Once when I was a new convert to Anglicanism (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away) I asked my dear Anglican pastor why our Anglican Church no longer canonized any saints. I knew that the Roman Catholic Church continued to canonize saints and (had I only known it back then) the Orthodox Church continued to canonize saints, but the Anglican Church did not. What was the deal?
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Old Testament Prophecies of Christ
I have just finished reading a very 2002 interesting book The Case for Christ, written in Evangelical style by Lee Strobel. One of the chapters was about how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, for which Mr. Strobel interviewed Mr. Louis S. Lapides, a Jewish convert to the Christian faith who now has a B.A. in theology from Dallas Baptist University and an M. Div. and a Master of Theology from Talbot Theological Seminary and who is now senior pastor at Beth Ariel Fellowship in California.
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask the Church)
The whimsical title of this blog post is based on the 1969 book by David Reuben entitled Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). I chose the title because although the Church has its own teaching about sexuality, many young Orthodox Christians are afraid to inquire diligently about it for fear the Church will give unwelcome advice. Which of course it will.
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More Bishops, Please
Recently I was re-reading a good but somewhat dated book about the episcopate, entitled The Apostolic Ministry, a collection of essays edited by Bishop Kenneth Kirk and published 1946. In one piece, written by Beatrice Hamilton Thompson on the “Post-Reformation Episcopate in England”, the author compared the state of the episcopate at the time Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker (d. 1575) to that of the episcopate at the time of St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258).
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Icons: Objects for Veneration or Mere Decoration?
Recently I have come across an anti-Orthodox polemic which rejects our veneration of icons on the grounds that venerating an image painted on a board of Christ, His Mother, or His saints is contrary to the practice of the apostles and of the earliest Church. The objection is stated with some sophistication, and is not the usual fundamentalist reference to the Mosaic Law’s proscription of carved statues used in worship (e.g. Exodus 20:4f). This more sophisticated objection acknowledges that there were indeed images of Christ, His Mother, and His saints used in the early Church such as can be found in the funerary art of the catacombs and on the walls of churches (such as that of Dura Europos). But, it points out, there is no evidence that these images functioned as anything more than mere decoration. That is, the people did not come up to the wall to kiss the wall art or venerate the images.
Netherlands