Luminous Christianity (3)

23 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pusey

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“Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Thus Jesus according to St Mark and St Matthew. Here is the start of His earthly Ministry, and already we are told that the Kingdom is at hand. When we pray the prayer He taught us, we ask “Thy kingdom come,” and for “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Often we think of this in an eschatalogical sense, but there is more to it than waiting until the end times when the Kingdom of God will come; it is closer to us than that. But there is one action we need to take first – repentance.

Here is the enlightenment which praying the mystery offers to us. It is through repentance that we are able to accept forgiveness and to forgive others; it is through repentance that we are healed. We hurt others, often without knowing it, although we are swift enough to point out to them when they have hurt us; how often are they as surprised by our reaction as we are by theirs? We need to be more mindful of the reality of others and not to see them solely in the light of their relationship with us. Being hard on ourselves for behaving poorly is not repentance, though it can be the beginning of it.

We know that sin separates us from God, and we can fall into the way of thinking that God is angry with us for this, so we feel guilty. Yet guilt itself can be a sin. It can lead us the way of Judas, who killed himself because of his sin; he could not imagine that God could forgive what he had done. How often are we like that? We can turn to God and confess our sins and know that this is the road to Him. If we surrender to Him and turn away from our sins, then we are indeed near the Kingdom of God.

We see ourselves differently in the Light of Christ, and the first fruit of repentance is change. We don’t just turn away from sin, we turn to Jesus, and this effects how we are with others and how we are in this world. We turn away from those things which bring pain to others, and so often to ourselves. We will slip on this path, but as with all paths, we slip less if we mind our footsteps and observe what we are doing.

Christ reveals to us what that Kingdom is like through His every act. He invites sinners to eat and drink with Him; He tells us there is more joy in Heaven over the lost sheep that is found than there is over the ninety-nine others; He tells us of the Father’s joy when the Prodigal Son repents and returns; He dies for all, not just His followers. Those who were outcasts in His society, the tax collectors, the Samaritans, the Gentiles, all these are received by Him through repentance. It is the most wonderful message to know this Kingdom of God is so close to us. But will we repent?

There is the heart of the Christian mystery. God loves us and wants us to love Him. He does not want to command obedience, neither does He want automatons. We have choice. We can grow in Him or away from Him; either way He is there and loves us. But He leaves it to us to repent and learn that the Kingdom is, indeed at hand, and we don’t have to wait for the next world.

Reformation Day

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by Neo in Faith, Lutheranism, Pusey

≈ 6 Comments

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Catholic Church, Christianity, controversy, Lutheran Church, Reformation Day

The Martin Luther window at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Charleston, SC

Today, 499 years ago, a priest (and a monk) by the name of Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of the Slosskirche in Wittenberg, All Saints Church. Some say this started the Reformation, and in a way it did. But these were things he thought the church should discuss, and this was the normal method of bringing them to the authorities attention.

And see that’s the thing, the Reformation didn’t really get going until the Roman Church excommunicated Luther, that’s when he decided he had no more choice. And I note that the Roman Church also reformed along the same line quite soon as well. Even in churches, competition is a good thing, it seems. But there were some bad consequences as well of this schism 500 years ago, such as the 30 Years War which devastated Germany.

Some people have told me that every 400 years the laity have to reform the church, and you know it does sort of seem like it. At Chalcedon in 451 we lost the Copts, In the Great Schism in 1054 the Orthodox split off from Rome, and in 1517 the Reformation got started. Well, it’s 2016 now, and all our churches seem riven by strife, What’s next? I doubt anyone knows, but I think we’d be well advised to stick pretty close together, or Islam or cultural relativism might inherit the earth. Perilous times, indeed.

So maybe it’s a good time to reiterate what it really means to be a Lutheran since Rev. Dr. Luther started this whole Reformation thing going. Mostly, we think Rome just got too involved with what we call “The Kingdom of the Left” as opposed to the “Kingdom of the Right”. To us, you were the schismatics. This article is by exegete77 writing in ”believe, teach, and confess”. it is one of the best summaries of what it really means to be a Lutheran that I have every read. Enjoy.

Over the past three decades I am often asked what it means to be Lutheran. What do Lutherans believe? What is most important? How does that work out in practice? This is just a brief introduction to those questions. Despite “popular” views, Lutherans do not follow Martin Luther. Rather, we confess the same Christian faith he did; hence we do not support everything he wrote. Martin Luther appeared at critical time in church history and had a significant influence on the entire Christian Church, but we do not “follow him,” rather Jesus Christ and him crucified. The name “Lutheran” was originally a derogatory term used by Luther’s enemies. Later, it became a term to distinguish itself from Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin, and later Arminius) as well as from the radical reformation.

Historic Continuity: “The Church has always taught…”

The Lutheran Church sees itself in continuity with the historic Christian Church throughout the ages, not something invented in the 16th century. That is, in most of our official writings (called the Lutheran Confessions), we often use the phrase “As the Church has always taught” to show that what Luther and others publicly were teaching was consistent with the historic church. We frequently use the term “catholic” (meaning “universal”) to denote the true Church throughout the ages, not in reference to the specific church body known as the Roman Catholic Church headed by the pope. This phrase is critical in understanding Lutherans, because while sometimes we look like Roman Catholics, we see the papal church deviating in the Middle Ages and onward from that historic faith. At the time of the Reformation, Luther and others continued what was done that was consistent with the Bible and the Church through the ages, but ridded itself of false teachings (especially in worship). In that sense Lutherans were “conservative” keeping that which was solid and discarding other elements. They could and did keep paintings, statures, icons, as aids to help people learn the stories of the Bible. On the other hand, Zwingli, Calvin and other Reformed leaders wanted to distance their churches from anything that looked Roman Catholic. For them, in regard to worship, they made significant alterations to the order of service and even destroyed what appeared in churches. The Reformed tended to get rid of paintings, statues, and icons. Lutherans use the phrase “believe, teach, and confess” to denote those statement which reflect accurately what the Bible teachings. In line with that, Lutherans accept the three Ecumenical Creeds as accurate statements of the Christian faith from the Bible (Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed). You can find them here.

Continue reading What does this mean… to be Lutheran? « ”believe, teach, and confess”.

One thing we should note in these times when so many try to restrict the availability of the internet and social media. One of the main factors in the success of the Reformation was the availability of a new social medium: The printing press, that spread the word of what was happening all over Europe within a few months, instead of years (if ever) as formerly.

Of course, we must have this, as well

We would also be wise to keep in mind some of the words of Pusey:

Many things will combine to wrest it from you, my younger brethren. Through one thing only can you hold it, the grace of God. New, though false, lights dazzle at the outset of life; novelty attracts ; the old faith may be pictured to you as antiquated ; a strict oneness of faith as illiberal ; the very Love of God is set in array against the Revelation of God, as though God could not mean what yet He has said ; belief in God, as He has revealed Himself, may be pictured to you as derogatory to God. “Go not after them, nor follow them,” is your Saviour’s warning as to those who shall come in His Name, and whom He hath not sent. Old must the faith be, since as soon as man needed redemption, the Redeemer was promised, and the truths of the Gospel lay implicitly involved in the revelation to Adam; and He Who eighteen hundred years ago, more fully declared it as the power of God unto salvation, changeth not. “One” must it be, for contradictories cannot both be true, and He has said, there is “One Faith,” as there is “One God ” and “One Lord.”

And since tomorrow is Halloween, maybe we should talk about that a bit as well

and

Crosposted from Nebraskaenergyobserver

Catholic Anglicans?

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pusey

≈ 72 Comments

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Catholicism, Christianity, Faith, Newman

Over on the Newmanlectures website, we have been exploring the English Catholic tradition. The Reformation was a national trauma, but it did not erase the Catholic Church in England; and there are those of us who would contend that Catholicism was not confined to those Catholics who continued to own allegiance to the Pope. I choose that form of words with care. I am not asserting there was more than one Catholic Church, but I am suggesting that the Catholic tradition was not confined to one place. There were always bishops and priests in the Church of England who believed that Christ was really present in the Eucharist, and who held all the the Church had always held – the one exception being the position of the Bishop of Rome. In this sense, the position of the Anglican Church was rather similar to those of the Orthodox Churches of the East. Reference to what the Ancient Church had held was their rule, rather than reference to the Reformers.

When it came to considering the doctrines of salvation, it was to the Creeds and the sacraments, not simply ‘faith by justification’ to which these Anglicans looked; repeantance and confession remained part of their pattern of faith; the sacrmanets were not merely symbols in the sense of not meaning anything beyond what they appeared to be, they were part of life in Christ, and they conferred Grace. They saw their Church as part of the universal Church, but, like the Eastern Churches, a branch and not a separated Church. That, of course, was not the view from Rome. But there is a difference between ecclesiology and spiritual life, and in terms of their spiritual life, men such as Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), George Herbert (1593-1633), like Keble, Newman and Pusey were always thoroughly Catholic, even though of that goodly number, only Newman felt the need to cross the Tiber.

That Catholic tradition continued into modern times, with men such as Charles Gore and Michael Ramsey. It was the one which nurtured me as a young man, and indeed, into adulthood. For many of us, the decision by the Church of England to ordain women as priests was the occasion, if not the cause, for us crossing the Tiber. I say that because in many ways it was not so much the straw which broke the camel’s back, more the outward and visible sign of an inward determination to pursue a vision of a Church which would adapt to the times even on matters where it would widen the divide with our Orthodox and Roman brethren.

In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI announced the creation of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham which made pastoral provision for Catholic Anglicans to cross the Tiber together, and in a way that allowed them to retain their Anglo-Catholic patrimony. It was one of many signs of what a great Pope he was. The Ordinariate recently launched an initiative, ‘Called to be holy‘ which emphasises that heritage and shares it with the rest of the Christian world. The Novena is one I have taken to praying, and found to be most beneficial.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us.

Compare and Contrast

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Neo in Anglicanism, Church/State, Lutheranism, Pusey

≈ 30 Comments

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Dutch Reformed Church, Evangelical and Reformed Church, Lutheran Church, Reformed Church in America, United Kingdom, United States

I was moved by Chalcedon’s remarks on his family in Among the Ruins. My family’s experience is not dissimilar. Yes, there’s going to be some church history here.

My parents were brought up in the old Norwegian Synod, which became part of the American Lutheran Church, which centered mostly in the upper midwest. For the most part these are the offshoots of the Scandinavian Lutheran churches, and became probably the most conservative part of the ELCA, as it remains to this day, which is why I still belong to it. But when they moved to Indiana, there was nothing especially close, although years later the LCA and the Missouri Synod would cooperate in quite a few things.

But they ended up in the Evangelical and Reformed Church. This was essentially the Church of Prussia that King Frederick Wilhelm III forced into existence by merging the German Lutheran and Reformed churches. As you can imagine serious followers of both Luther and Calvin were dismayed, beyond endurance. This is the church that my sisters and I were all confirmed in. To this day, the window over the door of the sanctuary of my home church reads Salem Ev. and Reformed Kirche.

When they ended up in Pennsylvania, my sister and her husband ended up in the southernmost church of the old Dutch Reformed Church. I should probably note that both had been hooked into the maelstrom of the United Church of Christ, that product of the ecclesiastical merger mania of the 1960s. Like the Church of Prussia before it, it tried to yoke oxen and horses, and found it a very balky team.

My family in Pennsylvania still belong to this church, and in fact, my sister was (and my brother in law still is) a leader of the congregation. As are my nieces, who in fact are not all that much younger than I am. But interestingly, in talking with them about various things, I have found that my nieces faith is quite shallow, they are leaders, and officers of their church but, they have a fairly shallow faith. Given my experience, I put it down to belonging to a church, that is neither fish nor fowl.

My experience is somewhat different. When I moved out here, there was essentially no UCC available, and so the choice became either Lutheran or Methodist. It wasn’t a very hard choice to go back to the ELCA, essentially it was coming home after a generation. 🙂

But you know, the ELCA is not the LCA that I knew on summer vacations as a child growing up in Minnesota, that was never a particularly conservative church, to my mind, but the corporate ELCA is on a par with (and in communion with) the Episcopal Church in America.

And so we go back into Lutheran history a bit. When the King forced that merger in Germany, a lot of Lutherans (Calvinists too, but that’s not germane to my history) felt that he was corrupting the teachings of their churches, and when civil and even criminal penalties started being imposed, a good many left. This is when Lutheranism really got going in the United States (Australia and New Zealand, as well). This is origin of the old Buffalo Synod. It drew heavily on what is called Old Lutheranism.

There was another group, from Saxony, which founded a synod based on mostly Neo-Lutheranism, which developed in reaction against theological rationalism and pietism, with an increased focus on Lutheran distinctiveness and and the Lutheran Confessions, as well as the historic liturgy. It paralleled the rise of Anglo-Catholicism and in fact is occasionally called German Puseyism. This is the origin of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Over time it became the second largest Lutheran synod in the United States.

Interestingly the ELCA, because of its full communion with the Episcopal Church, is (maybe, kind of, sort of, I haven’t yet figured out if there is an authoritative answer) in communion with the Church of England, and it shares many of its problems. As do many of the liberal churches (I would say it because of a lack of vision, in the faith and too much subservience to the state).

But the LCMS has also formed partnerships with the Evangelical Lutheran Churches across Europe and the world, which are in many cases the remnants of the old Lutheran churches in Germany. Even in the UK, where is 1896 a group of German bakers in Kent, asked Concordia Seminary in St. Louis to provide a pastor for them with assurances that they would support him. That mission has now grown to have churches in England, Scotland, and Wales, including training pastors in Cambridge.

If you know me, you know that I will likely at some point end up in the LCMS, simply because it matches better what I believe, or even what is often its subset: The Confessional Lutheran Church. A lot of the reason I haven’t is practical, the difference between five blocks and about fifty miles.

But I’m hardy alone in that yearning, the ELCA is at best flat in its membership and in many cases drying up, while LCMS is continuing to grow. That tracks with what I see in other denominations, the more demanding churches are growing while the ‘go along to get along’ ones are not. I think it more a matter of vision and the mission than anything else.

In many ways I think the development of the various churches in the United states almost makes a laboratory case for their predecessor churches in Europe, because here without state support, they have to make their case to the parishioner, That can, of course, lead to apostasy but it can also lead to real piety, depending on how well the people understand the purpose of the church, itself.

And so I continue to wonder if a good part of the Anglican church’s problem isn’t simply that it has, as the Established Church, this mandate from the state to be all things to all men, instead of a church serving only God. It never worked all that well for Rome, or in Germany, maybe it’s run it course in England as well, or maybe it simply needs to wrest control, once again, from the state and entrust it to men of vision. Because, historically, it has been one of the mainstays of the Faith, and I would hate to see it go down.

In truth, because I suspect, of Virginia’s influence on our early history, it (in its Episcopal form) has become our church for state functions as well. Where else but the National Cathedral could one have a state funeral for a Protestant?

The ‘line between truth and error’

06 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pusey

≈ 60 Comments

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, controversy, Faith, orthodoxy

The following lines from Newman’s response to Pusey’s Eirenicon bear meditating upon:

It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is ever the case in concrete matters, which have life. Life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonism and remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself, out of which they arise. Life has the same right to decay, as it has to wax strong. This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or again, you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused.

The ‘doctrine’ at issue here is the Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Pusey had done what others before and since him had done and do, they had looked at some of the popular expressions of piety, selected the ones furthest from their own cultural background and then decided these things supported the conclusion they had come in with – that the Church practices idolatry. They had done what we all do from time to time, approached the issue with our minds made up, and selected evidence which justified what we already thought. This is, a Newman points out, the opposite of how a Christian ought to approach questions.

Newman pointed out that the same Fathers of the Church who had praised Mary had been the same men who had helped establish Scripture. Protestants always struggle with that argument, and rarely, if ever, address the issue of the grounds on which they accept one part of the teaching of the Church, but reject other parts; as it can be nothing more than their own subjective judgment, that is wise of them. Like our own Bosco, they move on to some other supposed enormity.

But if there is a challenge for Protestants here from Newman, so there is to his fellow Catholics. As is the case for most converts, to see a clear line drawn between truth and error, and so Newman’s assertion about the impossibility of drawing it on matters such as devotion to Our Lady, the form of the Mass and other matters, comes as a challenge. But we should ponder his words. It is, indeed, a characteristic of living things that they grow. Some of the implications of this will form the subject of the next few postings.

Pusey: Passing on the faith

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Homilies, Pusey

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Catholicism, Christianity, Faith, love

But in our own souls, practically, Divine grace rarely operates altogether in this same order. For we are never, except through our own fault, out of Christ. God, for the most part, anticipates by His Gift the trials of elder years. In infancy, we receive the Sacrament of faith. Being then “made members of Christ and children of God,” we receive freely, through God the Holy Ghost, the first principle of that spiritual life which is afterwards to be developed.

In our childhood we, for the most part, without any opposition of a contrary will in us, receive the faith through the teaching of our parents, amid the operation of God the Holy Ghost on our dispositions and our young hearts. By the mercy and Providence of God, we, for the most part, receive the faith, before those faculties of the mind are developed, to which the
reception of the faith would be a trial. Even thus, we may see how the reception of the faith depends upon the right use of grace ; since the faith, communicated in the very same way, takes more or less deep possession of the soul, as the child is, in other respects, in his childish duties, self-government, obedience, prayers, more or less faithful to the grace of God.

Some childish unfaithfulness to grace has often laid the foundation of the unbelief of maturer years. The course of the Christian life, intended for us by God, is continual development of the grace which in Baptism we received, in “charity out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.” Even if unhappily faith is obscured in any, through the indulgence of habits, whether intellectual or sensual, contrary to faith ; if even, through marked resistance to grace or habitual neglect of it, love have grown cold, and faith have become an inoperative, historic faith, that faith, although at the time destitute of grace, because the soul has parted from grace and love, is still the residuum of past grace. The habit of faith still abides, like a body not yet dissolved, into which Christ may yet recall the soul by His life-giving word, “Young man, I say unto thee arise.”

But as is the original character of faith, such is the way in which it is maintained. If man arrived at faith through the mere use of his natural reason, accepting or rejecting what is proposed for his belief according as the evidence is or is not adequate to satisfy his natural reason, then undoubtedly it would be through unaided exercise of that same natural reason, that his faith must be maintained, strengthened, enlarged, defended ; or, if it have been unhappily shaken or lost, then, by that same mere exercise of the understanding must it be consolidated or recovered. If, on the contrary, God works faith in the soul, not without grounds which satisfy reason illumined by His Holy Spirit, but Himself acting, not simply on the reason, but on the will also and the affections, disposing, preparing, arousing, helping, illuminating, justifying, sanctifying, the whole man, then faith, being the gift of God by grace, must be retained in us through grace ; then faith will grow with the growth and enlargement of grace ; or it will wane through whatsoever lessens grace ; and if faith be impaired or destroyed, it cannot be demonstrated into any one by mere force of argument, nor can we recover it for ourselves by mere diligent study of human proof, but it must be regained by regaining the lost grace of God.

Pusey: The effects of the Fall

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Homilies, Pusey

≈ 1 Comment

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Christianity, Faith, sin

The fall perverted the whole of man’s nature ; not his sensual appetite only, nor his will, nor his under standing, but his whole being. In its outward act, it was rebellion against God. In its motive, it was pride and ambition ; “Ye shall be as gods.” In its effects it was a poison running through his whole physical nature, and rousing his passions into a phrenzied rebellion against himself. And henceforth sensual pleasurestupifies his judgment ; passion disturbs it ; pride and vain-glory distort it ; self-will blinds it. There is not one way only to blindness of spirit. Every thing blinds the mind of man, which is not according tothe Mind of God. It was then a poor and insufficient plea, when it has been said in behalf of this or that unbeliever, that he was, what is called “a moral man.” It was a short-sighted theory, which was anxious to point out this or that flagrant moral defect in the lives of unbelievers.

The fallen spirits have no sensual temptations. Our first parents’ sin was spiritual sin. Whatever may have been the inward life of the Pharisees in our Lord’s time, (and He Who “resisteth the proud ” often leaves them, so that they fall into disgraceful sensual sin) on the whole, they lived strict, obedient lives. ” After the straitest sect of our religion,” says S. Paul, ” I lived a Pharisee.” Our Lord Himself contrasts their lives, at one time with the Publican, at another with the Publicans and harlots ; yet, on both occasions, only to warn them, that the grosser sins of the Publicans and harlots did not keep them so hopelessly alien from the Kingdom of God, as the more subtle sins held back the Pharisee. The love of the praise of man made faith impossible. ” How ‘ can ye believe who receive glory one of another, and seek not the glory which cometh of God only ?” “They loved the praise of man, more than the praise of God.”

Pusey: Reason & Faith

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Homilies, Pusey

≈ 9 Comments

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Christianity, Faith, God, Grace, sin

So far then, from a highly intellectual age being a favourable atmosphere for the Gospel, intellect, like every mere natural power, is, unless in so far as Christ subdues it to Himself, in necessary antagonism to the Gospel, both as a whole, and in its parts. The special temptation of high intellect is, to think that, because by its natural powers it understands natural things and the visible creation, therefore it is qualified, more than others, to understand things above nature, and the Mind of the Creator. And therefore it will judge, what should be the evidence, the character, the extent, the contents, the effects of a Revelation from God ; what sort of miracles are to be expected and are conformable to reason and to the Nature of God ; what should be the structure or clearness of prophecy ; what doctrines are consistent with the Nature of God ; what God could or could not have taught ; whether He could have dispensed with His own laws, or ordinary ways of working ; what duties He could have imposed ; what He could have praised; what rational beings, good or evil, there can be, higher than man ; what the intercourse or influence of such agents towards man could be; whether a relation, which the natural intellect of itself would reject, could come from God ; what dealings with His creatures are consistent with love or justice in God ; whether the Eternal Existence of God, in Himself, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is true or self-contradictory ; whether the Unchangeable God can hear prayer.

Natural intellect judges, for itself, all these and many such questions, allowing freely to God what ever does not interfere with itself, granting to God that He is greater than itself, allowing its obligations to Him, that He has made it, and set it in a course wherein, without help from Him, it may attain, as it thinks, to its ultimate perfection. It treats with Him much as one might with a more powerful sovereign; it owns, in some sort, its dependence upon Him, yet so as to maintain an independence of its own. It will own what it cannot help, and will claim for itself all which it is not forced to yield up. It selects from the Attributes of God, what it wills to acknowledge; and what it will not, it denies. Its own will is its measure of Almighty God. And so it claims to judge, to criticise, to condemn, in the Revelation of God, whatever it assumes to be out of harmony with the Mind of God, because its own has nothing akin to it. Its God then is, in truth, its own creation; its Creator is the creature of its own mind. It invests Him with dignity, intelligence, benevolence, marvellous powder, wisdom of contrivance, as a sort of great Architect of the visible world. It will acknowledge gladly all which it likes, so that it is not required to acknowledge any thing which it does not like. But it has no idea of One Incomprehensible Being, containing all things, but contained by none; the Rule of all things, but measured by nothing; of Whose very Being, in that He is a Spirit, man can have no thought ; the Mysteries of Whose Nature cannot contradict man’s reason, because man has no capacity by which to estimate them; Whose “judgments are a great deep,” in which human reason cannot wade ; Whose ” Wisdom is unsearchable, and His ways past finding out.” It has no awe, no reverence, no subjection. It admires, not adores : it is pleased with its own intelligence in admiring, and worships itself and its own wisdom, instead of shrinking into its nothingness in the Presence of its God, to hearken to what God will say to it.

We think it strange now, that, because this earth has its moon rolling around it, and we see the sun and stars in their seeming circuit, man should have thought that sun and stars also circled around this small earth, as the centre of the whole visible creation. And men do not think it strange, that man’s reason should be the centre, around which all things seen and unseen should revolve ; so that from it, all things should be beheld in their due harmony and relations ; all should be understood by reference to it ; all should be measured by it, the Infinite by the finite. And well were it, were it only the Infinite ! But the very ground of the ignorance is that, not contemplating, not meditating, not adoring, not bowing down itself and all its powers before its Maker, its Deity is a mere inanimate abstraction, not He Who Alone Is, and Who, in His Infinite Love and Goodness, made us out of nothing, to have our being in Him.

Pusey: Faith, Reason and fallen nature

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Homilies, Pusey

≈ 38 Comments

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Christianity, Faith, God, Grace, sin

Thus, it is almost a received formula on the evidences of the Gospel, that the province of reason is antecedent to that of faith ; that we are on grounds
of reason to believe in Revelation, in other words, to receive Faith, and then on the ground of Faith, to receive its contents, which are not to be contrary to
Reason. True, as is urged, since reason is a gift of God, it will not conflict with His other gift, Revelation or Faith. But then, what Reason? Reason, such
as Adam had it, before the Fall, unwarped by prejudices, unswayed by pride, undeafened by passions, unallured by self-idolising, unfettered by love of independence, master of itself because subdued to God,
enlightened by God, a mirror of the Mind of God, reflecting His Image and likeness after which it was created; a finite copy of the perfections of the Infinite ? Truly, no one would demur to the answer of such
an oracle as this. A work of God, which remained inharmony with God, must be in harmony with every other creation of God ; for both would be the finite
expressions of the one Archetype, the Mind of God.

But that poor blinded prisoner, majestic in its wreck, bearing still the lineaments of its primaeval beauty and giant might, yet doomed, until it be set free, to grind in the mill of its prison-house and make sport for the master to whom it is enslaved, this, which can not guide itself, is no guide into the Mind of God.

More truly might that saying be reversed, and it might be affirmed, that the province of reason is after faith, not before. Reason, unaided, cannot even penetrate into the sphere of the objects of Faith ; nor can it, in any case, discern their substance or measure them by earthly laws. But reason, healed, restored, guided, enlightened, by the Spirit of God, has a power of vision above nature, and can spiritually discern a fitness, and correspondence, and harmony in the things of God which, through faith, it has received and believed. But to what end to measure by a crooked rule ?

It was then a poor and insufficient plea, when it has been said in behalf of this or that unbeliever, that he was, what is called “a moral man.” It was a short-sighted theory, which was anxious to point out this or that flagrant moral defect in the lives of unbelievers. The fallen spirits have no sensual temptations. Our first parents’ sin was spiritual sin. Whatever may have been the inward life of the Pharisees in our Lord’s time, (and He Who “resisteth the proud ” often leaves them, so that they fall into disgraceful sensual sin) on the whole, they lived strict, obedient lives. ” After the straitest sect of our religion,” says S. Paul, ” I lived a Pharisee.” Our Lord Himself contrasts their lives, at one time with the Publican, at another with the Publicans and harlots ; yet, on both occasions, only to warn them, that the grosser sins of the Publicans and harlots did not keep them so hopelessly alien from the Kingdom of God, as the more subtle sins held back the Pharisee. The love of the praise of man made faith impossible. ” How ‘ can ye believe who receive glory one of another, and seek not the glory which cometh of God only?” “They loved the praise of man, more
than the praise of God.”

Pusey: The End of All Things

04 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pusey

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Christianity, Salvation

Revelation 21:5-8

And he that sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.…

In one word did our Lord upon the Cross sum up the whole of man’s salvation and His own eternal purpose for our redemption, “It is finished.” In one word doth He here, revealing Himself as He sitteth upon His. throne in glory, sum up the whole of time, “It is done.” This one great word, in a manner, stood over against, and carries on and enlarges the other. “It is done.” What a Word is that! As it sounds, what a world of busy restlessness it seems to cut off at once. Well may it! For it is the end of the whole world itself, of all but God. We are, mostly, ever looking forward, and this “Voice turns us round at once, and bids us look back. We are, too often, living in an earthly future; then, all of earth will he past and “done.” Now men are looking on; and hope is as that glass which enlarges things distant; look back, and all shrivels and contracts into a speck, and can no longer fill eye Or heart. The past preacheth stern truth, if we will but hear. It is real It has come to an end; and so in it we may see things as they shall be in the end. “Call no man happy before his death,” said once a wise heathen We judge of things as they tend to. wards their end; contain, in a manner, their end in themselves, secure it. Wall. laid schemes ye call those which in every step look to, advance towards, their end. Worldly wisdom is that which gains its end. And shall not Divine wisdom be that which gains its own unending end, the end of all ends, the Everlasting God? This, then, can be the .only measure of the value of things in time, what shall be their value when time itself is gone? Even a heathen wast taught of God to say, “The whole life of the wise is a thinking on death.” That only is wise to be done which in death ye shall wish ye had done. Seasons of sorrow or sickness or approaching death have shown persons a whole life in different colours from what it worse before; how what before seemed “grace” was but “nature”; how seeming zeal for God was but natural activity, how love of human praise had robbed men of the praise of God; how what they thought pleasing to God was only pleasing self; how one subtle self-pleasing sin has cankered a whole life of seeming grace. Wherever, then, we may be in the course heavenwards, morning by morning let us place before ourselves that morning which has no evening, and purpose we to do that and that only which we shall wish we had done when we shall see it in the light of ‘that morning, when in the brightness of His presence every plea of self-love which now clouds our eyes shall melt away.