Articles

Martin Luther is best known for the 95 theses which he is said to have nailed to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg on the 31st of October 1517. For this reason Luther is sometimes called “the hammer” of the Reformation. Although there is reasonable doubt about the hammering,[1] the theses are real enough. [...]

In a way, I am glad I have not (or not yet) been ordained . Otherwise, I might be tempted not to address a persistent abuse and its feeble justifications. In his blog[1] an ex-Anglican priest argues why in the Roman Catholic Church only the “ordained clergy” (a pleonasm!) may preach at Mass. The subject [...]

This is the second of two essays about the history and future of Reader ministry in the Church of England. If you have not read my first essay, I strongly recommend doing that first. The problems outlined there are no doubt causes why clergy, as well as Readers themselves, continue to struggle with the identity [...]

If we want to discover the office of Reader in the New Testament, we are in for a hard time. There simply is no such thing, or it has not been recorded.[1] Over half of the epistles were written before the gospels and were read by whoever received them, probably the local overseer (chief elder). [...]

On the 25th of June 2017, the Old-Catholic Church in Amsterdam hosted a symposium on the question whether there is such a thing as a specific priestly spirituality. For me, the clearest answer came from Revd. Mattijs Ploeger, lecturer in Systematic Theology. Defining spirituality as living close to Christ and His mission, he came to [...]

In 1964 The Roman Catholic Church held the Second Vatican Council and adopted a new dogmatic constitution dealing with how the Church understood itself, in other words about its ecclesiology. I was only seven at the time and completely unaware of its implications, for other churches as well. The constitution was called Lumen Gentium, Light [...]

In this article, we will look at the grounds, if any, for distinguishing two groups of Christians, a laity and a clergy. First of all, it is important to recognise that the terms “laity” and “clergy” are not used in the Bible in a technical sense. When they are used at all, they are not [...]

The words “blessing” and “to bless” are used a lot in Church, and in a variety of meanings. But what is the essence of these concepts, and where do they come from? The English word “blessing” comes from the old Teutonic (Germanic) word ‘bletsian’, meaning “blood sacrifice”. But its meaning changed when it was used [...]

How two Greek words (for priest and elder) became confused and how this still affects us today. This subject is kind of controversial between Catholics and Protestants, but that is no reason to ignore it, on the contrary. The subject has often been looked at from one point of view only. This has led either [...]

One morning, the day after Easter 2017, I suddenly remembered an Archdeanery Synod report about “Mission Shaped Church”. It had called the bishop “the chief missioner” and that had kept me wondering for some time, at the back of my mind. Time to reflect. […]