Or go away.

I have never found a scholarly Roman Catholic or Orthodox commentator or hierarchic to accuse the 39 Articles in themselves as denying the infallibility of the Church.

For Anglican authors point, try Bicknell or Middleton on the 39 Articles. The Articles may not be Roman Catholic or completely Eastern Orthodox (though its hard to find tension with the latter without a strianed Puritanical reading of the Articles, which requires the sort of conflation and special pleading in your comment), but they most certainly are not Protestant in the Capital “P” sense. Or was the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Interregnum just a figment of my imagination?

Although i don’t usually address pseudonyms unless I know them personally, you’ll have to show me in plain English how this is a “fallacy”

XXI. Of the Authority of General Councils. General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.

The only way out of that is the Traditionalist trick of saying “When she errs, she is not the Church”. Sorry. That is exactly a trick: a bait and switch. Or you might want to play literalist and say “Well, this is only speaking of councils and we’re talking about something else…” Another trick, I think.

The XXXIX Articles clearly teach: the church may err, because sometimes we’re all too human. Period.

Since I addressed one of your pseudonyms, I will address the other, But now be forwarned – as the rules of this blog state over on the “about” page, I don’t really like pseudonyms unless I know you in the flesh. So, I have no problem outing you as double poster, but if you are warned – again as in the past when you’ve floated around these pages – that I reserve the right to just delete posts by silly pseudonyms.

On the feat itself, there is no reason to believe that Zacharias was ever a “high priest”, nor that a woman was ever let beyond the courts of the women (except in feminist fantasies about Goddess worship in the temple) nor that any pious Jew – who would have looked at the temple in awe and fear – would have let their daughter run headlong past Levites and other clergy.

It is a gentile myth constructed by folks who had no knowledge of Judaism and it can be disproved from scripture alone That’s assuming you want to imagine it as History, which I don’t think you need to do: as a myth it teaches rather a lot of truth – including why the Mother of God is a replacement for the Temple and why the hearts of Christians are, now, a further replacement. As I said, I like the feast because it is clearly an icon of an important part of our salvation. I think to stick modern, Western ideas of black and white, historical or worthless is silly. Equally silly is to stick some sort of pre-modern idea of “Church says it it must be true”. We can use our brains – God didn’t give them to us to put in a box defined by 4th century mythologies.

But, I’ll take the considered judgment of the Church through at least 18 centuries of its history (and probably longer as James simply memorializes older, oral tradition) against an mere opinion of Fr. Hopko — though I do think he does have many good opinions.

Please desist from the spreading the calumny that the 39 Articles contradict the doctrine that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is fallible. You have bought into the Puritan revisionist reading, which is no older than the Glorious Revolution — prior thereto the Puritans denounced the Articles as “papist.”

Indeed, to the contrary, the Articles merely point out that all particular churches have erred. Even the See of Rome. All the scholarly commentators that neither burn a torch for Rome or Geneva explain and demonstrate the limited meaning and purpose of the Articles on this point. All particular churches need reform from time to time — this includes Rome and the Eastern Patriarchates.

Christ’s Peace

As I said, it’s Church as a cat, saying “I meant to do that” over and over again. The catch 22 is “The Church is infallible, so if something is wrong, it clearly isn’t church.” I had the same experience over and over again in Orthodoxy.

The issue is faith. Either faith is believing a list of doctrines (which may or may not be illogical and evidently unprovable) or else faith is trusting in God to bring us home, no matter what the doctrinal mistakes are. Essentially if salvation is a case of “not going to hell” we’d better make sure all of our eggs are in the right basket (and all cooked according to order). WHat we think or imagine about God is terribly important because if we do not think or imagine exactly the right things about him he will not exactly like us at all.

Salvation may be something else, however.

Happily, I think this something else is shown forth in the feast of the Virgin’s Presentation as much as it is also shown forth in our Lord’s presentation and our own baptism.

Thank you, by the way, for the compliment. I pray I can actually live up to it.

Thus: an error in the EO tradition.

It’s ok, really. It’s one of my favourite feasts – up there with Mid-Pentecost. Both depict crucial elements of our salvation – that’s what the Church’s calendar is supposed to be about. But neither feast is historic, or real or even plausible.

As Hopko points out catholic (in the East) means not “covering the whole world” but “encompassing the whole faith”. The catholic faith is the whole faith – and we have a very wide tradition to embrace. Contradictions are ok. It doesn’t need to make logical sense, or have cold, crisp corners. It doesn’t need to stand up to philosophical examination: it needs only to save souls.

I don’t see this as a contradiction or even as a house divided – I see it as gloriously human, and God’s grace working in and through our world to accomplish what he wanted all along.

I like the 39 Articles, btw, but not to affirm them as a Creedal statement like the GAFCON folks want. XIX and XXI as you point out are the positive and negative poles of Protestantism. It makes it quite clear that the church – including GAFCON can err. XX is supposed to be the answer to that. But XX is Sola Scriptura, and I disagree with that very much for very Catholic reasons. The text is meaningless without the Church to read it.

Law of non-contradiction, a house divided against itself and so on.

I agree with Hopko. The story’s not heretical, so celebrating it is not a problem, but come on.

I’m reminded of Thomas Hopko saying that clearly the Entry of the Theotokos never happened, that the festival, itself, is only mythologically true. He flumoxed a room full of people, (by Godson’s Dad asked why the man was even a priest) and gave me my first taste of the historical realism that is needed to look at Orthodoxy – and her liturgy – as well as at Rome, the church that brought us crusades, political shortening of fasts, and other excesses. They are not infallible. But they are terribly beautiful and terribly right – and terribly wrong, and terribly human while being gracefully divine, too.

I’m happy with that. You are right that, unless one is careful, it can devolve to Unitarian silliness or Calvinist scariness. This is what Christianity does: the entirety of the Holy Tradition includes that silliness, that scariness and seems to have from the very beginning.

Donald’s post is more to the point: the entire thing is OUR Tradition. Anglicanism at her best encompasses all of it that works. This is the Anglican Attitude towards the thing – neither taking every tradition at face value and making a fetish out of it nor rejecting anything outright until its usefulness in expressing and incarnating the faith once delivered to the saints is determined.