During the course of running this blog and its associated YouTube channel I have evolved in my understanding and changed some of my beliefs. To avoid confusion or misrepresentation, here is a summary of my theological positions (beyond those things that are agreed upon as orthodox and non-negotiable such as the Trinity and inspiration of Scripture), grouped into five categories: Salvation, Sacraments, the Church, Anglicanism, and Women’s Ordination, which are the main topics I have made content on.

1. Salvation

1. Our salvation, that is, our future resurrection to eternal glory in the Kingdom of Heaven, is entirely a free gift of grace by God, due to the work and merits of Jesus Christ alone; Whose perfect life of obedience and sacrificial offering of Himself to the Father is able to make all those who belong to Him righteous, and Whose resurrection to immortality is able to make those God has declared righteous to be glorified in their own bodies.

2. God predestines certain people to be supernaturally given the gift of faith in His Son Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, and without this Spirit-empowered gift we cannot in our depravity come to any real faith in our Creator. Moreover, since in our depravity we cannot of ourselves work anything meritorious, God gives us our saving faith based only on His unconditional love for those He foreknew in Christ, and not for any foreseen ‘merits.’ This living faith that God gives us heals our wills to be able to love, thus fulfilling God’s law.

3. By the instrumental means of our faith in Jesus alone, God forensically declares us righteous by our mystical participation in Jesus Christ’s own righteousness, which is apprehended through faith. As a result, all of our sins are able to be forgiven and cleansed merely by faithful repentance of them to God. Since God gave us our faith, He will not take it from us, and since He has declared us righteous, He shall not take away that justification from us either. By our faith alone in Jesus Christ, and our subsequent justification, we therefore have assurance of salvation, for God will certainly save all those who He declares righteous, glorifying us in the manner of Christ’s own glorified humanity.

4. Christ’s sacrificial death purchased our salvation in that by it: the perfect offering of obedience was given to the Father, thus satisfying His justice; the wrath of God the Trinity against sin was satisfied in that the representative of humanity, Jesus, Who was and is Himself God, took upon His human nature our punishment by His own free will, while still remaining One with the Father; the power of Satan and his demonic angels was defeated, for sinless obedience was exemplified and fulfilled and the power of death was undone by the subsequent resurrection.

5. Our salvation is therefore by God’s grace alone, through the instrument of our faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, and our righteousness in God’s eyes cannot be worked towards, earned, or increased by any strivings of our own, instead, Christ’s own glory and perfection is entirely sufficient to save us, cleanse us, and justify us, throughout the course of our whole lives in this age, and forevermore in the age to come.

2. The Sacraments

1. The sacraments, which are Baptism and the Eucharist, are pledges of our faith in God, and of His grace upon us, for in them it is shown forth that we come to be cleansed, and are cleansed; that we live off Christ, and He feeds us.

2. The sacraments also supernaturally bestow real grace which is received by our faith. For those of God’s elect who are baptised, the Holy Spirit is received and they become one with the Lord, mystically united to Him; they die to their old Adamic self and are raised up as a new creation in Christ. This is real, not symbolic. However, Baptism is not a work, but a gift, whose blessings are bestowed upon faith, by means of faith. By receiving the Holy Spirit in Baptism, God’s elect people are then regenerated and sanctified throughout their lives, with the Spirit healing our wills to no longer follow the lusts of the flesh but turn instead towards God.

3. Likewise, the Eucharist really and truly strengthens and re-affirms to us our union with Christ, though that union never ceases in those He has elected to be His. In the Eucharist those who have a living faith really and truly eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood, albeit in non-corporeal manner, by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. The means whereby Christ is fed on is faith, and what is empowered and strengthened in the Eucharist is faith.

4. While we may not say that the Eucharist is “a sacrifice” without significant appendages we may equally say that it is “sacrificial.” In the Eucharist, we call to the Father’s remembrance the sacrifice of His Son, through the words of the liturgy and the elements of bread and wine themselves, and the proclamation of our own faith in that sacrifice is also offered sacrificially. Moreover, when by faith we feed on Christ and drink His blood, His sacrificial death is applied sacramentally to us.

5. As the sacraments are commanded by Christ Himself and since in them are found ordinary means of grace, they are generally necessary for salvation. While in irregular cases salvation may be attained without them, if one has the opportunity and ability to be baptised and to partake of the Lord’s Supper, to refuse the purifying waters of Baptism or the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist is to refuse Jesus Himself. The faithful Christian lives a life of constant repentance, and ever approaches Jesus to be cleansed, to die to themselves, and to feed on Him, and since Jesus instituted the sacraments to satisfy and fulfill these strivings, they must be partaken of when able. As the sacraments are said to be necessary means of abiding in Jesus, we cannot refuse them without stepping away from His embrace. Moreover, sacraments are generally necessary for salvation, not as hoops to jump through, for the sacraments were made for man and not man for the sacraments, but because they are the ordinary means whereby God seals the grace of His covenant promises to us, which we need to be saved. In the same sense we might say that hearing or reading holy Scripture is generally necessary for salvation in that it is the means whereby those promises are communicated to us.

6. The liturgical traditions passed down through the centuries of the Church, while not necessary for the sacraments to be truly effectual, should nevertheless be conformed to as they safeguard the correct understanding and administration of the same.

3. The Church

1. The Church is the visible congregation of the invisible body of Christ, which is the full number of those who are mystically united to Christ by faith and who participate in His Spirit. The Church’s existence and manifestation subsists functionally in the proclamation of the true word of God and the administration of His sacraments. Wherever the Scriptures are proclaimed in accordance with the true Apostolic interpretation (as ratified in the Creeds and Definitions of the first four Ecumenical councils, and in the consensus of the Fathers), and the sacraments are administered in accordance with Christ’s institution and directives, we cannot doubt that there is the visible Church of Christ.

2. While the Church appears to be divided visibly, it is nevertheless ‘one’ and united invisibly by one Faith, one Lord, one Baptism.

3. This Church has also always included clerical orders, consisting of those who are appointed and ordained to teach, lead, pastor, discipline, and administer the sacraments. It has always included disciplinary measures to root out all false doctrine and unrepentant sin, which is carried out by the aforementioned clergy. The Church has always understood that since the time of the Apostles, the Church they molded by the Spirit’s blessing has existed and spread across the whole world and the Church cannot therefore be said to have either ceased from existence or to only exist among one isolated group.

4. The clergy of the Church has since the time of the Apostolic Fathers consisted of three distinct orders: Deacons, Priests, and Bishops. While I do not say that these ranks of clergy are necessary for a congregation to be accounted part of Christ’s true Church, I do affirm that they are the ordinary and recommended positions of authority to be found in the Church. Moreover, the principles that those clerical ranks reflect are still to be observed, namely, the seeking of tangible links to the Apostles, the seeking of visible unity and communion amongst all congregations that comprise the Church, and the understanding that the administration of the sacraments and the proclamation of the Word should only be performed by those lawfully appointed. However, alternative forms of Church governance do not disqualify a congregation from being part of the Church, and Anglicans can and must look happily and warmly to other denominations without Episcopacy as brothers in Christ and in His Church.

5. Given that the clerical orders of the Priesthood and the Episcopate are inherently authoritative and center around the teaching office, women cannot be ordained to those orders. The sacred and irreplaceable role, duty, and calling of women in the Church is to nurture it by supporting their husbands, raising their children, and managing the household. If women are appointed to be Priests or Bishops, this inherently subverts God’s created design since it sets them up as unlawful authorities over the men of the Church and encourages them to neglect their duties. God does not call women to be homemakers because He has a low view of women, but because He has a high view of the Church.

4. The Anglican Church:

1. The Anglican Church is one part of the true Catholic Church, it is neither the totality of it, nor outside of it. The Anglican Church can be said to in some sense be the ‘via-media’ of Christendom, for it is Lutheran in its origins, view of justification, and general approach to the Church calendar and liturgy; it is Reformed in its soteriology and sacramentology; and it has as much of a ‘Catholic’ ecclesiology as its staunchly Protestant theology could possibly allow. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, and the two Books of Homilies, are the defining Formularies that should govern and dictate Anglican doctrine and practice. I personally find nothing disagreeable within them and they are the authoritative lens through which I interpret Scripture in my own life. While I affirm that only Scripture is infallible, and that the Formularies can thus err, I assent to them for the sake of piety and humility, seeking to preserve the understanding of the faith that are encapsulated within them.

2. The Anglican Church has for quite some time however been infiltrated by false teachers and poisoned and infected by false doctrine, heresy, and even apostasy. Core doctrines of the Christian faith, such as the sufficiency and truth of Scripture, the Virgin-birth, and the fact that salvation is found in Christ alone, or even the resurrection of Jesus and the very existence of God Himself, have been rejected and denied even by Bishops without any discipline. The existence of Hell, and the reality of damnation outside of faith in Christ, have been mercilessly cut out of the Prayer Books of many Anglican Provinces, while influences from the outside world have crept in. Moreover, many Provinces have moved completely away from the clear and explicit teaching of Scripture regarding sexuality and sexual conduct, and a false sense of security has thus been proclaimed to countless people who are actively being misled about the grave consequences of their actions should they not repent. The so-called ‘ordination’ of women to the Priesthood and even Episcopate is also virtually widespread. While this has happened, orthodox adherence to Scripture and Tradition has been squashed out and even persecuted in many places in the Anglican Church, which ferociously seeks to appeal to the secular world’s misguided ideologies while remaining blind to the fact that its rapid and substantial demise in population and influence is a direct result of moving away from God’s Word, and thus, His blessing.

3. As a result, Anglicans who are faithful to the Scriptures feel that they can no longer have fellowship with what they perceive as heresy, and so many new Anglican structures have been formed outside of the mainstream Communion that has the Archbishop of Canterbury as its figurehead, such as the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, the Continuing Anglican Churches, and those organisations that are tied to the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). These structures remain valid, acceptable, and in many cases even preferable, options for Anglicans and are in no way ‘schismatic,’ as it is those who cause the divide who are schismatic while those who remain faithful to the Apostolic deposit cannot be said to have abandoned the Church the Apostles established.

5. Women’s Ordination

1. It is a plain fact that Scripture consistently teaches us that women, while remaining one in Christ with men as regards their adoption and justification (Gal 3:28), are of a lower rank to men (1 Cor 11:3, 8-9 ; 1 Tim 2:13) and are created to be subordinate (1 Cor 11:10 ; 1 Cor 14:34 ; 1 Tim 2:11-12). This is why wives are commanded to submit to their husbands as to the Lord (Eph 5:22-24 ; Col 3:18 ; Titus 2:5 ; 1 Peter 3:1, 5), for their husbands are their head (Eph 5:23) and their lord (1 Peter 3:6). As it pertains to the liturgical gathering of the Church, St Paul the Apostle tells us that we must obey him even as he obeys the Lord Jesus Christ and keep the ordinances he prescribes (1 Cor 11:1-2), before immediately commanding the women of the Church to follow the custom of all churches (1 Cor 11:16) and cover their heads during prayer as a sign of their subordination (1 Cor 11:4, 10). For women to do otherwise would be to dishonour their head, which is to say, their husbands (1 Cor 11:5), for God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman (1 Cor 11:3). Indeed, women were made for men, not men for women, and thus women have a subservient role towards men, being below men in rank (1 Cor 11:3, 8-9 ; 1 Tim 2:13). It is surely for that reason that St Paul then commands, for the purpose of having worship be orderly and without confusion (1 Cor 14:33, 40), that women are to be silent in church, are to be under submission in church, and are to seek further teaching from their husbands privately, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church, as is clear from the Law (1 Cor 14:34-35). While these commandments were written by St Paul, they are in fact from the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 14:37), and whoever does not recognize them is himself not recognized (1 Cor 14:38). Lastly, given that man has pre-eminence and superiority of rank over woman, it is therefore not permitted for a woman to teach or have authority over a man, rather, she must be silent and must remain in submission (1 Tim 2:13). Let a woman therefore direct her time towards nurturing the household and her husband, for this is a supremely noble and important calling (1 Tim 5:14 ; Titus 2:4-5).

2. Inasmuch as Pastors, otherwise called Presbyters/Elders, which is to say Priests, have legitimate authority over the flocks which are appointed to their oversight (1 Tim 1:18 ; Titus 2:15 ; Heb 13:17 ; 1 Pet 5:2), and are called to teach and expound the word of God with authority (Titus 9:1 ; 1 Tim 5:17 ; 2 Tim 4:2), and to administer the Sacraments to the congregation, thus authoritatively signing, sealing, and confirming God’s promises (1 Cor 11:26), it is therefore out of the question for a woman to be ordained to this office. Given that women are to be recognizably under submission at church, are to remain silent, and are not permitted to teach or have authority over men, it cannot be that they should stand in a position of authority before the congregation and deliver the sermon or preside over Communion, as their performance of these duties is surely ruled out by the aforementioned Scriptures. Indeed, it has since the time of the Apostles been the unanimous custom of the Catholic Church to only ordain men to be Priests, until the disastrous twentieth century. As the state of the Church has only declined since then, there is no reason to suppose that such an innovation has blessed or improved the Church, rather, the opposite appears to be the case.

3. As St Paul has told us that his commands regarding the behaviour and status of women in the church are from the Lord Jesus Christ and are to be followed, and that to fail to recognize them is to be unrecognized, and given that the constant and widespread teaching of the Scriptures is that women are subordinate to men, it follows that to ordain women to the office of a Priest, thus appointing them to speak, lead, teach, and hold authority over the congregation, is to disobey God. In fact, when all of the New Testament’s inspired and infallible teachings regarding how corporate worship is to be conducted are surveyed, we find that the commandment for women to cover their heads, be in silence, be in submission, and refrain from teaching and having authority, is one of the clearest and most substantial commandments we are given. To disobey this commandment is not, therefore, to go against a minor point, but to contravene a major teaching. Given that disobedience to God is properly called sin, it is appropriate to call the ordination of women a sin. As the true Church is fundamentally called to obey and pass on the teachings of God, and to call sinners to repentance, and is in fact founded upon the teaching of God, for a church to persist in institutional and flagrant sin and disobedience, is to risk becoming unrecognized as a genuine part of the true Church, who is recognized by the faithful proclamation of the word and the lawful administration of the Sacraments.