Faith that Gnaws, August 2021

For the sermon before a week of needed vacation, I’m quite happy. However there are a few details I want to correct or elaborate on. First, there are 39 Articles of Religion. Although the one I quote is the 29th, so perhaps we can assume that’s the basis for my confusion?
Second, for my fellow Church nerds, the 29th article of religion reads

XXIX. Of the Wicked, which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper
The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing

Articles of Religion, 1801

If anyone is made nervous by the full text, please contact me. We’ll find time to talk. In short, Saint Augustine and I do not agree on all matters. But I do think that ‘carnally and visibly press with their teeth’ is the Anglican translation of ‘gnaw.’

I worked most closely with John 6.51-58.

Posted by

An Anglican/Episcopal priest, bibliophile, dog owner, and Montanan

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s