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  • Believer’s Baptism: Something between a Review, a Reaction, and a Response

    The title, “Believer’s Baptism,” gives cause for alarm. This means the book intends not to articulate a general teaching of “baptism,” but refers instead to a subtype of baptism called “Believer’s Baptism,” a baptism within the larger genera of baptism that is the “sign of the New Covenant in Christ.” The implication in the nomenclature…

  • The Pandemic as an Apocalypse of the Body

    This was my entry into the Archbishop’s Annual Essay Contest. It was not selected as one of the winners. I. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. On March 13, 2020, the U.S. President, Donald Trump, declared a National Emergency. The events, both nationally and globally, that then transpired in…

  • Where are the Priests?

    This passage by Peter Leithart remains, for me, one of the most compelling calls to vocation, “Against Christianity”, p. 129: Where are the priests? Who is manning the boundaries? And the answer is that this dimension of pastoral ministry has all but evaporated. Pastors see themselves as proponents of Christianity, teaching “religious” things or assisting…

  • "Out of worship are the springs of life."

    Operating on the assumption that the Church is a polis and that a polis is given form by the inculcation of its myths and rituals, Peter Leithart makes the claim that: Liturgy is the first form of Christian discipleship training, of paedeia, of induction into the culture of the Church. This claim sounds appealing to…

  • Homily for Good Friday

    Our Genesis passage tells the well-known story known traditionally by its Hebrew name, the “Aqedah” which refers to the binding of Isaac, Abraham’s only son. As the story goes, Abraham hears the call of God to take Isaac, and to offer him as a sacrificial burnt offering on the mountaintop. Every parent in here shudders…

  • Lewis on Primary Sources

    From C.S. Lewis’ Preface to the english translation of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation “There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that…

  • Mascall on the "Three Heavenly Unities"

    From E.L. Mascall’s Christ, the Christian, and the Church: A Study of the Incarnation and Its Consequences (pp. 92-93) 1. First, we must recognize the essential union of the Person of God the Father with the Person of God the Son within the life of the triune Godhead, a union through which the Son, who…

  • A Theory of the Homily: Against Expositional Preaching?

    I. Here is a story: In the Middle Ages, the clergy would not let the people read the Bible, let alone hear the Bible, since the Bible (and all of the liturgy) was in Latin, a language which only clergy knew. This gave the clergy a monopoly on Church teaching, the laity themselves having to…

  • A Theory of the Homily: the Sermon in Context

    I. The liturgy is not formless, but has a structure to it, a shape. From start to finish, there is a logic to its parts and its flow. While each of the “parts” of the liturgy can be meaningfully spoken of by their headings and traditional names (the “Sanctus,” the “Sursum Corda,” the “Benediction,” etc),…

  • Collect for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity Sunday

    Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that bringing forth in abundance the fruit of good works, they may be abundantly rewarded when our Savior Jesus Christ comes to restore all things; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.