6  RECOGNIZING OUR PLACE

      Let us return to our ships and consider the identity of the passengers on the two types of ships.  Of course they are the same kinds of people sharing (to use the modern phrase) “common humanity,” but they are perceived differently as they board each type of ship and sail in it.  Behind and in this perception are two very different doctrines of man and of the Church. Is man/human being first of all an individual or a person?  And is the Church local and/or universal first of all or in any sense a community?  We must explore these topics.

Individual and Community

      I recall that when I was younger there was a distinction made between the Church and the community.  People believed and modeled their prayers on the understanding that the church was certainly set in a community (be it an English village or an American town), but the Church itself as a fellowship of people was rarely if ever called a community.  In praying for the community, we prayed for the political leaders and elected officials, the schools, the police, the homes for the elderly, the organizations for young people, and so on.  We prayed that God would have mercy upon all of us and guide us and cause the church within the community to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  In fact, I was leading prayer of this kind in my English parish up to 1990 when I left to move to the USA.

      Turning to the dictionary, we find that “community” is from communitas and means “a body of people organized into a political, municipal, or social unity.”  So we speak of a village, a town, an ethnic group, and even a monastery or convent as a community.  This word has been much used in recent days as part of the vocabulary in a drive by leaders in various groupings to get their members or potential members to participate both for their own good and that of the whole group.  This state of affairs is entirely to be appreciated because within North America great emphasis is placed upon the individual and his right to control major aspects of personal living and choosing.  The Constitution written in the wake of the European Enlightenment enshrines the rights of the autonomous individual.  If people are taught from their infancy the doctrine of individual rights, and if they hear it in school and from all politicians and in all advertisements, then they believe it.  In fact, it is difficult to see how modern western democracies, based primarily on capitalism, can exist without a strong doctrine or ethos of the autonomous individual who is free to choose in fundamental areas of trade, commerce, and lifestyle.

      So for those who want to organize people from their individual existences into meaningful groups or societies, the word which seems to counter individual rights without offending individuals is community.  The idea is that individuals freely agree (from their individual rights) to be joined to others in an arrangement best called a social contract.  I join a group, agree to its rules, and pay my subscription.  Thus I am in a community.

      However, the word community still holds its older meaning when it refers to a political or social structure (e.g., a small town in Newfoundland or a long established ethnic settlement in a big city – the Irish or Chinese communities), but it has been extended to include voluntary groupings who exist on the basis of an obvious social contract.

      If we turn to social philosophers we find that community is often upon their lips and in their writings.  For example, Robert Nisbet writes of community as “relationships among individuals that are characterized by a high degree of personal intimacy, of social cohesion or moral commitment, and of continuity in time.  The basis of community may be kinship, religion, political power, revolution, or race.  It may be, in fact, any of a large number of activities, beliefs, or functions.  All that is essential is that the basis be of sufficient appeal and of sufficient durability to enlist numbers of human beings, to arouse loyalties, and to stimulate an over-riding sense of distinctive identity.”  (The Social Philosophers: Community and Conflict in Western Thought, 1973, p.1.)

      Those who follow this approach can thus easily speak of the Church as “the community of faith” or, of a part of it as, for example, “the Methodist community.”

The Church as Community?

      In the new liturgies of both the Canadian and American Church the word community appears in important places.  In the 1979 book it is found in the Catechism: “The Church is the community of the New Covenant” (p. 854).  Then in the introductory notes for The Prayers of the People (p. 383) we are told that prayer is offered for “the concerns of the local community.”  It is not clear whether this refers to the actual parish congregation or to the congregation and people amongst whom they live.  In Form I the bidding is “for this city, for every city and community, and for those who live in them.”  In Form V the bidding is “for all who live and work in this community,” where community seems to mean the locality in which the church meets.  Also in Form VI the community seems to be the locality when the prayer is “for this community, nation and the world.”

      In PBS 30 we find in The Prayers of the People this particular petition: “We pray for the Church, the family of Christ throughout the world, remembering particularly all the baptized who minister in this congregation and community.”  Here it is not clear to me whether the local church is being named twice (both as a congregation and a community), or whether the congregation meeting in the holy building is being differentiated from the community outside the building.

      In the 1985 book the first part of the Eucharist as well as of the Marriage Service is specifically called “The Gathering of the Community.”  The explanation offered is that “the purpose of the initial part of the rite is to unite the assembled people as a community, to prepare them to listen to God’s word, and to enter into the eucharistic celebration.”  However, in the Litanies (pp. 110 ff.) the word community seems to have the primary meaning of the social/political unit in which the church is placed (see Nos. 1 & 18).  The fact that it is used of both the gathered congregation of Christ’s flock and also of the social structures in which that flock is set surely tells us something of the mindset of the liturgists.

      The use of the word community of the congregation, a people who were formerly not called by this name, suggests that liturgists, following moves within modern culture, have felt the need to emphasize that autonomous individuals need to be bound together in what was (and is still) called the Church on a freely-entered-into contractual basis in order to become a viable, visible, and vibrant community.  Therefore, the first part of the central service of the only day when the people who are being formed into a local religious community actually meet together is called “the gathering of the community.”  Significantly, the climax of the gathering is the “exchange of the peace,” where people move about to greet and affirm each other as fellow members of the assembled community.

      No doubt some people who use this vocabulary sincerely intend to break through the rugged individualism of modern society and form individuals into meaningful groups.  Pastors and priests who see the dynamics of the whole congregation want to suppress individualism and encourage co-operation in the life of the church.  Liturgists are very much aware that liturgy is a corporate experience.  The congregation is meant to speak from within one Faith and in one voice to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Therefore, with the break-up of natural communities, they have worked hard to recover, at least in the congregation of worshippers, a sense of belonging, a sense of a community.  References to the “community of faith” abound in their writings in books and in journals.  (See, for example, the constant usage in the recent introduction to liturgy from the German Roman Catholic scholar, Adolf Adam, in his text-book for students, Foundations of Liturgy, 1992.  In contrast, the massive, yet more conservative collection of four books as one book, The Church at Prayer, An Introduction to the Liturgy [1992], originally edited by the French Roman Catholic scholar, A.G. Martimort in the 1980s, hardly uses the word.)

      Significantly, Charles P. Price singled out “Christian Community” as one of the theological emphases of the 1979 Book and wrote: “It has been said that as assurance of immortality was the acute spiritual need of the early Church, and assurance of forgiveness the acute need of sixteenth-century Europe, community is the acute need in our time” (Introducing the Proposed Book, p.43).  To supply this acute need for community the rites contain the “Exchange of the Peace,” encouragement for the involvement in liturgy of laity and clergy so that it is truly the work of the whole people, and the emphasis upon the Eucharist as the common meal of the people of God (“the gifts of God for the people of God”).

      Writing in the Anglican Digest (Michaelmas, 1992), Philip Turner of Berkeley Divinity School contends that “to turn the Church into a ‘Christian community’ is unacceptable to God.”  Then he explains:

What I have come to believe is that if Christians look to the Church in any of its manifestations or institutional forms to provide them with a community, they distort the nature of the Church and, more seriously, construct an idol that, like all idols, is but the mirror image of themselves.  If however, they learn, in coming to God through Christ, to long for and rejoice in the communion of the saints, they will find union with God and with the saints of God that both transcends and transfigures any community they have ever known or will ever know.

      I believe he is right to call a so-called Christian community by its appropriate name – an idol.  He describes how that in seeking to create “a community,” everyone is expected to become like everyone else; but this is impossible.  So everyone has to become like the inner community which is seeking to impose its identifying features, views, and ways upon everyone so that all may be a real community.  So he concludes by stating that to the extent that churches

are motivated by a search for ‘Christian community’ they will most certainly prove inhospitable, oppressive and divisive.  To the extent that they are motivated by a longing for communion with God and communion ‘in Christ Jesus’ with people from very different communities, we may, even as strangers, hope for hospitality, liberty, and unity with both God and one another.

      The church is a congregation of people from a variety of communities – ethnic, political, social –  who meet together for communion (Latin, communio) or fellowship (Greek, koinonia) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Father and with each other.

      Writing also from Yale the well-known liturgist, Aidan Kavanagh, seems to stand at the opposite end of the spectrum to Philip Turner.  He appears to have accepted the secular doctrine of the social contract and applied it to liturgy.  Addressing Episcopal friars, he quoted approvingly a claim that the liturgy “contains within itself not simply a symbolic representation of the social contract but a consummation of social contract.”  Further, he claimed that “the Rite is a public order, and its acceptance is a public act, regardless of the private state of belief.  Acceptance of the Rite one performs is thus a fundamental social act that forms the basis for public orders...”  And he added that this “is an anthropological way of stating the dictum, ‘the law of believing founds and constitutes the rule of belief,’ which is the public core of the Church's life.”  (Little Chronicle, Vol.75, No.2, Fall, 1992.)

      As far as I can tell, those modern liturgists who are critical of modern ideas of “Christian community” do not want to ditch the word.  Rather, they want to use it in a uniquely Christian way.  For example, the Englishman, W. Jardine Grisbrooke, fully recognizing that one of the original aims of the liturgical movement at the beginning of the century was to minimize individualism (not, primarily, in the sense of autonomous individualism in society, but of individualistic piety within the Mass) sees modern “individualization and secularization” as real problems today (in “Liturgical Reform and Liturgical Renewal” Studia Liturgica, 21. 2, 1991, pp. 136ff.).  Of these two ifis afflicting liturgy today, he writes:

Both are intimately connected with an inadequate and erroneous notion of community, and nothing could do more to repair the damage they have done than the regaining of a lively sense of what community really means in a Christian context.

      Perhaps he ought to have been more biblical and said “what fellowship [instead of “community”] really means,” but he continues:

The renewed emphasis on the Church, and the people who make up a particular church, as a community is one of the great gains of modern theology.  But it has been largely nullified by the depreciation of the concept of community which has in practice developed alongside it.  Community is also a fashionable concept in modern secular thought, and the understanding of the Church as community has in practice largely undergone a secularizing metamorphosis.

      Then he makes a very important observation which is worthy of careful study:

The ecclesial and secular concepts of community are poles apart: the former posits a pre-existing community into which the individual is incorporated, while the latter assumes that the community is the sum of the individuals who compose it.  More and more the latter concept has come to erode the former within the Church.

      I would echo what he says but question whether that divine society called the household of faith, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit is rightly called a community.  It is most certainly a fellowship and communion, but hardly a community, except in so far as it has a bureaucracy and organization upon earth.

      As an illustration, he uses the exchange of the Peace.  We may say that, theologically, the Peace is the peace of the Lord Jesus and comes only from the Lord who is deemed to be present in the Word, the Sacrament, and the assembly.  So to communicate this important fact and Reality, the Peace ought to begin at the altar and go from the ministers there to the assembled faithful in some kind of orderly way.  However, in practice the Peace is just an exchange of hugs or handshakes with those who are physically near; and thus the secular triumphs over the Christian insight.

      It would appear that there is a fundamental problem in the minds of those liturgists who produced the modern books.  They have imbibed a secular understanding of community!  In contrast in the Common Prayer Tradition (as I hope I showed with clarity in my recent Knowing God through the Liturgy) there is no concept of community, but rather of the assembly or congregation of the Lord being called together by His Word to meet with Him, to hear His Word and to be fed from His Table.  Likewise, there is neither use of the word community in the New Testament nor the presence of the concept of community in its contents.  Scholars have detected around ninety images of the Church (body, temple, priesthood, household, etc.) within the twenty-seven books, but community is not one of them.

      Communion or fellowship is central: there is no place for a community, for the simple reason that the Body of Christ is to be home for people from different communities.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

      In the view of the writers of the New Testament, believers in Christ are incorporated into Christ (into His Body) by the Spirit; and by being so placed, they are united with all other believers of the old and the new covenants.  A local church is thus a microcosm of the whole Church, which is catholic; and to be catholic means not only that this fellowship is found in history and universally through space and time, but also that it exists both on earth and in heaven.  Therefore in the Creed we confess that we believe in “the communion of saints,” for in holy worship we join with the company of heaven to praise and glorify the Father, through the Son and by the Holy Spirit.

      What concerns me theologically with the modern obsession with community is that it is a concept which so easily commends or flows from pantheism or panentheism.  God is or becomes the spirit of the community or the universal reality into which individuals come to be a local community.  God can be thought of as the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the age).  I realize that the best modern liturgists do not intend to commend pantheism, for they speak of two dimensions being operative when there is (in their terms) the “gathering of the community of faith.”  (For any reader who wishes to pursue the meaning of community I commend Frank. G. Kirkpatrick, Community: A Trinity of Models, 1986.  He uses it of the Church in a very specific way.)

      Karl Adam explains that the first of these involves God in Christ turning to the assembly in love and giving Himself to it.  Therefore, “to the extent that the faithful open themselves to this self-donation of God and respond to Him with grateful praise and with a self-giving in return, liturgy acquires a vertical dimension – the encounter and communion of God and human beings.”  There is also the horizontal dimension of inter-human reality which he explains in some detail.  And he comments: “The rediscovery of the communicational structure of all liturgical celebrations is one of the most important results of the liturgical reform that has been going on since Vatican II” (Adam, op. cit., p.56).  Perhaps it may be said that too much has been made of the horizontal to the diminution of the vertical!

Individual and Person

      Apparently the word “individual” was not generally used of a human being until the nineteenth century.  It is a word which was applied to persons after it had been used for a long time for things.  There seems to be little doubt but that the talk of human beings as individuals is a result of the great emphasis within the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century on what we now call the autonomy of each person, every human being and (from now on called) the individual.  An individual is one who is essentially separate from other individuals.  A man or a woman is one who essentially comes from others (via procreation and birth), and who is in relation to others (in a family).  A person is also a word which emphasizes the individuality of the human being, though it carries with it a sense of relation to others.  It is probably true to say that if Christians use only the vocabulary created by the Enlightenment – which placed man, not God, at the center of the stage – then they will surely never get straight the Christian understanding of man, of communion between man and God, and of the divine society, the Church.

      One of the Christian doctrines which the leaders of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century attacked was the teaching on sin and on original sin in particular.  The ninth article of The Articles of Religion is entitled “Of original or Birth-Sin,” and it reads:

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruptionof the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offipring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.  And this infection doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, phronema sarkos, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh,) is not subject to the Law of God.  And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

      In other words every person, male or female, born into this world is born with a human nature that has an inbuilt tendency or bias to choose evil rather than good or to choose what elevates self rather than what glorifies God. The divine act of regeneration implants in the soul the grace of God (= the presence and influence of the Holy Spirit) so that this tendency and bias can be overcome and the will of God obeyed intentionally and joyfully.

      The Common Prayer Tradition incorporates in its doctrine of baptism and in its collects and prayers this doctrine of original sin.  Thereby it rejects the ancient but ever-surfacing doctrine known as Pelagianism – the teaching that each of us, as created human beings, has within ourselves genuine freedom to choose right or wrong, God or Satan, without particular assistance by God’s special grace.  Thus in the General Confession we admit to God in humility that “there is no health in us”; that is, in and of ourselves without the grace of God there is no good thing which is acceptable to God.  And the collect for Easter Eve presupposes original sin as a permanent reality in the soul:

Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection, for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

      Further, in the collect for the First Sunday after Trinity we pray:

O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

      “Through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee” well summarizes the reality of original sin in our lives.

      It is well known that the apostle Paul distinguishes between sin (hamartia) in the singular, and transgressions, faults, and sins in the plural.  Sin belongs to sinful man; it is interior to him, and it will remain with him until the redemption of his body at the general resurrection (Rom. 5:12–21).

      Turning from the Common Prayer Tradition to the new Prayer books we find that apparently there is in them (a) the result of a determined attempt to remove the doctrine of original sin (Paul’s hamartia) or, where this is not possible, to minimize it; and (b) a modern form of Pelagianism, emphasizing our total freedom over against the Lord our God.  For example, the statement “there is no health in us” is removed from the General Confession even in Rite I, which is supposed to be a traditional rite (1979, p. 42). Then in both the 1979 and 1985 books the translation of Psalm 51 is designed to rule out this Psalm as a proof-text for this doctrine of original sin.  In the Psalter of the 1928 BCP verse 5 of Psalm 51 reads:

            Behold I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.

      In the Psalter of the 1979 and 1985 Books it reads:

            Indeed I have been wicked from my birth,

            A sinner from my mother’s womb.

      My readers may wish to consult such other translations as the Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, and the Jerusalem Bible.  The difference between the two translations printed above is clear: the first traces sin or a sinful nature back through procreation to the parents, and their parents, while the second only allows King David to have been a sinner from his birth.

      This denial of original sin and the defining of sin only in terms of personal rebellion against God is clearly taught in the Catechism of the 1979 Book.  In its first section entitled “Human Nature” the question is asked: “Why do we live apart from God and out of harmony with creation?”  The answer is, “From the beginning, human beings have misused their freedom and made wrong choices.”  In answer to the further question, “Why do we not use our freedom as we should?” the answer is: “Because we rebel against God and we put ourselves in the place of God.”

      If there is no original sin, then of course the Atonement of Jesus at Calvary was made to deal only with actual sins, acts of rebellion.  This in part explains why the new Eucharistic Prayers do not emphasize the death of Jesus as fully and explicitly as do those of the Common Prayer Tradition.  Further, if we do not have diseased natures, then regeneration by the Holy Spirit given at Baptism is not intended to heal our human nature but only to deal with the actual misuse and misdirection of our “freedom.”  If the Ministration of Holy Baptism in the two modern editions of the BCP (1928 & 1962) is compared with that of the later 1979 and 1985 books, then the virtual removal of the doctrine of original sin and the new emphasis on freedom to choose can clearly be seen.  Only someone schooled in the old ones would so much as think that original sin was intended in such a question as, “Do your renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?” (1979, p. 302).

      It may be said that the new Rites display a determined attempt to present God as the Creator of a good creation, but in doing so, they have a distinct tendency to present this in an unqualified way and thus to omit the darker side of nature (see, e.g., Eucharistic Prayers 3 & 6 in the BAS).  The content of these prayers and the praise of water found in the Easter Vigil is such as to avoid the fact that there has been “the fall,” and nature does not now exist in its pristine goodness.  We all are aware that we encounter goodness and evil in the world every day and always.  There is disharmony, disease, and disorder with violence as well as beauty, beneficence, and bounty with happiness.

      But to proceed.  What we may call the modern view of our common humanity also makes its appearance in the way that ancient canticles and hymns are translated and the way in which biddings for prayer are framed in the new books.  To begin with the latter, it has often been observed that much of what is called “the prayers of the people” (1979, pp. 383ff. & 1985, pp. 110ff.) is the agenda of the United Nations or enlightened secular humanism rather than that of the kingdom of God.  That is, so many biddings or intercessions do not connect the social, legal, and physical improvement of the lot of people in the world with the knowledge of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior.  To pray “for those in positions of public trust that they may serve justice, and promote the dignity and freedom of every human person” sounds like support of the civil rights’ and feminist movements rather than desire for men and women to worship and serve the Lord our God in freedom and to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.  Further, several people have pointed out to me that while there are several prayers for prisoners (“political?”), there are no prayers for the victims of crime.

      Then if the Canticles in Rite II (pp. 85ff.) and the Canadian Book (pp. 75ff.) are examined, one is conscious that the words “free” and “freedom” occur very often.  Further, if one knows the older translations, one is much aware of this fact!  For example in the Song of Simeon (Luke 2:29–32) and verse 29 we find:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. (Rite I)

Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised. (Rite II)

      The RSV is virtually the same as Rite I, and the NIV states:

            Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.

      If we translate the Greek literally, we get: “Now thou releasest the slave [servant] of thee, O Master, according to the word of thee in peace.”

      The opening lines of the Song of Zechanah (Luke 1:68–79) are:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people. (Rite I)

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free. (Rite II)

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people. (RSV)

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. (NIV)

      Again, if we translate the Greek literally, we get: “Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel because he visited and wrought redemption for the people of him.”  The point is that we ought to translate the Scriptures honestly and then explain their content rather than trimming the translation to contemporary calls for freedom.  Modern secular ideas of freedom do not include freedom from sin but only freedom to be the slave of sin while enjoying a greater economic and social freedom.

      It has already been noted that both in the Psalter and the Canticles of the 1979 and 1985 books inclusive language is present.  This usage is of course not neutral but is committed to the removal of sexism, androcentricism, and patriarchy.  So not only is there a strong injection of the secular doctrine of freedom into these books, but there is also the message that this freedom means freedom from the order of relations (equality with hierarchy) given in Scripture as of God and from God, in favor of a modern doctrine of equality where roles are reversible.  So it is not surprising that these books accept as normal the ordination of women to be presbyters/priests and bishops.

      We shall address the subject of inclusive language in the next chapter and show that its use is incompatible with a genuinely biblical and patristic orthodoxy.

Confession of Sin

      Already in this chapter the subject of sin has been raised!  Now I wish to make reference to the growing practice of leaving out any confession of sins or of not allowing a confession of sin followed by the absolution in both Eastertide (the so-called “Great Fifty Days” from Easter to Pentecost) and Christmastide (the days from Christmas to Epiphany).  (I say more on the “the Fifty Days” in Appendix 2, which I invite my reader to peruse after he has read this chapter.)  This novel practice for Anglicans can not be justified by the rubrics of either the 1928 or 1962 BCP.  Further, it is not allowed by the 1979 book which before the Confession of Sin in the Holy Eucharist has this rubric: “A Confession of Sin is said here if it has not been said earlier.  On occasion the Confession may be omitted” (pp. 330 & 359).  Such words can hardly be said to cover a period of fifty days which, where there is a daily Eucharist, is a very long time.  In his commentary on the 1979 book Charles P. Price tells us that the rubrical provisions “are intended to ensure a full, general confession of sin for most services” (Introducing the Proposed Book, p.77).

      The 1985 book, however, is more vague and seems not to require a confession of sin at any time or on any occasion (see page 191) for the modern-language Eucharist.  Modern liturgists seem unable to perceive the biblical idea that the confession of sin belongs to our confession of praise and thus is part of the joy of redemption.  For as John tells us: “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” and “we know that whenever our hearts condemn us,” our “God is greater than our hearts and He knows everything” (1 John 1:8; 3:20).

      To confess our sins is to acknowledge the truth concerning ourselves within the whole truth revealed by God concerning our salvation.  We are not what we ought to be, and we know that God makes clear what we should seek to be.  To confess one’s sin is to pray for His grace in order to live more to His glory.  So genuine confession becomes genuine praise.  Recognition of sin is not meant to be absorption with guilt-feelings but a basic reason to seek after and know the Lord our God.  The more we look on the resurrected, exalted Lord Jesus the more we ought to see and repent of our sins and desire their forgiveness and cleansing in order the more sincerely and lovingly to serve Him.

      Gregory Dix was very much aware of the emphasis in the Cranmerian BCP on the related themes of sin-grace-faith, and of the liturgy for the Lord’s Supper he wrote: “As a piece of liturgical craftsmanship it is in the first rank – once its intention is understood.  It is not a disordered attempt at a Catholic rite, but the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of justification alone” (Shape, p.672).  This doctrine of justification is set out by St. Paul in his Letters to Galatia and to Rome.  It states that believing sinners are placed by divine grace in a right relationship with the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit.  It is not justification sola fide where faith is a human achievement or work, but rather justification per fidem propter Christum (through faith on account of Christ).  So the baptized believer is simul iustus et peccator (righteous and a sinner at one and the same time).  In Christ, the Father places him within the covenant of grace, reckons him to be righteous and adopts him as His son; but in himself the believer remains a sinner who needs sanctification on a daily basis as long as he is in this age and this human body.  Thus the believing sinner always has need to confess his sins and receive absolution –  a truth stated with wonderful clarity in the second Exhortation of the service of Holy Communion in BCP (1549).

      Throughout the “prefaces” of the BAS it is [wrongly] suggested that the Anglican tradition has suffered from a morbid preoccupation with penitence.  In contrast to Anglicans of yesterday, the new redeemed community is to be celebratory, standing not kneeling before God.  This attitude is written into the BAS and emphasized by Charles P. Price (with reference to the 1979 book) who speaks of the need to “mitigate this tone of unrelieved penitence and unworthiness” (Introducing, p.41).  It comes in part from a general turning away from the written Word of God in Scripture, and a viewing of Cranmer and St. Paul through Dix’s blinkered or prejudiced eyes.  As Robert D. Crouse explains:

The Bible teaches that sin is the betrayal of a trust, freely given and received, the betrayal of the charity of God, who by virtue of the Cross of Christ accounts us as friends.  An authentic sense of sin arises only in proportion to our consciousness of the holiness and benevolence of God towards us, and recognition of our betrayals of His charity.  We grow in penitence only as we grow in adoration.  That is a fundamental principle of spiritual life, and that principle should govern the liturgical and pastoral practice of the Church.

Therefore, before we jettison the sackcloth to don the cheerful plumage of more affirmative religion, we ought perhaps to think about the meaning of our traditional practice.  The most striking aspect of the Anglican reforms in this regard was a thorough integration of penitence into the structure and pattern of common prayer.  For several centuries prior to the Reformation, penitential practice had been almost exclusively a matter of private confession and absolution, outside the context of the public liturgy.  Not only did the Reformers provide a penitential introduction to the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer ... but they also made confession and absolution essential elements within the structure of the eucharistic liturgy.

    This was a reform of immense importance, because it involved the explicit recognition, liturgically, of the character of sin as the betrayal of that divine charity which we celebrate in the memorial of our Savior’s sacrifice, and emphasized the point that the benevolence of that sacrifice is the ground of absolution...  The logic of it is exactly the logic of Christian prayer, of which the Lord’s Prayer is the paradigm: that is to say, the recognition of the paternal charity of God, and of our faithful attachment to His will and kingdom, must be the context in which our penitence makes sense. (Submission to the BAS evaluation commissioners by the PBS of Canada, November 1991, pp.65-66.)

      So it is that for Anglicans the ministry of reconciliation finds its focus in the public worship of the Church; and the practice of private confession and absolution, or the sacrament of penance, becomes supplementary, rather than a general rule.

      And there is no genuine substitute for the confession of sin and absolution in the Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper.  It is erroneous to equate, as the BAS does, the use of penitential intercessions, or even an introductory penitential rite, with confession and absolution within the service of Holy Communion.  In the latter the emphasis is upon God’s action – He pardons and He does so because of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement.  A petition for forgiveness in the Prayers of the People places the emphasis not upon God’s action but upon the people’s request – one petition amongst many.  Further, while the use of the penitential office before the Eucharist may seem to be preferable, since it includes the possibility of direct confession and absolution, it can give the wrong impression – that is, that we ought to get rid of penitential feelings before we come to the celebration of the Eucharist, for penitence has no place at the heart of the Christian life or of its principal act of worship.  Again our sin and Christ’s Atonement are prized apart!

      A comparison of the words of the priest or officiant before the Confession of Sin in Morning Prayer in the classic and modern books is very revealing.  For the latter the confession of sin is in order to prepare to worship, but for the former it is the basic part of the act of worship itself.  My reader may desire to compare the two and draw his own conclusions.

      Obviously there is a big difference between the teaching of classical and modern Anglicanism concerning man, his sin, and his salvation and how this is proclaimed and applied in liturgy.  We have to decide where God’s truth is in these important matters.

Holy Matrimony

      In the light of what has been written above, the reader will expect that there is a change in the doctrine of marriage in the new books.  He will not be disappointed!  However, we need to note that the two services are similar but not identical, and the American may be said to be a little more conservative than the Canadian since it points more obviously to classic Scriptural texts on marriage in its Preface and allows the reading of [the patriarchal passage!] Ephesians 5:21–33 (which includes the call for wives to submit to their husbands in Christian love and for husbands to love their wives as Christ, the Bridegroom, loved His Church).

      Unlike the Common Prayer Tradition, these two services do little to indicate that marriage, as instituted by God but set now in a world of sinfulness, becomes by the grace of God a redemptive structure or sanctifying order of relations.  In and by it, according to the traditional Christian message, the sinful appetites of man may be educated, corrected, and perfected by the grace of Jesus Christ.  The purposes of marriage as set forth in the new rites can be taken to be an uncritical acceptance and endorsement of a self-indulgent sensuality, and of self-fulfillment rather than self-giving, all set in the language of Zion.  What is missing from them is the sense that normally marriage is definitely for the procreation of children who are to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord and to the praise of His holy name.  Further, the new texts are silent concerning the chaste single life (which is a gift of God according to the service in the 1662 BCP), and they can give the impression (in a sensual culture) that chastity is neither virtuous nor necessary where there is no vocation to marriage.

      The modern teaching appears to be that the ministers of the sacrament of marriage are the two persons involved, for they marry each other.  If vows are to each other and not, in the first instance, to God our Father, then they can later decide to untie the knot they have tied, since God’s blessing is dependent upon their willingness to keep their contract.

      It is interesting to compare the order of the traditional and new services.  For the 1928 and 1962 and the 1979 BCP the content is: consent; vow; optional prayer over the ring; the giving of the ring; prayer for blessing on the couple that the vow and covenant may be kept; sentence from Matthew 19:6; and ratification of the marriage by the officiating minister.  Here the couple make their vows, the Church prays for God’s blessing on the covenant, and then the important scriptural formula is pronounced (“what God hath joined...”), with a declaration of what has been done.  The marriage is constituted by God’s blessing of the couple’s vow and covenant.  The role of the priest or bishop is to declare and ratify and only then to bless.  In the 1985 BAS the order is consent; vow; prayer over the ring; the giving of the ring; the minister’s declaration that they are husband and wife; and then the scriptural formula, followed by prayers and the blessing.  Here the priest makes no petition to the Lord for His blessing on the vow and covenant before declaring that they are married.  The difference between the two may seem minimal; but if it is taken in the context of the whole service, then it may be said that where the traditional BCP assumes that marriage is a work both of grace and human resolve, the BAS tends to suggest that it is only human resolve upon which the Church gives the blessing.  God does not act in and through the man and woman: rather, they act as autonomous individuals.  Their vows appear to be equated with the (claimed) act of God in uniting them as one flesh.  In terms of classical theology, there is the tendency to fail to distinguish between the realms of grace and nature and thus uncritically to affirm natural, sexual relationships in an individualist and subjectivist form as if they were in and of themselves Christian!

      Having briefly looked at Christian marriage, which is the union of a man and woman, we turn next to the vexed question of inclusive language, which some may judge is seeking to obliterate the seemingly obvious differences between a man and a woman!

7  CRISIS IN LANGUAGE

      I have raised the subject of non-excluding or inclusive language several times in previous chapters, and it is now time to reflect in some detail upon it.  Though the development of our language in the public arena in an inclusivist direction has been far from smooth, most people seem to think that inclusivist language is now here to stay and soon such generic terms as “mankind” will disappear completely from modern written and spoken English.  They will simply be used when one is referring to literature from previous times and spoken when presenting poetry and plays from earlier days.  Young people are being taught to speak and write in the modern way, and when they grow up everyone will be of the same mind – or so it appears.

      Within this context where inclusive language is seen as necessary in order to affirm the rights of women and minorities as well as to state the equal dignity and worth of all people, it would seem that the Church ought to be in the vanguard of the use of such language.  Further, it could be argued, if the Church cares for justice and dignity, human rights and sexual equality, then it ought to set an example and be in the vanguard also in this revolution.  Obviously some in the Church have felt and do feel this way and have engaged in such a crusade in order to implement this agenda.  Yet the majority have simply gone along with the results achieved by the pressure groups and have accepted the gradual adoption of this new language, offering only minor resistance here and there along the way.

      A minority has resisted the moves towards inclusivism and the rejection of all forms of generic language.  They have said something like this: “It is one thing adopting inclusive language today in order to converse with people or work within an organization or government agency which has made such language compulsory; but it is another thing actually to commend its use as a just and noble activity; and it is yet another thing requiring that it be used in divine worship or inserted by sub-editors into the text of prayer books, hymn books, devotional books, and theological books.”

The Issue

      The values and the ideology which undergird the call for and implementation of inclusive language are not neutral.  Not only is there a call for equality for women in all aspects of social and political life as well as in the workplace, but there is also a blanket condemnation of societies and cultures in the past or present which are judged to be sexist or patriarchal in their mindset and organization.  Apparently, the message is not simply that society and its self-consciousness have developed and we have reached a new era requiring changes in our language.  Rather, it is that we have discovered and acted upon a truth which males in earlier cultures and societies kept hidden in order to subjugate and maltreat women.  That truth is not only that there is equality of female and male but also that there are no essential differences between the two sexes.  It is claimed that biological differences are of the same order as differences in the color of eyes and hair; further, any supposed brain and psychological differences between the sexes are said to be no more obvious than between one male and another male, or one female and another female.

      Of course, many who use inclusive language do not consciously have any ideology in their intentions: they just do what others do and reckon it is the best way to get on in the world.  This, however, does not change the general effect of the use of such language upon a society and a culture.  If we get the impression and the message that equality means that there are no essential differences between female and male human beings, then that has an effect upon our thinking about the relations of male and female in the home, marriage, church, and society.  In asserting such an effect, one need not be saying that all was well and good in previous societies where most women spent most of their time in the home as homemakers and mothers.  Surely to ask questions and make critical assertions about the ideology behind inclusive language is not necessarily to commend a previous state of affairs when generic language was common, even universal!

      Christians obviously need to think about the inner content and logic of inclusive language before they use it in Christian worship either to speak of man (the human race) or to address God.  They have inherited a Bible and a rich tradition of devotional, liturgical and theological literature which is not in inclusive language.  Such terms as “man” and “mankind” are used in that holy tradition in a generic way to refer to the whole race; one of the titles of Jesus is “Son of Man,” and God Himself is named “the Father” and portrayed as the King of kings and Lord of lords.

      Language does not exist in a vacuum but within culture, and this is the case with the Hebrew of the Old and the Greek of the New Testament.  Generic language existed and was used because society was so organized that the man or the father represented the tribe or the clan or the family in real life.  This may be called a system of patriarchy in the sense that men were obviously the ones who were actively in charge as the warriors, hunters, and rulers.  They were to care for and provide for their wives and children.  Such a system may seem to modern eyes to have been tyrannical and wicked, and patriarchy has become a pejorative or abusive term for some people today.  Nevertheless we cannot escape from the fact that nearly all ancient societies, even where they worshipped female deities, were decidedly patriarchal, and that most societies in the world today – many of them very prosperous – are still patriarchal.

      Israelite society in the period of the Old Testament was like other near-eastern societies in certain ways, but in others it was different, for it had the vocation to model its life on God’s revealed Law (Torah).  Within that Law it is clear that male and female, man and woman, are equal before God since they are made in His image and after His likeness.  This basic equality, however, in no way prevents the existence of an ordered relation between them in marriage and in society.  An Israelite woman is to obey her husband who in turn is to love and care for his wife while children of all ages are to honor their parents and grandparents.  Of course, relations within ancient Israel, as everywhere else, were marred by such sins are selfishness and pride, and thus the ordered family of happy and contented relationships was not always (maybe not often) there to behold.  The Israelites did not always do what God’s law required to be done.  Yet God’s will concerning order within His covenant is clear, expressed not only through sociological and legal means, but also through language and in particular through the use of basic, generic terms such as “man.”

      We are not far off target if we also assume that relations between husbands and wives, children and parents, and grandparents and grandchildren within the so-called patriarchal systems of the countries which made up the Roman Empire in New Testament times were marred by sin, both in their actual structure and in the way people treated each other.  However, our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles did not reject patriarchy.  They taught that there is to be an ordered relation within the family as well as in the Church.  They placed ordered, human relations within the covenant of grace and thus within the orbit of the love (agape) which Paul extols in 1 Corinthians 13.  Certainly they taught that there is perfect equality of all people before God the Father, for He offers the same salvation to all, and without exception all baptized believers are adopted into His family.  All enter on equal terms (sinners) and remain on equal terms (forgiven sinners) in order to be sanctified in the dynamic of a personal relationship with the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit.  Yet in all relations between male and female (as well as between male and male and female and female) in home and church there is to be a following of God’s order.  One cannot defend the requirement that children obey their parents unless one also teaches that the wife obeys her husband in Christian love.  There is a hierarchy within equality.  Therefore the language of the New Testament, which conveys and contains this doctrine, is generic in content and style, as is that of the Old Testament.

      Bearing all this in mind, one can see at once that to translate generic terms in Hebrew and Greek in a non-generic way will be to lose something of importance.  Though it is certainly true that when the apostle Paul writes to the “brethren” he writes to each one of the members of the fellowship of faith, it is also true that calling them “brethren” (when there were certainly females present) is actually a way of stating their equality in Christ and asserting that all of them without exception are adopted by the Father into the family of His Son to share in his Sonship.  Thus believers appear before God’s throne of grace as both sons of the Father and brothers of Christ, whether they be male or female.

      After careful study and thought a Christian today may decide to reject the biblical portrayal of order for the family and the church and accept one or another view of equality from contemporary life.  Does this entitle him or her to ask or demand that the Bible be translated in an inclusivist way?  Certainly she or he has the opportunity to present the Christian Faith in inclusive language and to change into modern egalitarian and inclusivist terms the patriarchal and generic terms of the original Scriptures.  But to translate the Scriptures as though they were not (by God’s inspiration and guidance) patriarchal and as if they did not contain the doctrine of divine order seems to me dishonest.  What is honest is to translate the texts as accurately as possible, bearing in mind not only the possible meaning of words but the cultural and religious context in which they were said and written.  I accept that this is a difficult task, and since the sixteenth century as readers of the English language we have been exceedingly blessed by the supply of good translations.  However, to make an ingredient of translation the modern doctrine of anti-sexism or inclusivism seems to me to be a major mistake, for then what belongs to honest disagreement with the text is erroneously made a part of the text in translation.

Inclusivism in Liturgy

      The most obvious form of inclusivism in biblical translation is the removal of generic words from the Canticles and the Psalter.  The clearest example from the Canticles is in the Magnificat in both Books.  The last line is literally “to Abraham and to the seed of him,” and this meaning is preserved in the older translations (e.g. of 1979, Rite I and the BCP generally).  One reason for preserving “seed” is that in comparing Scripture with Scripture, we note that in Galatians 3:16–19 the apostle Paul emphasizes that the one seed of Abraham is Jesus Christ.  However, Mary’s Song (Luke 1:46–55) does actually use the word seed (= semen) and so ought to be translated “Abraham and his seed” rather than “Abraham and his children” (as in Rite II).

      It was only at the final stage in the translation of the Psalter that the revising committee decided to adopt a limited policy of inclusivism for their work.  This is described by the most influential member of that committee, Charles Mortimer Guilbert, in this way:

In its final review of the Psalter, the attention of the revisers was drawn to the frequent, and sometimes ambiguous, use of generic terms.  This usage is especially characteristic of the Wisdom Psalms, but it is not confined to this category.  The psalmists were given to the use of ‘man’ and ‘children (or sons) of men’ and similar terms, where, from the contexts it is quite clear that those referred to were neither exclusively masculine in gender nor singular in number.  Some of the passages deal with our common humanity, others are plainly collectives, still others are speaking of our human mortality. (The Psalter. A New Version for Public Worship and Private Devotion, Introduced by Charles Mortimer Guilbert, 1978, p. xiv.)

      We note that the basic work of translation was nearly completed before the committee decided (not unanimously and not without resignations) to adopt inclusivism.  Further, we note that in this decision were several judgments which are, to say the least, questionable and debatable.  What ought to be comment on the text (the last sentence quoted above) becomes part of the text.

      Guilbert uses Psalm 1 as an example and claims that the opening words, which literally speak of the blessedness or happiness of the man who lives in a particular, God-pleasing way, are in fact “a universal statement about the human condition.”  So he and his team give us “Happy are they” instead of “Happy is the man.”  If we look at the commentaries on the Psalter from church fathers, we find that the “man” is first of all the ideal Jewish man, who is the head of his family; and then, in Christian exegesis, he is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Man in whom we are all called to be blessed.  So both honest translation and Christian usage demand that there be no inclusivism here.

      Yet Guilbert is not consistent in his translation policy, for he tells us that “this treatment of generic terms has not been carried into those Psalms which in the New Testament and almost universal Christian tradition have been accounted messianic.”  And he cites Psalm 8 as an example where “man” and “son of man” are left as such in verse 5.  So it appears that the final group of revisers, after the departure of two or three of their former colleagues, decided which psalms were to be given in literal translation and which were to be treated by the ideology of inclusivism.  Regrettably, in the 1979 book we are not told anywhere that this Psalter is partially inclusivist.  Thus thousands have assumed it was an honest translation.  In contrast, the Canadian 1985 book does have a preface which admits that one reason it was chosen was that the “translators made an earnest (although not always successful) attempt to use gender-inclusive language whenever possible” (p. 703).

      However, if we go back to the earlier part of the process of the production of the 1979 Psalter, we note the publication of The Prayer Book Psalter Revised (1973), which was the result of the six years of work by the Standing Liturgical Commission in revising the Psalter of the 1928 BCP.  At this stage there was apparently not the slightest intention to use inclusive language, and the principles of procedure in producing this revised psalter had been clear.  As the Preface explains,

First, the Prayer Book text [1928] is normative and would only be revised where a word or passage was deemed to be an absolute mistranslation, or where, in modern usage, a word or phrase has become obsolete (not merely archaic) or positively misleading; secondly, where revision was agreed upon, the primary reference would be to the received Hebrew text, with the Masoretic printing, but full weight would be given to the Septuagint and to the Vulgate readings which lie behind the English text; thirdly, all pronouns and verbal forms even when addressed to God would be rendered in contemporary second-person forms.

      This was 1973.  Within three years a new text was available and authorized, in which a fourth principle had been operative – that of inclusive language.

      But in 1983 when the official French version of the American Prayer Book appeared, published by the Church Hymnal Corporation, it did not have an inclusive language Psalter!  Instead it made use of the Psautier Oecumenique: Texte officiel (Paris: Cerf, 1977) which is not in inclusive language!

More on “Man”

      We have noted that the translation in Psalm 1 of “the man” as “they” illustrates the dishonesty which the ideology of inclusivism requires.  In the Old Testament “man” is not simply a combination of letters which make a sound when spoken and which have one and only one meaning.  The word’s meaning is determined by the context and more generally by the cultural and religious presuppositions within Hebrew society.

      To illustrate how one word can have a variety of meanings, here is a sentence (composed by Vernard Eller) where “bridge" occurs five times with five different meanings: “He was under the bridge, flat on his back, playing bridge, when his buddy cried, ‘Bridge!’  He did; and the bridge popped out of his mouth and landed on the bridge of his nose.”

      Now we can move on to see how, particularly in the opening chapters of Genesis and in the Psalter, the word “man” is used in several ways with differing meanings.  First of all, in Genesis 1 we read:

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him. . . (v. 27)

      Then in Psalm 8 we read:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

      Here we encounter the primary meaning of “man” in the Bible.  It is the human race seen as simple (not complex), as a totality and a homogeneity.  Here “man” is not a collective, for its pronouns are singular; and not only singular but personal.  God treats and relates to the whole human race as one unit.  So the essential unity of the race is prior to and superior to any and all component analysis or individuation.  It is this “man” which is made in God’s image: he is created after God’s likeness.

      It is important to note that there is no substitute for this use of the word “man.”  If it is paraphrased or another word/phrase is used, then its meaning is gone.  Today we find it difficult to accept that this meaning is the primary one for the Bible, for our thinking is so molded by individualism that we move from the individual to the collective and really have little comprehension of an integer.

      In Genesis 1:26 we read that God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule.., over all the earth.”  At first sight “man” here would seem to be the same “man” of the next verse which is quoted above.  But this is not the case.  In verse 27 “man” is an integer of such integrity and entirety that there was (and can be) no hint of addressing “him” in terms of component individuals.  In verse 26, however, man is a collective and has the meaning of “all people” or just “people.”  So we are not surprised to read in v. 26b, “let them rule...”  Here “them” refers to a plurality of individual persons who are not yet divided into two categories of male and female.  “Them” means all people, and as persons they are not differentiated into two sexual categories.

      Neither of these two uses of “man” has any gender implications.  They provide a way for speaking of the human race without forcing gender into the discourse.  The same applies to “mankind,” which we notice below.

      We first encounter the use of “man” with gender implications in Genesis 2.  However, this is anticipated in 1:b where we read, “male and female God created them.”  So in 2:24, after the account of the creation of “the man” and “the woman,” we learn that in God’s order “a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh.”  So from the beginning a man and a woman are not to be seen primarily as autonomous individuals but rather as made for each other and finding their meaning and fulfillment in an ordered relation.

      It is fairly clear that in contrast to the several levels of meaning of “man” in the Bible the feminist agenda wants to reduce the meaning of “man” to this one level where it can mean only “a male human being.”  In modern language we can probably get by if we keep to their rule, but if we apply it to the Scriptures and refuse to allow that the Bible has a much richer use, then we are going to misunderstand or even pervert Scripture.

      Perhaps now it is appropriate to return to Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man...,” and ask “What is the meaning of ‘man’ here?”  Commentators on the Hebrew text explain that the poet had in mind the ideal man – a godly, holy man whose true delight is in the Torah of the LORD.  All Israelite men are to aim to be like him.  Here “man” is being used of a representative individual person.  We are familiar with this device in English.  For example, when as a writer I say, “My reader will understand my point,” I am thinking not of hundreds (or thousands?) of readers in Britain and America but of the representational person in whom and by whom I see all my readers.  This reader I envisage is without gender.  (If I write, “My readers, men and women, will understand...,” then I have lost this way of speaking.)  Or, to take another example, if I say, “The Christian takes up his cross and follows Jesus,” I am thinking of the way the ideal, prototypical Christian person lives.  (If I write, “The Christian takes up his/her cross,” then I have lost this way of speaking.)

      So Psalm 1 is distorted in translation if for “Happy is the man...” we are given “Happy are they...”  Man here operates in two spheres of meaning.  First of all, man is the ideal, prototypical Jew; and secondly, within God’s order, he is the man in relation to his family and his tribe.  They can never in any circumstances be an adequate replacement for man in a Psalm of this kind (see also Pss. 25:12; 32:2; 40:4).

      To complete this section we need also to note how mankind functions.  This word is total in reference and singular in that it treats the human race as an integer.  However, unlike “man” it presents the human species as impersonal and calls for the pronoun “it.”  (See, for example, its use in Daniel 4:17, 25, 32, 33 and Revelation 9:15, 18, 20.)  It has no gender implications; nevertheless, modern replacements for it are “humanity” and “humankind,” but neither of these is strictly equivalent.  (For more reflection on this general theme see Vernard Eller, The Language of Canaan and The Grammar of Feminism, Grand Rapids, 1982.)

Addressing God

      Unlike the American Psalter, the Canadian Psalter contains psalm-prayers.  These represent a kind of half-way house in terms of inclusive language for God.  Of the 152 prayers, while only nine invoke God as “the Father” and seventeen as “the Lord,” fifty invoke Him by some variant of the formula, “God of x” (e.g., “God of pilgrims”; “God of power” and “God of justice and mercy”), and forty-eight address Him in terms of His attributes or His functions (e.g. “Source of our life” and “Giver of courage”).  The same tendency is to be seen in Eucharistic Prayer 4 of the BAS.  The theological criticism of this technique is that it represents a tendency to project certain perceived human concerns, needs, and experiences into the realm of the divine, where they are made absolute.  Instead of discovering ourselves in God’s own Revelation we project into God our own self-understanding.

      It is in the use by feminists (female or male) of the 1979 and 1985 books that one may hear what everyone will judge to be inclusive language for God.  This is usually in the form of substituting “God” or “Godself” where there is the masculine pronoun “His” and the changing of the names of “Father” and “Son” to “Creator” and “Redeemer.”

      But what is certainly interpolation in these two Books is a real possibility and concern in Prayer Book Studies 30 (1989).  In order to avoid the names of “the Father” and “the Son,” the Eucharist begins, “Blessed be the one, holy, and living God.”  This is justified in the Introduction (p.26) in this way:

‘Blessed be the one, holy and living God’ acclaims the Trinity as Unity through its structure of three adjectives describing the one God.  God is ‘one’ as in the traditional Judeo-Christian vision of God the Father; ‘holy’ suggesting the sanctification of the Incarnate One; and ‘living’ recalling both the risen Christ and the eternal and living presence of the Holy Spirit.

      There is no natural trinitarian meaning in this Acclamation, and this explanation is not convincing.  The confession of the Holy Trinity has been effectively excluded in the name of inclusivism.

      Likewise, the glorious Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit has been effectively dismissed from the two so-called eucharistic prayers.  The prayers are not addressed to the Father (but in order to avoid a gender-specific word) to “Holy God,” “most generous, self-giving God,” and “Holy and living God.”  The only places in the Eucharist where the name of “the Father” is used is in the Lord’s Prayer and in the Nicene Creed, where it is obviously difficult to get rid of it without changing a received text.

      It is much the same with the revised Daily Offices.  The name of the Father occurs only where a traditional text (e.g. the Gloria and the Te Deum) is used.  We are told in the Introduction (p.16) that care has been taken to avoid an over-reliance on metaphors and attributes generally perceived as masculine, and to seek out and use images which describe God in feminine and other scripturally based terms.

      Thus, in the Second Eucharistic Prayer God is pictured as a mother who brings to birth the whole creation and cares for human beings like a mother cares for her children.  (It is this kind of material which brought the charge of panentheism against this liturgy.)

      As an alternative to the traditional Gloria which names the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity in terms of their relations one to another within the one Godhead, the texts of the Daily Office allow this formulation, which speaks of the activity of God in relation to the world:

Honor and glory to the holy and undivided Trinity, God who creates, redeems, and inspires: One in Three and Three in One, for ever and ever.  Amen.

      Here there is no clarity as to God-as-God-is-in-Himself but only a statement concerning God-as-God-is-towards-the-world.  The threefold activity of God as Agent of creation, redemption, and inspiration does not in and of itself point back into the Godhead as being a Triad or Triunity.  At best, we have here another form of modalism.

Fatherhood and the Father

      In the opening essay in The Commentary on Prayer Book Studies 30 (1989) Leonel L. Mitchell commends the use of inclusive language.  He makes many assumptions which I cannot here challenge for lack of space.  What I shall do is examine what he claims (and what is done within the texts) concerning the use of the name of “Father.”  He writes:

Jesus called God ‘Father’ and taught His disciples to do the same.  It is an image of God we do not find often in the Old Testament.  It represents a distinctive insight into Jesus’s own relationship with God and the relationship into which He calls us, His brothers and sisters, and so is by no means an image the Church can do entirely without.  But if this is the only image we use, are apt not only to use it correctly... but also incorrectly (p.10).

      What seems to be assumed here is that the use of the word “Father” when referring to God is uniform or of one type in the Bible with an intensification in the New Testament.  Such an assumption is false, as I hope now to show.

      It is possible and necessary to distinguish three senses in which the noun “Father” is appropriately applied to and used of God.  The first sense is to speak of God as being a Father; here the main themes are that God creates and cares for His creation as a father cares for the children he begets.  Thus we speak metaphorically and refer to the relation of the Holy Trinity to the world.  “Like as a father pitieth His own children, even so the Lord is merciful unto them that fear Him” (Ps. 103:13).  (This way of speaking is found in other religions apart from Christianity.)

      Second, by the rule of appropriation, what is known to be the activity of the Triune God (that is, activity common to all three Persons) may be said to be the activity of the First Person.  So we speak of the Father as the Creator and Sustainer when we also know that the universe is the creation of, and is sustained by, the Triune God.  Paul declared, “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family on earth is named...” (Eph. 3:14).  Likewise in the Apostles’ Creed we confess belief in the “Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”

      The third sense is that of the Father as the first Person of the Holy Trinity.  He is the Father of the only Son, begotten before all ages, and the Father from whom the Spirit is spirated.  Here we speak of the “comings forth” within God and not of “goings forth” from God into the universe He made.  While the trinitarian processions do not involve creation or causation of any kind or type, they do give rise to real relative identities/Persons within the Godhead.  We can only speak of this Mystery of the Three Persons as Three Subsistent Relations because God has chosen to reveal it to us.  Jesus, the Incarnate Son, spoke of and taught concerning the Father with whom He claimed to be One.  It is from this source alone and not from our own religious experience that we name the Holy Trinity as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  We have no authority to invent or to change these names, for they are the names which Jesus Himself used of God-as-God-is-in-Himself.  Therefore these are the names of the Three Persons used in the Gloria and the Creeds – the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds.

      Christians obey Jesus, the Incarnate Son, in naming His Father their Father when they pray, “Our Father...”  While He is the true and only Son of the Father, they are adopted sons.  As such they follow Jesus and call His Father by the very name which He used.  This is their duty, for they have no warrant to use any other name.  So all genuine Eucharistic Prayers and all Collects are normally addressed to “the Father,” who is truly first and foremost “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

      If what has just been stated is true to Scripture and Creeds, then we may say that there is a difference between speaking of God as like a Father or as a Father (thus using simile and metaphor) and speaking of the First Person of the Holy Trinity as “the Father.”  The latter use is not based on experience but belongs wholly to the gift of God’s self-revelation through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Thus it cannot be metaphorical in the same sense as the first usage, which works directly from the image of a good earthly father to state truths concerning the heavenly Father.  In trinitarian discourse concerning the “goings forth” within God, a common noun is being used with the definite article of the First Person.  To know what that noun means, we do not look to the examples of human fathers but to the way Jesus Himself described and addressed His Father.  Thus, this image as used of the First Person is a unique form of address.

      It may be added that while Scripture and the tradition of devotion speak of God as like a caring and devoted mother, they do not use this name of the First Person of the Holy Trinity.  One may say, “Like as a mother cares for her children, so the Lord cares...,” but one may not say, “O Mother, grant us thy peace.”  In other words, while both motherhood and fatherhood may be used as images to convey the care of the Holy Trinity for the world, this discourse must be seen as separate from the naming of the First Person as “the Father.”  As “the Father” He is so solely because of His relation to “the Son” and not because of the creative work of the Holy Trinity.

      Perhaps it is necessary also to make clear why the agent nouns “Creator, Redeemer, and Inspirer” (or any other combination) cannot be substitutes for “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  They are so used in PBS 30 and in much unofficial liturgy today.  Certainly these agent nouns (or their equivalent – e.g., “God who creates, who redeems, who inspires”) may claim to be biblical.  However, they describe God-as-God-is-towards-the-world and not the “goings forth” within God-as-God.  A description of how God is towards the world cannot be a substitute for how one Person within the one Godhead is towards the two other Persons.  Agent nouns are functional; the names of the Three Persons are personal.  Agent nouns are also essential in that they identify all that is common to the Three Persons in the relations of the Holy Trinity to the cosmos.  The personal terms, in contrast, do not identify the agential interaction of the Triune God with His world, but identify the relation of the Three Persons to each other and serve as personal names for them.  It is clear that the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity exercise agency, not with respect to each other, but with respect to the cosmos.  (Perhaps at this stage my reader will benefit by reading slowly the first half of the Athanasian Creed and the central paragraph of the Nicene Creed!)

Mystery

      From within theological studies perhaps the most commonly used argument for inclusive language for God proceeds from the claim that whoever God be, God is Mystery!  If God is truly beyond our understanding and is by nature ineffable, the argument runs, then all our ways of describing, speaking of, and addressing Him are inadequate.  In fact, since all our names and images fall short of expressing the Mystery, the greater variety of names and images we use the more likely we are rightly to identify the Mystery.  Thus to “Father” we add “Mother” and to “Son” we add “Child” and so on, using both personal names, common nouns, and a variety of images drawn from the world of the everyday experience of women as well as men, and children as well as adults.

      Usually the argument from God as Mystery rests upon the foundation of empirical theology.  That is, all our naming and describing and addressing of God comes out of claimed human religious experience of God and not from any self-naming by God Himself.  The names and images, the metaphors and similes we use of God, are produced solely within the religious consciousness of human beings.  This explains why, feminists tell us, the names and images of God in the Bible are androcentric, since they proceed from the religious experience of men within a patriarchal society.

      So we find that in order to face this challenge (and it is taken for granted in PBS 30), we have to discuss Revelation.  Do we have a revelation from God in which God tells us how we are to address Him?  Are the contents of the New Testament only the record of religious experience of the first disciples, evangelists and apostles, or do they also contain self-unveiling, self-disclosure by God Himself?  If it be the case that the books of the New Testament are not in some vital sense God’s Word written, then we are at the mercy of the human recording and describing of the human experience of God; and, further, there is no final reason why the apostolic experience is to be preferred to ours today.  Its only advantage is that it is primary.

      I believe we ought to follow the wisdom of the Church over the centuries and accept that we do have Revelation from God, as well as the apostolic experience of God, recorded in the New Testament.  Further, while the Church has recognized that God as the LORD is wholly incomprehensible and ineffable, she has also followed the example of Jesus and His apostles to name God as they did.  Certainly God is Mystery, but God also is the God who has revealed His Name and bidden us call Him by the name of “Father.”  Thus we name and adore the Mystery by the names He has given to us and especially when we speak of God-as-God-is-in-Himself, we are most careful to follow the example and teaching of Jesus and the apostles.

      Of course, in the Church over the centuries much intellectual effort has gone into the study of how the revealed names of God actually operate in the logic of human language to speak of the One who is incomprehensible by nature.  The most important contribution here is probably that developed by Thomas Aquinas and known as the doctrine of analogy.  He showed how we speak literally (i.e., in a natural and customary manner) of God when we say, for example, that God is good, as well as when we address God as “the Father.”  In claiming that such names as “Father” and “Son” apply literally to the First and Second Persons of the Godhead, the Church has consistently insisted that such literal predications require the exclusion of any limitations associated with the two terms when they are used of human beings on earth.  So ideas of superiority and subordination in generation, male bodily characteristics, and sexual differentiation for procreation are excluded.  “The Father” is so in a way appropriate to God, the Father of The Son and as Creator of man, and not in a way that is appropriate to man, as God’s creature.  (For more details see J.M. Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, Oxford, 1985, and Speaking the Christian God: the Holy Trinity and Feminism, ed. Alvin F. Kimel, Jr., Grand Rapids, 1992.)

      To summarize: There is no way which I know whereby one may use inclusive language of God and remain within biblical orthodoxy.  To use such language is to deny the authority and content of Revelation.  Further, with respect to the human race (man) it is also impossible to use inclusive language and maintain the biblical doctrine of the human species as within the divine order, set both in relation to God and to each other.  Therefore, to advocate and use inclusive language in divine worship is to begin the process of the rejection of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

8  SACRED AND EFFECTUAL SIGNS

      Anglicans speak of the ministry of the Word and of the Sacraments and look to their clergy to preach the Word and administer the Sacraments.  By Sacraments they mean Baptism and the Lord’s Supper even though they recognize that there are other Rites which are commonly called Sacraments (e.g., Confirmation, Matrimony, and Ordination).  It is our task in this chapter to look at the theology taught and implied by the services for (a) the administration of Holy Baptism and Confirmation (which is intimately related to Baptism) and (b) the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion) in the new Books.

Baptism

      Having used the service for Holy Baptism in the classic BCP over two decades, what first caught my attention in studying both the 1979 and 1985 Books was the emphasis on “initiation” and on “community.”  “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body, the Church,” says the 1979 book (p. 298); and the 1985 book speaks of initiation into the Church via and within the local Christian community (p. 146).  The BAS both describes the first part of the service as “the gathering of the community” and assumes that the baptized child will be nurtured “in the faith and life of the Christian community” (p. 153).

      The Liturgical Commission of the Church of England also used the term “initiation” but felt the need to explain why:

During the last fifty years the term ‘Christian Initiation’ has been widely used to indicate the cycle of rites which includes baptism, confirmation and first communion.  In the early centuries the use of this term to describe Christian rites, though not unknown, was neither normal nor common.  Nevertheless it is a comprehensive expression and may therefore be useful, so long as it is not used to beg any theological questions about the relative importance of baptism and confirmation. (The Alternative Service Book, A Commentary, p. 105.)

      We may reply that in North America, at least, its use has begged theological questions.

      We need to recognize that this language of initiation belongs more to the realm of anthropology and the rites by which young persons become full members of their tribes than to that of biblical and patristic theology and practice, which describe entry into a relationship with the Holy Trinity and membership of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church of God.  If an individual is becoming a member of a community to which he or she has not previously belonged, then the language of initiation is appropriate; however, if a male or female person is being washed and cleansed of sin, born again and from above by the Holy Spirit, united with Jesus Christ as a member of His Body, and adopted into the family of God the Father, then initiation is hardly the proper term.  Instead of initiation we should think in terms of washing, regeneration, and incorporation.  But the use of the concept of initiation confirms my point that the liturgists worked on “the newer is better” principle, even though they make use of their reconstructions from the “ancient” Church, thereby giving the appearance that they are simply restoring authentic, primitive practice.

      In the Common Prayer Tradition spiritual regeneration or birth from above by the Holy Spirit into the family of God is a prominent theme of the baptismal service.  This is because of the close identification in the New Testament between water and new birth (= spiritual birth from above).  Thus, for example, immediately after the actual baptism the minister says, “this child/person is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church...”  Then he prays: “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this child (this thy servant) with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church” (1928 BCP p. 280).  Baptism is the sign of regeneration by the Holy Spirit and incorporation by Him as a person into the Body of Christ as a forgiven and an adopted child of God the Father.

      In the new services regeneration does not seem to be an important theme.  Baptism is merely called “the Sacrament of new birth,” and in the Thanksgiving over the Water these words occur: “Through it [water] we are reborn by the Holy Spirit” (1979, pp. 305-6; 1985, pp. 155-158).  Of what then is Baptism the sign?  Apparently it is the sign of three benefits – the bestowal of the forgiveness of sins, the being raised to the new life of grace, and the being received into the household of God (1979, p. 308).  This is achieved through spiritual identification with Christ in His death and His resurrection.  However, the fact that the one to be baptized is not named (given a Christian name) in this Rite suggests that there is no new birth, requiring a new name, but only metaphorical birth through initiation.

      Probably there are two reasons for the deliberate reduction of the theme of spiritual regeneration.  First of all, if there is no original sin and no spiritual disease in the souls of men, then the need for a radical spiritual washing and a birth which penetrates into the depths of the soul is not necessary.  In the second place, if there had been controversy in the past amongst Anglicans over the precise chronological relation of the baptism in water and the regenerating action of the Holy Spirit upon and in the soul, then it may have seemed appropriate to downplay the spiritual birth from above.

      Usually associated with the denial of original sin is the teaching known as Pelagianism.  This is the doctrine that we as human beings are not diseased and immobilized by sin but are able freely to enter into a relationship with God, especially when He makes us an offer of grace.  When the Baptismal Covenant (1979, p. 304; 1985, p. 158) is carefully read, one can see that it is based on a view of covenant which assumes that while God takes the initiative, human beings are able freely to choose the way of Christ.  It is hardly a covenant of mercy on biblical terms where God Himself acts in sovereign grace to establish His covenant with His people whom He calls to Himself.  It is more like an agreement made between a senior and junior partner, where the senior partner takes the initiative.  (A similar view of covenant is found to be prominent in Eucharistic Prayer D = Canada No. 6, where the words occur, “again and again you called us into covenant with you.”)

      Within the section called the Baptismal Covenant there is also the dishonest translation of the Apostles’ Creed (on which I commented in chapter five) and an account of the Christian life of the baptized which seems to equate the Gospel with the agenda of the United Nations.  Striving for justice and peace and respecting the dignity of every human being is apparently what it is “to seek and serve Christ in all persons” (1979, p. 305; 1985, p. 159).

      Turning now to the Examination of the candidates, we find that the traditional rejection of the world, the flesh, and the devil in the Common Prayer Tradition has been modified so that what the baptized renounces and turns from, in order to turn to Christ is less than it ought to be.  It is as though this age (the world under the control of Satan), human nature (diseased by sin), and the devil (Satan himself) are less active and dominating now than they were in earlier centuries.  This changing emphasis reflects the general move within the teaching and assumptions of modern, liberal denominations to a more “positive” (but less biblical) evaluation of human experience and culture.  Again, we see the absence of the doctrine of original sin.

      Further, the traditional blessing of the baptismal water and the portraying of that water as a bath (washing away of sins), a womb (new birth by the Holy Spirit), and a tomb (burial and death in and with Christ) are there but not quite there!  It is certainly a thanksgiving for water, but hardly a blessing of water.  In contrast, the Orthodox Church, in blessing water, has the priest pray: “O merciful Lord, come down and sanctify this water by the descent of the Holy Spirit; impart unto it the grace of redemption and the blessing of Jordan; make it a fountain of immortality, a gift of sanctification, a remission of sins, a healing of infirmities and passions, a purification of souls and bodies, a weapon of angelic might, and a destruction of all evil powers...”

      Also, within the “Thanksgiving over the Water” (p. 306), the way in which the Baptism and mission of Jesus are presented is less than satisfactory.  It was as Jesus was actually coming out of the river Jordan (not while He was in the water) that He saw the Spirit of God descending upon Him and heard the voice, “This is my Son...” (Matt. 3:16–17).  Further, He did not become the Messiah of Israel at the Baptism: rather, He was confirmed in that Office by the word of the Father from heaven.  Then, in the description of where Jesus, the Christ (Messiah), leads the baptized, we get the inadequate presentation of the “Christus Victor” theme – much the same as occurs in the Eucharistic Prayers (see chapter 5 and the discussion below on the Eucharist).

      Looking at the whole Rite of Holy Baptism, we should observe how its own notes evaluate it.  “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Spirit into Christ’s Body, the Church.”  The older, western doctrine is that where Holy Baptism is of a catechumen and includes both the washing of water and the laying on of hands by the bishop, then a full sacrament has been given, and the door has been opened by the grace of God into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  The next (immediate) step for the baptized is to receive Holy Communion for the first time.  However, where the one baptized is an infant, then he waits for Confirmation and first Communion until he can have some basic understanding of the Lord in whom he trusts.

      The new doctrine in the 1979 and 1985 books has no place for Confirmation as a separate and later act: in fact, those who espouse the new doctrine (which they claim to be the revival of early Church doctrine) insist that both for adults and children Confirmation (as it has been understood and practiced) is not necessary.  This is because their Rite includes the Consecration of the Chrism (olive oil mixed with perfumed oil) and the possible use of this holy oil when the sign of the cross is made upon the forehead of the baptized (adult or child).  So even an infant can then be given Holy Communion without waiting for Confirmation, as was formerly the case.  Against this background it is not surprising that “Confirmation with forms for Reception and for the Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows” is found in the section of the 1979 book entitled “Pastoral Offices” and in that of the 1985 book entitled “Episcopal Offices.”

      The obvious intention is to have baptisms, which include chrismation, of all candidates, be they infants or adults [preferably] when the bishop is present: such is seen as “full initiation” and leads on to the receiving of Holy Communion.  However, for those who somehow slip through this net and are only baptized in water, there is then the possibility of receiving the laying on of hands of the bishop at a later time.  So provision is made for “Confirmation.”  In the interim they are free to approach the Lord’s Table and be fed.  (For an explanation of how the procedure according to the 1979 book is to operate see the essay by Charles P. Price, “Rites of Initiation,” in The Occasional Papers of the Standing Liturgical Commission, No. 1. 1987.)

      The general impression I received from study of these services in both the 1979 and 1985 books is that the writers of them were more fascinated by the way baptisms were performed in the early centuries of the Church than they were committed to the biblical and patristic doctrine concerning the salvation of souls and the pastoral care of the baptized.  Fascination with ancient liturgical rites and their implementation in modified form in this century is not necessarily the way to lead modern people into the salvation of the Lord.  It seems that in the modernizing process the ancient form has been secularized in the new Books.  Put baldly, every person, young or old, goes through the initiation rites in order to join the community and be present at its weekly holy meal.  There is a minimal adjustment of life-style required but not a radical one, for the world is not really under the sway of Satan but is instead the sphere (see chapters two and three above) where God still reveals Himself in (selective) contemporary experience.  The liturgists downplayed the necessity of faith and repentance for full participation in the sacramental life of the Church by allowing infants and children to receive Holy Communion before they consciously know that Jesus is their Lord and that they stand in need of His grace as sinners.

      While the new Rites may claim to be modelled upon the practice of the “ancient” Church (and be an outworking of the reconstruction of the unitary festival of the Pascha of the third century, which included baptisms on Easter Eve), it stands, nevertheless, in marked contrast to the historical development of Baptism and Confirmation in the Western Church from the patristic period onwards.  The BCP is firmly placed in this later and developed tradition in which, for infants washed and regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord to believe in and trust this Lord Jesus, Confirmation is the receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit in its sevenfold manifestation at the hands of the bishop.  From here full participation in the sacramental life of the Church begins with first Communion.  Where this order is set aside, then the way is open to reduce the place of personal faith and repentance and thus of the need for confession of sins and absolution in the Eucharist.  Such was apparently intended and such has happened; and at the same time the potential for the nature of the Sacrament of the Holy Communion to be changed towards becoming more of a local, token community meal than a feasting at the Lord’s Table in His presence has occurred.

      [It is perhaps worth remembering that while there is no evidence for the separation of baptism and (what we now call) confirmation in the early Church, there is ample evidence (e.g. Origen’s Homilies on Judges, 6:2 from AD 235) to show that there was often an interval between baptism in infancy and first communion some time later (see further The Study of Liturgy, 1992, ed C. Jones et al, p. 75).]

The Lord’s Supper

      In the ECUSA many people welcomed the change in emphasis concerning what is now rarely called “the Lord’s Supper” and more often called “the Eucharist.”  The 1928 BCP states:

The Order for Holy Communion, the Order for Morning Prayer, the Order for Evening Prayer, and the Litany, as set forth in this Book, are the regular Services appointed for Public Worship in this Church and shall be used accordingly.

      In a similar but contrasting way the 1979 book states:

The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in this Church.

      The continuity is obvious; the change in emphasis is significant!  And the question arises, “What kind of Eucharist?”

(a) Enter Hippolytus via Dix

      Those who prepared the new Rites for the Eucharist in both the USA and Canada were wholly taken with the one design which they believed was that design which was common in the early Church, as witnessed by The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus from the third century.  Hippolytus was a Roman who wrote in Greek against the heresies of his time and even against the bishop (Pope) of Rome.  He stands for the early Roman tradition but outside the later tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.  His influence in the East obviously made him useful in seeking a kind of prehistory for ecumenism.  That he died as a martyr gives him also a certain holy appeal.  Thus instead of looking to the structure of the Eucharist in the late patristic period (after the Church had digested the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils and adjusted her liturgies accordingly), liturgical scholars chose to go back to a time before the Church had set forth what we know now as her classical dogma of the Trinity and the Person of Christ and before the Church had settled the framework of the Liturgical Year.

      Further, instead of recognizing that the evidence for their preferred structure of the Eucharist is by no means as clear as their enthusiasm in commending it, they imposed their preference and prejudice upon all of us.  In fact, the use of Hippolytus via Gregory Dix’s reconstruction is a example of what has been called liturgical archaeology.  Why should not a piece of liturgical archaeology from the third century be as exciting, as scientific, and as revolutionary in its implications as any other archeological discovery in the field of biblical studies (e.g., the Ugaritic texts or the Dead Sea Scrolls)?  We may ask why other early sources were not used – the Didache (AD 120), for example.  Here we have, of course, an illustration of the way in which pre-Nicene material was used in support of the “newer is better” program (see above chapter three).

      It is important to note that both in the 1979 and the 1985 books (as well as the 1980 ASB in England) the traditional language Rites for Holy Communion are made to fit into this supposed correct structure.  This means that the logic of biblical faith built into the Cranmerian Rite (which I explain and describe in my Knowing God through the Liturgy and which ought not to be forced into a different mould) is set aside.  Further, we are even deprived of the authentic structure of the Eucharist of the Common Prayer Tradition, so that the latter is reduced to being a tradition of language only.  For example, the ‘Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church,” turned into “The Prayers of the People,” is placed before rather than after the Offertory.  I cannot see why, in reproducing the traditional Administration of the Lord’s Supper in Rite I of 1979 and in “A Form in the Language of the BCP” of 1985 the liturgists could not have left alone both the structure and the words of that which, to say the least, had been hallowed by long usage.  However, in their changing of the received texts, we encounter the mindset of the new liberal dogmatism, which says that we can only have the Cranmerian Rite through their re-creation of it!

      Study of The Apostolic Tradition and other early texts has convinced modern liturgists that a sound Eucharistic Prayer should contain most, if not all, of the following features: (1) introductory dialogue; (2) preface or (first part of the) thanksgiving; (3) Sanctus; a transition that may either (4) continue the thanksgiving or (5) take the form of a preliminary epiclesis, if not both; (6) narrative of the Institution; (7) anamnesis-oblation; (8) epiclesis; (9) intercessions; (10) concluding doxology and Amen.  (The Study of Liturgy, p. 333.)  The epiclesis is the invocation of the Holy Spirit to descend (upon the assembly and the gifts) while the anamnesis is the memorial or remembrance or recalling of the death and resurrection of Christ.

      All the Rites for “The Great Thanksgiving” of the Eucharist in both the American and Canadian books follow the modern trends led by the Roman Catholic Church and have the following structure: (a) Preface with the Sanctus; (b) Christological part; (c) institution narrative; (d) anamnesis with oblation; (e) epiclesis over the gifts; (f) epiclesis over the communicants; (g) intercessions; (h) concluding doxology.  (The American Prayer C = the Canadian No. 4 seems to waver on [b], the Christology.)  Further, the Prayers are all patterned after what Gregory Dix in his The Shape of the Liturgy called “the four-action shape” – He took the bread and wine; He gave thanks over them; He broke the bread; He gave the bread and wine to the disciples.

      Those who are familiar with the Common Prayer Tradition, which is not bound to the “fourfold shape,” will recall that the giving thanks over the gifts and the breaking of the bread occur within and alongside the Prayer of Consecration and that there is no separate breaking of the bread in silence after that Prayer.  It is an open question as to whether the “Fraction” ought to be given so much prominence as the new rites give to it.  People tend to associate the breaking of the bread (I Cor. 11:24) with the breaking of Christ’s body on the cross (but see John 19:36 – it was not broken) instead of, perhaps, with the one and the many (I. Cor. 10:16–17).

      Before “The Great Thanksgiving” the rubric tells us that “representatives of the congregation bring the people’s offerings of bread and wine, and money or other gifts, to the deacon or celebrant.”  Charles P. Price explains: “By offering money, bread and wine, and prayers, the congregation offers representatively itself and the world” (Introducing the Proposed Book, p.78).  This oblation then becomes the beginning of the first part of “the fourfold shape” – the taking of gifts of bread and wine.  Theologically, the danger inherent but not of necessity present here is that which Cranmer sought to avoid – the impression that we, as sinners, can make some contribution to our salvation.  In contrast, the rubrics of the 1928 BCP tell us that the gifts of money alone are brought up from the congregation to the priest, who himself “shall then offer, and shall place on the Holy Table, the Bread and the Wine.”  It is interesting that the late Bishop A.M.Ramsey referred to “a shallow and romantic sort of Pelagianism” with respect to offertory processions in England in the 1960s (The Study of Liturgy, p. 332).

      The general influence of Hippolytus Romanus via Dix upon modern liturgies is well illustrated by the indexes of two books, Anglican Worship Today: Guide to the ASB (ed. Colin Buchanan, 1980), and Liturgy for Living (by Charles P. Price and Louis Weil, 1979), where we find as many references to Hippolytus as to Cranmer (the father of Anglican liturgy!).  In fact we may note in passing that much of the contemporary prejudice against the Rite for the Holy Eucharist in the Common Prayer Tradition – as being too medieval, overly individualistic, non-corporate, Passion-centered, lacking an eschatological emphasis, being too penitential and lacking a celebratory quality – may be traced back to chapter xvi of The Shape of the Liturgy, where there is an all-out attack upon the Reformation!

      It is of interest to note that in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus the eucharistic prayer begins with a dialogue between the bishop and the congregation:

The Lord be with you.

And with thy spirit.

      Yet, despite all the claims made for this ancient text the reply of the congregation, “and with thy/your spirit,” is changed in all the modern Rites of the Eucharist to “and also with you.”  In other linguistic groups the original has been preserved – Et avec votre esprit; Und mit deinem Geist; E con il tuo spirito.  Did the modern experts fear that the laity might think that the bishop or priest had a spirit, like some genie called up in a bottle or even that he kept a flask of spirit under his cassock?  They got rid of the spirit and exorcised the beauty of the dialogue: they also changed the biblical psychology, for it is God as Spirit who witnesses with our spirits that we are His children.

      Even if there were no questions about the shape of the new Rites and the fascination with third-century texts, there are certainly serious questions about their theology, and particularly their teaching on the saving work of Jesus Christ.  Also serious questions about the orthodoxy of Hippolytus cannot be avoided.  Professor J.G. Davies has remarked that “he was superficially brilliant but lacking in depth, and the Christology which he opposed to the heretics of his day was so subordinationist that it found its logical outcome in the extreme Arianism and Macedonianism of the succeeding century” (He ascended into heaven, 1958, p.88).  Already we have referred to the hesitancy within the Prayers to name “the Father” and to be explicit about the pre-existence of the second Person, whom we confess as the Word Incarnate.  Further, we have remarked concerning the way they refer to His sacrifice for the world and not His sacrifice for the sins of the world.  It is to this point that we turn our attention now.

(b) Enter Aulen

      It would appear that the mindset of the liturgists of the 1960s and 1970s had been impressed by the little book by Gustav Aulen and entitled Christus Victor (first published in English in 1931, and translated by the liturgical scholar, A.G. Hebert – a fact which may have some significance).  This Swedish professor from Lund sought to show that both the Anselmian doctrine of the Atonement of juridical Satisfaction made by the Son to the Father and the classic Protestant doctrine of the Atonement as penal substitution, Christ in the place of sinners, were not acceptable.  That is, Aulen criticized the teaching that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, in His manhood on the Cross endured both the wrath of God against the sin of mankind and the punishment due to mankind for its breaking of the divine law.  He could not sing,

In my place condemned He stood,

Sealed my pardon with His blood.

      Aulen wanted to get behind both the classic Protestant teaching of penal substitution and the medieval, Anselmian doctrine of Christ paying a ransom to the Father in order to satisfy the divine honor and justice.  He saw in the writings of the fathers of the early Church what he called the classic theory or doctrine of God’s victory in Jesus Christ over sin, death, and Satan leading to the deliverance of man from these foes.

      Therefore, Aulen closed his book with these final thoughts:

If the classic idea of the Atonement ever again resumes a leading place in Christian theology, it is not likely that it will revert to precisely the same forms of expression that it has used in the past; its revival will not consist in a putting back of the clock.  It is the idea itself that will be essentially the same: the fundamental idea that the Atonement is, above all, a movement of God to man, not in the first place a movement of man to God.  We shall hear again its tremendous paradoxes: that God, the all-ruler, the Infinite, yet accepts the lowliness of the Incarnation; we shall hear again the old realistic message of the conflict of God with the dark, hostile forces of evil, and His victory over them by the Divine self-sacrifice; above all, we shall hear again the note of triumph.

      It does not take great mental effort to see how, for the liturgist of the 1960s and 1970s, the use of the text of Hippolytus (via Dix) with the supposedly early doctrine of the Atonement (via Aulen) seemed to be a sure, liturgical winner!

      Of course, there is a serious academic question as to whether Aulen rightly represented the teaching of the Early Church.  The general judgement seems to be that he focused upon on one important strand but conveniently overlooked others.  Or put another way, he failed to see that other models or explanations of the Atonement of Christ cohere with that of divine victory and thus make the model of divine victory a possibility!  It is not that Aulen is wrong but that he does not give the whole picture.  We can find in the Holy Scriptures and in the teaching of the Fathers the models of propitiation, expiation, substitution, and example to explain the passion and death of Jesus.  The sacrifice of Jesus (He offered Himself to the Father as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world) at Calvary is propitiatory, for it turns away God’s wrath from deserving sinners; it is expiatory, for it cleanses sinners from their sin; it is substitutionary, for He as the Second Adam recapitulates in Himself the whole of mankind and hangs at Calvary on its behalf; and it is exemplary, for we too are to take up our cross and follow Him.  However, it is truly the divine victory because the Second Adam, the Head of the new creation, for us and for our salvation overcame the devil, the evil age, and the sinfulness of human flesh by His sacrificial, propitiatory, expiatory, and exemplary death: and then He rose triumphant from the grave.  Hallelujah! what a Savior!  We triumph with, in, and through Him.

      It is important to recognize that Christ is truly Christus Victor, who triumphs over death, Satan, hell, and every evil, only because as One Person with Two Natures (as the Council of Chalcedon so clearly taught) He, as Priest, offers the one oblation of Himself as Victim in sacrifice for sin: and therein He is revealed also as the exemplar and inspiration of human good.  All at once He is God and Man, Priest and Sacrifice, Inspirer and Creator of the true good.  Therefore what He did for us men at Calvary is something done for us as well as in us.  His work is not only objective (as the theory of Aulen suggests) but also subjective (as the Scriptures and Fathers make clear).  He enables mankind to be restored in holy friendship with the Lord our God.

      The Prayer of Consecration in the Cranmerian Rite contains this whole view of the death of Jesus.  He “made there by His one oblation of Himself once offered a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.”  And those who worthily receive the holy Sacrament are “partakers of His most blessed Body and Blood” as they feed on Him in their hearts (the very center of their personalities and beings) by faith and with thanksgiving.  The objective is also subjective, for the work of Christ for us is accompanied by the work and presence of Christ in us.

      When we come to examine the new Eucharistic Prayers of the 1979 and 1985 books we see immediately that they present a victorious Jesus in and by whom is God’s victory over His foes.  So far, so good.  However, there is little recognition that this victory is for us and our salvation because the Son Incarnate is both Priest and Victim and because He dealt with sin, which is the sting of death and the sphere wherein Satan rules.  In other words, the biblical language of sacrifice is subordinated to the language of victory.  For example,

To fulfill your purpose he gave himself up to death; and rising from the grave, destroyed death and made the whole creation new. (1979 BCP Prayer D)

Gracious God, his perfect sacrifice destroys the power of sin and death; by raising him to life you give us life for evermore. (1985 BAS, Prayer 1)

He chose to bear our grief and sorrows, and to give up his life on the cross, that he might shatter the chains of evil and death and banish the darkness of sin and despair. (1985 BAS, Prayer 2)

      Then this emphasis upon celebrating His death and resurrection and upon His victory helps to create an ethos in which the too regular confession of sins is regarded as destructive of the spirit of celebration.  So provision is made that confession of sins is not necessary.  The general idea seems to be that God has done it all for us and God offers it all to us, so let us go forward, standing worthily in His presence and receive His gifts.  There is a kind of objectivity to it all – “the gifts of God for the people of God” – and thus some priests hesitate and even refuse to say what are deemed to be unnecessary words, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your heart by faith, with thanksgiving.”

      Of course, the influence of Aulen did not stand alone.  In the USA the name of Bayard Hale Jones of the University of the South at Sewanee comes to mind.  Jones wrote several books on the BCP and its history and theology.  In his posthumously published Dynamic Redemption: Reflections on the Book of Common Prayer (1961), Jones both commended the Common Prayer Tradition and made some critical comments on the doctrines of the Atonement and Sacrifice from medieval and Protestant theologians.  He certainly had no time for the doctrine that Christ on our behalf satisfied the justice of God the Father.  Though his teaching is different from that of Aulen, he does insist that in His death and resurrection Christ is the Victor and, as the fruit of this, of the victory of our humanity in Christ.  So he wrote:

In the Incarnation, Christ was made one with us; he took our humanity wholly, so that by his holy life as well as by his saving death, he fought the battle and won the victory of all mankind.  Then, in the Church, we are made one with Christ – “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.”  And through the Church, we do receive “a higher gift than grace”: our imperfect humanity is empowered and conformed to his victorious humanity so that we hold “Christ in us the hope of glory” (Col.1:27). (page 88)

      For Jones it is a reconciliation of man to God rather than for Aulen of God to man.  Nevertheless, the emphases first on victory over evil and then, secondly, on being fed by this victorious Christ through the Eucharistic Sacrifice were attractive themes for the liturgical commissions in the USA and Canada.

(c) Enter Pelagius

      To the trained eye the new Eucharistic Prayers reflect that general Pelagianism which we have noted in the Rites for Baptism and in the Catechism (see chapter six).  It is not merely that original sin is denied but that human beings in their “freedom” actually make a contribution to their salvation (cf. the quotation from A.M.Ramsey above, p.193).

      I think that the key to the Pelagianism is found in the “We celebrate...” and “we offer you these gifts” (or, “we offer.., presenting to you, from your creation, this bread and this wine”; or, “we bring before you these gifts”).  Within the structure of the new Eucharistic Prayers, the Words of Institution become, as it were, the justification for what “we” do.  Jesus told us to do this and so we do it.  Then “we” offer “these gifts,” which we have taken from the created order, asking God to sanctify them and “us.”  Significantly they are not called “these thy holy gifts” (as in the BCP of 1789, 1892 and 1928).  They are still only gifts which “we” offer.  In contrast, holy gifts are already of God and from God, and so there is no human merit involved in offering them.

      Commenting upon the Oblation [from “Wherefore” to “by the same”] within the Prayer of Consecration in the 1928 BCP, the late Massey H. Shepherd wrote:

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. (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, 1950, pp. 80–81.)

      The Invocation which follows is a prayer of benediction over the “holy food and drink” to sanctify it, by His great goodness, to our use.

      The new Prayers certainly allow, even encourage, the false doctrine of covenant found in other places in the Books.  That is, God initiates; we respond within and out of our freedom; and then God blesses our response.  Thus God gives us gifts of bread and wine in creation; we bring them along for use in Holy Eucharist as Jesus commanded; we offer them and after God has blessed them we receive them from Him in line with their new signification (body and blood of Jesus).  The older Prayer contains a doctrine of covenant which places all the emphasis upon God’s total provision of all that is necessary for everlasting friendship and communion between man and God.  We contribute nothing, for what we offer and do are from and in the grace of God.

(d) Enter St. Basil the Great

      In both the 1979 and 1985 books there is a Eucharistic Prayer which is modelled on that of St. Basil of Caesarea and known as a mid-fourth century Alexandrian Anaphora.  Scholars suggest that Basil took it to Egypt around A.D, 357.  This modern version was written by an ecumenical team and based not only on the original Egyptian text, but also upon the expanded Roman Catholic Latin version in the 1970 Missal of Pope Paul VI.  It is an excellent example of how modern liturgists think theologically and how they use ancient, classical sources for their own newer-is-better ends.  There are important differences between Prayer D (1979) = Prayer 6 (1985) on the one hand, and the original Prayer of St. Basil.  And, if we take the later amplified edition of St. Basil’s Anaphora, the Eucharistic Prayer we know through what is now called the Liturgy of St. Basil (and used in the Orthodox Churches on ten days of the year), then we see even greater theological differences.  The very fact that liturgists used the early rather than the later version of the Anaphora of St. Basil confirms for us again that they seek to go for texts which belong to the period before the Church had clarified its dogma and incorporated the same into the lex orandi.

      The ecumenical team which provided Prayer D (= No.6) from the original Anaphora made sure that they injected Pelagianism into their version.  Where the original addresses God, saying, “You did not cast us off for ever, but continually visited us through your holy prophets” (here the “us” is the one people of God of the Old and New Testaments), the modern rendering is, “again and again you called us into covenant with you, and through the prophets you taught us to hope for salvation” (here the “us” is less clear and can mean human beings in general).  This is a clear example of the reduction of the biblical covenant of grace given by the Sovereign Lord into a contract continually offered by God to human beings.

      If we actually compare the Prayer D with the amplified text of St. Basil in the Divine Liturgy, we find that in the first part (up to the “Holy, Holy, Holy”) the new Prayer does little justice to St. Basil’s majestic words.  The Liturgy of Basil addresses the Father as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior” and the One “through whom was manifest the Holy Spirit.”  It is decidedly and clearly Trinitarian, and the creation of all things invisible and visible by the LORD is certainly ex nihilo!  In contrast, the modern Prayer calls the Father the “fountain of life and source of all goodness” and does not mention the Son or the Holy Spirit.  Thus, the modern text does not specifically exclude either panentheism or creation by emanation (both of which are common errors today).

      Finally, let us note the doctrine of the Atonement found in the two texts.  The modern text states that “to fulfill your purpose he gave himself up to death; and rising from the grave, destroyed death, and made the whole creation new.”  Here we have a vague form of Christus Victor, with a doctrine of a renewed (old) creation rather than a new order, epoch, and creation.  The amplified text of St. Basil emphasizes the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  Here is a part of the Prayer:

For as by man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, so it seemed good unto thine Only-begotten Son, who is in thy bosom, our God and Father, to be born of a woman, the holy Birth-giver of God and ever-virgin Mary; to be born under the Law, that he might condemn sin in the flesh; that they who were dead in Adam might be made alive in thy Christ.  And becoming a dweller in this world, and giving commandments of salvation, He released us from the delusions of idols, and brought us unto a knowledge of Thee, the true God and Father, having possessed us unto Himself for a peculiar people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation; and being purified with water and sanctified with the Holy Spirit, He gave Himself a ransom to Death, whereby we were held, sold into bondage under sin.  And having descended into hell through the Cross, that He might fill all things with Himself, He loosed the pains of death, and rose again from the dead on the third day, making a way for all flesh unto the Resurrection from the dead – for it was not possible that the Author of Life should be holden of corruption – that He might be the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first-born from the dead; and that He shall have the pre-eminence in all things.  And ascending into heaven He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high...

      In both the shorter and longer forms of the Anaphora of St. Basil there is a doctrine of Atonement which is sadly lacking from the new prayer.

      To summarize: All the new Eucharistic Prayers reveal the influence of modern revisionist doctrine.  They are weak or deficient in terms of basic dogma (the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, the Person of Jesus Christ) and of doctrine (Christ’s Atonement and the covenant of grace).  Further, not only do they set aside the classical, developed Cranmerian Prayer, but also, in claiming to find a pure, original form from the third century, they effectively discount the classical Eucharistic Prayers of the East and the West from the end of the patristic era.  Then they appear to teach that the “community” can make a worthy offering; that oblations are our offering, not God’s gifts; that we aspire to change, but not to perfection (i.e. there is an abandonment here and elsewhere of a stable standard of perfection), and that liturgy is a human work worthy of God’s acceptance and blessing.  So the rites of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper share a common Pelagianism.

      For the future, I cannot see how the new Eucharistic Prayers can serve a biblical, orthodox, and dynamic Anglicanism, which must of necessity return to the renewed Common Prayer Tradition, suitably revised from scriptural and patristic sources.  In that renewal and revision I can see that, in a context where Morning Prayer does not go before the Eucharist, it may be appropriate to add to the developed Cranmerian Prayer of Consecration a significant reference to creatio ex nihilo by the Father through His Son, the Word made flesh, and also to make clear reference to other mighty acts of God, the Father, through the Son and by the Holy Spirit (e.g. the Parousia or Second Coming of Christ).  Here we can learn from the new liturgies, but in doing so we need to be aware in the modern theological context that references to creation which do not present it as creatio ex nihilo may well hide doctrines of creation which state that God made the world out of something – out of God’s being by emanation, or from already existing matter (panentheism) by a limited God.

9  WAS TERRY RIGHT?

      Having offered my own criticisms of the 1979 and 1985 books, I think it is now appropriate to notice what others have said of each of the books.  So we look first at two essays by two Americans offering very different estimates of their 1979 BCP; and then we look at a book by a Canadian, written to commend the 1985 BAS to the laity of the Canadian Anglican Church.

Urban T. Holmes

      In 1981 a book entitled Worship Points the Way was published by Seabury Press, and edited by Malcolm C. Burson.  It was a collection of essays in “Celebration of the Life and Work of Massey H. Shepherd, Jr.” and a sketch of his career by Sherman E. Johnson.  One of the essays was “Education for Liturgy,” written by the late Urban T. Holmes (called “Terry” by his friends), who had been a professor of pastoral theology at Nashotah House and then Dean at the University of the South at Sewanee.  In this essay Dr. Holmes sketched the background of liturgical revision before the appearance of the 1979 BCP and also sought to supply a theological appraisal of the new liturgy.  I urge all my readers to acquaint themselves with this essay and make their own judgment concerning what Dr. Holmes claims.

      Dr. Holmes made an important observation and admission.  He made it clear that the Standing Liturgical Commission knowingly violated its mandate from the General Convention to revise the 1928 BCP.  As the classical theology contained in the Common Prayer Tradition was “bankrupt,” revision of the old BCP was impossible, and a whole new Book was needed.  Thus, he says, the SLC ignored General Convention and went off to do its own thing.  Further, its members were never called to account for not keeping to their mandate!

      Perhaps it is true to say that Holmes makes the strongest possible yet reasonable case for evaluating the new liturgy as being a wholly new lex orandi and lex credendi for the Episcopal Church.  Our task is to note what he claims and to evaluate it.  Here is one large and comprehensive claim:

The new prayer book has, consciously or unconsciously, come to emphasize that understanding of the Christian experience which one might describe as a postcritical apprehension of symbolic reality and life in the community.  It is consonant with Ricoeur’s “second naveté” and is more expressive of Husserl, Heidegger, Otto, and Rahner than of Barth or Brunner.  It embraces a Logos Christology.  This viewpoint was shaped liturgically at Maria Laach, transmitted to Anglicanism by Hebert, Ladd, and Shepherd, and reenforced by Vatican II and a cluster of theologians and teachers who are, directly or indirectly, part of the theological movement reflected in that most significant gathering of the church in the twentieth century (p. 137).

      Perhaps it is best to take the second half of this statement first.

      Maria Laach is the Benedictine center for liturgical renewal and reform made famous by Abbot Ildefons Herwegen (1874–1946).  A.G. Hebert was an English monk who, as we noted, translated Aulen’s Christus Victor.  He also published Liturgy and Society in 1935: this book had a major influence on Anglican attempts to renew the received BCP liturgy by emphasis on the centrality of the Eucharist and on congregational participation.  William Palmer Ladd was the Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven in the late 1930s.  He was a theological liberal who also wanted to see the centrality of the Eucharist in Anglican worship.  Yet he was, notes Holmes, “the principal catalyst for the liturgical awakening in the Episcopal Church.”  Massey H. Shepherd was close to Ladd, and after the latter’s death he became a central figure in the movement for the supposed renewal of the received liturgy and then the introduction of new liturgy in the ECUSA.  We can see his changing views by comparing his books, from his Commentary of 1950 on the 1928 BCP, through his The Reform of Liturgical Worship (1961) and Liturgy and Education (1965) to his inclusive language rendering of the Psalter published in 1976.  It was, of course, the influence of Roman Catholic writers, given space and freedom by Vatican II to release their ideas on and proposals for liturgy in the l960s, which caused Shepherd and so many other Anglicans to move from merely seeking the renewal of the existing liturgy to the call for an entirely new liturgy, based supposedly on patterns taken from the early Church.  (In the looking to the early Church, the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus was of course of great importance for this reforming agenda.)

      It would seem that Holmes was correct to suggest that those responsible for the new liturgy produced in the late 1960s and 1970s for the ECUSA belonged to a new world of thought and experience of which they were not always wholly conscious.  They breathed in an ethos and lived in an atmosphere which they did not fully comprehend.  They worked within a theological framework which perhaps they had never really thought through.  What Holmes sought to do was to identify that world and thus his positive reference to Paul Ricoeur, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Rudolph Otto and Karl Rahner, and his negative reference to Karl Barth and Emil Brunner.

      Barth and Brunner were Swiss Protestant theologians of the Word, leaders of neo-orthodoxy within the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition.  Their influence was great within European and American Protestantism and on some evangelical Anglicans.  In fact, Barth’s faithful translator of his massive Dogmatics, Dr. Geoffrey Bromiley, is an evangelical Anglican clergyman.  Yet these scholars had little or no influence within the seminaries of the ECUSA.  Perhaps these Swiss giants and their followers reminded revisionist Anglicans like Holmes too much of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and of his “Tudor deity,” his Augustinian theology of sin and grace, and his supposed excessively penitential relic of a bygone age, the 1549 and 1552 Books of Common Prayer!  (I am reminded of what H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962), who learned much from Barth and Brunner, said about the theological liberalism he knew and which left its legacy within the seminaries of the Episcopal Church.  In his The Kingdom of God in America [1937], he claimed that theological liberalism “established continuity between God and man by adjusting God to man” [p. 192].  Also he observed that its message was that of a “God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross” [p. 193].)

      Holmes referred to Ricoeur, the French philosopher, because of his important writings in the field of hermeneutics – in particular his influence upon theories concerning symbols and the interpretation of the Bible and liturgy.  In what sense, then, is the new prayer book consonant with Ricoeur’s “second naïveté?”  To answer this question is to see how Holmes understood liturgy.  The “first naïveté” is that of having faith in a simple message – e.g., that Mary truly conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  The “second naïveté” is reached in two stages.  First, there is critical and rational reflection upon the simple faith to come to the conclusion that in fact Mary must have conceived Jesus through intercourse with a man.  Then, there is the second stage, which states that, since I truly accepted the virginal conception of Jesus by Mary, then there must be truth here.  What is the truth of this symbol?  So I tell myself that this truth is real in so far as it is my projection (projected, as it were, onto a screen outside myself) from within myself.  In this line of thinking, liturgy is the projection by me (and others involved with me in the “work of the people”) through symbols and into ritual of that which is deep within me (us).  Such an approach easily fits into a Jungian approach to religion of which Holmes was an advocate, and it opens the door wide for pantheism or panentheism.

      Husserl (1859–1938), a German philosopher, was the central figure in the phenomenological movement.  For him phenomenology was reflection upon and description of the coherence of different sorts of experiences and of their adequacy.  The article “Phenomenology” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1929 (the 14th edition) is by Husserl.  Heidegger (1889–1976), a central figure in modern existentialism, dedicated his book Being and Time (1927) to Husserl, his teacher.  This wide-ranging study of “being” influenced not a few theologians including two who were studied in Episcopal seminaries – the German biblical scholar, Rudolph Bultmann, and the German-American systematic theologian, Paul Tillich.  One of the translators of Being and Time was John MacQuarrie, the Anglican theologian, who converted the doctrine of “Being” in Heidegger into the doctrine of God in his Principles of Christian Theology, also a much-used text in Episcopal seminaries in the 1970s.

      Likewise, Karl Rahner (1904–1984), the German Jesuit and voluminous writer, was influenced by Heidegger.  He modified the teaching of the great Thomas Aquinas with insights from German existentialism.  Rahner’s work may be called a theological anthropology in which there is a correlation of human experience and God’s self-communication.  His method is usually called transcendental, since he both sought to discover the conditions possible for divine, saving action and to understand such action when the humanity addressed by God’s word is always situated in a temporal world.  There is no doubt that Rahner’s influence was deeply felt by many Roman Catholics involved in theological and liturgical reform in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was perhaps through them more than through the direct reading of Rahner’s difficult texts that Anglicans felt his influence in liturgy.  For example, the translation of the Nicene Creed which appears in the 1979 and 1985 books and which uses “Being” as a translation of ousia instead of the traditional “substance” or “essence” may be attributed to the influence of Rahner via his disciples on the International Consultation on English Texts (ICET).

      Only Rudolph Otto (1869–1927) remains for comment.  He is famous for his analysis of religious feeling and religious knowledge and for his exposition of the expression “the numinous” to refer to the unique religious feeling of awe, dread, and fascination.  His The Idea of the Holy (25th ed. in German, 1936; English, 1958) has been much read and has influenced many in assessing the relation of liturgical texts and actions to the evoking of a sense of worship and awe.  In other words, Otto has been useful in working out how liturgy is “the work of the people.”

      Reflecting upon this list of names, we could claim that we do not encounter one genuinely orthodox Christian thinker.  Rahner comes nearest to being so, and yet his doctrine of the Trinity is certainly modalistic!  Rather, we meet a group of influential thinkers whose influence is likely to have been towards seeing the need for new liturgical texts for a new era; towards emphasizing the immanence of God (in contrast to the transcendence of God); towards a resymbolizing of traditional dogmas, doctrines, and ceremonial; and towards the evaluation of the importance of modern experience as a source of encounter with and revelation from God (in contrast to looking for revelation in the Scriptures and holy Tradition).  Further, the claim of Holmes that in the 1979 book we have a “logos Christology” makes sense in this context, for one can understand “logos” in such a way as to see Christ as the One in whom all knowledge and insight is contained and fulfilled.  That is, all knowledge and experience, historical and contemporary, leads to and points to Him.

      Looking back to the 1960s and 1970s, we can see that there were very few bishops or seminary teachers of stature who were also consciously orthodox in a traditional sense.  Anglo-Catholics in the main were more interested in getting their ritual and ceremonial right than in ensuring that the liturgy conformed in its teaching to the historic Catholic Faith.  Then they were all blown over by the winds of change from Vatican II.  To say a word on behalf of traditional liturgy, Anglican or Roman, seemed so out of date and silly in those days.  The mood was for change and for supposedly getting behind the western liturgies to a purer source in the third century.  So when the new rites came along and seemed to be “catholic” in structure and content, the bishops in the old Evangelical and Catholic Mission commended them, and they were also enthusiastically commended at Nashotah House, the “Catholic” seminary.

      Likewise, Virginia Seminary, from where a solid Protestant or evangelical examination of the theology of the new rites and liturgy ought to have come, began to approve the new ways, especially through the commendation of Charles Price and Albert Mollegan.  It was Price, a liberal Protestant, who eventually wrote the theological exposition of the 1979 book in what is known as Prayer Book Studies 29.  However, he preferred not to say that there was a new theology in the new book but that (in more diplomatic terms!) “certain aspects of Christian doctrine receive a stress somewhat different from that in the BCP.”  Of course!  There is a different emphasis upon the doctrine of God, of Jesus Christ, of the Atonement, of sin and salvation, and of divine revelation!

      By 1971 a few vigilant, orthodox Episcopalians recognized that the call for a new lex orandi meant a new lex credendi was entering the ECUSA (by the back door, as it were).  The Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer was founded in the spring of that year.  Holmes had this revealing comment to make about the SPBCP.

Often the SPBCP is caricatured as a group of dilettantes with an inordinate fondness for sixteenth-century English...  The caricature is unfair.  Their interest was in the rhetoric of the trial services, true; but even more they were concerned for the theology.  They were correct when they said, as they did repeatedly and sometimes abrasively, that the theologies of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the Services for Trial Use [to become the 1979 Book] were different.  The Standing Liturgical Commission probably was strategically wise in not affirming this too loudly, but its members knew that the SPBCP was correct.  There is a clear theological change.  (p. 134)

      Holmes described the theology of the leaders of the SPBCP as “classical” but “precritical.”  That is, it had not been molded and broadened by the forces of the European Enlightenment!  Further, its members had not attained that new stage of religious consciousness of which Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Robinson had spoken.  For them man had not changed “from a mirror (the cosmocentric view as found in Aquinas) to a window (the anthropocentric view as exemplified in Rahner).”

      Holmes was right.  Those who defended the Common Prayer Tradition believed in the authority of Scripture as God’s Word written, and of the Creeds as faithful summaries of the essential content of Scripture.  They saw God, not the autonomous individual human being, as the focus and at the center of the cosmos.  They could trace their doctrines back through the classical Anglican divines of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries to Augustine and St. Paul.  Their sincerity and learning may be seen, for example, in An Open Letter to the Standing Liturgical Commission written for the General Convention of 1976.  Its author was Harold Weatherby, a professor of English at Vanderbilt.  He raised a series of questions and asked for reasoned answers, but they were not forthcoming.  In fact serious questions about the new Rites were ignored or passed quickly over.  The mood was to get them approved and into the new BCP.  Weatherby later left the Episcopal Church for Orthodoxy (likewise two other founding members of the SPBCP who were also professors of English left the Episcopal Church when they saw that the Common Prayer Tradition had been effectively ditched through the refusal to confirm the BCP of 1928 as a definite alternative to the new rites).

David Ousley

      A paper entitled, “The Pastoral Implication of Prayer Book Revision,” was read at the Charlottetown Theological Conference in Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the summer of 1985 and printed in the Report of the Conference soon afterwards.  Its author was Dr. Ousley, a young, traditional, and dynamic Anglo-Catholic, and the rector of St. James the Less in Philadelphia.  After providing a brief history of Prayer Book revision in the USA from 1967 to 1979, and noting what Dr. Holmes had said about the process and content of this revision, he proceeded to offer five observations concerning the 1979 book and its use (over the six years from 1979 to 1985).

      His first observation was that “the most obvious characteristic of the new liturgy is its man-centeredness.  Worship is now focused on the group rather than on God.”  One obvious example of this (especially to a Catholic Anglican) is that the altar is moved away from the wall and the priest now faces the people rather than joining with them in facing God.  Further, he notes, God is addressed not in the most exalted of language but in the most pedestrian.  Then, also, with the shift to man-centeredness has come a move away in worship from a balance of an essential inwardness, with appropriate outward manifestation, to an emphasis primarily upon outwardness (well illustrated by the replacement of kneeling with standing).

      The second observation was that there is a “rejection of a stable standard of perfection” in the new liturgy.  The BCP, be it of 1549 or 1928, was intended to be as far as possible a perfect liturgy.  So the oft-repeated claim concerning “the excellence of the liturgy.”  The 1979 book, however, has no such aim and is dedicated to change and variety.  He notes that the loss of a stable standard of perfection has profound moral, spiritual, and doctrinal effects upon congregations (which, we may add, have become apparent in the last seven years since he wrote his paper).  For example, the modern liturgy encourages such claims as “I have grown wonderfully by the experience” (where the experience is often something as questionable as a divorce or a homosexual relationship or the practice of Buddhist yoga).

      In the third place, he observed that the new liturgy encourages “cheap grace and easy religion.”  And he writes:

If we are creating our own worship, if we are creating our own Christian community, and if it is basically our action and not God’s, then we cannot admit in any real sense our total inadequacy to accomplish anything.   We will avoid facing the depth of our sin.  Typical, then, of the liturgical reforms is the replacement of the suffering Christus with a Christus Rex.  The concern, contrary to the clear witness of the Gospels, is now to have the resurrection without the crucifixion.  It is an attempt to destroy the unity and balance of the two in the Christian doctrine of redemption.

      We have substituted celebration for redemption.  Penitence is removed so far as possible, and where it remains it is looked on as a necessary evil to be gotten over as quickly as possible so that the real work of worship (i.e. celebration) can begin.

      In other words, penitence is taken to be a Reformation (and indeed a medieval) accretion, which in our enlightened age we have outgrown.

      Fourthly, he observed, since Anglicans probably learn more from the Prayer Book than from the Bible, any substantial changes in the lex orandi “are likely to have profound effects on our understanding of the Faith.”  He notices such substantial changes in the content of the Catechism and in the Eucharistic Rites before noticing a changed doctrine for private penance.  In the form traditionally used in Anglo-Catholic parishes the rite ends with the request for penance, counsel, and absolution, but in that of 1979 the request is for “counsel, advice, and absolution.”  He notes that the act of penance was very important in the patristic and medieval practice and has been so within Anglicanism where such a rite has been used.  Further, he points out that the rite in the 1979 book “is therefore the first instance of a rite of penance in the history of the church to omit any act of penance, substantive or symbolic.”  And no act of penance means a changed view of sin and grace, confirming the de-emphasis on sin in other parts of the 1979 book.

      Finally, he notes that there is a change “in the understanding of the priesthood and the laity and of the relation between them.”  While he is wholly in favor of lay ministry, it is his judgement that what it is claimed supposedly enhances the participation of the laity in the work of the liturgy actually makes it more difficult for them to pray.  To make the laity a fourth order of proto-priests or proto-deacons (as many rubrics seem to do) and to define their ministry in terms of what can be taken away from the ordained clergy is hardly what the Scriptures tell us is the work of the laos of God.  Far better to let the priests be priests to preach, to teach, to give spiritual direction, and to decide the spiritual and practical details of public worship.

      Dr. Ousley does see some benefits in the new Book.  That the Eucharist is the principal service of the Lord’s Day, that there is provision for a fuller Rite for Holy Week, and that there is a rite (though defective!) for private penance are for him advantages.  He sees the main gains as of a liturgical sort and the defects of a doctrinal, moral, and spiritual nature.  Therefore, he is not surprised to have heard often this call from bishops and priests: “Since the 1979 Book teaches such and such we must now do this and that,” meaning that a change in the “law of believing” should cause a change in how and what is done in church worship.  Since 1985 there have been many such changes!

Michael lngham

      In 1986 there appeared Rites for a New Age: Understanding the Book of Alternative Services, published by the Anglican Book Center in Toronto and written by Michael Ingham of Vancouver.  The title indicates one of his themes – that our times, the last years of the twentieth century, are so different from those of the sixteenth century or even the 1950s (when the last revision of the Common Prayer Tradition was done in Canada) that we need new rites for this new age.  So, like Holmes he believes that such a new consciousness has developed from the 1960s that Christian worship has to be updated to meet it and service it.

      At the end of his second chapter, “How the world has changed,” Ingham summarizes his thoughts in this way:

The Prayer Book was a product of its time, just as the new rites are a product of ours.  It assumes and reflects a Christendom perspective within its pages just as the Book of Alternative Services points us to a new post-Christendom world.  This new age, similar in many ways to the context of the early church, requires Christians to live with a vigorous and renewed missionary spirit, with a stronger spirit of belonging to an historic religious community, and with a joyful and sustaining spirituality.  Nostalgia for the past is understandable but inappropriate.  When nostalgia becomes schizophrenia – entrenched commitment to living in the twentieth century as sixteenth-century people – then it is positively destructive.  Our living tradition needs to remain alive. (p. 52)

      Reflecting on these assertions makes various questions come to mind.  If the BAS points us to a post-Christendom world, does it also point us to the one and true Lord Jesus Christ who is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8) and to the living LORD, who is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?  Can the present age be compared to the Mediterranean world and culture of the third century?  Does the content and theology of the BAS genuinely produce an evangelistic and missionary zeal, or does it encourage dialogue and acceptance of other “ways to God” than through Jesus?  Is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of God a community or a communion?  Why is it wrong to look to the past if one also looks to the present and the future – and, more importantly, looks up to the exalted Lord Jesus Christ?  If the Greek Orthodox Church keeps alive and grows in North America while using a fourth-century liturgy, why cannot Anglicans stay alive and grow while using an updated sixteenth-century liturgy?

      Ingham’s third chapter is entitled “Community” and gives us a readable and interesting account of why the concept of community has entered modern liturgy in North America.  Those who gather for Christian liturgy, “the work of the people,” need to be formed into a community, he asserts, because the church no longer expresses the religious life of a community (e.g. a village or small town in England or in Nova Scotia).  He writes:

The contemporary liturgies are designed to equip the post-Christendom church to strengthen its own sense of being a community, and to help us bring new members into the church in ways that help them experience a new identity in Christ.  They are an attempt to respond to the obvious need among many alienated people to find secure, caring relationships that will provide the stability and support necessary for purposeful living (p. 57).

      And he adds that “the BAS engages the modern church in the intentional building up of its sense of identity and community life.”

      Certainly, I reply, the ekkiesia of God is to be a genuine fellowship and communion of Christians who build each other up in the faith, hope, and love of Jesus Christ – and such a calling is very important, as the existence of charismatic fellowships demonstrates.  Yet we must not put the cart before the horse.  In the words of Article XIX “the visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.”  True fellowship occurs when people come together to meet with the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the only true center in which they all have a common allegiance.  Believers and their children are thus not a community but a fellowship of people who have come together from a variety of communities in order to glorify the name of their God and be blessed and fed by Him.  Fellowship flows from the common unity in Christ, and if it meets a deep sociological and psychological need in alienated modern individuals, then that is cause for thanks to God, our Father.

      The fourth chapter, “Women and Men,” gives the reader the modern, standard, liberal ecclesiastical line, learned from liberation theology and feminist or women’s theology, about our new understanding of the place of women in the world and church.  “Authentic biblical faith” is thus stated in these terms:

In the scriptures God is revealed as the One who constantly goes out to renew relationships and to build justice.  The outgoing God, whose nature is love, and who dwells in the inner relationship of Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, calls us to live in relationships free of oppression and the misuse of power.  But as Christians we are unable to do this until we gain a radically new understanding of our own history and the class and gender biases which distort its perspectives. (p. 81)

      In the desire for inclusive language there is always a tendency to a modalist doctrine of God, and we find that here – “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer” instead of “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

      Believing that “women theologians are beginning the task ... of reconstructing Christian belief into a more inclusive and holistic world-view,” Ingham announces that the BAS “expresses a fundamentally different doctrine of marriage” from that of the 1662 BCP and a doctrine much improved over that of the 1962 BCP.  The changes and improvements were made, he claims, on the basis of the rejection of the attitude towards sexuality and the patriarchal understanding of society and the family held within the Western Church from the days of Augustine to modern times.  In response, it may be said that in rejecting the particular western traditions of sexual relations and of patriarchy, Ingham has set aside the biblical doctrines of ordered relations in the human race and of equality with hierarchy in the family.  Thus Ingham confirms that the use of inclusive language and the rejection of the biblical doctrine of the family and of relations between the sexes are inextricably united in modern thinking.

      The chapter on spirituality, states the Bishop of Edmonton in the Foreword, “is essential reading for all Anglicans who seek to understand better their relationship with God and the benefit accrued to us by the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.”  Let us discover what is so important as to make it “essential reading.”  First of all, we are told that the new services in BAS are more joyful and more positive and more optimistic than those of the BCP.  In fact, in total contrast, “the Prayer Book is thoroughly penitential in tone and content.  It reflects the penitential nature of much of the prevailing spirituality of the late Middle Ages” (p. 113).  Ingham then cites the influence of the Black Death in the fourteenth century in creating a penitential mindset, the influence of the Passion Mysticism which focused upon the passion of Christ and mystical absorption into His redemptive sufferings, and the doctrine of the Atonement set forth by Anselm of Canterbury in his Cur Deus Homo? which emphasized the need to satisfy the honor and justice of God because of man’s sin.  (This information is given in such a way as to suggest that it is proven and cannot be questioned!  Space does not allow me to challenge it.)

      The effect of this inheritance mediated via the BCP has been, he claims “to create in Anglicans a penitential spirituality, a withdrawal into self, a preoccupation with personal guilt and personal salvation” (p. 119).  Here he is repeating what liturgists, inspired by Dix and who dislike Cranmer, the Reformation, and the BCP have been saying for several decades.  These are assertions which have never been proven but yet they are made often.  The spirituality of the BCP has nourished millions of joyful souls who have gone to the ends of the earth to proclaim the Gospel, and it has kept in a humble and peaceful frame of mind millions who have gone through trial and tribulation.  Ingham writes as though the essential ingredient in the BCP of Cranmer was not the Bible, especially the Gospels and Letters of Paul, but late medieval spirituality!

      So it is not unexpected that the reader is told that the standing posture, not kneeling, is correct.  “The BAS, consistent with its different spiritual emphasis, suggests standing as the appropriate posture in the presence of God for those who have been called into his kingdom” (p. 127).  Symbolically, we are told, this portrays celebration and gives physical dramatization to the Easter event.  But what about repentance and confession of sin and what about humility in the presence of His Glorious Majesty?  Has not the Anglican tradition been to kneel to pray, to stand to hear the Gospel and to say the Creed, and to sit to hear the lessons from the Word of God?  Why has all this changed so quickly, and have we all been wrong for so long?  (See further Appendix 2.)

      In chapters six and seven Ingham deals with Ministry and Mission and tells us that the BAS, in contrast to the BCP, is a book for a post-Christendom situation in ministry, mission, and evangelism.  He is honest in pointing out a series of differences of doctrine and emphasis between the BCP and the BAS in these areas.  The last chapter is entitled “Play,” and he writes:

Liturgy is a kind of play.  It is a way of playing before God, a divine play.  By this I don’t mean that liturgy is just a game with no real meaning.  On the contrary, it is a symbolic drama which has a crucial meaning.  Liturgy shapes and forms us for eternal life.  It builds up in us a complex range of conscious and unconscious attitudes and behaviors...  lt creates in our minds an imaginary world called the kingdom of God, and allows us to live vicariously in it for an hour or so, and then bids us go out into the actual world and make the kingdom world real within it.  The worship of the church is a fragile earthen vessel containing the symbols and stories of our faith which, when acted out, become our personal symbols and stories, transforming our minds and behaviour and shaping us to conform with the images they represent.  (p. 194)

      And he continues a little later:

Liturgy is work.  It is a form of action in which we open ourselves to the possibility of being remade and reformed into a new creation.  The content and style of the rites is therefore crucial to our identity and to an understanding of what we have become and are becoming.  A change in the rites means a change in our identity, a change in our spirituality, and that is why liturgical renewal is so painful. (p. 195)

      We recall what Dr. Holmes said about the power of symbolism, and we note that with the new rites we have both new verbal content and new or changed symbolism.

      Anyone who thinks that the new rites belong to the same classical theological tradition as the old ones is clearly not in touch with what has happened and is happening now.  The aim of the new rites of the new liturgy is obviously to change the identity of the Anglican Way.  We are grateful to Dr. Holmes, Dr. Ousley, and Dr. Ingham for making this intention so lucid.

10  IN CONCLUSION

      Two things are very clear to me.  First, the version of Anglican Christianity set forth in the 1979 and 1985 prayer books is different from that of the Common Prayer Tradition; and secondly, by highly selective and limited use of the new books of modern rites, it is possible to recover and express some but not all of the classical Anglican Faith.

      The differences between the classical and the new are of two kinds – structural (particularly eucharistic) and doctrinal.  The Common Prayer Tradition uses a reformed catholic structure, created in the sixteenth century from the long experience of the Church in the West, whilst the modern Books attempt to use a structure which it is believed and asserted was common in the early Church of the second and third centuries.  We noted in chapter one that Massey H. Shepherd Jr. claimed that the unifying principle of most of the restoration or renewals of liturgy centered on the reconstruction by liturgists of the Paschal Mystery, relived by the faithful, liturgically and sacramentally, once a year on the anniversary of the Lord’s own Passover (in Greek, Pascha) in a unitary festival.  He recognized that this unitary festival did not remain after the fourth century, but he, with his fellow liturgists, did their best to conform their own liturgies to their reconstruction of the liturgies of the “ancient Church.”  One worrisome aspect of this approach is that it is apparently possible to use it in the service of a Jungian interpretation of religion as the projection of human desires.  Thereby we are headed straight back into pantheism.

      Structure and doctrinal content, while distinct, are related.  A structure is hardly neutral, for it attracts or requires a certain doctrinal content.  For example, if your model for what is a good rite is from the third century, then why should you believe you have to be committed to the dogma of the Church in the fourth or fifth centuries in your creation of new liturgical texts?  And, conversely, if you are committed to the developed dogma of the Church, why should you go back to a liturgical structure which was written centuries before the Church had clarified her mind on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the content of the liturgical year?  Further, we need to be aware that commitment to the somewhat fluid structure and doctrine of the third century rather than those of the fifth century makes it much easier to allow erroneous teaching into the new rites either by design or default.  Interestingly, there is apparently a greater commitment to the teaching of Scripture in adopting the later patristic structures and doctrines than in adopting those of the “ancient,” pre-Nicene Church.

      The best way I know of stating simply the basic differences in theological content between the old Common Prayer Tradition and the new Alternative Services Tradition is to use the image of the cross.  In the older tradition the Cross is upright; it unites heaven and earth (God and man) in its vertical beam, and through its horizontal beam it sends God’s redemption into all space and time.  Here the immanent is dependent upon, and flows from, the transcendent.  In the new tradition the Cross is laid down upon the ground and, though its beams point in different directions across the earth sending a message of justice and love, they do not point directly to heaven.  Here the immanent is supreme, and whatever there is of the transcendent, it is known via transcendentals and is therefore only a dimension of the immanent.  So the tendency of the modern Rites is towards panentheism/pantheism and away from Trinitarian theism.

The Future

      In terms of the initial illustration of the two ships, I have to say that there is no secure future for the Anglican Way as an authentic part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church on the new ships, with their multiple decks and plastic fittings.  The good ship, the 1928 or 1962 BCP, with its old design and gold and silver fittings is so much an essential part of the Anglican Way that Anglicanism without it is, in the long term, unthinkable and probably impossible.  This is not to say that a period in dry dock for refitting and some added features is not necessary, but it is to say that this good ship, BCP, must and will continue to sail the seas of life bringing the faithful to God’s harbor!

      As we have noted, the differences between the old and the new liturgies are not merely at the level of a single versus a plurality of texts or of traditional versus a modern form of English.  As I have sought to make very clear, the differences are both in structure and in doctrinal content.  They consist in basic doctrines such as God; the Holy Trinity; Jesus Christ; the Atonement; man and his sin; salvation; the Sacraments; and inclusive language.  My point has been that the new doctrines are either modern forms of old heresies or secular religious teaching.

      Therefore, for anyone to accept the new prayer books as a whole, he has to tell himself that the dogmas of the first four ecumenical councils and the classical reading and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures inherited and fine-tuned by our classical Anglican divines are either wholly or partly wrong and misguided.

      I realize that there are not a few clergy and laity in North America who use all the new Rites because they have been persuaded of their orthodoxy and authenticity.  Thus they will find it difficult to receive the message I have put before my reader.  However, when we recall that in recent times there has not been an Anglican or Episcopal seminary in North America where the Common Prayer Tradition has been commended as superior, preferable or even equal to the new traditions, then this mindset amongst clergy is understandable, even if regrettable and perhaps inexcusable.  Further, when we bear in mind that good and kind bishops were very active in the USA, and are still so in Canada, commending the new rites as superior to the old ones, then we can be sympathetic towards those priests and laity who want to believe, against all the evidence, that all is well with the new books.

      Further, we can understand those who say, “Stay with the new Rites, for if we reject these, then the next set from the liturgical commissions will be in the theology and spirit of PBS 30, and we shall not be able to use those at all!”  In part, this type of thinking led the parish of Rosemont in Philadelphia to produce its Anglican Service Book in 1991.  This is wholly in traditional language and seeks to make the best of the offerings within the 1979 BCP while adding other traditional features.

      Let it be clear that I do not know precisely how the Common Prayer Tradition needs perfecting for use by orthodox, biblical Anglicans of both the catholic and evangelical persuasions (and all shades of churchmanship) in the days ahead.  It is not for me to decide the way forward in liturgical reform for Anglicanism in North America, even if I had the ability so to do.  Of course, I have suggestions, but such a holy task needs holy preparation and ought not to be rushed.  If it is done as merely the work of another ecclesiastical committee, then it will soon need doing again.  It has to be done as a service to the Lord with fasting and prayer, in holiness and by grace, with learning and wisdom.  Meanwhile, we shall do well to use one or another form of the Common Prayer Tradition and intend to begin revision from it.  The kind of sound rules I would establish would include faithfulness to the teaching of the seven ecumenical councils and to the Reformation insight of salvation by grace through faith.  And I would probably be ready to include two or three Consecration Prayers (e.g. those of 1549, 1662 and 1928 in order to provide for the catholic and evangelical constituency of modern Anglicanism).

My Task

      My task has been to make a theological case for reforming the liturgy and to call for that task to be done so that by the grace of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us, our worship and mission might be renewed in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.  As I have indicated earlier, it is very possible that the Anglican Communion, now breaking apart from within, will soon divide on what, for want of better terms, may be described as traditionalist/revisionist (conservative/liberal lines).  Then the task of revising the Common Prayer Tradition will belong only to the conservatives/traditionalists if they manage to stay together in some ecclesial unity and do not let divisive, individualist tendencies pull and push them apart.  Another possibility – somewhat remote, I fear – is that an association of Anglican parishes using the Common Prayer Tradition will be accepted as an Anglican Rite Diocese and be protected and cared for by either the Western (Rome) or one of the Eastern Patriarchs (Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria – that of Antioch being the most probable).  In this case the Common Prayer Tradition would have to be modified to nestle safely in the embrace of the appropriate Patriarch.

      Whatever direction is followed there will be an opportunity truly to show the genuine meaning of lex orandi: lex credendi; for the truth that the law of believing is the law of praying, and the law of praying is the law of believing is certainly the state of affairs to which we want to move.  In this connection, and at this juncture in history, we can certainly learn from the Orthodox Churches.  Theology, for them, is reflection upon that knowledge of God which He gives to us and the major place where we as the Body of Christ and Household of Faith know God is in our eucharistic worship of Him, through the ministry of the Word and the Sacrament.  Christian thought does not find its formative and proper place in the classroom or the library, as we in the West have often assumed, but in participating by grace in divine worship, the Daily Office, and the Holy Eucharist.  Here in the presence of God there is the sacramental and liturgical adoration of the Holy Trinity, the communal celebration of the sacred mysteries of our redemption and sanctification, the hearing and receiving of the Word of God, and the being formed by participation in the One Bread and One Cup.

      Theology is therefore an attempt to give verbal expression to the great Mystery known in worshipful, meditative, and contemplative experience.  It is a telling of the glory of the Father perceived in the face of Jesus Christ through the illumination of the Spirit.  Yet such a task calls for (and with the Orthodox has usually led to) sharp, critical thought which comes from the heart’s praise of the living and true God (Ps. 149:6 & Eph. 1:6).  Is not the Scripture itself as a two-edged sword (Eph. 6:17 & Heb. 4:12)?  Christian language and Christian thought come from authentic Christian prayer.  There ought to be precision and care in the language we call theology because true Christ-centered thought, based on vision, is sharp and clear.  What is clearly seen is to be exactly stated.  And of course the producing of that statement will be done outside the holy liturgy, but will be promoted and energized by the encounter with the Lord in Word and Sacrament.

      I believe that Mark Twain once commented that the difference between the “right” word and the “almost right” word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug!  We have become too careless about words in the West, and in defence of that carelessness we have invented excuses to cover it.  The Christian Faith is not a hazy, speculative sort of thing but a very precise and knowable thing: it is one thing and not another, and thus there is truth and error, orthodoxy and heresy.  In this connection we learn much by a careful study of the ecumenical councils and their presentation of orthodoxy over against error and heresy.

      Believers are called to be of and to share one mind; they are not merely to be of one heart (Rom. 12:1–2; Acts 4:32).  Only a single letter in a single word (homoousios and homoiousios) divided the true from the erroneous Faith in the fourth century in the Arian controversy – and it (or an equivalent) often still does so today.

      There is a world of difference between the Son’s being of the same ousia as the Father and the Son’s being of a like ousia to the Father.  And, as I sought to show in chapter four, there can also be a world of difference between saying “the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” and saying “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

      Since Anglicans in North America are not agreed that they have a confession of faith (for the status of The Thirty-Nine Articles is debated), it is most important that the liturgy with its inbuilt lex orandi be truly a biblically orthodox lex credendi.  That is, even as in the Greek Liturgy (that of Chrysostom or of Basil) the lex credendi and the lex orandi (with its added teaching to the catechumens) are generally identical, since the liturgy incorporates the great dogmas of the ecumenical councils, so also the liturgy of the Common Prayer Tradition ought to contain and present both the great dogmas of the councils and the doctrinal insights of the Reformation of the sixteenth-century.  (Here I must make a minor digression and sound a warning concerning what is called “liturgical theology” by liturgists expounding the modern rites.  So much depends on what is the liturgy from which the theology is being taken!  Modern expressions of this new discipline from Europe and America are well described by Kevin W. Irwin in his brief but very useful book, Liturgical Theology. A Primer (1990).  It is the discipline which is erected on the claim that primary theology is expressed in the lex orandi.  In my judgment Geoffrey Wainwright of Duke University writes in the most sensible way on this topic – see his review of Aidan Kavanagh’s book, On Liturgical Theology (1984) in Worship, vol. 61., March 1987.)

      I end with a word of hope!  Reading the books by Thomas C. Oden of Drew University (especially his After Modernity... What?, 1990) causes me to think that some of the intelligent, honest, younger members of the Anglican Way in North America will soon begin to forsake their ship, BAS, and return to the traditional, BCP.  They will be joined in this voyage by other postmodern persons.  I must allow Dr. Oden to explain:

The postmodern person is looking for something beyond modernity, some source of meaning and value that transcends the assumptions of modernity.  Neck deep in the quicksands of modernity, the postmodern mind is now struggling to set itself free.  Some of these postmoderns have happened onto classical Christianity and experienced themselves as having been suddenly lifted out of these quicksands onto firmer ground.  They have then sought to understand the incredible energy and delivering power of Christianity, and, in the process of returning to the classical texts of ancient Christian tradition and Scripture, have begun to discover that the orthodox core of classical Christianity constitutes a powerful, viable critique of modern consciousness.

      These postmoderns have roamed widely through a variety of modern experiments and have been plunged into the depths of such pits as psychoanalysis, behavior modification, existential ethics, deconstructionism, and sexual liberation.  Their roaming and diving have not satisfied them; now they are discovering that the authentic Christian tradition is more humane and realistic than any of the offerings of modernity (pp. 60ff).  So they will recognize that the Common Prayer Tradition can and does speak to them in an authentically Christian way, offering a center to their lives in this postmodern culture.

      The Anglican Way must incorporate the stabilizing and authenticating dogma of both the Holy Trinity and Christology (the divine and human identity of Jesus, the Christ) on the one hand, and the liberating Pauline doctrine of justification by faith on the other.  I hope that the Lord preserves me to witness in my lifetime the revival of a scripturally based Anglicanism in the West.  Better still, may He come in glory with His holy angels to judge the living and the dead and to inaugurate the Father’s kingdom – “even so, come quickly Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).  Then there will be no need for any Anglican Way, for “we shall see Him as He is” and be filled with wonder, love, and praise.

APPENDIX  1

The 1979 Catechism

      Anyone who compares the Catechism of the 1928 BCP with that of 1979 book will notice many differences, over and above the fact that the latter has one hundred and twelve questions and answers while the forms has only twenty-five.  The Catechism of 1928 is intended to be taught to baptized children as they prepare for Confirmation, the second (in the context of “full initiation through baptism”) is intended to explain what Episcopalians believe, primarily to those outside or on the fringes of the Church.  This is why “An Outline of the Faith” (pp. 845ff.) begins with the natural order or a natural theology; that is, it is intended to start where people are – in the world that God has made.  So it declares: “We are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God.”

      This text, “An Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism,” was not the first Catechism produced for the 1979 book.  In 1973 there appeared “A Catechism” produced by the drafting committee of the Standing Liturgical Committee.  The chairman of this committee was Bishop Stanley Atkins.  In many ways this draft Catechism was like that of 1928, being traditional in format and content.  In fact, this draft Catechism presupposed that baptized infants would be taught the Faith before Confirmation from it; it included the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds (regrettably in the modern, dishonest translations) to be learned; and it dealt with the Scriptures, the Commandments, Prayer (giving two versions of the Lord’s Prayer), the Church, the Ordained Ministry, the Sacraments, and Christian Hope.

      The 1973 Catechism was not accepted by the Standing Liturgical Commission.  As far as I can tell, this was for two reasons – first of all, it did not assume that Baptism is “full initiation,” and in the second place, it did not take the Faith, that is, the lex credendi, from the already appearing (in the trial services) lex orandi.  So a new committee was formed, headed by the Very Reverend R.H. Greenfield and including Marianne Wicks, Charles Winters, and Evan Williams.  All four were desirous of presenting a simple exposition of what Episcopalians (of their kind?) believed.  The result is a form of liberal or revisionist (Anglo) Catholicism, which assumes that the lex credendi is to be based upon the lex orandi of the new Rites in the new prayer book.  Put another way, they read the new services and new translations of the Creeds (which were all then in final form) and asked what is the law of believing presupposed in them.  Having found it, they then sought to express it in as simple and as intelligent a way as possible.  Their work was approved unanimously by the theological committee of the House of Bishops and by the Standing Liturgical Commission.

      Certainly Dean Terry Holmes held that Dr. Greenfield’s team had succeeded.  He believed that they expressed systematically the new theological consensus set forth in the 1979 book, and he commented that their work “appears not yet to be appreciated for its rich insights.”  He added that “commentaries on that document (‘An Outline of the Faith’) would make a start at providing a resource for a theological education rooted in the new liturgy” on the principle of lex orandi as the basis for lex credendi (‘Education for Liturgy’, p.139).

      When we realize that the Catechism is meant to be a summary of the teaching or theological assumptions of the new Rites, then it is easy to see why its teaching is what it is.  That is, it is not difficult to see why the erroneous and inadequate doctrines hidden within the Rites become explicit within the Catechism.  The very act of summarizing makes what is general, specific, and what is loose, tight!  The result is a liberal Catholicism in Anglican dress, which looks like the real evangelical and catholic thing on first appearance, but which reveals its true identity on careful examination.

      So, since the doctrine of the Trinity is taken from the incorrect translation of the Phos hilaron and the false opening Acclamation of the Eucharist, we are not surprised to learn that for modern Episcopalians “The Trinity is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is modalism.  Rahner, MacQuarrie, and Tillich have left their mark.  It is “God’s Being” which “draws praise from us”, not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  It is as though the Athanasian Creed and the Nicene Creed and the Thirty-Nine Articles never existed.

      And since this principle of deducing doctrine from liturgical texts also applies to the identity and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not taught any clear doctrine of either His pre-existence as the Second Person of the Trinity, or of His Atonement as being a real sacrifice, expiation, and propitiation for the sin of the world as well as a victory over Satan, death, sin, and hell.  Jesus is primarily what may be termed a “Nestorian Christus Victor,” the One who as the unique Man united to God “sets us free from the power of evil, sin, and death.”

      Likewise, there is no clear doctrine of the Fall or of original sin in the new Episcopalian Faith.  Sin is not more than the abuse and misuse of freedom.  So God’s covenant of grace is merely His initiative towards essentially free persons who are at liberty to say “yes” or “no.”  It is not His provision of that relationship with the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit – a relationship which sinners can do absolutely nothing in and of themselves to merit, enter into, and remain within.  They are always dependent upon His grace to enable them to move towards their God and remain in communion with Him.

      Therefore, anyone learning the Episcopalian Faith from this Outline, and then being asked to state that Faith, would in fact probably repeat some of the major heresies of the early Church in modern existentialist dress – Sabellianism (modalism), against which the Athanasian Creed was written; Nestorianism, which is outlawed by the Definition of the Council of Chalcedon, and Pelagianism, which was rejected in the West at the Council of Orange (AD 529).

APPENDIX  2

The Fifty Days

      Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Ascension Day, and Whit-Sunday (Pentecost) have been special days in the Church since the late fourth century.  Each one celebrates a mighty but interrelated act of God the Father in and through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.  Because of them “repentance and forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47) was preached by the first apostles and evangelists and is still preached today by their successors to the world.

      Those today who, following recent Roman Catholic revisions, emphatically speak of the “Paschal Mystery” and of “the great fifty days” or “the fifty-day Sunday” (Easter until Pentecost) display a certain hesitation about the feast of the Ascension of our Lord.  While this feast fits perfectly into the 40 + 10 scheme of the older Western and the Common Prayer Tradition (recall how the Pascal Candle used to be put out on Ascension Day, day 40, to show that Christ had ascended from earth to be at the right hand of the Father in heaven), it has little or no meaningful place in the 50-day scheme (where the Candle is usually kept lit until Pentecost).

      The liturgical reason for keeping the Candle burning for fifty days is that in the 50-day scheme, operative (it is claimed) in the early or “ancient” Church, the Ascension was celebrated either at Easter or Pentecost or both as part of the unitary festival of the Pascha.  Further, in theological terms, it is commonplace today to see all the feasts as celebrating one “Christ event” – that is, the one Christ who died but is now alive with God.  In this approach there is no physical, bodily resurrection, only a spiritual one.  Thus the Ascension Day is redundant and may be classed as a kind of resurrection appearance.  Here ancient practice, which in its own context made good sense, is used to justify and set forth new and perhaps erroneous doctrine.  (For the ancient practice with sensible modern Roman Catholic comment see the book, The Church at Prayer, ed. A.G. Martimort, IV Liturgy and Time, pp. 57ff.)

      Further, there are moral and spiritual consequences of the emphasis upon the 50-day scheme.  Its advocates usually insist that it is improper to have public confession of sins with priestly absolution (as the Common Prayer Tradition requires at each Holy Eucharist) in this whole period of seven weeks (and they also usually add Christmastide as well).  With modern Prayer Books (and more the Canadian than the American), where the confession of sin is optional, it is possible rubrically to begin this practice without any obvious breaking of the rules.

      When asked for reasons for omitting the confession and absolution in Eastertide, liturgists usually offer two basic reasons.  First of all, they claim that (liturgically) Jesus is with us in a unique way in the Pascha, from Easter Eve until Pentecost.  How can we confess our sins and be mournful when the Bridegroom is with us (citing Matt.9:15)?  How can we be penitential when we ought to be celebratory and joyful?  Did we not remember our sins in Lent and did we not celebrate on Good Friday their removal by Jesus?  Surely we are to celebrate new life in the fifty days!

      In the second place, they refer to canon 20 of the Council of Nicea (325), which states: “Since there are certain persons who kneel on the Lord’s Day and during the season of Pentecost [= the 50 days], therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere [= in all parishes] it seems good to the holy synod that prayer be offered to God in the standing position.”  From this they argue that since kneeling implies penitence, and standing implies joyfulness and acceptance by God, then there ought to be no mourning over and confessing of sins during the fifty days.

      But are these reasons sound?  Let us begin with the first one concerning our Lord’s presence.  Liturgical time is not real time.  There is a confusion between what we may call the time of the new creation, the new epoch inaugurated by the resurrected Lord, and the chronological time in which we live.  In and of ourselves we remain sinners as long as we are in this world and in this space and time.  Thus we are always in the position of having to recognize and confess our sins.  However, as members of the Body of Christ and thus in the new creation, we are new creatures and thus free of sin.  It is this new creation which is celebrated by the liturgical season of Eastertide.  In other words, that which shall be at the end of this evil age when redemption is complete is anticipated liturgically – that is, the blessed state of being actually without sins is not yet experienced, but already the promise of that state is claimed in the eucharistic celebration.

      If we turn to Scripture, the fact of our sinful state whilst on this earth is confirmed on virtually every page of the New Testament.  “If we confess our sins,” we are told, then “God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  True joy for the soul is to know that one’s sins are forgiven and that one is a right relationship by grace with the Lord.  Confession of sins is part of the praise of God, the Father, offered by His obedient children who desire to be pleasing to Him.  Such confession of sins is recognized by the important document known as the Didache (circa A.D. 120).  This provides the earliest description of the Eucharist outside the New Testament:

Assemble on the Lord’s Day, and break bread and offer the Eucharist; but first make confession of your faults so that your sacrifice may be a pure one.  Anyone who has a difference with his fellow is not to take part with you until they have been reconciled, so as to avoid any profanation of your sacrifice.  For this is the offering of which the Lord has said, “Everywhere and always being me a sacrifice that is undefiled, for I am a great King, says the Lord, and my name is the wonder of nations” (Mal. 1:11, 14).

      It would appear from this that the confession is an actual part of the worship.

      Further, as we have noted, the Common Prayer Tradition, without any exception from 1549 to the present day, has required confession of sins during the whole year with no changes for Eastertide or for Christmastide.  It is certainly true that the public confession of sins with the general absolution is the authentic Anglican Way of declaring the forgiveness of sins to penitent souls.  Other Churches use different methods – e.g. private confession before Holy Communion – and these methods Anglicans may respect and use without abandoning their own tradition.  Of course, the Anglican Way was not entirely novel as the Sarum Rite, for example, testifies.  Then also in the Greek Liturgies there is a silent recital of confession of sin before receiving Holy Communion.

      Turning now to canon 20 of  Nicea we must note carefully what it actually says.  Apparently, there were those who wanted to kneel, and so it calls for uniformity in liturgical practice; it does not state that those who stand ought not to confess sins or be penitent.  Further, it was written when the fifty-day Eastertide was probably in operation, and before the development of the separate feast of the Ascension and the introduction of the 40 + 10 scheme.  Thus it needs interpretation to be applied to the later scheme.  Then there is a question as to what is its authority for the West and for today, since canons are not on the same level as dogma (e.g. that in the Nicene Creed) and are adapted to local situations.

      Nevertheless, let us concede that it was widely believed in the third and early fourth centuries that it was appropriate to stand on Sundays and in the fifty days.  Take, for example, the fifteenth canon of Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, who was martyred in A.D. 311, which states: “We keep the Lord’s Day as a day of joy, because then our Lord rose.  Our tradition is not to kneel on that day” (H.E.Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils, 1900, p.601).  Earlier Tertullian, the Latin father, had written: “We consider it unlawful to fast, or to pray kneeling, upon the Lord’s Day; and we enjoy the same liberty from Easter-day to that of Pentecost” (De Corona Militis, s. 3, 4.)

      When I am asked why not merely this scheme of the 50 days, but also its modern corollaries of no kneeling and no confession with absolution are so insisted upon by modern liturgists, I offer six reasons.

      First, the authority of Scripture has been seriously eroded, and so it is no longer asked whether to omit the confession of sins is biblically justifiable for

any period of time, let alone for fifty days.  Further, the fact that St. Paul himself knelt to pray in the Pentecost season (see Acts 20:36 and 21:5 in the light of 20:6) is not heeded as being at least an alternative authority to that of a canon.

      Secondly, there is a determined desire to get behind the development of classic dogma and developed liturgy of the fifth and six centuries to a previous, more fluid state of affairs, where the evidence is less clear and where the options for choice for restoration in the present are apparently more exciting.  Further, there is a fascination with the period before Constantine the Great and the establishment of Christianity as an official religion.  Parallels between the variety of liturgical forms, and the milticulturalism and the pluralism, then and now, are drawn.

      Then, thirdly, there is a positive rejection of the Common Prayer Tradition and its supposed obsession with penitence, sin, and guilt and the embracing of the theme of joyful celebration.  Here what is learned from Gregory Dix’s hatred of Cranmer and the Reformation is married to the modern desire not to say much about sin as offending God.  (It is worth noting that kneeling in the Anglican tradition is the traditional way to pray [see Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, V.68. i–iii] and is seen not primarily as penitential but as a sign of humility and piety before God.)

      In the fourth place, as I stated above, liturgical time is confused with chronological time, and the eschaton (the end-time) is equated with present time.  Further, what we are declared by the Father to be in Christ in the new covenant (sinless and righteous) is taken as if it were wholly true of us now in our physical bodies in this evil age.  Theological confusion leads to practical error.

      Fifthly, the removal of the confession of sins in Eastertide and also in Christmastide seems to be a first step to the removal of any confession of sins from the liturgy at all times of the year.  Again ancient practice is cited by those who advocate this, but rarely do they quote Scripture or suggest that modern people adopt the full penitential practice of the early Church.

      Finally, as we observed in the quotation from Massey H. Shepherd Jr. in chapter one, the liturgists who put together the 1979 and 1985 books saw the unitary festival of the Pascha as the very center of their reforming innovations.  By their reconstruction and adoption of this centerpiece they wish their whole enterprise to be judged.

      We do not need to go back to the third century in search of that which was itself developed and changed.  By the fifth century, while there was still reference to the fifty days, the celebration of the entire Paschal Mystery as an indivisible unity was already being set aside to some extent as the Church responded to the psychological need which Christians felt to honor successively, in these days first the resurrection of our Lord, then His ascension and finally, the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and disciples.  That is, the liturgy gradually conformed to the chronology of St Luke’s Book of Acts.

      I believe that there is great scope in the 40 + 10 approach for the joyful worship of the Holy Trinity in the presence of the risen Lord and the edification of the household of faith.  The feast of the Ascension is very important, for it celebrates the entry into heaven of the eternal Son and Word with His human nature to be our King, Priest, and Prophet.  (See further Davies, op. cit., Appendix 1 for the early history of the feast of the Ascension).  However, there is no reason why in Eastertide the wording of the general confession and absolution can not be adapted specifically to the theme of the resurrected Lord Jesus – and the same principle could apply to confession and absolution in other parts of the liturgical year.  Further, to return to the 40 + 10 scheme does not mean that there cannot be an Easter Vigil with other rites from the “ancient” Church.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

      Primary sources:

      The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, ed. G. Dix, New York, 1937

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      The Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada (1985).

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      Called to teach and learn: A catechetical Guide for the Episcopal Church, New York, 1992.

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      Constitution on the Liturgy, (Vatican) Rome, 1963.

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