Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Through this year, I have posted from time to time about my journey forty years ago from the Episcopal Church to the Roman Catholic Church. Today is the fortieth anniversary of that transition. On a very nice South Florida November afternoon, I took my baby blue Pinto on the very short drive to St. Thomas …
Continue reading "Forty Years Ago, I Left. Today, the Diocese of South Carolina Leaves."
One of the significant changes that has come to this blog in the year fast ending is the incorporation of proper WordPress statistics for the webmaster to contemplate. This gives me a better idea of where my readers are coming from and what interests them (better than Google Analytics, I might add). This blog (and …
Continue reading "Veni, Venite, or Coming to Terms with Proper Latin Pronunciation at Christmas"
He's not widely known outside of the fields he specialised in, but Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant (1797-1886, usually known in the Anglophone world as simply Saint-Venant) was one of the premier scientists, engineers and mathematicians of the nineteenth century. His accomplishments were many and include the following: Successful derivation of the Navier-Stokes Equations …
Continue reading "Taking the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal"
To be called a "Pelagian" is about the worst insult that a Calvinist can hurl at you. So who was Pelagius? And how did his contemporaries react to it? Specifically, Pelagius was from Roman Britain; what did they think of it? Let's start with this, from Peter Salway's Roman Britain: One incident, in which the …
Continue reading "What the Britons Thought of Pelagius and Grace"
Although the "official" entry of Texas A&M to the SEC was 1 July, the "grand entrance" (and for a Palm Beacher, the importance of this cannot be understated) will be this Saturday, when the Florida Gators visit Kyle Field. One serious question, of course, is whether Kyle Field will stay, be remodelled, or built somewhere …
It took long enough, but Jonathan Martin finally "threw his wallet on the table" about this: I do not hold to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation-it is too speculative for my taste. But I do believe very much in real presence, that there is a mysterious way that we partake in the presence and power …
Continue reading "A Pentecostal Finally Gets It on the Eucharist"
So we now have Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee for President. It's an odd thing in many ways, not because the party grandees threw their lot in with him--that's par for the course. It's odd because they were able to get it past the people who supposedly dominate the party--the "Religious Right", those dreadful …
Continue reading "Mitt Romney and the Religion of the Middle Class"
Last week I took a page from "cassock and surplice" Anglicanism--the funeral of World War I flying ace Manfred "Red Baron" von Richtofen--to show what "1662 BCP" Anglicanism looked like in a celebrated event. The significance of my slighting the alb was well understood. So I guess a little "equal time" might be in order. …
One thing that surprises me in Anglican circles is the growing trend to insist on a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. In the old days Anglicans/Episcopalians used to believe that such hermeneutics was for “them”, a term loaded with educational, ecclesiastical and socio-economic overtones. After a half century of revisionism, however, a correction is understandable. …
Continue reading "The Significance of the Literal Meaning of Scripture: An Example from Origen"
Every now and then I have stop and protest one thing or another that has become fashionable among Evangelicals. We’re always told that every good and trendy thing comes from the Throne Room. But that isn’t really the case, and it makes sense to call some of these things out. I have friends on Facebook …
Positive Infinity 