Dead to Sin

Thoughts on Teaching and the Creation of a Teaching Order Recently, I have shared my plans and thoughts on advocating for and creating a monastic teaching order for a new Anglican boarding school " St. Dunstan's Academy. " I will express my culminated thoughts related to this in a few words. There have been several influences for me reflecting on this. These have been, in short, a renewed interest in the monastic tradition, a changed view on education in light of classical education tradition, the need for quality teaching, my desire to devote my own life to teaching Christian youth, and finally an epiphanic realization of the necessity of something like teaching orders in our very day. For those unaware, a teaching order would be a monastic order of either monks or nuns whose purpose stood primarily serving the church by the education of children. Situating Our View of Education  Some may be familiar with the history of teaching within the Christian West and that schools...

 Gold for the Spiritual Life: An Excerpt from the Enchiridion of Erasmus Recently I have taken up the " Essential Erasmus ." For those who aren't aware, any volume with "essential" next to a historic author usually signifies that the work is a kind of anthology of the author. Thus, the " Essential Erasmus " is a small, but defining, collection of Erasmus' works.  By the recommendation of a friend, I decided to order a used copy of this book, hoping to gain insight into Erasmus and gain wisdom about the spiritual life. Without exaggeration, apart from Holy Scripture and the daily office, nothing has shaped or influenced my spiritual life for the better than this work.  In our Protestant context, Erasmus can be an author we shy away from, even among Roman Catholics then and now, he was seen as an irreverent mocker and extreme critic of the state of things religious in his day. But if we pull back the polemic and satirical layer of this man, we find n...

  The Mother of Sorrows - Reflections on the Blessed Mother " Simeon saith unto Mary, 'A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also. [St. Lk. 2:35] That is, the Passion of the Lord, which was a fall unto many, and in which the secrets of many hearts were revealed since their sentiments respecting the Lord were extorted from them, without doubt, made His own Mother exceeding sorrowful, heavily struck with human bereavement ."  - St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms , Ps. 105 Traditional Christians have now passed the triumphal and glorious Easter Sunday after the penitential season of Lent. For many of us, during Lent, we gave up certain habits, foods, leisure, and comforts, to devote ourselves especially to the spiritual life in preparation for Easter Sunday. This time of heightened penitence and devotion (marked formally by Ash Wednesday) leads many to consult different devotional practices and works to adjust and refocus their mind on the spiritual life. One of th...

Objections to the Catholic view on Church Government: A Response to the Dutch Reformed and an Examination of St. Jerome "Οι Απόστολοι ἡμῶν ἔγνωσαν διὰ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ΙΗΣΟΥ Χριστοῦ, ὅτι ἔρις ἔσται ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος τῆς Επισκοῆς.  Our Apostles understood by our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be contention about the name of Episcopacy ."  - St. Clement of Rome, Epis. to Corinth. Recently a friend of mine had translated a section from Gisbertus Voetius' Disputation concerning the episcopacy. However, upon reading some of the arguments put forth in that post he had made, I was disappointed by the neglected engagement of the tradition from the English divines on this issue.   Now, being new to the Anglican tradition, I am careful to speak on issues I am not confident about. The greatest virtue anyone can learn when coming to the faith or to a new tradition is silence. But here, I am certain that my comments will not presume more knowledge than I have. Here I will not ...

 Resources for Greek Ligatures In a video that I will soon be making, I will discuss "Greek Ligatures." Greek Ligatures were a style of printing Greek in the early modern period.  * An example of Greek Ligatures from Diophantus Alexandrinus'  " Arithmeticorum " - 1621 Greek ligatures are a typographical convention that make appearances across various literary works in the early modern period, particularly in theological texts.  Personally, I encountered them in Amandus Polanus' " Syntagma " which initially left me at a loss, I had no idea how to read these Greek forms.  However, with persistence, I found ligature charts and other resources that helped me read this kind of Greek. In compiling these resources, my aim is to equip others for a more informed study of authors spanning the 15th to 18th centuries, who frequently employ Greek ligatures in their writings.  Here , you can see the hour-long video I made where I introduce this topic, and ( to m...

 Distinction of Persons in the Trinity: A "Brief" Three-Fold Discussion " For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself " Jn. 5:26     Among many lay Christians, a common set of errors is usually said about the Trinity. These range from saying (improperly) that the persons of the Trinity are united to the essence (this entails composition in God), to treating the persons and the essence as four separate entities, and even misunderstanding how the persons are distinguished in the godhead.  Unfortunately, because most lay Christians get their theology from YouTube videos and heated online discussions, they are often left with incorrect views about the most foundational aspects of the Christian faith.  Here, I wanted to provide a brief and succinct exposition of how the persons of the Trinity are distinguished. Why? Because apart from the catholic understanding of how persons are distinguished, we are left with the consequ...