Learning from Lambeth Conference 1998 and Primates’ Meetings 2002/2003, Submission to Lambeth Commission on Communion (Ford, 2004)
Submission to Lambeth Commission on Communion
Tag: 01 document
Theological Wisdom, British Style (Ford, 2000)
Some years ago when I encountered theologian George Lindbeck of Yale Divinity School, he asked me about the Gifford Lectures which had been written by my doctoral supervisor, Donald MacKinnon. At the time, Lindbeck was planning a course on MacKinnon. Within a year or so theologian David Tracy of Chicago gave a paper in which MacKinnon was one of the featured theologians. When asked what current theology he found most interesting, Tracy replied, “British.”
British Theology After a Trauma: Divisions & Conversations (Ford, 2000)
If there was one intellectual development in living memory that separates the “grandparent” from the “parent” generation of British theology, it was the rise of logical positivism and analytical philosophy. A fairly homogeneous educated class, largely shaped through a few major universities, received a massive assault from within those universities not just on its philosophy but on its beliefs, ethics and worldview. “But how can you prove . . . ?” “But what do you really mean by. . .” were the reigning questions, and the conclusion of the inquiry was usually that your meaning had no empirical basis and did not make sense. The assault was made by a confident army of elite intellectuals, who appropriated the prestige of modern science and offered a rational rigor that might provide a place (however confined) to stand amidst world wars and huge changes in every area of life. The story is far more complicated than that, yet it is vital to understand how, in the middle two quarters of the 20th century, a drastically reductionist way of thinking became the bottom line against which everything was measured.
British Theology, Movements & Churches (Ford, 2000)
Having surveyed in previous articles the variety of theological conversations in Britain — ranging across patristics, history, philosophy, biblical interpretation, literature and the arts, the natural and social sciences, ethics and politics, and other religions — it probably occurred to some readers to ask: But what about the classic topics of Christian theology? What about the doctrines of God, creation, human being, providence, sin, Jesus Christ, salvation, Christian living, church, Holy Spirit and eschatology?
Remarks at Final Plenary Session of Lambeth Conference (Ford, 2008)
Asking people the question: Where has the Conference been most at home together? the same answer has been given time and again: we have been most at home in worship and in the small Bible study groups. The worship has never been without the Bible at its
centre, and the Bible studies have been embraced by worship. And at the heart of both Bible and worship is what perhaps unites us
most strongly: the desire for God, that hunger and thirst for God which is itself a gift of God.
Theology & The Four Principles of Bioethics (Finnis, 1993)
‘The four principles of bioethics’ have their rational basis and truth only within the wider set of moral principles. Outside that context, they demarcate a rather legalistic ethic while also, paradoxically, providing labels for rationalising almost any practice.
Law, Morality and “Sexual Orientation” (Finnis, 1994)
During the past thirty years there has emerged in Europe a standard form of legal regulation of sexual conduct….which I shall call the “standard modern [European] position”…The standard modern European position has two limbs. On the one hand, the state is not authorized to, and does not, make it a punishable offence for adult consenting persons to engage, in private, in immoral sexual acts (for example, homosexual acts). On the other hand, states do have the authority to discourage say homosexual conduct and “”orientation” (ie overtly manifested active willingness to engage in homosexual conduct). And, typically, though not univerally, they do so.
Secularism, Morality & Politics [comments on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life] (Finnis, 2003)
The secularism that is a root of a systematised willingness to kill some sorts of weak and dependent people (Evangelium vitae, n. 21), or that takes an intolerant form in denying the legitimacy of using Christian criteria when making political decisions (Doctrinal Note on Participation of Catholics in Political Life n. 6), is not to be confused with a healthy secularity or respect for the secular.
Reason, Faith and Homosexual Acts (Finnis)
The Church “refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God and, by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.” Each person also has a “sexual identity”: either male or female, man or woman. The Church does not use the term “sexual identity” as some people do, who claim that people have “sexual identities” as homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, and so forth. Instead, the Church teaches that each male should accept his sexual identity as a man, and each female her sexual identity as a woman; and that means accepting that one is different from and complementary to – and equal in dignity with — persons of the opposite sex (gender).
A GodSpy Interview with William T. Cavanaugh (Cavanaugh, 2008)
What do you think best characterizes the essence of your thought? Cavanaugh: What I’m trying to do is make connections between Sunday on the one hand and Monday through Friday on the other. In other words, to make connections between Church life—especially the Eucharist—and everyday life. I want to bridge the gap that shouldn’t be there but is.