Your answers
I pray to "God, through Jesus Christ our Lord". Is Jesus God the
Proprietor's Submission Agent, the scrutineer, examiner, and censor
whose nihil obstat and imprimatur rubber-stamps
my prayer?
The mystery of the nature of the Godhead probably finds its best
expressions in prayer and action. When I pray "through Jesus Christ
our Lord", I am expressing the intrinsic Christlikeness of God, as
well as the fact that my personal knowledge of God derives from my
finding him revealed most fully in Jesus Christ. It is not
essential that the formula be used; nor is prayer, in my
experience, to be compared to the forms we are all expected to fill
in, online these days, whose incorrect completion will result in
rejection out of hand.
Legalism, ejected from the faith, in theory, by St Paul, creeps
back all the time. Power tends to bureaucratise anything that it
touches, but prayer is the opposite of an exercise of power: it is
an expression of love.
(Canon) R. H. W. Arguile
Wells-next-the-Sea
Norfolk
As a young Methodist preacher in the 1960s, and averse to
liturgical formulae, I would finish prayers with (variations of)
"We ask these prayers, trusting in the love you have shown us in
Jesus Christ. . ."
Michael Mann
Ilford
Your questions
Given that the 1988 Lambeth Conference resolution 33
against capital punishment saw it as incompatible with "the divine
dignity of every human being [being] respected", is it still
possible to defend the Old Testament Hebrew people from the charge
of genocide?
A. B.
Who in a parish church is authorised to sign the banns
certificates for couples whose banns are read by visiting clergy
during an interregnum?
M. S.
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