A discussion starter from Dr Peter Toon
In the use of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, there is the tendency on the side of evangelical Protestantism to see them as human activities offered to God, and on the side of liberal Protestants (including Episcopalians) to see them as existing for their social implications in this world. Thus Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are seen in terms of (i) a person dedicating himself to God, and of remembering the atoning death of the Lord Jesus by Evangelicals; and (ii) a person dedicating himself to improving the created order and of being energized to go out into the world to join God in the mission of revolutionary change by liberal, progressive Protestants.
Let us here reflect upon the latter.
Here the question is not, Whether the Sacraments have social implications, for they most surely do (as Scott-Holland and Gore pointed out a century ago for Anglicans and Vatican II for Catholics in the mid 1960s); but, Whether the social implications are the primary purpose of the Sacraments.
It is well to remember as we begin our reflections that while Baptism requires only water, from a stream or a well or a manufactured water line, the Lord’s Supper requires bread and wine. Unlike water, bread and wine are not found as such in the earth but are made by human hands in complex processes from what is found in the earth. Thus what is needed for the visible part of the Sacrament of ENTRY into the Body of Christ is easily attainable from nature, but what is needed for the visible part of the Sacrament of REMAINING WITHIN the Body of Christ has to be made from nature’s fruit. This reminds us that the human being is a wonderful unity of flesh and spirit, not a pure spirit imprisoned in an alien body and not the most advanced product of biological evolution; and it is as a person who is a unity of spirit and flesh, that God ministers to him through Sacraments (which have both visible and invisible aspects). And the fact that man uses bread and wine for the Sacrament point clearly to relations and implications of the Sacrament and those who receive it to the world from where the bread and wine are taken. For the Church which kneels at the Holy Table to ignore the world outside, with its sorrows and problems, would be to deny the processes and context from which bread and wine of the Sacrament came. By using bread and wine—and oil for anointing—the Church is necessarily implicated in the world around it.
However, the Sacraments are first and foremost by the institution of the Lord Jesus Christ for the purpose of making, preserving, extending, maturing and perfecting the Body of Christ, the household of God the Father, the people of God. They are actions of God through his Ministers which call for the response of man and which have the purpose of drawing human beings into closer union with the Lord Jesus Christ so that through, with and in him, the Mediator and High Priest, they can be presented to the Father as one body, one people, one household, to worship and glorify him, to serve and obey him. The end of man is to enjoy and glorify God for ever not as a solitary individual but within the one Body of Christ as one member together with countless others.
The social implication arise because the Church of God is a divine society and a people who belong to the heavenly Jerusalem. In the world, this people is as salt to prevent putrefaction and is as light to bring illumination in the darkness. Yet the purpose of this involvement for and in the world is not only to improve the world and the lot of people therein; but it is to point to the new heaven and the new earth, to the way of eternal life in following the Lord Jesus. So, as it has been said, the Church has many functions in society (differing from place to place and culture to culture) but it must never—and can never if it is true to its God-given nature as the Mystical Body of Christ—become a mere function of society. The Church is the society of the heavenly Jerusalem and of the Blessed, Holy and Undivided Trinity. Thus in functioning within society the Church never takes it agenda from the world but only from the teaching of Christ and his apostles.
In The Episcopal Church, especially since the 1960s, the social implications of the Sacraments have been seen and acted upon. Regrettably, they have not usually been seen in the proper perspective. While it is possible to read the Service of Baptism and Holy Eucharist in the 1979 Prayer Book as seeing the social implications as subordinate to and arising from the act of Christ in drawing persons into his own self (that is into his glorified human nature) by his Sacraments, the reality is that they have been read by the progressive leadership in terms of their social implications and—virtually—their social implications only. They have become the means to apply—while using the familiar language of Christian Zion from the received tradition of worship— the doctrine of God as the divine Spirit as being primarily around, through and in the universe, and only, in a secondary sense, transcendent and apart from it (thus panentheism, process theology or pantheism are usually in place in Episcopal spheres).
So in reference to Baptism—as the installation of the lady Presiding Bishop in November 2006 illustrated to perfection—what is taken absolutely seriously is the so-called “Baptismal Covenant,” and within it the part where the baptized commit themselves to striving for peace and justice in the world and recognizing the dignity of all persons. And we know that this commitment is, in real terms, roughly the equivalent of the social and political agenda of the United Nations to improve this world—e.g. the so-called millennium goals.
And in reference to the Holy Eucharist, what is taken seriously are (a) the passing of the peace as an affirmation of the dignity of all and that God is through and in all whoever they are and whatever their orientation and nature; (b) the community spirit and the subordination of individualism to communitarianism for action; and (c) the being sent out into the world to do the will of God (that is, to fulfill the Baptismal Covenant). The priest/priestess at the altar, and the eating of bread and drinking of wine, are ways of identifying with Jesus the friend of outcasts, the needy and the unwanted. The sense that the Eucharist is the being lifted up to heaven to share in the Messianic Banquet with the whole company of heaven is not present—except perhaps in some metaphorical way to emphasize communal sharing on earth.
There is minimal or no reference in modern Episcopalianism on Baptism as the Sacrament of Regeneration (that is of being born again into the eternal kingdom of God, the heavenly family of God and the Mystical Body of Christ), which looks to heaven and not to earth primarily; and when looking at earth sends for the baptized as identified with the crucified Saviour to do battle with sin and Satan. Likewise there is minimal or no reference on the Eucharist as the Institution of Christ to be built up into him, into real members of the Mystical Body, to real union through him and by the Spirit with the Father. This is because the emphasis is basically immanentalist and horizontal, with little regard for the vertical and transcendent. Practically speaking God is subordinated to the cosmos.
Though the 1979 Prayer Book can be used by discerning people in ways that accord with the received tradition of orthodox Common Prayer, regrettably its primary and normal use in the modern Episcopal Church seems to be in the service of a new kind of Episcopal Religion which, while using a good amount of traditional terms, words and music, is in fact propagating a wholly different Deity and religion than that received by this Church from the Ecclesia Anglicana centuries ago.
[See further the 64 page booklets: Anglican Identity for a global Communion; The Anglican Formularies and Scripture; and Episcopal Innovations 1960-2004 by me from www.anglicanmarketplace.com or 1 800 727 1928 ]
drpetertoon@yahoo.com Sexagesima, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Sacraments—diminished by Subjectivism and Individualism?
When a human being, even a saint, partakes of a Sacrament he does not cease to be—in modern parlance—an “individual” and he does not suspend his subjectivity. That is, he is conscious of feelings and he knows himself to be distinct from others present.
This being so, many have seen the Sacraments as ministering only or primarily to him in his individuality and subjectivity in order to raise his affections towards God and away from sin, and to impel him in his personal life to live more fully in holiness and piety. However, if this is how the Sacrament is understood then, it may be claimed, the people have been inadequately instructed. Of course, to be inspired, uplifted and energized to go forth in one’s individual life to love and serve the Lord is good, really good, but if it is the expressed and only purpose of the Sacrament, then it is insufficient and misleading, for it leaves out a very major dimension.
Looking back through time, we now see that in the medieval period the Sacraments—in the context of the ex opere operato doctrine of divine presence and action— were generally considered to be a means of individual salvation and stimulants of individual devotion, piety, and sanctification. Any larger reference, theological and spiritual, was hidden and not prominent. That is, what we may call the organic relation of both the person receiving the Sacrament, and the Sacrament itself, to the Church as the Body of Christ (“the Mystical Body of Christ”) was not primary in interest or emphasis. If it were in mind at all, it lay behind the view of the Sacraments as divine actions working psychologically and atomistically. We are familiar with well-known devotional books from the medieval period which illustrate the concentration on subjectivity in piety.
This common medieval approach of subjectivity was not much changed by the Protestant Reformation or the Roman Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the one side the cry of, “by faith alone and not by works,” could easily create and nourish the primacy of subjectivity, that of faith in the heart; and, on the other, the emphasis upon attendance at Mass without regular receiving of Holy Communion encouraged subjectivity in the sense of being stimulated personally by the Event to be more devout and ready to do the will of the Lord in daily living. The relation of the Sacraments to the Mystical Body of Christ was not prominent in either tradition.
Later in Protestant history, there arose Pietism and then the Evangelical Revival and out of these emerged a warm, heart-centered form of piety with emphasis on “personal assurance” that “Jesus is mine.” By this time the impact of modern, expressive individualism was also being felt in western society, and so to the intense subjectivity of inner conviction and assurance was added the sense of a real and vital individual and direct relation[ship] with God the Father through Christ. Sacraments in Evangelical Protestantism were very much in the background and personal, individual experience of conversion or “being born again” was in the foreground. In fact Sacraments were seen as only having meaning as the acts of human beings towards God and not acts of God in grace toward man—thus Baptism was dedication to God and the Lord’s Supper was remembering Jesus on the Cross and his atoning work.
In the Catholic Camp the subjectivity, strengthened by individualism, was also much present where, for example, the Mass was less a fellowship of fellow believers and more a collection of individual Christians who rarely received the Body of Christ, but who engaged in private devotions as the priest did his important thing at the altar. Most of the devotions recommended for use by pious souls before, during and after Mass, encouraged personal, individual piety and sanctification. One attended the Service with many others but one was there as one individual amongst many such cultivating one’s relation with God and the saints.
There is a real sense that Vatican II, amongst other things, attempted in the 1960s to bring to the forefront the idea of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and of the Sacraments as the actions of Christ within His Body and therefore, in the first place for the good of the Body—and then secondarily for the individual sanctification and good of the individual member. (Those who know the writings of E Mersch, Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac will recall that they wrote powerfully of the Church as the Mystical Body and the Sacraments as intimately related to this Body.) However, trying to correct excessive subjectivism and expressive individualism is a difficult task and has to be renewed in each generation and just how far Rome has been successful in all this is open to debate. (It may have replaced the old ways with the new ways of communitarianism and easy approach to the altar!)
To get Protestants in general to think first of the Mystical Body and then of the Gospel Sacraments in relation to that Body is asking a lot! It is perhaps impossible for subjectivity and individualism seem to reign completely in much of American Protestantism and Evangelicalism. In the liberal main-line denominations, under the influence of the liturgical movement, attempts have been made to recover the doctrine of the Mystical Body but these attempts have been somewhat put off track through the presence of progressive, liberal theology.
In the Anglican tradition, as also in the Lutheran tradition, there is both the basis for the possibility of the priority of the Mystical Body and also of the possibility of the priority of subjectivism and individualism. In the classic Book of Common Prayer services of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the emphasis is upon the Holy Trinity as the God of the covenant of grace who in mercy provides the Sacraments in order to bring repentant sinners into this covenant and thereby into the kingdom, family and church of God. Thus, one can find in them the clear teaching that Sacraments exist within the Body of Christ primarily for the good of this Body, which is also the Bride of Christ. And one can major on this.
At the same time, because of the heavy emphasis in these Services upon the duty of repenting of sin and believing the promises of God, of self-examination and lively faith in the crucified and risen Christ, they can easily be read as encouraging the equivalent of the old medieval subjective approach, but with a more biblically-based expression.
We may summarize the essential points in the following way:
“The Sacraments do not operate by their effect upon our feelings, nor is their primary purpose our individual edification. They operate because they are the acts of Christ in his Mystical Body the Church, and their purpose is the building up of the Body of Christ by the ever closer and fuller incorporation of his members into him. It is the function of the Sacraments to establish, to maintain and to extend, to vivify and to unify, the Mystical Body of the whole Christ, made up of the Head and members in one organic and coherent pattern of life, to the glory of God the Father.”
I hope that it is the case that Anglicans in renewal in North America are moving away from subjectivism and individualism in their sacramental understanding and practice.
Sexagesima 2007 drpetertoon@yahoo.com
This being so, many have seen the Sacraments as ministering only or primarily to him in his individuality and subjectivity in order to raise his affections towards God and away from sin, and to impel him in his personal life to live more fully in holiness and piety. However, if this is how the Sacrament is understood then, it may be claimed, the people have been inadequately instructed. Of course, to be inspired, uplifted and energized to go forth in one’s individual life to love and serve the Lord is good, really good, but if it is the expressed and only purpose of the Sacrament, then it is insufficient and misleading, for it leaves out a very major dimension.
Looking back through time, we now see that in the medieval period the Sacraments—in the context of the ex opere operato doctrine of divine presence and action— were generally considered to be a means of individual salvation and stimulants of individual devotion, piety, and sanctification. Any larger reference, theological and spiritual, was hidden and not prominent. That is, what we may call the organic relation of both the person receiving the Sacrament, and the Sacrament itself, to the Church as the Body of Christ (“the Mystical Body of Christ”) was not primary in interest or emphasis. If it were in mind at all, it lay behind the view of the Sacraments as divine actions working psychologically and atomistically. We are familiar with well-known devotional books from the medieval period which illustrate the concentration on subjectivity in piety.
This common medieval approach of subjectivity was not much changed by the Protestant Reformation or the Roman Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the one side the cry of, “by faith alone and not by works,” could easily create and nourish the primacy of subjectivity, that of faith in the heart; and, on the other, the emphasis upon attendance at Mass without regular receiving of Holy Communion encouraged subjectivity in the sense of being stimulated personally by the Event to be more devout and ready to do the will of the Lord in daily living. The relation of the Sacraments to the Mystical Body of Christ was not prominent in either tradition.
Later in Protestant history, there arose Pietism and then the Evangelical Revival and out of these emerged a warm, heart-centered form of piety with emphasis on “personal assurance” that “Jesus is mine.” By this time the impact of modern, expressive individualism was also being felt in western society, and so to the intense subjectivity of inner conviction and assurance was added the sense of a real and vital individual and direct relation[ship] with God the Father through Christ. Sacraments in Evangelical Protestantism were very much in the background and personal, individual experience of conversion or “being born again” was in the foreground. In fact Sacraments were seen as only having meaning as the acts of human beings towards God and not acts of God in grace toward man—thus Baptism was dedication to God and the Lord’s Supper was remembering Jesus on the Cross and his atoning work.
In the Catholic Camp the subjectivity, strengthened by individualism, was also much present where, for example, the Mass was less a fellowship of fellow believers and more a collection of individual Christians who rarely received the Body of Christ, but who engaged in private devotions as the priest did his important thing at the altar. Most of the devotions recommended for use by pious souls before, during and after Mass, encouraged personal, individual piety and sanctification. One attended the Service with many others but one was there as one individual amongst many such cultivating one’s relation with God and the saints.
There is a real sense that Vatican II, amongst other things, attempted in the 1960s to bring to the forefront the idea of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and of the Sacraments as the actions of Christ within His Body and therefore, in the first place for the good of the Body—and then secondarily for the individual sanctification and good of the individual member. (Those who know the writings of E Mersch, Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac will recall that they wrote powerfully of the Church as the Mystical Body and the Sacraments as intimately related to this Body.) However, trying to correct excessive subjectivism and expressive individualism is a difficult task and has to be renewed in each generation and just how far Rome has been successful in all this is open to debate. (It may have replaced the old ways with the new ways of communitarianism and easy approach to the altar!)
To get Protestants in general to think first of the Mystical Body and then of the Gospel Sacraments in relation to that Body is asking a lot! It is perhaps impossible for subjectivity and individualism seem to reign completely in much of American Protestantism and Evangelicalism. In the liberal main-line denominations, under the influence of the liturgical movement, attempts have been made to recover the doctrine of the Mystical Body but these attempts have been somewhat put off track through the presence of progressive, liberal theology.
In the Anglican tradition, as also in the Lutheran tradition, there is both the basis for the possibility of the priority of the Mystical Body and also of the possibility of the priority of subjectivism and individualism. In the classic Book of Common Prayer services of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the emphasis is upon the Holy Trinity as the God of the covenant of grace who in mercy provides the Sacraments in order to bring repentant sinners into this covenant and thereby into the kingdom, family and church of God. Thus, one can find in them the clear teaching that Sacraments exist within the Body of Christ primarily for the good of this Body, which is also the Bride of Christ. And one can major on this.
At the same time, because of the heavy emphasis in these Services upon the duty of repenting of sin and believing the promises of God, of self-examination and lively faith in the crucified and risen Christ, they can easily be read as encouraging the equivalent of the old medieval subjective approach, but with a more biblically-based expression.
We may summarize the essential points in the following way:
“The Sacraments do not operate by their effect upon our feelings, nor is their primary purpose our individual edification. They operate because they are the acts of Christ in his Mystical Body the Church, and their purpose is the building up of the Body of Christ by the ever closer and fuller incorporation of his members into him. It is the function of the Sacraments to establish, to maintain and to extend, to vivify and to unify, the Mystical Body of the whole Christ, made up of the Head and members in one organic and coherent pattern of life, to the glory of God the Father.”
I hope that it is the case that Anglicans in renewal in North America are moving away from subjectivism and individualism in their sacramental understanding and practice.
Sexagesima 2007 drpetertoon@yahoo.com
Friday, February 09, 2007
Primates'Meeting Feb 14th
(Information below will help to understand the upcoming Primates Meeting. What is not stated here is that there will be a preliminary session involving the lady Primate and three ECUSA bishops in order for the Primates to get a sense of where is the ECUSA and what are is real intentions.)
[ENS] The Anglican Church of Tanzania (ACT) (http://www.anglican.or.tz), under the leadership of the Most Rev. Donald Leo Mtetemela, will host the 38 Primates of the Anglican Communion for their February 14-19 meeting at the White Sands Hotel in Jangwani Beach near Dar es Salaam -- Arabic for "Abode of Peace."
International concerns facing the Primates will include discussion of a report focusing on the response of the Episcopal Church's 75th General Convention to the Windsor Report (http://www.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004); a presentation on the Millennium Development Goals (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77743_ENG_HTM.htm) and the work of the Poverty and Trade Task Team, introduced by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, and Hellen Wangusa, recently appointed Anglican Observer at the United Nations; and conversations about the future of the Church in China and its relationship with the Anglican Communion.
Sessions will also be devoted to reports on the Panel of Reference (http://www.aco.org/commission/reference/index.cfm), which considers situations where congregations are in serious dispute with their bishop and unwilling to accept his or her episcopal ministry; an Anglican Covenant (http://www.aco.org/commission/covenant/index.cfm), proposed in order to give explicit articulation and recognition to the principles of co-operation and interdependence which hold the Anglican Communion together; the Listening Process(http://www.aco.org/listening/index.cfm), which strives to honor the process of mutual listening, particular to the experience of homosexual persons; a proposal for an in-depth worldwide study of the way Anglicans interpret the Bible; and theological education.
On Sunday, February 18, the Primates will travel by boat to Zanzibar for a Solemn Eucharist in the Anglican Cathedral -- where the altar is built over an old slave trading post – as the people of Zanzibar commemorate the 100th anniversary of the last slave sold on the island and the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery in the British Empire.
In a recent statement (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81880_ENG_HTM.htm), Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori underscored her commitment to the collaborative work of the Primates' Meeting.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_82218_ENG_HTM.htm
- - - - -
Anglican Primates: nearly one third are new to meeting
By Matthew Davies
[ENS] Twelve of the 38 Anglican Primates will be new when the Anglican Church of Tanzania (ACT) hosts the February 14-19 Primates Meeting at the White Sands Hotel in Jangwani Beach near Dar es Salaam.
Since the Primates last met in Northern Ireland in February 2005, new ones have been elected in Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia; Australia; Brazil; Burundi; Hong Kong; Indian Ocean; Ireland; Japan; Korea; Scotland; Southeast Asia and the United States.
The Primates' Meeting is one of the three instruments of communion in the Anglican Communion, the other two being the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the Anglican Communion's main decision-making body. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as primus inter pares, or "first among equals," is recognized as the focus of unity for the Anglican Communion, as resolved by the ACC at its June 2005 meeting in Nottingham, England.
Each province relates to other provinces within the Anglican Communion by being in full communion with the See of Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, calls the Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of Primates, and is president of the ACC. The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, serves as secretary. In Tanzania, the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, will attend the Primates' Meeting for the first time in his capacity as Primate of England. Williams, as chief pastor of the Church of England, is Primate of All England.
The term "primate" means senior archbishop or presiding bishop of a province in the Anglican Communion. In some provinces the primate is also called Archbishop and/or Metropolitan, while in others the term Presiding Bishop -- or as in Scotland, Primus -- is preferred. In some provinces the term is translated to the local language, such as Obispo Primado in the Province of the Southern Cone (South America).
In the United Churches of South Asia, the Moderators of the churches are invited to the Primates' Meetings by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Since 1979, the Primates of the autonomous Churches of the Anglican Communion have met regularly in consultation on theological, social, and international issues. Meeting locations include Ely, England in 1979; Washington, USA in 1981; Limuru, Kenya in 1983; Toronto, Canada in 1986; Cyprus in 1989; Ireland in 1991; Cape Town, Southern Africa in 1993; Windsor, England in 1995; Jerusalem in 1997; Oporto, Portugal in 2000; Kanuga, USA in 2001; Canterbury, England in 2002; Brazil, May in 2003; London, England in October 2003; and Newry, Northern Ireland in February 2005.
The Provinces and Primates of the Anglican Communion, as well as biographical information, is available at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/primates/biog/index.cfm.
=========================================================
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
[ENS] The Anglican Church of Tanzania (ACT) (http://www.anglican.or.tz), under the leadership of the Most Rev. Donald Leo Mtetemela, will host the 38 Primates of the Anglican Communion for their February 14-19 meeting at the White Sands Hotel in Jangwani Beach near Dar es Salaam -- Arabic for "Abode of Peace."
International concerns facing the Primates will include discussion of a report focusing on the response of the Episcopal Church's 75th General Convention to the Windsor Report (http://www.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004); a presentation on the Millennium Development Goals (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77743_ENG_HTM.htm) and the work of the Poverty and Trade Task Team, introduced by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, and Hellen Wangusa, recently appointed Anglican Observer at the United Nations; and conversations about the future of the Church in China and its relationship with the Anglican Communion.
Sessions will also be devoted to reports on the Panel of Reference (http://www.aco.org/commission/reference/index.cfm), which considers situations where congregations are in serious dispute with their bishop and unwilling to accept his or her episcopal ministry; an Anglican Covenant (http://www.aco.org/commission/covenant/index.cfm), proposed in order to give explicit articulation and recognition to the principles of co-operation and interdependence which hold the Anglican Communion together; the Listening Process(http://www.aco.org/listening/index.cfm), which strives to honor the process of mutual listening, particular to the experience of homosexual persons; a proposal for an in-depth worldwide study of the way Anglicans interpret the Bible; and theological education.
On Sunday, February 18, the Primates will travel by boat to Zanzibar for a Solemn Eucharist in the Anglican Cathedral -- where the altar is built over an old slave trading post – as the people of Zanzibar commemorate the 100th anniversary of the last slave sold on the island and the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery in the British Empire.
In a recent statement (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81880_ENG_HTM.htm), Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori underscored her commitment to the collaborative work of the Primates' Meeting.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_82218_ENG_HTM.htm
- - - - -
Anglican Primates: nearly one third are new to meeting
By Matthew Davies
[ENS] Twelve of the 38 Anglican Primates will be new when the Anglican Church of Tanzania (ACT) hosts the February 14-19 Primates Meeting at the White Sands Hotel in Jangwani Beach near Dar es Salaam.
Since the Primates last met in Northern Ireland in February 2005, new ones have been elected in Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia; Australia; Brazil; Burundi; Hong Kong; Indian Ocean; Ireland; Japan; Korea; Scotland; Southeast Asia and the United States.
The Primates' Meeting is one of the three instruments of communion in the Anglican Communion, the other two being the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the Anglican Communion's main decision-making body. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as primus inter pares, or "first among equals," is recognized as the focus of unity for the Anglican Communion, as resolved by the ACC at its June 2005 meeting in Nottingham, England.
Each province relates to other provinces within the Anglican Communion by being in full communion with the See of Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, calls the Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of Primates, and is president of the ACC. The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, serves as secretary. In Tanzania, the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, will attend the Primates' Meeting for the first time in his capacity as Primate of England. Williams, as chief pastor of the Church of England, is Primate of All England.
The term "primate" means senior archbishop or presiding bishop of a province in the Anglican Communion. In some provinces the primate is also called Archbishop and/or Metropolitan, while in others the term Presiding Bishop -- or as in Scotland, Primus -- is preferred. In some provinces the term is translated to the local language, such as Obispo Primado in the Province of the Southern Cone (South America).
In the United Churches of South Asia, the Moderators of the churches are invited to the Primates' Meetings by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Since 1979, the Primates of the autonomous Churches of the Anglican Communion have met regularly in consultation on theological, social, and international issues. Meeting locations include Ely, England in 1979; Washington, USA in 1981; Limuru, Kenya in 1983; Toronto, Canada in 1986; Cyprus in 1989; Ireland in 1991; Cape Town, Southern Africa in 1993; Windsor, England in 1995; Jerusalem in 1997; Oporto, Portugal in 2000; Kanuga, USA in 2001; Canterbury, England in 2002; Brazil, May in 2003; London, England in October 2003; and Newry, Northern Ireland in February 2005.
The Provinces and Primates of the Anglican Communion, as well as biographical information, is available at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/primates/biog/index.cfm.
=========================================================
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Church—ONE, but what kind of ONE? Giving the Church expectant and triumphant its vote!
A discussion starter from Peter Toon
“One Lord, One Faith, One Church,” we sing, and “I believe in one….Church,” we chant and say. Then we read what St Paul declared to the Ephesians: “there is one Body and one Spirit…one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism…”
There is, of course, a major question as to what we mean by “One”—whether it be a numerical unity or an organic unity, or both, or something else. Let us leave this question to later and begin by considering a very common modern attitude within North American Episcopalianism/Anglicanism, that the Oneness of the Church only applies to space and time in this cosmos.
From Baptism to Burial
Let us reflect upon the position, seemingly held practically (if not theoretically) speaking, by many leaders today that “the Church is primarily an earthly society, which we enter by baptism and leave by death/burial—that is, it is a continuing terrestrial organism with a constantly changing and overlapping membership.” Here the Church may be likened to many human societies which persist through space and time and whose membership is constantly changing as people join it and leave it (e.g., like the U.S. Congress). And like human societies, the Church has a governing body of which the most prominent aspect is being governed by bishops, who are seen simply in terms of successors of the apostles and as the people in charge. (Here the Episcopal office is like a relay-race where each runner drops out as he passes on the baton to the next.)
If one examines the agenda and the resolutions of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church from the 1970s, looks at the kinds of literature being published by its publishing houses in the last 40 years, and listens to the public statements of its Presiding Bishops, then one concludes that the Church is primarily an earthly society with a mission to change the world by introducing into it more “peace and justice” and with greater “respect for human dignity”. And, accordingly, God is presented as essentially the God who is around, within and for this cosmos and this earth in particular. There is no clear expressed belief in the utterly transcendent Sovereign LORD (the Blessed, Holy and Undivided Trinity) who created the cosmos out of nothing and who through the Incarnate Son, Jesus, and by the presence of the Holy Spirit, is creating a new heaven and a new earth, which are everlasting and where the fullness of human potential will be realized in the worship and service of this same LORD and in the beauty of holiness. Rather the emphasis is upon the God who enfolds and inhabits this world (i.e., not Trinitarian Theism but at best Process Theology or Panentheism).
Before this mindset gradually entered The Episcopal Church from the 1960s onwards, there was within the same Church (PECUSA) the deep conviction, held by many, that the Church as we know it now as creatures of space and time is only the fringe or the outpost of the whole Catholic Church of God. The One Church of God is militant on earth, expectant after the grave waiting in his presence for the Second Coming of Christ to the earth, and (to be) triumphant in heaven with the exalted Christ and the holy angles. So the local church (diocese and parishes) is a manifestation in space and time of the fullness of the Catholic Church; and thus her members, who have been baptized and meet at the Table of the Lord, are very much only a tiny minority of the total membership of the One Church of God. And within this belief the Bishop is not merely one in a series in a relay-race but is rather the local apostle who both embodies the unity of the Church and who ties this local church to the whole Church. Further, while sinful human beings, who believe the Gospel of the Father concerning his Son, enter the Church as militant by Baptism they do not leave it at death, but they pass into the Church expectant and thus on and into the Church triumphant.
Central to this mindset is the conviction that the Church as “Catholic” is not the same as the Church as “Militant here on earth.” The Church as Catholic and as One is of heaven and earth, not only of earth (Hebrews 12:22-24). “Catholic” covers militant here on earth, expectant until the Lord comes again, and triumphant, seated with him in glory everlasting.
Doctrines have practical consequences and applications.
The current Episcopal Church doctrine that the Church is the divine society we enter through Baptism and leave by burial/cremation logically and morally requires that the agenda of the Church be this-worldly, that is concerned with making this world a better place. And, as we have observed, the agenda of this Church is truly concerned with bringing the “kingdom of God” to earth and thereby greatly improving the lot of human beings, especially the poor, weak, sick, down-trodden, despised and neglected. In this system of thought, Jesus is the One who embraces the outcast and the needy as Savior.
So it is not unexpected to be and to do this, The Episcopal Church accepts secular views of what is right and good for people who live on this earth and have no prospect of going anywhere else from it. Thus its heavy commitment to modern theories of human rights and of what is human dignity, including the doctrine that in “Baptism” God gives to all the baptized the potential and right to assume later any ministry in the Church, if the Church actually calls one to that ministry (so whatever one’s “orientation” one can be in principle a clergyperson, even a bishop, if one is baptized).
Had the leadership of The Episcopal Church seen this Church as a small earthly part of the Church Militant and thus a part of the Catholic Church, which is expectant and triumphant in and through Christ Jesus, then, without denying a temporal mission. it would have concentrated on its vocation of calling people out of the evil age and sinful world into the kingdom of God and the family of God, as the new people of God of the new heaven on earth—and it would have known, as history has so often illustrated, that those who are the most heavenly-minded are the most earthly-useful. And when it came to voting in General Convention, it would have voted bearing in mind the already cast vote of those promoted to the Church expectant and triumphant. Thus innovations in doctrine would have on principle been rare, and only in the sense of applying truth to new and challenging situations.
Of course, to take the high ground and to act and vote with the Catholic Church is a very challenging and difficult thing for a part of the Church militant to do in modern America where individualism, relativism, pragmatism, therapism and utilitarianism are so powerfully present—we have only to look at the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in America, groups who seek to be orthodox, easily to find examples of submission to the standards of culture rather than of the kingdom of God (with marriage discipline for clergy standing out as a major example of submission). Nevertheless, it makes a tremendous difference to how a Synod votes if its members remember that the Church militant is only a small part of the whole Catholic Church. In such a mindset, innovations in doctrine and morals should be rare and only in terms of applying and updating of the received tradition (e.g., in area of medical ethics and use of the earth).
The Catholic Church as One
Many Protestants affirm that the Church is One in its invisibility, as the total number of the elect known unto God and found both in heaven and on earth. It is One in the sense of being numerically one and organically one in that each and every member is united to Christ Jesus by faith and through the Holy Spirit.
Many Roman Catholics affirm that the world-wide, global organization known as the Catholic Church and under the authority of the Pope as the successor of St Peter is the Catholic Church and is one numerically, organizationally and organically.
Anglicans in their best moments and doing their best theology have insisted that the Church is One both numerically and organically but not in the Protestant or the Roman Catholic form, but more like the [Eastern] Orthodox form (where there are patriarchs and a college of bishops, but not a single, all powerful Pope, above the college of bishops), but without the excessive claims of traditional Orthodoxy to uniqueness as the only, true Church.
The Church, even in its many different forms and denominations worldwide, is numerically one Church in that, in comparison with Islam and Judaism, there is one religion, Christianity, professed by millions who gather in churches, and the aggregate of all these is the Christian Church.
The Church is organically One in that all the baptized, who believe the Gospel, are united to Christ Jesus through the human nature he made his own from the Virgin’s womb; and thus, united to the One Christ, by the Holy Spirit, they are united through, in and with him, the Mediator, to the Blessed Holy Trinity (see John 17) so that in the deep and mysterious words of St Peter, they are “:partakers of the divine nature,” even as also they are the adopted children of God the Father. This organic unity is not without expression in space and time and the historical Episcopate, which is understood to be the continuance of the College of Apostles through space and time, is the sacramental means whereby the Church militant is maintained as organically one. (This is why for Anglicans the question of who may be ordained and consecrated to the apostolic office of Episcopos is critical. The innovation of The Episcopal Church is to claim that both women as women. and human persons as living in same-sex partnerships. are suitable candidates for the office of Bishop as the local apostle of Jesus Christ.)
Conclusion
The emerging leadership of the emerging new Province of the Anglican Communion in North America (replacing The Episcopal Church?) needs to have at the front of its common mind the doctrine that the “votes” and the mindset of the members of the Church expectant and triumphant, who are in the majority, need to be counted as plans are made for the future.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon Septuagesima 2007 drpetertoon@yahoo.com
“One Lord, One Faith, One Church,” we sing, and “I believe in one….Church,” we chant and say. Then we read what St Paul declared to the Ephesians: “there is one Body and one Spirit…one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism…”
There is, of course, a major question as to what we mean by “One”—whether it be a numerical unity or an organic unity, or both, or something else. Let us leave this question to later and begin by considering a very common modern attitude within North American Episcopalianism/Anglicanism, that the Oneness of the Church only applies to space and time in this cosmos.
From Baptism to Burial
Let us reflect upon the position, seemingly held practically (if not theoretically) speaking, by many leaders today that “the Church is primarily an earthly society, which we enter by baptism and leave by death/burial—that is, it is a continuing terrestrial organism with a constantly changing and overlapping membership.” Here the Church may be likened to many human societies which persist through space and time and whose membership is constantly changing as people join it and leave it (e.g., like the U.S. Congress). And like human societies, the Church has a governing body of which the most prominent aspect is being governed by bishops, who are seen simply in terms of successors of the apostles and as the people in charge. (Here the Episcopal office is like a relay-race where each runner drops out as he passes on the baton to the next.)
If one examines the agenda and the resolutions of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church from the 1970s, looks at the kinds of literature being published by its publishing houses in the last 40 years, and listens to the public statements of its Presiding Bishops, then one concludes that the Church is primarily an earthly society with a mission to change the world by introducing into it more “peace and justice” and with greater “respect for human dignity”. And, accordingly, God is presented as essentially the God who is around, within and for this cosmos and this earth in particular. There is no clear expressed belief in the utterly transcendent Sovereign LORD (the Blessed, Holy and Undivided Trinity) who created the cosmos out of nothing and who through the Incarnate Son, Jesus, and by the presence of the Holy Spirit, is creating a new heaven and a new earth, which are everlasting and where the fullness of human potential will be realized in the worship and service of this same LORD and in the beauty of holiness. Rather the emphasis is upon the God who enfolds and inhabits this world (i.e., not Trinitarian Theism but at best Process Theology or Panentheism).
Before this mindset gradually entered The Episcopal Church from the 1960s onwards, there was within the same Church (PECUSA) the deep conviction, held by many, that the Church as we know it now as creatures of space and time is only the fringe or the outpost of the whole Catholic Church of God. The One Church of God is militant on earth, expectant after the grave waiting in his presence for the Second Coming of Christ to the earth, and (to be) triumphant in heaven with the exalted Christ and the holy angles. So the local church (diocese and parishes) is a manifestation in space and time of the fullness of the Catholic Church; and thus her members, who have been baptized and meet at the Table of the Lord, are very much only a tiny minority of the total membership of the One Church of God. And within this belief the Bishop is not merely one in a series in a relay-race but is rather the local apostle who both embodies the unity of the Church and who ties this local church to the whole Church. Further, while sinful human beings, who believe the Gospel of the Father concerning his Son, enter the Church as militant by Baptism they do not leave it at death, but they pass into the Church expectant and thus on and into the Church triumphant.
Central to this mindset is the conviction that the Church as “Catholic” is not the same as the Church as “Militant here on earth.” The Church as Catholic and as One is of heaven and earth, not only of earth (Hebrews 12:22-24). “Catholic” covers militant here on earth, expectant until the Lord comes again, and triumphant, seated with him in glory everlasting.
Doctrines have practical consequences and applications.
The current Episcopal Church doctrine that the Church is the divine society we enter through Baptism and leave by burial/cremation logically and morally requires that the agenda of the Church be this-worldly, that is concerned with making this world a better place. And, as we have observed, the agenda of this Church is truly concerned with bringing the “kingdom of God” to earth and thereby greatly improving the lot of human beings, especially the poor, weak, sick, down-trodden, despised and neglected. In this system of thought, Jesus is the One who embraces the outcast and the needy as Savior.
So it is not unexpected to be and to do this, The Episcopal Church accepts secular views of what is right and good for people who live on this earth and have no prospect of going anywhere else from it. Thus its heavy commitment to modern theories of human rights and of what is human dignity, including the doctrine that in “Baptism” God gives to all the baptized the potential and right to assume later any ministry in the Church, if the Church actually calls one to that ministry (so whatever one’s “orientation” one can be in principle a clergyperson, even a bishop, if one is baptized).
Had the leadership of The Episcopal Church seen this Church as a small earthly part of the Church Militant and thus a part of the Catholic Church, which is expectant and triumphant in and through Christ Jesus, then, without denying a temporal mission. it would have concentrated on its vocation of calling people out of the evil age and sinful world into the kingdom of God and the family of God, as the new people of God of the new heaven on earth—and it would have known, as history has so often illustrated, that those who are the most heavenly-minded are the most earthly-useful. And when it came to voting in General Convention, it would have voted bearing in mind the already cast vote of those promoted to the Church expectant and triumphant. Thus innovations in doctrine would have on principle been rare, and only in the sense of applying truth to new and challenging situations.
Of course, to take the high ground and to act and vote with the Catholic Church is a very challenging and difficult thing for a part of the Church militant to do in modern America where individualism, relativism, pragmatism, therapism and utilitarianism are so powerfully present—we have only to look at the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in America, groups who seek to be orthodox, easily to find examples of submission to the standards of culture rather than of the kingdom of God (with marriage discipline for clergy standing out as a major example of submission). Nevertheless, it makes a tremendous difference to how a Synod votes if its members remember that the Church militant is only a small part of the whole Catholic Church. In such a mindset, innovations in doctrine and morals should be rare and only in terms of applying and updating of the received tradition (e.g., in area of medical ethics and use of the earth).
The Catholic Church as One
Many Protestants affirm that the Church is One in its invisibility, as the total number of the elect known unto God and found both in heaven and on earth. It is One in the sense of being numerically one and organically one in that each and every member is united to Christ Jesus by faith and through the Holy Spirit.
Many Roman Catholics affirm that the world-wide, global organization known as the Catholic Church and under the authority of the Pope as the successor of St Peter is the Catholic Church and is one numerically, organizationally and organically.
Anglicans in their best moments and doing their best theology have insisted that the Church is One both numerically and organically but not in the Protestant or the Roman Catholic form, but more like the [Eastern] Orthodox form (where there are patriarchs and a college of bishops, but not a single, all powerful Pope, above the college of bishops), but without the excessive claims of traditional Orthodoxy to uniqueness as the only, true Church.
The Church, even in its many different forms and denominations worldwide, is numerically one Church in that, in comparison with Islam and Judaism, there is one religion, Christianity, professed by millions who gather in churches, and the aggregate of all these is the Christian Church.
The Church is organically One in that all the baptized, who believe the Gospel, are united to Christ Jesus through the human nature he made his own from the Virgin’s womb; and thus, united to the One Christ, by the Holy Spirit, they are united through, in and with him, the Mediator, to the Blessed Holy Trinity (see John 17) so that in the deep and mysterious words of St Peter, they are “:partakers of the divine nature,” even as also they are the adopted children of God the Father. This organic unity is not without expression in space and time and the historical Episcopate, which is understood to be the continuance of the College of Apostles through space and time, is the sacramental means whereby the Church militant is maintained as organically one. (This is why for Anglicans the question of who may be ordained and consecrated to the apostolic office of Episcopos is critical. The innovation of The Episcopal Church is to claim that both women as women. and human persons as living in same-sex partnerships. are suitable candidates for the office of Bishop as the local apostle of Jesus Christ.)
Conclusion
The emerging leadership of the emerging new Province of the Anglican Communion in North America (replacing The Episcopal Church?) needs to have at the front of its common mind the doctrine that the “votes” and the mindset of the members of the Church expectant and triumphant, who are in the majority, need to be counted as plans are made for the future.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon Septuagesima 2007 drpetertoon@yahoo.com
Katherine and the work of God in this cosmos
Below is the latest “Meditation” by the lady Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, her last before she flies to East Africa for the Meeting of the 38 Primates of whom she is one, and the only lady one.
What strikes me about the content of her writing and speeches is its horizontalism or immanentism or pantheism (maybe panentheism). The God she serves seems only to act within and for this cosmos and not come into the cosmos from outside. Thus her kingdom of God is not a divine revolution created by an Incarnate God from “above” and “beyond” who created this world out of nothing and who is creating a new heaven and earth for those who are united to him by faith; but rather the kingdom is the improvement in quality of this world as a temporal reality and as the “body” of God or “the home of God.” Especially does she claim to find God in the least and lowest of human kind for as universal, good Spirit, Divinity cares for all, especially the needy, is her belief.
Her two sermons when she was installed in Washington D C on November 4-5 2006 revealed her active pantheism (or panentheism) and also showed how she had taken the Sacrament of Regeneration (birth into the heavenly kingdom and heavenly Family of the Transcendent GOD, the Father almighty) and made it into the Sacrament of peace and justice in this world and initiation into service in and for this world. She sounded like a dynamic form of the old liberalism that looked for the realization of the “kingdom of God” on earth through human striving (although now through United Nations Millennium schemes and goals). “Baptismal Sprinkling” and “The Baptismal Covenant” interpreted as committing one to the work of being co-worker with God, the universal Spirit, to improve this world seems to be her message. If Baptism is a this-worldly Sacrament of entry into a life of striving for peace and justice, then Eucharist is the affirmation of the strivers as the friends of God who are affirmed and fed by Divinity as they engage in the divine work.
Below she leaves out of the theme of Lent the self-examination, the confession of sin, the mortification of sin and the cleansing from sin, which are in the classic devotional books and she send us to look for Christ – not in the Word written, not in the Sacraments, not in the Saints, but in strangers whom we are to make our friends. For Mother Teresa of Calcutta this kind of talk could be based on Matthew 25:35 and in the context of the biblical doctrine of the Incarnation with no trace of pantheism; but with Katherine it sounds like a moral form of pantheism –looking for the universal Spirit in all and embracing it through them.
Read what she writes and make your own estimate!
To date I have not heard her say anything or I have not read anything by her that causes me to think that she believes in what is called classic Trinitarian Theism, which is the basis of Catholic Christianity and the foundational truth of Anglican worship in the classic editions of The Book of Common Prayer. She is as far as I can tell a pantheist or a panentheist (for which see the recent book by John W Cooper, Panentheism, Baker Books, Grand Rapids).
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
What strikes me about the content of her writing and speeches is its horizontalism or immanentism or pantheism (maybe panentheism). The God she serves seems only to act within and for this cosmos and not come into the cosmos from outside. Thus her kingdom of God is not a divine revolution created by an Incarnate God from “above” and “beyond” who created this world out of nothing and who is creating a new heaven and earth for those who are united to him by faith; but rather the kingdom is the improvement in quality of this world as a temporal reality and as the “body” of God or “the home of God.” Especially does she claim to find God in the least and lowest of human kind for as universal, good Spirit, Divinity cares for all, especially the needy, is her belief.
Her two sermons when she was installed in Washington D C on November 4-5 2006 revealed her active pantheism (or panentheism) and also showed how she had taken the Sacrament of Regeneration (birth into the heavenly kingdom and heavenly Family of the Transcendent GOD, the Father almighty) and made it into the Sacrament of peace and justice in this world and initiation into service in and for this world. She sounded like a dynamic form of the old liberalism that looked for the realization of the “kingdom of God” on earth through human striving (although now through United Nations Millennium schemes and goals). “Baptismal Sprinkling” and “The Baptismal Covenant” interpreted as committing one to the work of being co-worker with God, the universal Spirit, to improve this world seems to be her message. If Baptism is a this-worldly Sacrament of entry into a life of striving for peace and justice, then Eucharist is the affirmation of the strivers as the friends of God who are affirmed and fed by Divinity as they engage in the divine work.
Below she leaves out of the theme of Lent the self-examination, the confession of sin, the mortification of sin and the cleansing from sin, which are in the classic devotional books and she send us to look for Christ – not in the Word written, not in the Sacraments, not in the Saints, but in strangers whom we are to make our friends. For Mother Teresa of Calcutta this kind of talk could be based on Matthew 25:35 and in the context of the biblical doctrine of the Incarnation with no trace of pantheism; but with Katherine it sounds like a moral form of pantheism –looking for the universal Spirit in all and embracing it through them.
Read what she writes and make your own estimate!
To date I have not heard her say anything or I have not read anything by her that causes me to think that she believes in what is called classic Trinitarian Theism, which is the basis of Catholic Christianity and the foundational truth of Anglican worship in the classic editions of The Book of Common Prayer. She is as far as I can tell a pantheist or a panentheist (for which see the recent book by John W Cooper, Panentheism, Baker Books, Grand Rapids).
February 7, 2007
In this season: 'Christ in the stranger's guise'
A reflection from the Presiding Bishop
[ENS] Note to readers: With this posting, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori continues a series of occasional reflections for the people of the Episcopal Church. The reflections are also available on the Presiding Bishop's web pages at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/pb.
In this season: 'Christ in the stranger's guise'
For the People of the Episcopal Church
As the primates of the Anglican Communion prepare to gather next week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I ask your prayers for all of us, and for our time together. I especially ask you to remember the mission that is our reason for being as the Anglican Communion –- God's mission to heal this broken world. The primates gather for fellowship, study, and conversation at these meetings, begun less than thirty years ago. The ability to know each other and understand our various contexts is the foundation of shared mission. We cannot easily be partners with strangers.
That meeting ends just as Lent begins, and as we approach this season, I would suggest three particularly appropriate attitudes. Traditionally the season has been one in which candidates prepared for baptism through prayer, fasting, and acts of mercy. This year, we might all constructively pray for greater awareness and understanding of the strangers around us, particularly those strangers whom we are not yet ready or able to call friends. That awareness can only come with our own greater investment in discovering the image of God in those strangers. It will require an attitude of humility, recognizing that we can not possibly know the fullness of God if we are unable to recognize his hand at work in unlikely persons or contexts. We might constructively fast from a desire to make assumptions about the motives of those strangers not yet become friends. And finally, we might constructively focus our passions on those in whom Christ is most evident –- the suffering, those on the margins, the forgotten, ignored, and overlooked of our world. And as we seek to serve that suffering servant made evident in our midst, we might reflect on what Jesus himself called us –-
friends (John 15:15).
Celtic Rune of Hospitality
I saw a stranger yesterday;
I put food in the eating place,
drink in the drinking place,
music in the listening place;
and in the sacred name of the Triune God
he blessed myself and my house,
my cattle and my dear ones,
and the lark said in her song:
Oft, Oft, Oft, goes Christ in the stranger's guise.
Shalom,
Katharine
-- The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is Presiding Bishop and Primate of the
Episcopal Church.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Monday, February 05, 2007
Preparing for LENT: Ash Wednesday – Why no Collect on Fasting?
People ask me: Why does The Book of Common Prayer (1662) delay the required Prayer (Collect) on Fasting during Lent to the First Sunday in Lent when it should, by rights, be prayed on the First Day of Lent?
The Collect for the first Sunday is interestingly one of the very few such prayers addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than to his Father in heaven; and it does concern the discipline of abstinence and fasting. It was written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549 and begins,
O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory…..
The required Prayer (Collect) appointed for Ash Wednesday addresses the Father:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
And this Collect contains no reference to fasting at all.
The answer to the question of why no reference to fasting is that back in the fifth and six centuries when the Christian Year, with its Collects, Epistles and Gospels, was created, Lent began on the Sunday which was called Quadragesima for it was about 40 days before Easter ( with the previous Sundays being named Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima). Only later was the beginning of Lent put back to the previous Wednesday to make an exact 40 days, not counting the Sundays in the period of Lent. So in the tradition of the medieval Church of England, although Lent began literally forty days (excluding Sundays) before Easter on the previous Wednesday (called Ash Wednesday), the Collect for the First Sunday testified to (and historically belonged to) an earlier period when Lent actually began on the Sunday which was 40 days or so before Easter.
Now back to the special Prayer for Ash Wednesday which is repeated every day throughout Lent. It was composed by Archbishop Cranmer, using as his base, the Latin Collect prayed at the benediction of the ashes on Ash Wednesday in the medieval English Church. Before the ashes were laid upon the heads of the members of the congregation the priest said, “Remember, man, that thou art ashes [dust] and unto ashes [dust] shalt thou return.”
Here is the old English Latin Collect used with the ashes in an English translation, which seeks to preserve the style of the original:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast compassion upon all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost not impute the sins of men by reason of their penitence; who also dost succour those who labour in necessity; Vouchsafe to bless [+] and sanctify [+] these ashes, which thou has appointed us to bear upon our heads after the manner of the Ninevites, in token of humiliation and holy devotion, and in order to the washing away of our offences; and, by this invocation of thy holy name, grant that all those that shall bear them upon their heads, to implore thereby thy mercy, may obtain from thee both the pardon of all their offences, and also grace so to begin today their holy fasts, that on the day of Resurrection, they may be counted worthy to approach to the holy Paschal feast, and hereafter to receive everlasting glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A final word is in order. Lent, of course, is not about historical research but is about devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. May our abstinence and fasting in Lent be adorned in Gospel righteousness.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
The Collect for the first Sunday is interestingly one of the very few such prayers addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than to his Father in heaven; and it does concern the discipline of abstinence and fasting. It was written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549 and begins,
O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory…..
The required Prayer (Collect) appointed for Ash Wednesday addresses the Father:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
And this Collect contains no reference to fasting at all.
The answer to the question of why no reference to fasting is that back in the fifth and six centuries when the Christian Year, with its Collects, Epistles and Gospels, was created, Lent began on the Sunday which was called Quadragesima for it was about 40 days before Easter ( with the previous Sundays being named Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima). Only later was the beginning of Lent put back to the previous Wednesday to make an exact 40 days, not counting the Sundays in the period of Lent. So in the tradition of the medieval Church of England, although Lent began literally forty days (excluding Sundays) before Easter on the previous Wednesday (called Ash Wednesday), the Collect for the First Sunday testified to (and historically belonged to) an earlier period when Lent actually began on the Sunday which was 40 days or so before Easter.
Now back to the special Prayer for Ash Wednesday which is repeated every day throughout Lent. It was composed by Archbishop Cranmer, using as his base, the Latin Collect prayed at the benediction of the ashes on Ash Wednesday in the medieval English Church. Before the ashes were laid upon the heads of the members of the congregation the priest said, “Remember, man, that thou art ashes [dust] and unto ashes [dust] shalt thou return.”
Here is the old English Latin Collect used with the ashes in an English translation, which seeks to preserve the style of the original:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast compassion upon all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost not impute the sins of men by reason of their penitence; who also dost succour those who labour in necessity; Vouchsafe to bless [+] and sanctify [+] these ashes, which thou has appointed us to bear upon our heads after the manner of the Ninevites, in token of humiliation and holy devotion, and in order to the washing away of our offences; and, by this invocation of thy holy name, grant that all those that shall bear them upon their heads, to implore thereby thy mercy, may obtain from thee both the pardon of all their offences, and also grace so to begin today their holy fasts, that on the day of Resurrection, they may be counted worthy to approach to the holy Paschal feast, and hereafter to receive everlasting glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A final word is in order. Lent, of course, is not about historical research but is about devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. May our abstinence and fasting in Lent be adorned in Gospel righteousness.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Baptism & Regeneration— Medieval, R.C., Reformed Catholic and Evangelical Approaches
A discussion starter from Peter Toon dated Septuagesima 2007
On the surface, the teaching of the late medieval English Church (using the Sarum Liturgy), the Reformed English Church (using The Book of Common Prayer in the edition of 1552, 1559 or 1662) and the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545) are alike with respect to Baptism and Regeneration, and very different from the teaching of Evangelicalism during and after the Evangelical Revival (involving Wesley & Whitefield) in the eighteenth century.
Why would one say this? Was not the Church of England supposedly Protestant from 1549 onwards? Yes, It was Protestant but not in the modern meaning of this word; rather in the then meaning of, “protesting against error and on behalf of the Faith given in Holy Scripture and expounded by the Early Church of the Fathers.”
The Sarum Baptismal Service, the Baptism Services in The BCP and the decrees and canons of Trent all declared that God regenerated the child (or the adult) at Baptism and that Baptism, though administered by a human minister, is God’s Sacrament and God’s gracious, saving work. All agreed that the infant children of baptized Christians, brought by Godparents acting vicariously on behalf of the infants, were born again, that is born into the kingdom of God and into the family of God; at the same time, the guilt arising from original sin was cancelled.
Further, all agreed that the infants were to be brought up in the Christian Faith, taught the Catechism and brought to the Bishop for Confirmation and to the Table of the Lord when they reached a certain age ( 7 or 8 for Roman Catholics, 12 for Anglican Reformed Catholics).
Where then were the differences?
The medieval and Roman Catholics teaching stated that in Baptism not only was there the new birth providing a new status before God but also there was the beginning of Justification, which is a process, they taught, of being made righteous, of being internally renovated and sanctified. In contrast the Anglican Reformed Catholics (see The 39 Articles of Religion, Numbers XI, XII, & XIII, and the famous Homily referred to in XI) taught that Justification by God is the accounting by God of the righteousness of Christ to the believing, repentant sinner, who accepts the promises of God by faith (itself a gift of God). And sanctification, or the process of being made righteous, follows from this, as the forgiven sinner lives by faith and faithfulness as a believing child of God. Thus, for Reformed Catholics, Justification by Faith occurs as the baptized child becomes conscious of who he is by grace before God and then personally believes the Gospel concerning Jesus Christ. (In the case of an adult such personal believing would occur before or in relation to Baptism.)
So there is great emphasis in authentic Reformed Catholic teaching on the nurturing and instructing of the baptized infant by Godparents, parents and local church. And the purpose of this is to bring the child to that consciousness of knowing who he is before God and embracing the Faith which his Godparents vicariously had exercised for him and in his name. Thus at this time, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, when he makes what they confessed on his behalf his very own, he can be said to be justified by faith and he is brought to Confirmation by the bishop and then to First Communion. Since Holy Communion is for believers who have engaged in self-examination, are repentant and believing, he does not go to the Table of the Lord until he is sufficiently mature so to engage.
Of course, the Medieval and Roman Catholics also emphasized the need for nurture and instruction, but because they had a different approach to Justification and also taught that the Baptism itself, by being what it is, achieves what God intends it to achieve (“ex opere operato”) simply by being performed aright, did not place so much emphasis as did the Reformed Catholics on the need for the baptized child to embrace for himself by repentance and faith what was already his by right and title through Baptism. And they allowed the baptized infant to receive Holy Communion earlier (approximately 5 years earlier) than the Reformed Catholics, because again they understood the Sacrament of the Altar to act “ex opere operato” and to give eternal life to the baptized whether they came as conscious believers or not. They simply had to offer no internal resistance.
All this said, it remains true that the Formularies of the Reformed Church of England agree with the Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent in teaching that regeneration occurs in the Sacrament of Baptism. And regeneration is birth into the sphere of the Covenant of grace, the kingdom of God and the Family of God.
The Reformed Catholic teaching of the Reformed Church of England on regeneration at or in Baptism was practically rejected first by the Puritans and Nonconformists (Dissenters) in England in the 17 and 18 centuries, and then by the famous preachers of the Evangelical Revival, notably George Whitefield. The latter preached to thousands of persons, who had been baptized as infants, and called upon them to repent and believe as if they were pagans and as if they had not been baptized. They told them that they needed to be born again, to be converted and to become real Christians. They equated new birth with conversion and regeneration with internal renovation. Thus they—and many after them—effectively made Infant Baptism into a ceremony of child dedication with no specific grace of God given or received in it. What was clearly held together by the Early Church, the medieval Church and the English Reformation and Formularies, was prized apart in and after the Evangelical Revival. Regrettably it has stayed that way for millions.
The only way that this prizing apart could have been avoided would have been by Wesley and Whitefield setting an example in preaching and teaching of using the model of the erring and apostate Israelites of the Old Testament and how they were called back to the meaning of the Covenant and Circumcision by the prophets. This way the Sacrament of Baptism would have been preserved as a Sacrament of Grace. Logically, the only way Baptism makes any sense according to the popular Evangelical preaching since the eighteenth century is the kind advocated by the Baptists, where it is a personal witness by one who claims to be a believer of his belief and commitment to Jesus. Thus it is not an act of God in adopting a person as his child through new birth, but is a profession of faith and commitment by a professed believer; and if Infant Baptism is at all administered in modern evangelism and church growth activities, it is nothing more than an elaborate ceremony of dedication of a child to God, hoping and praying that he will become a Christian.
Recovering The Anglican Way of Reformed Catholicism involves recovering the full doctrine and practice of Infant Baptism & Adult Baptism with complete follow-up. It will mean adopting methods of evangelism and church growth in imitation of the Early Church so that the Sacrament of Baptism (as in the Great Commission of Jesus—Matt 28 & Mk 16) is the focal point of entry into the kingdom and family of God, preceded by preaching of repentance and faith (with catechizing), and followed by teaching the Way of the Lord!
[I have written in some detail about these topics in various books –e.g., Justification and Sanctification, Born Again and Evangelical Theology, 1833-1856—visit http://www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Peter_Toons_Books_Online/Doctrine/anglicanway.htm ]
On the surface, the teaching of the late medieval English Church (using the Sarum Liturgy), the Reformed English Church (using The Book of Common Prayer in the edition of 1552, 1559 or 1662) and the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545) are alike with respect to Baptism and Regeneration, and very different from the teaching of Evangelicalism during and after the Evangelical Revival (involving Wesley & Whitefield) in the eighteenth century.
Why would one say this? Was not the Church of England supposedly Protestant from 1549 onwards? Yes, It was Protestant but not in the modern meaning of this word; rather in the then meaning of, “protesting against error and on behalf of the Faith given in Holy Scripture and expounded by the Early Church of the Fathers.”
The Sarum Baptismal Service, the Baptism Services in The BCP and the decrees and canons of Trent all declared that God regenerated the child (or the adult) at Baptism and that Baptism, though administered by a human minister, is God’s Sacrament and God’s gracious, saving work. All agreed that the infant children of baptized Christians, brought by Godparents acting vicariously on behalf of the infants, were born again, that is born into the kingdom of God and into the family of God; at the same time, the guilt arising from original sin was cancelled.
Further, all agreed that the infants were to be brought up in the Christian Faith, taught the Catechism and brought to the Bishop for Confirmation and to the Table of the Lord when they reached a certain age ( 7 or 8 for Roman Catholics, 12 for Anglican Reformed Catholics).
Where then were the differences?
The medieval and Roman Catholics teaching stated that in Baptism not only was there the new birth providing a new status before God but also there was the beginning of Justification, which is a process, they taught, of being made righteous, of being internally renovated and sanctified. In contrast the Anglican Reformed Catholics (see The 39 Articles of Religion, Numbers XI, XII, & XIII, and the famous Homily referred to in XI) taught that Justification by God is the accounting by God of the righteousness of Christ to the believing, repentant sinner, who accepts the promises of God by faith (itself a gift of God). And sanctification, or the process of being made righteous, follows from this, as the forgiven sinner lives by faith and faithfulness as a believing child of God. Thus, for Reformed Catholics, Justification by Faith occurs as the baptized child becomes conscious of who he is by grace before God and then personally believes the Gospel concerning Jesus Christ. (In the case of an adult such personal believing would occur before or in relation to Baptism.)
So there is great emphasis in authentic Reformed Catholic teaching on the nurturing and instructing of the baptized infant by Godparents, parents and local church. And the purpose of this is to bring the child to that consciousness of knowing who he is before God and embracing the Faith which his Godparents vicariously had exercised for him and in his name. Thus at this time, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, when he makes what they confessed on his behalf his very own, he can be said to be justified by faith and he is brought to Confirmation by the bishop and then to First Communion. Since Holy Communion is for believers who have engaged in self-examination, are repentant and believing, he does not go to the Table of the Lord until he is sufficiently mature so to engage.
Of course, the Medieval and Roman Catholics also emphasized the need for nurture and instruction, but because they had a different approach to Justification and also taught that the Baptism itself, by being what it is, achieves what God intends it to achieve (“ex opere operato”) simply by being performed aright, did not place so much emphasis as did the Reformed Catholics on the need for the baptized child to embrace for himself by repentance and faith what was already his by right and title through Baptism. And they allowed the baptized infant to receive Holy Communion earlier (approximately 5 years earlier) than the Reformed Catholics, because again they understood the Sacrament of the Altar to act “ex opere operato” and to give eternal life to the baptized whether they came as conscious believers or not. They simply had to offer no internal resistance.
All this said, it remains true that the Formularies of the Reformed Church of England agree with the Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent in teaching that regeneration occurs in the Sacrament of Baptism. And regeneration is birth into the sphere of the Covenant of grace, the kingdom of God and the Family of God.
The Reformed Catholic teaching of the Reformed Church of England on regeneration at or in Baptism was practically rejected first by the Puritans and Nonconformists (Dissenters) in England in the 17 and 18 centuries, and then by the famous preachers of the Evangelical Revival, notably George Whitefield. The latter preached to thousands of persons, who had been baptized as infants, and called upon them to repent and believe as if they were pagans and as if they had not been baptized. They told them that they needed to be born again, to be converted and to become real Christians. They equated new birth with conversion and regeneration with internal renovation. Thus they—and many after them—effectively made Infant Baptism into a ceremony of child dedication with no specific grace of God given or received in it. What was clearly held together by the Early Church, the medieval Church and the English Reformation and Formularies, was prized apart in and after the Evangelical Revival. Regrettably it has stayed that way for millions.
The only way that this prizing apart could have been avoided would have been by Wesley and Whitefield setting an example in preaching and teaching of using the model of the erring and apostate Israelites of the Old Testament and how they were called back to the meaning of the Covenant and Circumcision by the prophets. This way the Sacrament of Baptism would have been preserved as a Sacrament of Grace. Logically, the only way Baptism makes any sense according to the popular Evangelical preaching since the eighteenth century is the kind advocated by the Baptists, where it is a personal witness by one who claims to be a believer of his belief and commitment to Jesus. Thus it is not an act of God in adopting a person as his child through new birth, but is a profession of faith and commitment by a professed believer; and if Infant Baptism is at all administered in modern evangelism and church growth activities, it is nothing more than an elaborate ceremony of dedication of a child to God, hoping and praying that he will become a Christian.
Recovering The Anglican Way of Reformed Catholicism involves recovering the full doctrine and practice of Infant Baptism & Adult Baptism with complete follow-up. It will mean adopting methods of evangelism and church growth in imitation of the Early Church so that the Sacrament of Baptism (as in the Great Commission of Jesus—Matt 28 & Mk 16) is the focal point of entry into the kingdom and family of God, preceded by preaching of repentance and faith (with catechizing), and followed by teaching the Way of the Lord!
[I have written in some detail about these topics in various books –e.g., Justification and Sanctification, Born Again and Evangelical Theology, 1833-1856—visit http://www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Peter_Toons_Books_Online/Doctrine/anglicanway.htm ]
Friday, February 02, 2007
Schism—acceptable when for “good purpose”?
In the hymn which begins, “The Church’s one foundation…,” we eventually reach the words,
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schism rent asunder,
By heresies distrest,
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, ‘How long?’
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.
These lines were written well over a hundred years ago when European and American Protestantism was on the move in missionary work all around the world. Yet the writer, S. J. Stone (1839-1900), a C. of E. clergyman, is not in this hymn viewing the Protestant advance but the fact that the Church of God, centered in heaven, which has “One Lord, One Faith, one Birth” and blesses “One Holy Name” and “partakes One Holy Food” and presses on to “One Hope,” is on earth in the West torn apart by schism and distressed by heresy. So much so that the real saints of God long for the Parousia of the Lord Christ to judge the living and the dead and inaugurate the kingdom of God to bring to an end this situation.
The sentiments of S.J. Stone could well be those of godly American Christians today as they look into the vast supermarket of forms of Christian religion that exist across and through the U.S.A. “Surely,” their mind and heart cry out, “the Church of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus, was never intended even in this evil age on earth to be sub-divided into so many and various competitive groups with a massive assortment of emphases and with each majoring on its favorite minors!”
Further, and most regrettably, the sentiments could well be [are] those of godly American Anglicans/Episcopalians as they look at the daily-increasing variety of forms of Anglican groups, jurisdictions, denominations, parties, and congregations, which are coming into existence as the result of (a) the innovations in doctrine and practice of The Episcopal Church from the 1970s, (b) secession from this Church; (c) the endemic individualism and rights-culture of the U.S.A., and (d) the American tradition of denominationalism and sectarianism of the last two or three centuries.
Looking back to the exodus from The Episcopal Church of primarily Anglo-Catholic priests and laity in 1977, two things of note happened. First, the determination of the group to stay together as “the Continuing Anglican Church” did not last long. Internal disagreements over this and that led to further schism, this time from one another, rather than from The Episcopal Church. Secondly, Anglo-Catholics within The Episcopal Church began to use the slogan, “Schism is the worst kind of heresy” and this was a kind of call to stay loyal to The Episcopal Church through thick and thin.
Since the splitting of the original Continuing Church into several parts from 1978, those several parts have spawned others and to these have been added further groups of continuing Anglicans, not necessarily Anglo-Catholic but of varying churchmanships. At the same time, some of those of Anglo-Catholic mindset, who remain within The Episcopal Church, have allowed the idea that schism is the worst kind of heresy to cause them to accept some or all of the innovatory doctrines of The Episcopal Church.
Over the last few years, and particularly since the General Convention of The Episcopal Church in mid 2006, there has been a noticeable amount of schism by Episcopalians leaving the Church to create independent congregations, which invite an overseas bishop to be their bishop in the emergency situation. It is difficult to keep up with the number of such congregations and their adoptive bishops. At the same time the Anglican Mission in the Americas (with three branches) and the Convocation of Nigerian Church in America, along with associations of churches supervised from India by Anglican Communion bishops, add to the results of schism. It is a very complex picture that few have a full handle on!
One problem with schism—as the original Continuers found out and know daily—is that once you engage in schism it is easy to engage in more of it, and it is easier to justify the second and third time than the first. With this goes the right commonly assumed by local Anglican churches to choose one bishop and/or jurisdiction and, on not liking the arrangement or man, to switch to others. The new extra-mural Anglicans, who are mostly Evangelical and Charismatic types, have yet to learn the results of schism but they will do so, and it will probably not be good learning.
And then we must not forget that this mindset and these practices are being exported to other countries by American Anglicans.
Bearing all this in mind—and taking into account the most powerful evidence visible in the American supermarket of religions—one has to say that the possibility of there being One Anglican Way serving One Lord and worshipping One Father is remote indeed. It is also to indulge in optimistic thinking that there will be two only—one supposedly orthodox and the other supposedly progressively liberal. Perhaps the so called “orthodox” dioceses of The Episcopal Church will get to create a new Province and invite some others like say The Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in the Americas to join them, but that will leave much Anglicanism outside.
Schism, undertaken even for good reasons in a crisis, seems to have effects that are impossible to control. That is in the words of Stone:
Yet Saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song—(when the Lord comes!).
Unity will only be achieved, it seems, by the glorious Parousia of the Lord Jesus and the completion of the redeeming work of God in space and time.
However, this is not to free us of the obligation to do all we can to unite Christians and this means, as Anglicans, beginning with uniting Anglicans first. This duty seems to be virtually wholly over-looked today.
Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Feb 2. 2007
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schism rent asunder,
By heresies distrest,
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, ‘How long?’
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.
These lines were written well over a hundred years ago when European and American Protestantism was on the move in missionary work all around the world. Yet the writer, S. J. Stone (1839-1900), a C. of E. clergyman, is not in this hymn viewing the Protestant advance but the fact that the Church of God, centered in heaven, which has “One Lord, One Faith, one Birth” and blesses “One Holy Name” and “partakes One Holy Food” and presses on to “One Hope,” is on earth in the West torn apart by schism and distressed by heresy. So much so that the real saints of God long for the Parousia of the Lord Christ to judge the living and the dead and inaugurate the kingdom of God to bring to an end this situation.
The sentiments of S.J. Stone could well be those of godly American Christians today as they look into the vast supermarket of forms of Christian religion that exist across and through the U.S.A. “Surely,” their mind and heart cry out, “the Church of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus, was never intended even in this evil age on earth to be sub-divided into so many and various competitive groups with a massive assortment of emphases and with each majoring on its favorite minors!”
Further, and most regrettably, the sentiments could well be [are] those of godly American Anglicans/Episcopalians as they look at the daily-increasing variety of forms of Anglican groups, jurisdictions, denominations, parties, and congregations, which are coming into existence as the result of (a) the innovations in doctrine and practice of The Episcopal Church from the 1970s, (b) secession from this Church; (c) the endemic individualism and rights-culture of the U.S.A., and (d) the American tradition of denominationalism and sectarianism of the last two or three centuries.
Looking back to the exodus from The Episcopal Church of primarily Anglo-Catholic priests and laity in 1977, two things of note happened. First, the determination of the group to stay together as “the Continuing Anglican Church” did not last long. Internal disagreements over this and that led to further schism, this time from one another, rather than from The Episcopal Church. Secondly, Anglo-Catholics within The Episcopal Church began to use the slogan, “Schism is the worst kind of heresy” and this was a kind of call to stay loyal to The Episcopal Church through thick and thin.
Since the splitting of the original Continuing Church into several parts from 1978, those several parts have spawned others and to these have been added further groups of continuing Anglicans, not necessarily Anglo-Catholic but of varying churchmanships. At the same time, some of those of Anglo-Catholic mindset, who remain within The Episcopal Church, have allowed the idea that schism is the worst kind of heresy to cause them to accept some or all of the innovatory doctrines of The Episcopal Church.
Over the last few years, and particularly since the General Convention of The Episcopal Church in mid 2006, there has been a noticeable amount of schism by Episcopalians leaving the Church to create independent congregations, which invite an overseas bishop to be their bishop in the emergency situation. It is difficult to keep up with the number of such congregations and their adoptive bishops. At the same time the Anglican Mission in the Americas (with three branches) and the Convocation of Nigerian Church in America, along with associations of churches supervised from India by Anglican Communion bishops, add to the results of schism. It is a very complex picture that few have a full handle on!
One problem with schism—as the original Continuers found out and know daily—is that once you engage in schism it is easy to engage in more of it, and it is easier to justify the second and third time than the first. With this goes the right commonly assumed by local Anglican churches to choose one bishop and/or jurisdiction and, on not liking the arrangement or man, to switch to others. The new extra-mural Anglicans, who are mostly Evangelical and Charismatic types, have yet to learn the results of schism but they will do so, and it will probably not be good learning.
And then we must not forget that this mindset and these practices are being exported to other countries by American Anglicans.
Bearing all this in mind—and taking into account the most powerful evidence visible in the American supermarket of religions—one has to say that the possibility of there being One Anglican Way serving One Lord and worshipping One Father is remote indeed. It is also to indulge in optimistic thinking that there will be two only—one supposedly orthodox and the other supposedly progressively liberal. Perhaps the so called “orthodox” dioceses of The Episcopal Church will get to create a new Province and invite some others like say The Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in the Americas to join them, but that will leave much Anglicanism outside.
Schism, undertaken even for good reasons in a crisis, seems to have effects that are impossible to control. That is in the words of Stone:
Yet Saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song—(when the Lord comes!).
Unity will only be achieved, it seems, by the glorious Parousia of the Lord Jesus and the completion of the redeeming work of God in space and time.
However, this is not to free us of the obligation to do all we can to unite Christians and this means, as Anglicans, beginning with uniting Anglicans first. This duty seems to be virtually wholly over-looked today.
Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Feb 2. 2007
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
From Septuagesima to Quadragesima – journey in penitence
(a) SEPTUAGESIMA : The Third Sunday before Lent (Sunday, February 4, 2007)
The Collect,
O LORD, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9. 24-27 The Gospel: St. Matthew 20. 1-16
By St Paul’s words from the Epistle, we are encouraged to imitate true athletes. As they prepare for contests, so we are to discipline and prepare ourselves with God’s help for doing his service in the challenging contests of life.
From our Lord’s parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard in the Gospel, we learn to let God be God and in our working for him to submit readily to his wisdom, grace and judgment, knowing that he always knows best.
In the Prayer, we address God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ -- and our Father by adoption and grace -- as the Lord, the One who has all authority and power. And, as it were, as sinners, aware of our condition, we speak from a distance (as is suggested by the Latin verb, exaudire, used in the original). This approach is appropriate here for we proceed fervently and humbly to ask God for a major favor. This is not merely to note our petition but “favourably to hear the prayers of thy people.” We recall the ten lepers of Luke 17 who “stood afar off” when they cried, “Jesus, Master have mercy on us.” And more to the point, we recall the publican of Luke 18 who stood “afar off” and “smote upon his breast” when he said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
Sin weakens and affects all aspects of human life, degrades the sinner, and causes a bondage of the will to sin. Guilt of sin before God causes us to deserve his condemnation and judgment. But thanks be to God the Father who sent the Lord Jesus Christ to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. Thus we cry for deliverance to the Lord our God who is good and merciful and who is glorified in the pardoning and justification of sinners.
And we end by celebrating this Lord Jesus who is now enthroned in heaven with the Father and the Holy Ghost..
(b) SEXAGESIMA : The Second Sunday before Lent (February 11, 2007)
The Collect,
O LORD GOD, who seest that we put not our trust in anything we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11.19-31 The Gospel: Luke 8. 4-15
By St. Paul’s description of his suffering for Christ as his apostle to the Gentiles in the Epistle, we are encouraged to see that it is in our weakness that we are strong, strong, that is, in the strength of Christ Jesus by his Spirit.
In the parable of the Sower and the seed from the Gospel, we are taught how the Word of God takes root in human lives and we are called to be the persons in whom when the Word is sown it will grow and flourish.
In praying this Prayer, we are reminded of the apostle Paul who had very many achievements and much in terms of accomplishment as a missionary to claim. Yet he did not glory in any of these things but his glory was in the Cross of his Saviour.
God sees fully and clearly into our hearts and it is surely our desire, our hope and our aim, that, as he does, he will not see self-righteousness and pride. Let him see that we do not put our trust in anything that we do but put it only in him as our Father by adoption and grace.
Since we do heartily trust in God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ then we can humbly ask that he will so arrange the course of lives by his providential care that we shall be defended against all adversity, physical and spiritual.
We recognize that it is only as we learn not to trust in our resources, achievements and possessions that we are able to trust in God, in his wisdom, providence, love and protection. As St Paul put it, “When I am weak, them I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:19).
(c) QUINQUAGESIMA: The next Sunday before Lent (February 18, 2007)
The Collect,
O LORD, who has taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosever liveth is counted dead before thee: Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13. 1-13 The Gospel: Luke 18. 31-43
From St Paul, in the Epistle, we receive the great hymn of love/charity. God’s love to us, our love of him and of fellow creatures will survive death and will be fulfilled in the life of the age to come. For God is Love. Faith and hope will cease because fulfilled with the arrival of the age to come, but Love will continue for God is Love.
From Jesus, in the Gospel, we see love in action. First of all, it is love of his Father and love for his people that led him to go to Jerusalem, where he know that certain pain, suffering and death awaited him as he fulfilled the vocation of the Suffering Servant of God. Secondly, it was compassion for the blind man at Jericho which led Jesus to heal him by the power of God.
We observe a close connection between the Sexagesima Collect and this one for Quiquagesima. There we were taught that no trust can be put in human doing and achievement, even if it be the work of a St Paul, undergone for the Gospel’s sake – “who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do.” Here the lesson or teaching upon which the petition in the prayer is built is that these “doings”, which break when we lean upon them heavily, are of no avail before God; they are “without charity nothing worth.”
We recognize that genuine love – the will to do true and genuine good to other people – is not something that we can produce within our own beings, for, after all we are sinful creatures. Thus we beseech God our Father to send the Holy Ghost, who is the very Love that unites the Father and the Son in the Blessed Trinity, that he may place the divine gift of charity in our souls and lives.
The presence of this heavenly Love is “the very bond of peace and all virtues”. This statement is based upon Ephesians 4:8, “endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” and Colossians 3:14, where after listing virtues, St Paul writes, “And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.”
And we end this Prayer in recognizing that without genuine love or charity in our souls and lives we are not spiritually alive before God and not in communion with him. St John declared that, “he that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 John 3:14) and St James tells us that “faith without works is dead” (2:20).
All our prayers ascend to the Father through the Son and by/in the Holy Ghost.
Conclusion
Having gone humbly through the mini preparation for the major season of Lent, we are now ready by God’s prevenient grace to enter into the spiritual disciplines which begin on Ash Wednesday and move into Quadragesima. So we shall pray:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
One thing we lean afresh in the traditional preparation for Lent and the keeping of it is that the genuine confession of sins from a contrite heart is in fact the praise of God, for it is a supreme acknowledgement of his justice, his mercy and forgiveness.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
The Collect,
O LORD, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9. 24-27 The Gospel: St. Matthew 20. 1-16
By St Paul’s words from the Epistle, we are encouraged to imitate true athletes. As they prepare for contests, so we are to discipline and prepare ourselves with God’s help for doing his service in the challenging contests of life.
From our Lord’s parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard in the Gospel, we learn to let God be God and in our working for him to submit readily to his wisdom, grace and judgment, knowing that he always knows best.
In the Prayer, we address God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ -- and our Father by adoption and grace -- as the Lord, the One who has all authority and power. And, as it were, as sinners, aware of our condition, we speak from a distance (as is suggested by the Latin verb, exaudire, used in the original). This approach is appropriate here for we proceed fervently and humbly to ask God for a major favor. This is not merely to note our petition but “favourably to hear the prayers of thy people.” We recall the ten lepers of Luke 17 who “stood afar off” when they cried, “Jesus, Master have mercy on us.” And more to the point, we recall the publican of Luke 18 who stood “afar off” and “smote upon his breast” when he said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
Sin weakens and affects all aspects of human life, degrades the sinner, and causes a bondage of the will to sin. Guilt of sin before God causes us to deserve his condemnation and judgment. But thanks be to God the Father who sent the Lord Jesus Christ to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. Thus we cry for deliverance to the Lord our God who is good and merciful and who is glorified in the pardoning and justification of sinners.
And we end by celebrating this Lord Jesus who is now enthroned in heaven with the Father and the Holy Ghost..
(b) SEXAGESIMA : The Second Sunday before Lent (February 11, 2007)
The Collect,
O LORD GOD, who seest that we put not our trust in anything we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11.19-31 The Gospel: Luke 8. 4-15
By St. Paul’s description of his suffering for Christ as his apostle to the Gentiles in the Epistle, we are encouraged to see that it is in our weakness that we are strong, strong, that is, in the strength of Christ Jesus by his Spirit.
In the parable of the Sower and the seed from the Gospel, we are taught how the Word of God takes root in human lives and we are called to be the persons in whom when the Word is sown it will grow and flourish.
In praying this Prayer, we are reminded of the apostle Paul who had very many achievements and much in terms of accomplishment as a missionary to claim. Yet he did not glory in any of these things but his glory was in the Cross of his Saviour.
God sees fully and clearly into our hearts and it is surely our desire, our hope and our aim, that, as he does, he will not see self-righteousness and pride. Let him see that we do not put our trust in anything that we do but put it only in him as our Father by adoption and grace.
Since we do heartily trust in God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ then we can humbly ask that he will so arrange the course of lives by his providential care that we shall be defended against all adversity, physical and spiritual.
We recognize that it is only as we learn not to trust in our resources, achievements and possessions that we are able to trust in God, in his wisdom, providence, love and protection. As St Paul put it, “When I am weak, them I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:19).
(c) QUINQUAGESIMA: The next Sunday before Lent (February 18, 2007)
The Collect,
O LORD, who has taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosever liveth is counted dead before thee: Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13. 1-13 The Gospel: Luke 18. 31-43
From St Paul, in the Epistle, we receive the great hymn of love/charity. God’s love to us, our love of him and of fellow creatures will survive death and will be fulfilled in the life of the age to come. For God is Love. Faith and hope will cease because fulfilled with the arrival of the age to come, but Love will continue for God is Love.
From Jesus, in the Gospel, we see love in action. First of all, it is love of his Father and love for his people that led him to go to Jerusalem, where he know that certain pain, suffering and death awaited him as he fulfilled the vocation of the Suffering Servant of God. Secondly, it was compassion for the blind man at Jericho which led Jesus to heal him by the power of God.
We observe a close connection between the Sexagesima Collect and this one for Quiquagesima. There we were taught that no trust can be put in human doing and achievement, even if it be the work of a St Paul, undergone for the Gospel’s sake – “who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do.” Here the lesson or teaching upon which the petition in the prayer is built is that these “doings”, which break when we lean upon them heavily, are of no avail before God; they are “without charity nothing worth.”
We recognize that genuine love – the will to do true and genuine good to other people – is not something that we can produce within our own beings, for, after all we are sinful creatures. Thus we beseech God our Father to send the Holy Ghost, who is the very Love that unites the Father and the Son in the Blessed Trinity, that he may place the divine gift of charity in our souls and lives.
The presence of this heavenly Love is “the very bond of peace and all virtues”. This statement is based upon Ephesians 4:8, “endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” and Colossians 3:14, where after listing virtues, St Paul writes, “And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.”
And we end this Prayer in recognizing that without genuine love or charity in our souls and lives we are not spiritually alive before God and not in communion with him. St John declared that, “he that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 John 3:14) and St James tells us that “faith without works is dead” (2:20).
All our prayers ascend to the Father through the Son and by/in the Holy Ghost.
Conclusion
Having gone humbly through the mini preparation for the major season of Lent, we are now ready by God’s prevenient grace to enter into the spiritual disciplines which begin on Ash Wednesday and move into Quadragesima. So we shall pray:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
One thing we lean afresh in the traditional preparation for Lent and the keeping of it is that the genuine confession of sins from a contrite heart is in fact the praise of God, for it is a supreme acknowledgement of his justice, his mercy and forgiveness.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Let God be God—even in Infant Baptism and Christian Initiation
In the present crisis and confusion of the Anglican Way in North America, the Sacrament of Baptism has been and is variously negated, dumbed-down, politicized and neglected. Often it is merely seen as a ceremonial dedication to God or as a religious and social custom, or both. By progressive liberals it is even seen as consecration to a radical program of peace and justice in the world (see “The Baptismal Covenant” of The Episcopal Church).
Here let us try to answer the question: What is needed in order that Infant Baptism functions as a Sacrament according to the doctrine provided in The Book of Common Prayer (1662 & USA 1928 & Canada 1962)—the Service and the Catechism therein—and in The Articles of Religion (especially XXV-XXVII). The answer is in four sections.
What God has to do. There can be no Sacrament if God the Father for the sake of Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit is not active as the God of all grace and mercy. As the basis of this holy Ceremony, there has to be in place from God (a) the covenant of grace as the new covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus, into which the baptized can be placed; (b) the promises of salvation proclaimed in the Gospel concerning the Lord Jesus which the baptized can embrace; (c) the offer of the forgiveness of sin which the baptized can receive; (d) the Family of God into which the baptized can be adopted, and (e) the gift of the Holy Spirit to work within the baptized.
What the Church has to be and do. For the Sacrament to be truly the Gospel Sacrament authorized by the Lord Jesus Christ, Head of the Church, there must be in place the local church as a microcosm of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, and with an ordained ministry. Further, there must be the preaching of the Word of God, the administration of the Sacraments, sound Liturgy, and the exercise of basic, godly discipline. Further, there has to be a pastoral context in which families are treasured and where children are welcomed, nurtured and catechized, leading to Confirmation, taking Holy Communion and committed church membership as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
What the Godparents and Parents have to be and do. In allowing Infant Baptism in his Church the Lord Jesus places a high privilege and heavy responsibility upon those who stand in the place of the infant at the font (as sureties) and who, in his name and for his salvation, make solemn vows and promises to God the Father. As with the centurion (Matthew 8, Luke 7) whose faith availed for the healing of his servant, so with Godparents and Parents who believe vicariously for the Infant and commit to doing all that is required to provide for him the nurture and instruction needed so that he will grow into a truly committed Christian, a true member of the Body of Christ.
What the Infant has to be and do. By the faith of his sureties, the baptized infant is welcomed by God the Father into his family, kingdom, and covenant. As he grows and matures, God expects him and actually provides him with all spiritual help so that he can consciously make his own as a real possession what had been given him at his Baptism. That is, he is consciously to turn away from sin, to believe the Gospel, to learn the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments as the basis of a Christian mind and action. And he has to cooperate with his Godparents and Parents in becoming a committed member of the local church, by being Confirmed and receiving Holy Communion. In short, what his Godparents vowed and promised in his name, he is to make truly his own, by the help of the Spirit of the Lord.
When Infant Baptism and the follow-up from it as Christian Initiation of children is functioning well, then it is usually the case that the local church is in a healthy state. There is growth in maturity and numbers. Right now, very regrettably, as a reflection of the sickness and indiscipline of much of the Anglican Way in North America, the Sacrament of Infant Baptism is not being prepared for, explained, administered and followed-up as it ought to be!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Here let us try to answer the question: What is needed in order that Infant Baptism functions as a Sacrament according to the doctrine provided in The Book of Common Prayer (1662 & USA 1928 & Canada 1962)—the Service and the Catechism therein—and in The Articles of Religion (especially XXV-XXVII). The answer is in four sections.
What God has to do. There can be no Sacrament if God the Father for the sake of Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit is not active as the God of all grace and mercy. As the basis of this holy Ceremony, there has to be in place from God (a) the covenant of grace as the new covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus, into which the baptized can be placed; (b) the promises of salvation proclaimed in the Gospel concerning the Lord Jesus which the baptized can embrace; (c) the offer of the forgiveness of sin which the baptized can receive; (d) the Family of God into which the baptized can be adopted, and (e) the gift of the Holy Spirit to work within the baptized.
What the Church has to be and do. For the Sacrament to be truly the Gospel Sacrament authorized by the Lord Jesus Christ, Head of the Church, there must be in place the local church as a microcosm of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, and with an ordained ministry. Further, there must be the preaching of the Word of God, the administration of the Sacraments, sound Liturgy, and the exercise of basic, godly discipline. Further, there has to be a pastoral context in which families are treasured and where children are welcomed, nurtured and catechized, leading to Confirmation, taking Holy Communion and committed church membership as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
What the Godparents and Parents have to be and do. In allowing Infant Baptism in his Church the Lord Jesus places a high privilege and heavy responsibility upon those who stand in the place of the infant at the font (as sureties) and who, in his name and for his salvation, make solemn vows and promises to God the Father. As with the centurion (Matthew 8, Luke 7) whose faith availed for the healing of his servant, so with Godparents and Parents who believe vicariously for the Infant and commit to doing all that is required to provide for him the nurture and instruction needed so that he will grow into a truly committed Christian, a true member of the Body of Christ.
What the Infant has to be and do. By the faith of his sureties, the baptized infant is welcomed by God the Father into his family, kingdom, and covenant. As he grows and matures, God expects him and actually provides him with all spiritual help so that he can consciously make his own as a real possession what had been given him at his Baptism. That is, he is consciously to turn away from sin, to believe the Gospel, to learn the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments as the basis of a Christian mind and action. And he has to cooperate with his Godparents and Parents in becoming a committed member of the local church, by being Confirmed and receiving Holy Communion. In short, what his Godparents vowed and promised in his name, he is to make truly his own, by the help of the Spirit of the Lord.
When Infant Baptism and the follow-up from it as Christian Initiation of children is functioning well, then it is usually the case that the local church is in a healthy state. There is growth in maturity and numbers. Right now, very regrettably, as a reflection of the sickness and indiscipline of much of the Anglican Way in North America, the Sacrament of Infant Baptism is not being prepared for, explained, administered and followed-up as it ought to be!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
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