"Senator John Woodley who is also a minister of the Uniting Church".

Politics and the Uniting Church. It doesn't get worse than that! The Uniting Church was among the first to throw its doors open to Marxist dogma.

But where does human virtue come from, or what is its source point?

It is in the intrinsically beautiful heart-space of prior unity, or non separativeness.

To "sin" is to miss the mark of being established in that beautiful heart-space of prior unity. Every thing that a sinner thus says and does is an extension of that separative disposition - and simultaneously reinforces it too.

That is why sinners always create hell on earth. Have you read the news?

It is interesting to note that McIntyre also stated that what the world desparately needs is the appearance of a Saint of the stature of Saint Benedict.
But as a serious Christian why didn't he state/claim that what the world needs is the appearance of another Divine Incarnation of the stature of Jesus as distinct from a mere Saint (however worthy in his long ago time and place).

It is also interesting to note that a Radiantly Alive Saint has not appeared in the Western world within the last 500 years. And that the appearance of a Saint of even modest stature is virtually impossible within the Protestant tradition - because it is the "religious" face of the now world dominant paradigm of the left brained spirit-killing word which patterns and controls every minute fraction of human culture.

Peter
There is much wisdom in what you say, but the church is not immune from grappling with the problem of truth. Most obviously, in our Anglican communion (I’m also a member) there is a culture war between evangelicals who believe that the miracles described in the bible are historically accurate reports of actual events, and constitute what you call “evidentiary proof” of supernatural activity in the world; and those sometimes called “liberals” who interpret these stories as symbols and metaphors pointing to deeper truths that are otherwise impossible to communicate in ordinary human language. A church whose members, and even leaders, cannot agree on whether Jesus’ resurrection was a literal bodily event needs to be careful criticising secular interpretations of the meaning of truth

Rhian,
Good point. The evangelicals owe much to Enlightenment rationality. ie. nothing is true if it is not a fact. This is why they scour the bible for evidence that it all happened as in the text. Thus evangelicalism is a product of modernism.

I am often accused of being a liberal. This is far from the truth. A better description is "Post-liberal" as in Barth's onslaught against the liberals in Germany for whom Jesus was just a nice guy or perhaps a religious genius.

As for the dear old Anglican church split between vacuous, self obsessed individuality (I believe so that I will get to heaven, is a corse description) and serious minded theologians who treat the texts with the respect they deserve i,e, in their context and understood in the light of the theology of the Church, what can I say? Perhaps we can say that the truth will out?

Dear Sells,

Do you believe in the virgin birth, the triune god, life after death for those who believe, the Resurrection of Jesus and Jesus taking on the sins of all who believe in him? I understand all these are doctrines in which a Christian is supposed to believe,

Hindu philosophy speaks of four levels of truth:

1. Asatyam - complete untruth (e.g. the horns of a rabbit)
2. Pratibhasika - subjective truth (e.g. experiences within dreams)
3. Vyavaharika - Objective truth (i.e. "facts")
4. Paramarthika - Ultimate truth (i.e. God)

The author is correct when stating: "There is only one transcendent telos. We are here to glorify God"

But to effectively glorify God we need to know God.
To know God we first need to live as humans.
To live as humans we need to eat.
To eat we need to interact with others.
Interaction with others is only possible on the Vyavaharika, practical, transactional level.
And since living on this transactional level of relative-truth is tiring, we also need to retire at times, rest and dream.

The sages declare that objective truth is to the ultimate truth, like the subjective experience of dream is to objective truth.
To know God is akin to waking up from a dream to discover the objective reality of lying in bed.
Suppose we have a cup of water on our bedside table: no matter how thirsty we are in our dream, we cannot drink that cup. Likewise we cannot glorify God so long as we are absorbed in the objective world. We do keep trying, but remain thirsty until, by God's grace, we get so frustrated that we wake up.