Categories
Archive E.J. Hutchinson Natural Law Nota Bene Reformed Irenicism Sacred Doctrine

Zanchi on Festivals (2)

In today’s post, Zanchi continues his response to the objection that Christians should not have festivals through an analysis of the Fourth Commandment. Zanchi here makes the important distinction between substance and accident in the commandment; notes an important parallel with gentile festivals that helps to demonstrate the naturalness of festivals or feast days; and engages […]

Categories
Archive E.J. Hutchinson Featured Posts Natural Law

Zanchi on Festivals (1)

In clearing out some old papers, I came across something I had meant to do here, but didn’t get around to it; so I’m doing it now. That “something” is a series on an interesting bit of Girolamo Zanchi’s commentary on Colossians: an excursus De Festis (“On Festivals”) in his comments on Col. 2.17. I’m […]

Categories
Archive Ecclesiastical Polity Natural Law Philosophy Steven Wedgeworth The Natural Family

Male-Only Ordination is Natural: Why the Church is a Model of Reality

One of the dangers inherent in “complementarianism” is the perception that ordination to ecclesiastical office is a matter of semi-arbitrary positive law and private zones of jurisdiction, that male leadership in church is only a question of ordination or specific church polity and only because a few bible verses command it. Worse yet, it might […]

Categories
Civic Polity Corpus Iuris Civilis E.J. Hutchinson Natural Law

“Prayer, Work, Laughter, We Need Them All”: Notes in Service of Sanctified Celebration

“Natura abhorret a vacuo” Nature abhors a vacuum, and so every people constituted as a political body is going to have a schedule of sacred observances, of holy days–days marked out as special in some way, whether because of their perceived relation to a polity’s foundation or to its preservation. This calendar never has been, […]

Categories
Archive Natural Law Philosophy Reformed Irenicism Steven Wedgeworth

What is Effeminacy?

So let’s talk about effeminacy. This came up as final point of criticism in my Mere Orthodoxy critique of the gay Christianity of Revoice and Spiritual Friendship. Now, I knew that “going there” would upset a lot of people. It’s basically touching the third rail to even say the word “effeminate” today. And yet, it’s […]

Categories
Archive Natural Law Reformed Irenicism Sacred Doctrine Steven Wedgeworth

Is Concupiscence Sin?– Gay Christianity, Desire, and Orientation

Picking up from my previous post on the problem of gay-but-chaste Christianity, I want to talk about concupiscence. Jack Bates criticizes me for introducing concupiscence into the discussion in an over-generalized and therefore simplistic way. Bates writes: Wedgeworth’s treatment of concupiscence in relation to the queer Christian’s experience is the site of his most significant errors. […]

Categories
Archive Natural Law Reformed Irenicism Steven Wedgeworth The Natural Family

More Thoughts on Spiritual Friendship/Gay Christianity– Unpacking Some Basic Confusion

My essay over at Mere Orthodoxy on the Spiritual Friendship conversation has generated a fair amount of discussion these past few weeks. Much of it has been very good. Some of it was of the predictable online partisanship variety, which, while inevitable, is still too bad. There was a sort of blind partisanship on the […]

Categories
Archive Civic Polity E.J. Hutchinson Natural Law Philosophy Reformed Irenicism

Natural Knowledge Still Requires Teaching

If one holds to some version of natural law or a natural knowledge of the virtuous and the vicious, it might seem to imply that nothing else is required for virtuous action. I mean, we all know what “the good” is, right? Well, yes and no. Affirming that everyone knows the distinction between right and […]

Categories
Archive Civic Polity E.J. Hutchinson Ecclesiastical Polity Natural Law Sacred Doctrine

Burn, Baby, Burn?

In a truly bizarre thread on Twitter yesterday–the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation–started by our own Steven Wedgeworth, a number of traditionalist Roman Catholics speculated as to whether it would be a good thing for the church to take up the cause of burning heretics at the stake again, even if the […]

Categories
Archive Authors Civic Polity E.J. Hutchinson Natural Law Nota Bene

Religion a Part of Justice

We haven’t had a Hemmingsen post in a while, and I know how it has made you pine. Fret not; I’m here for you. In their discussion of the virtues, the magisterial Reformers followed the classical tradition in considering religion to fall under the category of, or to be a part of, justice, which can […]