tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post1159876545647076365..comments2024-03-29T06:58:28.383+13:00Comments on Anglican Down Under: John Henry Newman and the shape of Down Under Anglicanism in the 21st century (Possibly part 1 of several)Peter Carrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-9973425842179834892019-10-16T08:55:26.485+13:002019-10-16T08:55:26.485+13:00Dear Bowman,
Thank you ... and a nice point to beg...Dear Bowman,<br />Thank you ... and a nice point to begin my next post on Monday!Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-60732702965101430372019-10-15T22:22:33.864+13:002019-10-15T22:22:33.864+13:00B.W., a lovely summarisation of Saint John Hemny N...B.W., a lovely summarisation of Saint John Hemny Newman's genius for ALL Christian's Father Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17062632692873621258noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-26377961407977707092019-10-15T07:17:27.403+13:002019-10-15T07:17:27.403+13:00Those are the three blessings. The Holy Spirit has...Those are the three blessings. The Holy Spirit has not altogether denied these gifts to those of other traditions. Occasionally, one of them has had a bit more of one or the other of them. Nor were these given just once as reformation miracles never to be seen again. Not being confessionalists, Anglicans continue to deepen the well of living water and to pull fresh buckets from it. Finally, Anglicans have stumbled in the modern centuries (ie hypersynodicalism, Reformed confessionalism) just as other communions have done (ie papal infallibility, fundamentalism). But others have more often had to backtrack toward the resurrection faith from impasses of their own making. Sometimes it has been the blessings mentioned above that have shown them where they went astray. <br /><br />The irony of Newman's conversion-- visible in our time, although not in his-- is that the dream of a modern yet patristic catholicism that he defended and that, over the following century, Rome adopted is so very obviously an Anglican one. It is hard now to remember that in his time and for a while thereafter Anglicans fought over candles and incense as we fight over sex, but that puts his swimming of the Tiber in historical perspective. Newman brought these gifts to the wider communion where the need of them was greater. His canonisation in Rome occasions celebration that they were received, not just there, but in the Body everywhere.<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-2836301120384768142019-10-15T07:17:07.981+13:002019-10-15T07:17:07.981+13:00"What does it mean to be an Anglican Christia..."What does it mean to be an Anglican Christian?... But what is right about remaining Anglican?"<br /><br />From the very beginning, Peter, the reformation of the Body in England was blessed in three exceptional ways that still concretely matter to the lives in Christ of his disciples today. <br /><br />The CoE has a Reformation doctrine that has freed the believer from the trap of trying to make justification etc happen from the human side. That is immediately and enormously helpful to souls, whether their practice owes more to medieval English contemplatives, Protestant missionary spirituality, or Tridentine forms of religious life. Also, perhaps because Cranmer got his justification doctrine (and his wife) from Osiander (cf Wurtemburg Confession), the 10A of the 39A do not ensnare Anglicans in the confessionalist trap of needing to assent to a diagram (eg Beza's) of the machinery behind that justification. Lutheran faith is trust, and Osiander's trust amounts to theosis.<br /><br />Perhaps that explains why the CoE also has a BCP from Cranmer that orders the sacramental and devotional life of Christians around participation in Christ and incorporation into his mystical Body. Unlike most other Protestants, Anglicans have not had to adopt an arid individualism or an unreal intellectualism in order to trust God with their justification, sanctification, and vocation. Paradoxically, this richer ecclesiality has supported a warm personalism, a close acquaintance with Christ in the psalms, and a freedom to love God with the mind. Where other sorts of Protestants (eg William Ames) sometimes harbour paralysing doubts about the Spirit's indwelling of souls and congregations, the Anglican style (eg Richard Sibbes) normally and quite properly assumes it.<br /><br />Finally, that richer ecclesiality allowed Cranmer and the CoE after him to take a paleo-orthodox stance toward ancient tradition: the Vine need not be uprooted for its dead leaves to be pruned. That allowed Cranmer himself and others of successive generations-- Andrewes, Parker, Law, Wesley, Keble, Newman, Maurice, Temple, Williams, etc-- to listen to the fathers as well as the apostles. These voices have been silent to those who assume that a deep chasm yawns between the apostles and the fathers. Moreover this confidence in the continuity of the Spirit's witness to all generations has enabled Anglicans to rely on the holy scriptures in matters of salvation without needing to further believe that it must be a magic book or a perfect book to be God's book. The Spirit's witness graces the Communion with an organic order arising from word of the Lord and the ancient canons without need of modern machinery. And it has opened our eyes to the Spirit's presence among the faithful of other traditions, making the Anglican orthodoxy a generous one and ecumenical engagement a perennial mission. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-75649316915253245882019-10-14T13:16:08.389+13:002019-10-14T13:16:08.389+13:00Dear Bishop Peter, Good to hear of your experience...Dear Bishop Peter, Good to hear of your experiences around the diocese where there are still signs of life - despite recent disaffiliations.<br /><br />You spoke also, briefly, about another historical disaffiliation from Anglicanism - the departure of Father (Cardinal) John Henry Newman for the banks of the Tiber; which he has helped to shore up with his eirenic and most helpful understanding of the primacy of the human conscience. He, perhaps above all Catholic theologians, was able to enunciate what, in its time was perhaps a revolutionary Catholic theory: that God created us in the Divine Image and Likeness, but with an individual capability of either accepting or rejecting the idea of God's place in our lives.<br /><br />Cambridge theologian, Dr Michael D Hurley, had this to say about Newman:<br /><br />"Where cleverness and learning is valued above all else, intuitions of the heart may be too easily held in contempt. A good thing too, some might say, given the emotionally overheated way in which our political and cultural moment is currently being fought out. But in Grammar of Assent Newman challenges us to consider more carefully why we believe what we do, and in particular what positive and indeed necessary relationship there might be between feeling and thinking." <br /><br />Newman made the famous point that he would first make a toast to the individual conscience, before toasting the Pope. (perhaps this was the residual Anglican in Newman that still asserted itself).<br /><br />However, we Anglicans aren't always so scrupulous about the defence of private conscience - against the issue of dogmatic certainty, something we can often accuse our Roman brethren of too closely guarding.<br /><br />As a self-confess anglo-catholic, part of my affection for Newman comes from his defence of the sacramental validity and vitality of those spiritual benefits that were given to us by Christ. Another sphere of his beneficent influence on me is his down to earth understanding of feelings, as an important function of the human condition. One of his own manifestations of 'feeling' was his love for his confrere, Father John, with whom (at his documented express instruction) his human remains were interred in a common grave. Sadly, his deeply-felt desire for this proximity has now been overridden by Vatican protocol - a situation which, ironically, he himself might not have approved of. Father Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17062632692873621258noreply@blogger.com