Ancient Anglican

A Christ-centered reading of Scripture is a mark of a one-storey universe. Only when Christ is near to us, and not banished upstairs, can he show us that whole of the Scriptures speak of him.

We can see and hear better when we use tools – telescopes, microphones, and other instruments – that allow us to perceive that which is beyond our normal capabilities. The eye of the soul needs similar instruments of perception.

We find our end, not in a future event, but in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the end.

In this one-storey universe, everything becomes a doorway and a window and a means of participation in the depths of the divine reality.

The question that Fr. Freeman gives to us is whether our “Christian faith” truly makes a difference in us. If you stepped away from the Church and your faith would you be the same person? Is God truly present in your life?

The recovery of the immediacy of God in our storey is the recovery of a thick Christianity of holy days, feasts and fasts, religious imagery, and sacraments.

For we do not live in a world of mere things, disconnected and without reference to one another and to God. Creation exists with the capacity to reveal God. Rom. 1:20

The awareness of a one-storey universe with the communion of saints begins with the Incarnation. In the Incarnation, the temporal and the eternal are joined together in a common communion.

We perceive heaven as a place up there, and God is found upstairs in the second storey. God’s presence is what we find only once we have passed through this life. Revelation and eschatology are only about the future upstairs.

For Eastertide, we will be reading through Fr. Stephen Freeman’s book Everywhere Present – Christianity in a One-storey Universe. One of the central tenants of our faith is that God does not reside in a place up there called heaven, like Zeus on Mt. Olympus or Odin in Asgard. Rather, every …

The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it

But, the question asked by Gabriel of Mary, the assignment given by Gabriel to Mary, the object of Mary’s service is in many ways the same question, the same assignment, and the same object of service asked of us.  We certainly aren’t being asked to become pregnant with the very Word …