EFAC Australia
Book review: The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory
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- Written by: Tim Collison
Robert S. Smith
Lexham Academic February 2025
Reviewed by Tim Collison
Debates about ontology should be nothing new to Anglicans. Fifteen (depending on how you count them) of the Articles of Religion deal with the nature of what a person or an element is. The Articles’ concerns about how we see God, humanity, and what the sacraments are (or are not) demonstrate that trying to understand the nature of what things are is central to our understood identity.
We should then be equipped one, would think, to be able to participate in discussions about transgender issues. I suspect the reality is that most of us struggle with this. Either because we are concerned what people will think about what we might say, or we are unsure what we ourselves might think about it. It may even seem like it is not an issue we need to wrestle with. I doubt that there are many people in our congregations who are transitioning. Yet most of us will either need to provide pastoral care to enquirers about faith who are transitioning or answer the questions our congregations might have about this issue.
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The Story Of The Bridge Church
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- Written by: Paul Dale
“I will build my church” says the Lord Jesus, and in His extraordinary kindness that’s exactly what He has been doing through The Bridge Church in Sydney.
It was in August 2004 that a group of 10 people gathered to pray and envision what a new church might look like. We never imagined that 21 years later we’d be a church with 4 different campuses (Kirribilli, Neutral Bay, Macquarie Park and Rozelle), with 13 gatherings every Sunday and around 2000 people worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ.
There were 3 foundational truths that shaped the foundation of The Bridge Church, and these continue to be our ‘distinctives’. They are:
In God's Image – A Confession About Human Nature
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- Written by: Michael F. Bird
I’ve long argued that theological anthropology is the # 1 issue that Christians must wrestle with today. Whether we are talking about sexuality, gender identity, transgenderism, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, disability, or even the soul, it is all comes down to “what is a human being?” What follows below is my Beta-Test of some ideas on theological anthropology.
Now, this is spectacularly hard and I might be spectacularly wrong, because some of these issues are very complex, they defy simplistic analyses or resolution, and they involve a combination of biology, psychology, and sociology. Or else, many theologians within the Christian tradition might legitimately dispute the validity or cogency of the various assertions I make below. But these are the issues that we simply must address today in the second quarter of the twenty-first century.
I’m using a format of we confess, we affirm, we deny, and we commit. I hope it reads well - but remember, it is only a first draft!
THE IMAGE OF GOD
We confess that all human beings are created in the image of God, bearing inherent dignity, worth, and value that cannot be diminished or destroyed (Genesis 1:27-28).
We affirm that by God's grace, this image is present in every person from conception to death.
When Memory Fades Memory Remains
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- Written by: Sarah Bull
Imagine, for a moment, what it might feel like if your mind began to slip into confusion and forgetfulness. Imagine the disorientation of not being able to attend Sunday services week by week, to no longer participate in the ministries that once filled your heart with joy, or to miss the regular fellowship of believers who have long been your church family.
Now imagine knowing that others think you are “faithful and solid” in your faith—someone who has walked steadfastly with Christ for decades. They assume you are fine, confident you will endure to the end. But quietly, you begin to doubt. Bible passages you once recalled feel lost. You find it difficult to bring the right words together in prayer. You long for the closeness of God’s Word and His people but feel your capacity slipping away.
This is the reality for many older saints among us. And this is where the beauty and necessity of seniors’ ministry comes into sharp focus.
Authentic Anglicanism
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- Written by: Sydney Anglican Doctrine Commission
A REPORT OF THE SYDNEY DIOCESAN DOCTRINE COMMISSION
‘Anglicanism’ is the label attached to a form of Christian corporate life that traces its theological convictions and ecclesiastical practice to the New Testament, with an especially formative moment of clarification and development at the time of the English Reformation. Its congregations are particular instantiations of the one holy catholic and apostolic church confessed in the ecumenical creeds, yet they share distinctives that mark them out from other communions and denominations. These distinctives could be defined and described in a number of ways, of which two are most common: a phenomenological approach and a theological approach.
A phenomenological approach often begins by drawing attention to the diversity of practice that has emerged over the past 500 years, despite numerous Acts of Uniformity. It then proceeds to infer from this a distinctive ‘ethos’ of Anglicanism that claims for itself apostolicity, catholicity, comprehensiveness, and so on. The advantage of this approach lies in its attention to history and the way canon law has or has not shaped the practices of the church. In other words, it emphasises description. Its disadvantage lies in the way it sidesteps the question of what Anglican respond to the changing context of the church in its ministry and mission.
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