THE PROBLEM Most Anglicans I know have enough respect for the Scriptures and their traditional interpretation that when confronted with a bald Universalism — such as that presented last year by David Bentley Hart’s latest book — they have enough sense to reject it. But Universalism is a Hydra with many heads. To my great…
It’s lamentable that in our day philosophy has become, like the study of Religion, “a game that scholars play,” as one academic put it. For the Reformed orthodox of the 16th-17th centuries, however, like the Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, philosophy is the “love of wisdom.” This means it’s a way of life, as Pierre…
That was a way of putting it —T.S. Eliot, East Coker Conditional, at best. In other words. Needless to say. When all is said and done. Thinking things through. Seeing them. So to speak. A word to the wise. Better left unsaid. What isn’t golden: falling into place. The word made flesh, or was the…
Erlandson: Tracts for the Times 2.0Tracts for the Times 2.0 Announcing Tracts for the Times 2.0 Tract I: What Is Anglicanism? Tract II (Part 1): When Did Anglicanism Begin? Tract II (Part II): Where Did Anglicanism Begin? Tract II (Part III): How Did the British and Roman Churches Compare? Tract III: The British and English…
I the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost (I John 5: 7) The spirit, the Word, and the Father –Three in One – from eternity, gatheredThe earth, sky, and waters together. II the spirit and the water and the blood (I John 5: 8) The spirit, the water, the bloodBear witness on earth…
We tend to think of the Book of Common Prayer as a collection of rituals, but its original preface presents it as a means for hearing the word of God. Cranmer’s Preface recommends it with these words: [H]ere you have an order for prayer (as touching the reading of holy scripture) much agreeable to the…
Perhaps through a flattering overvaluation of the part that we play in them as clergy or scholars, we often suppose that ideas and practices prevail in the social arena chiefly through strength of arguments. Consequently, we can easily overlook the frequently decisive role played by such things as shifts in political and institutional power, by…
Most of us are familiar with the term “liberal arts,” but few of us stop to consider this curious term. Why “liberal”? Presumably not because these are the arts favored by political progressives (even if many historic “liberal arts colleges” have become quite “liberal” in that sense). Those who do attempt to attach an etymology…
P.D. James makes several morose references to the abandonment of the “old book” or “old liturgy” in the childless 2021 England of her dystopian novel The Children of Men (COM). By “old liturgy” she is referring to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, a book containing a marriage rite which stresses procreation as the first…
Let me not hasten words, as wind the leaves Of fretful autumn’s dissipating dither, Which all the rains of spring, and breath he breathes, Fail utterly to wake or make un-wither. May buds that burgeon out from tender reaching, Rooted deep in thoughts that take their time Ripen most from patience’ trammels teaching Tendrils surely,…