Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself). By David Zahl. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022. 208 pp. $16.38 (cloth), $20.99 (paper). We all have an anthropology (i.e., the study of what it means to be human). But do we have an anthropology that keeps us exhausted, overworked, anxious, and…
Scanning through the documents pertaining to the Anglo-Prussian Bishopric of Jerusalem recently helped to focus my mind on what one might call the proto-ecumenical movement. The nineteenth century was an age of rampant denominationalism, but it also saw the first tentative moves toward ecumenicism. Unlike twentieth-century ecumenicism, which at times sounded like an exercise in…
In his treatment of Article XV, Browne makes the following comment on the relationship between Adam and Christ: Adam had a liability to sin, and therefore was susceptible of temptation, before he was actually guilty of sin, and so defiled and corrupted by it. And Christ, who was the second Adam, who came on purpose…
Wading through Lethe. By Paulette Guerin. Athens, GA: FutureCycle Press, 2022. 84 pp. $15.95 (paper). Greek mythology held that the waters of five distinct rivers ran through the bowels of the underworld. That Paulette Guerin has chosen as her theme the river of Lethe—forgetfulness— illustrates how pervasive has been the Christianization of paganism in the…
I learn there is to be a rare display of planets ordered in the summer sky, so off I go before the start of day in hope of seeing such a sight nearby. I come to where I view the crescent Moon with Venus to the left and Jupiter off right, but since the Sun…
We are a people groping to find our way and not very clearly being successful. There is a mechanism called “cancel culture” that is relatively new in some ways yet not so new in others. Certainly, there is a relevant sense in which Jesus Christ was canceled by his own people, and unjustly so. He…
One following the news in the Anglican Communion will know of the steady stream of persons, including clergy, who have moved to Roman Catholicism or to Eastern Orthodoxy. Fr. Alexander Wilgus thinks we have grossly misunderstood the phenomenon’s roots. The moves do not expose a weak self-understanding and feeble self-confidence in Anglicanism’s Protestant roots—traits which,…
The doctrine of supererogation is bound up with the Roman system of indulgences, so a few words should be said about the latter first. According to the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, issued by Pope Paul VI, “An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their…
Thou Shalt be Buried. By Bishop Thomas Gordon. Exemplar Media, 2022. 110 pp. $10.00 (paper). While cremation has become increasingly common in the United States, its acceptance in Christian circles is often still controversial. In this short book, the Most Reverend Thomas Gordon, presiding bishop of the Orthodox Anglican Church and Metropolitan Archbishop of the…
It was just after Ascension Day that we packed up our family and drove over the Blue Ridge Mountains, eastward into the setting sun. Our destination was nowhere, not yet a place, but some land somewhere past the Wintergreen Resort in Nelson County, Virginia. There are few places in America like Appalachia. It is the…