All Things Seen & Unseen

We've been watching a DVD series, South Riding 1 , and it's got the usual Christian character who is held up for ridicule. He is judged harshly because he is a hypocrite. The character is a married, Methodist lay preacher -always fertile soil for Christophobia- who is committing adultery with a seductive, decepti ve Delilah. He is conscience stricken about what he is doing but she can always bend him to her wishes.

Just recently, I've again come across the writings of Dr J. I. Packer, now in his 80s, who has been a pastor and academic.  He was once a great hero of mine when I was an orthodox Calvinist d e cades ago. He was an Anglican but recently left the Canadian church because of its well-publicised slide into li beralism . Interestingly, although he classed himself as an evangelical he had a great l ove for The Book of Common Prayer ( BCP: 1662). (B eing an evangelical Anglican and having a love for the BCP seems rare to day. ) Packer was brought up on the BCP and I can understand his strong affection for its r h ythms and its implicit piety. (I was not nurture d in it but first e ncountered Anglicanism through An Australian Prayer Book (AAPA: 1978) .) Packer has made a study of the 1662 BCP and found that a sin-grace-faith pattern exists throughout its services.  To check this out f urther, I would like to go back to the second Prayer Book (1552) of Edward VI's reign ...

I believe that Christians should take the opportunities they receive in their daily lives to speak the good news of God to others they meet.  I n this post I will be trying to lay out one way of understanding what lies behind such witness.  I t's common to represent initiation into the Christian walk as the beginning of a relationship with God . And there's nothing wrong with this conception as long as we keep in mind some important differences between human relationsh ips and relationships with God. 1. God I s N ot A P erson It 's common to hear f o lk say that God is a person. In the evangelical world it's almost a fundamental doctrine and taken for granted.  H owever, although God relates to us in a personal way for we are persons, his being--to use C. S. Lewis' gra phic term--is 'sup er - personal'. What Lewis meant by this language is that God transcends or is beyond what we describe as a person.