Posts

The relevance of Anglican agrarianism

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Spending time connecting with the natural world is the perfect antidote to the pressures of modern life. Getting close to nature – and especially listening to birdsong – doesn’t just bring us physical benefits – it also helps improve our mental and emotional health, happiness and wellbeing. And this isn’t just some warm, fuzzy feeling. Scientists at the University of Surrey have been studying the “restorative benefits of birdsong”, testing whether it really does improve our mood. They discovered that, of all the natural sounds, bird songs and calls were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress, and allowing them to restore and refocus their attention. So said a Guardian article on Saturday, ahead of International Dawn Chorus Day on Sunday.  It is another reminder that criticism of the Anglican imagination being shaped by agrarian experience is itself now a rather dated and woefully narrow understanding.  Rachel Mann , for example, has critic...

Adored in heavenly glory: Taylor and Calvin on adoration of Christ at the Eucharist

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From Taylor's The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament , rejecting the teaching of Trent that "the worship of latria, which is due to the true God" is to be given "to this most holy sacrament": For, concerning the action of adoration, this I am to say, that it is a fit address in the day of solemnity, with a ''sursum corda,' with 'our hearts lift up' to heaven, where Christ sits (we are sure) at the right hand of the Father ... said S. Austin; "no man eats Christ's body worthily, but he that first adores Christ." But to terminate the divine worship to the sacrament, to that which we eat, is so unreasonable and unnatural, and withal, so scandalous ... "We worship the flesh of Christ in the mysteries (saith Ambrose), as the apostles did worship it in our Saviour." For we receive the mysteries as representing and exhibiting to our souls the flesh and blood of Christ; so t...

Why we sing the Gloria after receiving the Sacrament

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Below, a footnote in a Torrance Kirby article on Peter Vermigli's Epistle to the Princess Elizabeth , on her accession.  Kirby here powerfully emphasises how the repositioning of the Gloria in 1552/1559/1662 (a position retained in PECUSA 1928, the Scottish Communion Office 1929, and Canada 1962) embodies the rich Reformed eucharistic theology.  Our hearts lifted up, receiving the outward and visible signs, we partake of the Crucified and Risen Lord ("the internal substance of the sacrament is conjoined with the visible signs"- Calvin ).  Thus having communion with "Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven", who gaze "upon a Lamb as it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6), we then join in their hymn: Important theological significance is attached to the re-positioning of this hymn in the revised liturgies of 1552 and 1559. It is arguable that this liturgical alteration reflects Vermigli’s own substantive contribution to the re...

We are Latins: why Athanasius is not in the 1662 Kalendar

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A turning point in my formation was, in the first year of theological college, reading Saint Athanasius's On the Incarnation .  As C.S. Lewis noted in the foreword of the translation I read (and still own): He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, "whole and undefiled," when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius - into one of those "sensible" synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivate clergymen. Now, yes, it does push matters more than somewhat to suggest that Athanasius taught the fulness of Trinitarian doctrine which would be expounded by the conciliar tradition in the centuries to come.  Lewis's foreword is certainly no substitute for reading Williams's Arius: Heresy and Tradition .  That said, I cannot forget the delight in reading Athanasius, the power it gave to the words of the Nicene Cre...

May Day

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The woods and pastures are joyous in their abundance now in a season of warmth and much rain. We walk amid foliage, amid song. The sheep and cattle graze like souls in bliss (except for flies) and lie down satisfied. Who now can believe in winter? In winter who could have hoped for this? Wendell Berry, Poem IV, 'Sabbaths 1998' in Given: New Poems (2005). May Day: it is a day to celebrate. Summer approaches, the joys of warmer days and longer evenings.  For the Church not to celebrate May Day is to ignore the gift of the created order. He sendeth the springs into the rivers: which run among the hills.  All beasts of the field drink thereof: and the wild asses quench their thirst. Beside them shall the fowls of the air have their habitation: and sing among the branches. He watereth the hills from above: the earth is filled with the fruit of thy works. He bringeth forth grass for the cattle: and green herb for the service ...

"In the heavenly effect": Taylor and the unseen gift in the Eucharist

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Following on from yesterday's post , we see the same dynamic Augustinian emphasis on the contrast between sight and faith, sign and thing signified in Jeremy Taylor's The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament . He quotes from Augustine referring to the John 6 discourse: That which I have spoken, is to be understood spiritually: ye are not to eat that body, which ye see: I have commended a sacrament to you, which, being understood spiritually, will give you life (3.21). Taylor emphasises that "being understood spiritually" is not to be placed in opposition to 'Real'.  Earlier in the same work he declared "the spiritual is also a real presence" (1.6).  Now, following the quote from Augustine, he again affirms: here is reality enough in the spiritual sumption to verify these words of Christ, without a thought of any bodily eating his flesh (3.21). Thus, of the gift of the Lord's body and blood, he says:...

"Neither saw nor touched": Augustine on St Thomas and the Eucharist

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He saw and touched the man, and acknowledged the God whom he neither saw nor touched; but by the means of what he saw and touched, he now put far away from him every doubt, and believed the other - Augustine on John 20:27-28, Tractate 121. While he does not here refer to the Eucharist, Augustine's account of Saint Thomas's encounter with the Risen Lord has echoes of a theme which recurs throughout his eucharistic theology: the contrast between sign and thing signified, between sight and faith. For example, in Sermon 229A , he contrasts the meaning of bread on the Lord's Table with that on the domestic table, even though both are to sight the same: What you can see on the Lord's table, as far as the appearance of the things goes, you are also used to seeing on your own tables; they have the same aspect, but not the same value . Sermon 272 similarly emphasises the contrast between what is seen and what cannot be seen: For what you see is simply bread and...