Author Archives: JessicaHof

Tradition & women: Phoebe

18 Friday Sep 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Reading Romans

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First let me thank two men: Rob, for his incredibly helpful book, and then C451 who, despite (or because?) of his own views on the subject, gave me his collection of books on women and their ordination (it may explain the dates of some of what I quote from) as well as some guidance which was offered with characteristic generosity of spirit.

Second, an apology because I know that at times I have let vent in ways which while they show my feelings, offer, as C451 put to me, “more heat than light, which never helps with illumination.” As Neo said to be, “we’re all human,” which while true and a good explanation, isn’t an excuse, any more than responding in kind, is an excuse. I hope that the last few posts have, to a large extent, rectified that failure on my part, but a general apology is hereby offered.

Third, an explanation of what I am trying to do might be in order, since some comments suggest that I have not been as clear as I thought. In my own Church the matter of women’s ordination is a done deal, and as C451 has, again with a generosity of spirit that shames me, it may be that other churches will find in it lessons and an example. I know C well enough to have spotted the coded caveat of “for good or ill”! What I am trying to do is to explain how someone who considers herself a high Anglican in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, can possibly have ended up supporting the ordination of women.

I want to begin with Phoebe, as a way of illustrating the wider context. We are told that Phoebe is a “helper” or a “servant”, and that is, of course, a translation of the Greek diakonos. Paul uses the same word to describe his own monistry in his letters to the Corinthians and Galatians, but in a purely English version of the New Testament you might be hard put to see their roles as parallel. It is hard to escape the conclusion that circular reasoning is at work here. We know that when the word is applied to Paul it represents what he does, which invests even the word “servant” with a halo. When it is applied to Phoebe, there is no halo. The Douay-Rheims is an honourable exception translating it as “in ministry”. The choice of the words “servant” or “helper” are, I fear, gendered. It goes thus: we know women were helpers in the Church, therefore we translate diakonos as helper. Then, when asked what the role of women was in the early church, we are told they were “helpers” and pointed to the NT as evidence, where, helpfully, that is indeed the word used – QED. Except, of course, for the circular reasoning. Now if we found the same translation of the word applied consistently to men as well as women, my point would fall away; but we don’t, so it doesn’t.

If we look at the Greek, Paul describes Phoebe as “being” (the participle ousan) “of the church is Cenchrae” which is why the DR uses “ministry” – it is clear from the context that Phoebe was in ministry in the church, and that is the sense in which she was a “helper” or “servant”. In other words, absent the gendered assumptions and no-one would have any reason to question that Phoebe was a “minister.” We can discuss what that means, but I hope this explains why I can’t avoid the issue of gendered assumptions.

While on the subject of Phoebe, it might be worth saying that when Paul says she is delivering the letter, that does not mean she was just the postman. The likelihood was that she would have been reading it out and answering questions about it – so she would have been in Paul’s confidence and had an idea of what he meant – something generations of scholars have wished for! This, of course, involved a public teaching role.

Paul also calls her a “prostasis”, another Greek word often translated in her case as “helper.” This is a difficult one because the word in that form is found only in Paul, but its masculine form, “prostasis” always denotes a form of authority, which of course may be why it is not often applied to Phoebe, if we are back to the cricular logic we have already identified. The majority of translations translate the word as “helper” or a synonym, you have to get to contemporary ones before the word “leader” is used. So again, we see how unconscious bias downplays the role of Phoebe. If she’s been a “he” called “Philip” I wonder how many translations would have used the word “helper”?

This has taken me further than I thought, and means that I shall need another post to say something about how it all maps onto leadership in the Church. Let me say though, in parting, that it is for each Church which inherits tradition to interpret it as it does. The Roman Catholic Church has a high doctrine of the magisterium, and therefore, whatever an Anglican might say about tradition does not apply to the way that Church views things. This is not an argument to be seen in a Roman Catholic context, though some in the communion will be challenged and are challenged by such arguments, it is, however, an argument to seen in a catholic context to explain how a high Anglican can not only accept, but welcome and celebrate the ordination of women who have been called (lucky things!).

Tradition?

16 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith

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A stone sarcophagus front from the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, circa A.D. 430, at the Instanbul Archaeological Museum, showing a male and a female figure standing on either side of the altar. (Courtesy of Ally Kateusz/Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research)

“Time present and time past /Are both perhaps present in time future”

Thus T.S. Eliot in my favourite poem, Little Gidding and thus, I think, tradition in the Church. If we hold the same faith as our ancestors, that has to be the case, but we know that the Spirit moves in the Church, he did not stop moving at some point in the past, and so, as Newman among others pointed out, we also have change, or if you like, development occurs. If we are the same Church, then what the Apostles said in Acts remains true: “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” In short, tradition cannot be just conserving what was done in the past. If that were so there would be twelve bishops, all Jewish and all men – when there are more than twelve bishops, few of them Jewish and, at least in some traditions such as my own, not all of them men. It’s easy (which is why it happens so often) to attribute this to reckless modernists wanting to change because society has changed. It may be the case that some people fit that bill, but what about those of us who in many senses consider ourselves on the conservative and sacramental wing of our tradition? This is what I want to examine here, and that involves trying to say something about tradition first.

My own Church, and I think all others I know, agree on a starting point, which is that Scripture comes first, nothing which on the other parts of the tripod rest, that is tradition and reason, can stand if it contradicts Scripture, but we have to be careful that tradition does not become an excuse for giving our own reason extra weight. As anyone who has engaged in discussions in this area knows, there is an awful lot of what passes for tradition that gets quoted out of context. We must always be careful both to give tradition its place, but to beware the temptation to take the existing church in our time and its teachings as the whole of tradition. As Hans Kung put it:

At Trent tradition ousted Scripture, at vatican I real historical tradition was in turn ousted by the present magisterium of the church. Trent said that tradition shows what Scripture teaches; Vatican I said that the Church teaches what tradition is. The ‘teaching of the Church’, understood in this way, and hence the Church itself was made identical with the tradition of Christ. [Kung, The Church, 1967]

This view has not been accepted by any other Christian tradition because to them it seems to give too much weight to the Church. Anglicans take a more measured view. “We cannot separate the the Bible from the Church which recognised it and preserved it. The Divine Book and the Divine Society are the two factors of the one Revelation – each checking the other.” [H.P. Liddon, quoted in H.R MacAdoo, Anglicans and Tradition, 1997] The Church has the right to change things as long as nothing is done that contradicts Scripture. According to Article XXXIV

IT is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word.

As Archbishop Laud, who is more usually remembered for his matryrdom than for his theological contributions, put it: “the ancient Fathers relied upon the Scriptures” and made the Creed “the rule of faith” and the Church of England is happy with that position. Scripture is central.

But Scripture does not exist in a vacuum outside the context of the Church and tradition. With the rare exception of a person who chooses not to ask questions, we will all use the light of our reason to interpret Scripture, and as the current reality of most of our churches is that there is a great deal of contestation (in some cases even about whether a Pope is a Pope), the witness of the ancient undivided Church via the Fathers is critical. For Anglicans this gives us a certain economy in terms of doctrine, and as Article XXXIV sgows, a liberality in non-essentials. In Laud’s words:

Catholicity is not a narrow conclave … but lays open those wider gates of the Catholic Church, confined to no age, time, or place; not knowing any bounds but the faith which was once (and but once for all) delivered to the saints. [McAdoo, pp. 13-14].

For Anglicans the teachings of the Fathers and the witness of an ancient church matter a great deal. In the words of the great Bishop Andrewes: “On canon … two testaments, five centuries and the series of Fathers in that period … determine the boundaries of our faith.”

It can be seen from this brief, and naturally rather simplified summary, that for Anglicans the appeal to antiquity is in terms of doctrine, and not other aspects of tradition. There are some things, the Creed for example, which must be believed, but there are other, non-doctrinal traditions, which are received from our ancestors which may, at the determination of the Holy Spirit, change within the life of the Church as it is lived down the ages. No one has ever suggested that all the successors to the Apostles should be Jews, even though all the first Apostles were Jews. Paul himself challenged Peter when he resiled over the dietary rules which the first Christians followed as Jews always had. Tradition in this, non-doctrinal sense, has always been subject to change.

All of which is by way of an introduction to what I had hoped to deal with in three posts, but which will take more, and that is how a high Anglican such as myself, with a high doctrine of the sacraments, can accept that women can be ordained. More soon …

Apostolic

15 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Early Church

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In Acts 1:24 when a successor to Judas is being mooted, Peter talks about those who accompanied Jesus during his earthly ministry. We know that included among those were many women from what Luke tells us, and that some of these women actually provided the funds to enable Jesus and his followers to live while ministering. That tells us something about the relationship and the role played by women. In that sense they fulfilled one of the requirements to be an Apostle – that is they had been part of the ministry. But they did not, and could not, fulfil the requirement to be a replacement for Judas. The “twelve” represented the twelve tribes of Israel, and only men were allowed to do that, indeed, only Jewish men were allowed to do that. While, in the early Church, the requirement to be Jewish would be gradually abandoned, the requirement to be male was not.

Did that mean that women were not “Apostles” or does it mean that there is more than one sense in which that word could be defined? If we take Luke’s stricter sense, that is being eligible to succeed Judas, the answer is clear enough. But that is not the only sense in which the word is used, not least by the man who often gets a bad rap from feminists, Paul. In his first letter to the Corinthians, in which he claims the title for himself, he defines the role as one who spreads the Gospel of Christ, and we know from Luke, and from Paul himself that women did this. Indeed, rather more than that in some cases, as we know that the very first witness of the risen Lord was one of the women Luke mentions as helping support Jesus and his ministry. It is often asssumed that the seventy two who get sent out were all men, but there is no actual warant for that except the (male) assumption that they must have been men. Yes, the Greek word leads us to that conclusion, but the Greek language has an adrocentric bias, and there is no reason not to read “men” as in some English phrases where “men includes women.”

Paul clearly regards being an Apostle as important, he stresses it often enough for us to be clear that it cannot be read loosely. It involves encountering the risen Christ and receiving the commission to spread the gospel, with all the sufferings that involved. It was certified, so to speak, by signs and mighty works. Junia, as an Apostle, must be said to fit this description, and given what Luke and Paul says about the role women play in the early church, the only occasion for surprise is that this has been ignored and, yes, suppressed for so long.

That last may seem harsh, but how else to characterise an historic position which, when the name was “Junias” and therefore male, accepted that “he” was an apostle, but when it was established that the name was female, argued that she was just “known to the Apostles”? There is, for those who want the detail, an extensive discussion of this in Epps’ book on Junia cited by C451, and also in Richard Bauckham’s excellent and scholarly (i.e. too deep for me in many parts) “Gospel Women” (2002) which goes into an extensive discussion of the koine Greek by experts in the use of the language.

In short, with Junia we are back to church tradition – ironically. It is later commentators, not the Church Fathers usually cited by those defending tradition, on which those defending “Junias” rest; they might ask whether there is any other case in which they’d prefer a twenth century source to a Church Father, and if not, why they feel the need to do so here. Chrysostom wrote:

To be an apostle is something great, but to be outstanding among the apostles – just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! They were outstanding on the basis of their works and virtuous actions. Indeed, how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was worthy of the title of apostle.

There is, of course, a possible reason why some modern fathers prefer, for once, to ignore the Church Fathers, and that seems to be to do with the arguments for the ordination of women. For me, and for many others, that argument does not depend upon Junia, but on what one means by “tradition” and whether one thinks of it as static or whether one believes that the Holy Spirit is at work still guiding the Church. If the former is the case, then there’s no argument, although one might well ask how and why the requirement for the twelve to be Jewish was dropped, but the requirement to be men was retained; tradition either develops or it doesn’t. But these are arguments to which I shall hope to return.

In the meantime, we might consider imitating Chrysostom and marvelling at what Junia must have done to have been considered an apostle – and ponder in humility how it could be that she has been almost forgotten and often denied.

A new creation?

14 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by in Faith

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Paul realised the revolutionary nature of the Christian life. The world into which he was born had, as all societies do, its established hierarchies. In Judea a male Jewish rabbi held a position of more privilege than another man, whist men held more privileged positions than women, although social class was also a differentiation. Gentiles were not allowed to eat with Jews, and Samaritans were to be shunned. Into this world came the message of the Messiah. Paul is clear about the significance of this.

To the Gentiles he proclaims: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” He criticises the Corinthians for the way they have been discriminating against the poor. He makes it clear to Philemon that Onesimus, his slave, is his equall when worshipping God and needs to be treated as such. He could not have put it plainer to the Galatians:

26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And so we are. The poor God will, we are told, exalt, and the mighty shall be put down from their high positions; the first shall be last and the last shall be first. It was no wonder that Jesus was crucified by the authorities. If this had been a secular message it would have been seen now as communism, but it is not a secular message, it is a call to hope and redemption to us all.

But as part of that, it seems plain that one of the things that was supposed to mark Christian communities was a want of hierarchical differentiation. Grace is free, it cannot be merited and you and I cannot earn it. If we are “good” that is the outworking of Grace and the hope that is in us, it is not because somehow we are earning salvation. Yes, we run the race, as Paul did, because each and every day we wrestle with sin and with our fallen natures. But there is nothing we can do to win Grace.

The twelve Apostles were all Jewish men, and that was to be expected. Thy represented the twelve tribes of Israel. But long ago the Church decided there could be more than twelve bishops and that they did not need to be Jews. Why then, in this revolutionary new life in Christ did they need to be men?

It seems clear from Scripture that they were not all men. Despite centuries of men (interestingly usually from the Reformed traditions) claiming that there was a man called “Junias” who was an Apostle, it is clear that there was no such man, rather there was a woman of that name. As C451 has written on this I will say no more, except to wonder why, even now, men are at such pains to mansplain that the word “Apostle” does not, here, mean what it usually means. It’s a wonderful example of circular logic and goes like this: “we (men) know that all Apostles of the sort of Apostle that Peter was, are men, so, given we have to accept that Paul called this woman an apostle, that word cannot mean here, what it usually means.” Honestly, you could not make it up – except of course, they have. Oddly, when “Junias” was the preferred reading, no one thought anything other than that “he” was an apostle of the usual sort.

What cannot be disputed is that women prophesied in the early Church: Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied; women in Corinth prophesied (albeit that some didn’t wear head coverings, an issue to which I will return in a later post); and we know that prophesy in the early church had an educational function. We see from Acts, as my next post will outline, how truly the early Church lived up to the revolutionary idea that all were equal in Christ, and I will leave to a third post further reflections on the role of female “Apostles” in Paul’s church, and the issue of how, by concentrating on a particular interpretation of a few verses, that revolutionary insight was watered down by later generations. But for now, I’ll stop here.

Handmaid

13 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Marian devotion

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I think I must have noticed this before, but never thought about it. In some translations Luke 1:48 has Our Lady calling herself “handmaid” or “maidservant”, others, however, use the word “servant” because they don’t like the overtones of the gender-related noun. As someone who worked as a chambermaid in university holidays, I get where they are coming from, but oddly, those who in other contexts are most hostile to the use of gender-neutral language, have nothing to say (that I have been able to find) on the matter. As one who has no real beef with such language, I want to comment on it, because, well, I guess I find it offensive – the losing of the female element.

I know that it means when we say the Magnificat at Matins or Evensong, we can all join in, but as a woman I want to make a plea for keeping the older translation because the newer one, well-meaning though it is, actually erases the woman’s voice. I bet it was a man who decided that one!

What do I mean?

The Magnificat comes in the only passage of the Bible where we get no “male gaze”; no men were involved in the dialogue, and the unborn men are only witnesses. I don’t want (here and now) to stray into the delicate and difficult issue of gender in Scripture, but one thing is so obvious that we can miss it. The Bible is written by men and as such largely encapsulates things in terms of the ways men view the world. Nothing wrong in that, men and women often view the world in the same ways, you might say, and I might well nod and agree. But I would add that that’s not the same thing as capturing a purely “female gaze.” Some things are seen differently by the sexes – and nowhere is this more true than pregnancy and child-birth.

I have not had the good fortune to realise my childhood dream of being a mother, and I lost my own at a very early age and have few unmediated memories of her (I find it hard at times to know whether what I think I “remember” was real or simply half-recalling something my father told me), but I have friends and relatives who have been through the experience recently, and as a real and honorary “aunt” I have had the privilege of being part of conversations with them – and it is those female-only spaces which the Visitation recalls to me.

In this context “maidservant” is in no way, to my mind, demeaning. In calling herself this, Mary is expressing one of the virtues that show she is full of Grace and which has made her beloved by all subsequent generations – her humility. In the face of the awesome fact that you are going to be bringing another life into this world, I have noted friends often showing the same humility; it is literally, to be awestruck. How much more was Our Blessed Lady struck with awe, and what better way of expressing her humility than to call herself the handmaid of the Lord? Paul uses the masculine equivalent of the word in Romans 1:1 – δοῦλος there as opposed to δούλης.

Any of us, all of us, are servants of the Living God, but only a woman can be a handmaid in the way Our Lady was, and I want to reclaim that word for women – it is, if you like “servant plus” – and there’s a part of me doesn’t want to share that with men. Is that wrong of me?

I love the intimacy of the female space to which Luke gives us access. I know there are various theories as to the origin of the Magnificat, but there is a large part of me which knows it comes from Luke recording accurately what Our Lady told him. It’s a long time since I read literature at University, but I can spot a female “voice” when I hear it.

The image of the baby “leaping” in the womb moves our hearts, and is just what a woman would note – and the sheer joy, a word repeated several times – overwhelms us. As I say my Rosary I imagine it and am filled with joy myself. There is a very female acceptance of the will of God. Where Zacharias cannot believe that Elizabeth can get pregnant, and where even the wonderful and righteous Joseph (surely one of the most underrated men in history?) is minded to put his pregnant fiancée to one side quietly, Elizabeth knows who is in Mary’s womb, and Mary accepts the will of God with a willingness which can blind us to what she was accepting.

Mary was, after all, a young woman betrothed to Joseph. If we accept, as I and many do, that those called the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus were the progeny of Joseph by a previous marriage, then it is likely that he was much, much older than his betrothed. Twelve and a half was the minimum age at which a girl could be betrothed, and it was not uncommon for a marriage to follow as much as a year later, so she could have been as young as twelve or thirteen at the time of the Annunciation. She would have been aware that becoming pregnant might bring disaster on her. We know that the early enemies of Christianity spread the slander that she had become pregnant by a Roman soldier, and we know from Scripture that Joseph thought it necessary to put her aside before the Angel intervened. But the young Mary, she expressed no doubt, no hesitation, she cooperated with the will of God in a situation where doing so could have exposed her to extreme harm. It is easy to forget how wonderful her trust in God was.

We see something else too in her song of joy. We see traces of what the Kingdom of God will be like. Her lowliness will exalt her, and she who was last will be first. Those who are proud and wealthy, they who are first in their own estimation and that of the world will be humbled and will be last. We see here, for the first, but not the last time, how dangerous for the soul wealth and the pride it can engender can be.

The Visitation is a precious moment of female intimacy where we glimpse something so often missing from a book compiled by men. Please don’t see this as a criticism of men, I wouldn’t expect them to be familiar with female spaces any more than I am with male ones. But I do reclaim that “handmaiden” translation. If, as many believe, there is something special in men because of Jesus which means only they can serve the Lord as priests and bishops, then there is, equally, something special in women, as only they can serve the Lord through pregnancy.

Space and time

11 Friday Sep 2020

Posted by in Faith

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One thing that the current situation has given some of us is time and space we lacked. Conscious as I am of those who have less of either, I haven’t wanted to blog on it. It’s all too easy to sit in a comfortable home with space, and to have time to think, and forget those who have neither and yet without whom we’d be worse off. We get pretty regular deliveries, partly because of my book-buying habit, but also other things because it’s easier than going to supermarkets, and I am struck by the quiet heroism of those who drive the white vans than keep me supplied. We used to do a good deal of clapping for NHS workers, but I sometimes feel I’d like to applaud the van drivers and the shop assistants who, literally, keep us supplied with our daily wants.

None of us has any idea when or how this will end. But if at the end of it we simply have the old normal back, I am not sure that would be progress. I’m no economist, but I can’t see how it can be right for those working in Amazon warehouses to be on low wages when Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man. Even before the crisis it was clear that something had gone wrong with our economic and social system, and I hope we might be able to do somethings better after this – but the forces to resist it are strong ones.

AATW does not major on the climate change crisis, and even for those who, like me, think there is a crisis, some of the activities of the soi-disant “Extinction Rebellion” seem counter-productive; but that should not blind us to what is going on. We were given stewardship over the earth by God, not ownership. Pope Francis has written eloquently on this in Laudato Si, and if you take the trouble to read it, it’s pretty sensible stuff. We can’t just continue to “take” and give nothing back.

One effect of the crisis has been fewer cars on the road and fewer journeys. My other half has been working mostly from home for the last six months with no reduction on productivity, indeed quite the opposite. I know others in the same place, and life-work balance has, for some, improved. We don’t live to work, we work to live, but too often the economic system treats us as instruments not individuals. This is our modern version of what Jesus told the Pharisees about the Sabbath – and if we can claw back time and space it would be a good thing.

There are complex reasons why in the West we have a decline in births, and abortion and contraception are only two of them. We don’t have a culture of life, and one reason for that it that couples so often need two incomes to manage that having children, even for those open to it, can become a problem. How on earth did we get to this point? What is wrong with us? Again, complex answers, but it seems to me to boil down to our society forgetting why we are here. Secular society has no satisfactory answer to that fundamental question. Christianity does.

More time in prayer, more time with God, creating the silence so he can fill it, and above all, being open to his will. If we can use this crisis to do those sort of things, then other things will change too – us most of all.

Righteous Anger? Herbert’s The Collar

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Faith, poetry

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Portrait of George Herbert

 

I struck the board, and cried, “No more; 

I will abroad! 

What? shall I ever sigh and pine? 

My lines and life are free, free as the road, 

Loose as the wind, as large as store. 

Shall I be still in suit? 

Have I no harvest but a thorn 

To let me blood, and not restore 

What I have lost with cordial fruit? 

So begins George Herbert’s poem, The Collar. Herbert loved playing with words, it’s one reason I love his poetry. At first sight the subject seems to refer to the limiting effects of a collar, most obviously, his clerical collar, but of course the word is, in its sound, similar to the word “choler”, or “anger”, as well as to the word “caller”.

According to the theories of early modern medicine, “choler” was the humour which made one angry, hence our word “choleric”, and this poem has that in abundance.

He begins with anger expressing itself in physical form. The “board” he strikes may be taken to be a table, but it could equally be the altar, and given the subject of the poem, that may be the preferred reading. Herbert’s patience is at and end, he’s leaving. The constant search for something he cannot have is, he declares, at an end. He’s telling God that that’s it! He wants to be “free as the road.” We might note in passing the echo of the “rood” or Christ’s cross, whose sacrifices the poet is now rejecting. He wants a secular life and its happiness.

“Shall I still be in suit?” he asks querulously. This is almost a tantrum. He feels he has no control, that he is always the petitioner; he wants freedom. All he feels he has is a thorn, and we hear the echo, again, of Christ’s crucifixion when he was crowned with thorns.

   Sure there was wine 

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn 

Before my tears did drown it. 

Is the year only lost to me? 

Have I no bays to crown it, 

No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? 

All wasted? 

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, 

And thou hast hands. 

Of all Herbert’s poems, this is the one closest to modern free verse. He eschews his usual style, and the poem sprawls across the page, as ill-disciplined as the poet’s temper. He looks back with anger at what was, and longs for something better. Then it occurs to him that there is still time to do so.

 

Recover all thy sigh-blown age 

On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute 

Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, 

Thy rope of sands, 

Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee 

Good cable, to enforce and draw, 

And be thy law, 

While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. 

Away! take heed; 

I will abroad.

He can reject the academic life and the discipline of theology and of God. The constraints on him are, after all, self-imposed, and he can, if he so pleases, loosen them and leave.

And so, as the poem itself rages on with the poet’s wrath, another voice, a still small one is heard off-scene.

Call in thy death’s-head there; tie up thy fears; 

He that forbears 

To suit and serve his need 

Deserves his load.” 

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild 

At every word, 

Methought I heard one calling, Child! 

And I replied My Lord.

And in response to the “caller” Herbert’s “choler” subsides. Yes, it is his choice to follow Christ, and despite his anger and his hurt, he will do so. However much his human will rebels against God, the poet knows he cannot live without him, and when God calls the poet, like Samuel, may wonder “Is it I, Lord?” But he knows that, like Samuel, he will follow.

In many ways this is one of the most personal of Herbert’s poems, and for me, and I know others, one of the most reassuring. If a man like Herbert could so rail against God, then is it suprising that the rest of us have done so from time to time and wondered whether we could carry on living a Godly life in the face of temptation,  not least the temptations of our own wilfulness. But for me, as for the poet, when I hear “the caller” I, too, reply “My Lord.”

Lex orandi, lex credendi

30 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Faith

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Or, in the vulgar tongue, “the law of what is prayed is the law of what is to be believed” – in short, your liturgy expresses your theology. Which is by way of an introduction to the third of my little pieces on the Book of Common Prayer.

It’s a commonplace (which is why I and so many use it, commonplaces are good) to say that the Church of England, and by extension the Anglican Communion, has no doctrine of its own. Of course it doesn’t. What we hold is in common with the “one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” we affirm our membership of in the Creed. Getting into discussions with those who don’t agree that we are does no good. I respect their conviction and ask merely that they respect mine and that of millions of others like me.

There is no Luther or Calvin in Anglicanism, neither do we have a Magisterium as the Roman Catholics do. (My apologies to those who find the adjective objectionable, but in the English language as spoken by the English, it’s the easiest way to express my meaning). If I say the decisive influence for Anglicanism was Cranmer, that’s not because he expressed some wonderful theological insights, it is because he is the father of the Book of Common Prayer. Since the BCP was for so many years the definitive version of the Anglican way of prayer, and thus belief, it is worth dwelling for a moment on Cranmer’s work.

What did he do? First, Cranmer selected, arranged, and in some cases composed, the prayers we still pray to this day. Second, he drew up the rubrics which stipulate permissible variations in prayers and practice. Finally, he drew up the lectionary which sets out what portions of Scripture are to be read in Church throughout the liturgical year. To this might be added the fact that his original 1549 Prayer Book was in effect experimental in that it reflected reaction in the parishes to earlier versions. That, in itself, reflects one main feature of Anglicanism, which has been called the “English ethos.” Like it or not, and those with a fondness for strict order and logic won’t, there is an assumption that consensus and comprehensiveness are good ways of running things. It’s one reason we have tended to avoid civil wars since the seventeenth century. The second aspect is a tendency to pragmatism. We’re not hot on speculative approaches to the human condition. It is surely only of England that anyone could say that its Socialist Party owed more to Methodism than to Marx!

The 1549 BCP was a perfect example of pragmatic consensus. There were those who wanted to continue the ways of the (reforming) medieval church, taking their lead from Rome, and there were those who wanted to transform things in a major manner as in Geneva, and what we got from Cranmer was a sensible compromise. There was no speculative theological discussion of salvation of doctrine or dogma, there was the practical matter of how people would worship from week to week.

The downside of this is plain. Things change, a national church interacts with the culture within which it embedded, and it can be easy and pragmatic (which is why it has been done so often) not to update expressions of our common tradition in ways which make them more comprehensible to new generations, which then tends to lead to bitter arguments when change cannot be avoided.

What is clear though is that for Cranmer and therefore Anglicanism, God is worshipped primarily in terms of his love, grace and mercy. If we look at some of the Collects, this shines through. Take the Collect for today, the 12th Sunday after Trinity:

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

This theme, the mercy of God, occurs again and again in our Collects, and is often linked to God’s forgiveness of sin. The first example of this is the earliest, which is the Collect Cranmer composed for the BCP of 1549 for the first Sunday in Advent:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light …

We see the same emphasis here for the fourth Sunday in Lent:

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of Thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

God’s mercy and grace are brought together in the forgiveness for sinners. The doctrine of God revealed in our worship is not that of a distant being unconcerned with human pain, or a mighty Lord whose merit we might just be able to win if we behave ourselves, but a God who is near to us, loves us, cares for us and will hear our prayers.

It is this emphasis on God’s love which I first met in the BCP which infuses my own faith. It is expressed to perfection in the Collect for Palm Sunday:

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

If we look at what Cranmer did to the Latin original, we see he added the phrase “of thy tender love”, and he removed the petition that “we might merit to be partakers of his resurrection”, and substituted a petition that we might “follow” Christ’s “example.” This was at the heart of the Reformers’ concerns. There can be no question of Grace being “merited,” or “earned.” The grace and mercy of God are given lavishly and freely as expressions of his love, they are not rewards to be extracted from him in some way by our actions.

What is prayed is what is believed. What I pray in the BCP is what I believe.

[Renewed thanks to C451 for help here. JH].

 

More on the Book of Common Prayer

28 Friday Aug 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith, St John

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[My thanks to C451 for his help on the history of this, JH].

One of the many consequences of the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 following the demise of Cromwell’s commonwealth was that the Church of England was restored to its position as the Established Church. In an effort to secure as much support as possible, Charles II summoned twelve bishops and twelve Puritan ministers to a conference at the Savoy Palace in 1661. The idea was to see how wide the bounds of Communion might be. It was good timing. The Bishops, after the experience of Cromwell, had learned something of where intransigence might lead, and the Puritans might, without him, be about to learn the same lesson.

The Book of Common Prayer had not been revised since 1604. It had been banned in 1645 and suppressed during the Commonwealth. The hopes that it might be possible to find a revised form of the Book which would command support from the Puritans were generally dashed; their breach of Elizabeth I’s wise injunction not to ‘make windows into men’s souls,’ ensured that. The Bishops would not agree to a Minister having the right to say who could and who could not receive Communion, nor would they agree to his having the right to refuse to baptise a child; the Church was either national, or it was sectarian. The sectaries went their way.

The Bishops took their stand on precedent:

“If we do not observe that golden rule of the venerable Council of Nice[a], ‘Let ancient customs prevail,’ till reason plainly requires the contrary, we shall give offence to sober Christians by a causeless departure from Catholic usage, and a greater advantage to enemies of our Church, than our brethren, I hope, would willingly grant.”

And they went on:

“It was the wisdom of our Reformers to draw up such a Liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could justly except against.” For preserving of the Churches’ peace we know no better nor more efficacious way than our set Liturgy; there being no such way to keep us from schism, as to speak all the same thing, according to the Apostle. This experience of former and latter times hath taught us; when the Liturgy was duly observed we lived in peace; since that was laid aside there hath been as many modes and fashions of public worship as fancies.”

On 20 December 1661 the (fifth) revised Book of Common Prayer was approved by the Convocations of Canterbury and York and annexed to the Bill of Uniformity, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 19 May 1662. There were few significant changes since 1604. On the whole, that settled things until the nineteenth century, which is not to say there were not the usual discussions among the learned and the interested (which two parties even sometimes coincided).

It is not often stressed that one of the most fervent defenders of the BCP was that great and good man, John Keble. The third of the Tracts for the Times, written by none other than Newman, argued that those who thought like him and Keble should petition the bishops to resist changes in the BCP being demanded by men like the famous headmaster of Rugby, Thomas Arnold. In the 1850s what was then called the “Broad Church” formed an association to press for changes in the BCP, but despite a series of bills tabled in the Lords, they got nowhere.

Inevitably the issue got caught up in the wider controversy over “Ritualism,” with those opposed to what they called the “Romanising tendencies” of the Oxford Movement. What was clear was that there were many in the Church who wished to keep it comprehensive, and in the words of one set of commentators:

“If, therefore, the Church of England is to remain the National Establishment of a free country, room must be found within it, as far as is consistent with general conformity ‘in such matters as may be deemed essential’.”

In 1872 the Archbishop of Canterbury managed to guide a short reform through the Convocations and Parliament sanctioned the changes, which were largely to do with making the services shorter. Its critics said that it would lead to chaos and accused Tait of what we would call “dumbing down”; truly there is nothing new under the sun!

The experience was not a happy one, and the issue would rumble on until the 1920s when a serious attempt at Prayer Book revision, complete with a new Book, was proposed – but the attempt to get it through Parliament failed – but as that is one of C451’s hobbies, I shall stop there.

But what I hope this little excursus shows is that the Prayer Book has always been the focus of how Anglicans pray, a topic to which I want to return. On the one side its adherents have consistently rejected attempts to de-sacrilise our Liturgy and refused to water down the sacramental elements in it. On the other, they have resisted attempts to go the whole road to Rome route. It can be argued that in not using the Prayer Book as much, our Church lost something in terms of coherence, but that’s another argument for one more learned than myself.

I’ll finish simply by saying that it remains, for me, at the centre of my private devotions, but I also use “Common Worship” which I also find helpful. Anything that allows me to join millions of others in worshipping the Triune God is most welcome.