Dear friends in Christ,
Purgatory this Sunday
Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion rejects the “Romish” teaching on Purgatory–and on some other matters–but omits in that list prayers for the dead. That’s where we’re picking up this Sunday. I’m also going to draw a bit from the new book, Heaven, Hell, . . . and Purgatory?, a collection of six essays including a very insightful one on purgatory by an Orthodox scholar. (This book will soon be in our bookstore; it also contains an essay by yours truly on preaching heaven and hell.) We welcome visitors to every class. It meets at 10 o’clock on the 5th floor, and we have coffee and tea in the room.
Purgatory on Monday
I’ll repeat the Sunday class on Monday, October 19, at 12:40pm on the second floor. The class lasts 40 minutes.
Tragedies by Shakespeare
Our final tragic seminar, on Shakespeare’s King Lear, will be on Monday, October 19, in Andrew Hall from 6:15 to 7:45pm. If you read the play, you’re welcome to the conversation. I am particularly looking forward to this; it was my late wife’s favorite play, and she wrote her senior essay at St. John’s on it, under the title “Sweet Marjoram.”
Then on Tuesday, the Faith Within Reason class will continue trying to understand evil and God’s omnipotence, chapter 6 of the book by Herbert McCabe. This is a fresh opportunity to think through, with both faith and reason, the problem of evil and the goodness of God. You’re welcome to the class even if you haven’t been able to read McCabe’s book: October 20, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., in Andrew Hall. (The final class in this series will be on October 27, on chapter 8, an exploration of what it means to say “God is good.”)
Looking Ahead
Jeremy Waldron and I will be leading a four-week class, starting Tuesday, November 10, on Oliver O’Donovan’s book On the Thirty-Nine Articles. It is an interesting commentary, not very long, in which the esteemed Anglican moral theologian engages this sixteenth-century text. This Tuesday course will be independent of the Sunday class, and there will be no expectation that if you come to one you have been to the other. Dr. Waldron, of course, is an esteemed professor of legal philosophy, and most recently gave us (last winter) a precis of his Guifford lectures. It will be a treat to have him in class again.
On Monday, November 16, the Good Books & Good Talk seminar will discuss Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos, the ultimate send-up of self-help books.
Peace, Father Austin
