ISIL

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

1. Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis.

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

2. Propter fratres meos et proximos meos loquebar pacem de te:

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

3. Propter domum Domini Dei nostri quaesivi bona tibi.

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

4. Rogate quae ad pacem sunt Jerusalem:et abundantia diligentibus te.

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

5. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen

Give peace, O Lord, in our time
Because there is no-one else
Who will fight for us
If not you our God

(The following are from Psalm 122)
1. Let there be peace in your strength, and abundance in your towers
2. I wish you peace for the sake of my brothers and my family
3. I have sought good for you because of the house of the Lord God
4. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee
5. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

                              

The Panther and the Hind

I just finished re-reading Aidan Nichols' The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism, and have ordered it from Amazon for my personal library.  I want to especially recommend this book up front for every reader of mine who is currently investigating Anglicanism, because it is written by a former Anglican, now a Roman Catholic living in the Blackfriars Dominican community at Cambridge, whose knowledge of our history and faith is magisterial.   Here is a brief bio.

Nichols wrote this book primarily for Roman Catholics seeking to understand Anglicanism, and also to highlight the fact that Roman Catholic ecumenical engagement with the Anglican Communion is bound to be futile, given the latter’s current trajectory.  Readers new to or investigating will find an excellent summary of Anglican theological history since the Reformation, despite the author's less-than-sanguine assessment of Anglicanism's future.

The bulk of the book is concerned with his historical and theological analysis, which discerns 9 movements in Anglican history: 1) the English Reformation; 2) Hooker and the via media; 3) the Caroline Divines and their successors; 4) the Latitudinarian tradition; 5) the Evangelical revival; 6) the Oxford movement and its aftermath; 7) Liberal Catholicism; 8) Anglican modernism; and 9) contemporary Anglican theological radicalism. Nichols concludes this work by positing three disparate tendencies or parties within modern Anglicanism: Low Church, High Church and Broad Church.  Though there are some important nuances not to be overlooked, generally speaking in Nichols' schema 1 and 5 would today be grouped under the Low Church category; 2, 3 and 6 High Church; and 4, 7, 8 and 9 Broad Church.  (Nichols acknowledges that in reality it's somewhat more complicated than this. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of the High Church Evangelical.)

The Panther and the Hind is a compelling case for the belief that the Anglican Communion is likely doomed, but also in that connection why Anglo-Catholicism is fated to be a rump church existing in small pockets scattered throughout the Continuum and what's left of the Communion -- when it isn't morphing into Liberal Catholicism, a topic he takes up in Chapter 7 (the implication being that Roman Catholics shouldn't waste much time and energy on ecumenical endeavors with the Communion, but simply wait for the inevitable river crossings to Rome.)

The following are some salient excerpts from Chapter 7 on Liberal Catholicism (a successor to Tractarianism and the Yin to traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism’s Yang) and the Conclusion.  (Bolded emphases mine):

                                           From Chapter 7, “Liberal Catholicism”

Unfortunately, while one line of (Anglo-Catholic) development passes from Gore to the biblically and patristically controlled and credally obedient theology of the classical Anglo-Catholics of the mid-twentieth century, a second shoot of the genealogy-of-ideas tree points in the direction of a watery landscape, a more fluid world of theological discourse. It all depends whether greater stress is placed on the substantive, 'Catholicism', or the qualifier 'Liberal'.  Gore's confidence in the compatibility of credal orthodoxy and critical scholarship made the question of the relative priority of faith or reason, to his mind, entirely hypothetical. For a later generation of liberal Catholics, however, should inconsistency be detected between the 'assured results of modern criticism' and a somewhat minimised version of the essentials of the Catholic faith, it was faith which had to give way." On the other hand, those have never been lacking whose reaction was, rather, to wonder whether the critical methodologists might at times be using the 'wrong tool'. The Anglo-Catholic movement today is thus divided between its traditional or classical and 'affirming' or accommodationist wings.

In general, the twentieth century history of Anglo-Catholicism has been marked by early climax, a holding operation, and subsequently since the Second Vatican Council, steady decline. Anglo-Catholics enjoyed their greatest success in the Church of England around the time of the First World War. Though the Crown was on the whole suspicious of them and the bishops mainly cautious, Anglo-Catholics succeeded in taking over a considerable part of the parochial system, especially in London and south-east England, thanks to both lay patrons and the founding of missions later erected as parishes. Like the Evangelicals they also operated through Church societies, whether missionary, like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, or for internal consolidation, like the Church Union. Since the 1960s however their confidence has been deeply sapped, partly through the confusion as to Catholic identity engendered by the Vatican II revolution in Roman Catholicism, partly through the continued and growing institutional domination of con temporary Anglicanism by the Broad Church wing." Now largely existing in embattled enclaves, they are faced with difficult questions about their future in a Church with an episcopate open to Latitudinarianism on such issues as the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, and his Virginal Conception, and proceeding towards the ordination of women priests, and, doubtless, bishops. Four groups can be discerned: those who look to salvation from Eastern Orthodoxy, and hope for a `Western Orthodox' Anglican mini-church;" those who look to Rome for a Uniate scheme of some kind; those who propose to fall back on a 'continuing' Anglican splinter-church (as already found in North America and elsewhere), and those who under the leadership of the bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, are now preparing to make their peace with the Broad Church tradition over a wide range of issues, in return for the preservation of their liturgical and spiritual particularities." So far as one can tell from the somewhat vague yet clamant style of theological utterance which seems to be a mark of 'Affirming Catholicism', its chief doctrinal characteristic is a denial of the historical boundedness of the apostolic revelation in favour of a theory of continuous revelation through discernment of the 'signs of the times':

Our God does new things, does them for the first time, reveals truths hidden from previous generations and made known only unto us in these last days.

Admitting that no 'criteriology' for reading the signs of the times is yet forthcoming, and that therefore what God is leading us towards, or saying to us, by these media is undetermined, it can only be concluded that

The Christian way is as wondrously and as adventurously inexact as life itself.

The drawbacks to an emancipation of theological culture from a clearly identified doctrinal authority, at once preservative yet homogenously developmental, are only too apparent in our next topic, Anglican Modernism.

                                              From the Conclusion

The notion that the three schools somehow complement one another in a richly 'comprehensive' Church requires a lot of swallowing. As Eric Mascall has written

The fundamental incoherence of the three school theory can be seen from the obvious fact that the existence of each one of the schools can be justified only on the assumption that its characteristic theological assertions are true. But in that case all the three schools must be mutually compatible. And in that case there is no reason why we should not accept them all and a great many reasons why we should. But then what will have happened to the three schools? It is quite ridiculous to envisage the Church as a tricorporate society, each of whose parts is committed to holding one third of the truth. Regrettable as this no doubt is, it is because each school has not been convinced that everything that the others were holding was part of the truth that the schools have remained recognisably distinct.

And Mascall accepts Stephen Sykes' suggestion that the `comprehensiveness' argument must be traced back to the (somewhat unplaceable) mid-Victorian divine F. D. Maurice whereupon it becomes explicable, for Maurice's commitment to a romantic idealist view of [English] national character and destiny' predisposed him to the key-notions of complementarily and compromise. As Sykes wrote:

Coined at a time when internal party strife was at its most acute, it apparently offered a non-partisan refuge for that large body of central Anglicans who properly speaking belonged to no party, either evangelical, nor high-church, nor yet in any committed sense to the more radical of the liberals. Theologically speaking, however, the effect of the proposal has been disastrous. It must be stated bluntly that it has served as an open invitation to intellectual laziness and self-deception. Maurice's opposition to system-building has proved a marvellous excuse to those who believe they can afford to be condescending about the outstanding theological contribution of theologians from other communions and smugly tolerant of second rate theological competence in our own; and the failure to be frank about the issues between the parties in the Church of England has led to an ultimately illusory self-projection as a Church without any specific doctrinal or confessional position.

Bishop Sykes' critic D. Wiebe, by countering that comprehensiveness is but an 'appropriate response to the recognition of the in tractable character of the issues involved', and stigmatising as immoral any requirement from the theologian of some 'absolute commitment to particular theological claims' simply on the basis of his or her membership of the Church as such, only confirmed the accuracy of the analysis.' As Dr Paul Avis has written:

The notion of a tacit consensus residing in a common ethos is a post factum accommodation to the demise of doctrinal accord within the Church. 

Blood On My Hands: Being a Hunter and a Christian Clergyman

From an Anglican priest.

It's been years since I've braved the bitter cold of Norteastern Colorado in Fall and Winter in pursuit of migratory waterfowl, but now that I'm on the road to a slimmer and more energetic physique (and newly-ordained too), I think the time has come for this clergyman to return to the field.

Michaelmas

              

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Divine Power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

What Muscular Christianity is Not

This.

Unfortunately, Mooneyham's antics have only provided ammo (no pun intended) for Christians who eschew the notion of muscular Christianity altogether.  Here's an example from First Things:

Ignite’s approach to mission is nothing new; it’s just the latest example in the Muscular Christianity movement which dates back to the nineteenth century. And the danger now, as then, is that some Christians are allowing cultural concepts of masculinity to dictate our theology, rather than letting our theology dictate our understanding of gender roles. So it is that we end up glorifying a “warrior” concept of the Christian man—be it as a knight in shining armor (à la Wild at Heart) or the more in-your-face, gun-toting, beer-swilling version of manhood we get from Ignite.

Fortunately, a number of commentators were quick to spot the flaw in the FT author's analysis.  "Ignite's" mindset isnt't an "example" of muscular Christianity but a caricature thereof.  Some excerpts from the combox:

The author has chosen targets that are easy to criticize but I wonder if he would recognize overly feminized Christianity if he saw it. . . .

"From my father: masculinity without ostentation." Marcus Aurelius. . . . 

God said that David was a man after his own heart. How could you have overlooked that in a column on masculine Christianity?

Being masculine doesn't mean being foul-mouthed, obscene, or drunk, but David is as masculine as you can get and a counterexample to your gardener. We live in David's world, not Adam's world before the fall.

Given that David is a man after God's own heart I expect heaven to be a dynamic -- even wild -- place. . . .

Regarding the overall thesis, there's a tension between the warrior and the gardener I think. A book called The Masculine Mandate touched on the garden element early on, as it criticized Eldredge. Both of them missed the point: God made man outside the Garden and placed us in it. And well before the 19th century we were oft-told that we should "manfully" struggle. War language, metaphors, images are in the New Testament just as actual war is in the Old. So there is some sense to be made of that. It could just be "sin" or something, but more likely there is something to make of gardening and guns together. . . .

I think it's worth pointing out that ancient Roman infantry were mostly farmers. The essence of masculinity is probably something like Farmer-who-will-be-a-Warrior-when-he-must.

Or, we might simpy say that God's man is both "meek in hall and useful in battle."

C.S. Lewis: The Necessity of Chivalry

From the book Present Concerns (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1986):

The word chivalry has meant at different times a good many different things - from heavy cavalry to giving a woman a seat in a train.  But if we want to understand chivalry as a distinct ideal from other ideals - if we want to isolate that particular conception of the man comme il fant  which was the special contribution of the Middle Ages to our culture - we cannot do better than turn to the words addressed to the greatest of all the imaginary knights in Mallory's Morte Darthur.   "Thou wert the meekest man, says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot.  "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature.  The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man.  He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.  When Launcelot heard himself pronounced the best knight in the world, "he wept as he had been a child that had been beaten."

What, you may ask, is the relevance of this ideal to the modern world.  It is terribly relevant.  It may or may not be practicable - the Middle Ages notoriously failed to obey it - but it is certainly practical; practical as the fact that men in a desert must find water or die. . . .  (Brute heroism without mercy and gentleness) is heroism by nature - heroism outside of the chivalrous tradition.

The medieval knight brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate toward one another.  It brought them together for that very reason.  It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson.  It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop. . . .

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections - those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be "meek in hall", and those who are "meek in hall" but useless in battle - for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed.  When this dissociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair. . . .  The man who combines both characters - the knight - is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.

In the world today there is a "liberal" or "enlightened" tradition which regards the combative side of man's nature as a pure, atavistic evil, and scouts the chivalrous sentiment as part of the "false glamour" of war.  And there is also a neo-heroic tradition which scouts the chivalrous sentiment as a weak sentimentality, which would raise from its grave (its shallow and unquiet grave!) the pre-Christian ferocity of Achilles by a "modern invocation". . . .

(However), there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated.  But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature - something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen.  And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic.  In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion.  Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. . . . The ideal embodied in Launcelot is "escapism" is a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. . . .

Lewis sees softness and "milksopiness" in an insufficiently chivalrous man,  but Leon Podles takes it a step further in his book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, where he complains about the "bridal mysticism" that took hold in the Western Church during the Middle Ages, and how it contributed to a subculture of unmanliness in the Roman Catholic Church.  Podles also documents how the feminization of the church proceeds apace today, and infects nearly all Christian communions, including evangelical and liberal Protestantism. 

And, alas, the syndrome has infected Anglicanism as well.  It was so bad, apparently, in the Church of England of the 19th-century that F.D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley began the "muscular Christianity" movement in attempt to counter it.  From the Victorian Web (emphasis mine):

Beginning at mid-century, the broadchurch Anglican F.D. Maurice and his pupil, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, began espousing the virtues of muscular Christianity. Maurice and Kingsley, like many Englishmen, worried that the Anglican Church and Britain were suffering from the evils of industrialization: among others, growing slums, poverty, secularization, and urban decay. Life was a battle, Kingsley argued, and Christians should be at the center, actively employing their "manfulness" and "usefulness" against the evils of industrialization. Kingsley doubted that traditional morality would be able to cope with the effects of industrialization unless the Church reformed itself. He also deplored what many considered to be increasingly suffocating effeminacy within the Anglican Church, and believed that muscular Christian men equipped with a cohesive philosophy consisting equally of athleticism, patriotism, and religion could rescue Church and country from sloth.

I have recently been in an online debate with yet another Anglo-Catholic priest over the issue of muscular Christianity, this time about the right to keep and bear arms and the morality of self-defense.   In defense of his pacifism, be brings forth all manner of exceptions to the non-pacifist rule of Christianity, citing certain mystics and monks who went to their deaths willingly and citing the "other cheek" passages in the same way a liberal Protestant would, i.e., as pacifist proof texts.  He also berates the "macho" mentality of those Americans (he's a European) who defend the right to keep and bear arms and to use them in self-defense or the defense of another.  Of course, he's committing a whopping non-sequitur in arguing from the "other cheek" verses to pacifism, he fails to distinguish between acts of persectution on the one hand and acts of tyrants and criminals against states and persons on the other, and willfully ignores the demonstrable fact that the Christian church has long taken a non-pacifistic stance in the form of the Just War Doctrine.  (Though the Orthodox Churches reject that doctrine like they reject almost all of Augustine's views, their own position isn't significantly different.)  To their credit, there are many modern Anglo-Catholics (most of the American, it would seem) who are anything but "soft" or "milksops", and who would carry weapons and use them if necessary.  I know a few of them. 

Lewis himself was on or near the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum, but at least was a chivalrous man: meek in hall AND useful in battle.  (He fought in WWI.)  And his Narnia series defend chivalry to the uttermost, with boys (and girls!) carrying weapons and willing to use them.  Here's hoping that we'll start listening to Lewis and stop listening to the feminized bridal mystics in our midst, and that orthodox Anglicanism will accordingly be able to divest itself of every form of unmanliness. 

Chivalry

       

New To The Blogroll

The Midland Agrarian.  Politically, I lean paleoconservative, anarchomonarchist, minarchist, agrarian, distributist, or paleolibertarian, depending on my mood on any given day.  Henceforth, I will be saying more about political and cultural matters.  Richard at the Midland Agrarian blog is a kindred spirit.  Check out his blog.

Psalm 121 - St. Paul Cathedral Choir

Ordination Gift

Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, I will be ordained to the diaconate this Saturday, 9/27.  We had our good friends the Smiths over for dinner last night, who surprised me with an ordination gift of this beautiful icon "written" (painted) on a translucent mineral slice.  It is absolutely exquisite.  I had to fight off the tears.

Here's the link to the monastery that sells these beautiful icons:

http://www.stchrysostomoscrafts.com/

Through the Eyes of Hope

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine: Forgotten Medieval Augustinian

Great 3-part article on Bradwardine and his theology. 

I'm currently reading Heiko Oberman's book on Bradwardine.  In it, he argues that Wyclif mentions Bradwardine in his writings as having been a recognized teacher of theology, but it's not clear how much of Bradwardine's theology in its specifics was imbibed by Wyclif. It was Gregory of Rimini, another high Augustinian who disagreed with some of the aspects of Bradwardine's theology, who influenced Luther. So, Oberman concludes that because there's no clear evidence of transmission from Bradwardine through Wyclif or to Luther, he can't be rightly called "pre-Reformational." However, his work was part of the high Augustinian brew in the late Middle Ages that influenced these early Reformers.  Roman Catholic theologian George Tavard called sola fide the end result of the "Augustinian trajectory" in the West, and believes that the Augustinian Martin Luther deserves to be named a Doctor of the Catholic Church.

The New Knighthood, Then and Now

 

        

         (Syrian Christian soldiers -- enemies of ISIS -- kneeling at the altar of a desecrated church)

Bernard of Clairvaux: Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militiae

Thomas Madden: The Real History of the Crusades 

Alastair Roberts: Why a Masculine Priesthood is Essential

"The stakes here are very, very high."

A Medieval "Sinner's Prayer"

Courtesy of John Bugay at Triablogue 

There is an exhortation of Anselm (1033-1109) to a dying brother, written in the most comforting words: “When a brother seems to be in his death struggle, it is godly and advisable to exercise him through a prelate or other priest with written questions and exhortations. He may be asked in the first place: ‘Brother, are you glad that you will die in the faith?’ let him answer: ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you confess that you did not live as well as you should have?’ ‘I confess.’ ‘Are you sorry for this?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you willing to better yourself if you should have further time to live?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has died for you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you believe that you cannot be saved except through his death?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you heartily thank him for this?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Therefore always give thanks to him while your soul is in you, and on this death alone place your whole confidence. Commit yourself wholly to this death, with this death cover yourself wholly, and wrap yourself in it completely. And if the Lord should want to judge you, say: “Lord, I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and thee and thy judgment; I will not contend with Thee in any other way.” If he says that you have merited damnation, say: “I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between myself and my evil deserts, and the merits of his most worthy passion I bring in place of the merit which I should have had, and, alas, do not have.” ’  (Commenting on Sola Fide prior to the Reformation. Martin Chemnitz, “Examination of the Council of Trent, Part 1, Eighth Topic: “Concerning Justification”, Section II, “Testimonies of the Ancients Concerning Justification, pg 511.)

The Center for Pastor Theologians

What has the Academy to do with the Church? - Tertullian of Carthage

There is no such thing as a conservative academic, because the academy today only accepts liberals who have been trained as such. It is impossible to study conservative theology at a post graduate level. Many people would disagree pointing to those with Masters Degrees, but those are just three year post-graduate courses where the first degree is not theology. I am talking about is the English system where you do your first degree in theology, then do post graduate work, again in theology. There are no universities who accept conservative Professors.

The student at such a faculty will be taught all about source criticism etc. of course using only the NA critical text, and studying only modernist "theologians". To be accredited a university must toe the line, or they are out.

This is a comment that Rev. Roger du Barry made to a recent blog article I posted entitled, "Lent and the Academic Theologian."  I posted this article and a previous related one under a new category I've created called "Church v. Academy", because I have become increasingly aware of a threat that a certain kind of academicism poses to Anglicanism, and in fact has been doing so since shortly after the Reformation.  It's common knowledge that universities in Christendom were created largely, though not solely, for the purpose of training ministers.  It's also common knowledge that these universities and divinity schools, from Oxford to Princeton to Georgetown University, have tended to liberalize, and later to radicalize.  For certain reasons, one of which is the laudable goal of intellectual freedom, the Church could simply not keep them orthodox.

This means one of two things.  Either the laudable and necessary goal of intellectual freedom inherently leads one away from orthodoxy, and therefore orthodoxy must be dispensed with, or there is some sinful, fallen dynamic (or set of dynamics, usually revolving around egoism and pride) that naturally attends intellectual freedom and therefore must be identified and remedied by orthodoxy.

I mentioned a specific threat to Anglicanism.  It was in the Church of England's universities that Pelagianism and Semipelagianism reared their heads in the Middle Ages, that Arminianism arose to challenge Edwardine and Elizabethan divinity around the turn of the 17th century, and that Deism and liberal Protestantism, both based in Enlightenment thought, arose later. 

The problem, as I see it, isn't limited to the way the academic environment nourishes the heresies and unbelief typically associated with liberalism.  "Conservative" academic types get caught up in the dynamic as well, as Rev. du Barry correctly implies.  I've recently rubbed shoulders on Facebook with two somewhat unpleasant ACNA priests, whose comments show how smitten they are by the academy and whose pastoral sensibilites are, in my estimation, suffering accordingly.  One of them thinks that it's simply a matter of time before Tom Wright's work on the New Perspective on Paul becomes orthodoxy for Anglicans, and looks down with elitist disdain on Wright's critics.   The other priest, an Anglo-Catholic who eschews the Articles of Religion, predictably wants to vest orthodoxy in councils of bishops, but bishops whose ears are keenly attuned to the scholarship produced by Anglican academics, which is to say, an alliance of Anglican bishops and scholars that would be much like Rome's Magisterium. 

Enter the Center for Pastor Theologians (CPT), an organization dedicated to addressing this "disconnect that exists between the academy and the local church", per its founder Gerald Hiestand.  I would love to see Anglicans get on board with this project, because for far too long too many Anglicans have been laboring under "the assumption that Christianity can be abstracted from the Church", to quote Orestes Brownson's criticism of Newman's flawed method.  Prior to the rise of the medieval university, education had been procured at cathedral or monastic schools, and prior to the Reformation, theologians were generally either pastors or had some vital connection to the Church (e.g., the religious).  After the Reformation, the Church in the West looked increasingly to the university scholar, and not the pastor/theologian, for guidance into all truth.  I would argue that the legacy of that has patently been a sad one.  Theology must spring from where the Holy Spirit is, and I would argue for a number of reasons that the Holy Spirit ain't in the secular academy, and is becoming increasingly unimportant in the Christian academy.  Hence the need to train orthodox, Spirit-led pastors as theologians, just as in the days of the Fathers, who relied principally on the theology of the apostles, whose theology was likewise crafted in the context of pastoral activity.  Though the charge will be lodged that CPT's project is "obscurantist" or "anti-intellectual", we must answer, "Frankly, dear, I don't give a damn" to those who register that concern.  One need only examine the trajectory of the academy in the Western world to see that obscurantism and anti-intellectualism increasingly marks that environment as well, not to mention all the other signs of moral and intellectual degradation. 

I've linked the CPT and related sites in the sidebar.

Two Additions to the Blogroll

I link these in keeping with the "Man-glicanism" and "Muscular Christianity" subjects to which this blog is occasionally concerned, and in opposition to the mindset, recently expressed by an Anglo-Catholic blogger, who is "not an advocate of 'muscular Christianity', and who "approach(es) (his) faith through beauty and love, through the way of the Romantics". (To his credit, he did say "enough is enough" with respect to ISIS and seems to understand the need to unleash a can of serious whoopass on these murdering barbarians.  My high Anglo-Catholic friends here in Denver are hardly anti-muscular Christians.  They drink, smoke, love women, collect firearms, shoot, and prepare.  They may wear lace at Mass, but underneath their vestments are sidearms, nerves of steel and a resolve to go "loud" if necessary.)

The Art of Manliness

Joffre the Giant: Excursions in Christian Virility

Death Hath Deprived Me

Thomas Weelkes.  Performed by Vox Luminis.

Thomas Weelkes is best known for his vocal music, especially his madrigals and church music. Weelkes wrote more Anglican services than any other major composer of the time, mostly for evensong. Many of his anthems are verse anthems, which would have suited the small forces available at Chichester Cathedral. It has been suggested that larger-scale pieces were intended for the Chapel Royal.

Hear My Prayer

Henry Purcell.

Proof there is a God.

Aussie Military Strategist: We’ll Fight Radical Islam for 100 Years

"Australia needs to prepare for an increasingly savage, 100-year war against radical Islam that will be fought on home soil as well as foreign lands, the former head of the army, Peter Leahy, has warned."

News flash: we've been fighting it for 1,400 years. It's just that the modern political elite is in denial. Political correctness keeps them there.

On a related note, it's easy for us Christians to harbor a spirit of revenge when we reflect on the atrocities ISIS is currently perpetrating against the defenseless civilian population in Iraq, which includes Muslims.  Revelation 6:9-11 reflects a righteous Christian desire for retribution, and I for one would love to see ISIS destroyed.   At a minimum, the West should to its best to arm anti-Jihadist forces everywhere. 

But we must be aware of two things:  1) the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church; and 2) there are stories emanating from all parts of the Islamic world not only of disaffection with Islam but of conversions to Christianity.  And because Christian missionary activity is not allowed in Muslim lands, Muslims are coming to Christ by reading bootlegged Bibles and from visions received from heaven.  I don't know the provenance of this video and so I'm a little hesitant to post it, but, his tears might be a sign of authenticity. Even if fake, it is reflective of what indeed seems to be happening among Muslims:

Like the Calorene solidier Emeth in The Last Battle, Muslims like the man in this video are finding Christ, though in the most unlikely of places.  God knows the hearts of his elect, like he knew the heart of Cornelius, another unexpected member of the Church who became so because of a vision received from God.  He will save them missionary or no missionary, and the current horror just might prove to be, for many Muslims, the catalyst of their salvation.

That being said, if the Lord so tarries, we will indeed be fighting radical Islam for another hundred years,   and the liberals who constitute the political elite in the Western world will have to be removed from power in order for us to effectively fight it, because they simply aren't able to man up.  Their day has come and gone.

Behold, the need for a new Crusade is suddenly upon us.