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Anselm of Canterbury - brief bio (1033-1109)

Anselm of Canterbury, also known as Anselm of Bec, was born in the Val D'Aosta in northern Italy in 1033. After the death of his mother, his relationship with his father was strained, and he spent many years wandering around what is now France until he settled at the abbey of Bec in Normandy, where he became a Benedictine monk at the age of 27 (1060). The monastery had only been in existence for 25 years and its original abbot, Herluin, was still there. Anselm was taught by Lanfranc (1005-1089). When Lanfranc moved on, Anselm became the main teacher at the abbey, and later, in 1078, abbot.  Anselm was involved in controversies with Gaunilo (over arguments used by Anselm in his work Proslogion), and with Roscelin (over Trinitarian heresy) The Bec monastery was in Normandy, which at the time had strong connections with England, which had been conquered by the Normans in 1066. Anselm was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. Anselm stood up for the rights of the church against t...
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Do we eat Christ's body and drink his blood when we take communion?

The short answer is: yes we do. (Although I should clarify that it is by the Holy Spirit, and inwardly through faith.)  I am writing as an Evangelical Protestant Christian, a Grace Baptist pastor, and a church historian. I can assure you that we, that is to say, Protestants/Evangelicals believe (and have always believed) it to be the case that when we take communion we partake of Christ's body and blood .  This post is mainly written for my fellow Evangelical brothers and sisters who struggle with this truth, and perhaps suspect that it is a throwback to a medieval Roman Catholic, or High Church Anglican past. It isn't. At the time of the Reformation in the 1500s, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, Menno Simmons, and later John Calvin challenged many teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  On the subject of communion, the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation teaches (wrongly) that, during the communion service, the bread and cup at communion are changed i...
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Don't it always seem to go that you don't know you've got till it's gone

If you are old enough (or, young enough) to get the reference, the title of this blog post is a line from a 1970 song . The next line is, "They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot." This is a post about things that we have as Evangelical Christians, but perhaps have failed to cherish and value. These are reasons to stay Evangelical - even if other Christian traditions might at times seem appealing, tempting even. Evangelical Christianity is the faith I have received, the form of Christianity I was born into spiritually, and which has been my home since 1991. At least in this post, my concern is not to question the legitimacy of other Christian traditions, such as Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, or the faith of those brought up in those traditions, so much as to value my own tradition, and to encourage my fellow evangelicals to "stick with it" and "dig deeper" rather than going elsewhere. This blog is dedicated to a couple of dear friends who i...
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Government by referendum (about congregational church government)

This is not a post about Brexit. But I am going to use the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK as an analogy.  To refresh your memory, in 2016 a referendum was held in the UK on whether or not to stay in the European Union. This had been a longstanding issue for debate ever since the UK first joined in 1971. In the event, to the surprise of most pundits, the vote was 52% to leave the EU. This led to the immediate resignation of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and later to the resignation of his successor, Theresa May, in 2019. For months and years, the British parliament, the House of Commons was "blocked" - unable either to implement the referendum or to vote to hold a second referendum (effectively, to reject the result of the first). Finally, under Boris Johnson, a deal was reached and the UK left the EU in 2020. This was followed by years of wrangling over issues such as goods crossing the land border between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (...
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Trojan Horse (Eastern Orthodox church planting in the UK)

I have been interested in Eastern Orthodoxy ever since spending my linguist's year abroad in Novosibirsk in 1995/6. On my return, I began to read up about church history, and was later encouraged in that by my friend, Donald Fairbairn, who was at that time a PhD student at Cambridge. I have pursued this interest ever since then, researching and teaching the church history course at Novosibirsk Baptist Seminary, and later completing an MTh thesis accredited by Glasgow University on the missionary work undertaken from Constantinople 397-1453. As evangelical Christians, we have a huge amount to learn from our Orthodox brethren, past and present. As much as is possible, I try to engage in dialogue with Orthodox brothers and sisters, both finding common ground and also identifying areas of disagreement which prevent full communion at the present time.* 'Orthodox exclusivism' However, it is one thing to recognise some Orthodox as brothers and sisters in Christ, and to seek a meas...
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Covenant of works

The "covenant of works" (also known as the "covenant of life" or the "covenant of creation") refers to the original commandment given by the LORD God to Adam, the ancestor and head of the human race, when he created him. This is recorded in Genesis 2:15-17: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." The command is given in the context of creating Adam and placing him in the garden of Eden "to work it and keep it" (what is called the cultural mandate).  The command involves permission ("You may surely eat of every tree of the garden") and prohibition ("but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat"). Obedience or otherwise to the command wi...
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Athanasius, On the Incarnation (9 of 9), Advent 2025

These are some thoughts on Athanasius' "On the Incarnation", a classic Christian text from the 300s which I am reading this advent 2025 along with some colleagues with connections to Bury.  Here are my thoughts on chapter 9 which corresponds to paragraphs 56 and 57. In the final two paragraphs of "On the incarnation", Athanasius addresses the recipient of the book, Macarius. Athanasius describes his own work as "a brief statement of the faith of Christ and of the manifestation of His Godhead to us". He goes on to encourage his reader to examine what he has read by studying the Holy Scriptures (Bible), and speaks of Christ's second appearance, namely his second coming in glory to judge the living and the dead. Athanasius instructs Macarius as to the need for "a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind" in order to apprehend Christian truth. "... anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writer...
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