Sin and the Distorted Image

By Jim Tonkowich
Institute on Religion and Democracy
www.theird.org
May 20, 2013

This week Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of three infants who were born alive in his clinic. In addition, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a patient and more than 200 other criminal counts.

As the Gosnell trial was going on, former employees of a Texas clinic came forward with stories even more gruesome than the testimony given in the Gosnell trial.

BANJUL, Gambia: Anglican Church of West Africa celebrates 62 Years

By Archbishop S. Tilewa Johnson
Church of West Africa
May 17, 2013

Your Grace, MiLords, Clergy, Seminarians, Laity of the Church of West Africa (Anglican Communion), Friends, All.

Sixty Two years ago, at a Special Meeting held in Freetown Sierra Leone, six Dioceses came together to establish, after due process, the Church of the Province of West Africa - CPWA (Anglican Communion).

The Anglican Communion, as we know, is a section of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, which Church was inaugurated Fifty days after the glorious Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Our Communion is a group of episcopally led catholic and reformed churches which are in full communion with the See of Canterbury. We have an estimated worldwide membership of about 85 million in nearly 170 countries. We are the third largest Christian Communion in the world after the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The motto of the Anglican Communion is: The Truth shall make you free. St John 8: 32.

The Victory of Christ and the Mystery of the Cross

By The Rev. G. G. Dunbar
www.virtueonline.org
May 15, 2013

For much of the history of the western Church, both Catholic and Protestant, Christians have understood the redemption accomplished in the suffering and death of Jesus upon the cross in terms of sacrifice and satisfaction for sin. It is a doctrine with deep roots in Scripture and the Church Fathers, especially Athanasius and Augustine, but it is associated primarily with an Italian monk who became archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century, Saint Anselm (d.1109). According to Anselm's teaching, Christ the God-man accomplished in his own death what was required of man but only possible for God -- a full atonement for the infinite offense against divine majesty made by man's sin. In perfect obedience to the Father, Christ bears the penalty of our sins, God's just judgment and condemnation, and so satisfies God's honor for the offense of sin, appeases God's wrath, expiates man's guilt, and secures the remission of our sins and our reconciliation to the Father. This Catholic doctrine was embraced vigorously by the Protestant reformers of the 16th century, and their heirs in the Evangelical revival of the 18th century.

Paul's Experience of the 'Thorn in the Flesh': The Issue of Pride - Part 2

By Bruce Atkinson, PhD
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
May 15, 2013

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know-God knows. And I know that this man-whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows- was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:2-10)

JUSTIFICATION: ANGLICAN ALIGNMENT WITH JAMES

By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
May 11, 2013

Without a strong message of our guilt before God the marvel of divine grace hardly impinges consciously upon the human mind. Without a personal sense of sin and imminent judgment the fact of justification is an irrelevancy. When our evil (or wickedness) and the divine command for repentance are not preached with due prominence in the message of the church human consciences are dulled into a state of spiritual complacency and lethargy, and there is no earnest striving for a right relationship with God. We are woefully indifferent to the verdict the righteous Judge of all souls will pronounce upon our hearts and lives with irrefutable accuracy and fairness. Unbelief leaves masses of mankind ill-prepared for the awesome assessment that we will encounter on the Last Day when we will each be exposed to the searching and exhaustive scrutiny of a just and Holy God who cannot in any way deny his absolute purity or compromise his purpose for a thoroughly cleansed cosmos which will undergo the process of new creation.

The Strength of Weakness: Spiritual Logic

By Bruce E. Atkinson Ph.D.
Special to virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
May 4, 2103


"My grace is sufficient for you,
for My power is made perfect in weakness."
- 2 Corinthians 12:9

“Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
stand in His strength alone;
the arm of flesh will fail you,
ye dare not trust your own.”
- hymn by George Duffield, Jr.

Anglican Identity

Fr. Van McCalister
SOUNDINGS
http://sanjoaquinsoundings.blogspot.com/2013/05/anglican-identity.html
May 1, 2013

Are you a victim of identity theft? Most Anglicans are. Well, if not identity theft, certainly identity confusion.

We hear questions like: Are you Catholic? Do you have a pope? Are you Protestant? Weren't you founded by King Henry the VIIIth? (That's embarrassing.)

Unfortunately, we have accepted some misleading labels that get us off to a bad start. So, let's get our identity back.

Discerning the Lord's Body

By Robert Hart
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
April 28, 2013

This essay comes with a text, I Corinthians 11:17-34 (for clarity I will use the RSV).

"But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you assemble as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you meet together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What. Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.] Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

How to read a commentary, and avoid my four rookie errors

By Chris Green
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
April 26, 2013

I nearly drowned this week. Not physically, but mentally.

I'd started work on a talk, and pulled four commentaries off the shelves. A couple of hours after I started using the first one I realised that I'd hardly begun. This commentary was B-I-G, with well over a hundred pages on my passage.

Should I spend all my reading time on that one, very good commentary? Or drop it, and try three much shorter ones? What's a preacher to do?