No Other Foundation

Recently I read a copy of the alumni magazine from a mainline Protestant seminary. It was very well done and showcased a number of people, both faculty and students, all fervent in their faith and zealous to serve the Lord. It presented the seminary, as it intended to do, as a place of thriving faith, burgeoning mission, and robust spiritual health, which I’m sure it is. Reading it you would never know that the seminary was part of a denomination (which I will not identify) that is on its deathbed.

In a post-Liturgy Q & A held by a wonderful and learned priest, Fr. Justin Hewlett, someone present (a Baptist, if memory serves) asked a question about the Eucharist. He had been reading some anti-Catholic literature which had denounced the supposedly Catholic teaching that Christ was re-sacrificed at every Mass and he wondered, since the Orthodox use the same kind of sacrificial language about the Eucharist that the Catholics do, if we also believe that Christ is re-sacrificed at every Divine Liturgy. He pointed out that Bible texts like Hebrews 9:25-28 make the notion of Christ being re-sacrificed every week untenable.

With the expected influx of ordinations to the priesthood hoping to keep up with the recent surge of new converts coming into Orthodox parishes, many new priests will be stepping into pulpits (metaphorical or otherwise) to preach. Given the importance of preaching in the life of a parish (St. John Chrysostom knows what I mean), I am surprised at how comparatively little importance it is given in some places. When I was in seminary back in the Jurassic period we had many, many classes on the Old and New Testament each year, many offerings of Church History, many classes in Theology, but only one class on Homiletics. One asks: what’s the point of learning all that other stuff if you can’t effectively share it?

The term “the donation of Constantine” refers to a medieval forgery, long used to support the claims and authority of the medieval papacy. According to the document, the emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, transferred as a gift the city of Rome and the western part of the Roman empire to the bishop of Rome. The story goes like this.

Lately, through the kindness of a friend, I watched recently an old 1961 British film starring a very young Hayley Mills entitled Whistle Down the Wind, dating from before her Disney days. I saw it as a young child when it was first released in movie theatres and re-watching it as an old man I found it had lost none of its magic.