The Measure of Fr. Robert Hart's Mentality

Summed up in these recent posts of his on his Facebook page:

I'm not sure what to make, exactly, of his comment about Elon Musk, but it certainly can be read to imply that he's fantasizing Elon's death.  Maybe his bishop will ask him to clarify.  Or maybe he won't.

Fr. Robert Hart Again Accuses Me of "Slander"

Well, once again he shows that he is ignorant of the difference between libel and slander, on which I instructed him here.  But no matter.  If he's incapable of being educated, so be it.

Now, I had intended not to blog about this recent kerfuffle between us.  I was content to let it die privately. However, he's now forced the issue by posting this at The Continuum blog.  Here's the pertinent excerpt:

"On Friday (Nov. 1) I received several emails from a priest (?) who has written several slanderous "hit pieces" about me over the years on his blog, all of them deliberately misrepresenting me and demonstrating something of an obsession that makes me wonder of I need to hire security - not that I could afford it. They were about a comment that I never posted on Facebook that used an impolite (to say the least) word, apparently on a Facebook page of yet a third clergyman whom I have never met and frankly, because he violates the unwritten but generally understood ethical norm of not trying to be both a priest and a publicly known political pundit, hope never to meet (I do not approve of clergy appearing at political rallies to endorse candidates, especially a rally that included some of the most vile and slanderous hate speech ever to shock the nation for a second time since 1939 at Madison Square Garden. It is a shame that it has played host to such a scandalous spectacle now twice in our history). In the emails sent to me on Friday, was included a screenshot of the comment with the obscene word, and it looked exactly as if it had been posted from my Facebook account. He also mentioned "other [comments presumably]" which bothered me. Well, it is an old trick to create a fake Facebook account using someone's name and picture. This method has been used, as we all know, by people inviting us to "friend" people who are already on our "friends" lists, I suppose for some purpose to do with hacking. However, the priest (?) who was sending me the emailed screenshot has been blocked from seeing anything I post on Facebook since February of 2023. In other words, the fact that he was able to see it is only because I did not post it; it did not come from my account: Everything I post there is hidden from him because I had already blocked him."

This has to do with a comment Fr. Hart made, and subsequently deleted, at a post on Fr. Calvin Robinson's public Facebook page, but not before Fr. Robinson got a screenshot of it.  Fr. Robinson is the "priest and a publicly known political pundit" Hart disparagingly mentions in the quotation above.  The first photo below is of the Hart's comment.  The second photo show him "liking" the negative comment of Alice Linsley, showing his interest in the comments:

Hart claims that "it is an old trick to create a fake Facebook account using someone's name and picture."  That's true, but unfortunately for Hart, that "like" he clicked on Mrs. Linsley's comment links straight to his actual Facebook account, not a fake account, and I can prove it.  One of the things I asked him in our email exchange is why a hacker would post something and then delete it, as if he had second thoughts.  Hart is simply lying through his teeth.

In a pathetic attempt to further bolster his defense, he writes:

"However, the priest (?) who was sending me the emailed screenshot has been blocked from seeing anything I post on Facebook since February of 2023. In other words, the fact that he was able to see it is only because I did not post it; it did not come from my account: Everything I post there is hidden from him because I had already blocked him."

As I explained to him and have stated here, the image comes from a screenshot Fr. Robinson made, and then shared in a private group of which I am a member.  What's more, even though he has blocked me on his page and I can't see his posts, there are other ways of seeing them, as everyone knows.  Fr. Robinson's screenshot combined with my ability to do an end run around Hart's blocking me revealed that he posted that comment at Robinson's page and then deleted it.  (The subthread at which Hart made this comment has been deleted by its author, but I have both photographic and videographic proof that it was there.)

Hart complains that this is just another "slanderous" attack from me (he means "libelous"), similar to the ones I have made previously here at the Old Jamestown Church.  Well, those "attacks" came in response to his vile and vitriologic language which he had been directing against the objects of his political ire, mainly Donald Trump and his supporters.  You can read all about that past exchange in the Robert Hart archives.  Hart simply cannot find the resolve to repent for such unseemly behavior.  Or for lying.

Here's what I predict will happen if and when Hart sees this blog post.  He will rail against me, with implicit threats of ecclesial and legal prosecution.  He'll try to seize the high spiritual ground, as he does in the quotation above.  He'll rant and rave for awhile, but just like he did last time, he'll return to his basement with his tail between his legs and return to spewing his TDS comments at his own Facebook page and others.  It's pitiful.

And, as always, his bishop will do nothing about it.

A Prayer for Our Country from the Book of Common Prayer

"Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure conduct. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the  multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom, in thy Name, we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Fr. Calvin Robinson at the Perseus Men's Conference

I was blessed to attend this conference last week at St. Francis Anglican Church in Spartanburg, SC.  Fr. Robinson was our first speaker.  I will post other talks here shortly.

Happy Reformation Month! Alister McGrath's "Iustitia Dei" Continues to Vex Protestants

First, in earlier editions of this work McGrath called Luther's solafidianism a "theological novum", meaning it had no basis in anything taught by the Church in its 1,500-year history. I've maintained that "theological novum" is a polite and scholarly way of saying "heresy", because that's what a heresy is by definition.

Now this in his 4th edition:

“One of the more significant aspects of this newly revised version is the treatment of justification in the Greek fathers. Previously, McGrath suggested that a regenerative reading of justification was the result of the emergence of Latin in the Western Christianity. The narrative held that when the Greek term for ‘to justify’ (=dikaioō) was translated into Latin (=iustificare), Christian interpreters came to misinterpret Paul’s teaching. This was because the Latin suggested that justification involved ‘making’ the believer righteous. The notion that ‘justification’ involves a transformative element was viewed as contradicted by the Greek.

For some, this has held a key to unlocking Reformation debates. R. C. Sproul routinely made this point. (Go to 1:29 in the following video): . . . .

In short, in speaking about this ‘linguistic trick,’ Sproul draws on McGrath’s older work. The reason ‘justification’ was thought to involve the believer actually becoming righteous was due in part to misreading Paul in Latin. The Reformed tradition eventually recovered the original meaning of Paul by returning to the Greek, which shows that justification is not only merely juridical, but counterfactual–the believer is declared righteous but remains unrighteous; the righteousness of God is ‘alien’ to the one who is justified.

McGrath’s new volume shows that this version of history is flawed. Here is the problem: McGrath has discovered that the Greek fathers read justification as involving transformation.

For example, writing on Chrysostom, McGrath states,

‘Chrysostom’s account affirms the declaration or manifestation (endeixeis) of God’s own righteousness with its actualisation in the transformation of the nature of humanity.’ . . . .

McGrath writes,

‘It has become a commonplace in some quarters to suggest that the dik group of terms–particularly the verb dikaioo, “to justify”–are naturally translated as being “treated as righteous” or “reckoned as righteous”, and that Paul’s Greek-speaking readers would have understood him in this way. This may be true at the purely linguistic level; however, the Greek Christian preoccupation with the strongly transformative soteriological metaphor of deification appears to have led to justification being treated in a factitive sense. This is not, however, to be seen as a conceptual imposition on Pauline thought, but rather a discernment of this aspect of his soteriological narrative.’”

Read the rest here.

So, it is now not just that sola fide, ”the article by which the church stands and falls” according to Luther, is essentially called a "heresy" by a pre-eminent Evangelical theologian in his magisterial work on the theological history of the Church's teaching on justification.  In his latest edition, he takes the legs out from under the Evangelical argument that dikaioō means "declare righteous" which is absolutely essential to their argument that they have justification right and that accordingly they bear the true Gospel to the world.  They don't get  justification right, and are therefore bearers of an un-apostolic Gospel. 

Happy Reformation Month!

The Rev'd Fr. Robert Hart, Staying Classy and Getting Fact Checked

Snopes: Fake Photo Shows Gun-Toting, Pro-Trump 'Food Warriors' Ordering at Chick-fil-A


"However, the truth was someone generated the photo with the help of an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool. In other words, the picture was fake."

Well done, Robert.

The Rev'd Fr. Robert Hart, Second Amendment Scholar

Well, it is clear that neither Fr. Hart nor Mr. Michals has ever read the US Supreme Court cases US v. Miller (1939), District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), which speak clearly and authoritatively on the meaning of the Second Amendment, and particularly to the meaning of the "militia", and to the relationship between its prefatory clause (“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”) and its operative clause - what Hart calls the "subordinate" clause - (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”). 

Unfortunately for Hart, as the Court in Heller noted in its primary holding, the operative clause is not logically subordinate to the prefatory clause, and neither was it viewed as such in American legal history:  "Private citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia." 

Concerning the logical relationship between the two clauses Fr. Hart thinks he understands, as David Kopel and I observe in a footnote in our 1997 Maryland Law Review Article, Communitarians Neorepublicans and Guns Assessing the Case for Firearms Prohibition:

“Stephen Halbrook observes that the Second Amendment may be stated in the form of a hypothetical syllogism: ‘If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state . . . then the right to the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ (HALBROOK, supra note 148, at 85).  If, for argument's sake, a civilian ‘well-regulated militia’ is no longer ‘necessary to the preservation of a free State,’ it does not logically follow that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms’ may be now infringed. To so conclude would be to commit the fallacy of denying the antecedent. In illustrating the fallacious logic entailed in denying the antecedent, an analogous but simpler syllogism may be used: ‘If it is raining, there are clouds. It is not raining. Therefore, there are no clouds.’ The conclusion is obviously fallacious, for there may in fact be clouds even though it is not raining.

The Cato Institute's Sheldon Richman parses as follows:

‘Approaching the sentence as grammarians, we immediately note two things: the simple subject is "right" and the full predicate is "shall not be infringed." This, in other words, is a sentence about a right that is already assumed to exist. It does not say, "The people shall have a right to keep and bear arms ...."That has important implications for the opening militia phrase .... Gun opponents often argue that if the opening phrase does not apply-if, say, the standing army takes the place of the militia-then the right to keep and bear arms is nullified. That view would require a willingness by the framers of the Constitution to agree to this statement: If a well-regulated militia is not necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall(or may) be infringed. But it is absurd to think that the Framers would embrace that statement. Their political philosophy would not permit them to speak of a permissible infringement of rights .... The term infringement implies a lack of consent ....If [the Framers'] concern had been to keep the national government from limiting the states' power to form militias, they might have written: "A well-regu-lated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the power of the States to form and control militias shall not be limited.’"

Hart is merely parroting the tired, old argument of liberal hoplophobes, discredited by the corpus of "standard interpretation" law review articles and now officially by the US Supreme Court, that Americans have the right to keep and bear arms ONLY in connection with service in the militia. 

More Fun at Low Church Anglican

"Call no man father!" (Matt. 23:9)

1. Explain the verse in context, and how that application of the verse proves too much; that it is about humility, not honorifics;

2. Explain that this is one of Jesus' many rhetorical devices in the Gospels that do not admit of a strict literal reading;

3. Explain how St. Paul referred to himself as a "father" to his flock;

4. Explain how there are instances in other parts of the Bible where the faithful call men "fathers";

5. Explain how the Ordinal prompts addressing the bishop as "reverend father in God;"

6. Await their reply:

"Call no man father!" (Matt. 23:9)

Seriously, it's like trying to reason with children.

A Reader Writes. . .

concerning this post:

"I watched the video but was not overly impressed. The one constant I see when the Eastern apologists discuss icons is that they almost never use Scripture to justify their position. They almost always resort to philosophy and Greek metaphysics. An occasional nod to a Scripture verse may be made but only to stretch it way beyond what it is saying, such as trying to justify the bowing and reverencing of images with the fact that God ordered certain images made in the Temple and on the Ark.

It always goes back to authority and "What says the LORD"? There is absolutely nothing in Scripture that would justify what the Eastern "orthodox" have developed in terms of iconographic theology. But they simply don't care. Mind you I have no problem with icons per se nor even showing them respect. But the "orthodox" have gone to such extremes as to pretend that they are necessary for salvation and for safeguarding the doctrine of the Incarnation. There is even an akathist service TO the Kursk Root icon. Are these extremes Apostolic in nature? Are they Biblical? I doubt it."

My answer:

The argument for the making and veneration of icons is a theological argument, yes, but so is the argument on which the Nicene Creed is based. Neither the word "trinity" nor "homousios" is to be found in the New Testament, yet we use these theological terms to summarize what we believe to be the biblical teaching about the relation between the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Fr. Stephen DeYoung drives this point home compellingly near the end of his debate with Gavin Ortlund, who essentially argues as you do.

Public Service Announcment

Fr. Robert Hart is just as unhinged as ever.

Stay tuned to this channel for future regularly-scheduled announcements benefitting the tradtional Anglican communiuty.

Fun at Low Church Anglican

Notice that the Admins at Low Church Anglican have restricted my comments.  (See bottom of second and third images.)  Joe Mahler is one of them.  There's a historical reason why they do so.  They don't want sustained interactions with educated critics, especially Anglo-Catholics, but an echo chamber.  It speaks volumes.

Are Icons Idols? Responding to J.I. Packer's Iconoclasm

 This video eloquently presents an absolutely devastating reply to J.I. Packer's argument against icons in his popular book "Knowing God", to Puritan iconoclasm, and to the Homily Against the Peril of Idolatry, which unfortunately wormed its way into one of the Church of England's official Formularies. Packer once referred to himself as a "neo-Puritan". Thankfully, and for good reason, the Church of England and her offspring (except for a tiny minority of jurisdictional holdouts) stopped requiring clerical subscription to the Articles of Religion, which incorporates the Homilies.  This video not only demonstrates the pathology of Calvinist iconoclasm in particular, but of Calvinism as a theological worldview.

I can't begin to tell you my thoughts on how excellent this video is. In a mere 30 minutes, this fellow summarizes the depth and fullness of the Eastern Orthodox theology on icons. It is one of the best things I've ever seen, and I plead with you to spend 30 minutes to watch it.

Hark, He Wears The Purple!

Here is pseudo-Anglican forensic bloviator Donald Philip Veitch, donning his new purple clerical shirt.  Don is the principal mover and shaker behind the creation of a new Presbyterian microscopic sect claiming to represent true Anglicanism.  To Don, a presbyter is a bishop, and bishops wear purple. Forget about the fact that this belief stands squarely against the Catholic religion of the prayer book and all of standard Anglican divinity.  To be an Anglican bishop, to be authorized to wear the purple, one must typically be consecrated by three other bishops, who were likewise consecrated.  Don was never consecrated a bishop.  Never.  His claim is both preposterous and heretical.

If you want to watch this certifiable nutburger and his fellows in action, hang out at Low Church Anglicans, Prayer Book Anglican, his public Facebook page, and his YouTube channel.

And as I've warned, if you've come to this blog as an inquirer about Anglicanism and possibly thinking about becoming an Anglican, stay far away from these guys.  They are poison.

Preposterous Presbyterians with Prayerbooks Pontificating about Other Presbyterians

This is the latest from Jameson Overton, one of the pseudo-Anglican nutburgers who frequent Low Church Anglicans and other online fora of theological ill repute.  Overton was recently ordained a priest - uh, sorry, a "presbyter" - in the Reformed Episcopal Church.  I've had the distinct displeasure of bantering with him on a number of occasions, mainly at Prayer Book Anglican, but this afternoon he blocked me at Low Church Anglicans simply because I laughed at his post, linked below, with an emoji.  (Touchy, touchy, son, and I can still see you.) 

Anyway, he was bloviating about noted Presbyterian theologian, author and blogger Doug Wilson.  If you're a trad conservative and don't read Wilson, you should.  He's one of the best out there.  Here's Overton:

"Doug Wilson is being platformed by conservative reactionaries who are more interested in having a society full of white-washed tombs than in seeing sinners come to life in Christ.

Here is a post from another group. I am sharing it here to show why, despite him being a "conservative", he is a heretic who does not know the gospel. We should pray for his repentance, not only for his own soul, but also for the many souls he leads down to their eternal deaths."

The shrill tone and mindless verbiage say it all with respect to Mr. Overton's mentality, if we can even call it that since there's clearly little if anything "mental" going on in his cranium, but read the rest of his post if you have the stomach for it.  Essentially, he hates Wilson because he is one of those "heretical" Federal Vision (FV) Presbyterians, you know, the ones who actually do have some appreciation for the Catholic Faith.  He posts a pic of Wilson in hell:


Well isn't that special?

As I've written here before, if you're just starting out investigating Anglicanism, trust me as a *pastor* when I tell you to stay away from these guys.  They are toxic and demonic, their ostensible love of Christ notwithstanding, and they have perverted the Biblical and Apostolic faith.  That is precisely why they hate FV.

Mr. Jameson Overton:

Cole Simmon's Rejoinder to Will Witt

The North American Anglican (TNAA) has published Cole Simmon's rejoinder to Will Witt's reply to Cole's article published July 12, 2024.

JD Vance, Religious Populist

Matthew Schmitz, writing at First Things:

He believes that America remains more religious than people acknowledge—it’s the elites who have changed. “If you look at one measure of religious participation, just church membership in 1980 versus 2023 versus 1840, the country is not substantially less religious today . . . than it was 150 years ago.” Yet there is a profound obstacle facing anyone who aspires to be unapologetically both Christian and American. It is the conviction, shared by many of our elites and increasingly endorsed by the government, that anyone who dissents from progressive ideas on gender and sexuality is an enemy not only of progress but of the United States. Underlying this belief is an identification of America with the ideals represented by the Progress Pride flag.

Vance’s religious populism stands in opposition to a simply creedal conception of the United States. “We have to recognize that America is not just a principle. It is a group of people. It’s a history. It’s a culture. And yeah, part of that story is that people can come and assimilate,” Vance says. “But if your attitude is that . . . the only thing you need to become an American is to believe that with a little bit of hormonal therapy a man can become a woman, then you’re making it so that massive numbers of your own country either need to be re-educated, or need to be cast out of the political community.”

Vance says that the identification of the American project with progressive ideals is “a recipe for colonizing your own people.” When American leaders justify foreign conflicts in the name of LGBTQ rights (as has happened with the war in Ukraine), they are articulating a casus belli against much of their own population. The result is “militaristic adventurism overseas, war with your own people at home.”

Religious populism was not magically conjured by Trump. It has come to the fore because religious believers are increasingly excluded from important institutions. It is a response to social and legal developments championed by progressives and endorsed by America’s leading institutions. Justice Samuel Alito acknowledged these forces in February when he observed that a decision to exclude potential jurors who objected to same-sex marriage from a court case involving a lesbian woman “exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges, . . . namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.”

So long as religious believers are disfavored for their beliefs by important American institutions, they will skew anti-institutional and populist. They will seek to challenge the elite and its orthodoxies. Of course, certain religious groups in America—notably Catholics and Jews—have a long history of exclusion. But now a similar situation is faced by traditional believers of all kinds, including Protestants. If they want to exercise the duties of citizenship rather than withdrawing from politics altogether, they will need to look to leaders like JD Vance.

A must read, however, is Vance's account of his conversion to Roman Catholicism, "How I Joined the Resistance."  If you want to see the depth of thought exemplied in a man who may be the next Vice-President of the United States, and possibly President of the United States in 2029, you need to read this.  It's a long read, but worth it.

The Left's "Bad Faith" Documentary on Christian Nationalism

Just watched "Bad Faith" yesterday, the laughable spawn of some outfit called Heretical Reason Productions, whose web site speaks volumes.  I urge my readers to have a look at both.  As to the documentary,  they will discover that it is a tissue of half-truths, glaring omissions of pertinent facts, ridiculous juxtapositions, straw man fallacies, biblical and theological misinterpretation, innuendo, hysteria, political grievances and self-congratulatory posturing. The footage featuring the preposterous religious lefty William Barber II, a political activist posing as a Christian pastor, was particularly hilarious.  A left-wing hit piece, in other words. Like this article, which mentions the documentary and whose unhinged author sounds very much like a certain Continuing Anglican priest we all know.  But I digress.

While ostensibly a commentary on the rise of Christian Nationalism, the film targets the American right generally.  To the leftist, there is really no difference between political conservatism and fascism.  Remember that they called Ronald Reagan a fascist.  And realize that the question of who the real "fascists" are, and consequently where the true threat to liberty is found, is a live one.

As recently outlined here and elsewhere on this blog, the left was birthed in political violence and has a demonstrable historical record of it.  Rightist political violence, historically, is largely a reaction to it and to its depradations of Western culture.   We are still awaiting for confirmation of initial reports that arson is the cause of the First Baptist Dallas fire, where Robert Jeffress, who is one of the Christian Nationalist demons named in "Bad Faith", serves as senior pastor.  If it is arson, we know who the culprits will likely be, just as we know who the culprits likely are in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.   Even if it isn't, the potential for the kind of left-wing violence we observed a few years ago is increasing in spades, and films like "Bad Faith" won't help to stem this rising tide of political violence in the United States.

On the Left and the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, etc.

"As the Secret Service covered him with their bodies, even putting their hands protectively over his head, as they helped him to the car, the crowd could be seen turning to the media in the back and giving them the finger. They knew. They knew who did this. The left did this. The Democrats did this. The gutter press did this. The #NeverTrumpers did this.

What did they think would happen after months and even years yelling at the top of their lungs that Trump is Hitler, that Trump will be a dictator, that Trump is an “existential threat to our democracy?” Violence was inevitable.

Just a week ago, Biden said Trump needed to be put in the “bullseye.” In 2022, he said Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the “soul of our country.”

Last November, The Washington Post ran a column that said “every conceivable measure” must be taken to stop the “end of our democracy.” It said, “When a marauder is crashing through your house, you throw everything at him—pots, pans, candlesticks …” It said the next Trump administration will be filled “with Hitler’s gauleiters.” What did they think would happen?

Go to the NeverTrump Bulwark website founded by Bill Kristol and see they are nearly constant in their shrill cries that Trump and not just Trump but you and me are out to end “Our Democracy™.” What did they think would happen?

All of this has been nonstop for years. What did these people think would happen?

Tonight, a dumb reporter asked Joe Biden if this was an “assassination attempt.” What a stupid question. What did the reporter think this was? And then poor mush-brained Biden said he did not have enough information to answer. Could Biden and his men not hear the gun shots? Could they not see the blood coursing down President Trump’s face?

What we know is that someone tried to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump. Reports are that the shooter was using a long gun from a nearby rooftop. How did the Secret Service allow that to happen? He killed at least one person, and grievously injured two others. Some nutters on the left are saying it was a hoax. It is reported that a crowd at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood erupted in cheers when it was announced Trump had been shot. And now Democrats are saying there is no place for political violence in this country. But they did this.

We know political violence in this country comes almost exclusively from the left. Americans may have had a bad day on January 6th. A protest took place that turned into a riot. But it was a leftist who gunned down conservative lawmakers on that softball field. It was the left that burned several of our major cities. It was the left that laid siege to the White House and injured more than 100 cops. It was the left that tried to burn down a federal courthouse in Portland. It was the left that burned down a police station in Minnesota. It has been the left assaulting Jews on American streets and on college campuses. The left has promised violence and they have abundantly delivered. And they delivered today."

Chronicles Magazine, Donald Trump is a Legend

In related news, here's Fr. Robert Hart's take on the assassination attempt.  Hart is a priest canonically resident in the Anglican Catholic Church, Original Province (ACC).  As his Facebook news feed shows, his case of Trump Derangement Syndrome is off the charts.  Even his brother Addison Hodges Hart takes him to task for his latest.

The left was born in political violence.  The history of rightist violence is largely a story of resistance ("reaction") to that political violence from the left.   I wonder why Hart doesn't seem to know this, or if he does, why he doesn't seem to care. 

Oh, and regarding Hart's assertion that "actually, he was bleeding because of glass shards":

Snopes: False.

Confronting William G. Witt's "Icons of Christ"

New and philosophically interesting critique from Cole Simmons writing at The North American Anglican (TNAA) of Witt's Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. The Rev'd Matt Colvin penned a 4-part review of Witt's book at TNAA shortly after its publication in 2020: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.  It is far more comprehensive than Cole's and is more of a point-by-point refutation.  

These articles in TNAA are mainly reflective of the ongoing battle between pro-WO and anti-WO factions in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), and as such they represent a struggle between Anglo-Protestants. Witt is Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Trinity School for Ministry, an ACNA theological seminary.  Witt refers to himself and his pro-WO faction as "Reformation Christians", and Rev'd Colvin is a consummate Anglo-Protestant priest (er, "presbyter") and biblical scholar in the Reformed Episcopal Church, which is a founding member of and ecclesiastical partner with the ACNA. 

While these refutations of Witt's apologia are incisive and encouraging, they naturally presuppose, as I've intimated, a Protestant theological methodology and not a Catholic one.  For that I recommend the Rev'd Dr. Manfred Hauke's Women in the Priesthood?: A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption. Hauke is a Catholic priest and has taught at the Universities of Augsburg and Lugano.  This book is, hands down, the best and most comprehensive treatment of the issue in print IMHO.  From the description at Amazon:

This book should become the standard reference in the debate about women's ordination. The author cites copiously from American as well as European sources and presents the feminist position in the words and categories of the leading feminist authors. But, for the first time, the whole question is placed in the comprehensive context of anthropology, biology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. You will find a balanced presentation of the profound consistency of the Catholic Church's teaching and the practice concerning the role of women in the Church and in society. Written in a scholarly, yet very readable manner.

And from Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, an assessment with which I totally agree: "Undoubtedly the definitive work available on this important topic."

There is no Anglo-Catholic treatise that I know of that matches the breadth and precision of Hauke's work, so I would refer any Anglo-Catholic to it, as not all Catholic roads lead to Rome.  However, the scholarly responses to the un-Catholic monstrosity of womens' ordination from Anglo-Protestants at TNAA and elsewhere are welcome complementary sources.

The English Reformation: Stick a Fork In It, It's Done

Just finished reading this book.

When N.T. Wright calls Thomas' work "theologically explosive", that is an understatement. If, as I believe, the New Perspective guys are right, and if it's the case that these earliest of Christian sources reveal a view of the "works of the Law" that is consistent with the NP, then stick a fork in the Protestant Reformation, English and Continental, it's done.  That means, inter alia, that the Articles and Homilies are indeed nothing more than "historical documents" that should not enjoy confessional status, and are therefore not binding on Anglicans, as the Protestant soteriology reflected there, in the final analysis, finds neither apostolic nor patristic warrant.

Note especially the highlighted comment from the conclusions section: