The Wittenberg Door

I have Orthodox friends that find our little chapel concerning, and they are certainly right that a casual use of icons for decorative enhancement is to be avoided. Still, their chief complaint should be directed to the monks of Mount Athos who, infused with God’s flagrant generosity, so recklessly gave their replica icons away.

If such substitution and exchange were genuinely possible, would we agree with Lewis that no gift was more gladly given? Would we too readily assume we could bear another’s burden and so sink ourselves under more than we could carry? Or, would our burdens be lightened by such sharing?

The only thing that can save the world from a lost Christianity is a Cross-centered Christianity. Can Christians take the truths from both Life Is A Miracle and Sophia In Exile to not only reclaim our farms and our science, but to soften our hardened hearts towards the real, living transcendent presence of Christ?

Perhaps activism needs such determined gentleness, illustrated in the pro-life students’ hours of prayer and the work of adoption agencies like my grandmother’s. Activism must be framed by an understanding of common grace, shared depravity, and our implications with each other: our membership, which is “the way we are.”

The question, of course, is not whether some Protestant individuals have under-developed aesthetic sensibilities; the question is whether Protestant principles logically or consistently contribute to an under-developed aesthetic sensibility.

The IE is essentially the 1662 BCP of old, but unlike the Cambridge edition it is not just that and nothing more—it is the 1662 judiciously tweaked and supplemented in a way calculated to attract both newcomers to the BCP and long-time Anglicans.

"After all, if you are too small to do anything, what need is there to stir!”