laudable Practice

If I had been asked some time last month, as part of the discussion around the idea of the 'Benedict Option', to define what a 'Cranmer Option' might look like, my response would have focussed on the generous orthodoxy of Reformed Catholicism, the vocation to be a national church, and common prayer gathering up into Christ life from cradle to grave.  Such an understanding could be reasonably founded on Cranmer's theological writings, his liturgies, and the nature of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana  shaped by the character and convictions of this (in  Diarmaid MacCulloch's words) "cautious, well-read humanist". A rather different vision, however, is presented by the recent post on the North American Anglican , ' The Cranmer Option '. Part of the reason for the contrast would be that 'The Cranmer Option' - despite the name - shows little interest in Thomas Cranmer's theology (and, it might be added, is also rather critical of his lit...

I turned to the 1834 Bampton Lectures of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel) - An Attempt to illustrate those Articles of the Church of England which the Calvinists improperly consider as Calvinistical - to explore his view that the Articles of Religion on original sin, free will, works, and predestination were "in perfect conformity ... with the doctrine of the Lutherans".  This was part of a wider project on laudable Practice on how the broad High Church tradition and its antecedents, from the early 17th to the early 19th centuries, identified with Lutheranism.   Laurence's Bampton Lectures, however, also pointed to another, perhaps surprising source, for a High Church critique of Calvinistic predestinarianism: the theology of Zurich as articulated by Zwingli and Bullinger.  (This was not entirely without precedent, as previously suggested .) This is particularly evident in Laurence's Sermon III, addressing Article 9 'Of Original or Birth-sin', ch...

A recent Spectator article - critiquing the 'Spiritual But Not Religious' concept - offered what could be a rather good explanation of the use of the Commandments in the Prayer Book Communion Office: There's an annoying mantra from the SBNR types that I heard ad nauseam growing up: ‘Faith isn’t about rules but relationship.’ The problem here isn’t what is being affirmed; it’s what’s being denied. To say faith is about relationship not rules makes rules sound simply restrictive. But this isn’t the way rules work in the Abrahamic faiths. God’s laws are the ways of life, grooves marked out for us to make our way through often perilous ground. Rules are not imperatives imposed upon us from without. Rather, they answer to our innate orientation to goodness. This reflects how the Commandments are presented in Deuteronomy as gift, the way of flourishing: See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy Go...

In his excellent Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (2019), Andrew Davison states:  Our reason is a likeness to the divine Logos; similarly, what we come to know gets it being and intelligibility from its participation in God.  Since reason is a participation in divine truth in this twofold way, reason is already a sort of revelation (p.318). In a footnote, Davison points to Kathryn Tanner's equally excellent Christ the Key (2010) providing "illustrative examples on this theme" from the Cambridge Platonists, noting that the agreement with his Thomist account "is striking". Tanner, quoting from the Cambridge Platonists, says that they were "bucking Enlightenment trends in the understanding of divine agency, God's working ... not identified here with exceptional, occasional interventions that interrupt the ordinary operations of natural processes" (p.279).  She quotes Whichcote twice: reason is always the means of ...

According to most contemporary Anglican calendars, it would have not been permitted to have celebrated Saint Mark's Day yesterday.  When a saint's day falls on a Sunday, the contemporary liturgist has little hesitation in telling us that the Sunday should take precedence.  When that Sunday is in Eastertide ... well, then there is no choice.  In the words of the Church of Ireland BCP 2004: Festivals falling on a Sunday of Eastertide are observed on the Monday following or at the discretion of the minister on another suitable weekday in the same week. This obviously is required when Easter Day or its octave day, the First Sunday after Easter, fall on 25th April.  When it comes to the Third Sunday after Easter, however, we might begin to wonder.  Why should the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist not be celebrated on such a Sunday in Eastertide? The very fact that Mark the Evangelist wrote his gospel, after all, is because of the Resurrection.  It is the Resurr...

It was typical Twitter Milbank : provocative, breezy, and not overly concerned with detail.  The idea that Prince Philip was resurrecting the old debates of the 1928 Book (more of which below) is, to say the least, fanciful.  As George Weigel once stated in First Things , "Elizabeth II is said to be 'low Church' in her Anglican sensibility": in other words, Prayer Book Mattins and decent Laudian ceremonial.  All the evidence would suggest that Prince Philip shared the Supreme Governor's preferences.   1662 What particularly stands out, however, is Milbank's implication that 1662 should be dismissed as somehow inferior - what he terms in a subsequent tweet "old time religion" - contrasted with the "ecumenically Catholic" 1928 revision .  To term this a 'high church' stance is absurd.  The High Church tradition from the 17th into the 19th century delighted in the Book of Common Prayer as an ecumenically Catholic liturgy precisely beca...

From an article by Canadian political theorist Ben Woodfinden : The Crown is a valuable symbol and it's an institution that demands a lot from its representatives. But the virtues the Crown demands of its representatives aren't just ones that are good for the health and legitimacy of the Crown itself, they are virtues that benefit society as a whole. The stoicism and dignity with which the Queen carries out her duties is precisely what has made her so widely respected and admired. Perhaps one reason she is so admired is that the Queen feels like an increasingly rare figure.  We live in an age when authenticity, self-expression, and emotivism are celebrated often at the expense of any other virtue. The idea that we would allow ourselves to be moulded by an institution that might constrain this is alien to many of us. Yet for our institutions, and society to flourish, we all at times need to practice these older habits and virtues. The Crown is no exception.  This account provid...

In his 1807 Bampton Lectures , Le Mesurier interestingly sides with Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation against Luther on the Eucharist: In particular Luther, from a partial adherence to old ideas, came to entertain the notion of what he termed consubstantiation: he held that the body and blood of Christ substantially existed in the sacrament, though not alone, but united with the bread and wine; so that both the one and the other were taken by the communicants. This approached so near to the popish doctrine, it so naturally led to all the same consequences, that we cannot wonder at its being rejected by Zuinglius, and other eminent Reformers (Sermon VII). This is also very evident in his summary of John 6, "the eating of Christ there mentioned, was only spoken in a spiritual and figurative sense", and his declaration that "our church ... believes a real, but a sacramental presence" (note in Sermon V).  While Le Mesurier's rejection of consubstantiation was a sta...

How, in particular, the cause of Christianity, combined as it is with the unity of the church, has suffered, and still suffers almost equally from the two extremes of latitudinarian indifference, and fanatical enthusiasm (Sermon VIII). While Le Mesurier's 1807 Bampton Lectures took aim at "the latitudinarian principle", it is quite clear that what he has in mind is not the theology of Tillotson or Burnet, by the rejection of creedal Trinitarianism and subscription to the Articles urged by "the meeting at the Feathers tavern in the year 1772".  This is very evident in his defence of the comprehensive nature of the Church of England.  Referring first to the absence of any requirement of subscription by lay people, he emphasises that participation in common prayer and the sacraments is the basis of lay communion: Now, if it were only meant by this that no over nice or captious inquiry, nay, that no inquiry at all should be made into the faith of those who come to...

The spiritual temper that characterised many Orthodox as well as latitudinarian churchmen has been called 'Tillotsonian' ... A better epithet ... might be that of 'Warbutonian' - Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context , p.185. Despite the caution shown by Nockles, it does seem appropriate to describe a significant stream of late 18th and early 19th century High Church thought as 'Tillotsonian', with 'Warbutonian' standing within this tradition.  Nockles identifies the 1807 Bampton Lectures of High Churchman Thomas Le Mesurier as giving expression to this ethos, with its robust critique of asceticism and enthusiasm.   This is particularly evident in Le Mesurier's description of the Apostles, challenging both Roman Catholic and Evangelical accounts of piety which emphasised ' the Weird ', the former with its focus on "excess of mortification and severity of penance", the latter with its "peculiar opinions" and ...

The response in the The Spectator by Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington, to suggestions that the late Prince Philip embodied a form of 'epitomised a very British stoicism' represents a contemporary version of Tertullian's 'what has Athens to with Jerusalem?'.  The answer to this question by historic, orthodox Christianity - beginning with St. Paul quoting "your own poets" as he spoke to the Stoics and Epicureans in the Areopagus - has tended to be 'quite a bit, actually'. Now Tomlin does seem to recognise this when he says of Stoic teaching "there is real wisdom in all this" and admits that "many early Christian thinkers in the days when Stoic thought was at its most popular recognised it". This, however, is entirely overshadowed by the article's 'what have the Stoics to do with Christianity?' stance, beginning with the rather silly suggestion that "The Monty Python sketch depicting Christ on the cross, calml...

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany - John 12:1. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David - Matthew 21:9. After two days was the feast of the passover, and of the unleavened bread - Mark 14:1. And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This Is The King Of The Jews - Luke 23:38. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments, and rested the sabbath day according to the commandmen t - Luke 23:56. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand - John 19:42. In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre - Matthew 28:1. ... that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me - Luke 24:44. The Church's proclamation of the...