Dr. Peter Toon

I just found out that Dr. Peter Toon passed away on Saturday. The Anglican Church has lost a fine teacher, apologist and supporter of the Anglican Tradition. But he is not lost to the Body of Christ, for he will ever be our brother in Christ and we will see him again. Thank God for the resurrection of Jesus!
The Prayer Book Society of USA

Why the Traditional Liturgy

Join in and list the reasons why you believe - or one of your favourite authors believes - the traditional liturgy is appropriate for what the Church and the world need today. If the comments feature doesn't work for you, send me an e-mail and I'll list it for you.

[26 April: Yes, I'm keeping this one up for a while]

Here's why:
1) Its reverent form confronts us with the holiness of God.
2) The implicit hierarchy represents a biblical world view.
3) Its classic formality and beauty beats the weekly attempts at trying to come up with an order of service hands down.
4) It connects us with the universal church across time.
5) The presence of variety in certain elements engages one's interest.
6) The presence of sameness frees one from distractions so that one may focus on the devotional spirit.

See the first chapter in Letters to Malcolm by C. S. Lewis. Lots of good comments there. For example:
[...the traditional liturgy] "works" best - when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it.... The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.
Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don't go to church to be entertained.... A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant.
I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put.
Good stuff.

Neuhaus quote on "Public Ethic"

"Further, I believe ... that the God in whom we trust for the fulfillment of the promise is also the Creator of the universe and Lord of history in a manner that assures a certain correspondence, albeit disordered by sin, between His will and human reason and the laws of nature. As a result, ethics grounded in and thoroughly compatible with Christian faith is “accessible” also to non-Christians. It is, in other words, a public ethic. The Christian tradition provides various ways of describing such an ethic—e.g., natural law, common grace, orders of preservation, the twofold kingdom. This is the ethic that is pertinent to the right ordering of the earthly polis, and Christians are not “compromised” when they employ it. Indeed they have a Christian duty to do so. Why there should be such a public ethic is itself part of the Christian story about the nature of God’s world."

Source: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5704

Household baptism

Peter addresses Cornelius

I had another conversation recently with some folks regarding "infant baptism." Those of us who belong to churches that baptize infants need to quit using that term. It gives the "Baptists" - to use a generic term - a foot in the door. To begin with, arguments for baptizing infants are usually pitiful: "Jesus said to not forbid the children and surely there were infants in the household baptisms in Acts." Such arguments do not prove the position. The Baptists are correct that the Bible does not anywhere state expressly that infants of believing parents are to be baptized. What they cannot deny is that it does speak of Christian households that are baptized. When we point that out to them, then they are on the defensive and argue from silence ("they must have all professed the faith"), not us.

One cannot understand the doctrine of baptism without understanding accompanying doctrines, such as the doctrine of the Church and the nature of the covenants, especially the Abrahamic covenant. Once one understands those things, and then refers to Colossians 2 and the book of Acts, the issue is not whether a particular class of people is to be baptized or not. The evidence is that households are to be baptized. This was the case with Abraham and this is the case in Acts. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether there were babies in the households mentioned in Acts or not. Anyone, including babies or slaves or whoever, was to receive the sign of the covenant.

The term household baptism helps the paedobaptism position and it is a more biblical expression. Let's use it.

Image: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Image:Peter-teaches-Cornelius%27-household.jpg#file