New heights of absurdity in Episcopalia
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I am almost at a loss for words. Of all the saddest things to come out of the Anglican Communion of late, the following story is more than enough to make one weep. When the truth claims of Christianity are disregarded to the extent that sound doctrine is swept right away by whatever silly notion and whim takes the fancy, then I guess anything can be believed. And so the Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding, a scholar in New Testament, can tell us that she is both a practising Muslim and an Episcopal priest. |
To quote the Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding:
“We Christians, in struggling to express the beauty and dignity of Jesus and the pattern of life he offers, describe him as the ‘only begotten son of God.' That's how wonderful he is to us. But that is not literal,” she [Redding] continues. “When we say Jesus is the only begotten one, we are saying he's unique in some way. Islam says the same thing. He's the only human aside from Adam who is directly created by God, and he's different from Adam because he has a human mother. So there's agreement—this person is unique in his relationship to God.” Christianity also says that we are all part of the household of God and in essence brothers and sisters of Jesus. Muslims take the figurative language of “only begotten,” make it concrete and contradict it: God “neither begets nor is begotten.” “I agree with both because I do want to say that Jesus is unique, and for me, Jesus is my spiritual master,” Redding says. “Muslims say Mohammed is the most perfect. Well, it depends on who you fall in love with. I fell in love with Jesus a long time ago and I'm still in love with Jesus but I'd like to think my relationship with Jesus has matured.”
When we say that Jesus is the only begotten son of God, we are saying He is unique but not simply just “in some way”. We actually know in what way. It is in the way that He is of the same substance as the Father, our Creator God. And being of the same substance He is indeed God - God, the Son; second Person of our three-in-one Godhead. (John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”) Not to acknowledge this uniqueness in this way is not to believe the truth claims of Christ.
What is more, it is not we who “struggling to express the beauty and dignity of Jesus” have coined the term “only begotten son of God” in our supposed struggle, but He is called that in Scripture which is God’s holy written word, the revelation of God Himself, because He is indeed that - as God has revealed! (Matthew 16:15-17 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.”)
Christianity does not say that we are all in essence brothers and sisters of Jesus, but only those who believe in Jesus as the Son of God are the children of God. (John 1:12,13 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. )
The Qu’ranic description of Allah is something quite different from the Biblical revelation of Yahweh. Pope Benedict found himself in hot water last year as a result of his lecture at Regensburg when he described how Christianity’s view is that God is intrinsically linked to reason (the Greek concept of logos) whereas Islam’s view is that “God is absolutely transcendent.” He appeared to be saying that either the Islamic interpretation of God must be in error when used to justify patently irrational violence as divine, or else the god the Muslims worship is not God. The submission of man's rationality to irrational violent commands, Pope Benedict dared to suggest, is incompatible with who God must be. The Muslims, who insist that their Allah is the God of Abraham, were incensed and turned up the heat in their attempt to cook the Pope like a live lobster in a pot.
Furthermore, Muslims deny the deity of Jesus. To them He is just a prophet, the one they call ‘Isa. And the Qu’ranic accounts of their ‘Isa have significant contradictory differences (such as His crucifixion and resurrection which they deny, that He was begotten and not created - that is, being the Word through whom all Creation came into being) from the Gospel accounts of Christ. Unlike Yahweh, the Islamic Allah is not a father - he has no son.
Dr Redding believes that Jesus led her to Islam. Quoting from the interview with her…
She added that what Islam does is take Jesus out of the way of her relationship with God, “but it doesn't drop Jesus. I was following Jesus and he led me into Islam, and he didn't drop me off at the door. He's there, too.”
Yes, Islam does take Jesus out of the way of her relationship with God, and it does even more besides. Without Jesus and His redemption that restores our relationship to God, we are lost and no longer the children of God. (1 John 2:23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.) This is about the Sonship of Jesus, His unique relationship to the Father (”…of one Being with the Father through whom all things were made…” Nicene Creed) and our acknowledgement of His deity as part of the Godhead.
Jesus made an exclusive claim (John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”) and to suggest that He leads anyone to worship a false god, one that denies His deity and all that He did on the cross for our redemption, is quite staggering to me. I can only surmise that Dr Redding has been well and truly deceived by the Father of Lies, and in losing sight of the real Jesus, has followed Satan, the evil one, instead.
One simply cannot be both a Muslim and a Christian. Each requires incompatible allegiances. Their truth claims are contradictory and mutually exclusive. Both cannot be right together, and to claim to believe in both requires a dissociative mental state. Dr Redding has sought synergy rather than salvation, and in attempting to be a believer of both, she has become a true believer of neither.
The questions to be asked next: What is this woman doing being allowed to remain a priest in the Episcopal Church? Where is her bishop, and what is he saying about her outright heresy? If there was any reason to be defrocked, this is surely a big one. Oh, wait, the Episcopal Church has veered right off course, creating it’s own liberal revisionist religion. It really is the saddest thing about the Anglican Communion.
