So we will be dealing with 38 and 39 and next week Mr. Marquardt will be taking over with the study of 1 Peter. So let's get right to it. Article 38 says this, the title is Of Christian Men's Goods Which Are Not Common. It seems a really odd thing to put in with all this theological stuff. Oh, and by the way, let's read it and see where it goes. The riches and goods of Christians are not common as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought of such things as he possesseth liberally to give alms to the poor according to his ability. So when we think of the articles, they're written in a particular historical context, the mid to late 16th century, and in trying to forge a way forward for the national church, the Church of England, that was as comprehensive as possible, that means including everybody in it as much as possible. You cannot include everybody because there's just too many important disagreements. So the two main groups in the 16th century context that the Articles are trying to limit, saying, well, we can't keep everybody together. There are the innovations and errors and abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, and there are probably more of those that the Articles are contending with. It's a more important, more influential group. But at the other end of the spectrum, in a sense, if the Roman Catholics are conservative, at least in that point in history, they're conservative, even though they keep innovating. On the other side are the extreme innovators, the Anabaptists, who get rid of many things that were there from the beginning, starting with the premise that every individual has the right to interpret the Bible for himself. devolve into a large degree of fragmentation because no two people really agree without any kind of binding authority of the church. So Anabaptists typically got rid of, well, did get rid of bishops, liturgy, sacraments. They would consider them to be less than sacraments. They certainly thought they worked differently, and for that reason, they did not believe in infant baptism, hence the name Anabaptist, without baptism. It's not that they didn't baptize, but there was some mythical age of accountability that you would baptize at later. So this is written against Anabaptists. Anabaptists, I think as I mentioned last time, they began, of course there were more than one group of Anabaptists because they're based on the charismatic, almost cult-like personality of the leader. So there were as many varieties and flavors as there were charismatic leaders in the 16th century. Originally, some of them set up their own petty little kingdoms, most infamously the Kingdom of Munster, which was so vile that Protestants and Catholics alike got together and basically went to war with it because they set up this little siege and it was really weird inside the walls. Well, you know, when you set up a cult, one of the first things you do, we always do this, guys. The first rule is I get multiple wives. That's almost always the first thing you do. In fact, that's the real motivation. The rest of it is just icing. It's like, OK, now we got that out of the way. We can make up other stuff to see if you'll follow me. But that part, we're really clear on. So whether it's Joseph Smith, or Muhammad, the founder of the kingdom of Munster. It's all kind of the same, very predictable. So the Anabaptists believed as well, among other things, because they're trying to, in some sense, get back to the primitive simplicity of the early church, but without the church. So if this is the Old Testament, Israel, and here's the New Testament and the church, and 1,550 years of history, We're here in the mid 1500's or so. We're going to leapfrog over 3000 years of sacred history. We're going to go to the Bible directly. and get rid of everything in between and what we see is, oh, we see a form of proto-communism in there. Everyone's got everything in common, right? Well, obviously you don't see that in the Old Testament, so that's another thing they tend to do is divide the Old from the New because there's a lot of stuff in the Old Testament that kind of binds us and helps us to interpret the New. Without the Old, you can make the New read in many different foreign ways. So the Anabaptists were often communal so there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good impulse. It's just the way it was carried out. How do you construct this community? Do you just make it up from scratch? Those kinds of utopian communities have always failed and they generally fail within one generation. There were experiments in the 19th century among the transcendentalists, and those failed pretty quickly. There were the hippie communes of the 1960s, and they failed pretty quickly within actually less than a decade. It didn't take a whole generation even. So the question is, where might they read this from? And one typical place you might go to is the Book of Acts. So if you turn to Acts chapter 2, or just want to listen along, I'll try it. there were a couple of places but here's one the end of Acts chapter two this is after the day of Pentecost after Peter's sermon and Luke gives us a delightful description of life in the early church and he says in verse forty-four now all who believe were together and had all things in common and that phrase in common or of one accord occurs very frequently in the first eight chapters of Acts there's that divine unity that you see expressed and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. So continuing with one daily accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. So it's this wonderful picture. They had all things in common and they sold their possessions and goods. Why is this not some kind of communism? Why is this not Luke advocating we should sell all we have and divide it equally, share it in common? Or maybe we do believe that. As anyone had need, right? So as need, that's a qualifier that we tend to forget, right? What else even within this passage? Yes, Paul? Yeah, Paul's answer was that instead of the assumption being that you didn't know anything to begin with, the assumption is you must have had ownership over it because you voluntarily gave it. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions of good. How can you sell something that you don't own? If you think, flash forward to Ananias and Sapphira. Their sin was not that they weren't good communists and didn't give everything to the church. What was their sin? They lied. And when Peter rebukes them, and he rebukes them in the sternest possible terms, before God strikes them dead, So he was confirmation of what he said. He says, were these goods not yours to do with? You didn't have to give anything if you wanted to be stingy. It was the line to the Holy Spirit. So even a few chapters later, because we have to read the entirety of the book of Acts and the whole scriptures, not just cherry pick. So that's why we're not. On the other hand, the early church there's the idea that they had all things in common that yes these are really your goods that you can dispose of the way you see fit you have that freedom in Christ on the other hand it is not really yours in one sense you're a steward and everything that you've got everything you've got is a good gift from God it's really his and he's going to come if you listen to Jesus parables he's going to come and he's going to ask you in the day of judgment what did you do with all the good things I gave you? Did you hoard them for yourself? Did you bury them in the ground and use them for yourself? Or did you actually use them and multiply them? Did you give as I gave freely to you? We'll all be asked that question. So there is something that challenges us here, but the answer is of course not some form of socialism. Throughout the history of the church. Almsgiving has been a big deal until pretty recently. If you look in, for example, in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, there are three spiritual disciplines that he teaches us about. And he doesn't talk in terms of trying to convince us we should be doing these things. His assumption is when you do these things. What are the three spiritual disciplines of Matthew 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mount? What does he talk about? There's prayer, which we know. Everyone kind of knows whether we do it or not. There's fasting, which we've kind of lost our way on, and then there's almsgiving. And that one we've also kind of lost our way on. So the assumption is when you give alms, you do it this way. So it's just been an assumption throughout the Middle Ages. It was highly, highly significant to give alms throughout one's life. And then especially at the end of your life, those who had means, they typically left about a third of their wealth to the church. This is one of the ways, if you're wondering how can an age that is vastly more impoverished than we are, How can they build these beautiful cathedrals? And with the exception maybe of our new sanctuary, people can't do this anymore. Part of it is because we don't give our money to the church, we give a pittance in our lives and even less in bequests. People give almost as much to animal causes as they give to all charitable causes in their wills. Probably more to animals than to churches. So we're a little askew here in our values. Maybe an under-exaggeration. And they were just concerned for the poor. Now, some of that is difficult because it's a chicken-egg thing. If the church, because there's a long history of government sponsoring things like poor laws, what happens to almsgiving from Christians when the government gets involved in almsgiving? It's an open-ended question. There's more than one outcome. If the government decides that it's our responsibility to give alms, we're going to use the income tax or whatever the tax code is to redistribute wealth. There are consequences for that, for giving. Well, I mean, yeah, sure, we know the government skims a lot off it, but I'm not so much interested. How does it affect the giver? What's that? I would expect Christian giving from churches to go down to the cause, and that's what we see historically, is churches have gotten out of the business that they were the primary inhabitants of in all those areas, because they're all paying taxes, and they what their money is gained for. Yeah, Nathan's answer was correct, essentially, that when the government takes over those roles, and maybe it's because the church and Christians have abdicated, and maybe there's more to it, but when that happens, typically, in some sense, Christian giving goes down. It also creates a distance in almsgiving. When I give alms through paying my taxes, and the government then deigns to decide who is the recipient of that. What does it do to the distance between me and the alms receiver? I don't know that person at all. It's a number. They're statistics, right? I think about this because I think there's a challenge in giving alms in the modern world. I've thought about this a lot. When the man is at the temple gate begging for alms for Peter and John, what do they know about this man? Do they know him? Yeah, he's been there every day of his life. They pass by every day. Remember, everything's smaller in the ancient world. Tyler would have been the fourth and fifth biggest city in the entire Roman Empire. So you typically knew people. You didn't move very far. You were there for multigenerations. Oh yeah, we know that guy from birth. He's been lame or he's been sick or whatever it is. We see him every day. So there's a personal connection. And the requirement to give alms is very palpable and it's incarnated. When we think, well I gave it the office so to speak, I've paid my taxes, in some sense it's easy, not correct necessarily, but easy for us to think, well I've done my bit already because some of my taxes go to leave the poor and I'm kind of absolved of that obligation. So it's a very complicated system today. But that obligation to give is still there. Jesus didn't revoke it just because we've found more complex ways of organizing government and society. Yes? Right, and this is, if you read the history of government, in some sense, this is my design. It's not sold that way, unless his point was that people become dependent, because governments themselves are dependent on the money. and they're dependent on power. So when government takes over functions, the government is the winner. The government gets to spend more money and gets to be the dispenser of goods. The government therefore needs more money, which means it can accrue power because now it's going to be able to use this to determine winners and losers, which it does. So I'm not saying that it's purely evil, I'm just saying that there are problems because it really destroys the kind of personal connection. But it doesn't absolve us from looking for and finding the needs of those who truly need alms. Yes, David. I think we muddy the waters too with some of the parachurch organizations. Oh, good point. The Salvation Army. Instead of me seeing someone and saying, I need to provide for you, I can say, hey, Right, and David's point was that there are also parachurch groups that do this, like the Salvation Army. You know, so it's a complicated thing. Personally, I'm a big fan of PATH here in Tyler. People, what is it? People attempting to help, right? Yeah, I was thinking of a different acronym. and they do exactly what you were talking about. That is, they know the people who come into town, they give them food and shelter, and they point them in the way of job training and so on, and try to get them jobs. They also know people who have been around for months and are not interested in working, and we can call them and find that out. So it's very difficult for an individual parish to do that. So, it's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer. It's just to express that it's kind of complicated, but that we should take the call to arms seriously, even if we don't necessarily want to become socialists. given to us is to be merciful. Yeah, Chris made the point that we're supposed to be merciful and not some organization that kind of robs us of that. So if I do my duty as a citizen and pay my fair share of the taxes, and some of that goes to various welfare programs, then we don't usually call that charity, do we? and I might give it begrudgingly because it's never just simply being given to the poor. If there were a program where this is just, you know, it goes from me to the government to the poor, I might get my head around that, but it's rolled in with a bunch of everything else. Defense, other things, you know, just some things that were maybe in favor of some that were not. We don't get to make that call. So it creates this distance again and it means that I have not chosen to give it. So it's not coming from the heart. There's a kind of coercion in a sense because if I don't pay my taxes, which goes through many things, then of course I'm in trouble. So we do want to think about this because it is a Christian obligation, but communism with a smaller capital C is not the answer. Let's go on to 39, this is the final one, of a Christian man's oath. As we confess that vain and rash swearing is forbidden to Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ and James, his apostle, so we judge that Christian religion doth not prohibit, but that a man may swear when the magistrate requireth in a cause of faith and charity. So it be done according to the prophet's teaching in justice, judgment, and truth. So again, the history of this is that, once again, we're kind of in this section of the articles that is contending especially with the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists, the Waldenses, named after Peter Waldo, and the Quakers all held that oaths, including oaths in courts of justice, are unlawful. So you can see how that would make it difficult for them to be good members of society because they are opted out of the normal courts of justice. Now, the early church did have something to say about oaths, but they didn't have a problem with these kinds of official oaths, whether it's in marriage ceremonies or in civil courts. They constantly preached against idle swearing, swearing by idols, and idolatrous oaths, but not oaths in general. That came later with these more radical reformers. So the upshot of this is that Christians, according to the Articles, may take oaths and of course there's a long history of Christians doing that. If you think about the early Middle Ages, before maybe our courts of justice had been a little more well-developed, There are all sorts of ordeals and tests that people would go through, largely through the local magistrate. Most courts would have been simply, here's the local lay leader, it's my property so if there's a dispute on my property, my estate, then I'm the judge. I would come before him and you would take various oaths to tell the truth and so on. So there's an ancient, ancient history, even if it takes different forms throughout history, Christians have assumed that this is possible, including when it comes to trying to obtain justice in courts. We want men to be telling the truth. There is a sense of justice that prevails throughout the scriptures. Before I wrap up the 39 articles as a whole, are there any further questions on either Christian men's goods or oaths? questions or comments? Paul? Paul's question is what are some things our parish can do to reinvigorate the practice of almsgiving? What ideas do we have? I'm sure some of you I'm not going to repeat that one for the camera. Without saying who it came from. As Nathan says. Well, we've got one idea out there. So Mark's answer was that we look for opportunities first among the parish and the parish ministries and then we look outward towards Tyler. And if you think about the way the New Testament conceives of how we care for people, that is how we manifest charity or love, we can imagine it in terms of concentric circles. Who's at the center of my obligation to love? It's actually me. Well, God, but then it's me because I love my neighbor as myself, right? So I am supposed to love myself. I'm a person. The person that God most has given me and given me charge to look after is me. So my body, mind, and soul are precious to me because God has uniquely given them to me. So I do love myself, or I'm supposed to. And then there are special bonds. Your wife would be next if you're married because you're one flesh uniquely with your husband and wife in a way you aren't with anybody else. So you've got yourself, your spouse, if you're married, what's immediately next? your immediate household, because if a man doesn't provide for his own household, he's worse than an infidel. So you must provide for your own family. So we might not call that charity. We tend to think of almsgiving as being a little more outwardly focused, but it's all related. So the first obligation is to make sure you provide for your family. And family in the scriptures is not limited to nuclear family. There are typically a household in ancient times would be pretty large and diverse. Who would be in an ancient and even a medieval household beyond the nuclear family? You'd have grandparents, in-laws, possibly other kinfolk, nephews and cousins, servants. So you'd have a group of people. They're the people you take care of first. You have an obligation to them because they're related to you. So there are degrees. It's not that we don't care about others, but we're not made to care for 7 and 1 half billion people. I don't know them. I couldn't possibly care for them. We couldn't. What we can do is what we should do. And if you do that at the local level, then it happens. And of course, there are times where there are families that fall apart. There are times where families are not taking care of their own, and it's incumbent upon us to help them out. And then after that, maybe, I would say, within the Christian context, there is the parish family. So now, suddenly, we've expanded the scope of almsgiving to people that we're already really firmly attached to. Now, we can talk about looking beyond that, and we should, but those are starting places because there are needs in our families, there are needs in this parish already. Yes, Paul? Paul's question was, is almsgiving strictly limited to giving money? I think that it's, I'm not sure, I mean as far as technically, typically it's money, but it might be things that have monetary value like land, but I think it would be appropriate. to extend that to other things, because the church used to talk about the various works of mercy, including corporal works of mercy, and almsgiving is only part of that. So I would think that under that heading of almsgiving would be things like helping your neighbor's ox to get out of the ditch. If your neighbor is having trouble with transportation, or your neighbor like Paul Kovacs is unable to tend to his yard, and we do that, and there's not a financial exchange, I think that's a form of almsgiving. So I think we could think about it in broader terms and it would fit under that. So there's more ways than just giving money to be able to have mercy and do good to our neighbor. Jim. Mm-hmm. Jim's response was referring back to the incident in Acts. When Peter and John were asked for alms, they said, well, we have none, but what we do have, we give you. What did they give him? They did what? they healed him, right? I mean, it's even better, right? Now you don't have to beg at all because now you're made whole. And of course, anytime there's physical healing in the scriptures, it's assumed that going with that is the spiritual healing. So, you know, you start to see then, oh, when we talk about preaching the gospel and counseling with people, taking time to be with them, you know, if you think of alms as meeting their needs, then you can see there's many more opportunities that are available to us. Any other questions or comments? This is a good discussion and good question about how do we meet these needs, because they are, yes, Jamie? I think also, like, the effect that it has on us of giving, about what we're declaring to ourselves in not holding on to our money and not being reliant on the money that we have, that we, when we give it, we do proclaim One, this is the Lord's, and also I'm not counting on having a certain amount or maintaining a certain level that I'm declaring to this person and to myself and to everyone that I rely on the Lord. This isn't where my comfort is coming from. I think there's a self-discipline that happens in the almsgiving. helps us to face our own sin and trusting in that. And that's a way we push back against that temptation to trust in it, just to give it. And Jamie's comment was that In the act of giving alms, we kind of relinquish control of the things that God has entrusted to us, rather than clinging to them and saying, you know, this is mine, mine, mine, and I've got to kind of have a certain minimum amount. And it is the Lord himself who said, as we hear most Sundays, it is more blessed to give than to receive, because it is God's property always to have mercy. And the broadest sense of mercy is not simply forgiving sins. That's the species of it. It's doing good to someone else. So, it's a Christian obligation and we can look for creative ways to do it, especially now that we've expanded the categories. And part of that means that we really are looking outward, especially at other people in the parish. Some of those needs we know, some we don't. Maybe the final comment on this before we wrap up the class. is that it's also, in some sense, although it's shameful and embarrassing to admit a need, it is a two-way street. Sometimes we cannot meet the needs of parishioners because they haven't let us know, because we're not letting our needs be known one to another, and it makes it more difficult. We'd rather suffer alone and think I can do it myself when I can't because I'm broken, and maybe broke, And rather than saying, hey, you know, church, family, or particular members, I'm really struggling. You know, do you think you could help me? That's a very difficult thing to do. So because the way we live in separated lives, it also has made almost even more difficult because we simply don't know our neighbors, and therefore don't know their needs as well. Let me wrap up the 39 articles since this is our last class. In closing, when we look at the articles, there are actually, like you might imagine, among Anglicans, and even those who are Orthodox Anglicans and still love God and the scriptures, there are somewhat different attitudes towards the articles. However, we believe that the articles are what we would call an Anglican formulary. A formulary is an ecclesiastical norm. That is, this is the norm for what we teach. Now when we say that, that's in some sense kind of at the official level. You'll notice that if you become a member of Good Shepherd and there are certain things you've got to do to become a member and so on, you don't have to subscribe to the 39 Articles as a layperson. As a clergyman, I do. So, subscription is the word we use for our subscribing to the articles and saying, I believe them. So, when we are ordained, we are supposed to subscribe to the articles of the clergy of the laity or not. We believe, as the authorized teachers in the church, that the articles are true and a reflection of the teaching of the church and of the scriptures. If people do have disagreements with the articles, then those should be kept private, not public, otherwise it creates dissension. Some Anglicans have a tendency to downplay the articles. Notoriously, Anglicatholics, there's about, depending on which ones you talk to, three to six articles that they really don't like. So they kind of demote the authority. And then there are those on the kind of reform side who look only at the articles instead of looking at the prayer book, the creeds, the councils, the teaching of the fathers. If you read the articles by themselves, they're not only insufficient, but you're probably going to get the wrong idea about several of them, because both the prayer book and the articles, 16th century Anglican formularies, they're built on something far older and deeper. First of all, the scriptures, that's a given, but built upon the foundation of Christ and his word are things like the creeds, three creeds, the four councils, more generally speaking, the writings of the church fathers, and so on. These are all things that we believe manifest the universal belief of the church from the beginning in an unbroken fashion, what sometimes is called the patristic consensus. So when we look at the articles, if we're not sure about the meaning, We don't want to be in a position of saying, well, in the 16th century, we've got a new meaning that's different from what there was. That would be to innovate, right? To say, oh, we've done something completely new. That would be the beef we had with Rome in the first place, or the Anabaptists. So when we interpret the Articles in the Prayer Book, we do it in the light of the entire church. It's actually more difficult to do it that way, rather than simply saying the pope or council says this, and we can make it easy. Or we've got this one-size-fits-all confessional standard. So the Articles are not They're not a confession of faith in the same way that say the Westminster confession of faith is because they were not intended to be comprehensive. You'll notice there's all sorts of articles of belief, all sorts of theological beliefs, all sorts of practices the articles don't deal with because it's not intended to be comprehensive. It had a specific historical purpose which has now continued and that was to avoid religious controversy. So it deals with particular controversial things in the 16th century. It doesn't mean that we don't still go by them, but they're not the one-size-fits-all norm, because there are others as well. We also have to remember that the articles, even if they were more comprehensive, a living teaching ministry. It's not just, here are these dead artifacts. that we kind of consult and we get all the lawyers out to decide what it means. But there is a living teaching authority in the clergy in general, but most specifically the bishop who is the lead teacher within his diocese. Now even a bishop, of course, cannot preach against or teach against the scriptures or the articles of the prayer book, otherwise he's not a very good analyst. He's not exercising his authority properly. But within the pale of that, rather comprehensive, large territory, then there is a living teaching ministry to apply the scriptures. So it's never just looking at documents and so on. If you're interested in some more on how Anglicans think through scriptures and theologically, you can find an article I've written online for the North American Anglican. There's two of them. And there's an older one on Anglican interpretation. I've repeated it within the class that the lenses that we use to interpret scriptures, because scriptures are unparalleled in their authority, but they do require interpretation. All right, we have time for one final question or comment, if there is one, and then we will be done with the articles. Oh, yes, Mark. God's blessed our church, our parish, and giving us so many good teachers. Thank you for the message. Well, thank you, Mark. It's been my pleasure, and I've enjoyed doing it. So I kind of hate to give it up to you, but I'm leaving it in good hands. So next week, we'll be switching gears. So please show up for First Peter.