.  And God has given this new revelation only to a select few among all the Christians currently living in the world.

But how do we know this is truly revelation from God?  By what authority and what criteria does a claim to new revelation get checked out and determined to be true or false?  

To his credit, this bishop apparently told Fr. Conger that "we must proceed slowly and with generosity of spirit" in case it turns out that the majority of bishops and deputies at General Convention are wrong.  What might be the signs that we've got it wrong?  How would we know?

I note that this bishop made this statement in the context of Salt Lake City, a city founded in 1847 by Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders.  Seeing as Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, claimed a new revelation not shared with our forefathers in the church, Salt Lake City may strike some as a fitting place for an Episcopal bishop to make a similar claim.

It's possible that this bishop's take on what's happening in The Episcopal Church correctly represents a prophetic vision of how God is doing something new and unforeseen in our time through the actions of General Convention. 

It's also possible that what this bishop said expresses the hubris and false teaching, perhaps even the heresy, of General Convention's actions.

I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide.

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Integrating God's Intensified Ethic and God's Love: Jesus vs. the Pharisees

The Pharisees, they looked at Jesus, they could not get their theological imaginations around the notion that Jesus could both actively intensify God's ethical demand in our lives on the one hand, and on the other hand reach out aggressively in love to the biggest violators of that intensified ethic. They concluded if Jesus is reaching out aggressively in love to the violators of that ethic that he must not be stressing the ethic. Because they're stressing the ethic and they want to have nothing to do with the violators. But Jesus is aggressively reaching out in love, fraternizing, inviting himself into their homes, eating with them, preaching the kingdom of God, focusing his ministry mostly on them, for the very express purpose of recovering them for the kingdom. Where others didn't care that they were drowning, Jesus cared. And he reached out aggressively in love to bring them. 

The Pharisees couldn't put those two together. How can you love and at the same time follow God's intensified ethic? Jesus said those two go together beautifully. Because it's precisely because of God's intensified ethic people are put at risk if they don't obey it. And we want as many people as possible to inherit God's kingdom. So we ought to integrate those two in the church and not try to separate them. 

- Robert Gagnon

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