June 22, 2008
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Theology Today:
Salvation by GraceToday’s New York Times has an
obituary of Henry Chadwick, an Anglican priest and expert on church
history who believed strongly in ecumenism.Church history and ecumenism may interest few Americans, who have not
recently suffered the sort of conflicts familiar to Northern Ireland.Nevertheless, here are some thoughts on the matter.From a statement
of “the five points of Calvinism”–Irresistible Grace
“‘Irresistible grace’ refers to the grace of
regeneration by which
God effectually calls His elect inwardly, converting them to Himself,
and quickening them from spiritual death to spiritual life.
Regeneration is the sovereign and immediate work of the Holy Spirit….”Calvinism is, of course, a deeply serious and
powerful approach to spiritual matters.Still, I prefer the following visions of grace:
How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?– Wallace Stevens, 1936
On the left, a Catholic answer.
On the right, a Protestant answer.
For further details, see 10/16/05.The above two
Philadelphia stories
have met in a different
vision of Grace:
Click image for a (much) larger version.
This tableau, in the larger version showing details in the background buildings, seems to me an apt, if more Calvinist and less Catholic, version of what Paul Simon, in his Graceland album, has memorably called “angels in the architecture.”Let us hope that the late Henry Chadwick now has a place among such angels.
Related material:
Yesterday’s entries and
what T. S. Eliot might call
their “objective correlatives“
in the Pennsylvania Lottery
and in this journal:
