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The Third, the Youngest Son in Fairy Tales
His soul a glacial lake of deep humility, The third will sacrifice his only mite of bread When roadside witches beg, for he’s agreeable And no encounter mars his cool tranquility Or makes him lose all faith and wish that he were dead— Not talking wolf or other unforeseeable And fabulous inhabitant of fairy tales,…
Trueman and the Reality of the Inner Life
In his books, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and Strange New World, Dr. Carl Trueman presents a compelling intellectual history of contemporary identity politics. From Rousseau to Marx to Judith Butler, Trueman outlines how the evolution of “the notion of the self” gave life to expressive individualism, the sexual revolution, and our…
Final Perseverance and the Thirty-nine Articles [Commentary on Browne: Article XVI (2)]
The self-evident focus of Article XVI is the possibility of repenting from post-baptismal sin and, to an extent, the nature of “sin against the Holy Ghost.” Yet it is in the context of this Article, rather than Article XVII (“Of Predestination and Election”), that Browne chooses to discuss extensively the doctrine of final perseverance: The…
The Hope of Evangelical Union: The Telos of Anglicanism
In early America, flush with the chaos and wonder of the Great Awakenings, there was a creeping hope (as absurd as it is retrospectively) in the Episcopal church. Bishops and laity embraced this Evangelical tide in its best forms. Its hierarchy, historical rootedness, formal liturgy, and irenic Reformed disposition made the Episcopal church appear as…
Is Anglicanism Catholic or Protestant?
“Fools rush in where angels dare to tread.” – Alexander Pope, An Essay in Criticism Entering into the virtual (and, I hope, “real life”) debate over whether Anglicanism is Catholic or Protestant seems a little like an illustration of Pope’s epigram. But since I’ve already manifested the foolishness (or is it audacity?) to attempt a…
The Sanctus: Bigger on the Inside
O how sweetly the voices resound there when all the Holy Ones sing the praises of God saying: sanctus Thus we also praise the Lord on earth whom the holy angels praise in the highest saying: sanctus You alone make clean from unclean cleanse us, as long as we are in the world because you…
The Conundrum of Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost [Commentary on Browne: Article XVI (1)]
The pernicious doctrine opposed by Article XVI—that deadly sins committed after baptism cannot be forgiven—is rarely encountered in our dissolute age. If anything, we are more likely to fall into the opposite error of diminishing the seriousness of sin and the damage it inflicts. Yet tender consciences, suffocating beneath the burden of grievous sins, are…
If You Begin
If you begin a lullaby, You’ll know what words, what tune. The harder question, though, is why, Which—like a red balloon Floating along, as evening comes, On soft, pale purple air, Just out of reach of laws and sums, Unanswered—hovers there. The red balloon floats there alone, Dark seeping in from shade. No wonder we’re…
The Daily Grind
The alarm blares as I slide off the bed and somehow make it into the shower – nearly blind without my glasses and halfway sleep-walking with my eyes closed as I turn the shower on. My routine begins. It mirrors the daily lives of so many Anglicans across North America and beyond. Before anything gets…
On the Immaculate Conception [Commentary on Browne: Article XV (2)]
Browne’s Exposition originally appeared in two volumes, the first volume—which ended with his discussion of Article XV—being published in 1850, a few years before the Romish doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854: We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed…
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