With sunlight on his plumage, noble stance, he’s fully grown, a handsome specimen, ideally formed, by some design or chance— exemplar of the avian citizen. He’s quite alone; he wants no company Immobile, his attention occupied by possibilities I cannot see below, he rules the grassy berm, with pride, you’d say. For him, it is…
In his introductory book on Thomas Aquinas, Edward Feser contrasts medieval intellectual inquiry with modern scientific methodology in the following way: The medieval approach to knowledge was constituted by “a search for wisdom, understood as knowledge of the ultimate causes and meaning of things, in light of which one might improve one’s soul and prepare…
A young philosopher went every day To watch a seamstress toil at her machine, Where she’d sit alt’ring clothes, a fine array, For those too over-grown or those too lean. Until, at last, because of all he’d seen, As if awoke from prayer, he raised his head, And grabb’d her Singer in a fit of…
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. It is a formula so familiar to Anglican worshippers, occurring with such frequency in the course of any BCP order of service, that its significance…
Three days before the mystery of Whitsun A large tree across the road cracked in half The wind too much for its dried trunk As two men brought hedge clippers and a saw, Insufficient in tackling the mess, Looked for some time but finally left it Branches loosely strewn, uncut and ungraved Like an homage…
An Unexpected Mentor: A Baptist’s Appreciation for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer In May of 2017, I began my studies at a Baptist seminary by taking a course on eighteenth-century British Evangelicalism. While we spent most of our time examining the lives and impact of figures such as George Whitefield and John Wesley, the…
A mother to her daughter Gazing out over the water: ‘Back up you come, honey.’ I would not be without The love that puts paid to doubt For lust nor money. My sense of you is thorough As church bells rouse Hillsborough And the children play – Like the sudden certitude That saved us from…
the significance of the use of the Apocrypha in Tillotson’s preaching On September 13th, 1689, King William III appointed a commission of bishops and theologians “to prepare such alterations of the liturgy” as would enable “the reconciling, as much as is possible, of all differences among our good [Protestant] subjects.” On the same day, one…
Thank you, Steven McGregor, for taking the time to read and review my Orthodox Anglican Identity, for caring about Anglicanism, and for challenging me to think even more deeply about our beloved Anglican tradition. I’m glad to see that Steven has picked up on the structure of the book, as well as some of its…
Metaphysics in the Reformation: The Case of Peter Martyr Vermigli. By Silvianne Aspray. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 176 pp. $80.00 (cloth). Attempting to discern a systematic approach to metaphysics in the Reformation quickly runs into a problem, namely that the Reformers generally did not treat metaphysical questions as such in their writings. As…