Treasuring the Prayer Book, treasuring Calvin

And we most humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

The Order for the Ministration of the Holy Communion, 1662.

O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed ...

The Second Collect at Evening Prayer.

She [the Christian] understands herself to be enrolled in God's great school of sanctification, and so understands that her primary task, precisely as a discipline, is to learn. Accordingly, she is active and vigorous, awake and striving, but her basic, underlying mode of being is not acquisitional, not trying to obtain God's gifts by her own good works, but rather receptive, making the most of what God provides, living with confidence into a destiny already appointed and prepared. In other words, precisely because her ultimate destination is established and understood, her governing task as she moves along is rather to live in and alongside God in Christ and the Holy Spirit, and so to be continually formed and reformed, strengthened and corrected, renewed and sanctified at every turn ...

Seen in this light, a disciple's entire life may be recast not as an act of achieving and acquiring over against God, but rather as a hospitable act of receiving from God, responding with God, and so living in God. And in the end, for John Calvin, this means living a doxological life.

Matthew Myer Boulton, Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (2011), p.145.

RW: And coming back to that theologian we both rather treasure, John Calvin ...

Rowan Williams interviewing Marilynne Robinson for The Living Church.

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Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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