Christ Church

Notes on Fr. Tom Plant’s King Oswald’s Heirs:
Meditations on the Catechism of the English Church,
Session # 2, Ch.12-21, pp. 124-228.

Fr. Plant’s project of our re-enchantment of the Good happens by the Good; in short, by the movement of God’s grace seeking the perfection of our wounded and broken humanity. Our session tonight, providentially on the Feast of SS. Simon & Jude which marks the completion of the cycle of the Apostolic Saints in the liturgical year, takes us through the rest of the Apostles’ Creed. We begin with the theology of atonement in the Passion of Christ, his Resurrection and Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit bringing life and order to the Church, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins, the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting. He takes us through these articles of the Faith in a wonderfully imaginative and creative way through the logos of mythos, the meaning or reason and truth of the images in a number of stories that belong to the culture and history of the English Church. These relate in various ways to the overcoming of the dragons and demons in our own souls and world by showing us the triumph of the Good itself in and through suffering and tribulation, the sufferings and tribulations of Christ and ours as joined to his in what he suffers for us.

The opening chapter (12) for our session captures this overarching theme: “Love as strong as death,” meditating on Christ who “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” It is a very fine reflection on suffering and sin and its overcoming through the sacrifice of Christ. It offers a well-expressed theological argument that counters the common complaint about the goodness and almighty power of God that is often thought to be contradicted by the fact of suffering and death, of sin and evil. But our human ways of thinking stand in complete contrast to God’s ways “whose ways are higher than ours and whose thoughts are higher than ours.” This speaks to some of the confusions at the Saturday WORCs Quiet Day, I think, in the felt tension between the transcendence and the immanence of God. This is a kind of false dichotomy that leaves things in an unresolved tension and opposition which is very different from the interplay and dance of kataphatic and apophatic theology. God is God in se and per se, on the one hand, and as such utterly beyond and unreducible to human reasoning, but God is also all in all, on the other hand.

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Click here to download the PowerPoint presentation on the Book(s) of Homilies, given at Christ Church on 24 October 2026. Posted below is the text of the presentation.

The Book(s) of Homilies: # 1 – A Fruitful Exhortation
to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture
Fr. David Curry & Will Barton
WORCs Quiet Day at Christ Church
October 24th, 2026

Slide # 2: Gerlach Flicke’s 1546 portrait of Cranmer, National Portrait Gallery, London, England. Cranmer Window at Hensley Memorial Chapel, King’s-Edgehill School (2006)

Slide # 3: Portrait of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556)

Gerlach Flicke’s portrait of Cranmer shows him with the Epistles of Paul in one hand, and a pen in the other. On the stack of books, one can make out the title “De fides et operibus”, which is a work by St. Augustine (On Faith and Works). This is not Augustine of Canterbury (534-604), but the theologian Augustine of Hippo (354-430), whose writings did so much to shape medieval Europe, the Reformation, and beyond.

The portrait captures the primary intent of the English reformation; namely, as Diarmaid MacCulloch says, ‘the recovery of the Scriptures understood by way of the best of the patristic commentators’, particularly Augustine; what Ashley Null refers to as “a protestant Augustinianism.” This is a distinct feature of the Reformed Theology of the Prayer Book but raises the question which form of protestant Augustinianism? Fr. Crouse often noted the various medieval Augustinianisms, an observation that extends to the Reformers who had varying views on Augustine. 

Slide # 4: What is written…? How readest thou?

At the bottom of the Cranmer window are the words:

“Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly digest.”

They complement what is written at the bottom of the Anselm window: Fides quaerens intellectum, ‘Faith seeking understanding,’ a Christian concept that builds upon Plato’s divided line, and the image of the Cave. It also complements the King’s College and KES School motto found at the bottom of the Bishop Charles Inglis window: Deo Legi Regi Gregi that captures the educational and ethical project of Academia and Ecclesia. ‘For God, for the Law, for the King and for the People.’

Slide # 5: Cranmer’s Collect for Advent II

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Collect embodies the scriptural hermeneutic or interpretative principle expressed in the Homily, in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and in the whole project of the Book of Common Prayer

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