Quotes from Diarmaid MacCulloch

The first book printed in Lithuanian was an edition of Luther's Short Catechism, published in (Polish) Ducal Prussia at Königsberg in 1547; the Luther Catechism was the second published work in the related language of Lettic, at Königsberg in 1586.

and it was the Church after 1559 which established 'Communion' as the norm. There's a nice little doctoral project awaiting someone to trace out how 'Communion' won the battle against 'Lord's Supper'; I would make a preliminary guess that it was not until 1662.

THE EXILE AND AFTER This renewed catastrophe was a key event in the history of the people of Israel. Maybe if the exile in Babylon had lasted more than half a century, the impetus to preserve and enhance a Jewish identity might have been lost, but as it was the exiles who returned were able to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem; it was reconsecrated in 516 BCE.

theophany of quietness

For most of its existence, Christianity has been the most intolerant of world faiths, doing its best to eliminate all competitors, with Judaism a qualified exception, for which (thanks to some thoughts from Augustine of Hippo) it found space to serve its own theological and social purposes.

Thucydides had grasped that vital historical insight that groups of people behave differently and have different motivations from individual human beings, and that they often behave far more discreditably than individuals. He

The world felt increasingly out of human control, and the best hope seemed to be found in the hairline cracks between Heaven and earth provided by sacred places and holy people.

He recommended the contemplation and mental repetition of the name of Jesus, remarking that it reminded him of how, when he was young, old women and girls would sweeten their foul breath with chewing-gum. How much more would Jesus's name banish the foulness of demons, he concluded triumphantly.

Epicurus, saw the pursuit of happiness as life's ultimate goal: that Epicurean affirmation is echoed in the American Declaration of Independence, curiously omitting the original qualification that happiness consists in the attainment of inner tranquillity.

English was a complex hybrid of Anglo-Saxon and Norse, with a strong overlay of Norman-French, and was difficult for outsiders to learn fluently because of its consequent lack of linguistic logic.

An added paradox in the story of Hooker's reputation is that no one has ever wanted to adopt everything which he propounded; everyone has made choices to suit themselves. There is no Hookerian Movement.

In the Netherlands of Charles V, for instance, it could be heard on the lips of Pieter Florisz., a tailor in Gouda, who said that Our Lady was like 'a sack that had once held cinnamon, but now only retains the sweet savour'. In a rather less flavoursome version, Willem die Cuper said that she was like a flourbag from which the flour had been emptied.

The preservation of the cathedral tradition had huge significance for the future of Anglicanism, and it may be Queen Elizabeth's chief original contribution to her Church.

In the words of the great twentieth-century philosopher-historian R. G. Collingwood: 'Deep in the mind of every Roman, as in the mind of every Greek, was the unquestioned conviction which Aristotle put into words: that what raised man above the level of barbarism … to live well instead of merely living, was his membership of an actual, physical city.

We know of the tensions between the first Church in Jerusalem and Churches in which Paul of Tarsus became the prominent teacher .. The Jerusalem Church remained closer to the parent Judaism than other Churches did, that secondary grouping of other Churches revered the ministry and then the memory of Paul, who suffered the potential handicap of never having met the lord in his public ministry unlike his contemporaries in the Jerusalem leadership who included relatives of the lord.

One of his central commands is a commonplace of ancient philosophy, and is a conclusion at which most world religions eventually arrive: 'whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them' – what has come to be known as the Golden Rule.18

Thanks to Archbishop Cranmer and a fleet of committees who thoughtfully revised his Prayer Book, Anglicanism has a liturgy whose dignity and solemnity can act as a sure support through choppy waters. Seek out Cranmer's Evensong, hearken beyond its beautiful choral performance to some ghostly tut-tutting from a dead archbishop, and enjoy the way in which the past mocks our dogmatism and asks us to think again.

It may be that Anglicans will have to realize that it is one of the glories of their tradition that it is a tradition without logic or consistency, which depends on the strong clash of opposites, and which in the end provides heroes who are examples of human frailty rather than role-models for uncomplicated courage – which forces the individual to undertake a good deal of hard thinking in order to make sense of the world around, rather than reaching for some simple model in a book.

the same metaphors and themes sound again and again in mystic discourse, like a muffled peal of bells in English change-ringing.

Paul was not alone in his development of a Christ message which strayed away from Jesus's own emphases. Some

Equally important is the effect of Last Days thinking on questions of world environmental damage. If the Last Days are coming, it is a profane distraction to bother with problems of pollution or exhaustion of natural resources, which in any case have been supplied in God's providence for humans to use. Hence the Christian Right's long-standing lack of interest in a matter which may bring the Last Days on human civilization, but not in the manner it anticipates.

Right down to the seventeenth century, Christian debate about faith and the world involved a debate between two Greek ghosts, Plato and Aristotle, who had never heard the name of Jesus Christ.

Human societies are based on the human tendency to want things, and are geared to satisfying those wants: possessions or facilities to bring ease and personal satisfaction. The results are frequently disappointing, and always terminate in the embarrassing non sequitur of death.

Nationalism is a phenomenon of the world after the 1789 French Revolution; it implies a common consciousness created within a consolidated territory, usually involving a single language and shared culture, producing a public rhetoric of a single national will, and with the agenda of creating or reinforcing a unitary state.