Difference between High Church and Anglo-Catholic and can Anglo-Catholics identify as Protestants?

That's a different thread. Don't mix up your apples with your bananas!

 

Whoops! Sorry My mistake. Got my knickers in a right twist.
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Although it turned out that I posted this in entirely the wrong thread I think it relevant to make the point that attending an assembly of people claiming to be Christian, on a one off basis, just getting to know them and sharing experiences of life in Christ in the context of their usual forms of worship is a form of evangelism and sharing of our faith. Not an expression of approval for their entire system of church management, Theology and validity of Christian discipleship.
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If you're not preaching the whole Gospel -- if you only preach the parts you like, the warm fuzzy "love love love" parts -- then you are not teaching the true Gospel. The entire book of Revelation explains exactly why ignoring God's Holy Wrath is a massive mistake for a believer. This has been a problem with the "seeker friendly" churches in general, in my view. God's love for us is vast, but it will not mitigate punishment for sin. We do not love our neighbor if we not only allow their sin but affirm and advocate for it. Affirmation of sin is sin.

Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, one of the three holy Persons of the Trinity, co-existing and co-eternal with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, shares all the attributes of the other Persons of the Godhead. Love, yes. But also Wrath, and Justice, and Holiness, and Judgement. Christ is our ultimate judge, and if anyone thinks that Christ's mercy and love for us will forestall his Holy Wrath in the face of sin, just refer back to the book of Revelation (specifically Rev. 22:12-13).

 

I hope you are not implying that, any time, in any post, in any forum, I have "failed to love my neighbour" in the way you describe or am, "not preaching the whole Gospel".

Anyone might think, judging by the words of the answer you addressed to me, that a suggestion is being made that it is our place to usurp the functions of the Holy Spirit, John 16:8. I don't know what Gospel you are used to hearing but the one I heard and responded to was "Good News", (Matt.11:5, Matt. 11:5, Luke 1:19, Luke 2:10, Luke 3:18, Luke 4:18, Luke 4:43, Luke 7:22, Luke 8:1, Luke 16:16) not "Flee from the wrath to come" (Matt. 3:7, Luke 3:7.)

John 3:35-36 is the one and only instance of Jesus specifically mentioning God's wrath remaining upon those disobedient to Him. I try to keep the balance of what I preach firmly in the area of LOVE and leave the wrath part for the Holy Spirit to deal out where necessary.

We preachers of The Anglican Church preach according to mostly the common Worship Lectionary. That ensures that what we preach covers the whole of the most salient portions of scripture and is relevant to the whole of the Christian believer's experience in the true faith of Christ.

I can't help it, if in the entire 66 books of the combined Old and New Testaments of the Bible, God has chosen to use the word "LOVE" 310 times in the KJV, but Judgment only 294 times and Wrath only 198 times. I try to get about the same % balance by and large in my preaching, though I admit openly to definitely leaning rather more to the New Testament % and particularly the message of Jesus Christ to humankind in the Gospels, where "Love" gets 51 mentions in the KJV, Judgment 32, and wrath a mere 5 .

So if a gospel, (good news), has any less than 10 times as much love in it than it has wrath in it, it is not THE gospel and therefore definitely not GOOD NEWS.
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Tiffy, agapao/agape is not the same as phileo, which is not the same as the hebrew ahab. All can be translated as "love" in English, but carry different meanings.

Which is to say: "love" is not some unguent you can slather onto any conversation regarding the Bible to prove a point. You must explain your meaning. Agape love is a very different thing from, e.g., philadelphia (brotherly love) or phileo (a physical or indirect act of affection, a kiss).

Simply counting the number of times a given word occurs in an English translation of the text is not only meaningless in and of itself, it actually leads to the kind of error you just demonstrated. This exact problem occurs so often in the study of statistics, in fact, that students are specifically warned not to always equate frequency with importance.

I can say the word "happy" 100 times during the course of a party but "fire!" only once -- which word is more important?

 

Sucking eggs is a lesson I learned so many years ago I'd almost forgotten how to do it. Thanks.

Percentages of occurance does give some clues to the content levels of Christ's preaching and it is clear from scipture that there was a marked difference between the message of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth regarding distinctively differing emphases on wrath, judgment and grace.

Incidentally, are you a preacher too, like me, Ananias?
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In the sense that I shout the Gospel at random people, yes. But not ordained (yet). I may yet take orders if God leads me that way, but I have a ways to go before I have my MDiv (and I'm a pretty old dog to be chasing a divinity degree).

 

You don't have to be ordained to preach and neither do you need a degree. Jesus never had one. I'm 75 and still preaching, so I guess you are younger than I am.
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People who play the percentages always wind up losing eventually. Just sayin'....

I guess if 'wrath' is only mentioned 5 times, we can take our black permanent marker and fix it so we don't see those mentions. If it fits our personal theology.

That reminds me of a quote from Augustine which my parish printed on the front page of last week's bulletin:
If you believe what you like in the Gospel
and reject what you don't like,
it is not the Gospel you believe,
but yourself.

 

I'll not argue the toss over that. It's a crap game at the best of times.

And what you do with your black marker is your affair not mine. I am quite open to preaching wrath and judgment during Lent and Advent. That adds up to the recommended percentage we are used to doing in the Church of England.

Advent - Heaven, Hell, Death and Judgment.
Lent - Wrath and Repentance and Renewal.

The rest of the liturgical year - LOVE of the Agape kind mostly.
All you need is love, love is all you need.

All together now - All you need is love (Ya da da da daaa).
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John 3:19
And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.​

 

Maths is not everything, however these numbers may be of interest

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It may be a crude form of measurement but frequency of appearance of certain words and themes is a valid way of assessing what any book is primarily about. It is not definitively accurate in the case of the Bible because different English translations will return different arithmetical results but they are still generally in alignment with each other.

I believe the Bible and most of its books are mostly about God's love for his creation, and what, in His love, he has done about that. Even the wrathful bits are expressions of his exasperation at the way in which WE have mucked, and are mucking it, and ourselves, up.

But to get this back onto the thread title, I think the Protestant Evangelical faction of the Anglican church has a tendency to major on the wrath of God to scare people into appreciating God's love and atonement in Christ and the Anglo-catholic faction tend to major on God's love as a means of upbuilding the people of God and encouraging their little flock, in the face of a world that has convinced itself that God is either non existent, remote and aloof, or hostile and dangerous.

There are also Anglo-catholic Evangelistic and Reformed churches which are more toward the middle of these two extremes, be they Bells and Smells Sheepfolds or Happy Clappy, hands in the air 'Go Getters'.
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If you look at the other numbers however, you will see that for Christ, the #1 topic he spoke about, was hell and damnation. Nearly every one of his parables is rooted in the concept of damnation, and in all of the New Testament, the concepts of damnation and destruction by God for our sins are by far heavily found in the Gospels, specifically from the mouth of our Lord. So the Messiah was a fire and brimstone teacher, in contrast to the Apostles who certainly mentioned it less than He did.

Of course in the Book of the Apocalypse this awesome/awful image of Christ is reinforced. He is painted as the terrifying judge who comes to save the saints and to destroy the wicked reprobates. He says things like the blood of the damned will sprinkle and spurt into the air, like the grapes that are being threshed at a winepress.

 

I guess that you are trying to quote from Lamentations 1:11-15. If indeed I am correct the guy who wrote Messiah, (Handel), attributed this prophetically to Jesus as he was crucified. So since Jesus bore all our sorrows and sins on the cross it might not any longer apply to the world, which has it's sins no longer held against it, according to St Paul.

I'd be interested to know though from which version of the Holy Scriptures you are quoting and where you found it tucked away.
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The Book of the Apocalypse, chapter 14

v.17: "Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. Still another angel, with authority over the fire, came from the altar and called out in a loud voice to the angel with the sharp sickle, “Swing your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the vine of the earth, because its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood that flowed from it rose as high as the bridles of the horses"

 

And you presumably take this quite literally? Could there not be a figurative meaning intended by the author? The Book of the Apocalypse is presumably what everyone else refers to as The Revelation of Jesus Christ, isn't it.

There is a chance that the author is referring to Isa.63:3, Lam.1:15, and has Jerusalem in mind rather than Rome. The number of stadia, 1600, is possibly the length of Palestine and the events could be the destruction of Jerusalem and envorons in 70 AD. A sickle, especially a 'sharp' sickle
is an odd implement to gather grapes with. The author may have Joel 3:13 in mind here. "Wake and come up let the nations unto the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I sit to judge all the nations around. Send ye forth a sickle, For ripened hath harvest, Come in, come down, for filled hath been the press, Overflowed hath wine-presses, For great [is] their wickedness. Multitudes, multitudes [are] in the valley of decision, For near [is] the day of Jehovah in the valley of decision." YLT.

All the human race is in the valley of decision. It is basically the valley of the shadow of death, but those in Christ need fear no evil. Christ is their rod and staff.

Remember this is apocalyptic literature we are reading, not necessarily future history.
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Slick move, Tiffy. First you demand proof that the Scripture is quoted accurately, then when proof is then provided, you immediately dismiss it. Honestly I find this kind of argumentation fundamentally dishonest.

You obviously think the Apocalypse is meant to be taken metaphorically rather than literally, so why not just say so instead of playing these rhetorical games? All these "may" and "might" and "possibly" adverbs that litter your response are basically just hand-waving. John's Apocalypse might be nothing more than a fever dream brought on by a bad turnip that John ate for dinner. It's possible that he suffered from some mental lapse. It may be that the John who wrote the Apocalypse is not John son of Zebedee at all, but some other John. Could be, may be, might be, possibly, it's feasible that anything and everything is true or false.

Plant your flag and say what you mean. Is your interpretation to be preferred to a more literal one? If so, why?

 

Since Revelation is apocalyptic, I always assume the interpreter takes it figuratively unless it is explicitly stated otherwise. I’m not sure why that would be controversial outside of some fundamentalist circles.