Introduction
I bid you a very warm welcome to this third session of the thirty-ninth Synod of the Diocese of Wangaratta, my 11th and last. I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. I acknowledge Auntie Betty who will welcome us to country at the Synod Eucharist and bless us with smoke according to the ancient way.
I welcome guests to the synod, Ms Vicki Walker who will speak on matters relating to First Australians, the Canon Theologian the Revd. Professor Dorothy Lee, the CEO of the Anglican Schools Commission The Revd. Peter Laurence OAM together with school principals Justin Beckett, Adrian Farrer, and Steve Gale, The Revd. John Dean from ABM, Diocesan Financial Advisor David Ritchie, Ms Tanya Grant from Anglicare and Diocesan Safe Church Officer Ms Nikki Collins.
The observant among you will have noticed that the Chancellor is not at my side, for the first time in 11 Synods. I have deliberately not consulted the Chancellor on any matter relating to the Service of Blessing for those married according to the Marriage Act 1961 which will come to the Synod in due course, and about which I will say more shortly. Justice Croft is a member of the Appellate Tribunal, and it was clear both to him and to me that this matter could come to the Tribunal. Indeed the Primate has quite properly indicated that he would refer such a matter if he is persuaded that it raises a question under the Constitution of our Church (which on advice I do not believe it does.) Nevertheless so that the judge can not only be but can be seen to be at arm length from these matters and therefore able to sit in determination on any question which arises, we resolved that he should not receive any Synod papers and not attend this session of Synod. It causes both me and my Chancellor great sorrow that this has to be the case. Justice Croft has served me and the Diocese with great skill and devotion. We owe him an enormous debt of gratitude which must now be conveyed on some subsequent occasion.
We have a full program of work over the next day and a half. We will consider important legislation. The replacement of the Parish Administration Act with two pieces of legislation will if they are adopted bring our governance and clergy appointment practice into the 21st century and produce a framework which is permissive and not prescriptive as we respond to the rapidly changing context in which we minister . The Synod should acknowledge the extraordinary amount of work done by the Diocesan Advocate in bring this and the other legislation to us.
I am delighted to be able to report on the potential establishment of two capital protected funds – one to sustain the life of the Diocese, and the other to endow the See. The Endowment of the See Fund is to be named after the wife of the first bishop of Wangaratta whose bounty financed the Diocese for many years.
We will have important contributions both from within and without on aspects of our life together. I am pleased that we shall hear a voice from First Australia. In your pack you should have received a copy of the ABM produced study guide to aid in listening to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Authored by Celia Kemp and magnificently illustrated by the Revd. Glenn Loughrey it offers a response from the Church to the heartfelt aspirations and hopes of First Nation people. It deserves careful study, and I commend it to members of the Synod for use in Deaneries and parishes. There is an associated study guide also available from ABM.
I want to state up front that there are matters of some controversy before the Synod about which feelings may run high. I remind all members of Synod and those in the gallery that as Christian Anglicans we can hold divergent views in good conscience. There will be no demonstrations of partisan support for either side of the debate on the blessing of persons married according to The Marriage Act 1961 and no demeaning of those whose views do not coincide with ours. The measure of our Christian maturity is not that we all agree, but that we deal with our differences responsibly, carefully and with respect for each other as children of God and brothers and sisters in Christ.
Apologia pro vita mea – or why I am still an Anglican.
‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ So begins L P Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between. Contemporary events seem to challenge Hartley’s assertion. There appears to be world-wide a new flourishing of nostalgia. Right and left, democracies and autocracies, all are harking back to the glories of yesteryear. Even as President Donald Trump vows to “Make America great again”, President Xi Jinping is using his “Chinese dream” to banish a century of humiliation and return China to its golden age. Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has a mission to withstand global capitalism and restore his country’s economic sovereignty. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the most powerful politician in Poland, wants to purge the last traces of Soviet communism to bring about a renaissance of old-fashioned Polish values. And my place of origin, The UK, sails mindlessly it seems into the Bermuda Triangle of Brexit in some misguided hope to recover a land of hope and glory where it is the mother of the free. ‘God who made her mighty, make her mightier yet’ seems to underlie the rhetoric of the Brexiteers.
But the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there! New realities challenge old certainties and call for radical reinterpretation if those certainties are to be capable of taking us forward. Nowhere is that truer than in the church. Religious conservatives look backward to a supposed Golden Age when God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. When the church spoke with unquestioned authority and the pews were filled with the faithful. Pioneering types search for a mythical silver bullet to make all things right in a church which seems to have lost its edge, whilst declining and ageing.
Well here’s the bad news, at least from where this old bishop sits. If the Golden Age ever truly existed (which I doubt) it has no place in a contemporary global, pluralist reality. And there ain’t no silver bullet. Hankering for the past, refusing to acknowledge its fundamental difference to our present context and life situation, what theologians call our sitz im leben, is at best a pointless exercise of self-delusion, and at worst a dangerously destructive mind set. We face one of two potential outcomes each of which is equally unpalatable – we fade into obscurity, or we become a sect.
In the light of those observations, and in the light of my involvement in three controversial aspects of our ecclesial life, one historical being the full recognition of the ministry of women in the life of our church, and one current being the ways in which we minister with and to LGBTIQA+ people, the third being our recognition of First Nation Australians I want to state the theological perspectives which have guided me in throughout my life in ministry. I am responding to the charges that I am a revisionist, a liberal, one who does not take the Bible seriously.
This is going to be a teaching charge, to as the Ordinal says, ‘equip the saints for the work on ministry, using the office of bishop to ’heal’ and to ‘build up’. If this is head stuff please know that it comes from a place of deep love and care for you as its leaders and for the Diocese for whom God has called me to be shepherd.
My theological formation was deeply influenced by the great Anglican theologian John Macquarrie. The flowering of his scholarship in the 60s coincides with my own struggle for self-understanding. His 1966 book, Principles of Christian Theology[i] was foundational for me. Macquarrie is for me the great advocate in my time of the blessings of the Anglican Via Media.
Macquarrie defines theology as ‘the study which, through participation in and reflection upon a religious faith, seeks to express the content of this faith in the clearest and most coherent language available.’[ii] Theology is an insider discipline. It is grounded in the practice of a religious faith – for us Christianity. It differs therefore from a study of philosophy of religion which does not require as a prerequisite membership of and life in a community of faith. Our Christian walk must match our Christian talk.
Macquarrie identifies six formative factors in theology, recognizing that these are not on the same level or of equal importance. In a moment we will add a seventh. He argues that it is necessary to balance these formative factors if we are not to fall into serious error in our talk about God.
…one tries to be exposed to the genuine tensions among the factors that go into making theology, and avoiding such onesided simplifications as traditionalism, modernism, biblicism and the like, tries to allow for a dialectical interplay among these factors.[iii]
Ultimately the goal of theological language is finding the balance between loyalty to the faith which it seeks to express, and relevance to the cultural environment which it seeks to address.
Macquarrie’s six factors are: experience; revelation; Scripture, Tradition, culture and reason. I want to say a little about each of them.
He begins with experience because theology implies participation in the life of faith. He talks of the variety of religious experience and seeks a balance between the experience of the individual and the religious community. In this sense Macquarrie’s approach mirrors another of my heroes Friedrich Schleiermacher.[iv] This is theology from below – starting with the human experience of the holy and seeking a framework within which to articulate and make sense of that experience. Us to God if you like. Macquarrie is aware of the danger of subjectivism in this approach, which is why it needs to be balanced by the other more objective formulative factors.
Revelation is the primary source of theology. What is disclosed in revelation is the holy breaking in to our human reality. This is theology ‘from above’ after another of my theological heroes Karl Barth. God to us. Revelation has a gift-like character. Macquarrie identifies the notion of a primordial revelation being that experience which becomes paradigmatic for a religious community, which defines it and becomes normative for it. For the church, the primordial revelation is found in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. We access that revelation through the next of our formative factors, Scripture and Tradition.
I want to spend more time with the next factor, Scripture because this has become the battleground on which the unity of the church hangs in the balance. Scripture is one way, an important way but not the only way by which the community of faith keeps access to the primordial revelation on which it is founded. Scripture does not automatically lay this primordial revelation before us but when read in conjunction with the present experience of the community of faith, the scriptures come alive and renew for us the disclosure of the Holy One who is the content of that primordial revelation. This is what we mean by the inspiration of scripture. ‘Such inspiration does not lie in the words (it is not ‘verbal inspiration’), but belongs to the scriptures only as they are set in the context of the whole life of faith in the community.’[v]
Macquarrie challenges the present tensions in the worldwide Anglican Communion that the Bible is absolutized as the only factor in our Christian life.. First, he asserts a key and fundamental point (and I with him) that Christian revelation comes in a person and not in a book. We are Christocentric and not bibliocentric. Second he points to the factors which challenge the infallibility of the Bible – textual variants, internal inconsistencies, challenges of authorship and the like.
Neither he nor I want to challenge the essential place that the Bible has in Christian theology, only the tendency to absolutize it and make it the only factor in theological discourse. I endorse absolutely these words:
..over against this exaggerated regard for the Bible, it must be claimed that the critical study of the Bible, and the recognition that other factors too have their place in theology, will in the long run do more justice to the biblical teaching and will not run counter to any reasonably conceived doctrine of inspiration; for such a critical attitude accepts our own responsibility in the face of the Bible.[vi]
Tradition has been something a challenge for theology. Catholic thought offers a high view of the place of tradition; Protestants have tended to understate the value of tradition. The reality is that we do not stand alone in our theologising. There are two millennia of reflection by the community of faith on the interpretation, teaching and proclamation of the Scriptural witness to the primordial revelation in Christ. This history must be taken seriously. But if tradition becomes dead, then we get a ridged fixity of theological expressions of faith that can be as harmful as any rigid biblicism.
Culture is again a difficult matter to discuss. There are those who would criticise me as being captive to culture, as though the Gospel stands outside of culture and owes no debt to it. Again, the reality is that if our talk about God is to have any meaning at all, it has to be expressed in the language of the culture to which it speaks. This very same point was made by the 16th century Reformers who insisted that worship had to be in ‘a language understanded by the people.’
No one can escape the mentality or the intellectual climate of their own culture and those who would try to exclude all secular influences from their thinking are self-deluding. We all stand at a place in time, where the questions we now ask seek answers from the tradition in which we abide. ‘The work of theology needs to be done again and again, for its formulations are culturally conditioned, and therefore need reinterpretation as cultural forms change.’[vii]
The sixth factor is reason. We are not required to check in our brains at the door of the church. We are made in the image of God. God has given us the capacity to reason and presumably expects us to use it. Immanuel Kant rightly observed ‘Were biblical theology to determine, wherever possible, to have nothing to do with reason in things religious, we can easily foresee on which side would be the loss; for a religion which rashly declares war on reason will not be able to hold out in the long run against it.’[viii]
There is a seventh factor which needs to be explored. This is what theologians call praxis. Does our talk about God lead us to live Godly lives? Make Godly choices? Does it influence the way we deal with our disagreements? Use our resources? It was the landmark work of Liberation theologians, Guttierez, Boff and others in the Latin American context, Us theologians like Robert McAfee Brown, as well as the flowering of Feminist theological thought that caused a refocussing on the lived expression of the Christian vocation. Orthodoxy (right thinking) is irrelevant, maybe even destructive unless it leads to orthopraxis (right living). Talking the talk and walking the walk. Which is just another way of expressing the maxim attributed to (but almost certainly not spoken by) St Francis of Assisi. ‘Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary, use words.’
The danger for us is that we get caught up in the language of theology, without taking proper account of the call to live out our discipleship. Orthodoxy without orthopraxis. The present paralysis of our church in the way we speak of or fail to speak of or to LGBTIQA+ people, First Australians, women are paradigm examples of this dilemma in my respectful view. The point is made powerfully by Soren Kierkegaard, who tells this story.
A certain flock of geese lived together in a barnyard with high walls around it. Because the corn was good and the barnyard was secure, these geese would never take a risk. One day a philosopher goose came among them. He was a very good philosopher and every week they listened quietly and attentively to his learned discourses. ‘My fellow travellers on the way of life,’ he would say, ‘can you seriously imagine that this barnyard, with great high walls around it, is all there is to existence? I tell you, there is another and a greater world outside, a world of which we are only dimly aware. Our forefathers knew of this outside world. For did they not stretch their wings and fly across the trackless wastes of desert and ocean, of green valley and wooded hill? But alas, here we remain in this barnyard, our wings folded and tucked into our sides, as we are content to puddle in the mud, never lifting our eyes to the heavens which should be our home. The geese thought this was very fine lecturing. ‘How poetical,’ they thought. ‘How profoundly existential. What a flawless summary of the mystery of existence.’ Often the philosopher spoke of the advantages of flight, calling on the geese to be what they were. After all, they had wings, he pointed out. What were wings for, but to fly with? Often he reflected on the beauty and the wonder of life outside the barnyard, and the freedom of the skies. And every week the geese were uplifted, inspired, moved by the philosopher’s message. They hung on his every word. They devoted hours, weeks, months to a thoroughgoing analysis and critical evaluation of his doctrines. They produced learned treatises on the ethical and spiritual implications of flight. All this they did. But one thing they never did. They did not fly! For the corn was good, and the barnyard was secure!
I want to make a very clear point that Anglicanism is not a confessional denomination, although it should be conceded that the Jerusalem Declaration of the GAFCON Movement seeks to push us in such a direction.[ix] Historically we have held together a diversity of views, not always without tension, but taking seriously that we share communion with each other because we are called into communion by Christ.[x] The Church I love and serve is an open church, an evolving church always reforming itself to meet the challenges and opportunities offered to it by the context in which it seeks to live out its witness to the Gospel with the love of Christ and the grace of God. It is a church with conversation at its heart, where dissent is engaged and not shouted down, where the truth is sought recognising that persons of good faith and good conscience may not always observe from the same standpoint and take in the same perspective. It is the hospital for sinners and not the abode of the sinless.[xi] Most of all it is not a church where membership is limited to those whose doctrine is beyond reproach – for right doctrine is another work and we are not saved by works but by grace through faith in Christ.[xii]
For me then, bearing in mind what I have said so far, the ultimate test is not whether a particular action is biblical, but whether it is Christlike. The American theologian Rachel Held Evans puts the proposition eloquently.
If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not “what does it say?”, but “what am I looking for?” I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, “ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.” If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.[xiii]
I am an Anglican because I love a church that takes seriously its context. That balances the formative factors in theology. That listens before it speaks and when it does speak is conscious of the effect that its words may have, especially on the vulnerable, the weak, the powerless and the underprivileged. That understands the ever present danger of the abuse of clerical power. That measures its faithfulness by the fruits of its ministry. That is tolerant and inclusive. That engages with science in a respectful conversation, not treating science as theology and not treating theology as science. That offers a Gospel perspective to a world dominated by consumerism and narcissism. That begins with love and loves and loves beyond measure. That reserves judgement to the one who properly judges and gets on with the business of caring that those who fall may be loved into fullness of life.
I am an Anglican because the best of the Anglican tradition is Christocentric and not bibliocentric. This is the Church I was formed in. This is the Church I have served. In so far as I have failed to live up to those standards in my episcopal ministry I apologise. In so far that I have caused hurt or disappointment I am sorry. But I am not sorry for taking a stand on issues of justice, fairness, equality. If this episcopate has meant anything at all, it is encapsulated in that stand.
The 10th Episcopate
In the light of these reflections on the theological underpinning to my episcopal ministry, I now want to reflect on some of the significant events of the last decade.
Women in ministry
My election confirmed that the Diocese of Wangaratta had moved its position in relation to the ordination of women. Those who elected me knew full well my passionate commitment to the inclusion of women in the three orders of ordained ministry. I made it clear that there would be no women priests in this Diocese. The question of gender for me was irrelevant. The question of vocation was the only issue in play. I am conservative in affirming that the priest stands at the altar ‘in persona Christi’. I differ from my Roman Catholic brothers (and I choose the gender exclusive term deliberately) in how this is to be understood. It is not the masculinity of Christ being represented in my respectful view but Christ’s full humanity. Is this not what the author of the Letter to the Galatians asserts? ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’ (Gal. 3.28) It is a matter of great satisfaction that the ministry of women is now a given in the Diocese, and we have been and are being well served by those in ministry who are women.
Schools
Later in the Synod we will hear from the ASC through the Revd. Peter Laurence OAM and our three school principals. This journey has been of the utmost significance in the life of our Diocese. To open three schools at around the same time with minimal cash reserves could properly be described in Yes Prime Minister speak as a courageous decision. Without the partnership in mission with the ASC our schools would not have flourished in the way that they have. Indeed, any one of them could have fallen over, posing a threat to the entire Diocese. One only has to look north to the Diocese of Bathurst to understand the perilous waters in which we were sailing. Our Schools are now flourishing. With system support and outstanding local leadership we are providing a quality Anglican education to some 2,500 young people. They say there are not enough young people in the church. Well here is a mission field that any church planter would be grateful for. And in the emerging church, seeing the schools as communities of faith in and of themselves working alongside the parishes in proclaiming the Gospel, celebrating the sacraments and making new disciples pictures a diversity which is both healthy and very exciting.
Aged Care
There was a time when St John’s Village Wangaratta and Kellock Lodge Alexandra could properly be seen as jewels in the crown of the Diocese. The provision of high quality aged care was an important ministry for the church to be in and both institutions served their communities with passion and distinction. But the world of aged care has changed. What we inherited at the beginning of this episcopate bears little or no resemblance to the situation we found ourselves in over the last few years. I do not intend to recapitulate here the challenges we have faced. They have been monumental. The jewels in the crown had become Damocles’ swords threatening the very existence of the Diocese. In Respect Aged care we have found a commercial partner who has the depth of skills and resources to ensure that what was built at St John’s continues to provide the best of care for the increasing numbers of frail elderly in our midst. The community of Alexandra was not persuaded that amalgamation was the best way forward. I have worked with Mr Larry Fallon and the high quality Board that he was able to put in place to give that community the opportunity to manage Kellock Lodge for itself. They are fully conscious of the enormity of the task they have undertaken, and I assure them of my prayerful support as they deal with their challenges.
In the end, the Diocese is now de-risked from a business in which it had neither the skills nor the resources to take forward. As a by-product the financial future of the Diocese is secure, and for the very first time, the See will be properly endowed.
The smaller Self care villages continue to operate and we will hear from them in the course of this Synod.
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
Perhaps the most significant external event impacting on the life of the Church over the last decade has been the chilling revelations of our failures to protect the most vulnerable among us brought to light through the work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse. No part of the church has remained unaffected. Persons in the Diocese have suffered at the hands of those who should have protected them There are no excuses. No pleas in mitigation. We have failed. The only response can be to acknowledge our failings with deep shame, to offer the most profound apology to any who has suffered on account of our actions or our neglect, and to commit ourselves daily to ensure that such evil can never again take root among us. The massive administrative burden which we all now face is but one small cost to us of our past ignorance, neglect and complacency. I commend to you the work of the Safe Church Officer, who was my PA but who now fulfils a much more important role among us. She will report to you during this Synod. Please take careful note of what she has to convey.
Wider church
We do not exist in an ecclesiastical bubble. I have sought to play a role in the wider affairs of the Church. I have been a member of the Ecumenical Affairs Commission of our Church. I served as Anglican co-chair of the Anglican Uniting Church dialogue which produced a new cooperative understanding ‘Weaving a New Cloth’. I have served as the Anglican Representative on IARCCUM, the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission and in the role represented our Church in Canterbury and Rome in 2016.
Locally I served on the Board of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne and chaired the Theological School Committee. I have also served as a member of the Appellate Tribunal of our church.
Changes to the Marriage Act 1961.
I advised the Synod last year that I was taking legal and theological advice on what powers I might have to promulgate a form of blessing for persons married according to Commonwealth law. As a result of the Presidential Address the Synod passed by overwhelming majority the following resolution;
The advice I received indicated that there was no legal or theological reason for our not proceeding. In particular I am advised that the actions we are now proposing are not in breach of the Constitution or Canons of our Church, and that in so acting I will not be in breach of my solemn oath to uphold the same.
The work we have done will come to fruition when Professor Jane Freemantle and the Revd. David Still bring a Regulation with an attached Service of Blessing to you for your consideration later in the Synod.
I do not propose to canvas again the theological justification for this. You have all seen what I have written and said about this matter. The Theological arguments are in, and the Church is hopelessly split, indeed paralysed. Either you take the conservative view that Scripture forbids such action, or you take the theological approach which I have just advocated. I assert that the Bible, properly and critically read together with the other formative factors in theology that I have identified leads inextricably to the conclusion that loving monogamous faithful Christian persons ought to receive the blessing of God in their church to strengthen them for their lives as disciples.
I commend to the Synod the Regulation which will be put before you shortly.
Acknowledgements
I want to end this Address by acknowledging the enormous support I have received in my time in the Diocese. In thanking those I am about to name I am conscious of the many to whom I owe a debt of gratitude whose names will not appear here. If you should be here and are not identified, be assured in the words of another pugilistic Australian, ‘I loves youse all.’
I have been magnificently served by my Registrar Tim Williams for almost the whole of this episcopate. It is a blessed Bishop who has a registrar who is a person of deep faith, of passion, of loyalty and of administrative skill. The small registry team, Julie and Fiona and Fiona Tinney for a while have always performed well above and beyond their pay grade. Their cheerful and willing dispositions in the face of what has been at times almost intolerable pressure has been a real inspiration.
Norm Kenny has served this Diocese for ever as Diocesan Treasurer. His skill, diligence, common sense and effort have ensured that we have navigated some enormously challenging financial waters to the point where we now have economic stability going forward.
I was cheeky enough to ask John Davis son of this Diocese but at the time very successful Vicar of Melbourne’s Anglo-Catholic icon St Peter’s Eastern Hill to accept the role as Diocesan Archdeacon and was both delighted and a little shocked when he accepted. And I received a double blessing, for a year ahead of John came Rob Whalley who served me lovingly as chaplain, and despite knowing all my weaknesses at first hand still offers me his friendship and prayerful support.
It was through the work of John Davis that we secured the ministry of Clarence Bester who took over the role of Diocesan Archdeacon from John. Clarence is an exceptional priest whose fingerprints are now over all the Diocese. And through Clarence we have gained a strong cadre of senior priests who have opened us to a wider understanding of our discipleship from a more global context.
I pay particular tribute to our wonderful legal team; my first Chancellor the Hon John Batt AM and his successor the Hon Justice Clyde Croft AM, advocate the late David Parsons and his successor Ms Rachel Ellyard and deputy Advocate Stuart Bett. No Diocese in the Australian Church has a better group of senior lawyers who have guided and continue to guide us through sometime treacherous territory, and I give thanks to God for their service to the Diocese and its Bishop.
That we have as our Canon Theologian one of the world’s great New Testament Scholars in the Revd. Canon Professor Dorothy Lee is also an enormous blessing.
To the wonderful team of clergy who have been the engine room of ministry, to the chairs and members of the various Boards and Commissions of the Diocese to the members of parish councils and to all who love and serve their Church your Bishop gives his thanks, his assurance of love and prayers and his imminent farewell.
And now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessing…
+John Wangaratta
[i] John Macquarrie Principles of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1966)
[ii] Ibid 1
[iii] Ibid 5
[iv] Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), often called the father of modern theology, was a German philosopher and one of the greatest Protestant theologians of the 19th century. He is often regarded as the father of modern hermeneutics, i.e. the science of interpreting the Bible, and known for his many other works in the area of systematic theology. Otto Weber states that, “Retrospectively, the dogmatics of the 19th century can be understood essentially as the direct, indirect, or negatively received influence of the theology of Friedrich Daniel Schleiermacher, one of the most powerful personalities in all of church history, in some ways comparable with Augustine.” https://www.theopedia.com/friedrich-schleiermacher
[v] Macquarrie 1966, 8
[vi] Ibid 9
[vii] Ibid 12
[viii] Immanuel Kant Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (trans T E Greene &H H Hudson; New York, Harper & Row: 2006) 9
[ix] https://www.gafcon.org/resources/the-complete-jerusalem-statement
[x] John 15.16
[xi] Mark 2.17
[xii] Galatians 2.16
[xiii] Rachel Held Evans A Year of Biblical Womanhood (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2012)