Council of Nicaea, St Sozomen’s Church, Galata, Cyprus
This January will mark two years I’ve taught for Davenant Hall. It will also be the first time in my academic career I have the chance to teach something for the second time — The Theological World of the Nicene Controversy. Ad Fontes recently published a piece of mine promoting the course. I hope you enjoy the piece — and maybe you or someone you know will sign up!
Growing up in an Anglican church, we recited the Nicene Creed every Sunday—you know, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” I remember being quite surprised in confirmation class when I learned that the creed we recited at Holy Communion wasn’t actually the Nicene Creed but a later Creed, from Constantinople, with some added bits about the Holy Spirit. As I recall, I was a bit put out about this. Why didn’t we use the original? Why did we use some interloper masquerading as the Nicene Creed? Somehow, whatever lessons I got from confirmation class about why these two creeds exist just didn’t stick. I blame, of course, my teenage self. The priest who taught me was very good and a huge church history buff. I still talk church history with him to this day.[1]
The question of my teenage self, setting aside the bizarre feelings that the Creed of Constantinople is an interloper, is a worthwhile question though: why do we have two creeds that we think of as the Nicene Creed? Isn’t one Nicene Creed enough? And why is the second such creed the one we use at Holy Communion?
Obviously, Sunday worship contains what I delineated from the BCP in my last post:
we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul.
BCP, Morning & Evening Prayer
Nonetheless, this leaves a wide leeway for stuff you can do, doesn’t it?
The thread that sparked my last post said that cancelling Sunday morning worship a few times a year was important because it helped prevent the staff from becoming burnt out from working every Sunday. Truly worshipping God is more important than being known for putting on good shows. And cancelling church to do something neighbourly shows said neighbours we care about them more than putting on said shows.
Hold the phone.
Putting on good shows?
. . .
Putting on good shows?
I never knew this was essential to fulfilling the BCP’s four/five bullet points about what we assemble and meet together to do on Sundays.
My dad is an Anglican priest. Most of my life, I have attended Anglican churches. Anglican churches almost never cancel church. Maybe if there’s a gunman down the block and your church is on the other side of a police blockade. Sure, you can cancel church then.
Also, though: My dad, as a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada, got a month of holidays. Who would put on the show while we were off camping???
Fun fact: An Anglican service of Morning Prayer, or even Morning Prayer and Antecommunion does not require a priest (you need a priest to celebrate Holy Communion but can do the earlier part of the service without one). And what to do is all there is whichever service book your parish uses. All you need is a layperson to lead the service. Preparation is not very extensive.
But what about the music? Well, a normal Anglican service has 3 hymns. Many churches have more than one person capable of leading these three hymns. Or, if you have contemporary songs, you might have enough guitarists to lead. Or even this: No musicians at all.
This can be done.
I have to confess though: It may not be a good show. Maybe not even when your priest is there. Maybe not even if you have paid musicians.
Unless there’s a lady playing the saw, of course.
Because the church-canceling pastor was right: It’s not about putting on good shows.
It never should be.
It’s about the people of God assembling together to praise him, thank him, hear His Word, and ask him those things that are requisite and necessary.
In the inevitable dust-up over whether to cancel church on Christmas or not, some strange and interesting things have been said that should make all of us back up a little and say, “So, what’s Sunday morning for, anyway?”
There was this one Twitter thread (that I won’t make you endure) that said some very revealing things about how we imagine the gathering of the ekklesia and how we imagine worship. It was by a pastor of a church that will not be gathering itself together on Christmas morning. The primary reason: Getting everybody together in one building at the same time isn’t the only way to worship God.
We grant that. Of course.
But not all worship is the same sort of thing. This church cancels Sunday services multiple times a year to remind people that this is not the only way to worship. Instead, they could have a barbecue. Or help out the poor in some way. And so forth. There was an equivocation between the praise and worship of the assembled people of God and every act in our lives being done to the glory of God.
This pattern of thought is troubling because if assembling the saints for worship is the same as any other Christian action, why even go on Sunday? Many people with small children find the Sunday morning experience less than pleasant. Out the door on time. Back for lunch/naps. Recover over the afternoon. But if brunch can be worship — hey, presto! Stay home!
But I think everyone knows that what we do on a Sunday morning is, by definition, not the same as other acts of worship (unless they’re the same thing as we do Sunday but on a different day of the week). What do we do on Sunday morning? According to the Book of Common Prayer, “we assemble and meet together”:
to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands,
to set forth his most worthy praise,
to hear his most holy Word, and
to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul.
And, since this is from the preamble to the penitential rite in Morning and Evening Prayer, we also assemble to confess our sins.
First off, then: What we are doing on Sunday morning is objectively different from a barbecue, building houses for the poor, working at a soup kitchen — different even from other explicitly “religious” things, such as a Bible study or theology lecture.
For me, it’s the communal thanks and praise that really shift Sunday away from other things. Worship, adoration, latreia — if we wanna get all historical here, adoratio and latreia imply something specifically, consciously worshipful. Adoratio can sometimes also cover the same ground as proskynesis — getting down on the ground like a dog before the emperor or the Shahanshah (Persian King of Kings). Late Romans even had a special ceremony called adoratio purpurae wherein you got to touch the purple hem of the emperor’s robe.
Your heart can sing as you raise a roof. You can do it to the glory of God. And you can even do it, in a certain sense, as a more pure act of worship than what may be being offered up in your local megachurch discotheque — I mean, Sunday service — or cathedral concert — I mean, choral evensong. But it’s still not. the. same. thing. Literally a different human act from having the Lord open your lips that your mouth may show forth His praise.
And I think that everyone knows this. Opening presents on Christmas morning, when done to the glory of God, still isn’t the same, even if you whisper, “O God, make speed to save me,” when your kid is given more Hotwheels. And, “O Lord, make haste to help me,” as you gaze upon a gift you hate.
If you aren’t at church on Christmas morning, your time of family worship, with Scripture and some carols and prayers, maybe an Advent wreath, is similar to what goes on at church and may even include all the elements listed in the BCP. But it still isn’t the same. Why? The assembly of the saints.
Second, then: The BCP kicks off its list of churchy purpose with “we assemble and meet together.” I’m all for the validity of Lollardy — I mean, private devotion among friends, family, neighbours, without priestly supervision. I think singing hymns and carols around the family piano is even a species of the same thing that goes on at the Lord’s house when we all assemble together.
But do you see what I did there? We all assemble together. It’s good, but it’s still a different thing. When we assemble and meet together at the kyriakon, at the “church”, it is a theological act — it may even be the constitutive act of the church-as-people. I mean, ekklesia means assembly, after all. The entire community is invited and encouraged and exhorted. Some denominations require attendance at this assembly as part of their discipline, even.
And so we assemble and meet together, and those things that we do while there are all consciously Godward — praise, thanksgiving, the scriptures, supplication, repentance (which is a joyful turning from sin towards God who heals us [bad paraphrase of Met. Kallistos Ware {memory eternal!}]).
We are constituted as the body of Christ by being together. And while we are together, we fulfil our telos, which is to glorify God and enjoy him forever (right now being part of forever).
Anything else we do — no matter how worshipful — is literally a different thing.
This is not to bind consciences about Christmas morning. But it is meant as a reminder about why we gather on Sundays in the first place.
13th-c mosaic on loggia, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome
I think that perhaps one of the great problems with our society is that too many of us spend time thinking about our identities. For me, I spend time thinking about my religious identity. In particular, I often find myself feeling somewhat alone as a catholic Anglican — and not an Anglo-Catholic.
Like the majority tradition of Anglicanism, I embrace the teachings of the Fathers, the 39 Articles, the BCP, and what I’ve read of the Books of Homilies so far. I agree with Richard Hooker so much I wrote an essay recommending him for a real publication (as opposed to just another blog post). Moreover, I cherish the poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Guite, as well as the hymns of Charles Wesley and JM Neale. I recently called Lancelot Andrewes a saint, so there’s that in the mix, too!
Most of this doesn’t really make me much of “catholic”, though, does it? I mean, it mostly makes me an Anglican. I reckon John Wesley liked those things, too, except for the ones from after he died.
But what if I told you, despite spending 8 years as a Presbyterian, the only other church that seemed truly enticing was the Eastern Orthodox Church? That an Orthodox priest (now bishop!) once said that I am Orthodox in all but name? Although this actually isn’t true (I don’t seek saints to intercede for me [filed under: 39 Articles] or believe in tollhouses [filed under: umm…], to grab two really quick examples), I do have enormous respect for the Eastern Church and think that we can learn a lot from them in the West after a few centuries of Enlightenment and Romanticism under our belts.
So, yeah, I read St Sophrony, St Porphyrios, Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Father Andrew Louth, The Way of a Pilgrim, and others in my devotional time. I love the Greek Fathers, and sometimes I think I’m a Palamite. Byzantine chant and Byzantine icons, yes, please. I love the Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints John Chrysostom. Once when I was in a foul mood, I read the Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints Basil the Great just to cheer me up. And it’s beautiful and rich and makes anything from the West post-Vatican II (BAS and Common Worship, I’m looking at you) look like wading in shallow water when God has given us the skills requisite and necessary for surfing (or something like that).
I embrace the ancient and medieval heritage of the church — as interpreted through the 39 Articles and the BCP. Give me St Augustine. Give St Maximus the Confessor. Give me St Anselm and St John of Damascus and the Venerable Bede and St Benedict of Nursia and St Symeon the New Theologian and St Gregory of Nyssa and The Cloud of Unknowing and St John of the Ladder and St John of the Cross and St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Gregory of Nazianzus and St Basil of Caesarea and Origen of Alexander and St Athanasius of Alexandria and St Irenaeus of Lyons and Pope St Leo the Great and Pope St Gregory the Great and St Cyprian of Carthage and St Francis of Assisi and St Bonaventure and Stephen Langton and Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton and Aelfric of Eynsham and Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl and The Dream of the Rood.
Give me the Ruthwell Cross. Give me Mt Athos. Give the Benediktinerstift Sankt Paul im Lavanttal. Give me St Paul’s in London. Give me Durham Cathedral. Give me the Durham Gospels.
Give me these things, clothe them in the music of Tallis or Purcell or Gibbons. I’ll kiss your icons. I once kissed the alleged crozier of St Gregory. Give me the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Give me a little incense.
Give me these things, for when I encounter these things, I find Jesus in them.
Most of all, then: give me Jesus.
And I find that Jesus is found in this catholic Anglicanism. I find him there better than elsewhere — whether because of my own temperament or something in the nature of the catholic tradition itself. But Jesus comes to me in the poetry of John Donne and the teachings of the Orthodox monks. He comes when I read Pearl and I am drawn up to him through the architecture of a place like York Minster.
IRL, one finds oneself with almost no Anglicans round about, and few digging deep into this.
But Jesus comes amidst them, anyway — of course.
This is part of the secret of the catholic tradition, that God is always right there waiting for you. If you can cultivate hesychia and find, by grace, some level of purity of heart, you will find Jesus wherever you are, and not just listening to Byzantine chant on Spotify or with fellow catholics on Twitter, but at your own local parish.
Watch out for him. He’s there. Pray the Jesus Prayer. Memorise a poem or two by John Donne. Like St Pachomius, see God wherever He is, especially in your brother in Christ. He’ll be there — he has promised he will.
My latest YouTube video was made on the commemoration of Richard Hooker on November 3. In it, I discuss his Christology in relation to Chalcedon but most especially in relation to you and your union with God and participation in the divine life. Enjoy!
This post is really just me being a 39 Articles fan (stan? Am I a stan? What is a stan?). I’ve been going through some Reformation-era confessions and catechisms for research lately, looking at what they have to say about Christology. It’s interesting, but the results are still forthcoming. One thing I notice is where the article about Christology falls, and it’s often far down the list, or at least after a discussion of the Fall of humans.
And I noticed this because I’ve been mulling over the 39 Articles of the Anglican faith lately, and it puts the Christological article as Article II, right after the Article of Faith in the Holy Trinity. Here’s a Table of the Articles from prayerbook.ca, complete with links to the text:
The flow of the articles is from more important to less important. We begin with the doctrine of God, and then we discuss Christ, including his saving mission, then the Holy Spirit, before moving on to how we know about God — the Scriptures, the knowledge from which is articulated in the creeds. Having established the absolute foundation of our faith — God, the Holy Trinity who saved us through the life of Jesus — and how we have the knowledge of theology — God’s revelation through Scripture as articulated in the creeds — then we can move into other matters.
And now, not as Article 2, but as Article 9, we come to Original or Birth-sin. From here, questions of justification and sanctification are addressed, including stuff like predestination and election. Once salvation and the place of the church and her authorities are in good order, we look at what goes on in church, from speaking in a tongue such as the people understandeth to the sacraments, to excommunication and traditions of the church.
I love that in reading the Articles we are brought face-to-face with the greatest realities of the Christian faith before anything else. The Most Holy Trinity is where to lay our gaze, and then what he did for our salvation (which is wrapped up with those first few articles). Everything else should flow from or be framed by that belief. And the Articles help us be there.
It’s a great corrective to something I’ve witnessed — I’ve been at baptisms where people are asked about their beliefs in the Bible before their beliefs about God. Something is just … off in that ordering. It is disordered.
I’m sure other people have done this better than I have. But here it is. Now — read the Articles and see how Protestantism looks when it’s done properly.
My latest YouTube video flows out of the “Tolkien Among the Theologians” digital symposium in which I participated this past weekend, exploring music as an interaction with, reflection of, aspect of the order of the cosmos, starting with The Silmarillion and closing with the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” — which, if you’ve been around this blog long enough, you ‘ll know, I love.
I feel like the title of this blog post should be a hashtag: #Notallbaptists. I’m inspired to quickly jot down a blog post praising my brothers and sisters in the Lord who are Baptists AND who don’t reject traditional Trinitarian theology and doctrine of God. I say this because my last post was of a YouTube video I made in response to the Baptist Trinitarian controversy that seems to still be ongoing. And not long before that, I was discussing kerfuffles about Aquinas, often perpetrated by the same people. I suspect and pray that the perpetrators are outliers.
I want to write this in honour of the many Baptists I’ve been friends with over the years, mainly from high school onwards, people who love Jesus and their church, family, friends, and world, seeking to be loving persons committed to our Lord who want to see others find Him and His salvation. People committed to seeking God where he may be found, especially in Scripture. And, to my knowledge, nary a heretic in sight, from what I can recall.
Of course, this is going on in the ranks of Baptist seminary profs, so we need to look beyond the ordinary Baptist in the pew these particular Baptists in academia, whose fellowship I have enjoyed.
A close friend in PhD days always comes to mind in the midst of these kerfuffles. Here was a man committed to Reformational doctrine — sola scriptura, sola fide, you know, that sort of thing. And, being a Baptist, he wasn’t simply a credobaptist, but he could tell you why in terms of the history and structure and ecclesiology of Baptist churchmanship, looking beyond a few easy proof text verses deployed in online debates to what makes his view on Baptism actually … Baptist (unlike mine, being Anglican).
Anyway, this same guy arrived thinking to work on the Apostolic Fathers, eventually settled on Biblical Studies, but never turned his back on patristics. He loves Augustine. Went eagerly to a City of God reading group organised by Oliver O’Donovan. Said things like, “Augustine makes my heart sing.” Also, a big fan of St Thomas Aquinas. And he knew Latin, so he’d sit down with the Vulgate every once in a while.
Not your Twitter stereotype, is he? (Not on Twitter, either.) He now brings his grace and wisdom to a church in the Southern USA, and I hope great things continue to happen for him.
More recently, I’ve been building an army of friends, a network developing initially through the Davenant Institute and #WeirdAnglicanTwitter. Amongst this growing army of friends are two excellent Baptist scholars, fellow Canadians — Fellowship Baptists, in fact, as were some very close friends in high school. So that’s a comfort. Anyway, I’ll name names since they’re on Twitter and Doing Various Good Things, not just academically but for Christ and His Church (which is what Christian academics ought to be doing), and these men are Ian Clary and Wyatt Graham.
They have a podcast that you should listen to, called “Into Theology”. They are on the cusp of finishing off reading through St Augustine’s Confessions together. So right away — #Notallbaptists. Augustine FTW.
Ian teaches at Colorado Christian University. He’s done a bunch of research into Baptist history, which is great. I like to see Baptists being Baptists and Anglicans being Anglicans. But I also like us being brothers in Christ. So, another thing you’ll learn by spending time on his Twitter feed is the fact that he prays the daily office from the Book of Common Prayer, and sometimes he posts prayers from it on Twitter. Which is just great and warms my Anglican heart. Besides Baptist stuff and the BCP, you’ll see some Bavinck, some Aquinas, the new Coleridge statue, and various other things. As I say, #Notallbaptists.
Wyatt teaches at Heritage Seminary, Redeemer University, and Ryle Seminary. He’s the president of The Gospel Coalition Canada and the ON/QC chapter of the Evangelical Theological Society. He also uses St Gregory of Nyssa and St Athanasius to teach the Psalms. And he live-tweeted his way through St Bernard’s On Grace and Free Will. Like a lot of Reformed guys, tweets Bavinck — he’s reading James Jordan right now, too, though. As I say, #Notallbaptists.
A third member of my growing army of friends is Tim Jacobs, an Aquinas guy. But I’ll just pause here. You get the idea.
The second reason I’m writing this post is that I find these men encouraging because it felt like, for a while, the only evangelicals I know about who were into the Fathers and the medieval divines were fellow Anglicans, or American Methodists, except, like, DH Williams. And now I also know the work of Gavin Ortlund. This is great — if there is to be retrieval of the riches of ancient and medieval theology to benefit the whole church, it needs people working on it beyond the Anglicans, however great my predecessors’ achievements may be (consider the work of Henry Chadwick, Oliver O’Donovan, JND Kelly, Rowan Williams, Alistair Stewart, Tim Vivian, Christopher A Hall, and others if you’re interested in Anglicans and patristics).
So I’m thankful for the blessing these Baptist brothers are to me and to Christ’s church.
My latest YouTube video went up last week, entitled “The beauty and glory of the Trinity” wherein I make a contribution to some of the theological shenanigans going on on Twitter (you need not know said shenanigans to enjoy the video!). I hope you are blessed by this video.
Happy Thanksgiving! This blog bills itself as “patristic, medieval, byzantine, anglican”, so here we go, in reverse order:
From the Book of Common Prayer:
ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, We thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks For all thy goodness and loving-kindness To us and to all men; [* particularly to those who desire now to offer up their praises and thanksgivings.] We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; But above all for thine inestimable love In the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; For the means of grace, And for the hope of glory. And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, That our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, And that we show forth thy praise, Not only with our lips, but in our lives; By giving up ourselves to thy service, And by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, To whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.
From St Gregory Palamas (14th c):
Prayer changes from entreaty to thanksgiving, and meditation on the divine truths of faith fills the heart with a sense of jubilation and unimpeachable hope. This hope is a foretaste of future blessings, of which the soul even now receives direct experience, and so it comes to know in part the surpassing richness of God’s bounty, in accordance with the Psalmist’s words, ‘Taste and know that the Lord is bountiful’ (Ps. 34:8). For He is the jubilation of the righteous, the joy of the upright, the gladness of the humble, and the solace of those who grieve because of Him.
From St Francis of Assisi (13th c)
Almighty, most holy, most high and supreme God, holy and just Father, Lord, king of heaven and earth, for Thyself we give thanks to Thee 68because by Thy holy will, and by Thine only Son, Thou hast created all things spiritual and corporal in the Holy Ghost and didst place us made to Thine image and likeness in paradise, whence we fell by our own fault. And we give Thee thanks because, as by Thy Son Thou didst create us, so by the true and holy love with which Thou hast loved us, Thou didst cause Him, true God and true man, to be born…. And we give thanks to Thee because Thy Son Himself is to come again in the glory of His Majesty … to say to all who have known Thee and adored Thee, and served Thee in repentance: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” And since all we wretches and sinners are not worthy to name Thee, we humbly beseech Thee, that our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, in whom Thou art well pleased, together with the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, may give thanks to Thee as it is pleasing to Thee and Them, for all. Amen. (Prayers of the Middle Ages, ed. J. Manning Potts, 1956)
From John the Solitary (of Apamea, early 5th c., Syriac):
What is required of us is to give him thanks unceasingly — not indeed to the full extent that befits his gift, for no one is capable of giving him thanks as would be appropriate, for his grace is far greater than the thanksgiving of all peoples; it is enough for us to realize that we have not the ability either to repay him, or even to thank him sufficiently (Letter to Hesychius, trans. Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, pp. 83-83)
Classically Christian 