The Anglican Communion: Is it over?

This is an excerpt from an excellent article found "here":

It is now abundantly clear that the balance of power has moved decisively to the Global South (from whence Christianity came). Egyptian Archbishop Mouneer Anis reminded conferees to Entebbe of that fact.

It was made clear to me that many of the Global South leaders see Western Anglican leaders as the "Pharisees and Sadducees" of biblical times - Jewish leaders that Jesus overtly condemned for leading people astray. They believe that archbishops like Jefferts Schori and Rowan Williams have done precisely that.

There is the belief by many African bishops that Jefferts Schori is quite simply not a Christian with any beliefs that are discernibly biblical, while it is thought that Dr. Williams' understanding of the faith and convoluted syntax saves no one and nothing. As one archbishop commented to VOL, "If you cannot explain the gospel to a five year old, what sort of gospel is it that you believe?"

The Anglican Communion will never formally split. There will not be two communions and there will not be a see in Alexandria. What will and is happening is a slow disintegration of the communion, with orthodox Anglican leaders going their own way, refusing to sit down with their liberal Western counterparts, collaborating only with their orthodox counterparts in the West. It is death by a thousand cuts.

To all intents and purposes, a paperless divorce now exists in the Anglican Communion.

(From Virtue Online)

Book Burning Ceremonies

As much as I despise being dragged into the media malaise of the day, I sense a responsibility to address the promised book burning ceremonies in Gainesville.

It seemed wise to go Holy Scripture first, and to search them for any words of wisdom that might be directed at this event. Look up the word “books” in a concordance and you will find that it appears eight times in the Old and New Testaments. Most of the passages refer to books of scripture; a few address the books used by God in the final judgment; and one addresses a “book burning”. It is found in Acts 19:

Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Acts 19: 18-20

There was indeed a book burning recorded in the New Testament, however, it was not carried out by Jesus, an Apostle, or any churchmen, but rather, by converts who after their conversion saw the great deceit and danger contained in the books they previously believed to be holy.

Unlike this event in the book of Acts, Pastor Jones’ book burning ceremony has all the makings of a 21^st century marketing scheme. This individualistic, and politically motivated “self-appointed protector of the faith,” may have gotten more than he bargained for. The media has not even had to present him as the typical moronic fundamentalist, because he has done a very good job all by himself. His actions present our faith to the watching world as backwater religion for the undereducated that thrive on hate. Sadly, he claims that his reason for the book burning is to demonstrate the hateful nature of Islam, yet, his actions demonstrate the same seed of hatred.

Would Pastor Jones have searched for wisdom outside of himself, and consulted the bible he is supposed to believe in and teach, he might have noticed that “Koran burning,” or any book burning, only has serious meaning when be done by those who have converted to Christianity, and now despise the falsities contained in a book they previously deemed holy. Until the day Muslims burn the Koran due to their conversion, then any Koran burning done by the likes of Pastor Jones has no real meaning, and could even lead to disastrous consequences.

Authentic Christinaity Summed Up

Apostolic Tradition & Spirituality

The preceding year we dedicated our studies to the patristics and compared their teaching to that which is most common in today’s western church. Below are key quotes that shaped our study.

The Fathers

Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches? To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendor, shall come in glory, the Savior of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise His Father and His advent. St Iranaeus of Lyons ca 180 AD

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The Vincentian Canon

Some one perhaps will ask, since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church’s interpretation? For this reason,—because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters.

For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. Moreover, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. (A Commonitory (A Reminder), Vincent of Lerins, 434 AD)

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The Seven Ecumenical Councils

The doctrinal decisions and formulations of the seven ecumenical councils between 325 and 787 stand as the formal deposit of normative dogma. One reason for this is that no later actions of any church lay claim to the title “ecumenical.” (Credo, Jaroslav Pelikan, 2003)

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The Spiritual Disciplines

My critique then of the three prominent forms of evangelical spirituality, is simply this: they all situate spirituality the self. “I keep the rules”; “I know God in a system of thought”; “I had a born again experience”. In contrast, historic Spirituality situates spirituality in the story of the Triune God, who creates, became incarnate, took my humanity up into his, entered suffering by the cross, and rose from the grave. God drew me up into himself, and did for me what I could not do. He Himself restored my union with Himself. Now having been baptized into that great mystery, I contemplate God’s work for me and the whole world, and I participate in God’s purposes for the world revealed in Jesus Christ. Spirituality is a gift, and the spiritual life is a surrendered life. (The Divine Embrace, Robert Webber)

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The Gospel

According to the apostles and the early church fathers the gospel is comprised of the three following parts:

Trinity: The one true God exist in three persons: Father & creator, Son & victor, Spirit & giver of life. There exists within the triune God, a life that is primarily characterized by a communion of love. Hence, God is love.

Incarnation: God the Son took on flesh, and became one of us. So that even after the human race had turned way from God under the enticement of evil (sin & death), the Son might still bring the love of God to us, destroy evil by dying to destroy sin and death (sacrifice), He rose from the grave the victor (Savior), and He gave life eternal to all mankind (the final resurrection).

Restoration: The Son now has the authority to draw all mankind back into God’s Trinitarian family by pouring out upon mankind His life giving Spirit (baptism), which places the presence of God’s power within humans, making those persons incarnations of God (Christians- little Christs), here and now, healing & restoring (saving) them to dwell within the Trinity.

Rex Gloriae

It is a very difficult thing to promote a parish in a way that is genuinely Chirstian. I have tried to do this in various ways that do not insult the faith, the link below will take you to web page desinged to inform anyone who might be interested about our parish.

Click here

Rebuilding The Ruins

This summer’s treatment of the historic spiritual disciplines has brought one point of commonality to light, and that point is the shock to westerners that historic Christianity is a mystical religion. Most western Christians know about having a daily bible study and prayer time, which usually consists of reading though a book or books of the bible, followed by some extemporaneous prayers, and this usually leads to general feeling of well-being after wards, but anything beyond that enters into the realm of suspicion. Insert fasting, liturgical prayers, times of silence, kneeling, genufleting, lectio divina, and prayers of the heart into the disciplines the faith, and what we have is another religion. But, why and how did something so common to Christianity for so long become so foreign? There is a trajectory within western Christianity that has made this loss of these ancient Christian disciplines possible.

It began with the victory of Augustinian Neo-Platonism, in the 5^th century. The consequence of this has left today’s Christianity thinking that the goal of a person life is to make it into heaven, rather than to become united to God in body & soul now and after this life. The long term consequence of this is a two story universe, God up stairs, & us downstairs, and our task should we choose to accept it, is to make it upstairs.

This distortion continued in the 10^th & 11^th century by the additions of St Anselm. By way of his orientation towards legal satisfaction, what we now have is a Christianity that is most of all concerned with how man gets off the hook for sin on light of its insult of God’s honor. Christianity lost its focus on why and how God restores humanity to our original design as Christ’s icon on earth.

Move forward to the 12^th & 13^th century and we find the influences of St Aquinas. His influence made Christianity something that must be explainable and definable at every point, in other words, scholastic. For many Christians today, there is no higher form of Christianity than intellectual Christianity. This is a faith that lives in the mind.

Move forward again to the protestant reformation of the 16^th century, and there the west received the same authority that prior to it belonged to bishops and popes. Every individual became the protector of the faith, with the authority to keep, shed, or redesign the articles of faith as each saw fit according to their understanding of the bible.

Go forward again to the 18^th century and find the great awakening; this movement in the Americas and England made Christianity something that must be the result of a personal crisis and catharsis. As a result, one must have had a moment that one can point to when they had their God experience, once having that experience of God no more was needed.

Couple this with the need to feel moral and aligned to God, the social Victorian moralism made its way into Christianity. This moralism shaped the faith into more than just something in the mind and a one time experience. However, the problem here is that there was a focus on a few select sins such as sexual concupiscence, drunkenness, and participation in the things enjoyed by the general culture.

To sum this all up; what we have in the west today is a faith that is dualistic, legal, intellectual, individualistic, based on a one time experience, and sustained by a biased moralism that focuses on avoiding a few specific sins. In short, the trajectory of the western faith has left us with a faith that has almost no relationship to the faith of the early church, and especially its mystical practices of transformation into Christlikeness.

Having exposed these foreign viruses that have attached themselves to the faith, we can see their emptiness, and our need to return to a faith that actually creates real union with God here and now. It is this need that gives the mystical historic spiritual disciplines their place of priority in the Christian’s life. My hope is that the exposure of the above along with the recovery of this ancient practice can help to rebuild authentic Christianity.

The Feast of St. Mary (The Dormition)

The feast day that we celebrate on August the 15th was originally named “the Dormition” or “the falling asleep” of Mary, the mother our God. It is still called the Dormition in the Eastern Church. Unfortunately, our Anglican tradition stopped celebrating this day in all places except in a few Anglo-catholic parishes for nearly 400 years. It was not until the revisions of 1960 & 70’s that this feast day was included once into our calendars once again.

The collect for this feast day of the “Dormition” stresses 3 points which are perfectly inline with the early church's celebration of this day:

O God, you have taken to yourself the Blessed Virgin Mary,

mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we,

who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom;

through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

1] This collect confesses that upon her death (Dormition), God has taken Mary to himself. 2] Like the early church the collect addresses Mary as both blessed & still a virgin, & 3] Like the early church the collect uses her earliest title theotokos & translates it as “mother of your incarnate son,” meaning, mother of God!

After having made those 3 assertions, the prayer then beseeches God to help us who have been purchased by the blood of Christ (redeemed) to share in her glory eternally. This then is a prayer that connects us to MARY in a very particular way; it makes her our exemplar!

While ther are many ways that serves as our example, today's gospel (The Magnificat) presents Mary to us as one with great honor, and one who is highly elevated, yet full of humility in the midst of her elevation. Like Mary, the church also possesses the living God within her very body, and is called to go around as servants helping all who are in need, with no pomp or motivation of temporal recompense, possessing all yet poor.

Second, the magnificat presents Mary as an eternal portrait of God’s victorious (saving) work. This is no less true for the church, like Mary, the church is that same portrait. Mary's example to us is to treat our temporality as a fraction of reality. In short, as we face the problems of this life we are to be painting portraits of Christ’s eternal life. The story told by this portrait is life and its problems inbedded in etrnality. More specifically, we see in the magnificat that Mary saw this present life through the eyes of a mystical theologian. By that I mean that she seemed to be living in the end of the ages while even she was here in the middle of the age. We, the church, are to follow her lead and embrace the present knowing that we have arrived at the end of all things. Consider your problems in light of the reality that our time like Mary's will never running out, & you will turn your responses to those problems on their heads! You will live like a saint who already dwells in the heavens; you will live like Mary with God in her, here and now.

Grant O Lord that we, who have been redeemed by Christ’s blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom.

(An excerpt from the Homily on the Dormition 2010, by The Rev Fr. Carlos Miranda)

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Tell out my soul (in full)