tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post8507273167836267227..comments2024-03-22T17:35:52.045-04:00Comments on Extra Thoughts: Blessed All SaintsLydia McGrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-15429169362267674082009-11-28T21:56:11.880-05:002009-11-28T21:56:11.880-05:00Welcome to Extra Thoughts, Amy.Welcome to Extra Thoughts, Amy.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-60782289186866338102009-11-27T13:46:36.248-05:002009-11-27T13:46:36.248-05:00Hi Lydia,
I'm new here too but will be back!Hi Lydia,<br /><br />I'm new here too but will be back!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16574744939825941389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-26018770794657434422009-11-02T15:41:14.474-05:002009-11-02T15:41:14.474-05:00Thanks, Gina.
I think it's a rather sad thing...Thanks, Gina.<br /><br />I think it's a rather sad thing that the really _old_ version of Anglicanism--somewhat Puritan-influenced, very Protestant though liturgical--which was Anglicanism for over three hundred years is almost non-existence nowadays. The really mainstream Episcopals and Anglicans are just, frankly, heretics of the most blatant sort. The ECUSA is a dead loss, like most mainline denominations. And the continuing Anglicans, such as those who started the denomination of which I'm formally a member, tend to be very high-church and to put off people of evangelical background unnecessarily by too many wholesale borrowings of Roman Catholic practices, doctrines, and even bits of liturgy stuck together with Cranmer's much sparer, much more humble and Protestant, 16th century liturgy. Like neo-Gothic additions to a Tudor building, I sometimes say.<br /><br />In other words, pretty much the only Anglican types left now who believe even Mere Christianity tend to be heirs of John Henry Newman and very, very high, which is unnecessary and also, in an important sense, unhistorical.<br /><br />This is evident in the communion of saints issue we've been discussing here as well as in the liturgy itself. Most of Cranmer's liturgy contains almost nothing that an evanglical could object to, beyond the fact that it _is_ a liturgy.<br /><br />This is not to say that there are not real doctrinal issues even with regard to historic Anglicanism. There are, certainly, infant baptism being just one very obvious one. (I don't accept infant baptism, and my priest has just had to put up with that.) Also, it's interesting that the 39 Articles of Anglicanism are _very_ Calvinist in sound but that the liturgy has, at least to modern ears, a rather Arminian sound. Still, to be fair, there are certainly Arminian evangelicals. :-)Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-29016441511424894782009-11-02T13:13:43.942-05:002009-11-02T13:13:43.942-05:00Lydia, I am new here. I have popped in and out bu...Lydia, I am new here. I have popped in and out but have not posted before. I enjoyed your blog regarding All Saints Day. Being raised Catholic but now in a Bible church, it is not something that I have acknowledged for many decades. But yesterday,on my Facebook page, I felt compelled to wish a "Happy All Saints Day to that great Cloud of Witnesses and all who still remain." Maybe we Evangelicals have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Anyway, a friend - also raised Catholic and now in an Anglican church posted that same video/hymn on my page that you have on yours. I don't remember ever singing that hymn but I do love it.<br />I am enjoying your remarks here on this subject and will link into your other posts as well.<br /><br />Thanks'<br /><br />Gina DanaherGina M. Danaherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13829629413121806106noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-78444862151361231352009-11-01T16:47:41.300-05:002009-11-01T16:47:41.300-05:00Thank you for the explanation, Lydia. I'll nee...Thank you for the explanation, Lydia. I'll need to do some deeper research into this. I've been advising folks against that verse in what is one of my favorite hymns for many years now. Perhaps I can get away with leading that hymn without the "fine print disclaimer" introduction.Richard Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17633639712911093318noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-63699074125578013222009-11-01T14:52:17.185-05:002009-11-01T14:52:17.185-05:00Y'gotta read my old post on that, Rich. "...Y'gotta read my old post on that, Rich. "I believe in the communion of the saints," a line from the Apostles' Creed, can be understood entirely in a Protestant fashion without asking for the prayers of the saints. I myself agree that there is insufficient Scriptural evidence that dead Christians can hear us, and for that and also for other reasons I consider it unwise to assume that we can communicate with them and to ask for their prayers. The claim is that we can request their prayers exactly as we would request prayers from other Christians on earth. It does not seem to me that in practice invocations of the prayers of the Saints are carried out in the same spirit and attitude in which one asks one's grandmother to pray for one, but beyond that, I'm not at all convinced that God has so set things up that we can do that.<br /><br />However, the "mystic sweet communion" doesn't have to be by way of _communication_. I suppose that's why it's "mystic"--that is to say, not highly specific. Here is what I wrote in the older post:<br /><br />When Christian people die and go to heaven, we can't see them anymore, and they can't talk to us. But they are still worshiping Jesus Christ. In fact, they are worshiping Him better when they see Him face to face in heaven than they were able to do here on earth. And we are worshiping Jesus Christ, too. So even though we can't be with one another anymore like we are here on earth, we are connected by the fact that we are all followers of Christ, loving Christ, and with Jesus Christ loving and knowing about all of us, whether we are here on earth or in heaven. That is the Church--the Church Militant here on earth and the Church Triumphant in heaven.<br /><br />***************<br /><br />Btw, it's an interesting historical question whether Samuel J. Stone would have believed in invoking the prayers of the saints, either. High churchmanship at his time was a thing with many faces, and I do not get the impression that he embraced the highest brand--full-fledged Newmanism, as it were. And the discipline in the Anglican church was pretty strict. People got in huge trouble for things that I think would even seem innocent to most Baptists--for example, having a cross on the Communion table or wearing vestments. So to say that someone was somewhat "high" is rather vague when referring to that time period. Certainly, the developments in post-Oxford Movement Anglcianism _since_ then, the writing of a nearly-Roman missal which _does_ incorporate invocations of the prayers of the saints, lay in the future when Stone was writing, and that sort of thing was considered beyond the pale in the Anglican church. So it's entirely possible that Stone did not believe at all in asking for the prayers of the saints. The phrase "mystic sweet communion" is clearly an allusion to the Apostles' Creed, and it's worth noting that Stone uses entirely the notion of the saints as an _example_ to us in the song and nothing else, very much in the spirit of Cranmer as in the parts of the liturgy I reproduced in this post.<br /><br />Hope that's useful in showing both where I'm coming from and a bit of the history of all of this. In a lot of ways, I consider myself a better Anglican (all my Baptist opinions notwithstanding) than the truly high churchmen nowadays who would have Cranmer rolling in his grave. He was, after all, burned at the stake for, among other things, refusing to avow transubstantiation.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-89277493297409485252009-11-01T14:00:02.966-05:002009-11-01T14:00:02.966-05:00I love The Church's One Foundation too, but I ...I love <i>The Church's One Foundation</i> too, but I actually have a bit of a problem with that mystic sweet communion with the dead saints thing. Seeing as "we have one mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus," it does not seem fully appropriate for us to communion with the saints through prayer.Richard Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17633639712911093318noreply@blogger.com