Why I Will Be Going To Church On Sunday 10th June

To my dismay, THIS event is taking place again this year. I had misgivings (understatement of the year) last year: they still remain.

I have no problem with declaring the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his light, hearing the word of God preached and praying for the peace of our city, and I long for a genuine expression of the unity that Christian believers have in the gospel. But this is not it.

One of my most significant concerns is the willingness there is to stand together with Rome. Although no Roman churches have currently signed up, this is an event which is keen to have them on board. They were certainly on board last year. One of those involved in organising the event wrote afterwards:

Imagine all those leaders standing together shoulder to shoulder on the platform to pray a prayer of Repentance and Dedication with roughly 3500 people, led by the Protestant City Rector, together with the catholic Archbishops representative, who is also the wife of the Lord Lieutenant. Together we pledged that on this ground of woundedness, we would seek to stand reconciled, shoulder to shoulder under the banner of the Cross, with all those who confessed Jesus as Lord. (http://heartcry.co.uk/Publisher/Article.aspx?id=51050; accessed 28/03/07)

Clearly, the Church of Rome is viewed as proclaiming the same Biblical gospel as evangelical Christians. Apparently, gospel Christians can stand reconciled to the Church of Rome, who burned the Reformers all those centuries ago. Yet Rome still teaches that, “moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification and for the attainment of eternal life.” (Compendium Catechism of the Catholic Church, Q. 427). But Paul says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2.8-9). Paul calls curses down on those who preach a different gospel (Galatians 1.9). We cannot stand reconciled with them, shoulder to shoulder. We must have nothing to do with them, lest we participate in their evil deeds (2 John 2.10-11).

There is so much confusion on the Church of Rome these days. In a College Group Bible Study, one member could joke with a Romanist that four hundred years ago, they would have been burning each other, but now all those differences have been put behind them. The College’s Roman Catholic Society Representative led a Bible study last term on Acts 10 during which he openly taught salvation by works, for which he was applauded afterwards.

It is therefore singularly unhelpful for evangelical Christians to attend an event like this. It says that our disagreement with Rome doesn’t really matter, when in reality those differences take us to the heart of the gospel. Did the Reformers die for nothing?

Not only that, there is the problem of association with liberal and extreme charismatic chrches who will be attending. At least one of the participating churches proclaims a prosperity gospel and invites you to ask for prayer cloths containing Jesus’ healing power. Some of the churches involved say that you’re not a Christian unless you speak in tongues (and by that they don’t mean human foreign languages). Is it helpful or appropriate or right to stand united with such churches which preach such pastorally disastrous errors?

Perhaps I’m reading slightly uncharitably, but there’s an unhelpful view of what this unity can achieve. A report on the website records that, “the prayer time reached up to heaven”. Well of course it did. God graciously promises to hear the prayers of his people. One wonders if there’s a touch of the attitude of the priests of Baal who thought that if only they made enough of a noise and spectacle that they could make their god hear them.

When one’s church hasn’t cancelled its meetings, it betrays a particularly low view of belonging to a church family to simply not turn up, when the church’s eldership will have been praying for you and diligently studying the Scriptures to preach to you, when you have a responsibility to your brothers and sisters in your local church to encourage and spur them on.

It’s also pretty inconsiderate. I can’t say that it’s a particularly good witness of love to Balliol and Trinity Colleges to start setting up the stage and having band practice early on a Sunday morning, and to block off Broad Street with thousands of people.

I am certainly not going, nor will I encourage anyone else to go. If anyone asks me about it, I would seriously have to encourage them to question whether it’s a right thing to do.

A Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving

To be used yearly upon the Fifth Day of November for the happy Deliverance of the King, and the Three Estates of the Realm, from the most Traiterous and Bloudy intended Massacre by Gun-Powder.

Instead of the First Collect for Morning Prayer, shall these two be used.

Almighty God, who hast in all ages shewed thy power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of thy Church, and in the protection of righteous and religious Kings and States, professing they holy and eternal truth, from the wicked conspiracies and malicious practices of all the enemies thereof; We yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our late gracious Sovereign King James, the Queen, the Prince, and all the Royal Branches, with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England, then assembled in Parliament, by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous, and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages. From this unnatural conspiracy, not our merit, but thy mercy; not our foresight, but thy providence, delivered us: And therefore, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us; but unto thy Name be ascribed all honour and glory in all Churches of the saints, from generation to generation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[Sadly not appearing in the 1662 BCP any more.]
[N.B. Just a reminder: I'm not an Anglican.]

An interesting evening

Pleasant company, good food, and most importantly, a discussion of theology - Roman and Catholic .

Conversation covered divers matters including the mass, Mary and regeneration, but most of the focus was on election, free will and the status of man after the Fall. David may at this point reprove me for seemingly ignoring his statement that my “primary aim is not to get him to assent to the five points of Calvinism (or other Protestant doctrine — even if true) but to repent of his sins and believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ”. Admittedly, I probably did allow myself to be led away from discussing matters directly pertaining to salvation, but on reflection this was a helpful discussion to have for two reasons:

1. Importantly in its own right, it deals with the issue of whether we are all able to respond to God’s grace in our natural state, or whether we co-operate with God’s grace in salvation.

2. It was very telling when the discussion got the point where my friend could say that he saw how what I was saying came from the text in its context, but that it wasn’t consistent with the wider context of how the Church interprets the Scripture. It’s not as if he’s ignoring the Bible. He was quoting lots of Scripture - most of it horribly out of context, but that’s all right because it’s consistent with what the Church teaches.

(Also, it’s not as if he will never have heard the pure gospel before - apparently he had quite a heated discussion with Father Greg Downes from St. Aldate’s on the Ch. Ch. OICCU group punting trip.)

We parted on genial terms (we have other common ground - Cyprus, Pro-Life etc) and he seems quite willing to come to BNC for Formal Hall next term (poor lad!) so hopefully we can continue to talk. If progress is to be made (humanly speaking), I think I probably should be encouraging my friend to read the Bible on its own terms. We both are both committed to the authority of Scripture - the issue is how we do theology. To be honest, I’m quite keen to fight church tradition with church tradition - the semi-Pelagian heresy which Rome is teaching on the whole issue of free will, election and human ability seems to have been condemned quite well HERE. Moreover, a superficial reading seems to indicate that Augustine has done superb job in refuting it HERE. And it was, of course, Bertram’s treatise of the ninth century persuaded one Nicholas Ridley that a literal change in the elements of the Lord’s Supper was an innovation. I’m not making the Fathers authoritative, in case any one thinks they can lay that charge against me. My intention is to show that the present tradition of the church directly contradicts the ancient tradition of the church, so that (a) it is clear that it cannot be relied upon and therefore (b) we have to keep returning to the Bible and reforming our theology in the light of it rather than allowing our theology to distort the Scriptures.

Does anyone have any recommendations of Patristic works that would be a good introduction to their writings? I confess to having read nothing in this area (neither has my friend, as it happens). I am quite old-fashioned and would like to have books to read, rather than reading a computer screen. Books are also more portable.

I dislike having to keep qualifying myself on subjects about which my opinion should be evident, but someone’s bound to say something: of course I don’t believe that we interpret the Scriptures in a vacuum and that we don’t have a framework that we use when we come to a text. However, while we exegete our texts in light of our framework so that we do not “so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another”, our framework must be built and honed through the exegesis of texts-in-context.

The Errors of the Church of Rome

Tomorrow evening, I shall be dining at Christ Church with a rather convinced gentleman papist who stopped and chatted when a group of us were preaching the gospel on Cornmarket Street just over a week ago. I gave him my details - I didn’t have any paper on which to write them down, however, so I rather naughtily gave him a copy of Me, a Christian? by John Chapman (which is better than Two Ways to Live: the Choice We All Face, not least because it doesn’t try to make visual representations of God!) and which had my name and e-mail address written thereon. I received an e-mail today.

If anyone can give me a brief run-down of current Romish thought, I would greatly appreciate it. I have some idea, but it’s probably not very nuanced.

You have 21 hours and 12 minutes remaining…

Calvin on Romans 2.13

Calvin has a way of phrasing things that amuses me (I know, I’m reading in translation). Here he is on Romans 2.13:

“They who pervert this passage for the purpose of building up justification by works, deserve most fully to be laughed at even by children.”

George Herbert and the Church of Rome

As new and old Rome did one Empire twist;
So both together are one Antichrist,
Yet with two faces, as their Janus was,
Being in this their old cracked looking-glass.
How dear to me, O God, thy counsels are!
Who may with thee compare?
Thus Sin triumphs in Western Babylon;
Yet not as Sin, but as Religion.
Of his two thrones he made the latter best,
And to defray his journey from the east.
Old and new Babylon are to hell and night,
As is the moon and sun to heav’n and light.
When th’ one did set the other did take place,
Confronting equally the law and grace.
They are hell’s landmarks, Satan’s double crest:
They are Sin’s nipples, feeding th’ east and west.

from The Church Militant, lines 205-220.