Neither The Book of Common Prayer nor The Articles of Religion regard marriage as a sacrament (even if it is “commonly called a sacrament”), but rather as an ordinance of God the Creator, an ordinance which, when properly entered into by the two parties, the Church blesses, prays for and supports. That is, two persons covenant to marry each other and are the ministers of the nuptial bond. They do this, however, in the presence of God, the Judge, who knows the secrets of all our hearts. The Church supervises the marriage ceremony and witnesses to the covenant made between them. Then through its Minister the Church bestows a blessing of God the Holy Trinity upon the couple with appropriate prayers for their well-being.
The rites in the 1662 and 1928 editions have the same basic structure and content, but the 1928 is shorter, having none of the psalms and versicles of 1662. Further, the 1928 has been edited so as to remove from it that which “Enlightenment” sensitivity in 1789 and women’s dignity in 1928 found unacceptable. Thus the “three causes for which Matrimony was ordained by God” in the Preface of 1662 are missing from that of the first American edition of 1789 (and then also of 1892 & 1928). The verb “to obey” found in the covenantal promise of the wife to the husband in 1662, 1789 and 1892 is removed from 1928. Further, the short Sermon provided in 1662, in which the relation and duties of husband and wife are declared according to the teaching of St Paul, does not occur in any of the American editions, and neither do several of the concluding prayers. Then also while 1662 clearly assumes that procreation is an essential part of marriage (unless age or infirmity prevent) 1928 is much less clear and actually requires no statement or prayer concerning the duty of procreation (the one prayer for children is optional).
Therefore we find that a very clear doctrine of “headship” of the husband is both presupposed and declared in 1662 whilst in 1928, though there is a priority given to the man—he coming first in responding to the questions—the “headship” is minimized in nature and scope, so that unless you are looking for it you will not find it. Also, the hesitation or even refusal of 1928 to declare that procreation is a godly duty points to the context of the growing use of artificial birth-control (which in 1930, pressed by American Bishops, the Lambeth Conference endorsed—much to the horror of the Pope and the Vatican!).
It seems to be a natural development—given the growing secularization and liberalization of The Episcopal Church in the twentieth century—from this 1928 text to the Marriage Service in the 1979 Episcopal Prayer Book, where, as would expect, there is no sign of male headship, where procreation is presented as a choice, where the use of artificial birth control is assumed and where the possibility of divorce and remarriage in church is taken for granted. It seems that once the church gives up a high doctrine of marriage it quickly moves to affirming a minimal one. Of course, neither in 1928 nor in the 1979 Prayer Book is there any hint whatsoever of same-sex marriage.
What then are the “three causes for which Matrimony was ordained”? Here they are from the 1662 edition:
First, it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nature of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy name.
Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.
Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.
Though the Canadian edition of 1962 did not follow the example of 1928 and remove these statements completely, it did revise them to read:
Matrimony was ordained for the hallowing of the union betwixt man and woman; for the procreation of children to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord; and for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, in both prosperity and adversity.
This or course avoids the reference to the “negative cause,” the disordered soul of man, the reality of human nature as we know it. Like the 1928 the Canadian 1962 has removed obedience from the promise of the woman to the man.
It would appear that 1662 is so anti-cultural today (even if it is rendered into a suitable form of contemporary English) that few would want to use it—the man because he is embarrassed to have his wife obey him and the woman because she wants a marriage of equals.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Baptism and the Covenant [of Grace]: The BCP editions of 1662 & 1928
Baptism is a Sacrament instituted by the Lord Jesus and is intimately related to the proclamation and the reception of the Gospel of the Father concerning the same Lord Jesus. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt.28:18-20). Therefore, The Book of Common Prayer provides both for the Baptism of the infant children of baptized, believing parents as well as of adult converts to Christ.
While the two editions have the same doctrine of Baptism, they do not have identical provision of Services, and this is due in major part to the different time and social contexts in which they were created and approved. In 1662 there is one service for infants and another “for those of riper years,” while in 1928 there is one service for all, with provision for infants and adults within it. And, importantly, in both editions it is assumed that in the case of both infants and adults, Baptism is to be followed by Confirmation, either immediately in the case of adults or when reaching maturity in terms of infants.
Basic doctrines in the Services
Perhaps it would be useful to state briefly what are the basic doctrines which are either presupposed or set forth in these Services in order that their shape and structure can be the more easily appreciated.
1. Each and every child born into the world as a descendant of Adam is already a sinner before God’s tribunal because of the presence of original sin in the soul—that is an inborn bias towards evil and self-centeredness.
2. Each child also commits actual sin throughout his life.
3. Jesus Christ, as the New and Second Adam, offered himself as a sacrifice and atonement for the sins of the world and this offering was accepted by God the Father.
4. In order to receive forgiveness and cleansing both for original and actual sin, each human being needs to be baptized both with water and the Holy Spirit.
5. That is he needs to be born again (regenerated in soul) by the Holy Spirit and to be baptized in water as he (or his sponsors) believes the Gospel of the Father concerning his Son and commits himself to the service of Christ Jesus.
6. Baptism is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
7. Infants with Christian parents (who are within the covenant of grace – Acts 2:39) are baptized only if Christian sponsors (godfathers and god-mothers) stand in their place (and nurture them) until they reach an age whereby they can appropriate and make the Faith truly their own.
8. In and by Baptism “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” a believer is made a member of the congregation of Christ’s flock and becomes a soldier in the army of Christ to fight against the devil and all evil.
9. Baptism is completed in Confirmation, where by the laying on of the hands of the Bishop, the baptized believer is strengthened by the reception of gifts from the ascended Lord Jesus through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
10. Infant Baptism only makes sense if (a) the child is from baptized Christian parents, and (b) he is “virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life” at home and in the local Church—thus provision of the Catechism in both editions and “The Offices of Instruction” in the 1928.
11. The relation established with God by Baptism in terms of internal regeneration and outward faith and commitment “to confess the faith of Christ crucified and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world and the devil” is not a covenant where God is the senior partner. The baptized believer has no rights only wonderful privileges and daily duties in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father almighty, within the fellowship of the Church and in the world. In the covenant of grace, God establishes both the covenant itself and its terms; therefore human beings are called into it on terms that already exist and which they accept willingly as forgiven sinners.
12. Normally, but not absolutely, First Communion for the baptized will be after Confirmation. (On this, see the important study by Roger Beckwith & Andrew Daunton-Fear, The Water and the Wine, The Latimer Trust, 2006—www.latimertrust.org )
Comparison with 1979 prayer book of The Episcopal Church, USA
Those who created the 1979 prayer book rejected the doctrine and shape of the Baptismal Services in the classic Common Prayer Tradition in the editions of 1662, 1928 and Canada 1962. First of all, they claimed to follow the ancient Church of the East (rather than of the West) and insisted that “Initiation is complete in Baptism” and that Confirmation as a ceremony is not to be used as the completion of Baptism but, where desired, as a kind of public reception into church membership. Secondly, they downplayed the traditional doctrines of sin, Satan and the evil world, together with regeneration, in order to exalt the doctrine of human freedom and co-operation with God. Thus they created “The Baptismal Covenant” as the centerpiece. This they present as the human side of the agreement made with God in Baptism; and it is a commitment, amongst other things, by the covenant partners to radical social action to improve God’s world for him with peace and justice. (To the latter the new PB of the ECUSA is deeply committed, at least in word as her sermons in the National Cathedral on Nov. 4 & 5 demonstrated.)
Faithful Episcopalians need to return immediately to the Baptismal Services in one of the classic editions of the one Book of Common Prayer and avoid the service in the 1979 book.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
While the two editions have the same doctrine of Baptism, they do not have identical provision of Services, and this is due in major part to the different time and social contexts in which they were created and approved. In 1662 there is one service for infants and another “for those of riper years,” while in 1928 there is one service for all, with provision for infants and adults within it. And, importantly, in both editions it is assumed that in the case of both infants and adults, Baptism is to be followed by Confirmation, either immediately in the case of adults or when reaching maturity in terms of infants.
Basic doctrines in the Services
Perhaps it would be useful to state briefly what are the basic doctrines which are either presupposed or set forth in these Services in order that their shape and structure can be the more easily appreciated.
1. Each and every child born into the world as a descendant of Adam is already a sinner before God’s tribunal because of the presence of original sin in the soul—that is an inborn bias towards evil and self-centeredness.
2. Each child also commits actual sin throughout his life.
3. Jesus Christ, as the New and Second Adam, offered himself as a sacrifice and atonement for the sins of the world and this offering was accepted by God the Father.
4. In order to receive forgiveness and cleansing both for original and actual sin, each human being needs to be baptized both with water and the Holy Spirit.
5. That is he needs to be born again (regenerated in soul) by the Holy Spirit and to be baptized in water as he (or his sponsors) believes the Gospel of the Father concerning his Son and commits himself to the service of Christ Jesus.
6. Baptism is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
7. Infants with Christian parents (who are within the covenant of grace – Acts 2:39) are baptized only if Christian sponsors (godfathers and god-mothers) stand in their place (and nurture them) until they reach an age whereby they can appropriate and make the Faith truly their own.
8. In and by Baptism “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” a believer is made a member of the congregation of Christ’s flock and becomes a soldier in the army of Christ to fight against the devil and all evil.
9. Baptism is completed in Confirmation, where by the laying on of the hands of the Bishop, the baptized believer is strengthened by the reception of gifts from the ascended Lord Jesus through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
10. Infant Baptism only makes sense if (a) the child is from baptized Christian parents, and (b) he is “virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life” at home and in the local Church—thus provision of the Catechism in both editions and “The Offices of Instruction” in the 1928.
11. The relation established with God by Baptism in terms of internal regeneration and outward faith and commitment “to confess the faith of Christ crucified and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world and the devil” is not a covenant where God is the senior partner. The baptized believer has no rights only wonderful privileges and daily duties in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father almighty, within the fellowship of the Church and in the world. In the covenant of grace, God establishes both the covenant itself and its terms; therefore human beings are called into it on terms that already exist and which they accept willingly as forgiven sinners.
12. Normally, but not absolutely, First Communion for the baptized will be after Confirmation. (On this, see the important study by Roger Beckwith & Andrew Daunton-Fear, The Water and the Wine, The Latimer Trust, 2006—www.latimertrust.org )
Comparison with 1979 prayer book of The Episcopal Church, USA
Those who created the 1979 prayer book rejected the doctrine and shape of the Baptismal Services in the classic Common Prayer Tradition in the editions of 1662, 1928 and Canada 1962. First of all, they claimed to follow the ancient Church of the East (rather than of the West) and insisted that “Initiation is complete in Baptism” and that Confirmation as a ceremony is not to be used as the completion of Baptism but, where desired, as a kind of public reception into church membership. Secondly, they downplayed the traditional doctrines of sin, Satan and the evil world, together with regeneration, in order to exalt the doctrine of human freedom and co-operation with God. Thus they created “The Baptismal Covenant” as the centerpiece. This they present as the human side of the agreement made with God in Baptism; and it is a commitment, amongst other things, by the covenant partners to radical social action to improve God’s world for him with peace and justice. (To the latter the new PB of the ECUSA is deeply committed, at least in word as her sermons in the National Cathedral on Nov. 4 & 5 demonstrated.)
Faithful Episcopalians need to return immediately to the Baptismal Services in one of the classic editions of the one Book of Common Prayer and avoid the service in the 1979 book.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
Burn brightly with Primate Katherine- Nov 5 sermon in DC
Burn brightly with Katherine to bring in the kingdom of God.
The new Primate preaches again—November 5, All Saints’ Sunday
In the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. there is a special seat—cathedra—for the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. On Sunday November 5, Katherine Jefferts-Schori was formally seated in that chair as the new Presiding Bishop. In the Eucharist where this seating occurred, she was the preacher. Significantly there was also in this service (as there had been the day before at her Recognition Service) the increasingly popular ceremony in this Church of the sprinkling of everyone with “Baptismal Water” to emphasize that all are committed to the terms of “the Baptismal Covenant” (see the 1979 prayer book for details).
In her homily she sought to combine the theme of All Saints’ with that of “The Baptismal Covenant.” However, like her sermon from the previous day her “Gospel” was a message of what can and should be in this world if all of us love justice and peace and work for human dignity and reconciliation—the kingdom of God on earth. She seems to regard only as inspirational symbolism the New Testament vision of the Jerusalem that is above where Christ reigns as Lord and King, where the angels and saints in glory praise him, and to where the pilgrim Church of God is heading on the narrow way that leads to life. Rather, her emphasis and concern is to improve the lot of people of earth in ways to which most decent people could say “Amen,” even if they do (as yet) little to achieve such a state of health, peace and justice.
Katherine is aware that in order truly to get involved in the bringing of peace and justice most baptized Episcopalians need a mighty push:
Saints are those who are vulnerable to the gut-wrenching pain of this world. Some of us have to be seized by the throat or thrown into the tomb before we can begin to find that depth of compassion. And perhaps unless we are, we won't leave our comfortable narrow lives - or our remarkably nasty ones - to wake up and begin to answer that pain.
And she believes that they can get some encouragement from the Early Church to make commitment to their baptismal covenant:
In the early church, baptism was meant to be that kind of life-altering encounter. New saints spent three years in the readying, and then were taken in the dead of night into the crypt, stripped naked, and drowned - only to emerge filled with new breath, doused with sweet-smelling oil, and given a new white robe. What you and I do on Sunday mornings today sometimes seems a pale imitation, yet it can have every bit the same effect.
Then she referred to the experience of sprinkling with baptismal water that all soon would experience in the service:
When we remember our baptisms in the sprinkling in a few minutes most of us will probably cringe. We don't like to get wet. But I hope and pray that you and I can welcome those surprising drops as a tiny reminder of what is meant to happen to us, over and over again,day after day after day. Die to the old, be unbound, come out into abundant life in service to the world. Wake up, and notice the suffering around us.
It is the willingness to experience that pain which more than anything else marks us as saints. The pain of the whole world - those who agree with us and those who might be called enemies. The pain of creation, abused for our pleasure. The pain of a six-year old child in Ghana, sold into slavery, to bail a fishing canoe and repair nets for 100 hours a week so that his parents might eat.
In the Early Church Baptism was seen, not as a being born anew to improve this world by social, medical, political and economic action by available worldly means, but rather as being born into the new age of the kingdom of God and united to Christ in the death to sin and to new life in him by the Spirit in order to be a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem. And then to live as the salt of the earth and the light of the world as disciples of Christ in this world, working for the conversion and sanctification of the people of this world but not belonging to the ethos and spirit of this sinful world, and very specifically rejecting Satan and all his wiles.
Katherine ended her second sermon from that pulpit in two days with an inspiring call to the Cathedral congregation to action. It began with an illustration taken from Oregon where she once lived and worked and ends by using the symbolism of the heavenly Jerusalem:
In western Oregon for decades the usual way to clean up the fields after a crop of grass seed was harvested was to set the stubble afire. Clouds of noxious smoke filled the skies, and often drifted for dozens of miles. Air quality issues have led to other ways of controlling the smoke output, but burning is still the very best way to sanitize the fields and get rid of the stubble. What do you think? Can we make holy smoke?
The episkopeis of the saints, their ministry, cleans the fields of that which cannot survive in God's dream of shalom, it burns away whatever limits that dream or cannot contribute to it. The ministry of governance, whether in the legislature, the polling booth, or in raising a child, is meant to prepare the ground for a new and abundant crop of life. Most of us here this morning will have an opportunity to exercise that kind of ministry on Tuesday. Will you consider your vote as an act of "running through the stubble?" Would that we might all be able to answer, "I will, with God's help."
Let the pain of this world seize us by the throat. Listen for Jesus calling us all out of our tombs of despair and apathy. May the shock of baptismal dying once more set us afire. This place we call home is meant to be a new heaven, a new earth, a holy city, a new Jerusalem. It is the sparks in the stubble that will make it so.
Turn inward for a moment and greet the spirit planted within you. When we come to the [passing of the] peace, turn to your neighbors and greet the saints, the fire-lighters in this field. Welcome, saint! Burn brightly and transform this world into God's field for life, full measure, pressed down and overflowing, meant for all humanity and all creation. Burn!
Episcopalians are called to BURN!
Unlike her predecessor, Frank Griswold, who often sought to hide his radical mindset and agenda through rhetorical devices, Katherine makes it all clear. She looks for the kingdom of God on earth in the form of a renewed human life together on this planet, and in the pursuit of this Goal the baptized and covenanted people of God [Episcopalians] need to be wholly committed.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
The new Primate preaches again—November 5, All Saints’ Sunday
In the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. there is a special seat—cathedra—for the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. On Sunday November 5, Katherine Jefferts-Schori was formally seated in that chair as the new Presiding Bishop. In the Eucharist where this seating occurred, she was the preacher. Significantly there was also in this service (as there had been the day before at her Recognition Service) the increasingly popular ceremony in this Church of the sprinkling of everyone with “Baptismal Water” to emphasize that all are committed to the terms of “the Baptismal Covenant” (see the 1979 prayer book for details).
In her homily she sought to combine the theme of All Saints’ with that of “The Baptismal Covenant.” However, like her sermon from the previous day her “Gospel” was a message of what can and should be in this world if all of us love justice and peace and work for human dignity and reconciliation—the kingdom of God on earth. She seems to regard only as inspirational symbolism the New Testament vision of the Jerusalem that is above where Christ reigns as Lord and King, where the angels and saints in glory praise him, and to where the pilgrim Church of God is heading on the narrow way that leads to life. Rather, her emphasis and concern is to improve the lot of people of earth in ways to which most decent people could say “Amen,” even if they do (as yet) little to achieve such a state of health, peace and justice.
Katherine is aware that in order truly to get involved in the bringing of peace and justice most baptized Episcopalians need a mighty push:
Saints are those who are vulnerable to the gut-wrenching pain of this world. Some of us have to be seized by the throat or thrown into the tomb before we can begin to find that depth of compassion. And perhaps unless we are, we won't leave our comfortable narrow lives - or our remarkably nasty ones - to wake up and begin to answer that pain.
And she believes that they can get some encouragement from the Early Church to make commitment to their baptismal covenant:
In the early church, baptism was meant to be that kind of life-altering encounter. New saints spent three years in the readying, and then were taken in the dead of night into the crypt, stripped naked, and drowned - only to emerge filled with new breath, doused with sweet-smelling oil, and given a new white robe. What you and I do on Sunday mornings today sometimes seems a pale imitation, yet it can have every bit the same effect.
Then she referred to the experience of sprinkling with baptismal water that all soon would experience in the service:
When we remember our baptisms in the sprinkling in a few minutes most of us will probably cringe. We don't like to get wet. But I hope and pray that you and I can welcome those surprising drops as a tiny reminder of what is meant to happen to us, over and over again,day after day after day. Die to the old, be unbound, come out into abundant life in service to the world. Wake up, and notice the suffering around us.
It is the willingness to experience that pain which more than anything else marks us as saints. The pain of the whole world - those who agree with us and those who might be called enemies. The pain of creation, abused for our pleasure. The pain of a six-year old child in Ghana, sold into slavery, to bail a fishing canoe and repair nets for 100 hours a week so that his parents might eat.
In the Early Church Baptism was seen, not as a being born anew to improve this world by social, medical, political and economic action by available worldly means, but rather as being born into the new age of the kingdom of God and united to Christ in the death to sin and to new life in him by the Spirit in order to be a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem. And then to live as the salt of the earth and the light of the world as disciples of Christ in this world, working for the conversion and sanctification of the people of this world but not belonging to the ethos and spirit of this sinful world, and very specifically rejecting Satan and all his wiles.
Katherine ended her second sermon from that pulpit in two days with an inspiring call to the Cathedral congregation to action. It began with an illustration taken from Oregon where she once lived and worked and ends by using the symbolism of the heavenly Jerusalem:
In western Oregon for decades the usual way to clean up the fields after a crop of grass seed was harvested was to set the stubble afire. Clouds of noxious smoke filled the skies, and often drifted for dozens of miles. Air quality issues have led to other ways of controlling the smoke output, but burning is still the very best way to sanitize the fields and get rid of the stubble. What do you think? Can we make holy smoke?
The episkopeis of the saints, their ministry, cleans the fields of that which cannot survive in God's dream of shalom, it burns away whatever limits that dream or cannot contribute to it. The ministry of governance, whether in the legislature, the polling booth, or in raising a child, is meant to prepare the ground for a new and abundant crop of life. Most of us here this morning will have an opportunity to exercise that kind of ministry on Tuesday. Will you consider your vote as an act of "running through the stubble?" Would that we might all be able to answer, "I will, with God's help."
Let the pain of this world seize us by the throat. Listen for Jesus calling us all out of our tombs of despair and apathy. May the shock of baptismal dying once more set us afire. This place we call home is meant to be a new heaven, a new earth, a holy city, a new Jerusalem. It is the sparks in the stubble that will make it so.
Turn inward for a moment and greet the spirit planted within you. When we come to the [passing of the] peace, turn to your neighbors and greet the saints, the fire-lighters in this field. Welcome, saint! Burn brightly and transform this world into God's field for life, full measure, pressed down and overflowing, meant for all humanity and all creation. Burn!
Episcopalians are called to BURN!
Unlike her predecessor, Frank Griswold, who often sought to hide his radical mindset and agenda through rhetorical devices, Katherine makes it all clear. She looks for the kingdom of God on earth in the form of a renewed human life together on this planet, and in the pursuit of this Goal the baptized and covenanted people of God [Episcopalians] need to be wholly committed.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
What do the Lady Primate and 7 protesting Bishops have in common?
Question: What do the new Lady Primate of TEC and the Seven “orthodox” Bishops of TEC and of the ACN, who applied for Alternative Primatial Oversight to Lambeth in 2006, have in common?
Answer: They all appeal to “The Baptismal Covenant” of the 1979 Prayer Book as the basis of their faith and their Anglicanism. The lady had it recited in full and preached on it at her public service of recognition on Nov 4, and the Seven made it the basis of their confession of faith in their appeal to the Arch of Cant.
The lady interprets it as it was intended to be understood by its framers in the 1970s and as successive General Conventions and PB’s have interpreted it –- as the charter of progressive liberal religion—while the Seven, pretending that the 1979 Book is an orthodox document, seek to make its radical center into something that it has never been, the basis of [their definition of] orthodoxy--(we ask: why are they so against the historic Formularies of the Anglican Way which are also those of The Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA as the basis of their Anglican Faith?).
In the New Province desired by the Seven there must surely be a repudiation of this Covenant and the interpretation of it in TEC since 1970s, and the use instead of the traditional Baptismal Services in the BCP 1662, 1928 and (Canada) 1962 for the Anglican understanding of the beginning and nature of the Christian life!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Answer: They all appeal to “The Baptismal Covenant” of the 1979 Prayer Book as the basis of their faith and their Anglicanism. The lady had it recited in full and preached on it at her public service of recognition on Nov 4, and the Seven made it the basis of their confession of faith in their appeal to the Arch of Cant.
The lady interprets it as it was intended to be understood by its framers in the 1970s and as successive General Conventions and PB’s have interpreted it –- as the charter of progressive liberal religion—while the Seven, pretending that the 1979 Book is an orthodox document, seek to make its radical center into something that it has never been, the basis of [their definition of] orthodoxy--(we ask: why are they so against the historic Formularies of the Anglican Way which are also those of The Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA as the basis of their Anglican Faith?).
In the New Province desired by the Seven there must surely be a repudiation of this Covenant and the interpretation of it in TEC since 1970s, and the use instead of the traditional Baptismal Services in the BCP 1662, 1928 and (Canada) 1962 for the Anglican understanding of the beginning and nature of the Christian life!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Holy Communion in the BCP editions of 1662 & 1928
Comparison and Contrast in the Light of Bp Duncan’s call for the acceptance of 1662 as the primary Prayer Book
When Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and his fellow Reformers read the accounts in the Gospels of the Last Supper in the 1540s, what deeply impressed them, amongst other things, was the fact that between the words of Jesus, “This my body” and “This my blood,” there was no delay in the eating of the [blessed] bread and drinking of the [blessed] wine by the disciples (see Matthew 26:26ff.; Mark 14:22ff.; and Luke 22:14ff.). Thus in The Order for Holy Communion in the English Prayer Book from 1552 the communion of the clergy and people comes immediately after the recital of the words of the Lord Jesus. Nothing stands between the Words of Blessing/Consecration by the Lord Jesus and the receiving of the sacramental bread and wine by the congregation at the hands of Christ’s Minister.
In constructing the service in this way Cranmer and his colleagues knew that they were not following the order in either the medieval Latin Mass or in the late Greek patristic tradition. However, as the Scriptures were for them the primary authority, and since this is a Gospel Sacrament, they believed it to be required of them by the Lord Jesus himself to follow the Lord’s example. So what is usually called the Prayer of Consecration in 1662 is short and that which had usually been included within it in the Western Rite is separated from it and placed at other points in the Service.
New Shape
It was to be expected that sooner or later amongst Anglicans outside, and then inside the Church of England and related Churches, there would be a call to revise the order of contents in the service of Holy Communion, to bring it in line with the order in the Divine Liturgy from the ancient patriarchates of the patristic period. This was attempted by those in schism from the Church of England after 1689 and known as the Non-Jurors and they were followed by the Episcopal Church in Scotland in its Communion Rite of 1764. From this development, Samuel Seabury, who was consecrated bishop in Scotland for the new Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., inherited the principles which deeply affected the structure of the Prayer of Consecration in the first American edition of The Book of Common Prayer (1789), which is a fusion of the English and Scottish Prayers.
It is useful to know that the learned divines of the Anglican Way in the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I and Charles II were in general wholly satisfied with the structure and content of The Order for Holy Communion, as they had it in essentially the same wording as the later 1662 edition.
In BCP 1662, used in the American colonies until 1789, the order of content is as follows:
Sursum Corda (“Lift up your hearts”)
Preface
Sanctus
Prayer of Humble Access (“We do not presume…”)
Prayer of Consecration
Communion of the People in both Kinds
Lord’s Prayer
Either (a) Prayer of Oblation or (b) Prayer of Thanksgiving
Gloria in excelsis
Blessing
In BCP 1928 (continuing from the edition of 1789) the order of content in the 1662 is re-arranged as follows:
Sursum Corda
Preface
Sanctus
Prayer of Consecration (which includes The Oblation & The Invocation and Prayer of Oblation from 1662)
Lord’s Prayer
Prayer of Humble Access
Communion of the People in both Kinds
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Gloria in excelsis
Blessing
Here we see that (a) there is a long gap between the Dominical Words, which occur in the first part of the Consecration Prayer, to the actual Communion of the people; and (b) the verbal content of 1928 is larger than that of 1662 and is so by the inclusion of (i) two short paragraphs in the middle of the Prayer of Consecration—the Oblation and the Invocation—and (ii) the use of both prayers (in different places) provided after the Lord’s Prayer in 1662.
Comment
Those who follow Cranmer’s lead insist that the authority of the Biblical narratives is greater than the influence of the usage in ancient Liturgies of East or West and so it is good and right to connect communion with the recital of the Lord’s words. Those who follow the lead of the Non-Jurors and others after them believe that the Anglican Way should follow the example of the ancient Church of the East in the important matter of the structure and content of the Prayer of Consecration. Further, they offer justification for the Oblation and Invocation in these terms:
“The Oblation is the hinge of the whole Consecration prayer. It gathers up the thanksgivings and memorials that have gone before and offers them to God by means of the “holy gifts”, the instruments of bread and wine which our Lord himself chose to represent his own Sacrifice, and to be the occasion of its continuing and innumerable benefits to his Church. Thus the words ‘which we now offer unto thee’ are seen to be of great importance.
“The Invocation is a prayer of benediction over the “holy food and drink” to sanctify them to our use. It is the return of God’s blessing to us by ‘his Word and Holy Spirit’ in and through these representative gifts which we have offered up to him in thanksgiving and memorial in the Oblation.”
However, we need to note that the Invocation is carefully worded so as not to give the impression that the Invocation itself actually makes the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus. And the Western Latin Rite has no specific Epiclesis or Invocation.
Whatever we make of these differences today, it was the judgment of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the English Bishops that the revised Order for Holy Communion of the American Church of 1789 was of the same basic doctrine as that of the English Church in its 1662 text and so they gave their approval to the revised Order.
Other differences
In comparison with the differences in the shape of the Consecration Prayer other differences between the English and the American editions of The Book of Common Prayer are relatively minor. They include:
1. The option in 1928 of using the Summary of the Law instead of the full Ten Commandments.
2. Prayer for the Monarch in 1662 only.
3. Required use of the Exhortation in 1662 each Sunday while only required in 1928 on three Sundays (First of Advent and of Lent and Trinity Sunday).
4. The use of the verb “offer” with reference to the Bread and Wine in the rubrics after the Offertory Sentences in 1928 but not in 1662.
5. The rubric on kneeling and adoration at the end of the Service in 1662 but not in 1928.
Contrary to what some people think the 1928 does not allow in its rubrics either (a) the transfer of Gloria in excelsis to the beginning of the whole Service or (b) the cleansing of the vessels immediately after Communion—they are cleansed at the end of the Service in both 1662 and 1928. Neither does it require the use of an Old Testament Lesson since it assumes that such has already been read in Morning Prayer, and the ancient Eucharistic Lectionary used in The Book of Common Prayer does not have an O.T. lesson, only the Epistle and Gospel.
Canada 1962, Rite 1 (1979) and the Missal (1961).
The Canadian edition of The Book of Common Prayer (1962) also revises the order and contents of The Order for Holy Communion but in less detail than 1928. The Prayer of Consecration is lengthened to include a brief Oblation and Invocation; pax vobiscum (while kneeling) follows it and then comes the Prayer of Humble Access before Communion.
Rite One of 1979 in The Episcopal Church on first glance appears much the same as the 1928 Service of Holy Communion. However, on closer inspection, one sees that it is given the same structure as the innovatory Rite Two Service of Holy Communion, and so the 1928 shape is bent to fit into the new shape. Adjustments are also made to individual prayers to trim their doctrine; there is an alternative Consecration Prayer to that taken over from 1928, and different Collect, Epistles and Gospels are appointed for use with this Service than those appointed for 1928.
“The Ordinary of the Mass” in The People’s Anglican Missal in the American Edition (1961 and reprinted since), while based on the Book of Common Prayer, and used by some devoted church-people of anglo-catholic persuasion, appears to go beyond the BCP not only in ceremonial but also in doctrine. Also it seems not to have the same doctrine of the vocation and purpose of the Ministry as that in The Ordinal (1662 & 1928) and seems to contain some teaching that is actually rejected in The Articles of Religion (1662 & 1928).
In conclusion
If there is in real terms a primary Anglican Rite for Holy Communion it is that which is in 1662; and it is this Rite which has satisfied ordinary and learned people from 1552 to the present both in English and in over one hundred and fifty other languages. It has the distinct advantage of having a short Prayer of Consecration and of keeping people focused on the Words of the Lord Jesus as they receive his sacramental body and blood. Further, in terms of Anglican unity—something that is extremely important in the present identity crisis of Anglicanism—the 1662 is so widely used around the Global Anglican Communion that it has no competitor as “the standard Rite” of the past, for the present and on into the future.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
When Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and his fellow Reformers read the accounts in the Gospels of the Last Supper in the 1540s, what deeply impressed them, amongst other things, was the fact that between the words of Jesus, “This my body” and “This my blood,” there was no delay in the eating of the [blessed] bread and drinking of the [blessed] wine by the disciples (see Matthew 26:26ff.; Mark 14:22ff.; and Luke 22:14ff.). Thus in The Order for Holy Communion in the English Prayer Book from 1552 the communion of the clergy and people comes immediately after the recital of the words of the Lord Jesus. Nothing stands between the Words of Blessing/Consecration by the Lord Jesus and the receiving of the sacramental bread and wine by the congregation at the hands of Christ’s Minister.
In constructing the service in this way Cranmer and his colleagues knew that they were not following the order in either the medieval Latin Mass or in the late Greek patristic tradition. However, as the Scriptures were for them the primary authority, and since this is a Gospel Sacrament, they believed it to be required of them by the Lord Jesus himself to follow the Lord’s example. So what is usually called the Prayer of Consecration in 1662 is short and that which had usually been included within it in the Western Rite is separated from it and placed at other points in the Service.
New Shape
It was to be expected that sooner or later amongst Anglicans outside, and then inside the Church of England and related Churches, there would be a call to revise the order of contents in the service of Holy Communion, to bring it in line with the order in the Divine Liturgy from the ancient patriarchates of the patristic period. This was attempted by those in schism from the Church of England after 1689 and known as the Non-Jurors and they were followed by the Episcopal Church in Scotland in its Communion Rite of 1764. From this development, Samuel Seabury, who was consecrated bishop in Scotland for the new Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., inherited the principles which deeply affected the structure of the Prayer of Consecration in the first American edition of The Book of Common Prayer (1789), which is a fusion of the English and Scottish Prayers.
It is useful to know that the learned divines of the Anglican Way in the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I and Charles II were in general wholly satisfied with the structure and content of The Order for Holy Communion, as they had it in essentially the same wording as the later 1662 edition.
In BCP 1662, used in the American colonies until 1789, the order of content is as follows:
Sursum Corda (“Lift up your hearts”)
Preface
Sanctus
Prayer of Humble Access (“We do not presume…”)
Prayer of Consecration
Communion of the People in both Kinds
Lord’s Prayer
Either (a) Prayer of Oblation or (b) Prayer of Thanksgiving
Gloria in excelsis
Blessing
In BCP 1928 (continuing from the edition of 1789) the order of content in the 1662 is re-arranged as follows:
Sursum Corda
Preface
Sanctus
Prayer of Consecration (which includes The Oblation & The Invocation and Prayer of Oblation from 1662)
Lord’s Prayer
Prayer of Humble Access
Communion of the People in both Kinds
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Gloria in excelsis
Blessing
Here we see that (a) there is a long gap between the Dominical Words, which occur in the first part of the Consecration Prayer, to the actual Communion of the people; and (b) the verbal content of 1928 is larger than that of 1662 and is so by the inclusion of (i) two short paragraphs in the middle of the Prayer of Consecration—the Oblation and the Invocation—and (ii) the use of both prayers (in different places) provided after the Lord’s Prayer in 1662.
Comment
Those who follow Cranmer’s lead insist that the authority of the Biblical narratives is greater than the influence of the usage in ancient Liturgies of East or West and so it is good and right to connect communion with the recital of the Lord’s words. Those who follow the lead of the Non-Jurors and others after them believe that the Anglican Way should follow the example of the ancient Church of the East in the important matter of the structure and content of the Prayer of Consecration. Further, they offer justification for the Oblation and Invocation in these terms:
“The Oblation is the hinge of the whole Consecration prayer. It gathers up the thanksgivings and memorials that have gone before and offers them to God by means of the “holy gifts”, the instruments of bread and wine which our Lord himself chose to represent his own Sacrifice, and to be the occasion of its continuing and innumerable benefits to his Church. Thus the words ‘which we now offer unto thee’ are seen to be of great importance.
“The Invocation is a prayer of benediction over the “holy food and drink” to sanctify them to our use. It is the return of God’s blessing to us by ‘his Word and Holy Spirit’ in and through these representative gifts which we have offered up to him in thanksgiving and memorial in the Oblation.”
However, we need to note that the Invocation is carefully worded so as not to give the impression that the Invocation itself actually makes the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus. And the Western Latin Rite has no specific Epiclesis or Invocation.
Whatever we make of these differences today, it was the judgment of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the English Bishops that the revised Order for Holy Communion of the American Church of 1789 was of the same basic doctrine as that of the English Church in its 1662 text and so they gave their approval to the revised Order.
Other differences
In comparison with the differences in the shape of the Consecration Prayer other differences between the English and the American editions of The Book of Common Prayer are relatively minor. They include:
1. The option in 1928 of using the Summary of the Law instead of the full Ten Commandments.
2. Prayer for the Monarch in 1662 only.
3. Required use of the Exhortation in 1662 each Sunday while only required in 1928 on three Sundays (First of Advent and of Lent and Trinity Sunday).
4. The use of the verb “offer” with reference to the Bread and Wine in the rubrics after the Offertory Sentences in 1928 but not in 1662.
5. The rubric on kneeling and adoration at the end of the Service in 1662 but not in 1928.
Contrary to what some people think the 1928 does not allow in its rubrics either (a) the transfer of Gloria in excelsis to the beginning of the whole Service or (b) the cleansing of the vessels immediately after Communion—they are cleansed at the end of the Service in both 1662 and 1928. Neither does it require the use of an Old Testament Lesson since it assumes that such has already been read in Morning Prayer, and the ancient Eucharistic Lectionary used in The Book of Common Prayer does not have an O.T. lesson, only the Epistle and Gospel.
Canada 1962, Rite 1 (1979) and the Missal (1961).
The Canadian edition of The Book of Common Prayer (1962) also revises the order and contents of The Order for Holy Communion but in less detail than 1928. The Prayer of Consecration is lengthened to include a brief Oblation and Invocation; pax vobiscum (while kneeling) follows it and then comes the Prayer of Humble Access before Communion.
Rite One of 1979 in The Episcopal Church on first glance appears much the same as the 1928 Service of Holy Communion. However, on closer inspection, one sees that it is given the same structure as the innovatory Rite Two Service of Holy Communion, and so the 1928 shape is bent to fit into the new shape. Adjustments are also made to individual prayers to trim their doctrine; there is an alternative Consecration Prayer to that taken over from 1928, and different Collect, Epistles and Gospels are appointed for use with this Service than those appointed for 1928.
“The Ordinary of the Mass” in The People’s Anglican Missal in the American Edition (1961 and reprinted since), while based on the Book of Common Prayer, and used by some devoted church-people of anglo-catholic persuasion, appears to go beyond the BCP not only in ceremonial but also in doctrine. Also it seems not to have the same doctrine of the vocation and purpose of the Ministry as that in The Ordinal (1662 & 1928) and seems to contain some teaching that is actually rejected in The Articles of Religion (1662 & 1928).
In conclusion
If there is in real terms a primary Anglican Rite for Holy Communion it is that which is in 1662; and it is this Rite which has satisfied ordinary and learned people from 1552 to the present both in English and in over one hundred and fifty other languages. It has the distinct advantage of having a short Prayer of Consecration and of keeping people focused on the Words of the Lord Jesus as they receive his sacramental body and blood. Further, in terms of Anglican unity—something that is extremely important in the present identity crisis of Anglicanism—the 1662 is so widely used around the Global Anglican Communion that it has no competitor as “the standard Rite” of the past, for the present and on into the future.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
Home, sweet Home! Shalom, sweet Shalom! The sermon of the new Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
On November 4, 2006, in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., the new Lady Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, publicly took up her new vocation. Her sermon followed in the Service that which for her was necessary and highly significant, while for others it was puzzling. She had everyone in the Cathedral involved in “The Baptismal Covenant” from the 1979 prayer book, not only in terms of making the commitments of it, but also being sprinkled with baptismal water by a team of bishops and deacons as a external sign of an internal covenant they all made with God. Only in her sermon did one realize why she places so much emphasis upon this “Covenant.” It is for her the basis of the Church’s mission and work in the world and also the basis of her own ministry. Thus, though she gave out no text for her sermon, we may assume that it was the words of this Covenant and in particular the commitment made to God in it to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”
In moving and at times eloquent terms she spoke of the human yearning for home and for vital community life:
We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses - and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism - go home, and while you're at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.
Then she took up the theme of peace through the familiar Hebrew word, “shalom.”
There's a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work - shalom. It doesn't just mean the sort of peace that comes when we're no longer at war. It's that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hungry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it's a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it's a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it's a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. It is that vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway. It is that vision to which Jesus points when he says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." To say "shalom" is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.
Then she connected the commitment to peace of the Baptismal Covenant to the “Peace” which is the aim of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals and to which The Episcopal Church is committed by its General Convention:
This church has said that our larger vision will be framed and shaped in the coming years by the vision of shalom embedded in the Millennium Development Goals - a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate commitment of each and every one of us. It is God's vision of homecoming for all humanity.
At this point there was sustained applause. Her vision is powerful and moves people of good will. But then she went on to ask the hard question of why we are all not more full committed to the pursuit of shalom.
What keeps us from the tireless search for that vision of shalom? There are probably only two answers, and they are connected - apathy and fear. One is the unwillingness to acknowledge the pain of other people, the other is an unwillingness to acknowledge that pain with enough courage to act. The cure for each is a deep and abiding hope. If God in Jesus has made captivity captive, has taken fear hostage, it is for the liberation and flourishing of hope. Augustine said that as Christians, we are prisoners of hope - a ridiculously assertive hope, a hope that unflinchingly assails the doors of heaven, a hope that will not cease until that dream of God has swallowed up death forever, a hope that has the audacity to join Jesus in saying, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Finally, she described how the vision will be realized in practical terms:
In the courage to challenge our legislators to make poverty history, to fund AIDS work in Africa, and the distribution of anti-malarial mosquito nets, and primary schools where all children are welcomed. In the will to look within our own hearts and confront the shadows that darken the dream that God has planted there. That scripture is fulfilled each time we reach beyond our narrow self-interest to call another home.
And she concluded:
God has spoken that dream in us, let us rejoice! Let us join the raucous throngs in creation, the sea creatures and the geological features who leap for joy at the vision of all creation restored, restored to proper relationship, to all creation come home at last. May that scripture be fulfilled in our hearing and in our doing.
Shalom, chaverim, shalom, my friends, shalom.
Here the congregation cried out, “Shalom.”
What one misses in this sermon—if one had listened carefully to the reading from Ephesians which was chosen by Katherine as part of this service and if one has learned the basic Catechism of the classic Prayer Book—is the biblical, Christian vision of a regenerated and renewed cosmos. In Ephesians 1-4 it is intimately related to, indeed centered upon, the saving and redeeming work of Jesus Christ in his Cross, Resurrection, Exaltation and Return to earth. Why did Katherine say virtually nothing about the Lord Jesus and the place of the local church where is truth and unity as a kind of illustration and promise of the cosmic renewal which shall be?
In fact her message, whilst moving and idealistic in a good sense, could have been preached to any group of people who say they believe in God and also desire to see the genuine improvement of the daily lives of people in this world—which seems to be the only world for her. Her message fits well into Deism or Unitarianism or any kind of theism, which has no distinctive message of the absolute need of personal salvation from sin and corrupt society into a new people of God being saved for eternal life in the kingdom of heaven of the age to come with the Lord Jesus Christ and his saints. Her Shalom lacks the biblical dimension of peace with God in terms of everlasting salvation in and through Jesus Christ and the creation of a new people of God, who are destined to be the very center of a renewed and regenerated cosmos. And so with all her fine commitment to the improvement of this world and of the lot of needy people in this world, and her desire for genuine and real community, she does not present herself as a Christian theologian but rather as a gifted advocate for a liberal, progressive, Unitarian vision of this world as “the kingdom of God.”
drpetertoon@yahoo.com Nov 4, 2006
In moving and at times eloquent terms she spoke of the human yearning for home and for vital community life:
We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses - and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism - go home, and while you're at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.
Then she took up the theme of peace through the familiar Hebrew word, “shalom.”
There's a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work - shalom. It doesn't just mean the sort of peace that comes when we're no longer at war. It's that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hungry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it's a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it's a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it's a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. It is that vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway. It is that vision to which Jesus points when he says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." To say "shalom" is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.
Then she connected the commitment to peace of the Baptismal Covenant to the “Peace” which is the aim of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals and to which The Episcopal Church is committed by its General Convention:
This church has said that our larger vision will be framed and shaped in the coming years by the vision of shalom embedded in the Millennium Development Goals - a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate commitment of each and every one of us. It is God's vision of homecoming for all humanity.
At this point there was sustained applause. Her vision is powerful and moves people of good will. But then she went on to ask the hard question of why we are all not more full committed to the pursuit of shalom.
What keeps us from the tireless search for that vision of shalom? There are probably only two answers, and they are connected - apathy and fear. One is the unwillingness to acknowledge the pain of other people, the other is an unwillingness to acknowledge that pain with enough courage to act. The cure for each is a deep and abiding hope. If God in Jesus has made captivity captive, has taken fear hostage, it is for the liberation and flourishing of hope. Augustine said that as Christians, we are prisoners of hope - a ridiculously assertive hope, a hope that unflinchingly assails the doors of heaven, a hope that will not cease until that dream of God has swallowed up death forever, a hope that has the audacity to join Jesus in saying, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Finally, she described how the vision will be realized in practical terms:
In the courage to challenge our legislators to make poverty history, to fund AIDS work in Africa, and the distribution of anti-malarial mosquito nets, and primary schools where all children are welcomed. In the will to look within our own hearts and confront the shadows that darken the dream that God has planted there. That scripture is fulfilled each time we reach beyond our narrow self-interest to call another home.
And she concluded:
God has spoken that dream in us, let us rejoice! Let us join the raucous throngs in creation, the sea creatures and the geological features who leap for joy at the vision of all creation restored, restored to proper relationship, to all creation come home at last. May that scripture be fulfilled in our hearing and in our doing.
Shalom, chaverim, shalom, my friends, shalom.
Here the congregation cried out, “Shalom.”
What one misses in this sermon—if one had listened carefully to the reading from Ephesians which was chosen by Katherine as part of this service and if one has learned the basic Catechism of the classic Prayer Book—is the biblical, Christian vision of a regenerated and renewed cosmos. In Ephesians 1-4 it is intimately related to, indeed centered upon, the saving and redeeming work of Jesus Christ in his Cross, Resurrection, Exaltation and Return to earth. Why did Katherine say virtually nothing about the Lord Jesus and the place of the local church where is truth and unity as a kind of illustration and promise of the cosmic renewal which shall be?
In fact her message, whilst moving and idealistic in a good sense, could have been preached to any group of people who say they believe in God and also desire to see the genuine improvement of the daily lives of people in this world—which seems to be the only world for her. Her message fits well into Deism or Unitarianism or any kind of theism, which has no distinctive message of the absolute need of personal salvation from sin and corrupt society into a new people of God being saved for eternal life in the kingdom of heaven of the age to come with the Lord Jesus Christ and his saints. Her Shalom lacks the biblical dimension of peace with God in terms of everlasting salvation in and through Jesus Christ and the creation of a new people of God, who are destined to be the very center of a renewed and regenerated cosmos. And so with all her fine commitment to the improvement of this world and of the lot of needy people in this world, and her desire for genuine and real community, she does not present herself as a Christian theologian but rather as a gifted advocate for a liberal, progressive, Unitarian vision of this world as “the kingdom of God.”
drpetertoon@yahoo.com Nov 4, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
Trinity XXI—“with a quiet mind”
When deacons or lay readers officiate at the Daily Office they are not authorized to declare the absolution of sin, and so they have been advised to use one of the traditional Collects from The Book of Common Prayer, that for Trinity XXI, for a general absolution, even though it was originally composed in Latin and then rendered into English for use at the Holy Communion. It prays:
Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
A translation of the original fifth-century Latin intended to bring out its original meaning, even though being unattractive English, would be:
Be reconciled, we beseech thee, Lord, to thy faithful ones, and grant them bountifully indulgence and peace, that they may be cleansed from all offences, and at the same time do unto thee devoted service without distraction of mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What I want to focus upon—in the context of Anglicanism in North America—is the phrase “with a quiet mind” or “without distraction of mind.”
Few, I think, would disagree with the general proposition that far too many gifted, godly, and gracious people within Episcopal and Anglican dioceses and parishes in North America are suffering from “an unquiet mind” and/or “distraction of mind.” That is, they spend an excessive amount of time involved in, pondering and even plotting strategy to survive the current crisis of identity and purpose affecting the people of the Anglican Way.
Instead of that ability to spend long, fruitful times in meditation on God’s Word written, and contemplation of God’s Incarnate Word, their minds easily wander off into exercitations concerning the problems of Anglicanism. Further, in church fellowship meetings, instead of talking with and about the Lord himself and their walk with him in his Body, they easily fall into conversation about the continuing innovations and errors of The Episcopal Church and what, if anything, the Global South Primates will do to help. And in Divine Service, the pastor is severely tempted to speak in notices or sermon or both of the Anglican crisis instead of proclaiming the One Gospel, One Lord, One Faith and One Baptism.
So this ancient prayer is a contemporary prayer, not only a relevant but also a credible prayer for all anguished Anglicans to pray.
However, within the Collect, the blessed state of serving God “with a quiet mind” comes as the result of a previous action of the merciful LORD our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in and upon the souls of those who seek to be his faithful servants. First of all there is pardon, not the initial pardon that comes with conversion and baptism but pardon for sins after baptism—the forgiveness of a heavenly Father for his children where by his Spirit he washes their hearts clean of sin and gives them inward peace.
Devoted and attentive commitment to the Lord in service free from care and distraction is what He deserves, requires and asks for; and it is our high privilege, responsibility and opportunity to offer, even when we are going through a crisis. Only as we confess our sins, humble ourselves before him, and seek his pardon, cleansing and peace, shall we be able to rise to the occasion and serve our Father with a quiet mind.
Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Merciful Father, we implore You to give to your faithful [Anglican] people, who freely confess their sins to You, the blessings of pardon and inward peace, together with the cleansing of their hearts, that they may serve You with undivided and consecrated attention[in this time of crisis]; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Note: that the Epistle for Trinity XXI is from Ephesians 6 about the war against mighty spiritual forces in which we [as Anglicans] are engaged and the absolute need to take to ourselves the whole armor of God. (in 2006 Trinity XXI begins Nov 5)
drpetertoon@yahoo.com
Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
A translation of the original fifth-century Latin intended to bring out its original meaning, even though being unattractive English, would be:
Be reconciled, we beseech thee, Lord, to thy faithful ones, and grant them bountifully indulgence and peace, that they may be cleansed from all offences, and at the same time do unto thee devoted service without distraction of mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What I want to focus upon—in the context of Anglicanism in North America—is the phrase “with a quiet mind” or “without distraction of mind.”
Few, I think, would disagree with the general proposition that far too many gifted, godly, and gracious people within Episcopal and Anglican dioceses and parishes in North America are suffering from “an unquiet mind” and/or “distraction of mind.” That is, they spend an excessive amount of time involved in, pondering and even plotting strategy to survive the current crisis of identity and purpose affecting the people of the Anglican Way.
Instead of that ability to spend long, fruitful times in meditation on God’s Word written, and contemplation of God’s Incarnate Word, their minds easily wander off into exercitations concerning the problems of Anglicanism. Further, in church fellowship meetings, instead of talking with and about the Lord himself and their walk with him in his Body, they easily fall into conversation about the continuing innovations and errors of The Episcopal Church and what, if anything, the Global South Primates will do to help. And in Divine Service, the pastor is severely tempted to speak in notices or sermon or both of the Anglican crisis instead of proclaiming the One Gospel, One Lord, One Faith and One Baptism.
So this ancient prayer is a contemporary prayer, not only a relevant but also a credible prayer for all anguished Anglicans to pray.
However, within the Collect, the blessed state of serving God “with a quiet mind” comes as the result of a previous action of the merciful LORD our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in and upon the souls of those who seek to be his faithful servants. First of all there is pardon, not the initial pardon that comes with conversion and baptism but pardon for sins after baptism—the forgiveness of a heavenly Father for his children where by his Spirit he washes their hearts clean of sin and gives them inward peace.
Devoted and attentive commitment to the Lord in service free from care and distraction is what He deserves, requires and asks for; and it is our high privilege, responsibility and opportunity to offer, even when we are going through a crisis. Only as we confess our sins, humble ourselves before him, and seek his pardon, cleansing and peace, shall we be able to rise to the occasion and serve our Father with a quiet mind.
Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Merciful Father, we implore You to give to your faithful [Anglican] people, who freely confess their sins to You, the blessings of pardon and inward peace, together with the cleansing of their hearts, that they may serve You with undivided and consecrated attention[in this time of crisis]; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Note: that the Epistle for Trinity XXI is from Ephesians 6 about the war against mighty spiritual forces in which we [as Anglicans] are engaged and the absolute need to take to ourselves the whole armor of God. (in 2006 Trinity XXI begins Nov 5)
drpetertoon@yahoo.com
SCHORI: Beyond the Litmus-Test: The Repudiation of the God of Grace
From VirtueOnline
By Gary L'Hommedieu
"Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. That is not to say that Muslim's or Sikhs or Jains come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through human experience -- through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus." (Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, in an interview with Robin Young on "Here and Now", October 18, 2006)
The recent interview with the new PB almost two weeks ago is a "must hear". I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it through the blogosphere until yesterday. Perhaps it was appropriate as I sat home alone on Hollowe'en night hoping to ignore trick-or-treaters. Along came something I couldn't ignore, nor should any Episcopalian. (Follow this link to the "Here and Now" web site to download the interview on Real Player: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/10/20061018_9.asp.)
As the interview demonstrates, the ascending Primate of the Episcopal Church is a politician of rare polish. By comparison her predecessors are a dim bulb (in the case of Edmond Browning) and a clownish dancing bear (in the case of Frank Griswold). Schori is probably the only member of the HOB with gravitas and (in a word) star power.
Soft-spoken, articulate, urbane, she hits all the buttons that excite the liberal mainstream of the new Episcopal religion: she validates the righteous-rebellion ethos of the Baby Boomer generation that only minutes ago was reported to be on life support.
Let's not underestimate the eleventh hour genius of the collective unconscious of the Columbus Convention in surfacing Schori as the new icon for the Episcopal Church. She embodies the "clarity" of the Church's liberal mainstream that has been so much commented on ever since. Indeed, in her own person she reveals the Church's renewed identity. Beyond that, she points to an underground tributary with the civil religion of America's past.
The Episcopal Church was a washed out rainbow coalition on its way to Convention 2006. They knew only one thing for sure -- who their enemy was (their own Christian past) -- and they instinctively flailed against it in legislative sessions and public gatherings. The election of Katherine Schori was truly a surprise. Even more of a surprise was the instant eruption of institutional coherence. Suddenly all the parts fit. The Church's splintered, moth-eaten radicalism now had a single thrust and a fresh vitality.
This new vitality explains the shift to "mop-up" mode in dealing with the recalcitrant orthodox in recent months, which hourly increases in intensity. And don't look for a "kinder, gentler conversation" with the Episcopal Church's new Mother in God -- not before you're spoken with Bishops Iker and Ackerman.
Robin Young's October 18 interview captures the verbal component of the new icon -- the "kerygma", as it were. Essentially it is this: we come to God by our experience.
Schori's views have been decried as radical and heretical so many times since June that such a bald reduction of her message doesn't at first appear to say anything. It doesn't decry her obvious universalism, denying (as she clearly does) the unique role of Jesus in salvation. Nor does it parade indignation over her "radical" views on sexuality -- snatched up, like all of ECUSA's "radicalism", from the clearance table of secular politics. These are litmus-test issues for Evangelical Christians. Orthodox Episcopalians get so stirred up by our own saber-rattling in response to some heresy-du-jour, that we don't see here the essence of a new Gospel.
The rising Primate stated concisely the de facto doctrine of salvation of the Episcopal Church, probably speaking for the majority of Episcopalians in most of the years that the American Church has existed: Christians are NOT saved by grace, nor by a God of grace: that is, supernaturally, by God's sole initiative, breaking through an impenetrable barrier of human sin, against our wills, in spite of our utter powerlessness and rage against the One who loves us and gives Himself for us.
Here "grace" refers to the willful (arbitrius, hence "arbitrary") act of God on our behalf -- hence, sovereign and providential -- by His choice (i.e., His "election") to act on our behalf, when we were DEAD in sin (not just mortally wounded), not out of response to us based upon our worth or merit (i.e., as a wage owed) or any reason at all, but strictly as an expression of His divine love. The model of this love is the Blessed and Undivided Trinity.
We are saved rather through our own experience, through craning our necks toward the Divine, and being "graciously" drawn in by Him/Her/It, AS IF BY NATURE. Here "salvation" (which, on account of its "terrorizing" associations ought only to be placed in quotes) is not really "necessary", but certainly it "helps".
This second Divinity would be described as "gracious" and "grace-ful", but it is the "grace" of the Nanny Church. It expresses an entirely different species of "condescension" from that of the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity. It proclaims a "love" that expects nothing, because it really has nothing to give. It does not lift the beloved, but professes out of "love" to allow the "beloved" to persist in his/her/its present degradation. It lacks the strength of conviction to reproduce itself in the "beloved", or to say with confidence that as a result of its loving ministrations "the servant will be like the master", or even "the child will be like the parent". It knows its so-called "life" will be replicated in its children out of inertia, so it doesn't need to muster conviction -- or risk embarassment.
The model for this form of "love" is the Welfare State, sustained by the illusion that such a social organism has ever, anywhere produced the good it proclaimed. It is the perfect "gospel" for the twenty-first century. Its full articulation, in the person of the Episcopal Church's twenty-sixth primate, is a stunning revelation.
Ever since Episcopalians were known to be the main signers of the Declaration of Independence, it's been assumed that most Episcopalians have been Deists for most of our nation's, and our Church's, history. Here, then, is an added dimension to the "clarity" we've witnessed since this past summer in the re-emerging Episcopal Church. More than "clarity", there's a "resonance" -- a "ringing true" -- and the revealing of a thread that goes beyond the past thirty years of recycled campus radicalism, into the mists of Enlightenment religion in the New World. The election of Katherine Schori thus "rings true" for what the Episcopal Church has always been, perhaps for a majority of her members.
While orthodox observers have long complained about the Deism of the American Church (even long before the era of modern radicalism), there have rarely been accusations of heresy. Deism is an ancient, if rather senile, heresy -- even tame and respectable.
The god of Deism is perfect for the Me-Generations especially as a "bridge" between Eastern and Western forms of religion. While Schori's drifting toward the divine via "experience" has an Eastern flavor to it -- and she is quick to affirm Eastern religions by name -- her functional Unitarianism places her within the purview of Western theism. Once again she "resonates" with something old and something new.
Let's not miss what is really wrong about the present moment. The Episcopal Church is not just waffling between hot-button slogans. She is, perhaps for the first time, steeled to a position to do actual battle with the primary genius of historic orthodoxy -- the utterly unique God of Grace.
The Church finds itself, in spite of itself, poised with a revelation. Here is the Dragon that lay dormant, or seemed too insipid to be confronted or even named, for centuries. By an unplanned, unthinkable coincidence of circumstances, ideologies old and new have coalesced in the person of THIS rising prelate in THIS time and place.
The Nanny Church finally has a real Nanny. This is no accident. It is what finally accounts for the "resonance" of the present moment.
---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is canon for Pastoral Care at Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, Florida
Article Link: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4940
By Gary L'Hommedieu
"Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. That is not to say that Muslim's or Sikhs or Jains come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through human experience -- through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus." (Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, in an interview with Robin Young on "Here and Now", October 18, 2006)
The recent interview with the new PB almost two weeks ago is a "must hear". I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it through the blogosphere until yesterday. Perhaps it was appropriate as I sat home alone on Hollowe'en night hoping to ignore trick-or-treaters. Along came something I couldn't ignore, nor should any Episcopalian. (Follow this link to the "Here and Now" web site to download the interview on Real Player: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/10/20061018_9.asp.)
As the interview demonstrates, the ascending Primate of the Episcopal Church is a politician of rare polish. By comparison her predecessors are a dim bulb (in the case of Edmond Browning) and a clownish dancing bear (in the case of Frank Griswold). Schori is probably the only member of the HOB with gravitas and (in a word) star power.
Soft-spoken, articulate, urbane, she hits all the buttons that excite the liberal mainstream of the new Episcopal religion: she validates the righteous-rebellion ethos of the Baby Boomer generation that only minutes ago was reported to be on life support.
Let's not underestimate the eleventh hour genius of the collective unconscious of the Columbus Convention in surfacing Schori as the new icon for the Episcopal Church. She embodies the "clarity" of the Church's liberal mainstream that has been so much commented on ever since. Indeed, in her own person she reveals the Church's renewed identity. Beyond that, she points to an underground tributary with the civil religion of America's past.
The Episcopal Church was a washed out rainbow coalition on its way to Convention 2006. They knew only one thing for sure -- who their enemy was (their own Christian past) -- and they instinctively flailed against it in legislative sessions and public gatherings. The election of Katherine Schori was truly a surprise. Even more of a surprise was the instant eruption of institutional coherence. Suddenly all the parts fit. The Church's splintered, moth-eaten radicalism now had a single thrust and a fresh vitality.
This new vitality explains the shift to "mop-up" mode in dealing with the recalcitrant orthodox in recent months, which hourly increases in intensity. And don't look for a "kinder, gentler conversation" with the Episcopal Church's new Mother in God -- not before you're spoken with Bishops Iker and Ackerman.
Robin Young's October 18 interview captures the verbal component of the new icon -- the "kerygma", as it were. Essentially it is this: we come to God by our experience.
Schori's views have been decried as radical and heretical so many times since June that such a bald reduction of her message doesn't at first appear to say anything. It doesn't decry her obvious universalism, denying (as she clearly does) the unique role of Jesus in salvation. Nor does it parade indignation over her "radical" views on sexuality -- snatched up, like all of ECUSA's "radicalism", from the clearance table of secular politics. These are litmus-test issues for Evangelical Christians. Orthodox Episcopalians get so stirred up by our own saber-rattling in response to some heresy-du-jour, that we don't see here the essence of a new Gospel.
The rising Primate stated concisely the de facto doctrine of salvation of the Episcopal Church, probably speaking for the majority of Episcopalians in most of the years that the American Church has existed: Christians are NOT saved by grace, nor by a God of grace: that is, supernaturally, by God's sole initiative, breaking through an impenetrable barrier of human sin, against our wills, in spite of our utter powerlessness and rage against the One who loves us and gives Himself for us.
Here "grace" refers to the willful (arbitrius, hence "arbitrary") act of God on our behalf -- hence, sovereign and providential -- by His choice (i.e., His "election") to act on our behalf, when we were DEAD in sin (not just mortally wounded), not out of response to us based upon our worth or merit (i.e., as a wage owed) or any reason at all, but strictly as an expression of His divine love. The model of this love is the Blessed and Undivided Trinity.
We are saved rather through our own experience, through craning our necks toward the Divine, and being "graciously" drawn in by Him/Her/It, AS IF BY NATURE. Here "salvation" (which, on account of its "terrorizing" associations ought only to be placed in quotes) is not really "necessary", but certainly it "helps".
This second Divinity would be described as "gracious" and "grace-ful", but it is the "grace" of the Nanny Church. It expresses an entirely different species of "condescension" from that of the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity. It proclaims a "love" that expects nothing, because it really has nothing to give. It does not lift the beloved, but professes out of "love" to allow the "beloved" to persist in his/her/its present degradation. It lacks the strength of conviction to reproduce itself in the "beloved", or to say with confidence that as a result of its loving ministrations "the servant will be like the master", or even "the child will be like the parent". It knows its so-called "life" will be replicated in its children out of inertia, so it doesn't need to muster conviction -- or risk embarassment.
The model for this form of "love" is the Welfare State, sustained by the illusion that such a social organism has ever, anywhere produced the good it proclaimed. It is the perfect "gospel" for the twenty-first century. Its full articulation, in the person of the Episcopal Church's twenty-sixth primate, is a stunning revelation.
Ever since Episcopalians were known to be the main signers of the Declaration of Independence, it's been assumed that most Episcopalians have been Deists for most of our nation's, and our Church's, history. Here, then, is an added dimension to the "clarity" we've witnessed since this past summer in the re-emerging Episcopal Church. More than "clarity", there's a "resonance" -- a "ringing true" -- and the revealing of a thread that goes beyond the past thirty years of recycled campus radicalism, into the mists of Enlightenment religion in the New World. The election of Katherine Schori thus "rings true" for what the Episcopal Church has always been, perhaps for a majority of her members.
While orthodox observers have long complained about the Deism of the American Church (even long before the era of modern radicalism), there have rarely been accusations of heresy. Deism is an ancient, if rather senile, heresy -- even tame and respectable.
The god of Deism is perfect for the Me-Generations especially as a "bridge" between Eastern and Western forms of religion. While Schori's drifting toward the divine via "experience" has an Eastern flavor to it -- and she is quick to affirm Eastern religions by name -- her functional Unitarianism places her within the purview of Western theism. Once again she "resonates" with something old and something new.
Let's not miss what is really wrong about the present moment. The Episcopal Church is not just waffling between hot-button slogans. She is, perhaps for the first time, steeled to a position to do actual battle with the primary genius of historic orthodoxy -- the utterly unique God of Grace.
The Church finds itself, in spite of itself, poised with a revelation. Here is the Dragon that lay dormant, or seemed too insipid to be confronted or even named, for centuries. By an unplanned, unthinkable coincidence of circumstances, ideologies old and new have coalesced in the person of THIS rising prelate in THIS time and place.
The Nanny Church finally has a real Nanny. This is no accident. It is what finally accounts for the "resonance" of the present moment.
---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is canon for Pastoral Care at Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, Florida
Article Link: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4940
Katherine as Patriarch, Primate and Presiding Bishop
reflections from Peter Toon
We must suppose that The Episcopal Church knows what it is doing in terms of its innovations for it has been creating them and pushing them since the late 1960s. On November l 2006 it revealed to the world yet another innovation—a married lady as its new patriarch and primate. This Church has been encouraged often by its ecumenical partners from the main-line denominations of the U.S.A. even as it has been warned by fellow Anglicans and Catholics of varied kinds.
Despite the clear doctrine of male headship in family and church set forth and presupposed throughout the whole of Scripture, and witnessed to by the church in virtually all its history since the close of the Canon of the Bible, the Episcopal Church claims to consecrate women as chief pastors (Prayer Book, 1979, pp.510ff). It also claims to have the authority to make a female bishop into its Presiding Bishop and actually did this in 2006 by electing Bp Katherine of Nevada. On November 4 she was publicly acclaimed as such in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.
Let us get more clarity on the role of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.
Functions and authority of the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA under Title I of Canons:
Functions and authority of Presiding Bishop under disciplinary canons (Title IV).
Now some of this can be seen as administrative; but stated or implied in many of these responsibilities and duties is a clear headship and rule. Of this there cannot be any doubt.
Therefore for The Episcopal Church both to consecrate women as bishops and to elect one such as the Presiding Bishop means that a significant majority in this Church has rejected the biblical teaching on and witness to male headship. They have done this for the following kinds of reasons:
1. Patriarchy and male headship were how society was organized in those far off days and do not belong to the core or essence of relationship with the Divine. As society and culture change so do our views as to the place and men and women in society. In 2006 there is equality and so what the Bible says or assumes is interesting but not mandatory.
2. Patriarchy and male headship were how God truly intended ancient Israel and the early Church to be the way the people of God were organized as a holy society. But God (who is in Process and in interaction with the cosmos) is changing (in fact has changed) and the will of God now is in accord with how things are within enlightened human society in this cosmos.
3. God is not male or female and, at a time and in a place where female and male have equal dignity and equality of rights and opportunities, it is important that God’s Ministers be not only both straight male and female persons but also homosexual, lesbian and bi-sexual persons.
In fact it seems all to go back to the basic questions: Who is God? Who is Jesus? And What is salvation? It does seem to be the case that classic Trinitarian Theism fits well with the presentation of generous and gracious patriarchy and male headship in Scripture. However for many Episcopalians such doctrines as Deism, Unitarianism, and especially Panentheism and Process Theology are common today and these ways of thinking about Deity actually undergird and propel novel doctrine and morality and the rejection of biblical patriarchy and ethics.
If we go outside the Canon of the New Testament and to the fourth century text known as “The Apostolic Constitutions” we find there in Book 3 (as we can find in other patristic literature) a doctrine that if one were to utter it today one would probably be prosecuted under some human rights law. It is this. The (supposed) sacramental ministrations of a (supposed) ordained woman are not merely invalid (they do not communicate the dynamic grace of God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit) but they actually (because contrary to God’s Order) actually communicate the opposite of grace! (See further my Episcopal Innovations 1960-2004, 2006 from www.anglicanmarketplace.com for more details of this patristic teaching).
One (contemporary Evangelical) way to reject male headship and continue to maintain both Trinitarian Theism and the authority of Scripture is to say—as does John G. Stackhouse. Jr., in Finally Feminist, Baker Books—that patriarchy was God’s chosen way of human organization in biblical times and afterwards and that to go against it then was certainly to go against his known will. However, one also goes on to say that God was knowingly then in his inscrutable wisdom accommodating his will to what was actually possible for human society—in fact he was accommodating to a necessary evil—and waiting for a time when under his providential superintendence his real will could be made known and genuinely experienced as good. Society is now reaching this stage and so the church can now at last proclaim the full dignity and equality of both women and men; women can now assume as occasion offers or requires headship in churches; and we can read the Bible without having to explain away or degrade its profound commitment to patriarchy (which was real for its time). [There is of course debate as to whether the thesis of Dr Stackhouse really works.]
The Roman Catholic Church and The Orthodox Churches say little these days, especially in Europe, about the biblical theme of patriarchy and male headship. They tend to justify the male only ordained Ministry on the simple basis of iconic representation—Jesus was a man and male in sex and so those who represent him at the Sacrament of the altar must likewise be men and male in sex, in order for the iconic reality to work as the divinely chosen way of grace and leadership.
So whether as Trinitarian Theists we follow the Scriptures in a common-sense literal way to accept male headship, or whether we simply follow the Catholic (West and East) doctrine of iconic representation, we end up with accepting both a male-only ordained Ministry and the doctrine that the sacramental ministrations of a woman, and pre-eminently of a woman as “Chief pastor and Priest”, are invalid and (dare we say it, echoing patristic thought) possibly spiritually harmful—at least to those who have been taught the true faith!
Kyrie eleison.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
We must suppose that The Episcopal Church knows what it is doing in terms of its innovations for it has been creating them and pushing them since the late 1960s. On November l 2006 it revealed to the world yet another innovation—a married lady as its new patriarch and primate. This Church has been encouraged often by its ecumenical partners from the main-line denominations of the U.S.A. even as it has been warned by fellow Anglicans and Catholics of varied kinds.
Despite the clear doctrine of male headship in family and church set forth and presupposed throughout the whole of Scripture, and witnessed to by the church in virtually all its history since the close of the Canon of the Bible, the Episcopal Church claims to consecrate women as chief pastors (Prayer Book, 1979, pp.510ff). It also claims to have the authority to make a female bishop into its Presiding Bishop and actually did this in 2006 by electing Bp Katherine of Nevada. On November 4 she was publicly acclaimed as such in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.
Let us get more clarity on the role of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.
Functions and authority of the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA under Title I of Canons:
1. Chief Pastor and Primate of ECUSA. Canon I.2.4 (a).
2. Responsible for leadership in
• initiating and developing policy and strategy in ECUSA, and
• speaking for ECUSA as to its policies, strategies and programs. Canon I.2.4 (a) (1). 3. Speak God’s words to ECUSA and to the world, as the representative of ECUSA and its episcopate in its corporate capacity.Canon I.2.4 a) (2).
4. In the event of a vacancy within a Diocese, consult with the Ecclesiastical Authority to ensure that adequate interim Episcopal Services are provided. Canon I.2.4 (a) (3).
5. Take order for the consecration of Bishops, when duly elected, and assemble the Bishops of ECUSA to meet. Canon I.2.4 (a) (4).
6. Preside over meetings of the House of Bishops;and recommend legislation to General Convention and the Houses of ECUSA. Canon I.2.4 (a) (5).
7. Visit every Diocese in ECUSA for the purpose of:
• Holding pastoral consultations with the Bishop or Bishops thereof and, with their advice, with the Lay and Clerical leaders of the jurisdiction;
• Preaching the Word;
• Celebrating the Eucharist. Canon I.2.4 (a) (6). 8.
Report annually to ECUSA and, from time to time, issue pastoral letters. Canon I.2.4 (b).
9. Make appointments and delegate authority as appropriate to carry out his duties assigned by the canons or General Convention. Canon I.2.4(c).
10. Appoint a Chancellor to serve for as long as the Presiding Bishop may desire. Canon I.2.5.
Functions and authority of Presiding Bishop under disciplinary canons (Title IV).
1. The Presiding Bishop is the focal point for all disciplinary procedures
relating to a bishop under Title IV (The Disciplinary Canons).
• Charges against a Bishop are filed with the Presiding Bishop. Canon IV.3.24 & 26.
• The Presiding Bishop forwards the charges to the Review Committee. Canon IV.3.26.
• The Presiding Bishop on his own initiative may require the Review Committee to investigate any Bishop whom he believes has committed an offense. Canon IV.23 (b). • The Presiding Bishop appoints the five bishops who make up the episcopal membership of the Review Committee whose job it is to cause the charges to be investigated and to determine whether to issue a presentment against the Bishop charged. Canon IV.3.27 and 43.
• The Presiding Bishop may issue temporary inhibitions against bishops (Canon IV.1.4-6); and may determine punishment and sentence of bishops who may submit voluntarily to the discipline of ECUSA without trial (Canon IV.2.9-14).
• The Presiding Bishop receives and acts upon the certificate of the Review Committee when it finds that a Bishop has abandoned communion of ECUSA, including the imposition of an inhibition of such Bishop. (Canon IV.9.1).
• If a Bishop inhibited under Title IV.9 does not recant within two months of inhibition, the Presiding Bishop presents the matter to the House of Bishops for the Bishop to be deposed. (Canon IV.9.2). In addition to the foregoing functions and authorizations, there are a number of administrative functions provided in Title III (i.e., giving notice of a Bishop’s election, preparing a list of episcopal resignations, etc.), not viewed as substantive and not included here.
Now some of this can be seen as administrative; but stated or implied in many of these responsibilities and duties is a clear headship and rule. Of this there cannot be any doubt.
Therefore for The Episcopal Church both to consecrate women as bishops and to elect one such as the Presiding Bishop means that a significant majority in this Church has rejected the biblical teaching on and witness to male headship. They have done this for the following kinds of reasons:
1. Patriarchy and male headship were how society was organized in those far off days and do not belong to the core or essence of relationship with the Divine. As society and culture change so do our views as to the place and men and women in society. In 2006 there is equality and so what the Bible says or assumes is interesting but not mandatory.
2. Patriarchy and male headship were how God truly intended ancient Israel and the early Church to be the way the people of God were organized as a holy society. But God (who is in Process and in interaction with the cosmos) is changing (in fact has changed) and the will of God now is in accord with how things are within enlightened human society in this cosmos.
3. God is not male or female and, at a time and in a place where female and male have equal dignity and equality of rights and opportunities, it is important that God’s Ministers be not only both straight male and female persons but also homosexual, lesbian and bi-sexual persons.
In fact it seems all to go back to the basic questions: Who is God? Who is Jesus? And What is salvation? It does seem to be the case that classic Trinitarian Theism fits well with the presentation of generous and gracious patriarchy and male headship in Scripture. However for many Episcopalians such doctrines as Deism, Unitarianism, and especially Panentheism and Process Theology are common today and these ways of thinking about Deity actually undergird and propel novel doctrine and morality and the rejection of biblical patriarchy and ethics.
If we go outside the Canon of the New Testament and to the fourth century text known as “The Apostolic Constitutions” we find there in Book 3 (as we can find in other patristic literature) a doctrine that if one were to utter it today one would probably be prosecuted under some human rights law. It is this. The (supposed) sacramental ministrations of a (supposed) ordained woman are not merely invalid (they do not communicate the dynamic grace of God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit) but they actually (because contrary to God’s Order) actually communicate the opposite of grace! (See further my Episcopal Innovations 1960-2004, 2006 from www.anglicanmarketplace.com for more details of this patristic teaching).
One (contemporary Evangelical) way to reject male headship and continue to maintain both Trinitarian Theism and the authority of Scripture is to say—as does John G. Stackhouse. Jr., in Finally Feminist, Baker Books—that patriarchy was God’s chosen way of human organization in biblical times and afterwards and that to go against it then was certainly to go against his known will. However, one also goes on to say that God was knowingly then in his inscrutable wisdom accommodating his will to what was actually possible for human society—in fact he was accommodating to a necessary evil—and waiting for a time when under his providential superintendence his real will could be made known and genuinely experienced as good. Society is now reaching this stage and so the church can now at last proclaim the full dignity and equality of both women and men; women can now assume as occasion offers or requires headship in churches; and we can read the Bible without having to explain away or degrade its profound commitment to patriarchy (which was real for its time). [There is of course debate as to whether the thesis of Dr Stackhouse really works.]
The Roman Catholic Church and The Orthodox Churches say little these days, especially in Europe, about the biblical theme of patriarchy and male headship. They tend to justify the male only ordained Ministry on the simple basis of iconic representation—Jesus was a man and male in sex and so those who represent him at the Sacrament of the altar must likewise be men and male in sex, in order for the iconic reality to work as the divinely chosen way of grace and leadership.
So whether as Trinitarian Theists we follow the Scriptures in a common-sense literal way to accept male headship, or whether we simply follow the Catholic (West and East) doctrine of iconic representation, we end up with accepting both a male-only ordained Ministry and the doctrine that the sacramental ministrations of a woman, and pre-eminently of a woman as “Chief pastor and Priest”, are invalid and (dare we say it, echoing patristic thought) possibly spiritually harmful—at least to those who have been taught the true faith!
Kyrie eleison.
The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford)
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Installing the Lady Primate: Reflections upon the Liturgy as printed in the service booklet
God-willing, on Saturday November 4, 2006 The Episcopal Church will have a new Presiding Bishop and Primate, a married woman called Katherine Jefferts Schori. She will become the first ever female Presiding Bishop and Primate in the Anglican global family of churches. For The Episcopal Church she will be its twenty-sixth Presiding Bishop.
I attended the installation of her predecessor, Frank Griswold, and in my report of the Service at the National Cathedral in Washington I noted amongst other novelties the use of “The Baptismal Covenant” as the focal point of the first half of the service (the second half being Eucharistic) together with the emphatic claim by Bp Frank that he was entering into a new phase of his baptismal ministry. Thus I was most interested to note that Bp. Katherine is taking the same position as did Frank. That is, she is claiming that she is entering into a new phase, howbeit a continuing phase, of her baptismal ministry which began the moment she was baptized, fifty or so years ago. In the service there is (a) the giving to her of water as “the symbol of Baptism and of the ministry of evangelism shared by all the baptized”; (b) the public use of “The Baptismal Covenant” from the 1979 Prayer Book and involving everyone; and (c) the use of bishops and deacons in “Baptismal Sprinkling” of water over the whole cathedral congregation.
I raise two topics for my readers to ponder, who may download the booklet at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77550_ENG_HTM.htm
First, what kind of connection is there between “the baptismal covenant” and the office of Presiding Bishop [PB]? Obviously the office and ministry of the PB is of the same basic nature as that of diocesan and suffragan bishops except that the PB has a larger pastoral care -- of all the Bishops and the whole Church with all its dioceses. Further, as this office is only open to a Bishop, then what would have been more appropriate—if renewing “covenants” is the right way to go—would have been for her, alone, publicly to renew the commitments she made when consecrated a bishop and indicate that they were now extended in various ways. After all, it is her installation not the re-dedication of everybody who got a ticket for the service or sees it on a web-cast. However, so central has “The Baptismal Covenant” become in Episcopal Church practical theology and ethics that it is brought in nearly everywhere and connected with virtually everything.
The general idea of it appears to be that everyone baptized enters into a covenant with God which requires various duties by him/her, and that, in turn, requires God to make promises to the baptized and place him/her in “the risen life of Christ” to achieve them. What God gives in Baptism, it is held, includes the seed or the embryo of all possible forms of ministry, lay and ordained, that exist within the Church. So as the baptized person grows, he/she and the church discern which ministries are for him/her at succeeding stages of his/her pilgrimage. So whether one serves as a lay vestry member or as a priest then that ministry is the working out of one’s baptismal ministry, even also it is if one moves on to be a lay member of the General Convention or a bishop of the Church.
This notion that all possible ministries are given in seed or embryo at baptism is really a modern novelty. Baptism has a sufficient rich supply of meaning in terms of (a) relation to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, (b) membership of the Body of Christ and (c) the commitment to fight in Christ’s army against all forms of evil and sin, without adding to it this dimension of including all ministries. The general tradition of the Church has been that to be called to ordained Ministry is a special call into a special Order and that this call is only specifically related to one’s baptism in that God only calls baptized believers into this Ministry and Order. The calling is NOT present as a seed from baptism; rather it is the action of the exalted Lord Christ as Head of the Church. Of course, one reason why Bp Frank and Bp Katherine hold this novel doctrine so firmly is that it requires the church to admit into all forms of ministry, lay and ordained, those who in the classic tradition were not admitted into certain ministries through history—e.g., women and homosexually active persons into ordained priesthood.
But, by normal standards, to claim that the office and work of the Presiding Bishop is a baptismal ministry is to confuse the priesthood of all the baptized with the Ministerial Priesthood of those called from above by the Lord of the Church.
The second topic is the claim made several times in this Service and assumed generally in The Episcopal Church that “baptism is into the risen life of Christ.” And this “life” is usually explained in terms of “a life of an inclusive love” where Jesus receives people, especially those on the fringes of respectable society and its outcasts—“just as they are.” What he did and does we are to do likewise.
What strikes me as I read the presentation of St Paul in Romans 6 about the symbolism of Baptism is this. He is absolutely clear that we have been baptized into the death of Christ and have been buried with him. But the way he talks about our relation with the Risen Christ has a slightly different emphasis to it. He does not claim that “we have been already raised with him” for that is not true yet; for it will only be true at the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age. The truth is that the life of the age to come, the life of heaven and of Christ, is present in the Church—it is already here and we receive it in the Spirit—but it is not yet here in fullness, for this glorious state will only be present after the full redemption of our bodies. So while we are wholly identified with Christ in his death to sin and are to put away sin absolutely, we cannot yet be fully within the risen life of Christ, for that is only possible when we are given a glorious resurrection body like unto his.
Thus what I find missing in the great attachment to the theme of Baptism in the practical theology of The Episcopal Church and of this Service is (a) the baptismal emphasis in Scripture on dying to sin, or sin being as it were buried with Christ in the grave—that is the forsaking of and mortifying of sin in our souls and bodies; and (b) that the partaking in “the risen life” is real but partial and that its primary aspect is communion with God and seeking to be holy as he is holy. The avoidance of the “sin” part of the meaning of baptism and the emphasis on the “new life” part allows celebration of life as it is, that is life as it is without the full sanctification of it by the Holy Spirit. Zeitgeist is the Spirit here so often.
In conclusion, I have to say that in comparison with what is often encountered as “Eucharist” in the progressive liberal Episcopal Church, the Eucharistic second half of the service is (for this Church) “traditional.” One real problem with it, however, is that for the majority of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church it will not be a valid Eucharist since the “Presider,” whatever titles she holds by courtesy of The Episcopal Church, is not really and truly in the Ministerial Priesthood of the Catholic Church (since only men called by Christ can be so!).
drpetertoon@yahoo.com November 1, 2006
I attended the installation of her predecessor, Frank Griswold, and in my report of the Service at the National Cathedral in Washington I noted amongst other novelties the use of “The Baptismal Covenant” as the focal point of the first half of the service (the second half being Eucharistic) together with the emphatic claim by Bp Frank that he was entering into a new phase of his baptismal ministry. Thus I was most interested to note that Bp. Katherine is taking the same position as did Frank. That is, she is claiming that she is entering into a new phase, howbeit a continuing phase, of her baptismal ministry which began the moment she was baptized, fifty or so years ago. In the service there is (a) the giving to her of water as “the symbol of Baptism and of the ministry of evangelism shared by all the baptized”; (b) the public use of “The Baptismal Covenant” from the 1979 Prayer Book and involving everyone; and (c) the use of bishops and deacons in “Baptismal Sprinkling” of water over the whole cathedral congregation.
I raise two topics for my readers to ponder, who may download the booklet at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77550_ENG_HTM.htm
First, what kind of connection is there between “the baptismal covenant” and the office of Presiding Bishop [PB]? Obviously the office and ministry of the PB is of the same basic nature as that of diocesan and suffragan bishops except that the PB has a larger pastoral care -- of all the Bishops and the whole Church with all its dioceses. Further, as this office is only open to a Bishop, then what would have been more appropriate—if renewing “covenants” is the right way to go—would have been for her, alone, publicly to renew the commitments she made when consecrated a bishop and indicate that they were now extended in various ways. After all, it is her installation not the re-dedication of everybody who got a ticket for the service or sees it on a web-cast. However, so central has “The Baptismal Covenant” become in Episcopal Church practical theology and ethics that it is brought in nearly everywhere and connected with virtually everything.
The general idea of it appears to be that everyone baptized enters into a covenant with God which requires various duties by him/her, and that, in turn, requires God to make promises to the baptized and place him/her in “the risen life of Christ” to achieve them. What God gives in Baptism, it is held, includes the seed or the embryo of all possible forms of ministry, lay and ordained, that exist within the Church. So as the baptized person grows, he/she and the church discern which ministries are for him/her at succeeding stages of his/her pilgrimage. So whether one serves as a lay vestry member or as a priest then that ministry is the working out of one’s baptismal ministry, even also it is if one moves on to be a lay member of the General Convention or a bishop of the Church.
This notion that all possible ministries are given in seed or embryo at baptism is really a modern novelty. Baptism has a sufficient rich supply of meaning in terms of (a) relation to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, (b) membership of the Body of Christ and (c) the commitment to fight in Christ’s army against all forms of evil and sin, without adding to it this dimension of including all ministries. The general tradition of the Church has been that to be called to ordained Ministry is a special call into a special Order and that this call is only specifically related to one’s baptism in that God only calls baptized believers into this Ministry and Order. The calling is NOT present as a seed from baptism; rather it is the action of the exalted Lord Christ as Head of the Church. Of course, one reason why Bp Frank and Bp Katherine hold this novel doctrine so firmly is that it requires the church to admit into all forms of ministry, lay and ordained, those who in the classic tradition were not admitted into certain ministries through history—e.g., women and homosexually active persons into ordained priesthood.
But, by normal standards, to claim that the office and work of the Presiding Bishop is a baptismal ministry is to confuse the priesthood of all the baptized with the Ministerial Priesthood of those called from above by the Lord of the Church.
The second topic is the claim made several times in this Service and assumed generally in The Episcopal Church that “baptism is into the risen life of Christ.” And this “life” is usually explained in terms of “a life of an inclusive love” where Jesus receives people, especially those on the fringes of respectable society and its outcasts—“just as they are.” What he did and does we are to do likewise.
What strikes me as I read the presentation of St Paul in Romans 6 about the symbolism of Baptism is this. He is absolutely clear that we have been baptized into the death of Christ and have been buried with him. But the way he talks about our relation with the Risen Christ has a slightly different emphasis to it. He does not claim that “we have been already raised with him” for that is not true yet; for it will only be true at the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age. The truth is that the life of the age to come, the life of heaven and of Christ, is present in the Church—it is already here and we receive it in the Spirit—but it is not yet here in fullness, for this glorious state will only be present after the full redemption of our bodies. So while we are wholly identified with Christ in his death to sin and are to put away sin absolutely, we cannot yet be fully within the risen life of Christ, for that is only possible when we are given a glorious resurrection body like unto his.
Thus what I find missing in the great attachment to the theme of Baptism in the practical theology of The Episcopal Church and of this Service is (a) the baptismal emphasis in Scripture on dying to sin, or sin being as it were buried with Christ in the grave—that is the forsaking of and mortifying of sin in our souls and bodies; and (b) that the partaking in “the risen life” is real but partial and that its primary aspect is communion with God and seeking to be holy as he is holy. The avoidance of the “sin” part of the meaning of baptism and the emphasis on the “new life” part allows celebration of life as it is, that is life as it is without the full sanctification of it by the Holy Spirit. Zeitgeist is the Spirit here so often.
In conclusion, I have to say that in comparison with what is often encountered as “Eucharist” in the progressive liberal Episcopal Church, the Eucharistic second half of the service is (for this Church) “traditional.” One real problem with it, however, is that for the majority of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church it will not be a valid Eucharist since the “Presider,” whatever titles she holds by courtesy of The Episcopal Church, is not really and truly in the Ministerial Priesthood of the Catholic Church (since only men called by Christ can be so!).
drpetertoon@yahoo.com November 1, 2006
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