Tribute to Frank Williams

This is an icon of St. Epiphanius Bishop of Salamis, Cyprus - who actually despised icons. I probably wouldn't know Epiphanius at all except for a treasured book in my library, an English translation of his work by Frank Williams. It was a gift from Frank. Epiphanius was a vaguely familiar name to me from reading some of the English reformers who cite him. What many people don't know about the 16th century English reformers is that they lived in the Bible as seen and interpreted through the eyes of the church fathers. “Tradition” is not a separate and competing authority to the Bible (sola Scriptura), but rather the interpretation of the Bible over time which helps give the student and theologian a context to understand the Bible. To read the Bible in the context of catholic Christianity is to discover its central message and the single most important rediscovery of the Reformation: the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone ("the rebar" of all of Thomas Cranmer's theology, says theologian Zac Hicks). Epiphanius died on his way home from visiting John Chrysostom and was buried May 12, 403. 

On this day every year I give thanks for Frank. We would know little about Epiphanius except for the work of Frank Williams, an eccentric, disheveled, chain-smoking, Oxford-trained, Episcopal priest who quietly taught Bible and Greek at the University of Texas at El Paso in the 1970's. Frank translated The Panarion of Epiphanies from Greek into English in the night hours of his home as his life-long contribution to patristic studies. Epiphanius was an Orthodox bishop who opposed the use of icons that were beginning to creep into the church, famously tearing down a curtain that depicted one. In his writings he cataloged eighty heresies and he wrote directives for the translation of the Bible. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) named Epiphanius a father and teacher of the church. Frank Williams was my friend and mentor who graciously attended a Bible study I taught in college; the quiet old man always dressed in a black suit and clericals in the circle of 19-year olds. He was very old when I went to him to discussed my anguish over the Anglican/Episcopal divide in the United States. He told me he was sad but understood my decision. I remember one time after hearing me preach a few times, he said to me, “Chuck, that was good, but you only have one sermon." Over these 40+ years of ministry I have come to see this as the high compliment he meant it to be.