Very interesting video and a good exposition of the spirituality of Maximus. I’m very curious about the study of the Fathers by Evangelical, non-magisterial denominations. They speak of the Eucharist with great tenderness, but surely it is a crackers-and-grape-juice symbol in their own church services. Does anyone understand how they can so deeply study the Fathers and yet bypass those Fathers’ understandings of Real Presence, apostolic succession of bishops, etc.
The video says he identifies with Stone-Campbell Restoration tradition, which is a form of non-liturgical Protestantism – one of its most distinctive features is its rejection of the historic creeds such as the Nicene Creed as binding (not because they disagree with the content, just because they see creeds as adding to scripture.) In the US, that tradition is represented by the Disciples of Christ (at the more mainline/moderate-to-liberal end) and by various Churches of Christ denominations (at the conservative end). He teaches at a Stone-Campbell affiliated school, Emmanuel Christian Seminary. His bio at that school says he attends Grandview Church, whose website identifies it as “non-denominational”, but whose head pastor is a graduate of the same school. So this is all a fair way off Anglicanism.
Ed, my own experience is that many individual protestants are open to a greater eucharistic mystery than their tradition inherently contains. Indeed, one of my own pleasures as a protestant was the freedom to choose which (patristic) doctrines I would privately hold, and which I would discard as “unbiblical.” That pleasure, however, eventually turned into angst for me, and the so-called evangelical freedom of conscience became an epistemic prison. That said, my protestant friends are mostly satisfied to say that the historic Church simply got some major things wrong, and pervasively so.
Very interesting video and a good exposition of the spirituality of Maximus. I’m very curious about the study of the Fathers by Evangelical, non-magisterial denominations. They speak of the Eucharist with great tenderness, but surely it is a crackers-and-grape-juice symbol in their own church services. Does anyone understand how they can so deeply study the Fathers and yet bypass those Fathers’ understandings of Real Presence, apostolic succession of bishops, etc.
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As far as I know, Blowers attends some sort of Anglican church, I think. Might be mistaken.
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The video says he identifies with Stone-Campbell Restoration tradition, which is a form of non-liturgical Protestantism – one of its most distinctive features is its rejection of the historic creeds such as the Nicene Creed as binding (not because they disagree with the content, just because they see creeds as adding to scripture.) In the US, that tradition is represented by the Disciples of Christ (at the more mainline/moderate-to-liberal end) and by various Churches of Christ denominations (at the conservative end). He teaches at a Stone-Campbell affiliated school, Emmanuel Christian Seminary. His bio at that school says he attends Grandview Church, whose website identifies it as “non-denominational”, but whose head pastor is a graduate of the same school. So this is all a fair way off Anglicanism.
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Ed, my own experience is that many individual protestants are open to a greater eucharistic mystery than their tradition inherently contains. Indeed, one of my own pleasures as a protestant was the freedom to choose which (patristic) doctrines I would privately hold, and which I would discard as “unbiblical.” That pleasure, however, eventually turned into angst for me, and the so-called evangelical freedom of conscience became an epistemic prison. That said, my protestant friends are mostly satisfied to say that the historic Church simply got some major things wrong, and pervasively so.
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