A starter to Bible Reading and Meditation
What was impressed upon me in watching African bishops at the last Lambeth Conference and then African Primates at several Primates’ Conferences (that I attended as a reporter) and when hearing them speaking at various places, was their devotion to the Holy Scriptures and to a seemingly straightforward reading of them.
I know that many of them also use the classic Book of Common Prayer (1662 edition) in either English or in local translations and actually know large portions of it off by heart, even as they know Bible passages off by heart. Yet – and at first I found this puzzling -- when they were stating the Anglican Way as an authentic form of Christianity they rarely spoke of the Formularies (the BCP, Ordinal and Articles) as a secondary authority. This is not because they do not believe that the latter mark out the basis and ethos of the Anglican Way; but because of their high view of the Bible as God’s Word written, and of its unique position as the supreme authority for faith and conduct. For them firstly and supremely the Anglican Way is a biblical way! So they carry their Bible with them everywhere. (However, as the Province of Nigeria has recently demonstrated, when the chips are down and confession is required then they do declare their unswerving commitment to the classical Anglican Formularies.)
It seems to me that these Africans share with the first Anglican Reformers, and particularly with Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, a common approach to the Bible, which we in the West have generally lost and which would be called by present-day academics, a pre-modern approach.
It may be remembered that in the famous Preface to the first edition of The Book of The Common Prayer (1549) Cranmer actually defended the reform of the Lectionary and use of the Psalter as part of a major theme of the English Reformation – i.e., that the ordered reading of Holy Scriptures (one canon two testaments) daily morning and evening in the Offices is the center of reformed Catholic worship. There is no preaching in the Daily Office and a sermon is only required on Sundays and Feast Days at Holy Communion. So Scripture is independent of and prior to the church’s exposition (via creeds or its pastors) of the Scripture. The Church relates to Scripture first by reading it aloud and hearing it continually and constantly and only secondly in sermon, teaching and exhortation. Now the implication of this is most clear and it is this – the books of the Bible are not authoritative because the church or the preacher views them as such; no, the church views them in a certain submissive way because they are authoritative in and of themselves.
Here is what Cranmer wrote in Article VI “Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for Salvation:”
“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read thereon, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be though requisite or necessary to salvation.”
Here it is clear! Scripture is authoritative precisely because of what it contains – the unique message of salvation, which is not found anywhere else.
Now today most of us – due to our education, the use of modern prayer books and teaching from those educated in modern seminaries – cannot think of the Bible (one canon with two testaments) as standing alone by itself as a objective gift from God. We want to think of it as only being authoritative when we (as academics or parish clergy or preachers or lay leaders) relate to it through a particular way or means of studying, interpreting and understanding it. There is much talk of hermeneutics, the science of interpretation, at all levels in churches these days. This felt need for a connection to or an approach towards the Bible before it can be word of God for us is common to conservatives and liberals, evangelicals and high churchmen, feminists and “gays” – most of us in fact. This is so even if it is in the apparently simple sense (at the ladies coffee morning bible study) of “beginning where we are” (a phrase that contains much, too much to be explored here!).
Now in saying that the African bishops seem to join Cranmer in being pre-modern, I am not suggesting that they are less intelligent than American bishops or for that matter Asian bishops. Rather I am saying that they still have this sense that the Bible is objectively the gift of God, is a unity and is supremely the authority for the Church for it is God’s word written. First, it is to be read prayerfully and submissively daily & weekly within the disciplined prayer-life of the Church; and in this the power of its narrative and content have to be allowed to make their impact.
Out of this way of relating to God and his Word written these bishops quote and cite Scripture as God’s word today and then are surprised that many in the West cannot follow them or even appreciate what they say. This is usually because their fellow Anglicans in the West feel the need for a mindset, a means, a theory, or even a complex therapeutic need by which to approach and then read the Bible. They shy away from this immediacy of relation.
This presence of a mindset is seen clearly in the recent book from the ECUSA National Office, To Set Our Hope on Christ, written by a team gathered by the Presiding Bishop to defend and commend the practice of covenanted same-sex unions. The Bible is only Word of God here when it produces the novel doctrines that the team holds to be true for them. Regrettably, this general mindset is also seen in the approach brought to Scripture by the so-called “orthodox” when they find there justification for such innovations as the ordaining of women as pastors of Christ’s flock and the blessing of second and third marriages of divorcees. The “orthodox” come to the Scriptures out of the pervasive rights culture and as this is their mindset as they read the Bible so they find ways of hearing the Bible agree with them – and behold, the Scriptures approve women clergy and remarriage of all divorcees in church.
Now of course there are some African bishops who have developed the modern way of relating to the Bible for many of them have attended western seminaries and universities. Thus they display the same characteristics as their western brethren. No doubt their number will increase as western values permeate Africa.
But back to Cranmer and to the Articles of Religion VI to VIII ( and see also the wonderful sermon on Scripture, written by Cranmer, in the First Book of Homilies). May I suggest that as Anglicans we should consider the recovering of the reformed catholic way of relating to God through Scripture – the daily reading of the OT and NT with the Psalms and Canticles in the daily Offices [ but PLEASE in a sound translation!]. Let the Word of God be the Word of God objectively to us and let its content be transferred to our souls. Let us not seek to control it by our subjectivity, that is via our chosen means of approaching it in order to interpret it! Let the Scriptures be the Word of God!
The Revd Dr Peter Toon February 4, 2006 drpetertoon@yahoo.com
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