(Bill) Phipps and the divinity of Jesus.

Ottawa - The remarks of the moderator of the United Church of Canada that Jesus is not divine and that heaven and hell are not real (see C.I. Dec. '97) have reverberated in newspapers across Canada. The Ottawa Citizen was the first to report the news and then printed the full interview with its editorial board on November 2, 1997.

Critics from within the United Church have pointed out that Phipps contradicts two thousand years of faith as well as the Church's own 1925 Articles of Union. Wrote Rev. Allen Churchill of Ottawa: "Jesus is...the Word made flesh and this Word is God" (John 1:1,14) and "In him the whole fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Colossians 1:19). The four gospels describe Jesus as one who can forgive, walk on water, and rise from the dead. He is . . . the agent of creation, providence and redemption.

"Jesus certainly teaches us to love our neighbour, but in the same passages of Scripture (Matthew 25:31-46) he also teaches the realities of heaven and hell" (Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 27). Mr. Churchill accused Phipps of undermining the faith.

John Stackhouse, professor of modern Christian history at the University of Manitoba, put it even more vigorously. He called Phipps a heretic. Toronto U.C. Minister Robert Rumball assured the readers of the Sun that despite the moderator, "there are still Christians in the United Church" (Nov. 25). And Rev. Graham Scott of the Church Alive group, which is calling for a return of traditional biblical theology, reiterated that "The Bible says the fullness of God is in Jesus. Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Both, not partly" (Globe, Dec. 6).

Criticism denied

However, leaders of the U.C. are not listening to such views. Bill Phipps, 55, divorced and remarried, was well known as a social activist who has no use for "empty formulas," as he put it at the time of his election as moderator in the Alberta town of Camrose last August. The 380 delegates selected a man who reflected their own thinking on Jesus (Western Report, Sept. 1, '97). For them Jesus is essentially a social reformer, more interested in the life on earth than in the afterlife.

Groups within the church who defend traditional biblical beliefs and who have opposed past surrenders on moral issues such as abortion and sodomy, seem powerless. Supporters of the Community of Concern, Church Alive, and Fellowship Magazine are excluded from government and are barely tolerated in national meetings (Christian Week, Sept. 9). Yet polls among U.C. faithful have confirmed that most members very much believe that Jesus is divine.

On November 15, a 75-member church executive in Toronto formally expressed support for Phipps and for his claim that rather than undermining the faith he was doing everyone a service by beginning a theological debate. Also siding with Phipps were former moderators Anne Squire (1986-88), Robert Smith (1984-86), Marion Best (1994-1997) and Bruce McLeod (1972-74). The last named proudly recalled that in the 1960's then moderator Ernest Howse held similar views on Christ as Phipps did, and that he himself shared them as well.

Similarly, United Church seminary principals in Toronto (Roger Hutchinson), Kingston (former principal Bater), and Edmonton (Christopher Levan) all rallied to his cause. In response to calls for his resignation, Phipps argued that "diversity" and "tolerance" are the great strengths of the United Church, that "shaking up the faithful is a wonderful thing," and that the "little controversy" should be viewed "as a marvelous opportunity to evangelize" (Nov. 15).

To outside media commentators, too, Phipps seemed a liberator, compared to his "fundamentalist" troublemakers. Even Canadian members of the international Jesus Seminar, such as Catholic priest and Toronto School of Theology professor Michael Steinhauser, were quoted in support of the idea that Jesus himself never said he was divine (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 21). (Editor: this group of skeptics claims that we cannot know what Jesus said, only what commentators such as the Evangelists years later imagined Jesus said.)

Former moderator Anne Squire summed it all up. Within the United Church "people are encouraged to study, to come up with their own beliefs. The `Who is Jesus' document takes a study position, not the final position. There never will be a final position." (Editor: see Editorial, page 3.)