The Evangelical Theological Society is meeting in San Diego, and Ted Olsen is there, reporting on a talk that has the group buzzing:
While the ballroom sessions of the first day of the Evangelical Theological Society meeting had more attendees, no session was as packed as J.P. Moreland’s “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.” While the average breakout session seems to be attended by fewer than 50 people, easily more than 200 packed the room to hear Moreland’s talk, with dozens standing and more listening outside the door.
It’s little wonder why so many people attended. ETS membership has only two doctrinal requirements: you must affirm the Trinity and the inerrancy of Scripture. The first part has not been controversial of late, but the second was the focus of the society’s recent fight over open theism and was named as a reason why Francis Beckwith could not remain as ETS president after his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
In short, to accuse evangelicals of over-commitment to the Bible at ETS would be like accusing environmentalists of talking too much about climate change at a Sierra Club meeting. But Moreland, who has gained some prominence as a philosopher and apologist, wasn’t pulling any punches.
“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”
The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.”
ETS is, of course, the group of which Francis Beckwith was president before his reverted to Catholicism this past spring. (He comments on his participation in the gathering here.)
On the Orthodox front, the document from the Orthodox-Roman Catholic theological talks in Ravenna has been released. VIS press release here. Here is an analysis from AsiaNews:
Catholics and Orthodox have agreed that when the Church was undivided the bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope, was the first of the patriarchs, hence of the bishops. However, they cannot agree as to what that actually entailed. This in a nutshell is the conclusion that the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue reached in the paper it produced in last October’s Ravenna meeting with regards to the role of the Pope. It is a “working paper” and therefore does not entail any joint acceptance by either the Catholic or the Orthodox Churches. Orthodox Churches are also not likely to accept it because of their lack of a central authority and the decision by the Moscow Patriarchate to quit the Ravenna meeting over the presence of the Estonian Apostolic Church which it does not recognise.
But it is also true that the paper clarifies some key points, hence its significance as a step forward along the ecumenical path. Having said this, the “recognition” of the “primacy” of the bishop of the “see” of Rome—never seriously questioned—does not mean an end to the division between Catholics and Orthodox. The question which the paper leaves unanswered at the end is how to actually reconcile the principle of synodality, which necessarily characterises the relations between bishops and whose decisions require “consensus” among the participants, and that of “primacy” which acknowledges a particular role, one of presidency, to one participant.
The ten-page paper which is divided in 46 points starts therefore from the notion of “synodality” or “conciliarity,” which reflects the Trinitarian ministry and finds its ultimate foundation in it. As with the Trinity, the paper says that the designation as “second” or “third” person does not imply any diminution or subordination. Similarly, an order among local Churches also exists, but does not however imply inequality in their ecclesial nature. The bishops are not only united among themselves in faith, charity, mission, reconciliation, but have in common the same responsibility and the same service to the Church. Synods and councils are the main path in which communion is concretely exercised. Each local Church, when in communion with the other local Churches, is a manifestation of the one and indivisible Church of God. Being “catholic” therefore means to be in communion with the one Church at all times and in all places.
In this Church there is a three-levelled synodal dimension, local, regional and universal. At the local level of the diocese it is entrusted to the bishop; at the regional level to a group of local Churches with their bishops who “recognise who is the first amongst themselves”; and at the universal level, where those who are first (protoi) in the various regions, together with all the bishops, cooperate in that which concerns the totality of the Church. At this level also, the protoi “must recognise who is the first amongst themselves.”
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