Peter Toon
Principal George Sumner of Wycliffe College, Toronto, an ordained clergyman of the ECUSA, recently delivered a lecture in Birmingham, Alabama, on the theme of Anglican Comprehensiveness and the present state of ECUSA. In this, he explains the approach of the liberal Victorian churchman, F.D. Maurice, to comprehensiveness, the devastating criticisms by Bishop Stephen Sykes (now Principal of St John’s College, Durham) of a variety of theories of comprehensiveness, and other related matters.
The kind of comprehensiveness that has been generally supported by traditional Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics has a common basic center or foundation with variety allowed on secondary matters – often using the analogy of the cycle wheel, where there is one center and from which spokes go out to the perimeter, but there is nothing past the perimeter and the perimeter if firmly attached to the center. Here the Bible, the Creeds, the classic Anglican Formularies are the center or foundation and they are interpreted and used in a variety of types of emphasis and churchmanship. Such a view was commonly held at both Wycliffe College, Oxford, and Wycliffe College, Toronto, when I was working at Latimer House Oxford in the 1970s and Jim Packer produced a booklet on the very topic. This approach has been devastated since the 1970s by (a) the arrival of a plurality of liturgies wherein is a variety of doctrines, some orthodox & some heretical, and (b) the setting aside of the classic Anglican Formularies – the historic BCP, Ordinal & Articles – by churchmen of varying kinds.
Both Sumner and I agree that neither the Packer-kind of comprehensiveness nor any other kind of principled comprehensives is present in the ECUSA. What there is in the ECUSA at the parish level is diversity – from pantheism though panentheism and Unitarianism to Trinitarian Theism, and from the celebration of immorality to the devout desiring of the holiness of the Lord God in imitation of Jesus the Christ. What there is in the General Convention is the embracing of heresy and immorality by the majority. Where I think that Sumner goes off track in his persuasive lecture is in his lifting on to a pedestal the 1979 prayer book of the ECUSA (which as we all must know is falsely called “The Book of Common Prayer” when its content is that of “A Book of Alternative Services” – BAS/ASB).
Here are the claims he makes for the 1979 book of alternative services as they arise at the end of his lecture:
How can doctrine, prayer and community be understood in a full-orbed way so as to comprehend more limited affirmations? I want to suggest three: first, affirmations should be set against the full range of traditional doctrinal claims, arising from the whole story of salvation. Second, affirmations grow from and lead to devout congregational worship in accord with the best of the liturgical renewal movement, in our case found in the 1979 BCP. Third, (in place of a national polity), competing theological affirmations should be seen against the worldwide communion of which we are a part, and in conversation with which we test our claims. In each area I believe that a renewed comprehensiveness, though it conduces to a theologically generous orthodoxy, does draw some limits…. In contrast to Maurice, we are obliged in our time, to reclaim the importance of the doctrine of sin, alongside creation, redemption, and consummation, within our theological lexicon. An age which thinks in terms of the contrasting terms of affirmation and judgmentalism has trouble hearing sin as the doctrinal condition for a serious doctrine of grace. I am optimistic enough to believe that the 1979 BCP gives adequate expression to this full doctrinal picture, not least in the balancing of rites…
First of all, Sumner associates the 1979 Prayer Book with the best of the liturgical renewal movement. To do so, as he must know, is highly controversial and even if is the case it is the liberal (affirming) Anglican catholic understanding of liturgy of the late 1960s and early 1970s (when American society, culture and religion were in turmoil!) that is embraced. What is absolutely sure is that the 1979 prayer book does NOT represent the best understanding and practice of the present liturgical movement (note that the Common Worship 2000 of the C of E is theologically more conservative than its ASB of 1980).
In the second place, he assumes that the 1979 prayer book contains an orthodox doctrine of sin and an adequate expression of the balancing of rites (I am not sure what this latter expression means). To keep this essay brief, and as it is Shrovetide and a time for Shriving as I write, I shall only address the matter of sin in its liturgical expression. I want to state that the 1979 prayer book does NOT adequately state the biblical, patristic and orthodox doctrine of sin (as it does NOT state either the doctrines of the Trinity, the Person of Christ, Grace and so on in a consistent way – but I would need to write a book to show this).
But I stay with sin and with the doctrine as it is presented in 1979. The general approach of this prayer book in a variety of rites – e.g., M.P. & E.P. – is that the confession of sin (which is inadequately presented in the Catechism and elsewhere in the 1979 book) is something we do as quickly as possible (nor not at all in Advent & Easter) in order to move on to the more important activity of “Celebration.” In contrast, in the classic BCP (which is the chief formulary of the Church that Dr Sumner serves in Toronto) and in the 1928 BCP of the PECUSA (which ought to be the chief formulary of the new ECUSA Network) the confession of sin (following the lead of the Psalter and traditional Christian prayer) is also the praise of God, for it is the sinner not only acknowledging his personal wretchedness and grief before God the Holy One, but also praising the justice, righteousness, mercy & grace of God that both establish his sin and provide forgiveness and cleansing. The liberal catholic authors of the 1979 book expressed a revised, low doctrine of sin (not surprisingly in the context of the 1960s emphasis on self-worth, human rights & freedoms etc) in their liturgies. Herein is one – not the only one, but one – of the major causes of the apostasy of the General Convention and many dioceses of the ECUSA in the period from 1979 to 2003.
I invite Dr Sumner, who is a man of many talents and gifts, to rethink his position concerning the BAS/ASB 1979 of the ECUSA in the light of the official doctrinal position of the Church he serves – I say its doctrinal position not what its present bishops believe, teach and confess or its BAS teaches – as that is declared in the Solemn Declaration of 1893 found in the Canadian Book of Common Prayer of 1960/62 page viii. I suggest that the best way forward for the Anglican Way in North America is to be true to its best teaching and insights of the past and to move forward in harmony with them -- not partially or wholly to abandon them for that doctrinal and liturgical pluriformity which arose out of the social and cultural revolution of the 1960s and its aftermath in the West and determines much of the content of the American BAS/BCP of 1979 and the Canadian BAS of 1985!
(Note – I have written what I believe is an important 32 page booklet, An Act of Piracy, that will be available on March l. I invite users and lovers of the 1979 prayer book to read it carefully. It is about the relation of the 1979 prayer book to the historic catholic and reformed catholic tradition of Common Prayer and to the new prayer books that appeared in the Anglican family in the 1970s & 1980s. I propose that there can be no genuine movement towards true orthodoxy by The Network, the AAC, the FinFNA etc. until they recover the classic BCP as the Chief Formulary and make the 1979 book to be the equivalent of the Canadian BAS and the English ASB/Common Worship. For a copy send $5.00 to The Prayer Book Society, Box 35220, Philadelphia, PA. 19128-0220 or e mail debbier@bee.net or call 1-800-PBS-1928.)
The Rev’d Dr. Peter Toon Shrovetide 2004 -- peter@toon662.fsnet.co.uk & visit www.american-anglican.fsnet.co.uk
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