Monday, August 20, 2007

On the Making of Bishops

I recently completed a chapter – really, more like an encyclopedia article - for a new book. It is being compiled by a colleague of mine, a chaplain in another hospital in the area, to provide information for specifically for physicians on the spiritual traditions of patients, and how those traditions address issues of health care. I wrote, as you might expect, about the Episcopal Church.

In addition to the information, the editor requested of each author a graphic for the article, and some brief statement representative of the tradition taken from Scripture or tradition. The graphic was easy. After consultation with my bishop, I submitted the Episcopal shield.

The statement was harder. The editor, himself a faithful Baptist, assumed for us writers that one or another passage of Scripture would be submitted. I thought of several, but none seemed quite right. It wasn’t because Scripture isn’t important in the Episcopal Church. Contrary to some current strident voices, it certainly is. But it seemed to me that no one passage of Scripture was more meaningfully “Episcopal” than any other. After all, there isn’t some distinctively “Episcopal” Bible. We read all of it, even if we wrestle with some parts more than others (and who doesn’t?). And, we share all of it with other Christians of the Western Church and, by and large, with the Eastern Churches. No single passage stood out for me as more “Episcopal” than “Catholic” or “Orthodox” or simply “Christian.”

Something from the Book of Common Prayer, then: that’s where any Episcopalian would go next. I looked through the 1979 Book (it is, after all, the Prayer Book we use, and in which I was ordained), including the “Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer,” and the section of Historical Documents, and through the Rites of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist (both Rites, and all six Eucharistic prayers). Finally, one prayer stood out for me. It is an ancient prayer, taken from the Gelasian Sacramentary (per Hatchett), but it has not been used in earlier Episcopal or Anglican Prayer Books.

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Now, I will admit that this collect is a personal favorite of mine. At the same time, I was struck once again by how important this collect is in the life of the Episcopal Church. It is the last of the Solemn Collects in the liturgy for Good Friday. It is also the Collect after the ninth lesson in the Great Vigil of Easter. For each of these important rites of the Church, the collect is, as it were, a summary of what we believe God is doing. In the death and resurrection of Christ, we believe God is indeed restoring - or perhaps, re-creating – all of creation, so as to bring creation to perfection.

With that in mind, I was also struck by the third place in which this collect is used. This collect is the summation of the Litany for Ordinations in the Episcopal Church – all ordinations. Whether for bishop, priest, or deacon, this collect is read in every ordination in the Episcopal Church.

Now, this is a change from previous prayer books. The 1928 American book had this collect at the end of the litany:

ALMIGHTY God, giver of all good things, who by thy Holy Spirit hast appointed divers Orders of Ministers in thy Church; Mercifully behold this thy servant, now called to the Work and Ministry of a Bishop; and so replenish him with the truth of thy Doctrine, and adorn him with innocency of life, that, both by word and deed, he may faithfully serve thee in this Office, to the glory of thy Name, and the edifying and well-governing of thy Church; through the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen


This collect dates to the 1550 Ordinal of the Church of England, published then in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, where it is used, again at the end of the litany, for consecration of bishops and priests, and in adapted form for deacons. It was used this way in the 1928 Book.

Now, I have suggested that one of the things that current Anglican arguments are about is bishops. Granted, I think over all it’s about what it means to be Anglican; and within that, then, how we interpret Scripture and how we do or do not accept human sexual lives. But, a critical event was the election of a bishop, and many of the subsequent actions and reactions have been either statements of, actions of, or ordinations of bishops. We all speak about ordination of bishops for “the whole Church,” even if we argue about what we mean when we say that.

It that’s the case, it seems these collects, once again in position to summarize the Litany for Ordinations, do describe a different understanding of what ordination is about, and not just the ordination of bishops, but all ordinations. The 1550 collect is, if you will, about one person, and that one person’s place in the structure and discipline of the Church. It is about one servant, the vocation to which he is called, his fitness for it, and his functions in it.

The 1979 collect has a much wider focus. In the 1979 rite ordination is not solely about one individual or one individual vocation. Rather, it places ordination in the context of God’s process of re-creating the world. The ordinand is not called simply to “serve in this office” of bishop (or priest or deacon), but to participate in raising up what had been cast down, and making new what had grown old, and so participating in God’s work of “bringing all things to their perfection” The fact that this collect is also in some sense the summary collect for both the Good Friday liturgy and the Easter Vigil only seems to confirm this view. And, of course, this is not just the work of the ordinand, but of the “whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery.” And so in that sense ordination is hardly about the ordinand at all, but rather about the participation of the whole Church in God’s work of salvation.

In raising the question of what we mean when we speak of “Anglican tradition,” or when we call ourselves “Anglican,” I raised the question of whether we should follow classical Anglican content or classical Anglican method. This seems one clear illustration. Using the 1550 collect seems to me classical Anglican content, and its retention through English and American prayer books seems in that vein. On the other hand, the editors of the 1979 book followed, I think, classical Anglican method: seeking in ancient traditions of the Church resources appropriate for the Episcopal Church in our generation, just as Hooker and Jewel looked to the ancient scholars of the Christian faith for resources for a reformed catholic Church in England.

In these controversies, when the statements of bishops as individuals, as groups, and as “first among equals” have so much currency, and are attributed so much authority, I am struck by the differences in these collects used roughly in parallel in the different ordination rites. Looking at them, and recognizing the differences between classical Anglican content and classical Anglican method, I can see both how we come to speak so often of God doing a new thing, and how other speak of us leaving the Anglican tradition (understood as Anglican content). At the same time, if we are to appreciate the “historic episcopate, locally adapted,” perhaps we can consider these understandings, not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary and mutually informative. I would hope we could. I think it’s something that we as Anglicans used to do.

4 comments:

Christopher said...

This is in many ways similar to what I have said of Paul's letters with regard to content and method. Quite useful in thinking about such matters particularly in a tradition that claims prayerbooks as the closest thing we come to confessions of faith. Content, I would say, matters for us in a way it might not matter for other traditions and a change in content signals that we've changed in our theology and in our praising.

Marshall Scott said...

christopher, I think you're right. The issue becomes, which content? I am conscious that in forming the 1979 B ook, the Standing Liturgical Commission (as it was called then) was following the intent of liturgical renewal to look farther back in tradition, in hope of getting as close to the apostolic witness and the apostolic experience as possible. So, there was the conscious recovery of older liturgies that might or might not have been available to Cranmer, attributing to Cranmer (with reason), as with Hooker, an effort to root the new Anglican liturgy in pre-medieval Latin and Eastern liturgies - a process of recovery and restoration, rather than innovation. So, many thought the 1979 Book, with its Eastern theology of baptism and inclusion of Prayer D, was once again recovery rather than innovation: again, doing as Cranmer did rather than simply repeating what Cranmer wrote.

Now, we haven't argued in a while whether we better reflect Christian tradition and roots in doing so - seeking that apostolic experience - or whether in doing so we lose something "Anglican" in embracing something more anciently and more broadly "Christian," or at least "Catholic." The only person who seems these days to want to have that argument is Peter Toon; and as near as I can tell he isn't arguing in those terms. Rather he seems to see this as innovation rather than recovery. But, with your interests you might know of discussions I don't know about.

Thanks for your comment.

Christopher said...

But that is precisely the argument I want to have. And that I think we need to have before we go in for another revision.

There are few such discussions that I've found, but it may be that the likes of Derek and I are a generation of reassessers of the Liturgical/Ecumenical Movements that shaped 1979. I hope we can do this with generosity (in a way that Peter Toon seems incapable of doing) to our mentors who were largely involved in this revision.

Personally, I think something "Anglican" was lost in terms of continuity with a basic form and content and shape recognizable since about the 6th century even if changed, added to, misunderstood, and reformed over time. Such a shaping of people over generations and centuries in familiar words is not something to be tread upon lightly.

It's true Cranmer dug into Eastern sources (his addition of an epiclesis for example shows evidence of this) to rework a largely Salisbury framework, but Cranmer's method was not only to recover sources from Patristics but to rework them in line with Reformation principles, especially and particularly the Doctrine of Justification by Faith (Which might better be called the Justification by Christ's Faith and Faithfulness to Us). That it was this doctrine particularly and not simply earlier forms of prayers, that was for him the sum and glory of the Apostolic witness. And it is this "content" that is at the heart of the theology in his reshaping of our praying.

In a sense, Peter Toon has a point. It isn't clear that simply moving away from our received content to content somewhere else further back is more faithful. To only adopt prayers further back is innovative because it does leave open that our doctrine simply shifts with a change in content without being clear that our doctrine also shapes the content of our prayers. It's just that Toon has mistaken where the innovation may lay. Not in revisiting Patristic sources and using these rather than the Sarum Cranmer largely drew from, but in not being clear that the doctrine at the heart of our praying, Justification, to which Cranmer committed us to (even if we can fudge a great deal else in large part thanks to his own changing mind--and a boon for our later comprehension) in his revision, must examine any prayers we take up from the past.

And I would question if using the Apostolic Tradition or the Prayer of St. Basil (beautiful though this one is) is any more catholic than our own Rite I (which is to my mind not fully a rite as the Psalter is not included, but is the last vestiges of the former ways meant to pass away in the next revision, coming soon I understand). Each of these prayers was particular to a local tradition, and it isn't clear at this point if the Apostolic Tradition was ever actually used as a prayer and not rather an example of how to pray. If expanding our repetoire of Canons to four makes us more catholic by allowing for a greater variety in theology, that may be true, but then I have to ask, does this make us more catholic than affirming the principle that the Reformers put forward as the bedrock of our faith? The principle that is actually about a relationship God actualizes with us by his promises to us and to which we respond in our particular prayers here and now. The suggestion that somehow we're closer to the apostolic tradition simply by moving backwards is to my mind problematic because it can serve to suggest how all of those in the meantime got it somehow wrong or deficient. And of course, the Reformation itself is itself destabilized because it does the same thing. All reforms in some sense are unstable in this regard.

We've gotten into a terrible habit of throwing about lex orandi, lex credendi and suggesting that there is a one-way relationship to prayer and belief. In fact, our Anglican tradition has not suggested as such as evidenced in Cranmer's own prayerbook method. Bishop Marshall wrote an excellent article a few years back debunking this one-way understanding in our tradition.

I hope I don't sound like a curmudgeon, but I've been told I'm a young fuddyduddy.

Marshall Scott said...

Well thought through, Christopher, as always. I do appreciate that you and Derek are interested in this.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm ready to begin the process toward a new prayer book. When I was educated to the 1979, Hatchett and others thought is was good for about 30 years - and here we are. Perhaps this discussion will be of help in that.

And, at the time there was clear intent to lean more toward the Eastern Church than we had before. I agree we need a lot of discussion as to where we need to lean for the future.