Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said Sunday, “The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy - that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.”
In the tradition of Bishop Barnum’s Never Silent, I must say this statement and its timing make me wonder if the Presiding Bishop actually reads the lectionary. Sunday’s readings include Romans 10 which says:
“Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. . . The Scripture says ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’”
Admittedly I’m no scholar but it seems any simpleton could deduce from this text a very “specific verbal formula about Jesus” leading to salvation.
If anyone is in doubt about when the apostolic faith has been abandoned, let this be for him the very bright line. If you can’t say Jesus is Lord, you cannot be saved and therefore cannot be Christian. Next question: Can a church be Christian if it is headed by someone who is not?
Tue, Jul 14, 2009
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