Tag Archives: religion

Jots and tittles

01 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by in Audre, Bible, Faith

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I have great respect for those people who can argue the minutiae of the Bible. I’m not one of them. I guess I’m pretty much the Cliff Notes kind of Christian. But I can’t help being impressed by those folks who have delved so deeply into the Bible that they are able to discuss even the tiniest bits of the Bible with great intelligence, insight, and scholarship. Sigh … I’ll never be one of them.

On the other hand (you knew that was coming), sometimes it seems hopelessly ridiculous to me. Like, somewhere along the line, those great minds have missed the point or aren’t seeing the forest for the trees.

At one time, I was doing some light research for a piece I wanted to write and wandered the internet to see what I would find. It can be quite a journey, following links. It can lead to brightness or deep, dark places. But mostly, depending on the traveler, there’s a lot of brightness to be found and I discovered a deep conversation and discussion and debate about this sentence: Luke 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. The big debate was about … the comma!

Now, I get it; two different things are at work depending on where the comma is. If one reads the verse, as shown above, Jesus is saying on that particular day the thief will be with Him in paradise. However, if the comma before ‘today’ is supposed to go after the word ‘today’, that means that on that particular day, Jesus is telling the thief that at some time in the future he will be with Jesus in heaven. The discussion included mention that the original texts don’t have punctuation and so the translators decided how the statement should read.

I’m laughing at the memory; I spent a lot of time that day, following the debate, following the thought processes of these detail oriented people. And then it occurred to me – what difference does it make if the thief goes today or some day in the future? The important message is – the thief was going to be in paradise with Jesus! He recognized Jesus’ kingship and Jesus welcomed him. Isn’t that why the story is important? So that folks know even those who have committed crimes, done bad things, can come to know Jesus, follow Him, and hope for heaven?

Jots and tittles. I’m a ‘big picture’ kind of girl.

 

Black Lives Matter

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Faith, Persecution, Politics

≈ 36 Comments

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Yes, they do, as do all lives, but let us not use the latter to diminish the claims “Black Lives” makes on us. Historically, migrant people often suffer discrimination. That is not because some “system” is inherently racist – we cannot blame it on something impersonal; it is because mankind is tribal and our nature is a fallen one. The history of “Black Lives” in America is different from in the UK; in the former the ancestors of most “Black Lives” came in slave ships, suffered horrendously, and the marks of that left a deep scar. But that is not to say that “Black lives” in the UK have not also been the subject of discrimination. I am old enough to remember being shocked by some of the words used by adults which I won’t sully the internet with. That this situation is being weaponised by some for left-wing causes should not, and I hope will not, detract from the need to pay attention to the real problems suffered by racial minorities. I missed the protests about the way the Chinese treat their minorities, but I am sure they were equally vociferous within China, although I suspect statues of Chairman Mao may stand a while yet.

What ought to concern us all is the weaponisation of a good cause. That carries with it the potential to polarise society and make things worse. Wherever people feel there are things they are not allowed to say, they do not forget those things, and they are never exposed to the reasons why they might, on consideration, change their attitudes, they become fixed; nay, they become a virtuous cause which dare not speak its name. The most obvious example in the UK is what became the Brexit movement. When what Nixon once called “the silent majority” got a chance to speak, it did so with a vengeance. It may, to some of us, have spoken incoherently and with a force which surprised us, but that is on us; we never asked, we were never told, and so we made ourselves deaf to the feelings of others. We must try to avoid a repetition of this with “Black Lives Matter.” It is about far more than statues, and those focussing on it help the rest of us miss the point, unless we are careful.

Macaulay was correct when he wrote: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” We might now rephrase this, as there is something more ridiculous, that is “woke Twitter.” If we proceed from the assumption there is one “correct” way of thinking and that all who disagree are bad people with evil motives, we end by creating not a society in which everyone thinks alike, but one in which everyone speaks alike; group-speak is not quite the same as group-think, although those in the solipsism usually mistake it for such. It does not last, and when it goes, it usually involves violence and a sharp move to the opposite extreme.

The origin of our ills is us, as St Paul reminded the Romans long ago:

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

There is but one cure for this, and it is not group-think or group-speak. Indeed, here our own Faith risks being misused as a cover, as Jesus warned us when He spoke about how we should conduct ourselves, not trumpeting our virtues or excoriating the sins of others. We are all sinners, and that stone we wish to cast should, if we have self-knowledge, remain in the dirt where we found it. St Paul knew there was but one answer to this sin operating within us:

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord

Law can do only so much, and is, of course, necessary given our fallen nature. But only Christ can warm our hearts within us and make us whole. Before he is “cancelled” let us remember that old ex-slaver lost in the mire of sin, John Newton, who received Christ and turned from his sin to campaign against that very slavery of which he had been a victim and in which he had been a protagonist. He rightly bade us sing of that “Amazing Grace” which had saved a wretch like him.

So, as the culture wars take this new turn, and as good causes are weaponised by some for ends which others will contest, let us stop a while and remember we are on a road where we all get hurt, and that only the love of God saves; but let us rejoice that it is bestowed on all who turn to Christ. Though our sins are scarlet, yet shall we be washed clean – black, brown, yellow and white. In Christ there is no division, in Him we are all one. If we can live that as though we truly believe it, then we shall do better, and we may even begin to apprehend why “Black Lives Matter” is something to which we might all, as Christians, attend with prayerful enquiry.

The Modern Age in arms?

09 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by in Faith

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Near the beginning of the Sword of Honour trilogy, Evelyn Waugh allows his main protagonist (it will hardly do to call him a ‘hero,’) Guy Crouchback, a moment of epiphany when the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is revealed: ”The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.” Suddenly the world is the way the Crouchback, the scion of an ancient Catholic family, needs it to be. The moral complexities, the ambiguities attendant on everyday life, the shabby little compromises, all these were swept away – there was a righteous cause once more.

Within two years, Crouchback’s hopes were dashed. As he struggled back to Egypt from the wreckage of a doomed attempt to save Crete, the news came of the German invasion of Russia:

“He was back after less than two years’ pilgrimage in a Holy Land of illusion in the old ambiguous world, where priests were spies and gallant friends proved traitors and his country was led blundering into dishonour.”

The “Crusade” moment may have brought peace and clarity to Crouchback, but in the real world from which he was escaping, it led his country close to invasion and defeat. By June 1940 Britain and her Empire stood alone against a Continent divided between German and Russia. Had it not been for the invasion of Russia, it is hard to see how Britain, even with American help (had that come) could have won the war.  It was the very event Crouchback so deplored which brought the downfall of the evil of Nazism. But it resulted in the triumph of Communism and its dominance in Eastern Europe for half a century, and its pernicious influence remained a global threat into recent times.

The lesson is clear. What we were brought up to believe, that the good guys win because they are the good guys, and however great the odds against them are, they can be surmounted. That is not true.

We can, if we like, comfort ourselves with the thought that as Christians we can survive in some pure bubble of like-minded Christians, but that is not only a delusion, it is in itself a betrayal of the Great Commission. Jesus did not say “Go thou and take the Benedict option” – we have an imperative duty to share the good news. We live and exist in a world which is not as we would want it to be; but we always have.

One constant feature of human thinking is to posit the existence of a golden age. It happened just before we came to consciousness. So, in one version of this, there was a time of tight, faithful Catholic communities, when the age-old Mass ruled, priests were diligent and pious, and all was well with the world; then came Vatican II and the world began to go to hell in a handcart. Put so baldly it is clearly nonsense, unless one posits (as its proponents do) a Satanic conspiracy to destroy the Church. Had that golden age existed, then its inhabitants would surely have been able to have resisted?

We cannot, as Christians, retreat from the public square and try to keep ourselves pure. We are bound to stay and bear witness amidst the messiness and brokenness which are the inevitable concomitants of what we believe about the human condition. Do we find those things in our own Church? Of course we do, why would we not? The temptation at such times is to think oneself a better Catholic than those we think are less orthodox than us; that too is part of our own brokenness. It is unsure that people are saved by their orthodoxy; it is certain that our own uncharitableness and want of love will have a bad effect on us.

That should not be read as meaning belief does not matter; it does. But it does mean that we need to get things in order. That we disagree with our fellow Catholics is natural. That we express it in terms which imply that we are entitled to consider them as agents of Satan is to elect ourselves to a position that can be held only by God. We cannot judge as He can.

Christians have a duty to engage in the public square. If I were to make a complaint, it would be that we have been too willing to to speak about the moral components of our faith to the world whilst not emphasising its roots in Christ. We believe in loving each other because we are one in Christ, which is the same reason that we engage in good works, in education and in politics. We witness in what we do and say. What, to one, is righteous zeal is, to another, an act of bigoted self-righteousness. It was and always will be so until her comes again in Glory.

Crouchback’s experience is that of the world. There is a clarity in the enemy being clear, but if within our own self there is a satisfaction in that because it makes our live easier, that is not necessarily the road that God intends us to take. God is love and the world is as it is. That expresses the task before us. To believe both parts of that sentence, and the make the world a better place for our work and witness.

 

God and Mammon

08 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by in Abortion, Education, Faith

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The parallels between the world into which Christianity was born and this world are obvious; the major difference is the legacy of the Faith, and the witness still borne to it.

The Roman world recognised no sacred nature inhering in being human: abortion; infanticide; slavery and a material view of life were the norm.  As we move away from our inheritance, it is not surprising to see some of those things reappear. What we want from our life is the only standard by which we judge; as long as it does not go against the Law of the land, we can have it. “Justice” redefines itself as “what is legal” and “what the State allows.” As we have developed the concept of “human rights” around the same principles, it follows that my right to choose trumps some intangible “right to life.” If necessary we can use the flexibility of language to aid us here. You might congratulate a woman on her forthcoming baby, and the shops have cards to that effect; but medically a foetus is a clump of cells that can be removed if the bearer of the lump of cells so wishes.

So Mammon wins out. We can, as Christians rightly lament the plight of those who do not have food, shelter or safety, and we can work for their good, knowing it coincides with the good of the wider society. Nice though the fantasy of charitable giving providing for all the needs of the needy, in practice if the State does nothing then some people starve. What is wrong with the mega-rich in our Society is not that they earn too much, it is that they pay too little in tax. We have obligations as members of a State, and those do not come free. So, for all its imperfections, the British National Health Service ensures that no one is driven to bankruptcy as a result of being sick, nor are they denied the best help because they cannot afford it.

Properly viewed, taxation can be the State’s way of doing what is needed for those who need it most. Where we used to pay tithes to the Church, we pay taxes to Mammon. It is perhaps the uses to which Mammon puts those taxes that we might direct our objections.

As Christians we recognise we have a obligation to others. We have not gone down the route of those early Christians who held all goods in common, but taxation is the way that has been developed to ensure some money goes into a common coffer.

The Churches can and do work with the State in many of the areas mentioned: health; education; social services; welfare; all are spheres where we work together. As the State in the West has begun the process of withdrawal from areas where it was over extended, the Churches have tried to occupy some of those vacant spaces.  Anyone who had worked with a Foodbank or a community group knows that Christian make up a sizeable proportion of those who give their time and efforts freely.

We give freely; but do we give too freely? Do we mistake a common concern for a common motive and common ends? To what extent do we, as organised Christian groups do what any other interest group would do, namely promote our own agenda? If we don’t, then why not? Have we become frightened that we will be accused to doing what everyone else does – that is to work towards our own goals? Or have we convinced ourselves that the goals are then identical?

In the case of tax, it is Mammon who will decide where the money goes, but when it comes to areas where the Churches are putting in money derived from the faithful, the faithful might like to start behaving like shareholders and asking what value has been added to the goals of the Church by the investment made?

Mammon and God can work together well enough for the good of God’s people, but the latter demands that the Churches ensure that good is indeed promoted and beneficial. I doubt we do that often, and am sure we do not do it systematically. Perhaps we should try harder?

 

A return to arms

09 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, Lent, Politics

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newman_john_everett_millaisThere has been much else to occupy my time this last eighteen months, and, as explained in my last posting here, the press of business in my new vocation has been such that it would have been unfair to my university to have offered it less than 100% of my time. But evenings and week-ends still exist, and as we approach Lent, I want to use some of that time to return to the themes of this blog.

At its best it has offered a voice not heard elsewhere. It has been too reactionary for the liberals, and not reactionary enough for the reactionaries. I don’t take that as a sign that the positions taken here are, therefore, in some way ‘right’, but simply that they are a voice worth the speaking.

There is much to be gloomy about. I do not suffer from what has been called ‘Trump derangement syndrome”, which is common in the circles in which I usually move. I am a fan neither of the man, nor his style, nor, in so far as he has them and I understand them (both great caveats) of his policies; but nor do I see him as a species of anti-Christ for those who need one. If he is anything, he is a symptom of a political system where the insiders had long given the impression that they regarded the mass of the population as ‘deplorable’; Mrs Clinton simply said what had, until then, been unsaid. I take rather a similar view on Brexit. Give the electorate the impression you regard them as uneducated idiots and then give them the chance to vote in a way that allows them to give you a kicking, and then express surprise. It could only happen in a democracy where the ties that bind are already loosening.

That is my main worry. Whatever it is fashionable to believe, the basic values on which Western Civilization were founded we Christian ones; explicitly so. We believe in the value of each individual not because of some abstract theory of “rights” – that came later – but because each individual is a child of God; it is that sense, and that sense alone in which we are “equal”. It is that sense alone which matters. It matters because it means we never can, nor should, instrumentalise the human person. Whether it is turning people into cogs in a machine in work-setting, or killing the unborn or the elderly for being “useless”, Christianity rightly rejects such an approach to the human person. The princes of this world, under any system of government or economic system, have a tendency to do this, and one of the great gifts of Christianity is to have rebuked them for it. It is unclear who will do this in the absence of a Christian presence.

There is a deep irony in a leading Catholic Churchman appearing to tell us that China is an exemplar of Catholic Social teaching. One of my colleagues has said all that needs to be said on this egregious nonsense here.  To use his words:

Catholic social teaching demands freedom of conscience, freedom of association and the protection of life from conception until natural death. These are not optional extras and nor are they part of the moral teaching of the Church outside its social teaching. These aspects of the Church’s social teaching are fundamental because they have an impact on education, healthcare and the whole structure of political and civil society as well as on economic and social relationships.

That is true of Christian social teaching; there is nothing in that with which Archbishop William Temple and Anglicans of his hue would have disagreed.

We live in a world where on all sides these freedoms are being questioned in the name of identity politics. The idea, once risible, that one should be able to call for another to be silenced because they offended you, is now commonplace. For some of us, this was where we feared that laws prohibiting certain types of speech might lead. There is no satisfaction in having been proven right.

In a Society where people have been schooled to think that truth is relative, it is only natural that individual feeling should have become elevated into the standard by which to judge others. There is not truth, except that all truth is relative, says modern man and (naturally) woman. But for the Christian that cannot be true. There is a Truth, and it is a person, not a concept. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Light, and we cannot (though we often do) relativise that.

We are all sinners. We are all children of God. We are all fallen. In Him all can rise. The old Adam (and if you must, Eve) is rampant in us all. We all of  us do not what we will, but what we often do not will. For this there is but one remedy: Christ Jesus. He reaches out to each of us where we are. each of us comes to Him as we have the Grace so to do.

As the clouds lower over us, amidst th’encircling gloom, as the Blessed John Henry put it, we have but on Kindly Light. Let us pray that He illuminates our hearts, mind and spirit, in the Lent that approaches.

‘He rose again’

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Salvation

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Christianity has a content. Its most important content is that Christ died and rose again from the dead to redeem us; if we do not believe this, then, as Paul said, our faith is in vain. There are clever theologians who have constructed whole edifices of scholarship providing explanations of the things modern intellectuals find uncomfortable about Christianity; but such attempts raise questions about the content of our belief.

The Resurrection either happened or it didn’t. Anyone who thinks that the first Christians were channelling their spiritual experience of Christ needs to re-read the account of St Thomas and his doubts. The NT goes out of its way to make clear that the resurrection was a physical reality. It does so because clearly there were those at the time who denied it and sought more philosophical explanations; it is not by such that we are saved.

The world has always had trouble with Jesus. It had it whilst he was Incarnate in the flesh in this life, and, just when it thought it had disposed of him by crucifixion, he came back and has given it trouble ever since. He tells us things we do not want to hear: we are sinners; we need to repent; if we don’t we shall go to hell. All of this makes us uncomfortable. There are three reactions to this: the orthodox Christian one – that we should indeed repent and mend our ways and follow him; the other is that we decline to believe any of this Bronze-age nonsense; the third, and in many ways more worrying one, is to explain it all away as being not what most Christians have believed for most of history.

It is most worrying because of the impulse behind it. People want to have Jesus, but on their terms. They want a Jesus fit for North Oxford or Islington salons; they want a Jesus who would be at home in the senior common room; they don’t want to be laughed at by their sophisticated friends; they want a Jesus worthy of them. In this, they play God. God created us in his image; these men recreate God in their own, and in worshipping him, they are actually worshipping themselves. But they do more. They tend to make other people feel insecure. This is not what the Apostles did. Christianity is either something that we can all grasp, or it is nothing; whatever these sophisticated philosophical explanations might be, they have a tendency to empty Christianity of its content.

I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Three in One and One in Three. I do not believe in the prime mover, the secondary mover and the inspiration, or any other set of variants on the opening of the Creed. I believe Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. I do not believe that the Apostles had some kind of collective group-think; I don’t, because they didn’t. What I do not believe in is the superior wisdom of modern man, the church of good fellowship without Christ, or the life of the philosophy to come.

If Jesus did not rise, physically rise, then the whole of Christianity is a bad joke and should be discarded.

The Road to Schism

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith, Pope

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Diocorus had been Cyril’s secretary at Ephesus, and had been less than keen on the Formula of Union, thinking that it had conceded too much to the language of the Antiochenes.  As Theophilus and Cyril had before him, Dioscorus interfered in the affairs of the patrirch of Constantinople. In his case by supporting Eutyches, an archimandrate in Constantinople, who insisted on talking about the ‘one nature’ of Christ.

St Cyril had used the formula mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene –  that is ‘the One nature of God the Word Incarnate’, and for Eutyches and Dioscorus what mattered was to stress the one nature of Christ. In a synod at Constantinople in 448 Eutyches was condemned for his heresy, but in 449, in at attempt to decided whether Eutyches had been wrongly condemned, Theodosius II had convened a Council at which Dioscorus had presided.

It was not, as we have seen, usual at this time for Popes either to summon or attend a Council, but, as at Ephesus, the Pope’s views had been sought, and Leo had sent a letter to the Constantinople hearing which he asked to be read at Ephesus (where the new Council was held in 449).  Leo’s Tome, to which we shall come in the final post on this subject, was an attempt by a gifted theologian to resolve the problems caused by the disputes. Dioscorus did not, however, allow Leo’s letter to be read, and concentrated on condemning the Constantinople decision. The Council found Eutyches orthodox and condemned the Patriarch, Flavian and those who had agreed with him. The Council was a resounding success for Alexandria. Dioscorus had, it seemed, succeeded beyond even the achievement of Cyril.

In fact Dioscorus had pushed matters too far. Flavian had put in an appeal to Leo, and protests against the overweening arrogance of Alexandria were now loud.  This was the third time in a century that Alexandria had asserted its ancient right to be regarded as the second patriarchate of Christendom by humiliating the upstarts of Constantinople. Theophilus had had St John Chrysostom condemned at the Synod of the Oak in 403, Cyril had done the same with Nestorius in 432, and now, it seemed, Disocorus had repeated their triumph. But where Rome had supported Theophilus and Cyril, Leo refused to recognise the results of the Council, calling it a ‘Robber Council’ . Whilst Theodosius II lived, Leo had made no headway in getting another one; that changed with his death. Pulcheria and Marcian convened a Council in Chaldedon, just across the Bosphorus from the imperial capital.

As Bishop of Rome, Leo, had been consulted by all parties, as Celestine I had been before Ephesus in 432; what did this imply in terms of the status of the Bishop of Rome? The difficulty here is the insistence of many chroniclers on interpreting it to fit their preconceived ideas: Roman Catholics would say it showed the authority of Rome was crucial; Orthodox historians would say it showed the Bishop should be consulted, but since he had not convened the Council, it showed he was not regarded as essential for its results to be accepted; and the Protestants? They have tended to ignore this period. In fact what the Council and its history showed was how the Papacy was developing. Athanasius, Theophilus and Cyril had all made sure they consulted Rome. The See of St Mark naturally looked to the See of St Peter – and beside that, both Sees had an interest in curbing the ambitions of Constinantinople. If Dioscorus thought that this would see him through, he was to find out otherwise at Chalcedon.

Atonement: a Good Friday meditation

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Atonement, Easter, Faith

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It is not fashionable in polite Christian circles to talk about judgement. That, we are told, implies a God who is capable of wrath. In which case, one wonders what Good Friday is actually about? We know God is love, men say, and therefore He does not require a propitiation. God is love, says the Bible ,and therefore he provides a propitiation. To take away the notion that Christ is the propitiation for our sins is to empty the Bible of its import, and to rob Christ’s stoning sacrifice of meaning. As one author put it many years ago:

Nobody has any right to borrow the words ‘God is love’ from an apostle, and then to put them in circulation after carefully emptying them of their apostolic import. . . . But this is what they do who appeal to love against propitiation. To take the condemnation out of the Cross is to take the nerve out of the Gospel . . . Its whole virtue, its consistency with God’s character, its aptness to man’s need, its real dimensions as a revelation of love, depend ultimately on this, that mercy comes to us in it through judgment. (James Denney, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Expositor’s Bible, Hodder, 1894, p. 221f.)

The notion that God reacts to wickedness by in effect saying: ‘Oh well, don’t worry, I will love you and forgive you anyway’, belittles His love for us. What Father could be indifferent to the suffering of a child? Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal, God watches for us far off, ready to embrace us –  but first we must repent. That is what God is looking for. But the evil that sin has done needs to be redeemed, as we do, and so we get the supreme sacrifice this day marks.

On the first Good Friday, Jesus fulfilled the words of the prophet:

He was wounded for our transgressions
and bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that brought us peace
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one to his own way;
And YHWH has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah 53:5-6.)

Our sins were laid upon Him. As St. Paul told the Corinthians: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.The author of Hebrews says: Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. St Peter tells us: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. He died for our sins.

There are many theories of the atonement, but only we moderns have managed to pretend we don’t need it. It is sin which angers God, and in His love for us He sent Christ to bear our sins. Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s justice. ‘One died for all, therefore all died,’ he wrote in 2 Corinthians 5.14; and thus, seven verses later, ‘God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,’ he concluded seven verses later, ‘so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (5.21). And it is within that argument that we find the still deeper truth, which is again rooted  in the Old Testament: that the Messiah through whom all this would be accomplished would be the very embodiment of YHWH himself. ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Corinthians 5.19).

Theories of the atonement may vary, but they have been there from the beginning. It is sin which arouses God’s wrath, and we have sinned. We can (and do) argue over who was saved in this way`, but I prefer the plain reading – Christ died for us all. He suffered there for you and for me – for all who will receive Him. Those who chose not to receve Him, well, they make their choice and must abide by it.

Good Friday is our day of Judgement before the Last. We who were lost are found, we who deserve naught but chastisement receive mercy, we are redeemed in that precious blood. We gaze with awe upon the Cross through which we have received salvation.

Christians?

07 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Blogging, Faith

≈ 29 Comments

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One of the things most commonly said to me by way of criticism of Christians is that they seem to have a hard time getting along with each other; or, as Bosco here often puts it, they say ‘my church is better than yours’. It is natural that someone belonging to a church should think that – indeed, if one pauses for a moment, how astonishing would it be to argue that one was in such and such a church because one thought it in some way inferior to others!

This little reflection was prompted by some characteristically forthright comments from ginny, in the comments section of my last post. Let’s parse it. She begins where I would begin:

Jesus Christ founded a Church. He stated He would do such when He said, “thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church….” He spoke to a man, St. Peter, in front of the other Apostles, witnesses to God swearing to do something in the future that all would see and appointing St. Peter the head of that Church that He would and did build. All the Apostles gathered knew His intent and acknowledged these facts in the way they lived their lives as the first Christians in the Church whose “birthday” is the first Pentecost. Jesus swore that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church and they haven’t for 2,000 years. These are just some of the facts.

Thus far, thus good.  She goes on in equally confident vein, moving from ‘facts’ to what the current POTUS might call ‘fake facts’:

 
King Henry VIII founded a church. It is called the Church of England, the Anglican Church and a few other names, including Episcopalian. Its “birthday” I reckon is the the date of the Act of Supremacy in 1534. Quibble if you will about the date, it is still a good 15 centuries AFTER the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven and the fall of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles at Pentecost. There was no such raining down from Heaven of the Holy Spirit upon King Henry or his court at that time. God did not found the Church of England – a man did – Henry VIII, King of England.

Why is this inaccurate? It is a partisan interpretation, offered by Roman Catholics who, quite naturally, opposed what Henry was doing. But did Henry set out to ‘found a Church’? No, and even were ginny more learned than she is in Henrician studies, she would be unable to find a single document which states what she asserts with all the confidence of someone who thinks they have a ‘killer fact’, when in fact they have damp squib. Henry set out to reform the Church, a task prompted, certainly, by needs of his own, but at no point did he think he was founding a Church. In the nineteenth century the Vatican declared that Anglican orders were null and void, but then, of course, one might have expected that. But does that mean that the Roman Catholic Church takes the view that its members are the only ones entitled to the name of Christian? The answer is not what I suspect ginny thinks it is, and so I quote from Dominus Iesus:

17. Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches. Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.
On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church. Baptism in fact tends per se toward the full development of life in Christ, through the integral profession of faith, the Eucharist, and full communion in the Church.”

So the Church takes a position of mercy here. There is only one True Church, but there are Churches (the Orthodox) which are not in communion with that Church; this does not mean the Orthodox Church is not a Church. There are other groups of Christians who, unlike the Orthodox, have not preserved the essentials of a valid Church, but these ‘ecclesial communities’ contain Christians.

The polemicist divides, the Church seeks to unite. We win the hearts and minds – and souls – of no one by assuming a position of superiority in such matters. The Church is the field hospital for sinners – and since that is all of us, its doors stand permanently open.

 

 

 

 

 

With thanks

22 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Faith

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I do not often write personal posts, and this is one of the few, and it is not about me but about a friend whom I shall call R. R is one of the brightest men I know. He served his country in the armed forces for some years before moving into civilian life and taking a PhD, after which he entered the academic world where his life-experience put him, it would be fair to say, somewhat at odds with the usual ways in which academics do things. R liked to see results, he liked to be know why we were doing things and wanted to be able to calibrate the results; where was the data? Intellectually he was entirely untouched by groupthink. In a collectivist profession, he was an individualist. In the end he tired of it and went to do other things with his life. This was, I thought, academic life’s loss. On a personal level, because it meant I saw less of him, I was upset; though from his point of view, I could see, entirely, why he’d done it.

One of the areas where we had respectful disagreement (R was a gentleman to the core and had no other sort of disagreement) was my Christianity. He could see, historically, what Christianity had contributed to the history of Western Europe and to its value system, but beyond that, it eluded him. He was not an atheist who felt any need to attack or undermine Christianity, or who felt hostility toward it; but nor could he see why anyone might be a Christian.

Imagine, then, my surprise, a few days ago, to receive from him an email telling me that he had converted to Christianity and was now, with his family (a wonderful wife and two marvellous children) attending an Evangelical Alliance Church near to where they live. We have not, yet, had an opportunity to talk about this, but he thanked me, inter alia for recommending this site, and says he has found it very useful as a new Christian. My delight is threefold. R is simply one of the best men I know, a man of searing integrity who would rather suffer financial and personal loss than compromise his integrity. He is also a man who has his own ‘thorn’ as St Paul called his own ailment. So that He should have found Christ is simply a source of huge pleasure. It has been transformational, he says, and there seems to me a rightness in that. It is right that such a man should, in the encounter with Christ, find his world transformed. And that thought that this place has been useful to him, is all the justification I ever needed to keep running it.

So, R, welcome, and I know I speak for all the shades of Christian witness present here, in expressing joy that you have passed from darkness into light. My pleasure for you and your family is unbounded, my old friend, and I look forward to our being able to expand our conversations into this new area for us.