-
The Necessity of Property?
St. Germain in Doctor and Student has the doctor of divinity say this about the law of property: For the law of property could have been instituted from the beginning, but because the population was yet small, the law that all things should be common was suitable and necessary. But when the population increased, it was necessary to have a law of property lest the slothful and the wicked should oppress the good (19). That use of the phrase, “that all things should be common,” seems to echo Acts more than it echoes anything in the Genesis account. It leaves me wondering if… Continue reading
-
The Threat of an American Bishop
James B. Bell’s A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution, contains a chapter on Samuel and John Adams’ resistance to the appointment of a Church of England bishop for the colonies in the 1760s. The book presents the controversy over the potential appointment of a bishop throughout the century, and it is… Continue reading
-
A Repugnant Project
I’ve been thinking a good deal this year about Church of England canon law and Anglican ecclesiastical law in general, after working up a paper on Cranmer’s attempt at canon law revision for an independent study at Duke Divinity. The topic that I ended up digging into for my paper was the constitutional theory of… Continue reading
-
American Reflections on the Inns of Court
On my recent trip to London for a conference with the Ecclesiastical Law Society, I was sure to make time for something I didn’t get to do on my previous trip to London—a tour of the Inns of Court. It was an informative tour done by a retired solicitor. I hadn’t known what to expect,… Continue reading
-
Stop Juggling and Play the Fool
Given the snow day in the Triangle today, I did not have the opportunity to deliver my sermon scheduled for today, February 1—but I did record it so that folks would have an opportunity to listen to what I had prepared. It’s on YouTube here. There’s a family story that we’re related to a particularly famous… Continue reading
-
True Faith, True Love
This is a sermon (my first sermon) that I preached on May 5, 2024 at the 6pm service for the Cathedral Church of St. Luke. Readings “And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of… Continue reading
-
Philosophy as Therapy
Since February 2020, I’ve been going to (mostly) bi-weekly counseling appointments. It’s been a tremendously helpful experience—one that I continue to this day and that I would praise and commend to anyone willing to listen and similarly knowing their need. But there have been a number of doubts—although doubts is too strong a word, perhaps… Continue reading
-
Martha Tiller’s Voice
This is the first of what will hopefully be many oral histories for a book at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, Florida. It was not intended as a eulogy, but a shortened version was read by Mtr. Patricia Orlando at Martha’s funeral on February 18, 2023, while I was unfortunately out of… Continue reading
-
The Declaration and its Discontents
Review of Stuart Banner, The Decline of Natural Law: How American Lawyers Once Used Natural Law and Why They Stopped, Oxford University Press, 2021. “We hold these truths to be self evident…” is not how one would begin an argument in a modern courtroom–at least, not if you intended to actually win your argument. Nevertheless,… Continue reading
-
A Reformation of this World
Review of Bruce Gordon, Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. Bruce Gordon, who a number of years ago wrote what I understand to be the standard biography of John Calvin, has written a new biography of the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli, although the subject of a substantial amount of name… Continue reading
