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Flaming Tongues: On the Need for Creeds
There is a tendency among our evangelical brethren to see the creeds as distractions from true, Biblical Christianity; a human addition that is non-essential at best and a “vain philosophy” at worst. I will grant that the concern is noble. They fear going beyond the scriptures, and they are right to do so. This voice…
The Meaning of Merit De Congruo [Commentary on Browne: Article XIII]
While the Articles only mention the concept of merit de congruo by name in Article XIII, Browne explains the term earlier in his commentary on Article X: [The school-authors] thought…that some degree of goodness was attributable to unassisted efforts on the part of man towards the attainment of holiness; and, though they did not hold…
An Anglican Way for the Healing of the Asian Generations
As a son of Chinese immigrants in America, I read with interest an article by David Choi at Mere Orthodoxy, “Becoming an Asian-American Church.” Anglicanism is an international family of autocephalous national churches, and our post-Reformation experience of adaptation to local, non-English cultures goes as far back as the 17th century, with successes and failures….
The Purpose of Good Works [Commentary on Browne: Article XII]
The necessity of good works for Christians is clearly established in Article XII: good works “do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith,” we are told, “insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by the fruit.” The necessity spoken of here is a logical…
Anglican Catholicism and its Critics
Every time an Anglican converts to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, from lowly American deacons to English bishops, a story is told by way of explanation: Anglicanism, once a proud bastion of purely Protestant doctrines and practices, was hijacked by sacerdotal pretenders beginning in the Oxford Movement, and now, downstream from sham midcentury liturgical reforms, Anglicans have…
Spark
Glow, gentle canticle, in the endless ether— ring radiant across the radius of curse, flow faster than lashes, ride with rigid grasp. The hollows gape and holler as you flash in the shallows, a holy sheen holding steady— they didn’t know about you and the new brine we breathe.
The 1928 and Cranmer’s Shape
As I have noted previously, Cranmer’s Eucharistic liturgy of 1552 had a distinctive shape – Law-Gospel-Repentance-Supper-Thanksgiving – which was retained for most Anglican rites down to the middle of the twentieth century. The main, and for almost two hundred years the only, exception was that of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which was a hybrid of…
Infant Baptism: A Treatise in Defense of Infant Baptism, Written in the Scholastic Style – Part III
Practical Application Having discussed the reasons for infant baptism, as well as notable arguments against it, and the orthodox responses to those arguments, it remains to be seen why such a work as this treatise is necessary, or at least expedient, and how its content applies to our current ecclesial context. Our practical applications for…
The Propriety of “Conditions” for Justification [Commentary on Browne: Article XI (2)]
During the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became common among Anglican divines to refer to works as a “condition” of justification. Alister McGrath traces this development to the fact that “the idea of justification sola fide came under suspicion, perhaps reflecting a growing concern about its possible links with antinomianism.” Hence figures such as…
Emotion and Doubt: Experiencing the Divine at a Temple, a Cathedral and the Creation Museum
The most strange emotion I’ve ever felt in a church is something I’ve come to coin as “Spiritual Whiplash”—the feeling of being swept up in the grandeur, emotion, and beauty of a spiritual experience, and then immediately having that drained out of you by a sudden realization that the emotion was completely disconnected from reality….
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