Sir, —
Thank you for the article ‘GAFCON and the Church of Ireland’ in the May edition of the Gazette. I was especially consoled by the words, ‘The Church of Ireland remains one body, with one synod, one episcopate, and one common life’. To me, the Church of Ireland embodies grace — the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. She is a large tent where all are welcome, no matter how wounded or flawed we may be. No member of the Church is perfect — we’re all works in progress, but we are all called to live by faith, and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and his one complete and all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Whereas to me, GAFCON comes across as a religion of rules and regulations, salvation by works, a closed shop with strict boundaries as to who is in and who is out. I pray that those attracted to the closed shop of GAFCON may have the grace to trust the Holy Spirit and bring their concerns — doctrinal, moral, and ecclesiastical — to the ordinary episcopal and synodal instruments of the Church of Ireland for discerning the will of God, remembering the words of the Lord, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth […] and he will declare to you the things that are to come’ (John 16:12–13). There will be development in our understanding of the Gospel and its demands and implications. Some of those new things will be hard for some believers to bear now. Patience with one another is an essential aspect of our obedience to the Lord’s command to ‘love one another; just as I have loved you’ (John 13:34) and the Lord’s prayer for His followers ‘that they may be one, as we (the Holy Trinity) are’ (John 17:11).
Yours, etc.,
The Reverend Paul Symonds
(Belfast)
