The Gippsland Crisis | Theological Theology

Dr. Mark Thompson, Moore Theological College

Dr. Mark Thompson of Moore Theological College in Sydney posted the article, The Gippsland Crisis on his blog. While Dr. Thompson clearly has the moral issues right he also seems to be attacking the symptoms of the disease rather than the disease itself. That is, Thompson and the Anglican Church League and the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia have endorsed the Anglican Church in North America as an "orthodox" Anglican province of the Anglican Communion. Unfortunately, this enodorse completely ignores the fact that the Anglican Church in North America is predominately an Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian denomination or province and therefore is not "orthodoox" nor is it truly Christian.  The Protestant Reformation was a return to the catholic or universal doctrines of the first century church.  It is in fact the Roman Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Arminians and Pentecostals who have corrupted the plain teaching of the Scriptures, the only infallible record of apostolic doctrine and God's special revelation.

Moreover, the ACNA is an apostate denomination because it denies the soteriology of the Bible--justification by faith alone--and makes tradition an equal revelation with Scripture.  Confessional Anglicanism has its doctrinal standards laid out clearly in a literal reading of the Anglican Formularies, namely the Thirty-nine Aricles of Religion, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the second Book of the Homilies.  I concede that the Ordinal is included as well, although apostolic succession does not follow from an episcopal form of church polity.  (See Declaration of Principles).

What Dr. Thompson does not seem to get is that once the door is open to making the church an authority over Scripture then the door is also open to revisionism once a church goes off in a modernist or postmodernist direction. When theology is done from below rather than accepting the final authority of God's written Word in Holy Scripture then it is only a matter of time before evil takes over. Not only this but to deny justification by faith alone and to make good works and morality a basis for saving faith is to deny the very Gospel itself. That means that even conservative Anglo-Catholics, Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox are lost because of their semi-pelagianism and their confusing of law with gospel, merits with grace, and sanctification with justification. Moreover, once the liberals infiltrate a church--even Protestant churches--it is a short time before the dissimulation and relativism produces a propaganda approach like this one:

This is the context in which the actions of the Bishop of Gippsland, John McIntyre, have taken place. Last December the diocesan newspaper in Gippsland announced the appointment of an openly homosexual man as priest in charge of one of the parishes of the diocese. Since then, voices of protest have been raised and the bishop has attempted to take refuge behind the strict wording of only one part of the Lambeth resolution, the refusal to accept the ordination of people involved in homosexual behaviour. He, very clearly, did not ordain this person, he simply appointed him, in full knowledge of his situation (after all, a picture of the man and his partner was included in the diocesan newspaper) to be the senior minister in a local Christian congregation.  (Mark Thompson).

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