Among many self-professed traditionalists and apologists, the newly sainted Cardinal Newman is the fount for their rhetoric and argument. Often considered unassailable against “Protestantism,” Newman’s ghost haunts many well-read and historically aware Protestants. His oft-repeated quip “to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant” often leaves the non-Roman (or, nowadays, non-Orthodox) a…
Reading in Ryle’s Knots Untied, in the chapter on regeneration, it is interesting to see what Ryle says are the marks of regeneration. He uses the First Epistle of John to outline these marks, and here is part of what Ryle says about the first mark of regeneration: Reader, I invite your particular attention to…
Last spring, as lockdown orders went out to American cities and states, many prominent Christian voices equated masking, social distancing, and staying home with the command to love neighbor, and the refusal to do so as tantamount to indifference to the lives of others. As the pandemic has rolled on, other church leaders have decried…
AMONGST the manifold duties that Almighty God requireth of his faithful servants the true Christians, by the which he should that both his Name should be glorified, and the certainty of their vocation declared, there is none that is either more acceptable unto him or more profitable for them, than are the works of mercy…
(the day Wallace Stevens wrote a sonnet at his day job) Today is Surreptitious Sonnet Day, feast of St. Wallace in the poets’ church. Writing on paper, I will not betray my brief defection to the sharp-eyed search of bosses and their minions. (I do NOT trust the blonde secretary on my right). To tell…
Introduction A friend once said to me that “all theological debates go back to Prolegomena.” Namely, what is our justification for what we believe? What is our measure of truth in matters of faith? How can we know what God has revealed? These Questions are vital for those in the Anglican Communion. We have “Anglo-Catholics,”…
Divided We Stand: A History of the Continuing Anglican Movement. By Douglas Bess. Berkeley, CA: Apocryphile Press, 2006. 291 pp. $20.95 (paper). “Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us…” (Luke 1:1, NKJV). Those words have never been applied to the…
In this article, I thought I would take the prerogative of a catechist for a moment. Even good bishops need to be catechized. After all, they are the chief catechists of the Church. For the past several years, I have served the Anglican Church in North America as the chair of the Committee for Catechesis….
“Self-deception is nature; hypocrisy is art.” Mason Cooley The most charitable take I can possibly provide for last week’s statement from the GAFCON Primates is that they are merely self-deceived. Such meetings provide ample reason to be charitable towards one’s friends. I can imagine that no one wanted to call his brother an apostate, much…
Union with Christ: Salvation as Participation. By Jordan Cooper. Just and Sinner Publications, 2021. 246pp. $24.00 (paper). When I first began to listen to podcasts, Anglican-specific shows were hard to find. This dearth of content from within my own tradition led to my first exposure to confessional Lutheranism, primarily through two shows: Issues, Etc. by Lutheran…