Adult Sunday School - January 7

Dear Class Member, 

Pope Francis recently made it okay with the Catholic Church for priests to bless people in same-sex relationships without changing the church's stance that marriage is only between a man and a woman. The ruling gives us an opportunity to consider how church teachings evolve over time and what doctrines, by contrast, should never change. So we are using our next class on January 7 to explore this topic and consider what it means for people of faith. 

If you wish to start thinking about our topic in advance, here is the lesson. 

With New Ruling, Vatican Permits Priests to Bless Same-Sex Couples, but Not Their Unions 

In the News 

On December 18, Pope Francis officially signed a policy that allows Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples. While the move is not the same as approving same-sex unions or marriages within the church, it is nonetheless a radical change in Roman Catholic policy, which has historically considered -- and still does consider -- same-sex sexual relationships as sin. 

The declaration came from the Vatican's doctrine office, and states, in part, "When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection." 

The declaration goes on to explain that "a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God," and adds, "The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence, mercy and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life, which is no small thing in the world in which we live." 

Specifically, the priests may now bless the people within a same-sex relationship without blessing the relationship itself. The declaration speaks of "the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church's perennial teaching on marriage." 

Responding from GLAAD, an American nongovernmental media monitoring organization that protests against what it considers defamatory coverage of LGBTQ people, the organization's president Sarah Kate Ellis, praised the church's move, saying, "By removing barriers to priests blessing LGBTQ couples, the Pope accurately recognizes that LGBTQ people and our relationships are worthy of the same affirmation and support in the Church, and this strengthens couples in their faith and to the community." Ellis further noted that the declaration "is the latest in a historic pattern of actions and announcements from Pope Francis which show that LGBTQ people should not be used as a dividing issue, and we are worthy of love, respect and compassion." 

New Ways Ministry, an LGBTQ Catholic outreach group, said that the pope's statement was a significant advancement in the inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics in the church.

The Rev. James Martin, a scholar and editor at large for the Jesuit magazine America, described the declaration as "a decision to allow priests and deacons and bishops to bless same-sex couples in certain situations. You couldn't make it seem like a marriage, of course, you couldn't kind of have it as a kind of liturgical rite," he said, 

"But people who are in same-sex unions who have been married, legally, let's say they say, 'Come to the park and do a little blessing for us outside,' or, 'Come to our house in the backyard,' that's a big deal," Martin said. 

"I could not do that publicly before," Martin said. "I was not permitted to do that, and now I am. So it's a big shift. It's a big shift in the way the church looks at same-sex couples." 

But when asked if this move opens a pathway to same-sex marriage among Catholics, Martin said, "the church says that a marriage is still for a man and a woman. So for people to be married in a church, or in a Catholic ceremony, you have to be a man and a woman. So that has not changed." Still, he called the papal decision "a big step forward." 

Not all parts of the Roman Catholic Church have welcomed this permission to offer the blessing and some conservative clerics have urged that the pronouncement be ignored. Some bishops have said they will not implement the new Vatican policy and others have spoken strongly against it. Kazakh Bishop Athanasius Schneider, for example, who has long opposed Francis' progressive bent, called the new policy a "great deception." Priests should be aware of "the evil that resides in the very permission to bless couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples," he said. 

In August, Pope Francis told the hundreds of thousands gathered before him for World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, that the Catholic Church is for todos, todos, todos -- everyone, everyone, everyone. 

More on this story can be found at these links: 

Pope Francis Approves Allowing Catholic Priests to Bless Same-Sex Couples. ABC News (https://abcnews.go.com/International/pope-francis-catholic-priests-can-bless-same-sex-couples/story? id=105741196) 

Papal Scholar Reflects on Pope Francis Allowing Catholic Priests to Bless Same-Sex Couples. ABC News (https://abcnews.go.com/International/papal-scholar-reflects-pope-francis-allowing-catholic-priests/story? id=105772714) 

Some Catholic Bishops Reject Pope's Stance on Blessings for Same-Sex Couples. Others Are Confused. AP (https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-francis-samesex-blessings-baabeaf96ad180aa20e1df9fb4b4657e) Media Mudders: No, Pope Francis Did Not OK Blessings for Same-Sex Relationships. Hot Air (https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2023/12/18/media-mudders-no-pope-francis-did-not-ok-blessings-for-same sex-relationships-n599776) 

Declaration -- Fiducia Supplicans -- On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings. Bollettino (the actual Vatican document. Select "Testo in lingua inglese" for English version) 

(https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en) Applying the News Story 

It is not our purpose in this lesson to critique the Pope's declaration on blessing people in same-sex unions. But the news does provide a way to talk about how church teachings evolve over time and what, by contrast, should never change. The basic question is: Who gets to decide what the church teaches as truth?

In the Roman Catholic Church, it is the pope and the "magisterium" (consensus of teachers) that decides. For orthodox Lutherans, it is the confession found in the Book of Concord that is, under the scriptures, normative -- but even there, there are various interpretations that differ. Other groups have different answers. 

According to the Bible, the Ten Commandments were given by God on Mount Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount was given by Jesus on the Mount of Beatitudes. But where in scripture is the statement of Christian doctrine given? The answer is nowhere, at least not in any kind of organized or formal way. 

Yet just about every Christian denomination has a list of beliefs that have shaped the denomination over the time of its existence and continue to impact its teachings yet today. Generally, these doctrines are supported by scripture. Such lists may be titled as "Doctrines" or "Confession of Faith" or "Articles of Faith" or "What We Believe" or something similar. The list may be included in the movement's founding documents but are almost always available for all to see on the denomination's website and often also on the websites of the member congregations. 

In some cases, there may be two lists: One that's called something like "Historic Beliefs" and one along the lines of "Doing Theology Today." In those cases, the historic list may contain some doctrines that seem to have little to do with the practice of faith in that denomination today. For example, some denominations from the Reformed background may have statements about predestination that are not present in any significant way on the current list. Likewise some groups from the Wesleyan tradition may have faith statements about sanctification (also called holiness or the second blessing) that are absent from the more recent list or mentioned only nominally. 

The existence of revised doctrinal lists reminds us that with many faith communities, theology is seen as dynamic and responsive to a changing world. A motto in the United Church of Christ is "God is still speaking." 

While there are some differences in belief from one denomination to the next, there are also doctrines that all groups that claim the title "Christian" hold in common. Typically these include belief about the nature of Christ and the existence of the Trinity. While there was significant controversy in Christian thinking during the first several generations of Christianity -- and some groups that differ today -- the doctrines about Christ and the Trinity were eventually hammered out officially at the great ecumenical councils (mainly Nicaea in A.D. 325; Constantinople in 381; and Chalcedon in 451). 

Regarding church doctrines -- or at least practices -- that have changed over time, TWW team member Frank Ramirez comments, "Paul's admonition on head coverings has led, in my personal experience as first a Catholic and later, an Anabaptist, to observing women wearing a head covering to church, or in the case of Mennonites and Amish, all the time. Most of us would interpret Paul's concern for appropriate dress -- and extend that to men (pull your pants up!) -- since in his day women with uncovered heads were taking part in the oldest profession." 

The Big Questions 

1. How much, if at all, did your church's doctrinal statement affect your decision to attend that church? 

2. Are there any doctrines in your church's list that you think need to be changed? Why? Are there any that are being downplayed that shouldn't be? Why? 

3. How does your church define truth? In what sense is Christ the truth all Christian faith groups share?

4. What are the differences between believing in a doctrine and trusting in Christ? How does one affect the other? 

5. Should people be able to belong to a faith community before they believe all its doctrines? Should they affirm the community's doctrines in some public way before they're allowed to join? 

Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope 

Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion: 

Jude 3-4 

Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once and for all handed on to the saints. For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into debauchery and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (For context, read Jude 1-25 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jude+1&version=NRSVUE).) 

Jude, who was likely a church elder, had been planning to write to the recipients of his letter on a happier topic -- "the salvation we share" -- he says, but something had come up, and he now felt he must write to urge them to "contend for the faith," a faith that he goes on to describe as having been "once and for all handed on to the saints [God's people]." Jude's "once and for all" phrasing is especially key, for he understands the content of that faith as something that cannot change, as he views God's action through Christ as once for all. 

What necessitates this assertion is "certain intruders have stolen in among you," Jude says, "who pervert the grace of our God into debauchery and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." 

Jude was likely referring to people who had infiltrated some churches and who interpreted the faith differently from how the apostles and others who worked with them had presented it. That different interpretation likely played off the idea that freedom in Christ meant Christians were free from all moral restraints. The motive of these interlopers was likely to take advantage of those they could persuade, either sexually or monetarily or both. Every age has had "godless people" (to use Jude's term) who sought to misdirect the faith of others for their own ends. 

What's worse, these intruders in the church of Jude's day used their teaching to "deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." Whether they sought to accomplish this in so many words is unclear; Jude may have meant that while they paid lip service to Jesus, what they taught was in effect a denial of the lordship of Christ. They probably did not explicitly deny Jesus Christ in so many words, but did so implicitly through their libertine behavior, which dishonored both them and Jesus. 

So Jude's letter was to warn the faithful not to be taken in by this offensive twisting of the gospel. 

Jude's letter shows us one reason why it eventually became important for the content of faith in Christ to be formally written down in a doctrinal formulation. 

Questions: What is the content of the faith that was "once and for all" handed on to God's people? How do the faithful believers compare to the "intruders"?

Mark 7:24-30 

From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go -- the demon has left your daughter." And when she went home, she found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone. (No context necessary.) 

Many Bible readers find this story about Jesus to be disturbing because Jesus seems to behave in a way that is out of character with the rest of what we know about him -- as if he was behaving in an un-Christlike way, which is kind of the ultimate oxymoron. 

There is no definitive explanation that puts the concern about this story to rest, especially because the church has long maintained that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human. Many commentators have attempted to explain Jesus' actions in this encounter with the Syrophoenician woman by selecting one or the other of those realities about him. 

For example, those that emphasize his divinity, insist that if we knew the whole story, we'd find Jesus' response to the woman completely consistent with his identity as the Son of God. Typically, they say that Jesus' harsh words were not rude (or even racist, as some critics have claimed), and couldn't be, based on Hebrews 4:15, which says Jesus was "without sin." Rather, say these commentators, Jesus' words were simply to test her faith to see if she possessed enough of it for him to accomplish the healing of her daughter. 

On the other hand, those who attempt an explanation through Jesus' humanness point out how weary he was at that moment, and they also suggest that Jesus, like the rest of us human beings, was embedded in a culture and had grown up with a certain worldview and biases. They are perhaps thinking of Philippians 2:7, about Jesus finding himself "in the form of a human." These commentators say that this woman's responses to Jesus were eye-opening for him and caused him to cast aside those biases and broaden his outlook. We've even heard this explanation shorthanded by saying the Syrophoenician woman "taught Jesus to be Jesus." Some also posit that the meeting with this Gentile woman helped the Jewish Jesus to see that the gospel was also for the Gentiles. 

You're not required to pick one of these explanations, and the truth may be somewhere between them. But to the degree you pick the second explanation that this encounter may have caused Jesus to rethink his timeline for taking his message beyond the Jewish world, it can perhaps serve as an example for why churches have from time to time updated their doctrinal statements. 

Questions: What do you think explains Jesus' seemingly "un-Christlike" behavior here? In what ways is the woman's reply evidence of her faith? 

Philippians 2:12-13 

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you

both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (For context, read Philippians 2:12-18 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil+2%3A12-18&version=NRSVUE).) 

This passage contains the well-known line, "work on your own salvation with fear and trembling," which is easily misunderstood to mean "decide for yourself what you should believe." 

But Paul was not calling for each Christian to become his or her own theologian, standing apart from the mainstream of the church. Paul plainly taught that salvation was God's doing, but he also understood that humans have a responsibility to live out the implications of that salvation and bring it to completion in our lives. His call for fear and trembling is a reminder that we can squander God's gift and should make every effort not to do so. 

The Amplified Bible, Classic Edition, with its insertion of word definitions right in the verses, is not the smoothest reading of the English Bibles, but it adds to our understanding of Paul's meaning in this passage: "Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent, work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ)." 

Questions: What part of salvation is up to God? What part is up to you? What might that look like in your everyday life? 

Philippians 2:5-11 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 

who, though he existed in the form of God, 

 did not regard equality with God 

 as something to be grasped, 

but emptied himself, 

 taking the form of a slave, 

 assuming human likeness. 

And being found in appearance as a human, 

 he humbled himself 

 and became obedient to the point of death -- 

 even death on a cross. 

Therefore God exalted him even more highly 

 and gave him the name 

 that is above every other name, 

so that at the name given to Jesus 

 every knee should bend, 

 in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 

and every tongue should confess 

 that Jesus Christ is Lord,

 to the glory of God the Father. 

(For context, read Philippians 2:1-11 (https://biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil+2%3A1- 11&version=NRSVUE).) 

While we said previously that the Bible does not include a formal statement of Christian beliefs, it does offer the raw material from which many doctrines have been formulated. 

So here is a powerful and concentrated statement from the Bible which has contributed heavily to what Christians believe about Jesus Christ. 

Question: What doctrinal points about Jesus are contained in this passage? (There are several. Mention as many as you can.) 

For Further Discussion 

Respond to these statements: 

Preacher and writer Frederick Buechner defines "doctrine" as follows: "No matter how fancy and metaphysical a doctrine sounds, it was a human experience first. The doctrine of the divinity of Christ, for instance. The place it began was not in the word processor of some fourth-century Greek theologian, but in the experience of basically untheological people who had known Jesus of Nazareth and found something happening to their lives that had never happened before. Unless you can somehow participate yourself in the experience that lies behind a doctrine, simply to subscribe to it doesn't mean much. Sometimes, however, simply to subscribe to a doctrine is the first step toward experiencing the reality that lies behind it." 

"Dogma is an instrument for penetrating reality. Christian dogma is about the only thing left in the world that surely guards and respects mystery." --Flannery O'Connor 

"I am indebted to the writer and sculptor Edward Robinson for pointing out to me that the word 'dogmatic' as used today means, ironically, to have abandoned the original spirit of dogma. In the early church, he says, dogma simply meant acceptance, or consensus, what people could agree on. The Greek root from which 'dogma' comes means 'what seems good, fitting, becoming.' Thus the word 'beauty' might be a more fitting synonym for dogma than what has become its synonym in contemporary English: 'doctrine,' or a teaching. For Christians, dogmas represent what is basically agreed on as the foundation of faith." --Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace. 

2. The English poet and philosopher T.E. Hulme (1883-1917) wrote of "inevitable categories of the human mind." By that phrase, he meant that in each age, there are certain suppositions that are accepted by the majority of people, and that these suppositions mold the way in which people view and evaluate others. These suppositions, however, are not consciously accepted but are more like "foregone conclusions," unconsciously adopted as though there were universal and eternal truths. 

As people in later ages are gradually able to break away from these suppositions, or at least are able to question them objectively, they are then able to see them as doctrines rather than as inevitable categories.  Hulme's statement is relevant for every age because the more one can see one's preconceptions, suppositions and beliefs as doctrines rather than as inevitable categories, the more one can be open and understanding toward those who do not necessarily accept one's doctrines. Thus, as we make judgments about

others who disagree with our doctrines, we can still view them as fellow travelers on the human journey. But if we instead see them as deviants from universal norms (i.e., inevitable categories), we will likely regard them as somehow less than human. 

 How does this discussion affect your understanding of what a "doctrine" is? In what ways does it contribute to grasping the importance of the beliefs the church has curated for us over the centuries? 

3. For more on how Christian doctrines developed, see this entry from Britannica 

(https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/Emergence-of-official-doctrine). 

4. Respond to this by TWW consultant James Gruetzner: "In this whole lesson, I'm troubled by a lack of definitions -- or, more precisely, by the variety of definitions that are commonly used. In Roman Catholic usage, dogma is infallible and revealed, and there is a hierarchy: Dogma > infallible doctrine > doctrine > theological opinion. 

 "Orthodox Lutherans have a similar ordering, although they tend not to use those terms so precisely: Bible C = Confessions > denominational statements > theological opinions (where 'C =' means "has as a subset") -- and, of course, the latter two vary quite a bit. 

 "Eastern Orthodox, historical and modern Wesleyan, Calvinist Reformed, Arian Reformed, etc., each use these terms with some variety. 

 "While useful, I think the main sequence is more related to answers to salvation: A person's trust that, through Jesus' death and resurrection -- and God's promise -- he or she can be reconciled to God.  "Given that, what are the teachings/doctrines/dogmas that harm that reconciliation and which support it -- and to what extent? 

 "Given support, which are most useful in telling others of what God has done in Christ Jesus?  "After that, what are interesting questions that God has given us humans the capacity to consider and discuss?" 

Editor's response: While we welcome the precision of James Gruetzer's definitions and the questions he raises from them, we have chosen in this lesson to employ "dogma" and "doctrine" more as they are used colloquially, as we think that makes the discussion more useful and understandable. 

Responding to the News 

This is a good time to review your congregation's list of beliefs, with a goal of learning why they are important and how they support the Christian life. 

Prayer 

O Lord, let our doctrines support our faith and challenge us to know you more. In Jesus' name. Amen. Copyright 2023 Communication Resources