I expected discussion of the Stephen Hawking and God story I covered here and here to be an exercise in (rhetorical if not actual) mutual incomprehension of what I persist in regarding as not much of a story. Very little of the discussion has been particularly constructive, and is well illustrated by the Church Mouse’s summary of the reactions.

One thing I hadn’t particularly counted on was the reactions of some Christians, who seemed to think that physics hadn’t got much to do with faith or our understanding of God. I rather disagree. One thing science and theology have in common, it seems to me, is a permanent hankering after a Theory of Everything – a desire that the whole picture fits together and all truth is inter-related.

It is in part that sense of an overarching and ultimate truth or knowledge of truth which informed the mediaeval crowning of theology as Queen of the sciences – in which the word science (scientia) meant not its confinement to a limited range of academic subjects sharing a broadly similar methodology, but – as in the contemporary German Wissenschaft – a branch of knowledge. To do theology well required a thorough grasp of the other core university subject areas.

Postmodernism and postmodernity alike have certainly challenged the attainability, desirability and importance of any Grand Unified Theory, and most of us are nowadays more epistemologically chastened than our ancestors were. Nonetheless, rather than simply jump into bed for a playful romp with the postmodernists, the theological disciplines share rather more common ground with science in wanting to insist on the reality of the world. The postmodern abuse of complexity theory – and its concomitant love affair with Heisenberg – is not a very good reason to agree that science has proved you can’t know anything. Science is still working on knowing and understanding the world out there. Critical realism is, or should be, our common ground.

“Queen of the sciences” sounds a ridiculous claim on the modern ear. Yet whether we use it or not, it bears witness to a conviction that all truth finds its unity in God, who is the ground of both reason and relationship, and in whom all our ways of knowing find their end.

Obviously, I don’t expect atheists to agree. But I am constantly frustrated by my fellow Christians who somehow think that retreating into their hearts and Bibles and moving away from any knowledge of God from the book of nature is any kind of answer to anything. To rewrite St Paul, it seems to me to be exchanging the glory of God for a warm fuzzy.

But am I wrong? What do others think about the possibility, desirability or illusory nature of aiming at a unified truthfulness to reality? Has the idea that “all truth is God’s truth” now been killed off so well by the atheists that the Christians are cheerfully firing their arrows into its corpse?

In a comment on another post Sam Norton (who blogs here in case you haven’t discovered him) asked me what I thought about this post by the Ugley Vicar. In that post John Richardson argues for a particular litmus test for orthodoxy, selecting what he sees as the five most important articles of the thirty-nine – exactly as originally phrased – by which you can discover if your would-be vicar is a heretic. The more your applicant nuances the wording, the more likely they are to be a dodgy liberal.

Of course, I have spent quite a deal of time and energy either nuancing, expounding, reacting to and arguing with the articles in my recently finished series. It makes some sense in the light of that to try and answer Sam’s question, and respond to John Richardson’s post. In some senses this may stand as a coda to the series, or at least a concluding untheological postscript.

Let me begin with John’s selection. He starts with the second article, which I commented on here. As I noted there is at least one serious issue where I offered some reasons to disagree with the wording of the article in speaking of God being reconciled:

The predominant direction of reconciliation [in scripture], is of our being reconciled to God, by God, through Christ, and not of God being reconciled to us. The language of the article is, at best, careless, and such language gives an unfortunate apparent authority to some versions of atonement theory that divide God’s work from Christ’s.

Whether you agree or disagree with me here, I do want to note that in this case I am making a direct argument against the wording of the article as inadequately representing the content of scripture.

Next up, John proposes the ninth article on original sin. I offered a two part reflection on this article, and I continue to think there are serious questions raised by how we read the biblical narrative. In those posts I suggest what we have learnt of the world through science compels us to find new ways to reread and interpret the story of the Fall. Sin – taking up Dawkins’ concept of the selfish gene – is definitely original, but rather more part of the process of evolution than the loss of a state once enjoyed.

“Sin” (if I may be every bit as anthropomorphic and anachronistic as Richard Dawkins is) is not only in the world long before “Adam”, but is the mechanism whereby Adam’s species can emerge and flourish as the one who is able to name the animals (in increasingly sophisticated taxonomies) and tend to the garden of the earth’s ecosystem (or destroy it). That is why the traditional “liberal” view is also inadequate. We cannot simply quarantine science as a “how” question in an area where the “how” has such a profound impact on the “what” and the “why”.

In this case I argue for a re-reading of scripture in the light of significant scientific knowledge. The article, I suggest, given what we now know is an inadequate formulation of our understanding.

Third of John’s key doctrines is justification as reflected in the eleventh article. As I make clear in my post on that article, I simply disagree that it is a correct interpretation of Paul. I am a fairly convinced espouser of the New Perspective on Paul, which I try to summarise in that article. When Paul was speaking about justification he was talking about something significantly different to the questions the Reformers were trying to answer.

In this particular case I am arguing that new scholarship shows that the articles’ (and Luther’s) understanding of the Scriptures is a later reading for a different context, and not what the writings of Paul meant in his own day. We need to recover something more in tune with Paul’s intended meaning, and hear the hard edge of his challenge to welcome one another as Christ as welcomed us.

Next John turns to an article – the eighteenth – on salvation being through “only the Name of Jesus Christ”. In my treatment of that article I argued for what one might describe as a prayerful hope that despite every human obstacle, all people, indeed all creation, might be saved. There is, I suggest, a legitimate debate of how to nuance “the Name of Jesus Christ” as well as other statements of Scripture which offer room for a rather wider hope. In point of fact I know of no-one who holds that it means only verbal, open and explicit confession that Jesus is Lord and Saviour. Even the most conservative articulation of salvation through Christ includes the heroes of faith listed in Hebrews, who had never known the explicit faith of Christ they yet managed to model.

In this case I argued for a nuanced understanding in the light of reading other Scriptures as part of the praying mission of the Church. Which Scripture should be read alongside another? That is not a straightforward question and leads me in to John’s final selection, where he choses and excerpt from the twentieth article:

it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.

It is in practice less obvious which Scriptures are repugnant to others, and which should be given the priority. Evangelicals disagree among themselves, for example, over the relative weight to accord to Galatians 3:28 and 1 Timothy 2:11-12, and find different ways of stopping one being repugnant to the other. Reading Scripture is not an exact science, and the canon comes without the marginal notes and cross-references which help turn it into a system espousing a particular theological framework. Others. less inspired than the authors of sacred Scripture, have tried since to make up for that defect, and give us the book they think God should have provided in the first place.

I will come back to that last article again, however let me first summarise what I have argued so far. I have suggested that the articles need reforming, whether in the light of closer attention to the language of scripture, in re-reading in the light of scientific knowledge, in the light of modern historical scholarship about Paul and Judaism, or in the ways we seek to nuance our reading of one text in the light of another, or privilege one text as thematic and relativise another as contextual. To do anything else than continued reformation would be to place the articles over Scripture as an unchanging hermeneutical key, and deny Scripture the power to offer fresh challenges to Tudor formulations of the faith.

But there is a word more. John Richardson has selected his five articles from a whole thirty-nine, and within that the specific parts of the articles he quotes to stress the aspects he wants. The articles themselves give no reason for thinking of these as the most important five points. I might legitimately point to the sixth article, and ponder whether the parish of Ugley encourages the public liturgical reading of the Apocrypha “for example of life and instruction of manners”. I might wonder at those evangelical clergy who refuse to baptise their own children until they are old enough to decide for themselves, for “the Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ”. I might, pointing to the last of John’s key issues. draw attention to the way in which he selects a quotation from an article dealing with the authority of Church to decree rites and ceremonies and ponder the number of clergy who sit light to the rites, ceremonies and vesture decreed by law in the Church claiming a “biblical” rejection of ceremonial.

None of that is to say that these issues are of equal importance. It is to point out that selecting five from thirty-nine is to interpret which are the key issues in ways which the articles themselves do not. I assume that John Richardson would relate this selection both to his understanding of the central message of the biblical gospel, and to his sense of the key contemporary arguments facing the church. He is not being arbitrary or unusual – it is what his tradition tells him the Bible says.

I assume, despite what looks like a fairly rigid attachment to the articles, he would in fact agree with me that any properly Anglican understanding of them (in order to be faithful to them) must agree that they are themselves in principle reformable by Scripture. I think in view of our very different blog postings, we are unlikely to agree easily on which parts of the articles should be reformed in the light of scripture, even before we consider which might be most responsive to or important for the presentation of the faith today.

Ultimately that is why, I think, the articles cannot stand as a test of orthodoxy. They are, as I hope my series has shown, a fruitful conversation partner in exploring our Anglican inheritance. Clearly, however, they themselves point to Scripture as normative – an authority above their own. Stranded in the scholarship and devotion of the past as they are, they cannot adjudicate competing understandings of Scripture for the Church seeking to “proclaim the gospel afresh in each generation”. Indeed, the Church of England asks only that licensed ministers accept them as bearing their historic witness to the “faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the Catholic creeds”.

That is a role in which we can receive them with thanks as our critical friends reminding us from whence we came. They are too contingent to their own time to be universal, too ready to admit error even to an Ecumenical Council to be infallible, and too aware of their own submission to Scripture to be irreformable. Fidelity to them demands they be transcended.

My sceptical maxim provoked one atheist (who blogs here) to protest the legitimacy of comparing God to a flying spaghetti monster. I suggest you read his points in the comments there in his own words. To summarise, he suggests that this shorthand insult is meant to convey a serious point about what he sees as a methodological weakness in all systems which rationalise belief in a deity.

As our exchange developed, it became clearer that there is in his view a larger problem underpinning the discussion: how do you tell the difference between rational thinking towards a belief system and a subsequent rationalisation for what is believed on other grounds. This is caught in my question and his reply:

Me: if there is no rationality “behind” the universe, is every utterance that appears rational to its author actually a human rationalization imposed on a nonsensical reality?

Ian: I’ve grown to be very sensitive of post-hoc rationalization. And over time I’m less and less able to convince myself that all rationality isn’t just post-hoc rationalization. Which is troubling, because at that point I disappear up my own… erm…. skepticism.

More interestingly he goes on to ponder what criteria he might use to judge between rationalisations, and decides (with due self-scepticism) that there might be one:

my only glimmer of light for my own sanity is that some rationalizations are far more effective than others. In other words, they can more successfully predict new experiences. That feels to me to be a significant thing.

That is, of course, an intellectual version of a famous saying: “By their fruits you shall know them”. It is also, I think, something that distinguishes (at least some) forms of belief in God from a flying spaghetti monster. There are significant religious traditions which reflect a history of disciplined thought and practice about how humans should live in the world, and many secular traditions have been shaped in their positive and negative interactions with that history.

It seems to me, however, that the larger question I posed in that conversation remains significant. We humans see patterns – rational patterns – of meaning in the universe and spend a great deal of time trying to make coherent sense of those patterns. The universe seems to us to be intelligible and patient of rational investigation. We believe we can make sense of it, and (at least on some occasions) we act on that belief.

Does the rationality of the universe reside in human pattern-making, or is it an intrinsic property of reality? A universe that is rational in actuality is either the ultimate cosmic absurdity – a seemingly rational result of an entirely irrational quantum fluctuation – or it points to a rational intelligence from which it in some sense originates. In that sense, God may offer the only secure ground on which to believe in the power of reason. Either way, reality needs to be approached with a generous helping of irony.

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

I’m vaguely aware that my first blogging anniversary is past and that I want to get to the end of the 39 articles by my summer holiday break. Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure what to make of this next one to come under scrutiny, the thirty-seventh. More than many, it breathes the air of a bygone age, but it also throws up subjects like capital punishment and war which need whole series of posts in their own right.

XXVII. Of the Civil Magistrates
The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction.
Where we attribute to the King’s Majesty the chief government, by which Titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended; we give not to our Princes the ministering either of God’s Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative, which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself; that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evildoers.
The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.
The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences.
It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars.

It is noteworthy that the sole (quite frequently quoted) reference in the articles to the pope comes in this article on civil power. “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” No doubt in part that recognised the de facto reality that the pope was one among many competing political powers in Europe, whatever else his role might have been. Alongside this, during the whole mediaeval period, bishops more generally were powerful nobles in their own right, and exercised considerable secular power from their castles and palaces. Whatever highflying theology might say, on the ground it was not easy to distinguish between temporal and secular authority. Handing heretics over to the “secular arm” for the death penalty because the church could not execute people was in some respects simply a convenient legal fiction.

This jumbling up of authority was the daily reality of life, irrespective of theological perspective, even as it was increasingly coming under threat from the widespread social changes that marked the end of the late mediaeval period, and the beginning of the early modern, with the bourgeoisie coming into their own, and changing the balance of power between monarch, nobles and bishops.

What was largely different theologically was that where the Reformation generally made a theological virtue out of the practical necessity of turning to princes for protection from the pope, the Anglican Reformers developed a particular theory of monarchical power rooted in the Old Testament. So in the early stages of the Reformation they proclaimed the boy-king Edward VI as a new Josiah, and took the model of the Deuteronomic reforms as the model for Protestant reformation. In a way, Anglican England began life as a theocracy, and as the symbiosis between temporal and spiritual power diluted itself in myriad ways in the succeeding centuries, competing accounts and visions of authority emerged, none being particularly successful nor becoming triumphant.

In many respects this was not, and is not, simply an Anglican problem but a Christian one. (Even Rome’s answer is only achieved by maintaining a small corner of the Eternal City as an independent theocracy.) The primary theological resources of the New Testament (and its earliest interpreters) had little to say about the exercise of power or any theology of the State. The church was ill-equipped by its foundation documents to respond to becoming either the official or a majority religion, and has continued to struggle with it. The Reformers’ abandonment of the mediaeval theologians’ work exacerbated the lack of guidance in the patristic era to which they turned. The best they had was Augustine, veering between his magisterial vision of the City of God, and his practical turn to the secular power to defeat the Donatists. In the end, perhaps, they were more ready simply to follow the lead of Eusebius’ baptism of Constantine’s ascendancy as providence.

Something of the problem is suggested by the last two clauses of the article, asserting the rightness both of capital punishment and waging war. With the partial exception of John Paul II (whose articulation of a “culture of death” that embraced war and abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment) there really has been very little coherent theology done on either of these two topics by leaders of the mainstream churches in their varied relationships with the State. The only Anglican theologian of any note working primarily in this area I’m aware of is Oliver O’Donovan, whose work seems (sadly) a marginal interest for most.

The loudest voices come from the descendants of the Anabaptist tradition, ruled out as “slanderous folks” by this article, and generally condemned by the magisterial Reformers. The European consensus on these matters, largely shared by the international left-leaning parties, that both war and the death penalty are essentially failures of a civilised society, is usually simply assumed by Christians as by others. In fact there is a greater gulf between the Christian tradition and the contemporary consensus here than there is on any matter relating to sexuality.

In the spirit of this article, I fail to see how the Anabaptist tradition offers any answer other than an opt-out, a misplaced application of eschatology to the created order, a confusion of then with now. The Anglican tradition may have been singularly poor at producing a coherent political theology for a multi-cultural democracy in the modern world, but its history points strongly to the need for an affirming one that gives God an interest in the ordering of society, and encourages political participation as a Christian vocation.

I cannot see that a term such as anabaptist Anglican, however well-intentioned and passionately argued for, is anything more than an oxymoron. For Anglicans, a commitment to God’s ordering and re-ordering of the world as a question of justice means that a theology of law, statehood and even of war is something at which the church and its theologians should be working. However difficult it is now, and however inadequate or wrong-headed it was in the past, this is an aspect of the tradition that no church—concerned for its members to live in the world with things both positive and prophetic to say to those with real power and responsibility—can afford to neglect.

One of the things I like about Heresy Corner’s scepticism is that the Heresiarch is sceptical about scepticism as well, as in this post on the Cumbrian shootings, which exemplifies many of that blog’s virtues.

Interestingly, in dealing with a delicate topic, the writer found it convenient to begin by taking aim (if you will excuse the metaphor) at the (former) Bishop of Carlisle and his statements about God’s judgement on a sinfully pro-gay Britain.

Now I must confess that savaging the Rt Rev’d Graham Dow’s views on divine judgement, sex and demonology is both easy and fun to do. It is, indeed, a sport many of us have engaged in in the past: if not bad, he has at least sometimes seemed mad and dangerous to know. However, I can’t help but feel that we’ve reached a point where any attempt to frame any aspect of our social, political or individual lives in terms of judgement would attract pretty much the same level of mockery.

Some of that was involved in the disdainful and jokey incomprehension levelled at Tony Blair’s statement that he was ultimately answerable to God for his prime ministerial decisions. One could attribute some to a disdain for the Vicar of Albion’s piety, and a great deal more to the legitimate criticism that whatever his answerability to God, he was certainly also accountable to Parliament and the electorate, and God was not a “get out of gaol free” card that should substitute for a reasoned defence of his decisions and actions. Yet, when all that is acknowledged, it seemed at the time that any sense of God, accountability and judgement was food as much for comedy as for anger.

All that leads to pose the question: “is there any way in which the idea of God’s judgement may be articulated today by those who are not fundamentalist about the Scriptures, who are appreciative of the incredible ordered-ness of the universe, and sceptical about the pettiness of a God who finds parking spaces for rich Westerners while seemingly being unable to prevent impoverished refugee children from treading on land mines?”

I am going to leave aside what one may call the question of individual morality and subsequent judgement which are a staple of the ways in which societies and individuals express their disapprobation. Though now expressed impersonally and scientifically, links between smoking and lung cancer, or obesity and heart disease are remarkably close to earlier ideas that were expressed in terms of immorality and punishment. The rhetoric often has the same general goal in mind: a change in behaviour. Losing the language of divine judgment does not make a society less censorious.

However, it is normally the larger scale of event where the real problems come. Earthquakes and tsunami pose a very particular kind of problem for the language of judgement, yet they have also been commonly seen as the instruments of some or other god’s anger, including the God whose designation we commonly capitalise.

My problems with those who wish to ascribe natural disasters to specific divine action in response to some aspect of human (mis)behaviour come in two ways. The first is that these phenomena are part of how the world works. It does not require a specific intervention for two tectonic plates to rub against each other. That’s what they do, and if they didn’t who knows what sort of world this would be. We know that these events are natural, and that whatever the behaviour of humans they would still happen, and indeed need – physically, geologically – to happen. Unless they impact a populated area, or a populated area where poverty has led to poor construction, overcrowding, bad roads and non-existent emergency services, healthcare and sanitation, these natural phenomena need not even be a disaster.

My second problem is with those who seem to want to play the role of prophet and tell us why such a thing is God’s judgement. They paint us a picture of a God who is very keen to judge voodoo and sex, especially gay sex, while remaining gloriously unconcerned about war and genocide. A God who never sent an earthquake against Hitler for massacring six million Jews, but got seriously pissed with Haitians for sticking pins in dolls (allegedly) is not a God I would particularly care to learn morality from.

And yet I think there is something more to be said. So many natural events could be seen to be acting as reminders both of some of the fragility of our human achievements, and a summons to remember our common humanity with those who suffer. In the latter case, Haiti or the Indian Ocean tsunami were powerful examples of how responses of generosity and compassion were called out of many people. In the former case the recent Icelandic volcano managed to ground European air traffic, and inconvenience if not frustrate our way of life in a way which could (for those with the imagination) have been very much more severe.

There is a scope, a power and an immensity to many of our planet’s geological outbursts which afford us opportunities to be more honest about the limitations and possibilities of what it means to be human, but also to live more generously as a brother or sister of all humanity. If we believe that the universe is God’s creation through wonderful, complex and awesome natural processes, then is the language of judgement not in many ways still appropriate for the ways in which the forceful processes which shaped and still shape this living planet remind us of our fragility and summon us to mutual care and co-operation?

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

For some people much of the time, and many people some of the time, the Church often comes across as a “past (and past controversy) preservation society”. This is especially apparent in some of the arguments over justification that seem to rage among some US Christians around Bishop Tom Wright. It is also true, I think, of many Christians’ attitudes to the Eucharist. First, then, one such past controversy as reflected in the thirty-first article.

XXXI. Of the Oblation of Christ of Christ finished upon the Cross
The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

It is not apparent to me whether this article intends a distinction between a “common view” of Eucharistic sacrifice as a repeated one, and an unspecified more theological view, or if it intends to subsume all Catholic teaching under “in the which it was commonly said”. But there are potentially many ways in which sacrificial language can be used of the Eucharist which continue to maintain the uniqueness of the Cross.

In an earlier post not in this series I noted that there were some reasons for seeing the roots of a sacrificial understanding of the Eucharist in the language of the New Testament. Here I want to look at more broad questions arising out of this article.

There are two arguments that could be worth considering, which I will only do so here in order to note them Both however might reframe some of the questions about the past controversy. One concerns the theory of atonement adopted by the Reformers, and whether models other than propitiation and satisfaction might offer a different set of approaches to Eucharistic theology.

It might additionally be worth discussing whether reading Paul entirely in the light of the stress of Hebrews on the “once and for all” sacrificial nature of the Cross doesn’t distort some of the ways in which Paul speaks of the unique salvific role of Christ’s death.

Regarding the dispute at the heart of this article, however, both Anglicans and Roman Catholics have moved on. I quote first from the Agreed Statement on the Eucharist of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission.

Christ’s redeeming death and resurrection took place once and for all in history. Christ’s death on the cross, the culmination of his whole life of obedience, was the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. There can be no repetition of or addition to what was then accomplished once for all by Christ.

Any attempt to express a nexus between the sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist must not obscure this fundamental fact of the Christian faith. … Christ instituted the Eucharist as a memorial (anamnesis) of the totality of God’s reconciling action in him. In the eucharistic prayer the church continues to make a perpetual memorial of Christ’s death, and his members, united with God and one another, give thanks for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering.

In response to queries about the statement, ARCIC said:

There is therefore one historical, unrepeatable sacrifice, offered once for all by Christ and accepted once for all by the Father. In the celebration of the memorial, Christ in the Holy Spirit unites his people with himself in a sacramental way so that the Church enters into the movement of his self-offering. In consequence, even though the Church is active in this celebration, this adds nothing to the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, because the action is itself the fruit of this sacrifice. The Church in celebrating the Eucharist gives thanks for the gift of Christ’s sacrifice and identifies itself with the will of Christ who has offered himself to the Father on behalf of all mankind.

Both the statement and the elucidation are worth reading in full. This view is of course consonant with the argument of the earlier post I mentioned above. I will not repeat those arguments here, although they underpin my own thinking, and explain why I find this ARCIC statement to be one rooted in scripture and the Church’s traditional reading of it which develops particularly in reflecting on Malachi’s pure offering. The application of Malachi to the Eucharist is not arbitrary, but precisely about the cultic renewal promised in that book in the light of the coming of the true high priest, and based on existing NT appropriation of Malachi to underscore the relationship between the Baptist and Jesus.

Here I want to go on exploring agreed views, not my own arguments. While I am reluctant to lend any weight to the “creeping magisterium” view of the Lambeth Conference, currently being attributed to it by the proponents of a traditional view on gay relationships, it is worth noting the Lambeth Conference resolution on ARCIC. This has more authority than the current bug-bear of 1998’s resolution 1:10, since it was agreed after a consultation with all provinces, and thus represents the mind of the Anglican Communion reasonably comprehensively.

While we respect continuing anxieties of some Anglicans in the areas of “sacrifice” and “presence”, they do not appear to reflect the common mind of the provincial responses, in which it was generally felt that the Elucidation of “Eucharistic Doctrine” was a helpful clarification and reassurance. Both are areas of “mystery” which ultimately defy definition.

But the Agreed Statement on the Eucharist sufficiently expresses Anglican understanding.

The Eucharist, in short, while in no sense being a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, is a means of participation in Christ’s self-offering. Seeing it in this way allows us to express in prayer and liturgical enactment the calling “to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:2) and “to make up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” (Colossians 1:24). These actions are responses, but they are not only responses to Christ, they are also responses in Christ, as we get caught up in his work of drawing us and all people into an offering of love to the Father.

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

As I press on to finish this series, I note that from time to time it can be a little hard to see exactly what point one of the articles is making, since they are, as short statements, relatively free of a discourse context. This is to some extent the case with the twenty-ninth article. Is it directed against an antinomian position, and seeking to reinforce the importance of moral behaviour for worthy reception of the sacrament? Or is it directed against strongly realist views of the sacrament, by stressing the importance of faith for worthy reception? (The title makes me think it is this latter.) Whichever of these be the primary force of the article, it also need to be asked whether it ends up putting too much stress on the worthiness of the one who receives, and not enough on the grace that transforms.

XXIX. Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper

The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.

The quotation from St Augustine comes from his homilies on John 6, a fairly discursive commentary, which, rather like the Johannine discourse itself, veers between a strongly realist language and statements about the need for faith. An earlier quotation from the same homily offers a slightly different nuance:

Believers know the body of Christ, if they neglect not to be the body of Christ. Let them become the body of Christ, if they wish to live by the Spirit of Christ. None lives by the Spirit of Christ but the body of Christ.

Here, Augustine, following St Paul, links recognition of the sacramental body with participation in the ecclesial body, and he develops the interweaving of these themes of unity in the one body signified by eating the one body (made of diverse grains of wheat), stressing that through both together there is participation in Christ. It is only then that he comes to the argument quoted by the article.

Consequently, he that dwelleth not in Christ, and in whom Christ dwelleth not, doubtless neither eateth His flesh [spiritually] nor drinketh His blood [although he may press the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ carnally and visibly with his teeth], but rather doth he eat and drink the sacrament of so great a thing to his own judgment, because he, being unclean, has presumed to come to the sacraments of Christ.

For Augustine, this is not then about directly either wickedness or faith per se (and in that sense the article misleads), but about someone who is not properly part of the ecclesial body attempting to receive the eucharistic body. That may be because they have estranged themselves from the body by broken relationships, or not yet entered properly into the one body of the Church. Proper sacramental participation is not judged directly on either the faith or morality of the individual, but determined by their relationships in the life of the body. This in turn, though expounded here as a commentary on John, is drawn essentially from St Paul.

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! … Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (1 Corinthians 11:20-22, 27-30)

Seeking to celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist while disfiguring the relationships that it is meant to create, signify and seal, is a failure to discern the Lord’s body: either the true significance of the broken bread, or the true identity of the fellowship as Christ’s body. There is a a dual vision of the Lord’s body, eucharistic and ecclesial, which cannot be properly celebrated apart from one another. Likewise in every celebration of the sacrament, there is a dual communion, with God in Christ, and with one another in Christ. I can never make “my communion” – despite a long Anglican tradition of so speaking – without also being part of the “we” who celebrate one communion in Christ. While the article can be interpreted in a way consonant with this view, it seems more directed to the validity of individual communions: “do I have faith and good behaviour so that by my receiving I will commune with the Lord?” It seems to me that receptionism may well tend towards individualism, and against the dual nature of sacramental communion.

Paul in fact, is far from receptionist here in the Reformation sense of the term. Proper reception for Paul is about recognizing the body in both its ecclesial and eucharistic forms. The church and the eucharistic body are there prior to the recognition. They are not created by it, but are gifts of God to be rightly discerned and participated in. Not discerning the body renders it dangerous rather than salvific. Improper reception is a violation of the integrity and purity of the body of Christ, and so in turn the integrity and purity of one’s own body is violated: the offending participant is laid open to invasive illness. This may be somewhat alien to modern ways of thinking, but belongs comfortably within first century discourses on health and purity. (I find Dale Martin’s The Corinthian Body an excellent resource on these issues.) Paul is not working with mere symbols: such thinking presupposes a reality that is violated, and one cannot separate the sacramental from the social body in his language.

Augustine (who can be ambiguous about the sacraments) offers some support for this article, but even so is still far more relational than Cranmer’s implications. Paul, on whom Augustine directly, and Cranmer indirectly, draw, offers very little support to Cranmer. His language is not only even more strongly relational, but inescapably realist, and, on this point, uncomfortably close to (what we would call) the magical.

A strong sense of faith in the reality of the Eucharist often does seem to slip over into what would seem to us to be magical views, not simply in the mediaeval period, but in the early period (St Cyprian, in De Lapsis 25,26 offers a notable example), and that can be traced back to this passage of Paul, which has been softened through repeated reading and theological schemes, so that we scarcely notice the implications of his language. I do not want here either to defend such views, or argue against them, but simply draw attention to the radical strangeness of Paul’s words. I think we need the interpretative work of Augustine and others who seek to place this in a broader and more organized framework.

It does seem to me, however, that both Scripture and early tradition are more strongly realist than the Reformation tradition has been comfortable recognising. If our ideas of the mystery of the sacrament are always going to err in one way or the other (and who can fully understand it?), better that they err in this direction than away from it. But above all, Paul and Augustine together testify to the strong insistence that recognition of the Lord in his body on the altar cannot be severed from relationship with the Lord in his body through the Church. The Body of Christ is both Sacrament and Church, and cannot truly be discerned in one without being discerned in the other.

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

This post follows on from last week’s on the twenty-eighth article about the Eucharist. I don’t particularly want to get stuck in the Reformation debates, and as I noted earlier, the development of Anglican spirituality in Eucharistic hymnody, as well as the development of theology in the structure and content of Eucharistic rites, has moved beyond those debates in many respects, sometimes recovering parts of the mediaeval tradition, more often returning to the liturgy of the patristic era.

The single most influential text in this reshaping of modern liturgies is the historically problematic Apostolic Tradition, once almost universally attributed to Hippolytus and early third-century Rome, but now disputed as to both provenance and date. The Eucharistic Prayer from the ordination rites described in this underlie both the English Anglican Eucharistic Prayer B, and Roman Catholic Eucharistic Prayer 2 (= South African Anglican Prayer 3). The overall structure that underpins the modern Western rites can still be argued for as a mainline development within the Church, but much greater stress is now put on historical diversity, a diversity that has begun to be reflected in the Common Worship prayers.

While there are still recognizable theological differences between RC and Anglican liturgies, it is again possible to talk of a common Western rite in which there is also a renewed emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit and the eschatological horizon. In Anglican rites, particularly, there is a considerable move away from a “magic words” approach to the narrative of institution. While in most Eucharistic Prayers the invocation of the Holy Spirit to consecrate the elements precedes the narrative, in common with the Roman rite, in two (F & G) this epiclesis follows the narrative and anamnesis, after the fashion of Eastern rites. The whole prayer is held to be consecratory, rather than any particular element within it, so that it is the response of God to the prayer that is seen as efficacious and transformative.

The Reformation debates, by contrast, focussed heavily on the words of institution alone. This was always going to problematic, since at one level, we have a metaphor (the language of body and blood) applied to symbols (bread and wine) representing an event yet to happen (the sacrifice of Calvary). The early seeds of rationalism sown at the Renaissance which would come to full flower in the Enlightenment seems to struggle with this combination of metaphor, symbol and representation. So one ends up with the entirely inappropriate wooden literalness of discussing whether Jesus’ risen body can only be in one place at one time.

In this post-Renaissance context, transubstantiation had itself become problematic. First, of course, because it was poorly understood, and seemed to the new humanists to encourage magical views and superstition. Secondly, because it was always problematic to envisage substance independent of its accidents. Thirdly, and perhaps above all, because the new humanists had no patience with Aristotelian metaphysics, but were often neo-Platonists in a new guise. As such they seemed to miss the point that in its original Thomistic form, transubstantiation insisted that the change in the elements could only be known by faith, and not by the senses.

In reframing this question it seems to me that the forward-looking direction (to God’s final kingdom) of the Eucharistic celebration needs to be taken into account quite as much as the backward-looking direction (to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross). This is part and parcel of the biblical narratives in the Synoptics and Paul:

He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:15-18 – the last verse is paralleled in Matt and Mark)

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:26)

This future orientation also picks up the Passover theme, which is a historical remembrance of a liberation into future freedom. I also place myself with those who see “remembrance” as having a forward looking dimension. When God remembers things, he acts in the present and future according to his past pledges. And in prayer, God’s people may invite him to remember these promises (see. e.g. Ps 20:3-4, Ps 74:2, Ps 132:1, 1 Macc 4:10, 2 Macc 1:2). There are interesting parallels (for those of us who think Paul’s language in Rom 8:32 and Gal 2:20 justifies them – and see here) in later traditions about the Binding of Isaac, where the prayers not only assume Isaac’s binding is an effective sacrifice, but invite God to remember this sacrifice. It is, I judge, impossible to think in terms of any remembering of Jesus and his sacrifice that is not also a remembering before God, and therefore an invitation to God to act in accordance with this ultimate example of faithfulness that Christians call a new covenant.

The supper, then, has a prayerful and eschatological orientation, which is precisely why the work of the Spirit is invoked in its celebration, for the Holy Spirit is the mode of our participation in the resurrection of Christ, and the one through whom we begin to experience the life of the world to come. So transformation of the elements, that they may truly feed us with the life of Christ, the bread of heaven, is seen against the horizon of the power of God who promises, in fidelity to his work in Christ, to transform all things.

Christ is truly present in the elements, because his life is the life we share by the Sprit now, and in eternity. They focus the promise of God’s transformation on real material things, real food and drink, as a foretaste of the promise that the world has a future in which we shall be nourished by Christ without sacramental mediation, and that’ God’s remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, and his own covenant promises, will change all things.

These tokens of creation are transformed as vehicles of Christ’s presence, as a promise that we will be saved not out of the world, but with all creation. It is in this context that we may speak of (Schillebeeckx’s term) transfinalization, not simply as a change in purpose, though it is that, but as a change oriented towards that final horizon when God will be all in all, and all creation’s substance will be shot through with the divine life.

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

I take the title of this post (the first of several on this first major article about the Eucharist) from the most common translation in Anglican hymn books of one of St Thomas Aquinas’ great Eucharistic hymns. The presence of this hymn, Pange lingua, gloriosi, in Anglican hymnals for over a century is a reminder that the developing tradition of Anglicanism has (whether others judge this as right or wrong) re-appropriated much of the Eucharistic devotion of the pre-Reformation Church.

Anglicans interact with this (and subsequent) articles from a diverse Eucharistic spirituality that has not been in every case constrained by the controversies of the Reformation. St Thomas’ Eucharistic theology was not confined simply to the Anglo-Catholics, but through Hymns Ancient and Modern (and its revisions), the most popular Anglican hymnbook across a broad spectrum for most of the twentieth century, many Anglicans became acquainted with not just Pange lingua, but also Verbum supernum / O salutaris hostia (The heavenly word proceeding forth / O saving victim), and Adoro te devote (Thee we adore, O hidden Saviour thee). At the same time, most saw nothing inconsistent in continuing to reject, usually in a garbled form, the doctrine of transubstantiation – though poorly understood, it served to distinguish them form Roman Catholics. The background for approaching this article is therefore complex.

XXVIII. Of the Lord’s Supper

The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.
Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.
The Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped.

I will save the discussion of the place of faith, the issue of reservation, and the question of worthy reception, to later discussions, and here concentrate on the understanding of what change happens in the sacrament. Of course, there are those who say that no change happens in the sacrament, but only in the hearts of those who receive it in faith. I think myself that (while this is a possible interpretation of the 1552 BCP) the 1559 and 1662 revisions of the Prayer Book somewhat ruled it out by entitling the prayer over the elements “The Prayer of Consecration.” Something was supposed to happen, though that something could be interpreted minimally or maximally.

In one sense, Anglicanism has tended to be reticent – then and now – about spelling out what that something is, whether of political necessity at the time of the the Elizabethan settlement, or out of reverence for the mystery of God’s working. The words attributed to Elizabeth I still hold some force and appeal for Anglicans.

Christ was the Word that spake it.

He took the bread and brake it;

And what his words did make it

That I believe and take it.

On the one hand there is in those words the reluctance to embrace particular theories of consecration that has tended to characterise Anglicanism, whatever those theories be, Protestant or Catholic. Before we pray the Eucharistic Prayer, we speak of the elements as bread and wine; after we have prayed it we speak of them as Christ’s Body and Blood given for us. And we are not, on the whole, particularly focussed on exactly how God accomplishes this. It is enough that he does.

On the other hand, in common with the mainstream Western tradition, Elizabeth’s words reflect an overwhelming emphasis solely on the words of institution as having power to consecrate, that modern Anglican rites have moved away from to some extent. Calvin was the only reformer to seek a significant role for the Holy Spirit, but his interest was more, I think, in preserving God’s sovereignty than asking about what happens. Modern rites, Anglican and Roman, learning from the early Church and the Orthodox, have returned to making more space for the work of the transforming Spirit in the Sacrament. In doing so, they reopen the eschatological context of the Eucharist as pointing not only back to the sacrifice that makes our peace with God, but to the eternal celebration of that life of peace in the feast of the kingdom.

It seems to me that this eschatological reframing of the Eucharist, together with a due attention to the work of the Spirit, are key elements in allowing us to move beyond the debates of the Reformation. In a subsequent post I intend to develop this further. At the same time, I want to err on the side of delineating mystery rather than trying to explain it away with over-precise theories, and that perhaps, is why I remain an Anglican.

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

I’m not sure if I’d be exaggerating if I were to call the Church of England’s twenty-sixth article its least believed. But there seem to be quite a few bishops around the world at the moment who clearly don’t believe it, as the game of who is (not) in communion with whom plays itself out in endless variations. But at least just as much to the point, there are vast numbers of people who move from church to church, or away from (and sometimes back to) church entirely, purely based on their opinion of the parish priest. It is at least relevant then, to think about what this twenty-sixth article is saying.

XXVI. Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament

Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men.
Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil Ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally being found guilty, by just judgement be deposed.

This teaching comes surprisingly close to both an ex opere operato (just by doing it, it works) view of the sacraments, and an ontological character view of ordination, without actually committing itself explicitly to either view. If the articles oscillate somewhat between objective and subjective views of the sacraments, here is where they swing nearest to the entirely objective pole, in god Augustinian fashion.

Somehow all Christian views of the sacraments need to hold these two poles in tension. Is it fair to say that Protestants characteristically veer to subjective pole and Catholics to the objective pole? I think so, and that the former tend to inculcate an emphasis on faith as feeling, and the latter on faith as observance. But, I suggest, in the end the two poles need each other. If we take the phrase often used in the Eucharistic Prayers: what we do is both “our duty and our joy.” The observant celebration of the sacraments is a duty of obedience to Christ who commanded them, and it should lead us into a more joyful celebration of the life of faith and the hope of redemption.

I must confess that I tend to the more objective pole by inclination. First, I think, because I’m an extravert (in Jungian / Myers-Briggs terms). I get my energy from things outside me, and the performance of the liturgy energizes me in ways that my own prayers often do not. Second, I tend to suffer from (mainly mild) periods of depression. Having a rite to perform, whether as congregational or presidential celebrant of the liturgy, allows me to pray when I otherwise could not, and sometimes joy follows on the heels of depressed duty. Third, as a priest, there are times when I am particularly well aware of my own sins, and if it were not for a sense of the grace of orders, and the place of Christ as true Host at his table and on his altar, I doubt that I could lead people in worship.

None of that should take away from the sense that we should desire active and joyful faith for ourselves and others, be ready to know God’s presence among us, and enter our sacramental meeting with God in expectation of his power to renew and change. We are all meant to encourage one another in faith, and stir one another up to faith. I don’t, in the end, want to see the objective and subjective poles driven apart, but brought together.

Nonetheless, I can’t help feeling in today’s Anglican Communion, that we’ve rather lost sight of the fact that these our Christ’s sacraments and not ours, and it is not our table to disinvite people from, or our meal we refuse to share. Playing games of who is in communion with whom comes close to putting the morality of bishops in a place that should be occupied by the grace of Christ.

Yes, the article does end with a proper warning about discipline: trusting the grace of the sacraments is not about tolerating those who do evil. I don’t mean to minimise that. But that comes as a last resort, and at a time when there are some very hard arguments about precisely how sinful, if at all, certain forms of gay relationship are, it’s also a little hard to see how a “just judgement” can be arrived at quickly or easily.

The article assumes a default position of trusting the God whose Church it is, whose ministers are assumed (if called and ordained legally) to have God’s authority for their work. Discipline is assumed to be the sometimes needed exception that proves the rule. This default position recognises duly observed sacraments as God’s work, ordained by Christ and vivified by the Spirit, and (significantly and importantly) from which deeper faith and better obedience should flow. That may be a default position we need to recover.