For My Friend Stefano

Who Knew?

"I see Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has said that we climate deniers are 'sinful'. Who knew the Episcopal Church still had sins?" - Mark Steyn

From J.I. Packer

It is important to know who our friends are. Anglo-Catholics generally believe in Trinity, Scripture, atonement, resurrection, judgement, prayer, etc. A ‘higher’ view of sacraments and priesthood seems secondary in the light of those primary correspondences. I can be friends with Anglo-Catholics. Modern Anglo-Catholicism has a different agenda from in the past. I can, with qualifications, be friends with Anglo-Catholics. I have good will towards Forward in Faith. Liberals are different, denying many of the aforementioned. We have let Liberals get away with too much with regard to leadership in the past.

Quoted here.

Could Newman Have Been Right About the Catholic Sense of the Articles?

This blogger thinks so.  It's a matter I intend to look into more seriously when time permits. 

On a related subject, when I peruse the web for what's going on in the "evangelical" world these days, I'm afraid the term "evangelical" means anything and nothing. I'd be tempted to abandon the term altogether were it not for the fact that it has a long and honored history in the Church, as it it is a cognate of the world "Gospel." Somehow we Evangelical Catholics need to reclaim it. I try to do it by telling people I'm an "old school" Evangelical and that by that I mean a Christian who believes the apostolic doctrines of grace as set forth in the great Protestant confessions, which doctrines not only cohere with but flow inexorably from the orthodox triadology and christology of the Catholic Church. For us old school Evangelicals, Creed and Confession go together. We can only be truly Evangelical if we are rooted in the Great Tradition.  That means being Catholic. 

I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church.

Luther on Academic Theologians

To be read in conjuction with this.

"...the longer you write and teach the less you will be pleased with yourself. When you have reached this point, then do not be afraid to hope that you have begun to become a real theologian, who can teach not only the young and imperfect Christians, but also the maturing and perfect ones. For indeed, Christ’s church has all kinds of Christians in it who are young, old, weak, sick, healthy, strong, energetic, lazy, simple, wise, etc. If, however, you feel and are inclined to think you have made it, flattering yourself with your own little books, teaching, or writing, because you have done it beautifully and preached excellently; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others; if you perhaps look for praise, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you did not get it -- if you are of that stripe, dear friend, then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way you will find a beautiful pair of big, long, shaggy donkey ears. Then do not spare any expense! Decorate them with golden bells, so that people will be able to hear you wherever you go, point their fingers at you, and say, “See, See! There goes that clever beast, who can write such exquisite books and preach so remarkably well.”

From Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther’s German Writings (LW 34:285-88).

Holy Smokes

Why smoke at church and at home is a good thing.

Joel Wilhelm on the ACNA Task Force on Holy Orders

Will ACNA keep women's ordination or won't it?  Links to Wilhelm's previous two articles can be found at the end of this article.

A Reader Is Frustrated by the Problem of Anglican Identity

An Australian reader sent this to me in early February:

Can you please tell me how someone can be an Anglo-Catholic or High Church Anglican and believe in the 39 articles of faith and homilies? Isn’t there a conflict between the Catholic worship style with the real prescene in the Eucharist etc and the evangelical nature of the articles and homilies? I keep being told that to be Anglican is to be Catholic and Protestant but each parish seems to only focus on one. This is something I am struggling with and would like some help in understanding it.

My reader touches on several key issues in his query, but in order to give what I hope will be an adequate answer, those issues need to be teased out and examined.

First, there is the question of terminology with respect to the terms "Anglo-Catholic" and "High Church Anglican".  As Peter Nockles argues in his book The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857,  the term "Anglo-Catholic" has historically been difficult to define with precision.  Read his comments here.

So it remains today.  "Anglo-Catholic" and "High Church Anglican" refer to different phenomena, but I personally know Anglican who call themselves "Anglo-Catholics" when they are really noting more than Old High Church Protestants.  And sometimes the term "High Church" is applied to the Tractarian Movement and its progeny, when it really shouldn't be.  I know Anglicans who call themselves "Anglo-Catholics", most of whom reject the 39 Articles but others who embrace them as Anglicanism's confession.  It's all very confusing.

The next issue concerns the authority of the Articles and the Book of Homilies.  There are many confessional Anglicans who question whether the Homilies should share the same degree of authority that the Articles.  I am one of them, for reasons I won't go into here. 

Next, there is the question of what is meant by "Catholic worship style".  I suppose whether something is "Catholic worship style" depends on the perspective of the observer.  Many Baptists take issue with what they perceive to be the "Catholic worship style" of Reformed and Presbyterian liturgies, whereas Anglo-Catholics and High Church Anglicans would consider those liturgies to be snake-belly low and hence very unCatholic.  My reader does explain that by that term he associates the doctrine of real presence.  But Lutherans believe in a version of real presence, and yet they are everywhere regarded as Protestants. 

Some Anglo-Protestants also believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, along with the Lutherans.  However, I have found that when some of these Anglicans refer to "real presence", they're really referring to the Calvinistic/Cranmerian view.  Ergo: more terminological confusion.

The bottom line is that I share the reader's frustration over the question of Anglican identity.   The various styles of churchmanship do tend to manifest themselves parish by parish.  Anglicanism being what it is, however, I think it's pretty much what we have to expect -- and live with, at least for the foreseeable future.

Lent Begins

St. Peter's Anglican Church, Akaroa, New Zealand

My wife and I returned from New Zealand yesterday.  Other than being able to attend an Ash Wednesday service at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Akaroa, NZ (above photo), my Lent is off to a late start.  So, I've decided to enter into the season now that we're back in the States with this poem from an Anglican priest, which I shared last year and which I may share every year going forward, since it captures the true spirit of the season.  (In a tip of the hat to the Orthodox, I don't know how many times the Lenten spirit of Herrick's poem was stressed in the Lenten seasons of my 13-year stint in the Orthodox Church, regardless of the austerity of the Orthodox Lenten fast.  I even heard one story about an Orthodox priest who, in confession, counseled a man to drink copious amounts of beer during Lent to counter his judgmental spirit.):

TO KEEP THY LENT

BY Robert Herrick (1591-1647)

Is this a Fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep?
Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish?
Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg'd to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour?
No: 'tis a Fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat
And meat
Unto the hungry soul.
It is to fast from strife
From old debate,
And hate;
To circumcise thy life.
To show a heart grief rent;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin;
And that's to keep thy Lent.

Nineveh Plains Protection Units

It's all well and good for us to lament for our brethren by posting cries of "Lord have mercy" on Facebook, quoting Scriptures about the reality of martyrdom in this world, and stressing the need to pray for them.  As the Christian militiaman Gabriel says in the video below from The Patriot, "Yes, PRAY for them, but HONOR them as well by taking up arms to fight with us."  We here in the free West need to honor them by supporting them materially as well as spiritually.  That means we need to send bodies, arms and money.  When I get back from New Zealand I plan to research these groups and how, provided they are graft free,  Christians can do so. So far I have found only this: Iraqi Christians Form Anti-ISIS Militia, and You Can Legally Chip In.

Iraq’s Christians Take Up Arms to Fight Islamic State

Now we're talkin'.

Jadis Takes One in the Teeth

South Carolina Court Grants Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina & Parishes Complete Relief.

Praise the Lord.

"Church For Men" Blog at Patheos

Church For Men.

"Call No Man Father"

A reader sends this question:

The Anglican Church has its appeal, but there are a couple of issues that I bump up against.  One of them is the church's habit of addressing clergy as "Father".  Since Jesus clearly said "Call no man Father", I have a hard time with the Anglican and Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Some Anglicans asked me what I call the man that was married to my mother, but I believe that Jesus was clearly talking in a religious context, not a familial one.  How is it that the Anglican Church violates what seems to be a fairly clear statement of our Lord??  Any thoughts?

Dear reader, yes, I do have a couple of thoughts.  The first is that certain Anglicans -- but I am not one of them -- would agree with you.  These Anglicans are typically on the "snake-belly low" side, basically Presbyterians with prayer books, Puritan types who detest anything remotely "Romish", like calling a presbyter a "priest" or addressing him as "father."  So, if you did become an Anglican, you would find at least some kindred spirits in the Puritan party.  (I'm using "Puritan" here, by the way, in a purely descriptive sense, not a pejorative one.)

My other thought is that those Anglicans who've asked you what you call the man that married your mother have effectively dismantled the exegetical argument, for it proves too much.  Your response is that "Jesus was clearly talking in a religious context, not a familial one", but I don't think that really does much for your case, mainly because it's ignoring the context in which the command to "call no man 'father'" is found.  Let's have a look at the passage, which appears in Matthew 23:

23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, ³ so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,^a]"> and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. ⁵ They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, ⁶ and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues ⁷ and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi^b]"> by others. ⁸ But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.^{c]"> 9} And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. ¹⁰ Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. ¹¹ The greatest among you shall be your servant. ¹² Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

What is the point being made by Jesus here?  Is it about inappropriate honorifics or rather about the importance of humility?  Verse 12 contains your answer.  It's clearly about not pridefully glorying in titles.   Jesus employs a particular extreme rhetorical device here, like he does throughout the Gospels, with a view toward making a point, and here the point is clearly stated in v. 12.  It's somewhat similar to the device he uses when he said, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”  Is Jesus really telling us not to attend to the funeral of our parents?  Hardly.  And neither is he instructing us not to refer to our pastor as "father."  I mean, why shouldn't we refrain from calling our pastor "pastor".  For we have only one pastor.   See how it works?

Is there no sense in which church leaders can be called "father", when St. Paul himself wrote, "For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel."?  How can we call no man "teacher" when the gift of teaching is listed as one of the spiritual gifts?  Are we to refrain from calling a seminary professor an "instructor"?  Really?

So yeah, your argument proves too much, and really doesn't account for either the context in which the statement "call no man 'father'" is found or for the fuller testimony of Holy Scripture.

There are my thoughts, for what they're worth.  And here's an article from a Catholic web site that goes into further detail: "Call No Man 'Father'"?

Why I Am Becoming Anglican: A Brief Explanation for My Assemblies of God Family

H/T to fellow chaplain and Facebook friend Randy Demary.  I am posting this in part as a further reply to Kerby Rials.

C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism

Worth the time.  On a related note, ex-Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee has gone on record as saying that states do not need to obey the US Supreme Court if that court's ruling is that state laws prohibiting gay marriage are unconstitutional.  Wherever you stand on the right of gays to have some sort of state-recognized union, Huckabee is right, and nullification is coming back to the forefront of national political discussion, whether the Federals and their left-liberal enablers like it or not.  States, county sheriffs and even individual citizens all around the country are currently nullifying, by disobeying, a number of laws they deem unconstitutional and/or irrational.  There is more such disobedience to come, I guarantee it.  As evidenced by such abominable law as the Obamacare contraception mandate, the churches of Christ here in the United States will increasingly be forced to jump on the nullification bandwagon whethery THEY like it or not, for we must obey God rather than men.  The time for "conservative" deference to an increasingly illegitimate liberal state is over.  No sovereign but Jesus.

A Reply to Kerby Rials

UPDATE 1/25. 

On December 21 of last year, Assemblies of God pastor and missionary Kerby Rials posted a critical response to the article How I Got There: An Evangelical Converts to Anglicanism, to which I will respond here.  (The article was written by a certain “Fr. Doug”, who was the vicar at All Saints Anglican Church in San Antonio at the time of the article’s first publication.  I have yet to find his last name.) Before responding to Pastor Rials, however, I want to extend the right hand of fellowship to him by thanking God for his mission to plant Evangelical churches in Belgium, and for the irenic tone of his response to the article.  Pastor Rials and I have become Facebook friends, though we have as yet to interact there.  I think he will find after reading my reply here that he has more in common with certain Anglicans than he thinks.  In fact, a goodly number of charismatic Evangelicals from AOG and Vineyard ranks have become Anglicans.  Many of them are church planters themselves and seek to perpetuate Three Streams Anglicanism in North America and beyond.

So, now that I’ve offered the rose of friendship to Pastor Rials, I would like to turn his attention to the thorns.  His response begins:

Dear Doug,

I read your story with interest, and felt led to leave you a response. In looking over your account of your conversion, I could not find, what seemed to me, to be a strong justification of Anglican theology as opposed to evangelical protestant theology. As I see it, these are the principal concerns:

You noted, first of all, that "the priest is a father and the parishioners are his children. He is responsible for raising and nuturing (sic) them." This contradicts, it seems to me, the New Testament passages speaking of the priesthood of every believer, and the fact that there are no priests in the New Testament at all. The collegiality and the equality of the believers in the New Testament does not concur with the hierarchical system practiced in Anglicanism. It creates a barrier between the believer and Christ, inserting an hierarchical priesthood.

Classical Anglicanism in fact holds to the priesthood of all believers as one of the key Reformational distinctives that fueled the English Reformation.  However, like so many in the baptistic and free church traditions, Pastor Rials illogically concludes from the few New Testament data which speak to the issue of the priesthood of believers that some form of democratic egalitarianism is implied.  He sees no “hierarchical system” in the New Testament when in fact there is hierarchy to be seen just about anywhere you look.  For example, it was the apostles and the elders who convened the Jerusalem Council, not the “priesthood of believers” at large.  We see hierarchy set forth in the listing of spiritual gifts concerning church leadership seen in I Cor. 12:28 and Ephesians 4:11-16.  Of these leaders, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes, “Obey . . . and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”

Though revisionist Anglo-Catholics would demur, we would agree with Pastor Rials that there is no sacerdotal priesthood in the New Testament.  There is, however, a “presbyterate”.  The English word “priest” is etymologically related to the word “presbyter”, so there it is perfectly acceptable to call an elder of the church a “priest”, so long as we stipulate that the “priests” of the New Testament were not sacrificing priests.  That being said, St. Paul was not averse to seeing a priestly aspect of his ministry, for, as he writes in Romans 15: 15-17, “. . . I have written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again, because of the grace that was given me from God,  to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”  (NASB)  The word there is hierourgounta, literally, “ministering as a priest”, as the NASB literally translates it, and if it is possible for a church leader to do priestly service in one sense, why not more?   I would recommend to Pastor Rials that he read the Conciliar Anglican blog article On the Eucharist: Why We Need a Presbyter at the Altar and that he also lay his hands on Brian Horne’s article Homo Hierarchicus and Ecclesial Order.   We move on:

Secondly, and in a related fashion, Anglicanism's reliance on apostolic succession is faulty, it seems to me, as Christ himself noted that those who were not apostles and had no apostolic succession had a valid ministry: (Luke 9:49) "John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name; and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow along with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not hinder him; for he who is not against you is for you.” Paul had no apostolic succession, but it did not hinder him either: (Gal. 1:12ff) For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ...But when God... was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus."

Classical Anglicans would agree with Pastor Rials that the ministry of the Holy Spirit can’t be confined to the church hierarchy, but to make that acknowledgment is not in any way to gainsay the proposition that Christ, and the apostles after him, DID establish a church order that was not only hierarchical in nature but would need a means of perpetuating itself.  Read any book worth its salt on apostolic succession, and it is certainly evident that church order underwent a process of evolution during the first century.  However, it became clear by the second and third centuries that a mechanism for episcopal succession was in place.  We see it coming into shape as early as the end of the first century, as evidenced in Clement of Rome:

Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.

As the decades and the next few centuries unfolded, patristic testimony to apostolic succession became multiplied.  However, it is not in any way necessary to hold the view, as some high church Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics do, that without an apostolic succession there are no valid sacraments or no valid church.  That certainly was not the view of Anglican divinity from Cranmer through Hooker.  It was only later that this view began to assert itself.  Classical Anglicans do not view the bishop as being necessary to the esse of the church, but they tend rather to sort themselves into plene esse and bene esse camps, all of which is to say that the activity of the Holy Spirit can in no way be bound to the canonical boundaries of the church.

And finally,

Anglicanism's reliance upon the liturgy is also not found in the New Testament, nor is its reliance upon tradition as superior to scripture or its belief in transubstantiation (sic) nor its reliance upon infant baptism, which did not come into the church until 400 years after the apostles.  Anglicanism seems to be drifting doctrinally toward Catholicism and LIberalism at the same time. It is a church without a strong sense of purpose, unable to deal with heretical beliefs like homosexuality in the bishopric. I used to consider it a protestant church but I am not sure anymore!

In this paragraph we find a string of wholly false and misinformed assertions.   If Pastor Rials would simply read some scholarly works on this history of the Christian liturgy, he will be shown all the indications to be found in the New Testament that the apostolic (which is to say Jewish) church most likely inherited a liturgical form of worship based on the Hebraic form of worship.  Classical Anglicanism does not believe in transubstantiation, and nor does Anglo-Catholicism (which tends to gravitate to a more Eastern view of the sacrament).  Infant baptism did not appear 400 years after the apostles.  We have copious evidence from the 2^nd century as to its practice, and as the penetrating exegetical and historical work of Joachim Jeremias demonstrates, there is every reason that Christian paedobaptism is related to Jewish proselyte baptism as a child is related to a parent.  Segments of Anglicanism have indeed been drifting toward Catholicism and liberalism ever since the 19^th century, but Pastor Rials illogically concludes that what is true of the part must be true of the whole.  It makes me wonder if he’s ever examined Anglicanism’s Formularies or read J.I. Packer or John Stott, who are noted representatives of a huge Evangelical Protestant stream in the Anglican Communion and Realignment Anglicanism.

The sum of the matter here, if I may be blunt, is that Pastor Rials really doesn’t have much of an understanding of what it is he rejects in his response to Fr. Doug, but if he’s game, we would be pleased to disabuse him of any other false notions he has of the Anglican Way, as we have done here with respect to the notions expressed in said response.  I think if he would simply read the 39 Articles, he’d find a document that is thoroughly Protestant and Evangelical, but  he would also find there a document that reflects a catholicity that the AOG simply doesn’t have, and which is why historically-minded Pentecostals have left churches like the AOG and the Vineyard for “Three Stream” Anglican churches, which are aplenty around the world.  I would direct his attention to one Pentecostal theologian in particular, Simon Chan, who in his book Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community in essence forces the question of why Pentecostals shouldn’t become Anglicans.

From an Anglican Bishop in Nigeria

"I do not know how many more lives must Boko Haram kill in the North East and Central Nigeria before the Western powers show they care. Seventeen lives lost in Paris and world leaders show solidarity. More than two thousand lives lost in two days and just passing comments. Almighty God will help us today or tomorrow. Our help is in the name of the Lord who has made the heavens and the earth..." - Bishop Benjamin Kwashi

H/T Fr. Matt Kennedy.

A Roman Muscular Christian Project

The New Emangelization.  Some good stuff here.   (Other stuff, meh.)  We should follow suit.  Or better, resurrect a similar project.

Text of interview with Cardinal Burke.

C.S. Lewis on the Word "Puritan"

Courtesy of The Calvinist International.

Theologically, Protestantism was either a recovery, or a development, or an exaggeration (it is not for the literary historian to say which) of Pauline theology.  Hence in Buchanan’s Franciscus ad Fratres the Friars’ prophylactic against it is to keep clear of the ‘old man from Tarsus.’ …

All the initiative has been on God’s side; all has been free, unbounded grace. His own puny and ridiculous efforts would be as helpless to retain the joy as they would have been to achieve it in the first place. Fortunately they need not. Bliss is not for sale, cannot be earned. ‘Works’ have no ‘merit’, though of course faith, inevitably, even unconsciously, flows out into works of love at once. He is not saved because he does works of love: he does works of love because he is saved. It is faith alone that has saved him: faith bestowed by sheer gift. From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally sprang.

For it must be clearly understood that they were at first doctrines not of terror but of joy and hope: indeed, more than hope, fruition, for as Tyndale says, the converted man is already tasting eternal life. The doctrine of predestination, says the XVIIth Article, is ‘full of sweet, pleasant and unspeakable comfort to godly persons.’ But what of ungodly persons? Inside the original experience no such question arises. There are no generalizations. We are not building a system. When we begin to do so, very troublesome problems and very dark solutions will appear. But these horrors, so familiar to the modern reader (and especially to the modern reader of fiction), are only by-products of the new theology. They are astonishingly absent from the thought of the first Protestants. Relief and buoyancy are the characteristic notes. In a single sentence of the Tischreden Luther tosses the question aside for ever. Do you doubt whether you are elected to salvation? Then say your prayers, man, and you may conclude that you are. It is as easy as that.

It follows that nearly every association which now clings to the word puritan has to be eliminated when we are thinking of the early Protestants. Whatever they were, they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; nor did their enemies bring such charges against them. On the contrary, Harpsfield (in his Life of More) describes their doctrines as ‘easie, short, pleasant lessons’ which lulled their unwary victim in ‘so sweete a sleepe as he was euer after loth to wake from it.’ For More, a Protestant was one ‘dronke of the new must of lwed lightnes of minde and vayne gladnesse of harte.’ Luther, he said, had made converts precisely because ‘he spiced al the poison’ with ‘libertee.’ Protestantism was not too grim, but too glad, to be true; ‘I could for my part be verie wel content that sin and pain all were as shortlye gone as Tyndale telleth us.’ Protestants are not ascetics but sensualists.