My Word Cloud (for this blog)

Note: see previous post



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My Word Cloud

[Next week is dead week, then finals, then I should have more time to blog.]

I got this idea from CB. This word cloud is actually made of words from my other older blog which doesn't post photos very well. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the selection of words. I'll post the word cloud for this blog in a little bit.



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Off topic (Art History)

I haven't had much time for unrequired reading now that Spring Semester has started. I'm doing a short paper for Art History comparing and contrasting two works of art from the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper which hangs in the Refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan and Tintoretto's The Last Supper which hangs near the altar of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. While Leonardo's is much more well known (and associated with kitsch) I like Tinteretto's version much better and it is Tinteretto's that I'll be thinking about on Maundy Thursday.

Technorati Tags: Art, Art History, Christian Art, da Vinci, Italian Art, Italian Renaissance, Last Supper, Leonardo, Leonardo da Vinci, Maundy Thursday, Milan, Santa Maria delle Grazie, San Giorgio Maggiore, The Last Supper, Tinteretto, & Venice.

Suggested Reading

An acquaintance of mine in NYC has started writing an every-other-month column for the DC-based Episcopal Diocese of Washington's newspaper. Her first two columns are now online. I would commend the reading of them to you.

Seminary in the City
&
The Relativity of Modern Morality

Catagories: Columns, DC, Episcopal Church, Morality, NYC, Seminary, Single, Writing

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

September and October have not yielded much time to read or blog. And November is National Novel Writing Month. I shall be quite busy writing. I hope to resume blogging in December. I hope.




Catagories: Fiction, NANOWRIMO, Writing

explanation

I've been a little busy, I hope to get back to blogging after mid-September.

First my calendar went crazy with little free time to read or write or blog.

Then a friend died.

Now my laptop refuses to acknowledge the presence of the operating system/hard drive. BIOS seems to indicate a loose cable inside somewhere. I have a two year service contract still in effect - but it is taking time. I won't have my laptop over Labor Day weekend, which means I'll be taking handwritten notes for over three days at the SoloFlight conference I'm attending at Kanuga.

And after Labor Day it maybe the 19th before I have time to resume blogging! URGH.

Doctrine in the Church of England, Prolegomena

Yes, I know that today is Tuesday. It took a while to recover from watching the Tour de France and celebrating Lance's seven-peat! And then there was that wonderful shuttle launch this morning.

~~~@~~~
For those who have just arrived we are continuing our look at Doctrine in the Church of England - The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922.
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Prolegomena: The Sources and Authority of Christian Doctrine (pp. 27-39)

The faith and doctrine of Christianity are handed down to us in the context of a living fellowship.
. . .
The Christian religion is founded upon a specific revelation of God in history. To this revelation Scripture and the Church alike bear witness. But the Church has always claimed that its doctrine is based on Scripture.
. . .
Belief that the Bible is the inspired record of God's self-revelation to man and of man's response to that revelation is not for us a dogma imposed as a result of some theory of the mode of the composition of the books, but a conclusion drawn from the character of their contents and the spiritual insight displayed in them. (p. 27)

I read the above to say that when we say that Scripture is the inspired Word of God, we don't mean that God dictated every single word, as much as some would like to think. Instead, I take it to mean exactly what it says, that we accept the various books of the Bible as scripture based on "a conclusion drawn from the character of their contents and the spiritual insight displayed in them." That in both content and theme the 66 books of the Bible are unified.

This unity consists in the presentation of a self-revelation of God through history and experience -- a self-revelation which develops in relation both to the response and to the resistance of man to the Divine initiative, and which culminates in the Incarnation.
. . .
From the Christian standpoint the Bible is unique, as being the inspired record of a unique revelation. It is the record of the special preparation for Christ, and of His direct impact upon men, through His Life, Death, and Resurrection. It sets before us that historical movement of Divine self-disclosure of which the Gospel is the crown.
Thus while rejecting the view that all parts of the Bible stand on one spiritual level, we also repudiate any effort to concentrate all attention on the directly edifying passages. Those which in themselves are on a lower spiritual level have their place in the whole, which derives part of its power from the universality of its range and part even from the intractability of some of its material.(p. 28)

While all Scripture is useful, not all Scripture is equal. The reason we Anglicans stand for the reading of the Gospel, but for neither the Old Testament nor the Epistle reading is that the Gospel is the pinnacle of Scripture. It is the culmination of the story of redemption that began with the fall of humanity in Eden.

(T)he books of the Bible, though received as the oracles of God, were written within, and accepted as canonical by a living and worshipping society. They can only be fully understood in relation to that society and its life. Moreover, the Bible is the work of many writers -- original authors, editors, and revisers -- and its final form is due to the selective judgment of the Jewish and Christian Churches. It is in this process as a whole that we recognise the working of the Divine Spirit. (p. 30)

Sixty-six books written, edited, and revised in more than one language over a period greater than two millennia by a motley crew of writers, editors, and revisers, and shaped by their various communities yet containing one central theme with no contradictions and speaking to all sorts and conditions of humankind through out the ages is a pretty amazing thing.

Inspiration is not to be thought of as analogous to "possession," in which the personality of the possessed is superseded; . . . The truly inspired are those whose response to the Spirit of God has issued in a free surrender to His guidance. In this surrender all individual characteristics of mentality, temperament, knowledge, and the like remain, and when Inspiration issues in writing these characteristics appear in what is written.(p. 30)

So we can see that the writing of Bible was far from the taking of divine dictation, yet there is no example of inspiration that parallels that of the Bible.

Well that brings us up to the middle of page 31. I'll be back after a long late lunch with the section on the authority of Scripture.

Pages read since last post: 4.5 out of a remaining 215.

Categories: Anglican Communion, Anglican Doctrine, Bible, Books, Christian Doctrine, Christianity, Church of England, Church of England Doctrine, Doctrine, ECUSA, Episcopal Church, Episcopal Doctrine, Non-Fiction, Reading, Religion, Scripture, & Theology.

The Free Zach Blogswarm, Part 2

See this post for the back story.

I was in the kitchen making cookies for this weekend's church bake sale and listening to News and Notes on NPR when they mentioned Zach. At least the blogswarm has finally made the leap to "traditional media" at long last, but the blogsphere is way ahead of NPR when it comes to what is going on.

Places in addition to the links in my previous post on this issue with more news than NPR's News and Notes:

Related Ex-Gay Watch blog entries #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 (first post about the State of Tennessee investigation that NPR didn't mention), #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15 #16, #17, and #18.

Janus Online blog entries #1 and #2.

Even comedian Margaret Cho is blogging about this!

Oh and did I mention The New York Times! (username = "bloggingblogger" password = "blogger")

You'd think that NPR types would read the dinosaur blog that boasts "All the news that's fit to print."

We will return to our regular topic on Monday, once Lance wins #7, now back to watching the Tour de France.

Categories: Current Affairs, Free Zach, Human Rights, Love in Action, Religion, & Tennessee

Le Tour 2005

Le Blog will be on Le Break until Le End of Le Tour.

Le Tour de France Links

Le Tour de France

Eurosport's Live Le Tour Audio Stream

The Offical Tour de France Store

BBC coverage of Le Tour de France

Le Tour de France Blogs

The TdF For the Rest of US

RohDesgin

GO LANCE!

Catagories: Cycling, Lance Armstrong, Tour de France, & Tour de Lance

Doctrine in the Church of England, finished the Introduction

For those who have just arrived we are continuing our look at Doctrine in the Church of England - The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922.

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We were appointed to consider existing agreement within the Church of England and the removal or diminution of existing differences. ~ Introduction, page 24

The Commission on Christian Doctrine focused more attention on and gave the most space to those areas where there was the most divergence of opinion in the 1920s and 30s rather than the areas that are most important for faith and theology. If the current Archbishop of Canterbury, The Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams were to appoint a similar commission today, I would imagine that the major focus would shift in two areas, but remain the same in the third. In fact it would be interesting if +++Rowan could appoint instead of just a Church of England, but a Communion-wide commission to focus on Christian doctrine related to the topics of the role, if any, of GLBTQ persons in the Church including the debate on the partaking of same gender couples in the commonly called Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, the role of women in Holy Orders especially that of the order of bishops, and the perennial topic of Eschatology [es-kuh-TAHL-uh-jee].

Actually, it would be really nice if the Primates and Bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting at Lambeth Palace in 2008 would take such an action and appoint a modern day Anglican Communion-wide Commission on Christian Doctrine. Then maybe we could discover how much we Anglicans have in common, agree to disagree on the few things we don't have in common, and finally stop focusing on the issues that divide us, turning our focus instead on worshiping and serving Christ. Instead, unless there is a major intervention of the Holy Spirit, we well most likely get strife, squabbling, and schism. If only our Primates and Bishops would take the advice written almost 80 years ago by the Church of England's Commission on Christian Doctrine:

Certainly we have found that so soon as both parties to any controversy set themselves to find other expressions than those which have been traditional among them, they discover a far greater measure of substantial agreement than they had anticipated. ~ Introduction, page 24

I would say there are more issues that unite the worldwide Anglican Communion than divide it, but only the divisions make the news. It is mostly those divisions that get talked about in the Anglican corner of the Blogosphere. And it is mostly those divisions that our "instraments of Anglican unity" focus on. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, St. Peter joins our Lord in walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee. It is only when St. Peter took his eyes off the unchanging Christ and put his focus on the changing wind, that St. Peter started to sink into the waters. At least St. Peter had the presence of mind to call out "Lord, save me!"

God save the Anglican Communion!

Pages read since last post: 3.5 out of a remaining 218.5 (Hey it's been one of those weeks.)

Categories: Anglican Communion, Anglican Doctrine, Anglican Unity, Anglicanism, Archbishop of Canterbury, Books,Christian Doctrine, Christianity, Church of England, Church of England Doctrine, Doctrine,ECUSA, Episcopal Church, Episcopal Doctrine, Non-Fiction,Reading, Religion, Rowan Williams, Schism, & Theology.

Doctrine in the Church of England

Interestingly enough late late last night since I couldn't get to sleep, I started reading a book that was published in New York by The MacMillan Company in 1938 entitled Doctrine in the Church of England - The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922. (Though there is a year published, there is no copyright notice of any sort.)

The "Chairman's Introduction" is by none other than +++William Temple who was Bishop of Manchester when the Commission began its work and Archbishop of York (ABY) by the time he wrote the Chairman's Introduction in October of 1937. (By late 1943 he would be the 98th Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) - this I know because +++WT's reply to Bishop Ronald Hall of Hong Kong telling him that ordaining a deaconess named Florence Li Tim-Oi to the priesthood would not be a good idea arrived after +RH had done just that in Hsinxing, Guandong, unoccupied China on the Feast Day of the Confession of St. Paul, 25 January 1944.)

Anyhoo, I'm almost done reading the introduction and I already have a list of 15 different terms/Latin phrases/rare words to look up. From what I have gathered so far the work of the Commission was not to come up with an "official" doctrine for the Church of England (CoE), but to find the points of agreement from the different theological schools within the CoE at that time. This would have been done at a time when "modernity" was springing up everywhere along with major social and political changes.

One thing that then ABY, later ABC, William Temple pointed out in his "Chairman's Introduction" was:

. . . we must recon among the special determinants of English theology the fact that our Reformation Fathers appealed so largely to the authority of Patristic, and especially of Greek Patristic, writings. They were at one with the Continental Reformers in their indebtedness to St. Augustine; but to a greater extent they paid regard also to the works of Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories. In these the distinctive doctrines of St. Augustine, which he developed in his controversy with Pelagianism, are (naturally) not to be found. The heirs of Luther's Augustinianism are apt to accuse English Christianity as a whole of Pelagianism; and it must be admitted that we have a perpetual tendency in that direction. As I regard Pelagianism as of all heresies spiritually the most pernicious, I share in some degree the Continenal anxiety concerning our habitual inclination towards it. Yet I am glad that we have not been lastingly subjected to the distinctively Augustinian doctrine of the Fall, but can balance this with the very different doctrine of some of the Greek Fathers (page 5).

In the result there is found to be a closer relationship in theology between the Orthodox Churches of the East and the Church of England that between the former and either Rome on the one hand or Wittenberg or Geneva on the other (page 6).

So for all our Protestant Episcopal and Anglo-Catholic labeling, it looks like we could be historically more Greek/Orthodox than we are Protestant or Roman. At least in the eyes of one former ABC.

According to the index Doctrine in the Church of England covers the following subjects:

Prolegomena - The Sources and Authority of Christian Doctrine
The Doctrines of God and of Redemption
The Church and Sacraments
Eschatology

The appendices are:

On the Psychological Aspects of Sin
On Finitude and Original Sin
On the Meaning of the Terms "Body" and "Blood" in Eucharistic Theology
On the Relation of the Sacraments to Grace

So it should be quite the educational read. I plan on blogging about it more here as I read through the book. Feel free to stop by, read the posts, and leave your comments.

Anyhoo, I shall close with two quotes of +++William Temple that stood out to me in the Chairman's Introduction. The first provides some good food for thought. The second is rather interesting as the piece was written early in the fall of 1937, just less than two years before what security of the nineteenth century that still lingered in England would be forever shattered by WWII.

It is a sad reflection upon the sincerity of Christian discipleship that so often in the history of the Church controversy had been conducted with bitterness and has been associated, as both cause and effect, with personal animosity. It is truly said that to become bitter in controversy is more heretical than to espouse with sincerity and charity the most devastating theological opinions; and by this standard the "orthodox" are condemned as grievously as their opponents. Progress in apprehension of the truths of the Gospel must chiefly come by the intercourse of minds united in friendship, so that they can do that most difficult thing to which St. Paul refers as though it ought to come naturally - "speaking the truth in love (page 1)."

If the security of the nineteenth century, already shattered in Europe, finally crumbles away in our country, we shall be pressed more and more towards a theology of Redemption. In this we shall be coming closer to the New Testament. We have been learning again how improtent man is to save himself, how deep and pervasive is that corruption which theologians call Original Sin. Man needs above all else to be saved from himself. This must be the work of Divine Grace (page 17).

23.5 pages read so far out of a total of 242.

Catagories: Anglican Communion, Anglican Doctrine, Books, Christian Doctrine, Christianity, Church of England, Doctrine, ECUSA, Episcopal Church, Episcopal Doctrine, Non-Fiction, Pelagianism, Reading, Religion , Saint Augustine, Theology, Theology of Redemption, & William Temple.