Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a read more

Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a Christian experience. We think we are doing our duty when we're only talking about it.

In questions of this sort there are two things to be observed. First, that the truth of the Scriptures be read more

In questions of this sort there are two things to be observed. First, that the truth of the Scriptures be inviolably maintained. Secondly, since Scripture doth admit of diverse interpretations, that no one cling to any particular exposition with such pertinacity that, if what he supposed to be the teaching of Scripture should afterward turn out to be clearly false, he should nevertheless still presume to put it forward, lest thereby the sacred Scriptures should be exposed to the derision of unbelievers and the way of salvation should be closed to them.

Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle It is impossible for a man to be a Christian without having Christ; and read more

Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle It is impossible for a man to be a Christian without having Christ; and if he has Christ he has at the same time all that is in Christ.

Commemoration of Wilson Carlile, Priest, Founder of the Church Army, 1942 Few have defined what free will is, although read more

Commemoration of Wilson Carlile, Priest, Founder of the Church Army, 1942 Few have defined what free will is, although it repeatedly occurs in the writings of all. Origen seems to have put forward a definition generally agreed upon among ecclesiastical writers when he said that it is a faculty of the reason to distinguish between good and evil, a faculty of the will to choose one or the other. Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.

To live is nothing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live.

To live is nothing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live.

We [must not] underestimate the enormity of the claim [made by the Jews]. Again and again in the Pentateuch, the read more

We [must not] underestimate the enormity of the claim [made by the Jews]. Again and again in the Pentateuch, the psalms, the prophets, and the subsequent writings which derive from them, the claim is made that the creator of the entire universe has chosen to live uniquely on a small ridge called Mount Zion, near the eastern edge of the Judean hill-country. The sheer absurdity of this claim, from the standpoint of any other worldview (not least that of Enlightenment philosophy), is staggering. The fact that Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt again, Syria and now Rome had made explicit mockery of the idea did not shake this conviction, but only intensified it. This was what Jewish monotheism looked like on the ground.

God's child in Christ adopted -- Christ my all -- What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather Than read more

God's child in Christ adopted -- Christ my all -- What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather Than forfeit that blest name, by which I call The Holy One, the Almighty God, my Father? -- Father! in Christ we live, and Christ in Thee -- Eternal Thou and everlasting we. The heir of heaven, henceforth I fear not death: In Christ I live! in Christ I draw the breath Of the true life! -- let then earth, sea, and sky Make war against me! On my front I show Their mighty Master's seal. In vain they try To end my life, that can but end its woe. Is that a death-bed where a Christian lies? Yes, but not his -- 'tis Death itself there dies.

Form-criticism... has made an end of the false notion, which for a long time dominated critical scholarship, that it was read more

Form-criticism... has made an end of the false notion, which for a long time dominated critical scholarship, that it was possible throughout the gospels to distill from them a "Life of Jesus" that would be free from dogmatic presuppositions and not affected by any "retouching" derived from the faith of the Church. In fact, however, faith in Jesus Christ crucified and risen did not first appear at some later stage in the tradition, but was the foundation of the tradition, the very soil out of which it grew; and it is in light of that faith alone that the tradition can be understood. This faith in Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Exalted One, explains both the things which the primitive tradition makes known to us, with its manifest concern for the factual truth of the tradition about Jesus, and at the same time the peculiar liberty which the evangelists take in making alterations in the record in points of detail. In relating the acts and words of Jesus, they do not refer back to any sort of "archives" possessed by the community... Jesus Christ is not for them a figure of past history whose proper place is in a library.

Feast of Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton, Archbishop of Mainz, Apostle of Germany, Martyr, 754 The Pauline teaching is read more

Feast of Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton, Archbishop of Mainz, Apostle of Germany, Martyr, 754 The Pauline teaching is the means through which God Himself wants to teach us; Paul's Epistle to the Romans is a letter from God to us, mankind today. It remains the great problem of interpretation, hitherto never entirely solved, how to unite these two things: the keen attention to what Paul wanted to say to that community then, and the search for what God wants to say to us through Paul today. In the end, the question is whether the reader will really allow God to speak to him, or whether he evades God by hiding behind "Paul", behind "the past".