The Lord’s Supper. Part Two: The Early Church, 1st-3rd Century

In my first entry I looked at practices in scripture around the Lord’s Supper. In this entry we’ll be looking at what the earliest Father’s of the church believed on the subject.  In the 17th century the Primate of Ireland James Ussher publicly wrote in response to a Jesuit Polemicist on the subject of the …

Particular Judgement, the Early Church and the Harrowing of Hell

I recently sat in on a discussion about the afterlife wherein everyone present had a chance to reflect on their own views. I gave a potted answer of my own position there but what follows is an attempt to hash out my own position on this topic in more detail given its something that on …

Justin Martyr, Procreation, and Marriage

I was reading a patristics discussion group recently when someone raised the topic of Justin Martyr’s views on sexuality. The pertinent passage in question comes from ‘On the Resurrection’: They say, then, if the body shall rise entire, and in possession of all its members, it necessarily follows that the functions of the members shall …

Opposition to Incense in the Early Church Fathers and Anglicanism

There was a recent thread in a patristics group I contribute to on the topic of incense in the early church. As a topic it was never one I paid massive attention to but I found the ensuing discussion really fascinating. It’s not something done in my own tradition but I figured it might be …

Is paedobaptism a prerequisite for Christendom?

Having a minority view on Baptism (That of a mixed approach accepting both paedo and credo approaches, albeit assuming a credo mode as normative) within my tradition means I spend a long time having to justify my position repeatedly to critics. What follows is a reflection on a recent criticism on paedobaptism being a prerequisite …

Abuse, Ecclesiology, and the Eucharist

When news of the abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church was popular news I became really interested in how the laity responded to what was unfolding. A reoccurring theme was that many laity were sick of the practices of many of the clergy but had nowhere to go because of their beliefs around apostolic …

Christianity as the urban religion

I'm currently reading David Frye's good book entitled "Walls: A History of Civilisation in Blood and Brick" and he uses the construction of walls to demarcate between 'civilisation' on one side and the 'wilderness' on the other. This got me thinking about the disposition and historic residence of the Church along these lines. Walls create …

On Baptism and it’s timing. Part Two: Witness of the Early Church

In the first part of this endeavour, I took a brief top-level view at the passages that had been raised by others, from scripture, during my discussions and reading on the topic on the timing of baptism. What I hope to subsequently address in this next, albeit not final part of my exploration is the …