What Is the Church

Anathema (Excommunication)

2008-08-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Now if any man is obstinate and contemptuous, let him hear Christ saying even now, "If any one trespass against thee, go, tell him his fault between thee and him alone"; but if he will not be persuaded, "take with thee one or two." But if even so he contradict, "tell it to the Church, but if he shall also refuse to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican." Matt. 18:.15, 16, 17

Beliefs and Practices

2008-08-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Jewish Messiah both instituted practices and taught doctrines. As the High Priest and messenger of God, he revealed not only the Truth, but the Way. With speech he taught (to our perennial surprise) that the merciful are better off than the vengeful, the meek better off than the overbearing, the peacemakers better off than the conquering war heroes... And with deeds he showed that we ought to wash the feet of our employees and students, that we ought to be baptized in water, that we ought to break bread, bless it, and give thanks to God for it, in remembrance of him who was broken for us.

The disciples of this Divine Man, in obedience, followed Him in both word and deed. (Peter, James, Mathew, Paul) They both preached what they were taught, and did what they were modeled. The "apostolic fathers" in turn believed and obeyed, taught and modeled. (Polycarp, Ignatius, Clement, Barnabas)

Today, we preach what he taught. Do we do what he did?

APOSTOLIC TRADITIONS GENERALLY IN ABEYANCE.

1. Washing of feet. St. John xiii. 4-14.

2. Anointing of sick with prayer for healing. St. James v. 14, 15.

3. Anointing with Oil and Muron in Baptism.

4. Anointing with Muron for Consecration.

5. Trine immersion in Baptism.

6. Incense offered to God's Holy Name. Malachi i. 11.

Humility

2008-08-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

"The road to humility is labor, bodily labor, while seeking to know oneself and to put oneself below everyone else and praying to God about everything: this is the road to humility, but humility itself is something divine and incomprehensible."

Abba Agathon

Did the Church Fall Away?

2008-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Since an apostasy [of the church] was supposed to happen, and was underway even while the apostles were still alive, let us explore some of the side-effects of this falling away. The first such side-effect was the loss of the apostolic authority from the Church. That is, the Church was in rebellion so God took away the Apostles from the earth, and with them, the apostolic authority. Although [Christians] since the second century have been fond of calling their church "apostolic," by virtue of having descended from the churches established by the Apostles, we shall see that living apostles are meant to be part of the true Church of Christ. Otherwise, a church can't have apostolic authority."

Barry Bickmore, Mormon Apologist

Relics

2008-08-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

"And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet."

-II Kings 13:20-21

"What power there was in his dead body: it communicated life to another dead body, v. 21. This great miracle, though very briefly related, was a decided proof of his mission and a confirmation of all his prophecies.

It was also a plain indication of another life after this. When Elisha died, there was not an end of him, for then he could not have done this. From operation we may infer existence. By this it appeared that the Lord was still the God of Elisha; therefore Elisha still lived, for God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

And it may, perhaps, have a reference to Christ, by whose death and burial the grave is made to all believers a safe and happy passage to life."

-Matthew Henry's Whole Bible Commentary

On the Canon II

2008-08-04T01:58:00.000-07:00

Decree from the Council of Rome in 382 AD:

"Now indeed we must treat of the divine scriptures, what the universal Church accepts and what she ought to shun. The order of the Old Testament begins here: Genesis, one book; Exodus, one book; Leviticus, one book; Numbers, one book; Deuteronomy, one book; Joshua... one book; Judges, one book; Ruth, one book; Kings, four books [that is, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings]; Paralipomenon [Chronicles], two books; Psalms, one book; Solomon, three books: Proverbs, one book, Ecclesiastes, one book, Canticle of Canticles [Song of Songs], one book; likewise Wisdom, one book; Ecclesiasticus [Sirach], one book . . . . Likewise the order of the historical [books]: Job, one book; Tobit, one book; Esdras, two books [Ezra and Nehemiah]; Esther, one book; Judith, one book; Maccabees, two books..."

Damasus, Patriarch of Rome

On the Canon

2008-03-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, Martin Luther (1522)

"Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, 1 I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle; and my reasons follow.In the first place it is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. It says that Abraham was justified by his works when he offered his son Isaac; though in Romans 4 St. Paul teaches to the contrary that Abraham was justified apart from works, by his faith alone, before he had offered his son, and proves it by Moses in Genesis 15. Now although this epistle might be helped and an interpretation 2 devised for this justification by works, it cannot be defended in its application to works of Moses' statement in Genesis 15. For Moses is speaking here only of Abraham's faith, and not of his works, as St. Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. This fault, therefore, proves that this epistle is not the work of any apostle."

Spirit and Works

2008-03-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

"Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, vigils, prayer and almsgiving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Note well that it is only good works done in the name of Christ that bring us the fruits of the Spirit."

St. Seraphim of Sarov

Icons II

2008-03-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

"[I]n the western tradition the elements of art--line, shape, color, movement, form--were calculated to be beautiful (a Madonna might be, for example, a literal representation of the artist's mistress)...

[I]n the eastern icon, these elements were calculated to invoke the presence of God. Shapes, hand positions, facial expressions, materials, and forms all meant something. Not only did they mean something, they came to be... physical manifestations of the presence of God in his people and in creation.

As such, the icon was not merely an art object, but a spiritual artifact, a relic, worthy of profound respect and veneration."

Timothy A. Smith
"Bach's Mass in B Minor as Musical Icon" From a lecture first delivered at Ball State University in conjunction with a performance of the B-Minor Mass by the University Singers in 1995.

Icons

2008-03-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

"God who has no body, nor form or limits could not, in the past, be represented. But now that He has come in the flesh and has dwelt among men, you can paint on wood and present for contemplation Him who desired to be visible."

John of Damascus

The Church Fathers IV

2008-01-16T23:52:00.000-08:00

Jim said, "He did not fill his arguments with Patristic citations because he viewed them as an independent source of authority. Authority was found in Scripture... The issue for Jewel was not Episcopal Succession, but Doctrinal Succession."

This view is intriguing but I wonder if it denies a fundamental axiom of human nature and of political science: Individual human persons are essentially psycho-somatic, body and soul.

Though the body can die and the person remains him or herself in the afterlife; though the spirit can waste away through sin, ignorance, vice, and corruption, while the body can (for a time) keep moving, neither of these states is permanent. We must eventually be a unity of soul and body.

Nations are essentially psycho-somatic. There is not only American citizens but an "American spirit," an ethos, an ineffable personality of the nation. You can have American citizens who are "un-American," (TS Eliot) and you can have Europeans who have an American spirit (Alexis de Tocqueville).

The Church is essentially psycho-somatic. Jesus Christ is both the Logos of God, the second Person of the Trinity, and also a Man of flesh and bone, born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem under Herod.

So too the Church is Holy Spirit and Body. Jesus sent his Spirit, and Paul pointed out that we have become 'members of each other,' with Christ as the Head.

Is there any way to deny what follows? The genealogy of the Body of Christ cannot merely be bodily (apostolic succession) nor merely spiritual (ie doctrinal, 'faithful', or practical)?. It must be both.

Heretical bishops (like Arius or Honorius) have bodily succession but have abandoned the spirit. Perhaps orthodox pastors (like Lance Pitluck, the pastor of my home church Vineyard) have the spirit but not the body.

Wayward laymen like myself who are enslaved to sins and ignorant of Church history, of course, have neither. Or, if I do, I do not know how. I am certainly in a precarious position, hanging on by a thread, held back from total heresy and apostasy by a miracle of the Holy Spirit alone. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Rome erred, as all humans have erred. But England attempted to evaluate her errors based on Doctrinal Succession, which is the "Spirit of the Church." But can the spirit long survive apart from the body? Can pastors long avoid heterodoxy without being discipled in person by someone who was discipled by the Apostles, who were discipled by Christ Himself in the flesh?

If we forsake the importance "genetic" lineage of the Body of Christ, we cannot simply evaluate orthodoxy based on the "spiritual" lineage as Jewel would like to do. The Doctrinal succession, which is basically that group's unique interpretation of Holy Scripture, plus self-proclaimed affiliation with the majority of Church Fathers, is an attempt to find truth and unity through the reading and interpreting of the Word according to each person's individual reason. This strategy has produced 22,000 denominations. The Body is One and yet this strategy has made thousands. The competing groups claim to politely 'agree to disagree' but actually have strong and livid disagreement with many of the others. Infant Baptism? Sacramental Communion? How to do Evangelism? Preach from the Word, or about current events? Contemporary music or hymns? Bishops, elders, or no hierarchy at all? Attempting to preserve the faith "in spirit" only, we have no way in principle to resolve these disputes.

Nor is there any end in sight. Perhaps the disintegration will continue until each family is a 'non-denomination' of their own, meeting in houses churches and avoiding all other Christians for fear of heresy.

Is this strategy failing because we who are trying to "use it" are not ourselves holy and Christlike and apostolic members of the Body we are trying to evaluate? Are we attempting to "worship in spirit and truth" without "offering our bodies as living sacrifices"?

Is it not a more promising strategy to become holy and Christlike, and only then to examine the Scriptural interpretation of others, not according to reason only but also according to the Spirit?

Is it not more Biblical to conform ourselves, body and soul, to the doctrine, practice, and faith of the living Truth as seen in the Holy Writings of the Apostles, and in the lives of earlier faithful generations, and in the lives and teachings of the present-day apostolic pastors?

-Searching for the Church

The Church Fathers II

2008-01-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

"In their view, they were directly descended through Apostolic Succession (Episcopal succession) from the church of the Fathers, and therefore they were the inheritors of the Father's catholicity. The Protestants not only taught heresy, they argued, but they were not in the same Succession, and so they simply could not claim to be their successors. The matter was, in the Roman view, settled by episcopal genealogy. ¹⁵ However, they also staked their claim to the idea that the Fathers did in fact teach the same theology as did the current church of Rome. It was here that Jewel played his hand. If Jewel could demonstrate that Rome had in fact innovated away from the teaching of the Fathers, and that the Reformed camp had actually returned in substance to the teaching and practice of the Patristic era, then he would have a strong case to undermine the principal Roman arguments against the Church of England.

This is a crucial point in understanding his work. Jewel, as will be outlined later, did not appeal to the Fathers as an end in and of themselves. He did not fill his arguments with Patristic citations because he viewed them as an independent source of authority. Authority was found in Scripture. Jewel used the Fathers because he believed them to be a faithful witness to the catholic faith, and by demonstrating their affinity with the Reformed position, he would take the wind out of Rome's sails."

Jim Salladin
John Jewel and the English Catholic Church

www.thoughtsonthechurch.blogspot.com/

The Church Fathers

2008-01-16T23:05:00.000-08:00

"...[A]nother central assumption shared between Jewel and his [Roman Catholic] opponents was that the Patristic church was catholic. Whatever the issues were during the 16^th century, whatever the complicated questions surrounding which group held legitimacy and which ones were orthodox, both agreed that the Church Fathers represented an authoritative example of an authentic catholic church. ¹⁴ And so the Roman party charged the Church of England with departing from the faith of the Fathers."

Jim Salladin

John Jewel and the English Catholic Church
www.thoughtsonthechurch.blogspot.com

Protestant Heritage III - The Origin of the "Quakers"

2008-01-04T00:54:00.000-08:00

The Quaker religion was begun by George Fox and brought to America by William Penn. Penn had been persecuted by the Church of England for arguing against the Trinity. That is, he disbelieved the divinity of Christ. This disbelief is perhaps understandable, for the divinity of Christ is a difficult doctrine, and one to be carefully considered by every Christian, humbly and in a life of devotion and desire to learn. Penn's persistent insistence, on the other hand, that what he could not understand must not be true, qualifies him the inauspicious title of a heretic and a dissenter. It is no surprise that I lack faith. "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief!" But it is a shocking audacity to presume that the fault lies with Christ and not with me. "You unbelieving generation! How long must I be with you?" The sin of Judas was not betrayal, it was unrepentance. Peter betrayed Christ not just once for money, but thrice for fear of man. But he repented, and believed.

-Searching for the Church

An article from New Advent.com on the formation of the Quakers by George Fox:

"Founding his opinions on isolated texts, he gradually evolved a system at variance with every existing form of Christianity. His central dogma was that of the "inner light", communicated directly to the individual soul by Christ "who enlightenth every man that cometh into the world". To walk in this light and obey the voice of Christ speaking within the soul was to Fox the supreme and sole duty of man. Creeds and churches, councils, rites, and sacraments were discarded as outward things. Even the Scriptures were to be interpreted by the inner light.

This was surely carrying the Protestant doctrine of private judgment to its ultimate logical conclusion. Inconvenient passages of Holy Writ, such as those establishing Baptism and the Eucharist, were expounded by Fox in an allegorical sense; whilst other passages were insisted upon with a literalness before unknown. Thus, from the text "Swear not at all", he drew the illicitness of oaths, even when demanded by the magistrate. Titles of honour, salutations, and all similar things conducive to vanity, such as doffing the hat or "scraping with the leg", were to be avoided even in the presence of the king. War, even if defensive, was declared unlawful. Art, music, drama, field-sports, and dancing were rejected as unbecoming the gravity of a Christian. As for attire, he pleaded for that simplicity of dress and absence of ornament which later became the most striking peculiarity of his followers.

There was no room in his system for the ordained and salaried clergy of other religions, Fox proclaiming that every man, woman or child, when moved by the Spirit, had an equal right to prophesy and give testimony for the edification of the brethren. Two conclusions, with disagreeable consequence to the early Friends, were drawn from this rejection of a "priesthood"; the first was, that they refused to pay tithes or church rates; the second, that they celebrated marriage among themselves, without calling in the services of the legally appointed minister.

Impelled by frequent "revelations", Fox began the public preaching of his novel tenets in 1647. It was not his intention to increase the religious confusion of the time by the addition of a new sect. He seems to have been persuaded that the doctrine by means of which he himself had "come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God" would be greeted alike by Christian, Turk, and heathen. The enthusiasm and evident sincerity of the uncouth young preacher gained him numerous converts in all parts of Britain; whilst the accession of Margaret, wife of Judge Fell, afterwards of Fox himself, secured to the Friends a valuable rallying-point in the seclusion of Swarthmoor Hall, Lancashire.

In an incredibly short time, a host of unordained apostles, male and female, were scouring the two hemispheres, carrying to the ends of the earth the gospel of Fox. One enthusiast hastened to Rome to enlighten the pope; a second went to the Orient to convert the sultan..."

Protestant Heritage II - History of the Vineyard II

2008-01-04T00:37:00.000-08:00

I grew up in the Vineyard. After being born into and attending the church of which my dad was a pastor (Four Square), I spent ages 4-18 in the Vineyard Christian Fellowship movement.

It is to the Anaheim Vineyard (which was the seed church of the whole movement) that I owe my initial salvation, most of my instruction in doctrine and the practical living out of the Christian life, many of my closest friends, a thousand memories, Bible studies, emotional worship sessions... I could go on. For all this I shall be (literally) eternally grateful.

However Spirit-led her origin in the 1980s, her ancestors have inauspicious beginnings.

The Vineyards spiritual lineage includes Calvary Chapel and Yorba Linda Friends. Calvary Chapel was originally a Four Square church. Yorba Linda Friends is a part of the so-called Quaker movement, or Society of Friends.

The Four Square church I am still learning about and will hopefully send another email regarding their lineage in the future. The Quakers or Society of friends are those spiritual grandparents of whom I am not proud to a descendant.

The Body I

2008-01-04T00:36:00.000-08:00

One of the central assertions of the Orthodox Church is that spiritual and psychological and doctrinal health stem from organic connectedness to Christ and the Church. That is, one can have isolated points of correct spirituality and prayer, perhaps a good deal of psychological habits, and entire systems and matrices of intelligent and godly and scripturally accurate doctrines and beliefs, even if one is only partially rooted in the Church. But the fullness of Christian living and the Mind of Christ comes from being fully rooted in the rich and healthy soil that is Christ in his current earthly Body. This fullness is not to be found in a private relationship between "me and Jesus," for was there ever such a thing as a private relationship? Is my relationship with my parents "private"? or is it indeed a relationship with them, their parents and grandparents, all their friends and families, and my own brothers and sisters as well? This fullness is not to be found in "faith alone," but in total faith, with all that faith entails: namely, repentance, obedience, and communal worship.

These are new ideas that I have never considered before, but have immense explanatory power. It explains my own anemic Christian life, and the painfully inconsistent vitality of my church growing up (the Vineyard), and the only occasional trustworthiness of Christian authors, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and theologians that I have been acquainted with. What else is the explanation?

For, I am learning, this Body of Christ which is so essential to life in Christ includes not only the people who wrote the Holy Scriptures, as we Evangelicals and Protestants fully understand, but also the people who lived before the writing of the Scriptures, the people who lived during, and the people who lived after these writings. It includes the Apostles (who may have taught by word of mouth rather than by letter, see II Thes. 1:15), the Apostles who committed some teachings to writings (John, Matthew), some who were only Apostles after Christ ascended (Paul), and those who were instructed by the Apostles directly (Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch), and those who were taught by these disciples, and so on through the generations.

The living Body of Christ, which is the soil in which we must be rooted and grounded for health, is no less than the sum total of all Christians from past, present (and in some mysterious sense) future, and the teachings and practices of these Christians as guided by the Holy Spirit. For it is not merely the writing of Holy Scriptures themselves in the Holy Canon, but the affirmation of that Canon, the decision of what is and is not Holy Scripture (as decided upon at the Council of Nicea), all of which was guided and safegaurded by the Holy Spirit of God, and so deserves and demands our trust.

If this is true, how much of the spiritual malaise, the doctrinal lukewarmness, the emotional despair and frustration, is caused from being only partially rooted in love, while remaining partially rooted in the world? How much of our crises, with more than 50% of Evangelical young people leaving the church before graduating college, and many many adults ceasing to attend church altogether, is due to building our faith only partially on rock, while continuing to build half of it on sinking sand?

-Searching for the Church

What is Orthodoxy?

2007-12-21T00:34:00.001-08:00

"Orthodoxy is that form of Christianity which gives right glory or right worship to God the Holy Trinity. Orthodoxy is the Christian Church, in succession to the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Priests of the Old Testament, which was founded by our Lord Jesus Christ when He Ordained His Apostles and sent the Holy Spirit upon the faithful gathered in Jerusalem at Pentecost. The followers of the Way were first called Christians at Antioch; and the Christians were first called Catholics in a letter of St. Ignatius of Antioch in about the year AD 98. The Orthodox are the original Christians, the first Catholics, the Church of the Apostles, and the Community of the New Testament.

The Western Churches, including that of Rome, were part of the unity of Orthodoxy through the whole of the first 1,000 years. Rome only separated from the unity of the church by making extraordinary claims for the earthly powers of her patriarch (Pope) at the beginning of the 11th century and completed the break with the Orthodox by the 13th century. The usual date of the great schism is given as AD 1054. The ancient churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople are all Orthodox. About 250 million people now living are members of the Orthodox churches around the world with about 5 million in the USA.

The Orthodox Church is universal (catholic), has Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Laity, and a rich Monastic life with Communities of Monks and of Nuns in nearly every country. Most Priests and Deacons are married. Bishops are not married because they are elevated from celebate monastic life for the most part.

What is Western-Rite Orthodoxy?

2007-12-21T00:16:00.000-08:00

"http://www.westernorthodox.com/whatis.html)

"By AD 2000, approximately 1.433 billion persons, or slightly less than one third of the world’s population, will be Christian, according to David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia. In spite of these millions of adherents, the percentage of the globe’s population that calls itself Christian will have fallen slightly since 1900.

Sadly, these statistics include folk who claim to be Christian but who are not necessarily active in local congregations. Even more startling for most Americans is the decline in influence of Christian institutions and values on contemporary life in terms of ethical standards and practice, political and economic policies, and popular culture, such as movies, music, the press, and so forth.

As a consequence of this diminution of Christianity’s impact on society at large, historians, both Christian and secular, call this a post-Christian age. Martin Marty, a faculty member at the University of Chicago and author of The Modern Schism, notes that industrialization and urbanization which swept through Western Europe and North America in the latter half of the nineteenth century resulted in a society in which religion, if acknowledged at all, has been relegated to the private concerns of most citizens’ lives where it has less and less importance for each passing generation.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Bishop Leslie Newbigin, a long-time Christian missionary in India and author of Foolishness to the Greeks, maintains that the culture most impervious to the Christian Gospel is not Africa, Asia, or Oceania, but the industrialized West (Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand).

Newbigin’s observations are manifested in the decline of mainstream American churches since the 1960s, when, according to Christianity Today, Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, and Episcopalians lost literally millions of members. While mainline churches are on a condition of retrenchment for a multiplicity of reasons, conservative Christian bodies continue to grow.

Among those groups that are growing are Christians known as Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox. Orthodoxy in North America claims somewhere between 5 to 6 million adherents. Worldwide, the Orthodox Church has a membership of about 250 million persons, which makes it the second largest Christian body on the globe, with Roman Catholicism’s having a membership of somewhat less than 1 billion.

In the United States, Orthodoxy, which was first brought to North America through Alaska by colonizers from czarist Russia in 1794, has been, until the last few years, a church primarily of immigrants and their descendents from Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. With these new arrivals came their clergy from the old country; so, today in the United States and Canada there are 14 Orthodox jurisdictions that reflect the ethnic make-up of those who originally brought the ancient Christian Faith to these shores.

Among those jurisdictions are at least four groups that came out of czarist Russia (the largest being the Orthodox Church in America), the Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, Albanian Orthodox, and the Antiochian Orthodox. While each of these groups has its own hierarchy of bishops and administrative responsibilities, all of these churches are a part of the ancient Church of Christ known as Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy and are in communion with each other.

All of these bodies believe in the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who has always existed as one God in three divine Persons. Orthodox Christians believe that Almighty God created all that is, and that He is the Lord of all history.

These Christians affirm that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, that He died for the sins of mankind, that He was raised from the grave by the power of the Father on Easter morning, that He ascended into heaven, that He is the head of His body, the Church, and that He sent God the Holy Spirit to guide the Church into all truth. The summary of the faith is proclaimed each Sunday, when the faithful recite the Nicene Creed during the Divine Liturgy.

To the casual observer, the Orthodox Church appears to have much in common with the Roman Catholic Church.

This is of course true in many ways. However, Rome began the process of breaking with the Eastern expression of the catholic faith, i.e. Orthodoxy, in the eleventh century.

Perhaps the most obvious difference between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy, laying aside differences in regard to the role of the Pope in the life of the universal Church and certain other doctrinal disagreements, is the form of worship followed by most Orthodox Christians.

More specifically, the worship of the overwhelming majority of Orthodox congregations is called Eastern-Rite or Byzantine. This last term comes from the name of the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, Byzantium. Byzantine liturgics (forms of worship) are gloriously beautiful, complex, mostly sung, and quite repetitive from the perspective of contemporary Americans. Depending on the parish, liturgies in American and Canadian-Orthodox congregations are sometimes even conducted at least partially in the native tongue of the jurisdiction. But many now use English almost exclusively.

Not all Orthodox Christians use the Eastern or Byzantine liturgical forms. At least two branches of Orthodoxy in America also include congregations that use Western liturgies. The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese is the larger body that sanctions the use of forms of worship that most Americans and Canadians would perhaps find more familiar.

This liturgical form is known as the Western Rite. More specifically, the Western Rite is a specified form of worship that was used by Christians in Western Europe before the Roman Catholic Church broke with the Orthodox Church.

The Western Rite, when compared to Byzantine liturgical forms, is simpler, less redundant, obviously shorter, and employs a hymnody (the hymns used) that are familiar to a great many American Christians. More precisely, the Western Rite, as approved by the Antiochian Archdiocese is a theologically corrected form of worship formerly used by either the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Communion.

In most Western-Rite Orthodox parishes, this means the liturgy is based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. In other Western-Rite congregations, the liturgy may be a Latin or English form of pre-Vatican-II Roman Catholic worship. In fact, all native French Orthodox Christians, who number in the thousands, use this form in Orthodox Churches in France.

For those Western-Rite Christians who use a theologically corrected Anglican liturgy, the modifications, while important, would not be terribly noticeable to even the most regular worshippers from a traditional Episcopal congregation. Two of these alterations include the deletion of the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed and the addition of a stronger epiclesis in the eucharistic prayer said by the priest at the consecration of the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Christ.

Filioque is the Latin word for and the Son in the third section of the Nicene Creed that affirms the church’s belief that the Holy Spirit is one of the three persons of the triune Godhead. Orthodox Christians insist that the phrase and the Son in speaking of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father is an addition by a meeting of Western bishops that was never universally accepted by the Church. Even the papacy, which now accepts the phrase, originally rejected it. Moreover, this phrase causes a blurring of the roles of each of the three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the Godhead. It is from the Father that the Son is begotten and from the Father that the Spirit proceeds.

Besides the removal of the filioque in the Creed, the Orthodox version of the Western Rite in its Anglican form requires the priest specifically to petition God the Holy Spirit to act in changing the gifts of bread and wine into God’s gift of the life-giving Body and Blood of the Incarnate Son.

In addition to these two changes, the Orthodox Church’s Western Rite includes other indiscernible changes that most Anglo-Catholics (old-fashioned, High-Church Episcopalians) would find to be either familiar or certainly acceptable.

Finally, as mainstream Anglicanism and other mainline Protestant Churches continue their decline and denial of basic catholic faith, doctrine, and worship, and turn to inclusive language liturgies, which refer to God as Mother (to name only one alteration of traditional worship), many traditional catholic Christians of both the Roman and the Anglican Churches are turning to the Orthodox Church. In fact, a goodly number of those who are doing so, have joined congregations that employ the Western Rite.

By doing so, these Christians have retained familiar forms of worship and at the same time insured themselves of remaining within an ecclesiastical communion, and under Godly, Orthodox bishops, who attempt to teach and practice the ancient Gospel of Jesus Christ."

From, What is Western-Rite Orthodoxy?

Fr. Patrick McCauley

http://www.westernorthodox.com/whatis.html

Sola Scriptura II

2007-12-19T23:08:00.001-08:00

"Rome's error was to identify truth so much with an institution that it became impervious to correction. Innovation and heresy were inevitable. But some Protestants viewed Sola Scriptura as a cart blanch for their own autonomous interpretations of Scripture. This also inevitably led to innovation. Jewel's way was to find the wise path: Scriptural authority, interpreted with the Communion of Saints... Biblical Christianity did not begin at the Reformation, and Jewel stands as a witness that the church Fathers are evangelical guides in the pursuit of Scriptural faith.^"

Jim Salladin
John Jewel and the Catholic Church of England

Liturgy I

2007-12-14T03:43:00.001-08:00

"The testimonies of Scripture that refer to the Liturgy are in places such as St John Chapter 3 in Christ's talk with Nicodemos, St John Chapter 6, Luke Chapter 22, Matthew Chapter 26, Corinthians 11, Luke 24 (reflect carefully on this in light of Orthodox teaching), Acts Chapters 2 and 20, all concerning the breaking of bread, the core of the Liturgy, Matthew 28, 1 Peter 3, regarding Baptism...

Ephesians 5 is also an important testimony to participation as Orthodox understand it. Apart from this we have a continuous history of the Liturgy of the Church as understood by the Orthodox; it has always been part of the Church. Read St Ignatios writing around 100 AD, St Justin Martyr around 150 AD, St Ireanaus around 180 AD, all these bear a similar witness to the Liturgy."

Monk Kirkpatrick
www.energeticprocession.wordpress.com

Sola Scriptura I

2007-12-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

"More recently, Ridderbos has argued that the common apologetic for canon ultimately leads a person to one of two alternatives, a certainty based upon what amounts to the assured results of higher criticism, or the infallibility of the church."

M. James Sawyer , Th.M., Ph.D.

Evangelicals and the Canon of the New Testament
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=689

Sabboth vs The Lord's Day

2007-12-14T03:30:00.001-08:00

"Be not seduced by strange doctrines nor by antiquated fables, which are profitless. For if even unto this day we live after the manner of Judaism, we avow that we have not received grace.... If then those who had walked in ancient practices attained unto newness of hope, no longer observing Sabbaths but fashioning their lives after the Lord's day, on which our life also arose through Him and through His death which some men deny ... how shall we be able to live apart from Him? ... It is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practice Judaism. For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity — Ignatius to the Magnesians 8:1, 9:1-2, 10:3, Lightfoot translation."

Ignatius of Antioch, student of John the Beloved, circa 30-107 AD

Faith as Self Effacing

2007-12-14T03:29:00.001-08:00

"Faith is nothing. Really, it is. In fact, one way to ensure missing the gospel is to think faith is something. But it's not. It's really nothing at all. Faith is a negative concept that opens up space to speak about something else. It has what John Webster calls a 'rhetoric of indication', one which is 'self-effacing'. In other words, faith couldn't care less about itself. Faith wants you to stop thinking about it, too, because in thinking about it, you are thinking about how you have (or don't have) it. And so, you're really just thinking about yourself."

-Matt Jenson

Read the full article @ http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/10/18/faith-is-nothing/

Thoughts on the Church

2007-12-14T03:06:00.001-08:00

Friends and family,

As a part of my recent interest in the ancient Orthodox church, I strongly desire to continue conversations with all of you about what I am learning. I have been convicted, stimulated, amazed, and thoroughly changed. I am grateful to the Spirit of God for his active work on the earth and his faithfulness towards us. I wish to journey along with you as we attempt to understand what it means to follow God. But time is short and for some of you our in-person conversations feel few and far between!

To this end, I have constructed this email ring which I will use to send a few thoughts about Christianity in general. I'll send quotes, Bible verse, some questions or short reflections on history and theology both to keep you abreast with my journey, and hopefully to stimulate your thinking for future conversations.

Thanks,

Protestant Heritage

2007-12-14T03:05:00.000-08:00

A friend recently urged me "Before you leave the Protestant Tradition, make sure you know it fully and deeply. What if what you are seeking is to be found in your own backyard?"

It is important for us, whatever church we go to, to know the history of our church, to know our heritage. We should know the immediate heritage, and the heritage reaching far into the past. For instance, I should know the history of the Vineyard (where I grew up) and Four Square, where my dad was a pastor when I was born. And I should learn broadly about the history of Evangelical Christianity in general, its roots in American revivalism . I should know its roots in British Anglican Protestantism, and Anglican Protestantism's roots in the Roman Catholic church. I should certainly understand the Reformation. Why did it happen? What is the Protestant side of the story? What is the Roman side of the story?

The Vineyard Anaheim where I grew up was born out of the Yorba Linda Friends Church and Calvary Chapel Yorba Linda. We became a new church not because of some controversial issue that rent us asunder, but because of a new thing the Spirit was doing. Yorba Linda Friends was born out of the Quaker movement, begun in the 1600s by George Fox. John Wimber left Calvary Chapel because of differing views on the present day ministry of the Gifts of the Spirit, and differing ways of living out those gifts. Beyond that, I do not know! I now know about Bill Jackson's book, "The Quest for the Radical Middle." which explains the history of the Vineyard movement specifically.

I do indeed plan to continue learning what I can about the Reformation, the Roman church from which we sprang, and the evolution of Evangelical Christianity in particular.