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I particularly like Guildford Cathedral for their music program, and was excited last week to hear a Christological sermon by the celebrant.
However, on hearing it, I was disappointed, because rather than stressing the deity of Christ, she managed to inadvertently imply Arianism, through two errors: stating that the Gospel of John chapter 1 asserts that Jesus Christ was created, which is utterly false, and this has the effect of negating one of the most important proof-texts of Christianity against the false Arian and Unitarian religions, and also by failing at any point in her sermon to refer to our Lord as God, or as God Incarnate, which I regarded as a grave omission.
Now, she did correctly assert that anyone could become a Christian in the early church, but she failed to mention that not anyone could become a Christian while retaining their existing occupation. Specifically, no one who was employed as a gladiator or trainer or keeper of gladiators, or as an actor (for the theatre in the Roman Empire was exceedingly lewd; it was not until the era of playwrights such as William Shakespeare that the theatre became respectable), or as a teacher of Hellenic philosophy, or as a prostitute, could be baptized without first renouncing their profession and obtaining a more legitimate form of employment, according to the Apostolic Canons (I think; it is among the ancient canons, and I can look up exactly which ones if desired, and quote them). I suspect she was unaware of this fact as alas very few people, including clergy, have ever bothered to read a compendium of the canon laws of the early church such as the Pedalion (Rudder), which contains all of the canonical legislation of Eastern Orthodoxy, which consists predominantly of Patristic canons from the first millenium and differs from that of Oriental Orthodoxy in that it includes the canons of Chalcedon, the Quinisext Council (also known as the Council of Trullo) and the Second Council of Nicaea, and from early Roman Catholicism in that the Roman Church never accepted the validity of the Quinisext Council or its canonical legislation, and this was one of the earliest signs of a rift between the Eastern and Western churches. Since that time, the Roman church has issued its own compendiums of canon law that supercede the ancient canons, something which I greatly disagree with as I believe the canons of the ancient Ecumenical Synods are an integral part of those councils, such as the Council of Nicaea, and cannot simply be set aside without deprecating the council as a whole.
In viewing this sermon, however, the main problem was the priest failing to refer to Jesus Christ as God, or God incarnate. Indeed it was only the recitation of the Nicene Creed, which not everyone understands correctly, which ensured Christological correctness.
As a secondary consideration she made the popular but unproven assertion that the Apocalypse of St. John, or Revelation was not written by St. John the Apostle, but this belief is extremely widespread in Anglicanism, with the author of Revelation often referred to as St. John the Divine (of course, some Anglicans who are more invested in the traditions of the early church and who believe that the Beloved Disciple wrote all of the Johannine books, including Revelation, the three Epistles and the Gospel, refer to St. John the Apostle and Beloved Disciple aS St. John the Divine, which literally means St. John the Theologian, for the word Divine applied to a person or group of person, such as the group of early High Church Anglicans known as the Caroline Divines, literally means Theologian, and the Eastern Orthodox venerate St. John as St. John the Theologian.* However, while I find it annoying when people assert that the author of Revelation is not the same as the author of the Gospel of St. John, considering that there is no actual proof, and the subtle stylistic variations could be caused by many things other than different authorship, but rather, this is essentially a guess made by practitioners of Higher Criticism, if she had only made this assertion I would not have complained.
Ultimately what really bothered me was her assertion that the Prologue of the Gospel of John asserts that Jesus Christ was created, which is entirely false, for it specifically does not say that, and I hope she simply misspoke and this was a flub, as opposed to her actual belief, and also her failure to compensate for this potential incitement to Arianism by failing to refer to Jesus Christ as God, God the Son or God Incarnate, or indeed to begin her sermon with the Trinitarian formula “In the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” which many preachers use. It is insufficient and confusing for the laity when they are only told that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and are told that he is divine as well as human, but not fully God and fully Human, since the word divine, since divine as an adjective does not unambiguously identify its subject as God.
Rather, in the case of Jesus Christ, His actual deity along with his perfectly assumed humanity must be stressed in order to ensure that the Incarnational and Trinitarian reality which is at the beating evangelical heart of Christianity, the very essence of the Gospel being, to quote St. Athanasius, that God became man so that man could become god, that is to say, that we could by the grace of the Holy Spirit attain godliness and overcome our sinful passions, and enjoy eternal life in fellowship with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and furthermore, we are called to make our relations with other humans an icon of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is vital because it is an eternal union of perfect love between three persons.
Here is a link to the Eucharistic liturgy, which contains the Homily immediately following the three Scripture lessons:
www.youtube.com
*Indeed he is one of only three persons who the Eastern Orthodox venerate as theologians, the others being St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the friend of St. Basil the Great and along with St. Basil and his younger brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three most important Patristic figures known as the Cappadocians, and St. Symeon the New Theologian, a 13th century Athonite monk who was instrumental in a revival and popularization of Hesychasm, and whose writings were later defended by St. Gregory the Theologian against a false accusation of Nestorianism by Barlaam.
However, on hearing it, I was disappointed, because rather than stressing the deity of Christ, she managed to inadvertently imply Arianism, through two errors: stating that the Gospel of John chapter 1 asserts that Jesus Christ was created, which is utterly false, and this has the effect of negating one of the most important proof-texts of Christianity against the false Arian and Unitarian religions, and also by failing at any point in her sermon to refer to our Lord as God, or as God Incarnate, which I regarded as a grave omission.
Now, she did correctly assert that anyone could become a Christian in the early church, but she failed to mention that not anyone could become a Christian while retaining their existing occupation. Specifically, no one who was employed as a gladiator or trainer or keeper of gladiators, or as an actor (for the theatre in the Roman Empire was exceedingly lewd; it was not until the era of playwrights such as William Shakespeare that the theatre became respectable), or as a teacher of Hellenic philosophy, or as a prostitute, could be baptized without first renouncing their profession and obtaining a more legitimate form of employment, according to the Apostolic Canons (I think; it is among the ancient canons, and I can look up exactly which ones if desired, and quote them). I suspect she was unaware of this fact as alas very few people, including clergy, have ever bothered to read a compendium of the canon laws of the early church such as the Pedalion (Rudder), which contains all of the canonical legislation of Eastern Orthodoxy, which consists predominantly of Patristic canons from the first millenium and differs from that of Oriental Orthodoxy in that it includes the canons of Chalcedon, the Quinisext Council (also known as the Council of Trullo) and the Second Council of Nicaea, and from early Roman Catholicism in that the Roman Church never accepted the validity of the Quinisext Council or its canonical legislation, and this was one of the earliest signs of a rift between the Eastern and Western churches. Since that time, the Roman church has issued its own compendiums of canon law that supercede the ancient canons, something which I greatly disagree with as I believe the canons of the ancient Ecumenical Synods are an integral part of those councils, such as the Council of Nicaea, and cannot simply be set aside without deprecating the council as a whole.
In viewing this sermon, however, the main problem was the priest failing to refer to Jesus Christ as God, or God incarnate. Indeed it was only the recitation of the Nicene Creed, which not everyone understands correctly, which ensured Christological correctness.
As a secondary consideration she made the popular but unproven assertion that the Apocalypse of St. John, or Revelation was not written by St. John the Apostle, but this belief is extremely widespread in Anglicanism, with the author of Revelation often referred to as St. John the Divine (of course, some Anglicans who are more invested in the traditions of the early church and who believe that the Beloved Disciple wrote all of the Johannine books, including Revelation, the three Epistles and the Gospel, refer to St. John the Apostle and Beloved Disciple aS St. John the Divine, which literally means St. John the Theologian, for the word Divine applied to a person or group of person, such as the group of early High Church Anglicans known as the Caroline Divines, literally means Theologian, and the Eastern Orthodox venerate St. John as St. John the Theologian.* However, while I find it annoying when people assert that the author of Revelation is not the same as the author of the Gospel of St. John, considering that there is no actual proof, and the subtle stylistic variations could be caused by many things other than different authorship, but rather, this is essentially a guess made by practitioners of Higher Criticism, if she had only made this assertion I would not have complained.
Ultimately what really bothered me was her assertion that the Prologue of the Gospel of John asserts that Jesus Christ was created, which is entirely false, for it specifically does not say that, and I hope she simply misspoke and this was a flub, as opposed to her actual belief, and also her failure to compensate for this potential incitement to Arianism by failing to refer to Jesus Christ as God, God the Son or God Incarnate, or indeed to begin her sermon with the Trinitarian formula “In the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” which many preachers use. It is insufficient and confusing for the laity when they are only told that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and are told that he is divine as well as human, but not fully God and fully Human, since the word divine, since divine as an adjective does not unambiguously identify its subject as God.
Rather, in the case of Jesus Christ, His actual deity along with his perfectly assumed humanity must be stressed in order to ensure that the Incarnational and Trinitarian reality which is at the beating evangelical heart of Christianity, the very essence of the Gospel being, to quote St. Athanasius, that God became man so that man could become god, that is to say, that we could by the grace of the Holy Spirit attain godliness and overcome our sinful passions, and enjoy eternal life in fellowship with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and furthermore, we are called to make our relations with other humans an icon of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is vital because it is an eternal union of perfect love between three persons.
Here is a link to the Eucharistic liturgy, which contains the Homily immediately following the three Scripture lessons:
- YouTube
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*Indeed he is one of only three persons who the Eastern Orthodox venerate as theologians, the others being St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the friend of St. Basil the Great and along with St. Basil and his younger brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three most important Patristic figures known as the Cappadocians, and St. Symeon the New Theologian, a 13th century Athonite monk who was instrumental in a revival and popularization of Hesychasm, and whose writings were later defended by St. Gregory the Theologian against a false accusation of Nestorianism by Barlaam.
