What Is the Anglican Tradition? Scripture
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What is the Anglican Tradition? Scripture. A lecture given as part of the Series What is Our Anglican Tradition? Edmonton, Lent 2006 By Dr Walter Deller Principal, The College of Emmanuel and St. Chad When it comes to how Anglicans deal with the Finally, I want to comment on what seem Bible, it’s probably more correct to pose the historically, and still today, to be two forces question What Isn’t Our Anglican Tradition? If constantly requiring to be balanced as we seek in one tries to answer either the positive or negative faithfulness to interpret the Scriptures together in forms of your question in any phenomenological continuity with our Anglican tradition. way—that is, trying to describe what one can observe past and present—it’s rather difficult to see Because it’s Lent, and we are all deeply what should be excluded. So one first response I immersed in our Lenten discipline, it might be will offer to your question is that we Anglicans interesting to share a glimpse of how one woman read the scriptures as Christians in the Catholic or kept Lent in the period between 1669 and 1678— universal Church always have throughout history— not least because it tells us something about in a multiplicity of ways that are shaped by the Anglicans and the Bible. John Evelyn in his Life of practices of Christian liturgy, piety and discipline, Mrs Godolphin, about Margaret Bragge/Godolphin, and by the constant renewal of the Church through a Maid of Honour to the Queen in the racy and the work of the Holy Spirit and the spread of the lascivious Restoration court of Charles II, observed Good News of Jesus Christ though time and Lent by fasting and dining alone at home, and then cultures. Now that’s a good Anglican line, isn’t it? repeating each evening all the psalms she knew by heart. She knew nearly the whole psalter from All Christians read the scriptures of the two memory, so this would have taken some hours. collections we know as the Old and New She then said her prayers, and did her spiritual Testaments through frameworks. In fact, the very reading. On Wednesdays, and Fridays, observed name Old and New Testaments is a first framework widely as days of exceptional fasting, she ate which has been around for a long time, even if we nothing until after evening prayer, then completed treat it as simply designating something about the her own personal religious observations, and only relative age of the two collections that form our then went down to the Queen. Without trying to Christian scriptures. A first thing I propose to do assess whether or not Margaret was more or less today is describe to you a couple of frameworks for devout than her contemporaries, I would simply reading that are uniquely Anglican. Both come to want to note again that this young woman in her us from that period during and just after the English twenties knew by heart and repeated on a daily Reformation when the life of the English Church basis most of the 150 psalms. took on many of the particular aspects we might identify as ‘Anglican’. The late 1500’s may seem The first thing we might consider about pretty irrelevant to us today, but I want to argue Margaret Godolphin is that she lived in the that each of these frameworks has shaped an immediate aftermath of the Puritan Revolution and Anglican approach to scripture into a particular Commonwealth. The more I reflect on the early identifiable form—for good or for ill. formation of Anglicanism, the more it seems to me that this appalling experience of government by I want to spend a bit of time then exploring in a truly religious people shaped more than anything very cursory way some moments of crisis in else the subsequent history and patterns of the Anglicanism, and to tease out of those some Anglican way. There is considerable evidence that recurrent themes we Anglicans seem to come up the English did not welcome the Book of Common against repeatedly in our journey with the Prayer in the 1550’s when it was first imposed. scriptures as a part of Christianity. I should note There is equally considerable evidence that when here that I don’t think that these recurrent tensions the Book of Common Prayer was restored in 1662 and themes are a problem within Anglicanism that after being banned for nearly two decades, English we have to solve in some clear and decisive Anglicans were overjoyed to have it back. The manner. On the contrary, I think that these themes restoration of the Book of Common Prayer marks and tensions are a sign of the ongoing health of the the end of the terror of absolute rule by the Bible— Anglican tradition. and as Henning Graf Reventlow’s The Authority of W. Deller--1—What is the Anglican Tradition? Scripture 7/4/2006 the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World two passages from the Old Testament and two from demonstrated three decades ago, the emergence of the New Testament for reading at Morning and what we know as historical-critical study of the Evening Prayer on each day of the calendar year. Bible took place in England as John Locke and In this way the faithful heard the entire New other Christian thinkers struggled to ensure that Testament about twice each year, and the bulk of never again would the Anglican and English public the Old Testament over every two year period. The realm be governed by theocrats imposing biblical Psalms were read through in order once in the laws and fiats. There was a cost to this, and I will course of each month. I use the term ‘the bulk’ return to that topic later in this lecture, but I draw because even in the 1552 Prayer Book most of your attention to this moment because the victory Leviticus and substantial other portions were that Anglicans won with the restoration of the omitted from the office lectionary. Thus even this prayerbook in 1662 underlies the deep resistance of early in the formation of the tradition, some the most liberal members of our own Anglican portions of the Old Testament seem to be set in a Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the secondary relationship to the rest of the canon in United States to the rising tide of biblical terms of their usefulness for Christian formation. fundamentalism in the Anglican Communion. This This lectionary was revised again in 1662, and it resistance has genuine and deep historical roots in may surprise you to learn that Leviticus 18, which that seventeenth century experience of the was included in the 1552 daily office lections, was destruction of our places of worship, and our life of dropped in the 1662 Prayer Book’s lectionary of common prayer, of the murder of rulers, and rigid daily readings. That 1662 revision is still the control of ordinary life and morality, all authorized authorized Prayer Book of the Church of England, under the claims of God’s will and law as and the Prayerbook of reference for the Anglican expressed in the Bible, that our Anglican forbears Church of Canada’s Solemn Declaration of 1893. never wanted to revisit. This pattern of reading sets up a dual Doctrine and Scripture in the Book of Common expectation around the interpretation of scripture. Prayer Anglicans interpret the Bible through a lens of Those of you who read eighteenth and doctrine as laid out in the chosen Eucharistic nineteenth century English novels and diaries from epistles and gospels, but we also read scripture in time to time will be aware of how widespread relation to the broad sweep of the entire story of across many classes was the practice of attending God’s work of creation, the election of Israel, it’s morning and evening prayer, or of reading them, journey and history, the tradition of the prophets along with the four lessons and psalms for the day and the wisdom writers. There is a story we are in the home—often with the entire family and the supposed to know and reflect on in its entirety, and servants present. This tradition of Common Prayer the only way we can know and assimilate that story is a crucial element in understanding how is through a devout, devoted and daily work of Anglicans read and interpret the scriptures. The reading in consecutive order through the books of Book of Common Prayer provides for two the Bible. It’s not just the doctrine that shapes our lectionaries. One lectionary, the Eucharistic reading of the story, it’s the entire scripture story in lectionary provided for the Sundays of the Church all its richness (and the more we know of it, its year, offers a series of readings from the Epistles ambivalence), that enables us to interpret doctrine and Gospels. Scholars of the Prayer Book have in the context of a changing world. cogently argued that this lectionary is doctrinal in shape and force. Its purpose is to provide an I would argue that the doctrinal framework overall framework of the fundamental doctrines of provided in the Prayer Book extends beyond the the Church and its teaching about the Christian life, choice of epistles and gospels to include the four reiterated on an annual basis. I knew people who regularly used Canticles: the radicalism of the grew up in Newfoundland in the 1940’s and 1950’s Song of Mary (the Magnificat), the horizon of hope who had been required before confirmation to of the Song of Simeon (the Nunc Dimittis), the memorize every collect, epistle and gospel in the demand of personal vocation and witness to Prayer Book.