A few days ago bls at The Topmost Apple posted a critique of this First Things article by Philip Turner on the “unworkable theology” of the Episcopal Church. In Turner’s view, liberal, mainline Protestantism prizes “inclusion” above all else and thus has reduced God to “love, pure and simple.” In response, bls pointed out that, in fact, liberals are not quite as squishy and non-judgmental as Turner supposes; they can be quite stern about sins against social justice, for example. She further pointed out that inclusion and salvation are distinct issues and that it’s possible to (and many churches do) emphasize inclusion without being requiring good works for salvation or being universalists. Moreover, many saints and doctors of the church, not to mention the current Pope, seem quite comfortable with saying that God is love, pure and simple.

Christopher at Betwixt and Between followed up with a post defending the view that, in fact, God is love “pure and simple,” and we can’t earn that love. But this doesn’t mean that God’s love leaves us the way we are, as critics like Turner claim. Christopher writes: “Let’s be clear, a response to Love that comes out of Love will bear appropriate fruits in virtues.” Yet the order is critical: we love because he first loved us. Following that, Christopher posted a lengthy meditation on the atonement of Christ (partly in response to a question I asked) and connected this to the ethics of same-sex relationships (which really does seem to be the subtext–or in many cases just the text–of so many of these cris de coeur about decadent liberal churches).

I may have more to say about all this later once things have sunk in a bit more, but I wanted to highlight these very thoughtful and thought-provoking posts.