Comments for Covenant

Comment on +Robinson and an Elizabethan apocryphon by Welcome, Benjamin Guyer | The Conciliar Anglican

Welcome, Benjamin Guyer | The Conciliar Anglican — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:45:52 +0000

[...] the Caroline Divines. He has also written some fine essays that you can find on the net, including this one refuting the often repeated false claim that Queen Elizabeth I was trying to establish a church [...]

Comment on Jordan Hylden by Fr. Robert Walden

Fr. Robert Walden — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:38:35 +0000

Read your article: Being a People of Peace, in TLC, 3 March 2013 edition. How do I sign your petition? Jesus never said to destroy those who do not agree with you, but He did say to love them and to do good to them! TEC has wasted a lot of money and burned a lot of bridges under the present program of trying to destroy those who do not agree with them. Must make Jesus very sad!

Comment on Return to your first love by Craig Uffman

Craig Uffman — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:47:37 +0000

“Why should everyone see only our arguments?”

What an outstanding point. I confess that I have never seen it put like that. Like Nathan to David. The light bulb goes on. Thanks.

Comment on Return to your first love by Zack Guiliano

Zack Guiliano — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:43:49 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Craig. I too think that somehow, as others like Derek Olsen have been emphasizing, these aspects of Anglicanism can get a little lost in the muddle, at times.

Part of this is why I suppose I would only want to add a fourth rule: the necessity of holy conversation, both in our local communities and online. We need the spur and encouragement of the other to maintain our engagement in our acts of worship, devotion, and study. And I would like to see that encouragement made more visible.

Why should everyone see only our arguments?

Comment on Return to your first love by Craig Uffman

Craig Uffman — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:38:19 +0000

Zach – reading this in connection with another conversation we have had, let me add that I’ve been taught that the task of theology – whether occasional practical divinity or engagement of first principles – presupposes the immersion in scripture and prayer to which you call us here. My way of making a similar point as the one you make here is to remind folks that Anglicanism assumes the Three-fold rule of weekly Eucharist, Daily Office, and daily private devotion. Theology arises healthily only from that soil.

Comment on Augustinian brothers? Not so fast by Fr. Sam Keyes

Fr. Sam Keyes — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:40:38 +0000

While we're on the subject of Rowan and Benedict, this interview ought to be mentioned.

Comment on Augustinian brothers? Not so fast by Fr. Sam Keyes

Fr. Sam Keyes — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:31:10 +0000

Craig, don’t read too much into the rejection of “Thomism” in favor of “Augustine.” (I don’t think either Crowe or the books he covers would put it so starkly.) Obviously Thomas was Augustinian, as was Bonaventure, as were the neo-Thomists of the late 19th century and the Kantian Thomists of the 20th and the resourcement Thomists of today (e.g. Hütter); but there are multiple Augustinianisms just as there are multiple Thomisms. I do think it would be mistaken to think of neo-Thomism as Kantian, unless it is construed as reacting to the Kantian rejection of metaphysics. The 20th century stream of Thomists — Rousselot, Maritain, Rahner, etc. — are Kantian, perhaps, but shouldn’t be thought of as “neo-Thomist” (at least I don’t know of anyone who thinks of them in that way).

Anyway, pointing out the “Augustinianism” of Williams and Benedict is not necessarily anti-Thomas, even if it is possibly anti-Thomistic (in one of the varieties of the term). One of the reasons that I so admire both Rowan and Benedict is that they both resist, personally and intellectually, the easy divisions between devotion and scholarship, between the monasteries and the schools. (The Tridentine liturgy, for example, need not be tied to Neo-Thomist manual theology, but has far deeper roots.)

Comment on Augustinian brothers? Not so fast by Craig Uffman

Craig Uffman — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:47:55 +0000

Also, Ben, his NeoPlatonism is seen quite clearly in his account of the law.

Comment on Augustinian brothers? Not so fast by Craig Uffman

Craig Uffman — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:28:09 +0000

I read all of Cary’s books on Augustine, too, Ben, and loved them. My own reading is that Aquinas took Augustine’s soteriology, as received from Lombard, and re-described it in Augustinian ways. However, I note the same thing you experienced: Augustine describes a Christocentric immediacy, where, at first glance, Aquinas describes a hierarchical mediation from Pseudo-Dionysus. Aquinas mediates Aristotle by describing the sacraments in terms of Aristotelian causality. So there is the shocking shift from Christocentric immediacy to hierarchical mediation. Yet Aquinas, in all his Aristotelian philosophy, ultimately follows Augustine. In his description of scientia, one cannot believe until one experiences a moment of doxastic causality – a cognitive reconfiguration that provides the certain knowledge of cause enabling deduction of principles from that point. For sacred scientia, however, that cognitive restructuring only happens in an encounter with the Christ – the gift of the light of faith. That encounter looks a lot like Christocentric immediacy. Thomas describes two ways in which humans are affected by grace. First, the disposition of the soul is re-ordered such that humans are “moved by God to know or will or do something.”[1] Second, God bestows grace in the form of a super-added quality – “a habitual gift is infused by God into the soul” such that “the movements whereby [humans] are moved by God become natural and easy.” This habitual gift is a super-added quality added to the soul in “the manner of a formal cause, as whiteness makes a thing white, and justice, just.”[2]

[1] ST I-II.110.2
[2] ST !-II.110.2 ad 1

If you read some of Aquinas’ hymns you will see he is not a cold and detached robot. Quite a poet with a fine appreciation of the sacraments. The hymn he wrote for the Corpus Christi procession is a case in point. Beautiful.

Comment on Augustinian brothers? Not so fast by Benjamin Guyer

Benjamin Guyer — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:13:45 +0000

This is probably a bit tangential, but…after reading Philip Cary on Augustine on the sacraments, it seems to me that medieval sacramental theology is thoroughly un-Augustinian. Without a strong sense of interiority (one which privileges inner over outer), how is Aquinas an Augustinian? We might call Aquinas (Neo-)Platonic in his exitus-reditus and/or schema(e), but this is a pretty thin ‘(Neo-)Platonism’.