January l is the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus Christ. Let us note these two texts:
At the end of eight days, when Mary’s Son was circumcised, he was called Jesus. (Luke 2:21).
The circumcision of Jesus, the Christ, on the Cross at Calvary (Colossians 2:11).
As an infant, Jewish boy, Jesus (through the action of his parents) obeyed the command of the God of Moses and was circumcised. By this act he began his submission to the Law of God, which he would keep until he hung on the Cross thirty years later. Also by this act, he shed the first drop of his blood as the second Adam, the Representative of Man, and Jewish Messiah, for the human race; thirty years later on the Cross he would truly shed his blood to establish the new covenant, the saving relation between God and man.
The circumcision of Jesus when a week old was of course both physical and symbolical. The cutting off, the shedding of the foreskin of the male, is in Genesis 17 the sign and seal required by God of Abraham and his descendants which points first to the covenant which God in his sovereign mercy had made with Abraham and secondly, and derivatively, to the human response to God, required by the covenant. Only the male is involved because he is considered to be the head of the family and thus the women of his family are covenant members because of their relation to him.
The apostle Paul, himself circumcised as a Jew, had long pondered the theological meaning and purpose of circumcision—as his frequent references to it in his Epistles shows. In Colossians 2:10-15 we find the result of profound meditation upon the relation of circumcision to Christ, his Cross, the Church, Baptism and salvation from sin. In this paragraph, Paul describes Jesus as undergoing or experiencing a unique form of circumcision, performed by God his Father on the Cross at Calvary. Of Jesus Paul writes: “he disarmed/stripped off (Gk—apekdusamenos) the principalities and powers…” (v.15). This cutting off or stripping off is not of the foreskin for that has already gone! Rather it is, through the act of offering up his weak, human body in physical death, the stripping off and the divesting himself of the spiritual, demonic powers of evil with which he had been at war and which were clinging to him, thinking that, in this final battle to death, they were the victors. However, says Paul, at the very moment when they seemed to have totally triumphed, they are cast off by Jesus and made into captives and conquered rebels, as he is raised from the dead triumphant over them. This is cosmic circumcision undergone on the hill, Golgotha, outside the city walls of Jerusalem. As a result the evil powers become subservient to the victorious Lord, who is raised from the dead in his new glorious body and crowned King of kings.
Paul also tells the baptized believers in the Colossian church that they also have been circumcised through their union (by faith and with the Holy Spirit) with the circumcised Christ on the Cross. In union with him, they participate in his circumcision and his victory over evil powers, and this is what was declared in word, symbol and spiritual power in their Baptism. That is, they experienced “a circumcision made without hands,” a work of God the Holy Spirit, in and upon their souls/hearts.
We may claim that it is only because of the TWO CIRCUMCISIONS of Jesus the Messiah and Saviour that from the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) both female and male persons who receive the Gospel (or who are the infant children of those who have received the Gospel) are provided with “ a circumcision made without hands” in the covenant of grace, sealed by Christ’s atoning blood. The outward and visible form and expression of this divine circumcision of the soul/heart (=regeneration) is water Baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the Anglican Prayer for the Feast of the Circumcision, we pray for the full reality of this internal, divine circumcision to be realized within and through us as baptized Christians.
JANUARY lst. The Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus
A meditation from Peter Toon
Almighty God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man; Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that our hearts and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 1662/1928)
Few Episcopalian churchgoers today are familiar with the Feast of our Lord on January 1st as “The Feast of the Circumcision” because it is now called “The Feast of the Holy Name.” However, whilst there is tremendous symbolic meaning in the Name of Jesus (Joshua, “the Lord our salvation”) on which we all ought to meditate, there is also deep symbolic meaning in the fact that the infant, who was called Jesus was also circumcised because, put simply, he was a Jewish boy, not a girl, and born within the Mosaic covenant of grace. On this also we ought to meditate!
It is rather odd, we may think, that in a time and culture where there is much explicit “sex”, that the Church should cease to refer directly and publicly to the day when Jesus was circumcised! At least in liberal progressive contexts, this cessation is empowered by the idea that Jesus is androgynous and thus specific talk of circumcision is not in order—but more of this below.
From the middle of the sixth century until the 1960s the Feast was known in the West as “The Feast of the Circumcision.” Only in the last forty years has its name has been changed by both the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Churches either to emphasize the Name of the Son of God or the role of his blessed Mother. However, there are excellent reasons for retaining the traditional Name and meaning of the Feast.
Circumcision was the entrance into the Covenant of the Law, the Mosaic Covenant, and the person receiving it involved himself in every other obligation of the Law of Moses – as St Paul wrote, “every man who is circumcised is a debtor to keep the whole Law (Gal 5:3) In the institution of circumcision God told Abraham, “He that is eight days old shall be circumcised” (Gen 17:12). For the Jew nothing was perfect until seven days had passed from the moment of its production and the eighth day had arrived – because the creation of the world with its ensuing rest took 7 days (Genesis 1)!
The Law was obeyed with respect to Jesus. “When eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus (Luke 2:21).
For Christians there is a profound reason why the Feast of the Circumcision should be eight days after the Feast of Christmas. St Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4: “God sent forth his Son made of a woman” [Christmas] and then he added, “made under the Law” [here is the Circumcision, the act by which Jesus first became involved in legal obligation as a Jew, the Son of David]. His whole life henceforth was in obedience both to the Law of Moses and to the higher will of his Father in heaven. So it is not a surprise to find that in the pleadings of the Litany, the Birth and the Circumcision are united as the Lord Jesus is addressed: “By thy holy Nativity and Circumcision… Good Lord, deliver us.”
And on the Feast of the Circumcision, as we read or hear the opening of the traditional Anglican Collect: “Almighty God [the Father], who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man….,” we recall and state before God not only the fact of the circumcision of Jesus but also that his circumcision, with its commitment to the obeying of the whole law of God, was done also for man, for the human race, and thus for us. It was done for man, male and female, because Jesus is “The Lord our salvation” and “Immanuel, God with us.” He is the Incarnate Son of the Father, who has taken to himself from his Blessed Mother Mary our human nature in its male form so as to be our Savior from within human nature.
It was common and good in the past—though neglected today— to speak of Jesus, in his vocation as the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the whole world, as being involved in two necessary aspects of obedience to God his Father through the Law. One is active obedience, his daily commitment to obey God through the law in thought, word and action; and this he did willingly and wholly to the moment that he expired on the Cross. The other is passive obedience (from pascho, to suffer), his passion, his suffering as the innocent for the guilty, as bearing the pain and punishment as the substitute and representative on behalf of his people (see Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12). Both these important aspects are signified in the act of circumcision; for here the first shedding of his precious blood points to his passive obedience in the shedding of the blood of Atonement at the Cross of Calvary, thirty or so years later at the close of his Messianic ministry.
One further point is worthy of noting and considering with respect to the bloody circumcision of Jesus, son of Mary and Incarnate Son of God the Father. And it is a point that is very relevant in the contemporary, liberal progressive Episcopal (Anglican) Church. What the circumcision makes abundantly clear is that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity assumed not human nature in the abstract, but human nature as male, for he became Man, not an androgynous human person. This seems to be offensive to some of strong feminist commitments. They prefer to speak of the Child of God and suggest this Child was androgynous.
Further, in these egalitarian days, it is asked: how can a male man represent female persons, for male and female are two different and distinct forms of humanity? The biblical answer, which again is offensive to or difficult for some modern people, is found in the doctrine of creation: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1: 27). In creation there is an order that is from God. In this order man is both male and female, man and woman, husband and wife. However, the male is first in order and the woman is second. They have equal dignity and honor before God; but, one, the woman, by God’s appointment is second in order (not inferior) to the other. This is conveyed in speech by the word man in ancient and modern languages, including Hebrew, having the meaning of “man, woman and children.” And in doctrine it is said that the woman is included in the man, so that Jesus the Man is not only the representative of male men like himself but also of female women like his blessed Mother and all children. Symbolically this is portrayed in Genesis 3 by the creation of the female woman out of man, who is thus “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (3:21-24).
If the eternal Word (Logos) and Son of God had become human either as androgynous or female, it/she could not (by the very design of God in creation!) have become and been the Savior of mankind (males & females). Only the male man is by God’s ordering able to represent both male and female persons and thus the Word of the Father became man, male man. He was circumcised for us all because by that act he committed himself to doing what was good and necessary for the salvation of mankind, Jewish and Gentile men and women!
Almighty God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man; Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that our hearts and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 1662/1928)
In response to his Circumcision (and all that it implies), as the BCP Collect prays, we (male and female members of the new covenant created by the shed blood of Jesus) ask God to circumcise our hearts and all our faculties, to cut away from them all sinfulness and to cause them to be sanctified, so that we may gladly do his will. This is surely an excellent prayer with which to begin the New (secular) Year on January 1, 2007.
December 30, 2006
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Should we abandon INFANT BAPTISM? Part Two: On Regeneration
For the biblically-minded and biblically based, traditional Reformed Catholic Christian of the Anglican Way (living in the West and particularly in the U.S.A.) the commendation of the wonderful Sacrament of Baptism—particularly as administered to infants—presents several major problems or difficulties in today’s religious context.
Let us focus on two of them—the biblical basis/authorization (already done in Part One), and the connection with regeneration (Part Two) to be done here.
In this essay, what was stated in the first is assumed, especially the covenantal and familial relations of the human being as a person-in-relation.
Those familiar with the traditional Anglican Services of Baptism for Infants and Adults in the various editions of the classic Book of Common Prayer (e.g., in the English 1662, the American 1928 and the Canadian 1962 editions) have heard the verb, to regenerate (and its equivalents), and the associated noun many times. For example in the 1662 Service for Infants words related to regenerate occur more than ten times and in significant contexts. Prayer is offered to God for the regeneration of the child before the Baptism; and then thanksgiving is made to God after the Baptism for the regeneration of the infant. This act of God by his Holy Spirit in and upon the infant in answer to the prayer of the assembled church (and other prayers offered elsewhere) is obviously understood to be internal and not external, within the soul not in the flesh, and invisible not visible in its arrival, action and immediate effects. Further, it is presupposed that the fruit of this divine action will grow and be seen later.
What is regeneration?
Regeneration is not to be identified with repentance or saving faith which are human activities (prompted by God) which normally presuppose regeneration; further it is not to be identified with conversion which again is a human activity of turning around to face and be with God (again energized by God and presuming regeneration). To be born again, to be regenerated, to become regenerate, to be spiritually washed, is wholly and completely, from beginning to end, a secret, invisible action by God the Holy Spirit in and upon the soul/heart of a human being. Further, it is a sovereign action of God in that only he, as the LORD, decides to do and can do it. At the same time, it is a covenantal action of the LORD God who has created the covenant of grace to relate to his (sinful creatures) as his adopted, forgiven children. So regeneration is the action of the Covenant LORD in and upon the one whom he is calling into his covenant, to be of his elect, a member of his Household and an adopted child. And Baptism, instituted by the Lord Jesus, is the sign and seal of this covenant; it is an outward and visible sign of an internal and invisible grace, and the first part of this grace (gracious action of God) is being born again by the Holy Spirit.
Normally on earth one is born into this world and into a family. Likewise one is born again by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of heaven and the Family of God. As an infant, one is probably not conscious of this internal regeneration during one’s first months, even years. In this period, the human response to, and outworking of regeneration, is impossible to discern and to see accurately. But, the Christian family and local church have the privilege and duty of nurturing the infant member of the Family of God, treating him as a very young Christian, instructing and supporting him, and praying for him and with him. It is for the child himself to appropriate, to make his own, to absorb, by faith in the Lord Jesus what God has given to him and made him to be by regeneration. The result will be a self-conscious, believing Christian young person. Because of the mystery of human freedom, God looks for and requires the willing and ready commitment of the growing child (which normally in the church setting will be given publicly at Confirmation). However, the presence of free-will and the every present work of the devil means that there is always the possibility that the child will use his freedom to resist what God has given to him—and this resistance will be the more probable where the nurturing in the Christian Faith has been absent or weak in family and church. There will always be those who seem to fall away or actually do so.
[Much popular evangelical thinking—in part encouraged by popular evangelists—has tended to identify regeneration or new birth with conversion. Thus the text in the KJV in John 3, “Ye must be born again” has been taken as a command for man to do something, rather than a statement of divine necessity (It is necessary that you be born again…). To be born again is wholly, completely and absolutely the work of God, in which man has no part as such—even as the human infant had no active part in his conception and birth from the mother’s womb.]
As to the Christian status of baptized infants, there is the universal belief and practice of the Church to give to any who die in infancy or childhood, Christian burial.
Biblical basis
Can the belief in the new birth of the infant, that is being born into the kingdom of heaven while remaining of a child of earth, be justified by reference to the Bible?
Yes, but only (as was emphasized in the first part) if the Bible is read not as if it were a modern book deeply affected by expressive individualism; but rather as a book in two testaments of the covenant of grace, where people of any age are persons-in-relation and the elect of God.
First of all, there is an abundance of teaching in the New Testament about the secret and supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man which is both necessary and preliminary before man can repent of sin and believe the Gospel. There is no reason—in the light of the covenant of grace—to restrict this to adults. In fact we have scriptural references to the work of the Holy Spirit in infants and children, of whom John the Baptist is a well-known example.
Secondly, there is explicit connection of new birth, regeneration, to “washing” which usually means Baptism—see e.g., John 3 & Titus 3:5. Again, though the references are to adults the covenant background means that they apply also to the infant children of believers.
Thirdly, there is the very warm welcome that Jesus gave to children from Jewish homes (Mark 10). He did not forbid them at all to come to him, and he warmly embraced them as God’s children, as within the Israel of God.
Fourthly, there is the analogy of ancient Israel and membership therein of infant children as the elect people of God, and there is the NT assumption that children of believers are within the covenant of grace unless they deliberately and knowingly step outside of it—“the promise is unto you and to your children…”.
Finally, in relation to the “timing” of regeneration in relation to Infant Baptism. Since God’s “time” is not our “time” we cannot dogmatically say precisely when the new birth occurs, but we presume that it is in direct connection to the Baptism, for Baptism is a Dominical Institution and Sacrament. But there is no need to speculate as to precisely when; rather, it is better to affirm that God does regenerate within or in relation to this Sacrament.
Modern problems—a few!
The doctrine and discipline within the classic BCP Rite for Baptism presuppose that only the infant children of baptized believers are to be baptized. And the only way that Infant Baptism makes sense is on covenantal terms and that those baptized are from Christian families. Within this situation of the presence of the covenant of grace then regeneration occurs.
In the West there has been over the centuries a massive amount of what we may call “nominal Christian profession” based upon what we may call “indiscriminate infant Baptism.” This has led to all kinds of pastoral problems for devout pastors and parents, not the least of which has been the absence of committed Christianity appearing in the lives of the baptized when they have reached maturity as young people and adults. One solution to this is to make the claim that Baptism as a Sacrament always and without exception is accompanied by regeneration, and therefore all these nominal Christians are in the kingdom of God and on their way to heaven—even if because of their lack of dedication they will have a long routing through purgatorial cleansing. Another is to decry or devalue Infant Baptism altogether and discount all connection between regeneration and baptism, as we hear some evangelicals saying today.
Let us admit that to administer Infant Baptism on covenantal principles in modern America is difficult, perhaps nearly impossible, especially if one desires to see one’s church grow in both numbers and maturity. Expressive individualism and the general inability to exercise church discipline in the American situation contribute to make the task enormously difficult. No wonder pastors and churches (not least ECUSA priests and parishes) go for indiscriminate infant baptism upon modern communitarian principles. But a parish church doing so can never aspire to be holy unto the Lord for it has forsaken that holiness in its misuse of the first of the two Dominical Sacraments. (And when this is followed by indiscriminate giving of Holy Communion, the problem is much compounded.)
It is easier to pass through the eye of needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven today in western, secular society. But so it was also in Jerusalem in A.D. 30! The Christian Way remains that of the tiny entrance (gate) and the narrow road which happily goes directly to the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon, December 29, 2006.
Let us focus on two of them—the biblical basis/authorization (already done in Part One), and the connection with regeneration (Part Two) to be done here.
In this essay, what was stated in the first is assumed, especially the covenantal and familial relations of the human being as a person-in-relation.
Those familiar with the traditional Anglican Services of Baptism for Infants and Adults in the various editions of the classic Book of Common Prayer (e.g., in the English 1662, the American 1928 and the Canadian 1962 editions) have heard the verb, to regenerate (and its equivalents), and the associated noun many times. For example in the 1662 Service for Infants words related to regenerate occur more than ten times and in significant contexts. Prayer is offered to God for the regeneration of the child before the Baptism; and then thanksgiving is made to God after the Baptism for the regeneration of the infant. This act of God by his Holy Spirit in and upon the infant in answer to the prayer of the assembled church (and other prayers offered elsewhere) is obviously understood to be internal and not external, within the soul not in the flesh, and invisible not visible in its arrival, action and immediate effects. Further, it is presupposed that the fruit of this divine action will grow and be seen later.
What is regeneration?
Regeneration is not to be identified with repentance or saving faith which are human activities (prompted by God) which normally presuppose regeneration; further it is not to be identified with conversion which again is a human activity of turning around to face and be with God (again energized by God and presuming regeneration). To be born again, to be regenerated, to become regenerate, to be spiritually washed, is wholly and completely, from beginning to end, a secret, invisible action by God the Holy Spirit in and upon the soul/heart of a human being. Further, it is a sovereign action of God in that only he, as the LORD, decides to do and can do it. At the same time, it is a covenantal action of the LORD God who has created the covenant of grace to relate to his (sinful creatures) as his adopted, forgiven children. So regeneration is the action of the Covenant LORD in and upon the one whom he is calling into his covenant, to be of his elect, a member of his Household and an adopted child. And Baptism, instituted by the Lord Jesus, is the sign and seal of this covenant; it is an outward and visible sign of an internal and invisible grace, and the first part of this grace (gracious action of God) is being born again by the Holy Spirit.
Normally on earth one is born into this world and into a family. Likewise one is born again by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of heaven and the Family of God. As an infant, one is probably not conscious of this internal regeneration during one’s first months, even years. In this period, the human response to, and outworking of regeneration, is impossible to discern and to see accurately. But, the Christian family and local church have the privilege and duty of nurturing the infant member of the Family of God, treating him as a very young Christian, instructing and supporting him, and praying for him and with him. It is for the child himself to appropriate, to make his own, to absorb, by faith in the Lord Jesus what God has given to him and made him to be by regeneration. The result will be a self-conscious, believing Christian young person. Because of the mystery of human freedom, God looks for and requires the willing and ready commitment of the growing child (which normally in the church setting will be given publicly at Confirmation). However, the presence of free-will and the every present work of the devil means that there is always the possibility that the child will use his freedom to resist what God has given to him—and this resistance will be the more probable where the nurturing in the Christian Faith has been absent or weak in family and church. There will always be those who seem to fall away or actually do so.
[Much popular evangelical thinking—in part encouraged by popular evangelists—has tended to identify regeneration or new birth with conversion. Thus the text in the KJV in John 3, “Ye must be born again” has been taken as a command for man to do something, rather than a statement of divine necessity (It is necessary that you be born again…). To be born again is wholly, completely and absolutely the work of God, in which man has no part as such—even as the human infant had no active part in his conception and birth from the mother’s womb.]
As to the Christian status of baptized infants, there is the universal belief and practice of the Church to give to any who die in infancy or childhood, Christian burial.
Biblical basis
Can the belief in the new birth of the infant, that is being born into the kingdom of heaven while remaining of a child of earth, be justified by reference to the Bible?
Yes, but only (as was emphasized in the first part) if the Bible is read not as if it were a modern book deeply affected by expressive individualism; but rather as a book in two testaments of the covenant of grace, where people of any age are persons-in-relation and the elect of God.
First of all, there is an abundance of teaching in the New Testament about the secret and supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man which is both necessary and preliminary before man can repent of sin and believe the Gospel. There is no reason—in the light of the covenant of grace—to restrict this to adults. In fact we have scriptural references to the work of the Holy Spirit in infants and children, of whom John the Baptist is a well-known example.
Secondly, there is explicit connection of new birth, regeneration, to “washing” which usually means Baptism—see e.g., John 3 & Titus 3:5. Again, though the references are to adults the covenant background means that they apply also to the infant children of believers.
Thirdly, there is the very warm welcome that Jesus gave to children from Jewish homes (Mark 10). He did not forbid them at all to come to him, and he warmly embraced them as God’s children, as within the Israel of God.
Fourthly, there is the analogy of ancient Israel and membership therein of infant children as the elect people of God, and there is the NT assumption that children of believers are within the covenant of grace unless they deliberately and knowingly step outside of it—“the promise is unto you and to your children…”.
Finally, in relation to the “timing” of regeneration in relation to Infant Baptism. Since God’s “time” is not our “time” we cannot dogmatically say precisely when the new birth occurs, but we presume that it is in direct connection to the Baptism, for Baptism is a Dominical Institution and Sacrament. But there is no need to speculate as to precisely when; rather, it is better to affirm that God does regenerate within or in relation to this Sacrament.
Modern problems—a few!
The doctrine and discipline within the classic BCP Rite for Baptism presuppose that only the infant children of baptized believers are to be baptized. And the only way that Infant Baptism makes sense is on covenantal terms and that those baptized are from Christian families. Within this situation of the presence of the covenant of grace then regeneration occurs.
In the West there has been over the centuries a massive amount of what we may call “nominal Christian profession” based upon what we may call “indiscriminate infant Baptism.” This has led to all kinds of pastoral problems for devout pastors and parents, not the least of which has been the absence of committed Christianity appearing in the lives of the baptized when they have reached maturity as young people and adults. One solution to this is to make the claim that Baptism as a Sacrament always and without exception is accompanied by regeneration, and therefore all these nominal Christians are in the kingdom of God and on their way to heaven—even if because of their lack of dedication they will have a long routing through purgatorial cleansing. Another is to decry or devalue Infant Baptism altogether and discount all connection between regeneration and baptism, as we hear some evangelicals saying today.
Let us admit that to administer Infant Baptism on covenantal principles in modern America is difficult, perhaps nearly impossible, especially if one desires to see one’s church grow in both numbers and maturity. Expressive individualism and the general inability to exercise church discipline in the American situation contribute to make the task enormously difficult. No wonder pastors and churches (not least ECUSA priests and parishes) go for indiscriminate infant baptism upon modern communitarian principles. But a parish church doing so can never aspire to be holy unto the Lord for it has forsaken that holiness in its misuse of the first of the two Dominical Sacraments. (And when this is followed by indiscriminate giving of Holy Communion, the problem is much compounded.)
It is easier to pass through the eye of needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven today in western, secular society. But so it was also in Jerusalem in A.D. 30! The Christian Way remains that of the tiny entrance (gate) and the narrow road which happily goes directly to the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon, December 29, 2006.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Should we abandon INFANT BAPTISM?
Peter Toon
For the biblically-minded and biblically based, traditional Reformed Catholic Christian of the Anglican Way (living in the West and particularly in the U.S.A.) the commendation of the wonderful Sacrament of Baptism—particularly as administered to infants—presents several major problems or difficulties in today’s religious context.
Let us focus on two of them—the biblical basis/authorization (Part One) here, and the connection with regeneration (Part Two) in a later essay.
In the modern context where, in a massive variety of translations and paraphrases, the Bible is read by people from within their own cultural and personal contexts—not least the reality of expressive individualism—the finding of “proof-texts” for justifying infant baptism is virtually impossible. One can argue from the requirement of circumcision in the Old Covenant, but here one faces the charges of irrelevance and sexism for circumcision was only administered to infant boys (including Jesus!). One can argue from the baptism of households mentioned in the New Testament (see e.g., Acts 16:33) claiming that small children were probably included, but here one is arguing a probability or possibility not a sure fact and the argument is quickly dismissed. And one can argue from silence claiming that this practice was taken for granted because infants were always seen as within the kingdom of God (cf. the words of Jesus in Mark 10:13-16), but, here again, the argument is not compelling to someone living within western society where “family” is not the same as in biblical times. Further, one can appeal to reason and claim that the Christian Church for centuries has administered Baptism to infants and therefore there must be good reasons for it or the Church would not have done it. This approach fails because “tradition” does not have authority for people today as it did a century or more ago.
So where can one begin in discussion with a modern person who holds an open Bible ( say the NIV) in his hand and wants to hear a biblical basis for infant Baptism? It would appear that there is not one way, for people are different in all kinds of ways.
Here is one possible approach.
1) The Church of God in the period after the apostles had the solemn and high duty and privilege of collecting the books that were to become the Canon of the New Testament. This was a process of discernment and authorization took a century or more. In this period the Church saw itself as under the authority of the Lord Jesus and of his Word as found in Scripture and so they collected and authorized the Canon with great care. During the time that this was going on, and when it was completed, the Church was both baptizing adult converts and the infants of baptized church members. Thus it is clear that the Church did not see anything in the Word of God written, or in the experienced Lordship of Christ, forbidding infant baptism. In fact the opposite is true—they surely would not have done it, if they did not see it as required by the Word of God written and according to the mind of Christ.
2) The Church of God in what we call the patristic era read the Bible in a very different way to what we do. Our general approach, because of our being westerners, secularized and individualistic in mindset, is to see things primarily from our own personal, individual perspective—my relationship with God. (After all, the USA has a Constitution and a Legal System which is based on the doctrine—from Locke and others—that each of us is an individual, and this has overflowed into culture generally.) The approach of the early Church, while not neglecting the personal dimension, began from the corporate, the covenantal and the “we” rather than from the individualistic and the “I”. So there was one Family of God, the Household of God, the Body of Christ—the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. And a Christian family was a unity—man and wife one flesh in procreation—and thus the children born of the union were “holy to the Lord” and within the covenant of grace. Thus, as with boys only in the old covenant, so with girls and boys in the new covenant, the sign and seal of belonging, Baptism was administered as a sacrament.
3) Infant Baptism as a Sacrament authorized by the Lord Jesus cannot be justified on biblical grounds unless the Bible is read—as the Church read it—before the arrival of expressive individualism from the Enlightenment onwards (and even from the late Renaissance onwards in some ways). That is, the Bible has to be read on its own terms and its own doctrine of the nature of man as God’s creature, made in his image and after his likeness. In other words, there has to be in place the doctrine of the unity of the family and the reality of the covenant of grace wherein “the promise is to you and to your children” (Acts 2:39). Here the obvious and moral thing to do is to baptize the infant so that God makes him not only a potential but also a real member of his elect family. And everything in the Bible seems to point in this direction for the Bible is covenantal in that God makes the covenant of grace and calls his sinful creatures into it in order to save and sanctify them for glory.
4) It is significant that the Baptist movement, wherein Baptism is usually seen as a personal witness and confession of faith by adults, only really took off when individualism had been absorbed into the mindset of the West, from the eighteenth century onwards. We recall that the Anabaptists were a very small minority in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, in today’s western culture, only Baptism as the free act of a convinced individual seems to make sense and also seems to be what the Bible itself, read as a contemporary book (especially if translated according to dynamic equivalency principles), presents.
5) So only in a church where (a) an attempt is made to read the Bible on its own terms and in the way the Church has read and heard it, and (b) worship, preaching and teaching avoid the expressive individualism of our time and instead focus on the person-in-relation in covenant, fellowship and family, will Infant Baptism makes sense. Here also there will be the commitment to nurturing the baptized infants so that they do grow up as Christians.
We may note in closing that for liberal progressive Christians in the mainline denominations like The Episcopal Church, Infant Baptism is basically severed from all traditional and meaningful Biblical ties and is usually seen in cultural and communitarian terms, where the infant is made a part of the church community (which is a free association of individuals). In Roman Catholicism, the doctrine that the Church teaches and, if necessary, the Bible proves, is in place, and so the questioning about the biblical justification for infant baptism is either absent or not so intense as in American Evangelical Protestantism generally—and even here the cultural and communitarian context is often present.
Part Two on Regeneration to follow.
[For the way the Early Church read the Bible see J.J. O’Keefe & R.R.Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible, John Hopkins Univ Press, 2006; and for the powerful presence of individualism in the U.S.A., see Mary Ann Glendon. “Looking for ‘Persons’ in the Law”, First Things, December 2006 and P.A. Lawler, Stuck with Virtue. The American Individual and our Biotechnological Future, ISI Books, 2005]
For the biblically-minded and biblically based, traditional Reformed Catholic Christian of the Anglican Way (living in the West and particularly in the U.S.A.) the commendation of the wonderful Sacrament of Baptism—particularly as administered to infants—presents several major problems or difficulties in today’s religious context.
Let us focus on two of them—the biblical basis/authorization (Part One) here, and the connection with regeneration (Part Two) in a later essay.
In the modern context where, in a massive variety of translations and paraphrases, the Bible is read by people from within their own cultural and personal contexts—not least the reality of expressive individualism—the finding of “proof-texts” for justifying infant baptism is virtually impossible. One can argue from the requirement of circumcision in the Old Covenant, but here one faces the charges of irrelevance and sexism for circumcision was only administered to infant boys (including Jesus!). One can argue from the baptism of households mentioned in the New Testament (see e.g., Acts 16:33) claiming that small children were probably included, but here one is arguing a probability or possibility not a sure fact and the argument is quickly dismissed. And one can argue from silence claiming that this practice was taken for granted because infants were always seen as within the kingdom of God (cf. the words of Jesus in Mark 10:13-16), but, here again, the argument is not compelling to someone living within western society where “family” is not the same as in biblical times. Further, one can appeal to reason and claim that the Christian Church for centuries has administered Baptism to infants and therefore there must be good reasons for it or the Church would not have done it. This approach fails because “tradition” does not have authority for people today as it did a century or more ago.
So where can one begin in discussion with a modern person who holds an open Bible ( say the NIV) in his hand and wants to hear a biblical basis for infant Baptism? It would appear that there is not one way, for people are different in all kinds of ways.
Here is one possible approach.
1) The Church of God in the period after the apostles had the solemn and high duty and privilege of collecting the books that were to become the Canon of the New Testament. This was a process of discernment and authorization took a century or more. In this period the Church saw itself as under the authority of the Lord Jesus and of his Word as found in Scripture and so they collected and authorized the Canon with great care. During the time that this was going on, and when it was completed, the Church was both baptizing adult converts and the infants of baptized church members. Thus it is clear that the Church did not see anything in the Word of God written, or in the experienced Lordship of Christ, forbidding infant baptism. In fact the opposite is true—they surely would not have done it, if they did not see it as required by the Word of God written and according to the mind of Christ.
2) The Church of God in what we call the patristic era read the Bible in a very different way to what we do. Our general approach, because of our being westerners, secularized and individualistic in mindset, is to see things primarily from our own personal, individual perspective—my relationship with God. (After all, the USA has a Constitution and a Legal System which is based on the doctrine—from Locke and others—that each of us is an individual, and this has overflowed into culture generally.) The approach of the early Church, while not neglecting the personal dimension, began from the corporate, the covenantal and the “we” rather than from the individualistic and the “I”. So there was one Family of God, the Household of God, the Body of Christ—the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. And a Christian family was a unity—man and wife one flesh in procreation—and thus the children born of the union were “holy to the Lord” and within the covenant of grace. Thus, as with boys only in the old covenant, so with girls and boys in the new covenant, the sign and seal of belonging, Baptism was administered as a sacrament.
3) Infant Baptism as a Sacrament authorized by the Lord Jesus cannot be justified on biblical grounds unless the Bible is read—as the Church read it—before the arrival of expressive individualism from the Enlightenment onwards (and even from the late Renaissance onwards in some ways). That is, the Bible has to be read on its own terms and its own doctrine of the nature of man as God’s creature, made in his image and after his likeness. In other words, there has to be in place the doctrine of the unity of the family and the reality of the covenant of grace wherein “the promise is to you and to your children” (Acts 2:39). Here the obvious and moral thing to do is to baptize the infant so that God makes him not only a potential but also a real member of his elect family. And everything in the Bible seems to point in this direction for the Bible is covenantal in that God makes the covenant of grace and calls his sinful creatures into it in order to save and sanctify them for glory.
4) It is significant that the Baptist movement, wherein Baptism is usually seen as a personal witness and confession of faith by adults, only really took off when individualism had been absorbed into the mindset of the West, from the eighteenth century onwards. We recall that the Anabaptists were a very small minority in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, in today’s western culture, only Baptism as the free act of a convinced individual seems to make sense and also seems to be what the Bible itself, read as a contemporary book (especially if translated according to dynamic equivalency principles), presents.
5) So only in a church where (a) an attempt is made to read the Bible on its own terms and in the way the Church has read and heard it, and (b) worship, preaching and teaching avoid the expressive individualism of our time and instead focus on the person-in-relation in covenant, fellowship and family, will Infant Baptism makes sense. Here also there will be the commitment to nurturing the baptized infants so that they do grow up as Christians.
We may note in closing that for liberal progressive Christians in the mainline denominations like The Episcopal Church, Infant Baptism is basically severed from all traditional and meaningful Biblical ties and is usually seen in cultural and communitarian terms, where the infant is made a part of the church community (which is a free association of individuals). In Roman Catholicism, the doctrine that the Church teaches and, if necessary, the Bible proves, is in place, and so the questioning about the biblical justification for infant baptism is either absent or not so intense as in American Evangelical Protestantism generally—and even here the cultural and communitarian context is often present.
Part Two on Regeneration to follow.
[For the way the Early Church read the Bible see J.J. O’Keefe & R.R.Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible, John Hopkins Univ Press, 2006; and for the powerful presence of individualism in the U.S.A., see Mary Ann Glendon. “Looking for ‘Persons’ in the Law”, First Things, December 2006 and P.A. Lawler, Stuck with Virtue. The American Individual and our Biotechnological Future, ISI Books, 2005]
Does each person in Baptism make a covenant with God? Yes, says The Episcopal Church. No, says the Bible.
A meditation starter…
Covenant is a word that occurs often in the Bible both in terms of treaties between peoples and nations and of the relation that God the Creator, Judge and Redeemer chooses to make and have with his sinful creatures. It is a word that has not been used often in Liturgy, except where it occurs as a Biblical quotation or citation. However, as we shall see below, the word is given prominence by The Episcopal Church in its official Liturgy.
Covenant in the 1979 Prayer Book
In the current Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church, there is, as we would expect, a service of Holy Baptism. If you examine the layout of this service, you notice that there are several types of sub-headings within the text. Those in the largest type are obviously intended to indicate the important nature and content of the material that follows and there are three of these: “Presentation and Examination of the Candidates,” “The Baptismal Covenant,” and “The Baptism.”
Immediately underneath “The Baptismal Covenant” without any headings in smaller type there are two sections—the Creed in the form of Questions and Replies, and five questions concerning commitment and consecration to Christian life and service. Then there is a sub-heading in small bold print, “Prayers for the Candidates,” which is followed by two further sub-headings in small bold print, “Thanksgiving over the Water,” and “Consecration of the Chrism.”
It would appear that “The Baptismal Covenant” ends where the sub-heading, “Prayers for the Candidates” begins, and that the reason why the first is in much larger print than the other is that it is deemed to be of primary or greater importance.
On the basis of this evidence one is able to say first that “The Baptismal Covenant” is taken to be very important and secondly how it is understood by The Episcopal Church. The Covenant on pages 304-5 appears to be the commitments and promises that those about to be baptized make to God. It is the human dedication and consecration to the God who is proclaimed in the Apostles’ Creed. What is promised (to this God and/or to his Church) is regular attendance at Christian worship, resistance of evil, repentance for sin, a Christian life that commends the Gospel, seeking and serving Christ in the neighbor, striving for peace and justice along all people and respecting the dignity of every human being.
Earlier as part of the Examination of the Candidates they are asked to make certain renunciations—of Satan, evil powers and sinful desires—and to accept Jesus Christ as Savior, to trust in him and to follow him. But these vows are not part of “the Baptismal Covenant” but preparatory to it. So we can sharpen the definition of the meaning of this Covenant and say that it is the human commitments and promises of those who have already made certain specific vows and are about to be baptized.
Now a covenant is relational, with at least two parties. Obviously God is the other party here but there is no specific and clear statement of what God’s commitments and obligations are, though one perhaps can deduce them by what is said here and there in this service. In “An Outline of Faith” in the same Prayer Book a covenant with God is defined thus: “A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith.” And the New Covenant is said to be “the new relationship with God given by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to the apostles; and, through them, to all who believe in him.”
So what we learn from the Service itself and from “An Outline” is that God as the senior partner in the agreement/covenant/contract sets things in motion—initiates—and the human being as the junior partner accepts certain beliefs and conditions. (In terms of the beliefs and conditions, it would appear that the Episcopal liturgists have actually drawn up the terms of the contract of what they deem God requires by use of scripture, tradition and experience. In doing this, they innovated in their placing in the contract the requirement of striving for “peace and justice” in the world, and “respecting the dignity” of each and every person.)
The Covenant in the BCP (1662)
By far and away the most widely used edition of The Book of Common Prayer in Anglican history is the edition of 1662. This obviously contains Baptismal Services—for Infants and for Adults. However, unlike the American 1979 Baptismal Service these do not contain the expression, “baptismal covenant,” or the word “covenant” itself.
Yet the question arises and remains as to whether or not the Services of the 1662 edition actually presuppose the existence or the making of a covenant, within the service itself. Here we find that there is a difference of opinion.
The position of those who we may term “Augustinian” (which would include Cranmer) is that there is no making of a covenant or agreement or contract in the Service at all. In fact there could not be such a thing for God’s covenant of grace is a covenant between the Father and the Son, where the Son as the Messiah and Representative of man fulfills for God’s elect people all the conditions of the covenant of grace by his perfect life of obedience and his atoning death. Thus all those (the elect) who repent of their sins and are united to him in faith and by the Holy Spirit are placed by the Father within this covenant of grace. So the covenant is made and its conditions are already fulfilled before the Gospel is preached and Christian Baptism is offered. In Baptism, sinners humbly repent, believe and consecrate themselves to the God who has reached out to them in Christ Jesus in mercy and grace. They approach on his terms and by his call and empowering; and in this (his) Sacrament, he makes them his children as they become members of the Body of Christ. Baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of union with Christ, or regeneration, of forgiveness of sins and of consecration to God. The baptized do not negotiate or set any terms of the covenant of grace; they simply come to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament and do so only and solely on the terms that God has made and in the way that he has provided. They make promises and vows to serve the Lord but they are in the covenant because they are “in Christ Jesus.”
In contrast the position of others, who are of varied theological positions, is that there is in Baptism a personal covenant that God provides and makes with every willing believer. This covenant is, as it were, the personalized and localized expression of the everlasting covenant of grace between the Father and the Son for the redemption of the world.
In terms of the content of the Service of Baptism in the 1662 BCP, what God offers and gives in this covenant is said to be declared and clearly set forth in the Gospel reading and in the clear Exhortation that follows it; and what the person to be baptized gives in response to this offer of grace is made through The Renunciation (of the devil and his works, the pomp and glory of the world etc.), the Profession of Faith (Apostles’ Creed), & The Vow of Obedience (to keep God’s law and walk in his ways). This said there is nothing in the Text to require belief in “a personal baptismal covenant with God.” Further, in the latest Prayer Book of the Church of England, Common Worship (2000) there is nothing to suggest a covenant is being made; rather, the explicit theme there is the beginning of a journey with God of which Baptism is the start.
Conclusion
What appears to have happened in the construction of “The Baptismal Covenant” in the American 1979 service is this. The creators of the service decided that there should and must be a covenant in terms of a specific commitment made by the baptized to God and that this commitment must be more specific and more liberally progressive than that of the traditional Service of Baptism. To achieve this end, they created the major sub-heading, “The Baptismal Covenant,” and they expanded the one, general question of 1662 (as also of the American versions of 1662—1789, 1892 & 1928) which reads: “Wilt thou obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life?”, into five questions. And thus they able to insert into this section the themes of striving for peace and justice and respecting the dignity of all persons into the covenant, which themes have had tremendous impact and importance within the life of The Episcopal Church since the 1970s. In fact “The Baptismal Covenant” has been the major charter of this Church for its innovations in many areas of human life in the USA and abroad. And both the present Presiding Bishop and her predecessor claimed to base their leadership and Primatial ministries upon this covenant. And not to be outdone, those five or so “orthodox” ECUSA Bishops who reject the Primatial ministry of the present Lady Presiding Bishop, actually appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury for alternative Primatial oversight, professing their orthodoxy by citing “The Baptismal Covenant” of the 1979 Book. Amazingly this Covenant pleases the left and the right in the spectrum that is present The Episcopal Church and this itself demonstrates just how far the whole Church has moved leftwards so that the present “right” is where the “left” was several decades ago—such, regrettably is the powerful secularism of our times!
If there is an implicit covenant within the 1662 Service (and thus also in the 1789 & 1892 and 1928 equivalents) then it is very much a two sided covenant where what God gives, provides and offers is paramount and clear (in the Gospel reading and its explanation) and what the repentant sinner is to be and do—as assisted by God—is also clear. In the 1979 Service the divine side of the covenant is far from clear. And there is the further point that the human requirements of the covenant in the 1979 text do not actually include the actual renunciation of the devil, the evil world and the sinful flesh.
It would appear that the creation of the Baptismal Covenant in the 1979 Book is a clear example of how far The Episcopal Church had become by the 1970s a Body deeply influenced by the European Enlightenment, where the human being not God is the center of attention in the universe, and where a major characteristic of man as an “individual” is seen to be his freedom to choose, and his right to make agreements, even with God, the LORD (as “An Outline of Faith” assumes and states).
Where there is a healthy doctrine of the righteousness of God and the sin of man, and of God as light and man in darkness, then the individual person as repentant believing sinner looks not to make a favorable contract with God, but rather looks for every sign of mercy and grace, forgiveness and cleansing, and thankfully receives the same, desiring only from God that liberty wherein he is free to do the Master’s will as he walks in his ways in the Household of God.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Covenant is a word that occurs often in the Bible both in terms of treaties between peoples and nations and of the relation that God the Creator, Judge and Redeemer chooses to make and have with his sinful creatures. It is a word that has not been used often in Liturgy, except where it occurs as a Biblical quotation or citation. However, as we shall see below, the word is given prominence by The Episcopal Church in its official Liturgy.
Covenant in the 1979 Prayer Book
In the current Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church, there is, as we would expect, a service of Holy Baptism. If you examine the layout of this service, you notice that there are several types of sub-headings within the text. Those in the largest type are obviously intended to indicate the important nature and content of the material that follows and there are three of these: “Presentation and Examination of the Candidates,” “The Baptismal Covenant,” and “The Baptism.”
Immediately underneath “The Baptismal Covenant” without any headings in smaller type there are two sections—the Creed in the form of Questions and Replies, and five questions concerning commitment and consecration to Christian life and service. Then there is a sub-heading in small bold print, “Prayers for the Candidates,” which is followed by two further sub-headings in small bold print, “Thanksgiving over the Water,” and “Consecration of the Chrism.”
It would appear that “The Baptismal Covenant” ends where the sub-heading, “Prayers for the Candidates” begins, and that the reason why the first is in much larger print than the other is that it is deemed to be of primary or greater importance.
On the basis of this evidence one is able to say first that “The Baptismal Covenant” is taken to be very important and secondly how it is understood by The Episcopal Church. The Covenant on pages 304-5 appears to be the commitments and promises that those about to be baptized make to God. It is the human dedication and consecration to the God who is proclaimed in the Apostles’ Creed. What is promised (to this God and/or to his Church) is regular attendance at Christian worship, resistance of evil, repentance for sin, a Christian life that commends the Gospel, seeking and serving Christ in the neighbor, striving for peace and justice along all people and respecting the dignity of every human being.
Earlier as part of the Examination of the Candidates they are asked to make certain renunciations—of Satan, evil powers and sinful desires—and to accept Jesus Christ as Savior, to trust in him and to follow him. But these vows are not part of “the Baptismal Covenant” but preparatory to it. So we can sharpen the definition of the meaning of this Covenant and say that it is the human commitments and promises of those who have already made certain specific vows and are about to be baptized.
Now a covenant is relational, with at least two parties. Obviously God is the other party here but there is no specific and clear statement of what God’s commitments and obligations are, though one perhaps can deduce them by what is said here and there in this service. In “An Outline of Faith” in the same Prayer Book a covenant with God is defined thus: “A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith.” And the New Covenant is said to be “the new relationship with God given by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to the apostles; and, through them, to all who believe in him.”
So what we learn from the Service itself and from “An Outline” is that God as the senior partner in the agreement/covenant/contract sets things in motion—initiates—and the human being as the junior partner accepts certain beliefs and conditions. (In terms of the beliefs and conditions, it would appear that the Episcopal liturgists have actually drawn up the terms of the contract of what they deem God requires by use of scripture, tradition and experience. In doing this, they innovated in their placing in the contract the requirement of striving for “peace and justice” in the world, and “respecting the dignity” of each and every person.)
The Covenant in the BCP (1662)
By far and away the most widely used edition of The Book of Common Prayer in Anglican history is the edition of 1662. This obviously contains Baptismal Services—for Infants and for Adults. However, unlike the American 1979 Baptismal Service these do not contain the expression, “baptismal covenant,” or the word “covenant” itself.
Yet the question arises and remains as to whether or not the Services of the 1662 edition actually presuppose the existence or the making of a covenant, within the service itself. Here we find that there is a difference of opinion.
The position of those who we may term “Augustinian” (which would include Cranmer) is that there is no making of a covenant or agreement or contract in the Service at all. In fact there could not be such a thing for God’s covenant of grace is a covenant between the Father and the Son, where the Son as the Messiah and Representative of man fulfills for God’s elect people all the conditions of the covenant of grace by his perfect life of obedience and his atoning death. Thus all those (the elect) who repent of their sins and are united to him in faith and by the Holy Spirit are placed by the Father within this covenant of grace. So the covenant is made and its conditions are already fulfilled before the Gospel is preached and Christian Baptism is offered. In Baptism, sinners humbly repent, believe and consecrate themselves to the God who has reached out to them in Christ Jesus in mercy and grace. They approach on his terms and by his call and empowering; and in this (his) Sacrament, he makes them his children as they become members of the Body of Christ. Baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of union with Christ, or regeneration, of forgiveness of sins and of consecration to God. The baptized do not negotiate or set any terms of the covenant of grace; they simply come to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament and do so only and solely on the terms that God has made and in the way that he has provided. They make promises and vows to serve the Lord but they are in the covenant because they are “in Christ Jesus.”
In contrast the position of others, who are of varied theological positions, is that there is in Baptism a personal covenant that God provides and makes with every willing believer. This covenant is, as it were, the personalized and localized expression of the everlasting covenant of grace between the Father and the Son for the redemption of the world.
In terms of the content of the Service of Baptism in the 1662 BCP, what God offers and gives in this covenant is said to be declared and clearly set forth in the Gospel reading and in the clear Exhortation that follows it; and what the person to be baptized gives in response to this offer of grace is made through The Renunciation (of the devil and his works, the pomp and glory of the world etc.), the Profession of Faith (Apostles’ Creed), & The Vow of Obedience (to keep God’s law and walk in his ways). This said there is nothing in the Text to require belief in “a personal baptismal covenant with God.” Further, in the latest Prayer Book of the Church of England, Common Worship (2000) there is nothing to suggest a covenant is being made; rather, the explicit theme there is the beginning of a journey with God of which Baptism is the start.
Conclusion
What appears to have happened in the construction of “The Baptismal Covenant” in the American 1979 service is this. The creators of the service decided that there should and must be a covenant in terms of a specific commitment made by the baptized to God and that this commitment must be more specific and more liberally progressive than that of the traditional Service of Baptism. To achieve this end, they created the major sub-heading, “The Baptismal Covenant,” and they expanded the one, general question of 1662 (as also of the American versions of 1662—1789, 1892 & 1928) which reads: “Wilt thou obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life?”, into five questions. And thus they able to insert into this section the themes of striving for peace and justice and respecting the dignity of all persons into the covenant, which themes have had tremendous impact and importance within the life of The Episcopal Church since the 1970s. In fact “The Baptismal Covenant” has been the major charter of this Church for its innovations in many areas of human life in the USA and abroad. And both the present Presiding Bishop and her predecessor claimed to base their leadership and Primatial ministries upon this covenant. And not to be outdone, those five or so “orthodox” ECUSA Bishops who reject the Primatial ministry of the present Lady Presiding Bishop, actually appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury for alternative Primatial oversight, professing their orthodoxy by citing “The Baptismal Covenant” of the 1979 Book. Amazingly this Covenant pleases the left and the right in the spectrum that is present The Episcopal Church and this itself demonstrates just how far the whole Church has moved leftwards so that the present “right” is where the “left” was several decades ago—such, regrettably is the powerful secularism of our times!
If there is an implicit covenant within the 1662 Service (and thus also in the 1789 & 1892 and 1928 equivalents) then it is very much a two sided covenant where what God gives, provides and offers is paramount and clear (in the Gospel reading and its explanation) and what the repentant sinner is to be and do—as assisted by God—is also clear. In the 1979 Service the divine side of the covenant is far from clear. And there is the further point that the human requirements of the covenant in the 1979 text do not actually include the actual renunciation of the devil, the evil world and the sinful flesh.
It would appear that the creation of the Baptismal Covenant in the 1979 Book is a clear example of how far The Episcopal Church had become by the 1970s a Body deeply influenced by the European Enlightenment, where the human being not God is the center of attention in the universe, and where a major characteristic of man as an “individual” is seen to be his freedom to choose, and his right to make agreements, even with God, the LORD (as “An Outline of Faith” assumes and states).
Where there is a healthy doctrine of the righteousness of God and the sin of man, and of God as light and man in darkness, then the individual person as repentant believing sinner looks not to make a favorable contract with God, but rather looks for every sign of mercy and grace, forgiveness and cleansing, and thankfully receives the same, desiring only from God that liberty wherein he is free to do the Master’s will as he walks in his ways in the Household of God.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
JANUARY lst. The Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus
A meditation from Peter Toon
Few Episcopalian churchgoers today are familiar with the Feast of our Lord on January 1st as “The Feast of the Circumcision” because it is now called “The Feast of the Holy Name.” However, whilst there is tremendous symbolic meaning in the Name of Jesus (Joshua, “the Lord our salvation”) on which we all ought to meditate, there is also deep symbolic meaning in the fact that the infant, who was called Jesus was also circumcised because, put simply, he was a Jewish boy, not a girl, and born within the Mosaic covenant of grace. On this also we ought to meditate!
It is rather odd, we may think, that in a time and culture where there is much explicit “sex”, that the Church should cease to refer directly and publicly to the day when Jesus was circumcised! At least in liberal progressive contexts, this cessation is empowered by the idea that Jesus is androgynous and thus specific talk of circumcision is not in order—but more of this below.
From the middle of the sixth century until the 1960s the Feast was known in the West as “The Feast of the Circumcision.” Only in the last forty years has its name has been changed by both the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Churches either to emphasize the Name of the Son of God or the role of his blessed Mother. However, there are excellent reasons for retaining the traditional Name and meaning of the Feast.
Circumcision was the entrance into the Covenant of the Law, the Mosaic Covenant, and the person receiving it involved himself in every other obligation of the Law of Moses – as St Paul wrote, “every man who is circumcised is a debtor to keep the whole Law (Gal 5:3) In the institution of circumcision God told Abraham, “He that is eight days old shall be circumcised” (Gen 17:12). For the Jew nothing was perfect until seven days had passed from the moment of its production and the eighth day had arrived – because the creation of the world with its ensuing rest took 7 days (Genesis 1)!
The Law was obeyed with respect to Jesus. “When eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus (Luke 2:21).
For Christians there is a profound reason why the Feast of the Circumcision should be eight days after the Feast of Christmas. St Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4: “God sent forth his Son made of a woman” [Christmas] and then he added, “made under the Law” [here is the Circumcision, the act by which Jesus first became involved in legal obligation as a Jew, the Son of David]. His whole life henceforth was in obedience both to the Law of Moses and to the higher will of his Father in heaven. So it is not a surprise to find that in the pleadings of the Litany, the Birth and the Circumcision are united as the Lord Jesus is addressed: “By thy holy Nativity and Circumcision… Good Lord, deliver us.”
And on the Feast of the Circumcision, as we read or hear the opening of the traditional Anglican Collect: “Almighty God [the Father], who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man….,” we recall and state before God not only the fact of the circumcision of Jesus but also that his circumcision, with its commitment to the obeying of the whole law of God, was done also for man, for the human race, and thus for us. It was done for man, male and female, because Jesus is “The Lord our salvation” and “Immanuel, God with us.” He is the Incarnate Son of the Father, who has taken to himself from his Blessed Mother Mary our human nature in its male form so as to be our Savior from within human nature.
It was common and good in the past—though neglected today— to speak of Jesus, in his vocation as the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the whole world, as being involved in two necessary aspects of obedience to God his Father through the Law. One is active obedience, his daily commitment to obey God through the law in thought, word and action; and this he did willingly and wholly to the moment that he expired on the Cross. The other is passive obedience (from pascho, to suffer), his passion, his suffering as the innocent for the guilty, as bearing the pain and punishment as the substitute and representative on behalf of his people (see Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12). Both these important aspects are signified in the act of circumcision; for here the first shedding of his precious blood points to his passive obedience in the shedding of the blood of Atonement at the Cross of Calvary, thirty or so years later at the close of his Messianic ministry.
One further point is worthy of noting and considering with respect to the bloody circumcision of Jesus, son of Mary and Incarnate Son of God the Father. And it is a point that is very relevant in the contemporary, liberal progressive Episcopal (Anglican) Church. What the circumcision makes abundantly clear is that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity assumed not human nature in the abstract, but human nature as male, for he became Man, not an androgynous human person. This seems to be offensive to some of strong feminist commitments. They prefer to speak of the Child of God and suggest this Child was androgynous.
Further, in these egalitarian days, it is asked: how can a male man represent female persons, for male and female are two different and distinct forms of humanity? The biblical answer, which again is offensive to or difficult for some modern people, is found in the doctrine of creation: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1: 27). In creation there is an order that is from God. In this order man is both male and female, man and woman, husband and wife. However, the male is first in order and the woman is second. They have equal dignity and honor before God; but, one, the woman, by God’s appointment is second in order (not inferior) to the other. This is conveyed in speech by the word man in ancient and modern languages, including Hebrew, having the meaning of “man, woman and children.” And in doctrine it is said that the woman is included in the man, so that Jesus the Man is not only the representative of male men like himself but also of female women like his blessed Mother and all children. Symbolically this is portrayed in Genesis 3 by the creation of the female woman out of man, who is thus “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (3:21-24).
If the eternal Word (Logos) and Son of God had become human either as androgynous or female, it/she could not (by the very design of God in creation!) have become and been the Savior of mankind (males & females). Only the male man is by God’s ordering able to represent both male and female persons and thus the Word of the Father became man, male man. He was circumcised for us all because by that act he committed himself to doing what was good and necessary for the salvation of mankind, Jewish and Gentile men and women!
Almighty God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man; Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that our hearts and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 1662/1928)
In response to his Circumcision (and all that it implies), as the BCP Collect prays, we (male and female members of the new covenant created by the shed blood of Jesus) ask God to circumcise our hearts and all our faculties, to cut away from them all sinfulness and to cause them to be sanctified, so that we may gladly do his will. This is surely an excellent prayer with which to begin the New (secular) Year on January 1, 2007.
December 27, 2006
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Few Episcopalian churchgoers today are familiar with the Feast of our Lord on January 1st as “The Feast of the Circumcision” because it is now called “The Feast of the Holy Name.” However, whilst there is tremendous symbolic meaning in the Name of Jesus (Joshua, “the Lord our salvation”) on which we all ought to meditate, there is also deep symbolic meaning in the fact that the infant, who was called Jesus was also circumcised because, put simply, he was a Jewish boy, not a girl, and born within the Mosaic covenant of grace. On this also we ought to meditate!
It is rather odd, we may think, that in a time and culture where there is much explicit “sex”, that the Church should cease to refer directly and publicly to the day when Jesus was circumcised! At least in liberal progressive contexts, this cessation is empowered by the idea that Jesus is androgynous and thus specific talk of circumcision is not in order—but more of this below.
From the middle of the sixth century until the 1960s the Feast was known in the West as “The Feast of the Circumcision.” Only in the last forty years has its name has been changed by both the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Churches either to emphasize the Name of the Son of God or the role of his blessed Mother. However, there are excellent reasons for retaining the traditional Name and meaning of the Feast.
Circumcision was the entrance into the Covenant of the Law, the Mosaic Covenant, and the person receiving it involved himself in every other obligation of the Law of Moses – as St Paul wrote, “every man who is circumcised is a debtor to keep the whole Law (Gal 5:3) In the institution of circumcision God told Abraham, “He that is eight days old shall be circumcised” (Gen 17:12). For the Jew nothing was perfect until seven days had passed from the moment of its production and the eighth day had arrived – because the creation of the world with its ensuing rest took 7 days (Genesis 1)!
The Law was obeyed with respect to Jesus. “When eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus (Luke 2:21).
For Christians there is a profound reason why the Feast of the Circumcision should be eight days after the Feast of Christmas. St Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4: “God sent forth his Son made of a woman” [Christmas] and then he added, “made under the Law” [here is the Circumcision, the act by which Jesus first became involved in legal obligation as a Jew, the Son of David]. His whole life henceforth was in obedience both to the Law of Moses and to the higher will of his Father in heaven. So it is not a surprise to find that in the pleadings of the Litany, the Birth and the Circumcision are united as the Lord Jesus is addressed: “By thy holy Nativity and Circumcision… Good Lord, deliver us.”
And on the Feast of the Circumcision, as we read or hear the opening of the traditional Anglican Collect: “Almighty God [the Father], who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man….,” we recall and state before God not only the fact of the circumcision of Jesus but also that his circumcision, with its commitment to the obeying of the whole law of God, was done also for man, for the human race, and thus for us. It was done for man, male and female, because Jesus is “The Lord our salvation” and “Immanuel, God with us.” He is the Incarnate Son of the Father, who has taken to himself from his Blessed Mother Mary our human nature in its male form so as to be our Savior from within human nature.
It was common and good in the past—though neglected today— to speak of Jesus, in his vocation as the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the whole world, as being involved in two necessary aspects of obedience to God his Father through the Law. One is active obedience, his daily commitment to obey God through the law in thought, word and action; and this he did willingly and wholly to the moment that he expired on the Cross. The other is passive obedience (from pascho, to suffer), his passion, his suffering as the innocent for the guilty, as bearing the pain and punishment as the substitute and representative on behalf of his people (see Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12). Both these important aspects are signified in the act of circumcision; for here the first shedding of his precious blood points to his passive obedience in the shedding of the blood of Atonement at the Cross of Calvary, thirty or so years later at the close of his Messianic ministry.
One further point is worthy of noting and considering with respect to the bloody circumcision of Jesus, son of Mary and Incarnate Son of God the Father. And it is a point that is very relevant in the contemporary, liberal progressive Episcopal (Anglican) Church. What the circumcision makes abundantly clear is that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity assumed not human nature in the abstract, but human nature as male, for he became Man, not an androgynous human person. This seems to be offensive to some of strong feminist commitments. They prefer to speak of the Child of God and suggest this Child was androgynous.
Further, in these egalitarian days, it is asked: how can a male man represent female persons, for male and female are two different and distinct forms of humanity? The biblical answer, which again is offensive to or difficult for some modern people, is found in the doctrine of creation: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1: 27). In creation there is an order that is from God. In this order man is both male and female, man and woman, husband and wife. However, the male is first in order and the woman is second. They have equal dignity and honor before God; but, one, the woman, by God’s appointment is second in order (not inferior) to the other. This is conveyed in speech by the word man in ancient and modern languages, including Hebrew, having the meaning of “man, woman and children.” And in doctrine it is said that the woman is included in the man, so that Jesus the Man is not only the representative of male men like himself but also of female women like his blessed Mother and all children. Symbolically this is portrayed in Genesis 3 by the creation of the female woman out of man, who is thus “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (3:21-24).
If the eternal Word (Logos) and Son of God had become human either as androgynous or female, it/she could not (by the very design of God in creation!) have become and been the Savior of mankind (males & females). Only the male man is by God’s ordering able to represent both male and female persons and thus the Word of the Father became man, male man. He was circumcised for us all because by that act he committed himself to doing what was good and necessary for the salvation of mankind, Jewish and Gentile men and women!
Almighty God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man; Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that our hearts and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 1662/1928)
In response to his Circumcision (and all that it implies), as the BCP Collect prays, we (male and female members of the new covenant created by the shed blood of Jesus) ask God to circumcise our hearts and all our faculties, to cut away from them all sinfulness and to cause them to be sanctified, so that we may gladly do his will. This is surely an excellent prayer with which to begin the New (secular) Year on January 1, 2007.
December 27, 2006
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Frames within the Mind and Divisions within the Church: One approach to understanding the crisis in the Anglican Way.
A discussion starter.
Probably—maybe certainly—we should pay more attention to the profound influence over our thinking, feeling and acting of what have been called frames of reference, existing deep within our minds. Though we are not always or wholly conscious of their presence, these frames provide us with what we call our common sense and affect the way that we perceive and act.
These frames are formed unconsciously in our minds over time and through the influence of dominant messages and images which we receive from the culture and context in which we live. And what we may offer on any particular occasion as the reason for our actions and feeling will probably not be strictly identical with the dominant frame deep in our minds. For the latter work by creating the general structure or shape of our thinking and feeling, not by supplying immediate and conscious reasoning.
What we find within the dysfunctional Anglican Family in North America (as also in the West generally) is a major division which cuts through and across a lot of minor divisions. The major division is expressed publicly and obviously in disagreement over same-sex marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research—and particularly same-sex matters.
Nurturant Parent
It appears that those who in general terms support the blessing of covenanted, long-term, same-sex relations and related matters on religious grounds do so primarily because in their minds is picture/frame of God and the world which may be described in terms of God as the nurturant Parent.
That is, God is not like the old-fashioned bossy and strict father in the human family who insisted on discipline, obedience, and self-help. Rather, he is like the caring parent who wants the best for her/her child and thus affirms the child and provides for his/her well being and in support of his/her freedom and choices. Nurture for freedom is the key.
This deep metaphorically-based frame provides the religious common sense and the drive to be committed to what may be called the liberal, progressive religious agenda, with the extension of human freedoms, choices and rights.
At the conscious level, reasons may be offered for the religious agenda and program which are different from or not identical with the input and pressure of the dominant frame—e.g., God may be presented in terms of Trinitarianism, Panentheism or Process Theology. Here Scripture is read within the context of the dominant frame and so from it God is heard telling them that they are in covenant with him in order to take forward his will for peace and justice in the world, and to affirm the dignity of all.
Thus the common sense of the liberal progressives, fed from the deep frame, simply sees the extension of human freedoms and God’s acceptance and blessing on them as normal, reasonable and required by decent people. Those who oppose these things appear to them as being foolish, or ignorant or having ill-will.
Strict Father
In contrast, the deep frame of those who oppose the liberal progressive agenda and do so passionately, especially same-sex marriage, may be described as that of the holy, righteous and strict Father, the Almighty and the Lord. Here the picture is that of the father in the family who loves his family but is strict, requiring discipline, obedience and commitment to the law. In this picture, male and female are opposites and yet complementary, and the essence and vocation of the male and female are different but their differences point to a unity for procreation and family life.
The frame of the holy and strict Father, deeply embedded in the mind, informs and energizes the agenda and program of the real conservatives in their opposition to the liberal, progressive agenda and program. Again, the specific reasons they give for their opposition may not be identical with the content of the deep frame within their minds; but both unconsciously and consciously they are opposed. And they call themselves “the orthodox” because they believe that what they teach is actually clearly written in the Bible and required by their God. In other words, they read and hear the Bible and confess Christ as Lord in terms of their dominant embedded mental frame.
So there is real division over what appear to be essential matters within the Anglican Way. And there is nothing on the horizon which seems capable of changing this situation for two deeply-embedded frames are in opposition.
Reflection
Now we need to backtrack a little to note that deep in our minds, alongside the dominant frame, there will be other frames, which may influence and affect our feeling and thinking alongside that of the dominant frame. For example, it appears that not a few in The Anglican Communion Network, while being primarily influenced by the holy, strict Father frame at this time with reference to same-sex matters, are also influenced by the nurturant Parent frame as they enthusiastically embrace women’s ordination and a liberal approach to marriage, divorce and remarriage (these latter are rejected by the strict Father frame). Also, no doubt, there are many Episcopalians in whom both frames are equally embedded and thus their lives seem inconsistent as they move from one position to another, not quite clear as to whether they are liberal or conservative or both.
How are frames formed and how may they be changed? They are formed gradually through the impact of culture, society, family, friends, media, church, and so on. In the secularized West the likelihood of the nurturant Parent frame is more likely than that of the strict Father frame in 2007.
Frames are changed gradually by living in a different context where different influences can impact and the mind be affected by them. (E.g., using the classic BCP of 1662 for 6 months with traditional hymns and reading the Bible in this context would surely begin to impact and modify the nurturant Parent frame in the sincere liberal, progressive bishop!)
So there is no quick way to heal the divisions of the Anglican Family and without any external Anglican Hierarchy to determine what is right and true there is no simple way for any one side to claim it has the whole truth.
Right now one side looks to the liberals in the Western parts of the Anglican Family and the other looks to the Global South parts. It seems that we are on a collision course. Let us hope that the Holy Ghost descends upon the Primates’ Meeting in February 07, the Lambeth Conference in July 08 and upon Lambeth Palace, London, continually in 07 & 08!
What each one of can really do now is to follow the ancient discipline of self-examination in the presence of God, asking that “in thy light we shall see light”—as the Psalmist stated. Each of us needs to have embedded the enlightened frame/paradigm/model deep in our minds so that we conform to the mind of Christ!
Meanwhile the R C Church is working hard to formulate a strategy to capitalize on all this confusion and attract Anglicans into its embrace, where, if the Pope is followed, the strict Father frame in a sophisticated version is certainly clearly in place.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon December 21, 2006
Probably—maybe certainly—we should pay more attention to the profound influence over our thinking, feeling and acting of what have been called frames of reference, existing deep within our minds. Though we are not always or wholly conscious of their presence, these frames provide us with what we call our common sense and affect the way that we perceive and act.
These frames are formed unconsciously in our minds over time and through the influence of dominant messages and images which we receive from the culture and context in which we live. And what we may offer on any particular occasion as the reason for our actions and feeling will probably not be strictly identical with the dominant frame deep in our minds. For the latter work by creating the general structure or shape of our thinking and feeling, not by supplying immediate and conscious reasoning.
What we find within the dysfunctional Anglican Family in North America (as also in the West generally) is a major division which cuts through and across a lot of minor divisions. The major division is expressed publicly and obviously in disagreement over same-sex marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research—and particularly same-sex matters.
Nurturant Parent
It appears that those who in general terms support the blessing of covenanted, long-term, same-sex relations and related matters on religious grounds do so primarily because in their minds is picture/frame of God and the world which may be described in terms of God as the nurturant Parent.
That is, God is not like the old-fashioned bossy and strict father in the human family who insisted on discipline, obedience, and self-help. Rather, he is like the caring parent who wants the best for her/her child and thus affirms the child and provides for his/her well being and in support of his/her freedom and choices. Nurture for freedom is the key.
This deep metaphorically-based frame provides the religious common sense and the drive to be committed to what may be called the liberal, progressive religious agenda, with the extension of human freedoms, choices and rights.
At the conscious level, reasons may be offered for the religious agenda and program which are different from or not identical with the input and pressure of the dominant frame—e.g., God may be presented in terms of Trinitarianism, Panentheism or Process Theology. Here Scripture is read within the context of the dominant frame and so from it God is heard telling them that they are in covenant with him in order to take forward his will for peace and justice in the world, and to affirm the dignity of all.
Thus the common sense of the liberal progressives, fed from the deep frame, simply sees the extension of human freedoms and God’s acceptance and blessing on them as normal, reasonable and required by decent people. Those who oppose these things appear to them as being foolish, or ignorant or having ill-will.
Strict Father
In contrast, the deep frame of those who oppose the liberal progressive agenda and do so passionately, especially same-sex marriage, may be described as that of the holy, righteous and strict Father, the Almighty and the Lord. Here the picture is that of the father in the family who loves his family but is strict, requiring discipline, obedience and commitment to the law. In this picture, male and female are opposites and yet complementary, and the essence and vocation of the male and female are different but their differences point to a unity for procreation and family life.
The frame of the holy and strict Father, deeply embedded in the mind, informs and energizes the agenda and program of the real conservatives in their opposition to the liberal, progressive agenda and program. Again, the specific reasons they give for their opposition may not be identical with the content of the deep frame within their minds; but both unconsciously and consciously they are opposed. And they call themselves “the orthodox” because they believe that what they teach is actually clearly written in the Bible and required by their God. In other words, they read and hear the Bible and confess Christ as Lord in terms of their dominant embedded mental frame.
So there is real division over what appear to be essential matters within the Anglican Way. And there is nothing on the horizon which seems capable of changing this situation for two deeply-embedded frames are in opposition.
Reflection
Now we need to backtrack a little to note that deep in our minds, alongside the dominant frame, there will be other frames, which may influence and affect our feeling and thinking alongside that of the dominant frame. For example, it appears that not a few in The Anglican Communion Network, while being primarily influenced by the holy, strict Father frame at this time with reference to same-sex matters, are also influenced by the nurturant Parent frame as they enthusiastically embrace women’s ordination and a liberal approach to marriage, divorce and remarriage (these latter are rejected by the strict Father frame). Also, no doubt, there are many Episcopalians in whom both frames are equally embedded and thus their lives seem inconsistent as they move from one position to another, not quite clear as to whether they are liberal or conservative or both.
How are frames formed and how may they be changed? They are formed gradually through the impact of culture, society, family, friends, media, church, and so on. In the secularized West the likelihood of the nurturant Parent frame is more likely than that of the strict Father frame in 2007.
Frames are changed gradually by living in a different context where different influences can impact and the mind be affected by them. (E.g., using the classic BCP of 1662 for 6 months with traditional hymns and reading the Bible in this context would surely begin to impact and modify the nurturant Parent frame in the sincere liberal, progressive bishop!)
So there is no quick way to heal the divisions of the Anglican Family and without any external Anglican Hierarchy to determine what is right and true there is no simple way for any one side to claim it has the whole truth.
Right now one side looks to the liberals in the Western parts of the Anglican Family and the other looks to the Global South parts. It seems that we are on a collision course. Let us hope that the Holy Ghost descends upon the Primates’ Meeting in February 07, the Lambeth Conference in July 08 and upon Lambeth Palace, London, continually in 07 & 08!
What each one of can really do now is to follow the ancient discipline of self-examination in the presence of God, asking that “in thy light we shall see light”—as the Psalmist stated. Each of us needs to have embedded the enlightened frame/paradigm/model deep in our minds so that we conform to the mind of Christ!
Meanwhile the R C Church is working hard to formulate a strategy to capitalize on all this confusion and attract Anglicans into its embrace, where, if the Pope is followed, the strict Father frame in a sophisticated version is certainly clearly in place.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon December 21, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Comparison of the BCP 1928 and the “BCP” 1979 in ten statements.
1a. 1928 is a gentle revision of the editions of the American Prayer Book of 1789 & 1892, and these are a revision for American use of the English BCP 1662.
1b. 1979 is new kind of Prayer Book usually called “A Book of Alternative Services” because of the variety in Rites, and is like the Canadian BAS 1985/English ASB 1980.
2a. 1928 is in one form and style of language, the traditional English language of prayer.
2b. 1979 has texts in both traditional and modern English.
3a. 1928, along with The Ordinal and The Thirty-Nine Articles, is a Formulary or Standard of Faith of the Anglican Way.
3b. 1979 alone is the new Formulary of the Episcopal Way of ECUSA and is seen as a replacement for the traditional three Formularies.
4a. 1928 has one only text/rite for MP, EP, Holy Communion etc.
4b. 1979 has choices between texts for MP & EP & Holy Communion.
5a. 1928 is consistent in doctrine throughout its services and this doctrine is in line with that in The Thirty-Nine Articles and is called Reformed Catholicism.
5b. 1979 has a variety of doctrines with no consistency in theological proclamation.
6a. 1928 presents Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration, to be followed by Catechizing, Confirmation and First Communion.
6b 1979 presents Baptism as “complete initiation” with Confirmation of no sacramental character as optional.
7a. 1928 expects young persons to begin to receive Holy Communion regularly after their Confirmation by the Bishop.
7b. 1979 expects infants to receive Holy Communion after Baptism.
8a. 1928 sees Baptism as being placed by God within His covenant of grace on conditions that He alone has set and requires and which are not negotiable by us.
8b. 1979 sees Baptism as being received by God into his family and freely entering into a covenant with Him (where he is the Senior partner) with commitment by us to bring peace and justice into the world.
9a. 1928 is committed to the doctrine of generous and gracious male headship, as is also the Ordinal. Thus no women as clergy.
9b. 1979 is committed to equality in all things between the sexes and so promotes female ordination and a marriage service that is minimal in requirements before God.
10a. 1928 has no inclusive language for human beings and uses “man” of both male and female.
10b. 1979 has much inclusive language for human beings and presents it in the Rites and in the Psalter.
Conclusion. The BCP edition of 1928 and the so-called BCP of 1979 are very different because the latter is truly “An Alternative Service Book” and should have been authorized as existing alongside the classic BCP not replacing it.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon Advent 2006 www.pbsusa.org
1b. 1979 is new kind of Prayer Book usually called “A Book of Alternative Services” because of the variety in Rites, and is like the Canadian BAS 1985/English ASB 1980.
2a. 1928 is in one form and style of language, the traditional English language of prayer.
2b. 1979 has texts in both traditional and modern English.
3a. 1928, along with The Ordinal and The Thirty-Nine Articles, is a Formulary or Standard of Faith of the Anglican Way.
3b. 1979 alone is the new Formulary of the Episcopal Way of ECUSA and is seen as a replacement for the traditional three Formularies.
4a. 1928 has one only text/rite for MP, EP, Holy Communion etc.
4b. 1979 has choices between texts for MP & EP & Holy Communion.
5a. 1928 is consistent in doctrine throughout its services and this doctrine is in line with that in The Thirty-Nine Articles and is called Reformed Catholicism.
5b. 1979 has a variety of doctrines with no consistency in theological proclamation.
6a. 1928 presents Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration, to be followed by Catechizing, Confirmation and First Communion.
6b 1979 presents Baptism as “complete initiation” with Confirmation of no sacramental character as optional.
7a. 1928 expects young persons to begin to receive Holy Communion regularly after their Confirmation by the Bishop.
7b. 1979 expects infants to receive Holy Communion after Baptism.
8a. 1928 sees Baptism as being placed by God within His covenant of grace on conditions that He alone has set and requires and which are not negotiable by us.
8b. 1979 sees Baptism as being received by God into his family and freely entering into a covenant with Him (where he is the Senior partner) with commitment by us to bring peace and justice into the world.
9a. 1928 is committed to the doctrine of generous and gracious male headship, as is also the Ordinal. Thus no women as clergy.
9b. 1979 is committed to equality in all things between the sexes and so promotes female ordination and a marriage service that is minimal in requirements before God.
10a. 1928 has no inclusive language for human beings and uses “man” of both male and female.
10b. 1979 has much inclusive language for human beings and presents it in the Rites and in the Psalter.
Conclusion. The BCP edition of 1928 and the so-called BCP of 1979 are very different because the latter is truly “An Alternative Service Book” and should have been authorized as existing alongside the classic BCP not replacing it.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon Advent 2006 www.pbsusa.org
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
WHO IS IN THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION?
The Anglican Communion News Service states
In response to a number of queries, and following consultation with The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion has issued the following statement:
“The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) is, to my knowledge, a “mission” of the Church of Nigeria. It is not a branch of the Anglican Communion as such but an organization which relates to a single province of the Anglican Communion. CANA has not petitioned the Anglican Consultative Council for any official status within the Communion’s structures, nor has the Archbishop of Canterbury indicated any support for its establishment.”
I would think that the AMiA is described in Lambeth in much the same way as is the CANA ( which has made news recently through the entering into it of two well-known northern Virginian congregations).
The AMiA is sponsored by the Province of Rwanda but is apparently seen by the A of C and others in London as not being officially in the Anglican Communion even though its bishops are regarded as Rwandan bishops by Rwanda.
In the same vein it would seem that the hundred or so formerly ECUSA congregations now under overseas bishops are also not in the Anglican Communion, but rather are only in fellowship with their adopted bishop.
We may recall that churches in communion with individual provinces (e.g. Lutheran) are not thereby in the Anglican Communion. So what Lambeth states does make Sense. However, in the present confusion and crisis of the Anglican Way, statements from Lambeth do not seem to have the authority they once had – which is sad. Thus patience is the name of the game for the next 18 months at least!
The test will be the invitations to Lambeth Conference 2008 – as of now it appears that the Bishop of CANA and the Bishops of AMiA will not be invited.
However, Lambeth 2008 may not happen or may happen in ways that break the traditions of the last century! Watch for the results of the Dar-es-Salaam meeting in Tanzania in February 2007 of the Primates (including the competent and outspoken American lady primate). These may tell us what to expect of Lambeth 2008 and whether the Global South will take a strong line on whom they will meet with in council – right now it seems that they will not sit down with many of the bishops of the ECUSA and Anglican Church of Canada.
We may also soon have missionary diocese offshoots from Uganda, Southern Cone etc in the West. It seems that the Anglican Family is going to become much more dysfunctional before it begins to be healed of its divisions and schisms. And the healing – as so often in Church history – may include a major division! For to unite those who are so clearly divided over doctrinal and moral matters is a task for angels, even archangels, not women or men.
Let us pray and hope that the Holy Trinity wills that the Anglican Family be healed and in his inscrutable and ineffable wisdom will achieve the same despite our many sins and infirmities, and despite our tendencies to centrifugal rather than centripetal ecclesial actions.
I hope that we all are able to exercise PATIENCE and CHARITY for the immediate future so that the Holy Trinity can do the work he wills to do!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
In response to a number of queries, and following consultation with The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion has issued the following statement:
“The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) is, to my knowledge, a “mission” of the Church of Nigeria. It is not a branch of the Anglican Communion as such but an organization which relates to a single province of the Anglican Communion. CANA has not petitioned the Anglican Consultative Council for any official status within the Communion’s structures, nor has the Archbishop of Canterbury indicated any support for its establishment.”
I would think that the AMiA is described in Lambeth in much the same way as is the CANA ( which has made news recently through the entering into it of two well-known northern Virginian congregations).
The AMiA is sponsored by the Province of Rwanda but is apparently seen by the A of C and others in London as not being officially in the Anglican Communion even though its bishops are regarded as Rwandan bishops by Rwanda.
In the same vein it would seem that the hundred or so formerly ECUSA congregations now under overseas bishops are also not in the Anglican Communion, but rather are only in fellowship with their adopted bishop.
We may recall that churches in communion with individual provinces (e.g. Lutheran) are not thereby in the Anglican Communion. So what Lambeth states does make Sense. However, in the present confusion and crisis of the Anglican Way, statements from Lambeth do not seem to have the authority they once had – which is sad. Thus patience is the name of the game for the next 18 months at least!
The test will be the invitations to Lambeth Conference 2008 – as of now it appears that the Bishop of CANA and the Bishops of AMiA will not be invited.
However, Lambeth 2008 may not happen or may happen in ways that break the traditions of the last century! Watch for the results of the Dar-es-Salaam meeting in Tanzania in February 2007 of the Primates (including the competent and outspoken American lady primate). These may tell us what to expect of Lambeth 2008 and whether the Global South will take a strong line on whom they will meet with in council – right now it seems that they will not sit down with many of the bishops of the ECUSA and Anglican Church of Canada.
We may also soon have missionary diocese offshoots from Uganda, Southern Cone etc in the West. It seems that the Anglican Family is going to become much more dysfunctional before it begins to be healed of its divisions and schisms. And the healing – as so often in Church history – may include a major division! For to unite those who are so clearly divided over doctrinal and moral matters is a task for angels, even archangels, not women or men.
Let us pray and hope that the Holy Trinity wills that the Anglican Family be healed and in his inscrutable and ineffable wisdom will achieve the same despite our many sins and infirmities, and despite our tendencies to centrifugal rather than centripetal ecclesial actions.
I hope that we all are able to exercise PATIENCE and CHARITY for the immediate future so that the Holy Trinity can do the work he wills to do!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
What to Pray on Christmas Day: Christmas Greetings from Peter & Vita Toon
In the Ecclesia Anglicana before she began to use English (as the Church of England)in 1549, there were Three Latin Collects for Christmas Day. The Missal of Sarum (Salisbury) in use up to 1549 made provision for three Masses for this high festival – one at cockcrow, one at the break of dawn, and one in full daylight. (No midnight Mass then!)
At the Mass at cockcrow the Collect prayed (in traditional translation):
O God, who madest this most sacred night to shine with the brightness of the true Light; Grant, we beseech thee, that we, as we have known the revelations of the Light upon earth, so we may also have the fruition of his joys in heaven; who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth one God, world without end. Amen.
This recalls Jesus as the Light of the world especially as he is so presented in the Prologue and Text of the Gospel according to St. John.
At the Mass at dawn the Collect prayed:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, to us upon whom the new light of the Word made flesh is shed forth, that the light which shines by faith in our hearts may also shine brightly in our works. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
This also specifically recalls the Prologue of the Gospel according to St. John.
At the Mass in the full light of day the Collect prayed:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that the new birth of thy only-begotten Son through the flesh may set free those, who are held fast by the old bondage under the yoke of sin. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
Here the Incarnation of the Son of God, born from Mary his virgin mother, is seen as the basis for the salvation offered to us through the same Jesus Christ.
In the provision for the new Book of the Common Prayer (1549), the reformed Church of England provided only one Collect along with the Epistle and Gospel set for the third Mass in the Latin Church. However this Collect was a new creation from the hand of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.
Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit through the same Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
In this Collect we have a most beautiful combination of sound doctrine and of inspired petition.
The Son of God was the Second Person of the Holy Trinity before he took to himself human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. At the Annunciation and Conception, Mary conceived Jesus miraculously by the presence of the Holy Ghost; at the same time the Son of God who had eternally his divine nature acquired the beginnings of a human nature, so he became One Person made known in two natures, divine and human.
As the Son of God was born according to his human nature from Mary, Blessed Virgin, so each of us is to be born of the Holy Ghost into the kingdom of God and thereby made into the adopted children of God, through the love of the Father and the grace of the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And as the Son of God in his human nature lived as Jesus of Nazareth, fulfilling the vocation of the Messiah and Suffering Servant of God, so we are to fulfill the vocation of the children of God called unto holiness and service in the kingdom and church of God our Father.
Christmas is a time for rejoicing with the heavenly host that the Son of God has become man for us and our salvation. It is also a time to see and accept what is the vocation of the regenerate children of God and by the help of the Holy Ghost fulfill the same.
A BLESSED AND JOYFUL TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS!
Peter Toon December 20, 2006 (just returned from South America to the after-effects on a major storm in Washington State, USA, where electricity is still out for many in Seattle area—ours came on yesterday— and where many trees are down).
At the Mass at cockcrow the Collect prayed (in traditional translation):
O God, who madest this most sacred night to shine with the brightness of the true Light; Grant, we beseech thee, that we, as we have known the revelations of the Light upon earth, so we may also have the fruition of his joys in heaven; who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth one God, world without end. Amen.
This recalls Jesus as the Light of the world especially as he is so presented in the Prologue and Text of the Gospel according to St. John.
At the Mass at dawn the Collect prayed:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, to us upon whom the new light of the Word made flesh is shed forth, that the light which shines by faith in our hearts may also shine brightly in our works. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
This also specifically recalls the Prologue of the Gospel according to St. John.
At the Mass in the full light of day the Collect prayed:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that the new birth of thy only-begotten Son through the flesh may set free those, who are held fast by the old bondage under the yoke of sin. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
Here the Incarnation of the Son of God, born from Mary his virgin mother, is seen as the basis for the salvation offered to us through the same Jesus Christ.
In the provision for the new Book of the Common Prayer (1549), the reformed Church of England provided only one Collect along with the Epistle and Gospel set for the third Mass in the Latin Church. However this Collect was a new creation from the hand of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.
Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit through the same Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
In this Collect we have a most beautiful combination of sound doctrine and of inspired petition.
The Son of God was the Second Person of the Holy Trinity before he took to himself human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. At the Annunciation and Conception, Mary conceived Jesus miraculously by the presence of the Holy Ghost; at the same time the Son of God who had eternally his divine nature acquired the beginnings of a human nature, so he became One Person made known in two natures, divine and human.
As the Son of God was born according to his human nature from Mary, Blessed Virgin, so each of us is to be born of the Holy Ghost into the kingdom of God and thereby made into the adopted children of God, through the love of the Father and the grace of the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And as the Son of God in his human nature lived as Jesus of Nazareth, fulfilling the vocation of the Messiah and Suffering Servant of God, so we are to fulfill the vocation of the children of God called unto holiness and service in the kingdom and church of God our Father.
Christmas is a time for rejoicing with the heavenly host that the Son of God has become man for us and our salvation. It is also a time to see and accept what is the vocation of the regenerate children of God and by the help of the Holy Ghost fulfill the same.
A BLESSED AND JOYFUL TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS!
Peter Toon December 20, 2006 (just returned from South America to the after-effects on a major storm in Washington State, USA, where electricity is still out for many in Seattle area—ours came on yesterday— and where many trees are down).
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Southernmost Cathedral in the Anglican Communion
At 8 a.m. on Sunday morning The Order for Holy Communion from The Book of Common Prayer (1662) is used in Christ Church Cathedral, Port Stanley, Falkland Isles. It is used again for Evensong in the evening.
Christ Church has a massive parish - all the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the British Antarctic Territories. The Cathedral status is based upon the fact that here was the seat, cathedra, of the Bishop of the Falkland Islands, whose diocese also covered the south of South America. Today, there are Anglican Bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone in the south of South America, and since 1978 the Archbishop of Canterbury has held the office of both Bishop of the Falkland Islands and Dean of the Cathedral. In 2006 - 2007 the Bishop of Dover of the Diocese of Canterbury acts as the Commissary and visits by courtesy of the Royal Air Force.
The foundation of Christ Church was laid in 1890 and it was consecrated by the first Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Waite Hockin Stirling in 1892. It replaced Holy Trinity Church, destroyed in 1886 by a Peat slip -- peat on the hill moved as a black mass of liquid earth, destroying buildings in its path.
Christ Church has a tower, nave and chancel, excellent stained glass windows, and many memorial tablets on its walls. Facing East, it looks like an English late Victorian Church of stone and bricks but its roof, like others in the town, is of corrugated iron rather than of traditional English slate. In the Chancel is the pipe organ, choir stalls, the Holy Table - with cross and two Candlesticks - and the Bishop´s Cathedra. There is room for about 200 people in the pews.
The Cathedral has a priest-in-charge - currently vacant - and a non-stipendary minister, the Rev. K. Biles. The priest-in-charge is called Rector, because he is Rector of the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the British Antarctic Territories. Technically, the Archbishop of Canterbury is both Dean and Rector of the Cathedral.
Regrettably, as in Great Britain itself, church attendance in the Falklands is low. With a population of around 3000, with 2000 in Stanley itself, not more than one tenth is found in Christ Church and the other churches -- R C and Protestant Nonconformist -- on a regular Sunday. However, for Christmas Carol Services and Funerals the Churches are packed.
Outside the west end of Christ Church is the Whalebone Arch, four jawbones from blue whales, erected as an arch in 1933 to celebrate 100 years of continuous British rule. And, despite an invasion by Argentina in April 1982, the territory still remains British - but with no sea or air contacts with its neighbour, Argentina.
In daily worship in Christ Church the Queen is prayed for as the Head of State and Church.
(this is written not from the F.I. but from Ushuaia, the southernmonst city in the world, to where Anglican missionaries came in 1869 to evangelize the native peoples, who had lived in this area of Tierra del Fuego for 6,000 years or more. Dec 7, 2006)
A blessed Advent to all my readers from Cape Horn which I visited yesterday on a reasonably calm sea and bright sunshine!
Advent I, 2006
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
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