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I acknowledge my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Psalm 51:3

A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet
came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

David’s adultery with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:4) was bad enough, but the cover-up was much worse.  First, there was the attempted cover-up, which failed.  Uriah declined to follow David’s urging that he go home and sleep with his wife (vv. 8-11), so that the child which Bathsheba had conceived by David (v. 5) would seem to be Uriah’s.  So David callously ordered that Uriah should be killed in battle (v. 15). 
            As is so often the case, the woman is victimized. Bathsheba had no possibility of repelling David’s lustful advances: “David sent messengers and took her” (v. 4).  Then her lawful husband was murdered (v. 17), and when the child that had been conceived through adultery fell mortally ill (v. 15), we are told of David’s anguish (vv. 16-17), but nothing is said about the mother’s grief. 
            In the Acts of the Apostles we have the story of the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the Book of Isaiah as he rode along in his chariot coming from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (8:27-28).  Philip the evangelist, moved by the Spirit (v. 29), runs up to the chariot and inquires, “Do you understand what you are reading?” (v. 30).  The eunuch replies, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (v. 30).  Philip then proceeds to tell him “the good news of Jesus” (v. 35). 
            The story illustrates the reader’s abdication of responsibility as an interpreter and his befuddled deferral to a supposedly better informed expert.  The Roman Catholic Church considers the Protestant principle of “sola scriptura” untenable: scripture requires an authoritative interpreter (like Philip in the story), and this interpreter is to be found today in the living voice of the church’s magisterium. 
            The Report of our Primate’s theological commission on the blessing of same-sex unions begins with an exhortation from the Letter to Titus: “Teach what is consistent with sound doctrine” (2:1).  But how are we to know this?  As Anglicans, without an authoritative magisterium, we have difficulty coming up with an answer, and that is why an acrimonious debate—if, indeed, one can call it a debate—has been going on for years, not just in our church, but throughout the Anglican Communion. 
            The Report makes impressive reading: it is thoughtful and prayerful and seeks to do justice to both sides.  But it has not resolved the matter, and so the debate will continue.  The most the Report could do was to determine that although the blessing of committed same-sex unions is a matter of doctrine, it is not a matter of core doctrine, i.e. it does not hinder or impair our common affirmation of the three historic creeds.  Actually, that is quite obvious, since the creeds do not address the issue of homosexuality. 
            We might wish that the moral issues involved in the same-sex question were as clear-cut and straightforward as those in the story of David and Bathsheba.  But such is not the case.  As Protestants we must wrestle with a scripture which, over the centuries, has been interpreted in countless ways, and, armed with this scripture, we must seek to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). 

July 29, 2007

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