“No one can have God as his father, who does not have the Church for his mother.” – St. Cyprian “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.” – Proverbs 1:8 Introduction River Devereux has recently published a provocative essay dealing with several topics that should interest…
Anyone familiar with the classic 1959 science-fiction novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, will remember a central theme was Christianity’s ability to survive and rebuild even when Mankind uses the creative gifts handed down to us from the Almighty to maim and murder ourselves. In the book, atomic bombs turn on their hubristic creators in a…
“As runs the glass Man’s life doth pass.” New England Primer, 1690 The little couplet neatly tucked in the first few pages of Marly Youmans’ novel Charis in the World of Wonders haunted me as I read her tale, spun from the threads of history and fiction, Puritan mettle and poetry. I know Youmans firstly…
The axe and maul and splitting of the wood; The climbing up stone stairs above the house; The climbing down stone stairs below the house; The cutting of sasanqua blooms on the ridge; The standing straightly, shoulders back and down; The slanting path and vegetable plots; The clacking of the big 4-harness loom. Her solar…
Introduction In his response to my article on why the Anglican Reformers rejected Nicaea II and condemned the religious veneration of images, Fr. Mark Perkins showed that the debate over this subject really hinges on the deeper questions about how we as Christians arrive at the knowledge of truth. Indeed, to reject what is often…
I just finished reading Paul F. Bradshaw’s Daily Prayer in the Early Church. It was a fascinating read but it is not what I am writing about; its conclusion is the inspiration for what I am writing about. In the conclusion he issues a challenge to make the daily prayers of the church what they…
Article XIX. Of the Church. THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria,…
The Book of Esther recounts a plan to commit genocide against the Jews during their time of exile under the reign of the Persian king, Ahasuerus. The plot was hatched by one of the King’s officials by the name of Haman, who had a profound loathing for the Jews and used the machinations of government to…
Article XVIII. Of obtaining Eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ. THEY also are to be had accursed that presume to say, that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law, and the light of…
INTRODUCTION Let us give John Henry Newman, circa 1836 (before his own bishop’s rejection drove him mad for a certainty of his own devising), the first word, on the recent controversy over Iconodulia in the Anglican Church: We have indeed too often fought the Romanists on wrong grounds…we have argued the unscripturalness of image worship…