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Thousands over the centuries have asked, "Who is Jesus?" and many answers have been given.  In fact, Jesus Himself may be said to have set this ball rolling, beginning this series of questions by saying to His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?"  Simon Peter replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:15–16).  Later, when Jesus, now the resurrected Lord Christ (Messiah), encountered Thomas, this disciple, who had doubted the truth of His being raised from the dead, addressed Him as "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28).  And Paul, the converted Pharisee, explained that "in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Col. 2:9).

In the light of these texts, along with hundreds of others which are found in the New Testament, it is not surprising that the apostolic Church believed that Jesus was God in the flesh, God made Man.  Later, at Nicea in 325 the bishops stated with great clarity that in whatever sense the Father is God, so also is the Son.  Jesus, the Son Incarnate, is "God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God," that is of one essence or substance with the Father in terms of His Deity/Godhead.  Yet the Son is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son.  It was the Son, not the Father or the Holy Spirit, who took His flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and became incarnate "for us men and for our salvation."

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So we may say that the identity of Jesus has three phases or aspects.  First, there is His existence as the Son of the Father and in the communion of the Holy Spirit within the Holy Trinity: this is beyond and above all eternity, infinity, space, and time.  Further, this phase is really not a phase, for it relates to what He is permanently within the one Godhead now and for ever and unto the ages of ages.  This identity of His within the Trinity is declared in the Athanasian Creed and in the traditional Anglican Proper Preface for Trinity Sunday (1928 BCP, p.79).

Then, secondly, without in any way diminishing or reducing His Deity, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took to Himself our human nature.  He the Son became Man and took the name Jesus.  As the incarnate Son, He fulfilled the role of the Messiah of the Jews as He became the Suffering Servant of God.  This earthly ministry came to an end and reached its climax when He as the Lamb of God offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sin of the world on the cross at Calvary.  This phase is conveyed through the regular reading of the New Testament in the Daily Offices, in the traditional Collects and Readings for the major Feasts of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter, as well as in the description of His Atonement in the Prayer of Consecration of the 1928 BCP and Rite I of the 1979 book.

The third phase began with His resurrection when he rose from the dead in His transformed, supernaturalized body and took His perfected and glorified body/human nature into heaven.  Here, as the exalted Messiah in His human nature, He was crowned the King of all kings and the Lord of all

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lords.  His crowning was not because He is permanently the Son of the Father in the One Godhead, but because He is also the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth.  He rules His Church, energizes His Church, and sends His Church out into the world to preach the Gospel.  In and by Him those who believe are brought by the Holy Spirit to the Father for salvation and sanctification and to be adopted as His children.  This phase is conveyed both by the many Scripture readings from the Epistles which describe the place and ministry of Jesus Christ in heaven and by Collects and Proper Prefaces such as those for Ascension Day and Whitsunday (Pentecost).

Another way of stating the identity of Jesus in biblical, dynamic images, and a way used by both Catholics and Protestants, is to present Him as our Prophet, Priest, and King.   In His public ministry He was truly and visibly the Prophet of the LORD, for He declared the Word of the Lord and performed the deeds of the LORD.  For three years His roles or offices as Priest and King were partially or even wholly hidden from view.  In His Passion and on His Cross He as the Priest of God presented Himself as the sacrificial offering.  Further, from the Cross He reigned as the crucified King of the kingdom of heaven.  By His resurrection He was vindicated, and as the Son of Man He was exalted to heaven "for us men and for our salvation."  He now reigns over the cosmos and Church as the exalted King; He ministers for the Church and human race as the exalted High Priest, making intercession for His disciples; and He proclaims God’s Word in the Spirit and through His messengers to the whole earth.  Thus the way of salvation, the way of worship, the way of prayer, and the way of daily service is through the Lord Jesus, our King, Priest, and Prophet, to the Father by the Spirit in faith, hope, and love.  At the

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end of the age the Lord Jesus will return to the earth as King of all kings and Lord of all lords to consummate the purposes of the Father and complete His redemptive work.

Apart from the long paragraph in the Nicene Creed concerning the relation of Jesus as the Son to the Almighty Father, there are other important doctrinal statements concerning the identity of Jesus; for example, the second of the Articles of Religion:

The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and the Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.

Here we have the fusion of the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon (451) on the Person of Christ with the later western teaching from Augustine and Anselm on the Atonement of Christ.  The teaching of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, often called "the Chalcedonian Definition," is printed in the historical documents at the back of the 1979 book (p.864) and the essence of its content is presented in the second half of the Athanasian Creed (see p.865).

From the Athanasian Creed we learn in the most precise terms what was for the Western Church the

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orthodox doctrine of the true identity of the Lord Jesus:

For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess: that our Lord Jesus.  Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man;

God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds [ages]: and Man, of the substance of His Mother, born in the world;

Perfect God, and perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting;

Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead: and inferior to the Father, as touching His Manhood.  Who, although He be God and Man: yet He is not two, but one Christ;

One: not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking the Manhood into God;

One altogether; not by confusion of Substance: but by unity of Person.

For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man: so God and Man is one Christ;

Who suffered for our salvation: descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead...

While this confession of faith may seem highly cerebral and lacking the warmth of the descriptions of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels, it was necessary for two reasons.  First of all, it served to create the structure of the Christian mind (or mindset) for believers as they approached the Scriptures and participated in the liturgy.  In the second place, it existed to save believers from being drawn into erroneous doctrines (e.g., that Jesus was truly God but only seemed to be a Man; or that He was not really God made Man, but a Man whom God adopted from the moment of his conception).

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The faith of Christians is nourished from the hearing and reading of the sacred Scriptures, and for this there is no substitute: this is why the Daily Office is virtually all reading from the Scriptures in the morning and the evening.  However, the right structure of doctrine in the mind helps one process the hearing and reading of the Word of God so that it becomes truly food for the soul.  Of course, there must also be the presence of the Holy Spirit as the Illuminator of the very Word He caused to be written by the pens of men; otherwise, the Scripture can be used merely to support dogma or ideology and be read at the level of the letter and not the Spirit.

When we examine the 1979 BCP and such additional material as PBS 30 and The Proper for the Lesser Feasts and Fasts, we find that they contain both the classical doctrine of the Person of Christ and other teaching, which is either a variation of it or a plain denial of it.  Thus we meet relativism here as we did also with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  The appearance alongside each other of several incompatible doctrines of the Person of Christ leads the reader/user of the liturgy to assume that variety in teaching (a kind of doctrinal smorgasbord) is to be preferred to doctrinal clarity and accuracy.

For immediate contact with the orthodox teaching concerning the identity and work of the Lord Jesus in the 1979 book we look at the traditional translations of the Creeds, the traditional Collects, and the Eucharistic Prayer A of Rite I.  It is also found here and there throughout the contents of the Book – e.g., in Collects of Rite II as well as in other places – e.g., the Great Vigil of Easter (pp. 284ff.).

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We meet alternative or modified teaching when we turn to the newer versions of the Creeds.  Doubt concerning the virginal conception of Jesus is raised in the 1979 book by the addition to both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds in Rite II of the expression "by the power of" to "the Holy Spirit."  (Interestingly, throughout this book there is evidence that its composers were fond of empowering, for they add "by the power of" in various places – e.g., in the absolution – pp.80 & 117.)  Instead of "by the Holy Spirit" (which is a faithful rendering of the original languages), we are given "by the power of the Holy Spirit."  Now an orthodox mind can read this extra phrase in such a way as to assume orthodoxy; but, when one learns that one reason for the addition was to allow people to take the Creed to mean that the conception of Jesus was like that of, say, Isaac or John the Baptist (somewhat against the normal run of nature), then dishonest translation is exposed.  All conceptions are by the power of the Holy Spirit, but that of Jesus was unique, for it was "by the Holy Spirit" Himself!

It is perhaps worth noting that these translations in the 1979 book are now out of date, for the commission (ICET) which produced them has radically revised them in an inciusivist, anti-sexist direction. In so doing, however, it has heard criticisms and has left out "by the power of" from both Creeds, as can be seen in the translations of the two Creeds printed as part of the new rites in PBS 30.

Doubt concerning the pre-existence of the Son before the conception in the womb of Mary is raised by the section in the Catechism entitled "The Son" (p. 849).  The statement, "Jesus is the only Son of God," is explained as meaning that "Jesus is the only perfect image of the Father, and shows us the nature of God."  Then Jesus is called "his divine Son" (a

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strange expression) who "received our human nature from the Virgin Mary, his mother, by God’s own act."  Within the general context of the teaching of the Catechism concerning God (which I take to be modalism – see chapter 4), the natural meaning of what is specifically taught there concerning the identity of Jesus is that God, the Creator who is called the Father Almighty, adopted Him from the moment of His conception.  Thus God deliberately placed Himself in the closest possible union with this unique Man and then in and through Him worked out His saving will and purposes.  So He is effectively the God-Man who may be called "His divine Son" because He is the uniquely adopted Son who is lifted higher than the angels; further, He may also be called "his eternal Son," for, from the moment of conception He lives and will live forever as the uniquely adopted Son of God, closer to God than any other creature in heaven or on earth. In the early Church such teaching was called Nestorianism and was rejected because it clearly denies that there is a genuine Incarnation.  One of the purposes of the Definition of the Council of Chaicedon and the Athanasian Creed was to reject such teaching as incompatible with the clear teaching of Holy Scripture.

It would seem also that the words of the Nicene Creed (Rite II) – "we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father" – allow a Nestorian reading.  That is, "eternally begotten" can mean begotten at a point in space and time in order to live eternally from then.  A better translation of the original would point to the truth that He was begotten of the Father before all worlds (ages) and thus clearly establishes His pre-existence before becoming Man.  However, I accept that a Nestorian interpretation of this version of the Creed is shown to be false if, and only if, the

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rest of what is said about Jesus in the second article of the Creed is taken as being propositional truth.  That is, the statements are not merely evocative, intended to create good thoughts of Jesus but informative of what is the case; and, further, the use of "Being" does not imply that the Creed is to be read through the eyes of existentialist theology from either Rahner or MacQuarrie, for whom God is "Being."

The possibility that Nestorianism is intended or allowed in the Eucharistic Prayers of Rite II also exists.  In A we hear of "your only and eternal Son," in C of "your only Son, born of a woman," and in neither of the Prayers is belief in the pre-existence of the Son strictly required by the literal meaning of the texts.  The point I am making is that none of the new Eucharistic Prayers seems to have been written with the intention of excluding Nestorianism (or, for that matter, of abiding clearly within the principles of the Definition of Chalcedon).  Part of the problem here may be that modern liturgists take as models eucharistic prayers which pre-date the clarification of dogma by the fathers in the early Church.  Thus they do not have the precision concerning the identity of the Lord Jesus which is found, for example, in the Greek Liturgy (of Chrysostom and Basil), where the development of the doctrines of the Trinity and Christology are taken for granted.

What may be said concerning the identity of the Lord Jesus in Rite II may also be said concerning His saving work on the Cross. In their legitimate desire to include greater reference to the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the creators of the Eucharistic Prayers in Rite II have not been as clear as they could have been concerning the purpose and nature of His sacrificial, atoning death in relation to sin.  We hear that His death was "a

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perfect sacrifice for the whole world" (p. 362), but why was the text not "a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world?"  (Regrettably, we also meet the same phenomenon in Rite I, Prayer II, which is an attempt to simplify and rewrite Prayer I.)  Maybe those who wrote these prayers were so much a part of the general revulsion felt in liturgical circles in the 1960s against the presumed excessive emphasis of the Common Prayer Tradition – both on sin and penitence and upon the death of Jesus as a propitiation and expiation – that they went too far in the opposite direction.

The whole subject of the Atonement is also complicated through a bad translation in the Fraction Anthem, provided, apparently, to allow people to make more of the sacrifice of the Eucharist than traditional Anglican theology has done.  For both Rite I and Rite II the optional Fraction Anthem said after the celebrant breaks the Bread is "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us," to which the reply is "Therefore let us keep the feast."  There are apparently two sources for this Anthem.  First of all, there is Paul’s statement, "For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed.  Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor. 5:7-8, RSV).  The tense of the Greek verb is one for which there is no exact parallel in modern English.  It is in the aorist passive and conveys the idea that what happened once (the death on the Cross as the unique and last Passover Lamb) in a specific place and at a known time has not only meaning but also efficacy for all space and time.  Old English conveyed this meaning by saying that Christ "is sacrificed," and this translation is found where the text of Paul is used in the Common Prayer Tradition within what have been called "the

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Easter Anthems" (1928 BCP, p. 162, and the 1979 BCP, p. 46).  However, it is hardly the best way to translate the Greek today into modern English.  Either "was sacrificed" or "has been sacrificed" would be better – as the 1979 book itself recognizes on page 83.

The second source for the Fraction Anthem is the 1549 BCP, (but not the 1552 and later Books of the Common Prayer Tradition), where the celebrant says: "Christ our Paschal Lamb is offered up for us, once for all, when He bare our sins on His body upon the Cross, for He is the very Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world: wherefore let us keep a joyful and holy feast with the Lord."  Here we see how the past and the present are united in such a way that no one could think that the priest was reoffering the once-for-all atoning Sacrifice of Christ offered at Calvary at Passover, and yet at the same time no one could think that worshippers were not benefiting from that Sacrifice once offered by the living Lord Jesus Christ.

The point (as made often by evangelical Episcopalians) is that the tense, and the very brevity, of the words in the 1979 text (which are not in the 1985 text) can give the impression that Christ is being sacrificed all over again in the Eucharist.  Or the words can suggest that there is something unique about the actual breaking of the bread in public view.  Thus evangelicals follow the RSV and say, "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us," preferring "has been sacrificed" to "is sacrificed."  And they cite Article XXXI:

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

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alone.  Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in 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.

The modern situation is not like the late medieval situation, but nevertheless the evangelicals’ point is an important one.

The 1979 Catechism also fails to do justice to the redemptive suffering and atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We are told that "by his obedience, even to suffering and death, Jesus made the offering which we could not make; in him we are freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God" (p.850).  This is true as far as it goes, but why were we not told that His offering was because of and for sin (see Hebrews 10:5ff.)?

What may be judged by some only to be minor omissions and suggestive hints in Rite II become clearer errors in PBS 30.  In the second of the Eucharistic Prayers, which has the theme of "God bringing to birth and nourishing the whole creation," it is difficult to find the Jesus of the Gospel and the Creeds and to ascertain any saving and moral purpose to His death.  This is because here the doctrine of God is panentheism (the world is in God and inseparable from His being).

All this is in contrast to the clear statements concerning the death of Jesus in the classic Eucharistic Prayer of the Common Prayer Tradition (found also in Rite I, Prayer 1).  It is said that the Lord Jesus made at Calvary "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."  This may seem wordy, but by it we learn that this bloody death of the Incarnate Son of God is the fulfillment and perfection of all the

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sacrifices required by the Law of Moses; is cosmic in its value and effects; being for all people everywhere; and always and wholly satisfies the just wrath and holy demands of the Father for the punishment of sin; and is a perfect expiation for the sin of the world.

There are problems also with respect to the Person of Christ in some of the new collects produced for The Proper for the Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980).  Take for example, that produced for remembering Leo the Great (p. 371), who died in 461.  He is the author of the famous Letter concerning the Person of Christ which is included in the documents of the Council of Chalcedon (451).  Before the 1980 edition of The Proper the Church used an edition of 1963 entitled The Calendar and the Collects for the Lesser Feasts.  The collect there (p. 99) reads:

Almighty, everlasting God, whose servant Leo steadfastly confessed thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to be Very God and Very Man: Grant that we may hold fast to this faith, and evermore magnify His holy Name; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.  Amen.

This contains the main theme of Leo’s Letter, namely, that there is One Person (the Lord Jesus Christ) who has two natures, divine and human, and who is therefore truly God and truly Man.

The writer of the modern collect seems to have been under the spell of existentialist theology and to have felt the need to insert the word "Being."  Thus he wrote:

O Lord our God, grant that thy Church, following the teaching of thy servant Leo of Rome, may hold fast the great mystery of our redemption, and adore the one Christ, true God and true Man, neither divided from our human nature nor separate from thy

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divine Being; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Had the writer left out everything from "neither" up to "our Lord," it would have been a better prayer.  As it stands, it is at best confusing and at worst Nestorian.  While "divided" is in the past tense, "separate" is in the present tense and this difference in tense is probably very significant.  There is no doubt that Jesus the Christ is really and truly a Man sharing the same flesh and blood and human nature as the rest of us.  However, there is no separate Person of the Son, for here the One called the Son is in fact the One God ("O Lord our God") in perfect union with the Man, Jesus.  Thus the Person of "God" in the "God-Man" is not separate from the Person who has "Being" as the "Lord our Lord"!  There is no distinction of Persons (the Father and the Son) who share one and the same being, substance and essence (= Godhead), but One God who acts and appears in different modes.

The evaluation of the Person of the Lord Jesus in the BAS is indicated by what is allowed and commended as an alternative to the Apostles’ Creed in the Daily Office.  We are offered as an alternative to (a revised) Apostles’ Creed the ancient Jewish Shema: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deut. 6:4).  It is explained that "the Apostles’ Creed and the ‘Hear, O Israel’ are complementary: the first stresses faith as teaching, the second emphasizes faith as action" (p.42).  However, the New Testament teaches us to read the Old Testament in the light of Jesus, the Christ.  This means that a great OT passage such as the Shema cannot of itself

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be a confession of faith for Christians unless its content is "unpacked" in the light of the Revelation in and by Jesus.  As its long second paragraph indicates, Jesus is very much at the center of the Apostles’ Creed, but He is not mentioned in the Shema.  Yet what the Shema means to Christians is, "the LORD our God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), the LORD is one," but there is no indication of this in the text or the notes.  The ancient creed of the synagogue is given as a strict alternative to the baptismal creed of the Christian Church.

Of course, there is much in the BAS which can be read in the light of the Definition of Chalcedon.  However, since the BAS contains modalist formulations (adopted from the American 1979 book), since it uses the modern translations of both Creeds, since its Eucharistic Prayers give insufficient emphasis to the atoning sacrifice for sin of our Lord, and since it does not have a translation of the Athanasian Creed available as an alternative anywhere, it is a book which opens its doors to the charge of relativism and to less than orthodox doctrines of the identity and saving work of the Lord Jesus.

A striking example of the diminution of classic Christology in the BAS (as also in PBS 30) is the suppression of the second half of the traditional antiphon, "O Come let us adore Him," after the Venite (p. 47).  I suspect that this reveals an acceptance of the radical divorce of the risen Christ (who/which is androgenous?) from the admittedly male Jesus.

Both the 1979 and 1985 books use a Psalter which is intended to be partially inclusivist.  In chapter seven we shall address the subject of inclusive

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language.  Here we need only note how the principle of inclusivism affects how Jesus Christ is related to Scripture or where we find Jesus Christ in Scripture.  In the New Testament there are ninety-three quotations from over sixty Psalms.  Jesus is reported as quoting the Psalms more often than any other book of the Old Testament.  For the early Christians the Psalter was "David’s Prophecy" concerning the One who fulfilled the promise made by the LORD to the king (2 Sam. 7:12–14; cf. Ps. 132:11–12).  So every psalm was understood as an address between the Father and the Son or between the Church and her Lord (or Redeemer/Savior).  The Psalter was thus seen as Christ’s Prayer Book. (I have explained this in detail in my Knowing God through the Liturgy, chapter 7.)

The translators of the Psalter for the 1979 book were obviously aware of this holy tradition, and they kept it in mind in part.  Psalms which were specifically related to Jesus in the New Testament, and/or have been used liturgically as referring to Him as the Christ, were translated in a regular or literal way in order to preserve their liturgical use as prophecies of Christ.  But others which belong in devotion to the "Christologizing" of the Psalter were subjected to the principle of inclusivism which meant the removal of generic and male-centered language (e.g., "man" and "children of men") wherever possible.  So, for example, in Psalm 1 we read, "Happy are they" instead of "Happy is the man."  We may observe that by this principle of inclusivism the ancient Christian use of the Psalms, as prayed with and in Jesus, is made very difficult, even impossible.  If the "man" of Psalm 1 is taken to be the Lord Jesus, then we pray this psalm as those who are with Him as his disciples and in Him because in His Body, the

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church.  If, however, we have to say "they," then we are puzzled as to "who are they?"

From the time of John Cassian (360–435), monk and contemplative of the Eastern and Western Church, the Church held the theory of the fourfold sense of Scripture.  The literal, common-sense meaning could, and usually in fact did, nurture the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.  However, when the literal sense did not obviously or easily produce this nurture, the expositor of the text could appeal to three additional senses, each of which corresponded to one of the three virtues. The allegorical sense pointed to the Church and what it should believe concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and thus it corresponded to the virtue of faith.  Then the moral or tropological sense taught about what a Christian should do as a disciple of Christ, child of God, and. member of the Church, and so it corresponded to the virtue of love.  Finally, the anagogical sense pointed to what God had in store in the future for those who believed in Jesus Christ, and thus in awakening and sustaining such conviction it corresponded to the virtue of hope.

A thousand or so years after Cassian, when this method had long been used to expound and explain Scriptures in monastery and parish, Nicholas of Lyra summarized it in Latin verse:

Littera gesta docet; (The letter teaches deeds;

Quid credas allegoria; (Allegory, what you should believe;

Moralis quid agas; (The moral what you should do;

Quo tendas anagogia. (Anagogy, whither you should strive.

It is perhaps important to point out that the literal sense was that which God intended as the

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primary Author as He inspired and spoke through the personality of the human author.  Therefore, following this approach, Psalm 1 is a psalm about the Lord Jesus Christ and of what His followers are to be as they are united to Him in faith, love, and hope.  In modern times we have gotten so fixed on ascertaining the original intention of the human author(s) that we seem to have lost this spiritual and moral approach to the Scriptures.  Further, when the ideology of inclusivism is forced into the sacred text, then it becomes more difficult or even impossible to pray the psalms as a Christian believer.

I do not want to suggest that the Psalter is to be interpreted in an individualistic way (see further chapter six below).  Each Christian, along with other Christians, is to read and pray the psalms as a member of the new Israel and thus a member of Christ’s Body.  As one writer has explained:

The key to the interpretation of the Psalter is that it is intended primarily for united use.  The word ‘I’ in the Psalter does not mean the person who is reciting the words.  It denotes the Lord himself; or the Church united with him; and if it is applicable to the individual worshipper, it applies to him only as a member of Christ and the Church.  The worshippers are meant to use the words, not to express their own personal sentiments, but in order to enter into the mind of Christ and his Church  (G.D. Carleton, The English Psalter, 1945, p.24).

In my book entitled Knowing God through the Liturgy I make similar points in my explanation of praying the psalms.  Examples of Psalms where the "I" is Christ and only secondarily the "I" of each member of His Body are Psalms 116–119.

We shall return to the question of inclusive language in chapter seven.  Here the point is that to

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force inclusive language into a translation of the Psalter is to take the Lord Jesus out of "David's Prophecy" and thus out of liturgical devotion.

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

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

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

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

However, the word community still holds its older meaning when it refers to a political or social

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structure (e.g., a small town in Newfoundland or a long established ethnic settlement in a big city – the Irish or Chinese communities), but it has been extended to include voluntary groupings who exist on the basis of an obvious social contract.

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

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

In the new liturgies of both the Canadian and American Church the word community appears in important places.  In the 1979 book it is found in the Catechism: "The Church is the community of the New Covenant" (p. 854).  Then in the introductory notes for The Prayers of the People (p. 383) we are told that prayer is offered for "the concerns of the local community."  It is not clear whether this refers to the actual parish congregation or to the congregation and people amongst whom they live.  In Form

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I the bidding is "for this city, for every city and community, and for those who live in them."  In Form V the bidding is "for all who live and work in this community," where community seems to mean the locality in which the church meets.  Also in Form VI the community seems to be the locality when the prayer is "for this community, nation and the world."

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

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

The use of the word community of the congregation, a people who were formerly not called by this name, suggests that liturgists, following moves within modern culture, have felt the need to emphasize that autonomous individuals need to be bound

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together in what was (and is still) called the Church on a freely-entered-into contractual basis in order to become a viable, visible, and vibrant community.  Therefore, the first part of the central service of the only day when the people who are being formed into a local religious community actually meet together is called "the gathering of the community."  Significantly, the climax of the gathering is the "exchange of the peace," where people move about to greet and affirm each other as fellow members of the assembled community.

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

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

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

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

I believe he is right to call a so-called Christian community by its appropriate name – an idol.  He describes how that in seeking to create "a community," everyone is expected to become like everyone else; but this is impossible.  So everyone has to be-

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come like the inner community which is seeking to impose its identifying features, views, and ways upon everyone so that all may be a real community.  So he concludes by stating that to the extent that churches

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

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

Writing also from Yale the well-known liturgist, Aidan Kavanagh, seems to stand at the opposite end of the spectrum to Philip Turner.  He appears to have accepted the secular doctrine of the social contract and applied it to liturgy.  Addressing Episcopal friars, he quoted approvingly a claim that the liturgy "contains within itself not simply a symbolic representation of the social contract but a consummation of social contract."  Further, he claimed that "the Rite is a public order, and its acceptance is a public act, regardless of the private state of belief.  Acceptance of the Rite one performs is thus a fundamental social act that forms the basis for public orders..."  And he added that this "is an anthropological way of stating the dictum, ‘the law of believing founds and constitutes the rule of belief,’ which is the public core of

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the Church's life." (Little Chronicle, Vol.75, No.2, Fall, 1992.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It would appear that there is a fundamental problem in the minds of those liturgists who produced the modern books.  They have imbibed a secular understanding of community!  In contrast in the Common Prayer Tradition (as I hope I showed with clarity in my recent Knowing God through the Liturgy) there is no concept of community, but rather of the assembly or congregation of the Lord being

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called together by His Word to meet with Him, to hear His Word and to be fed from His Table.  Likewise, there is neither use of the word community in the New Testament nor the presence of the concept of community in its contents.  Scholars have detected around ninety images of the Church (body, temple, priesthood, household, etc.) within the twenty-seven books, but community is not one of them.

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

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

What concerns me theologically with the modern obsession with community is that it is a concept which so easily commends or flows from pantheism or panentheism.  God is or becomes the spirit of the community or the universal reality into which individuals come to be a local community.  God can be thought of as the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the age).  I realize that the best modern liturgists do not intend to commend pantheism, for they speak of two dimen-

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sions being operative when there is (in their terms) the "gathering of the community of faith."  (For any reader who wishes to pursue the meaning of community I commend Frank.G. Kirkpatrick, Community: A Trinity of Models, 1986. He uses it of the Church in a very specific way.)

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

Apparently the word "individual" was not generally used of a human being until the nineteenth century.  It is a word which was applied to persons after it had been used for a long time for things.  There seems to be little doubt but that the talk of human beings as individuals is a result of the great emphasis within the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century on what we now call the autonomy of each person, every human being and (from now on called) the individual.  An individual is one who is essentially separate from other individuals.  A man or a woman is one who essentially comes

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from others (via procreation and birth), and who is in relation to others (in a family).  A person is also a word which emphasizes the individuality of the human being, though it carries with it a sense of relation to others.  It is probably true to say that if Christians use only the vocabulary created by the Enlightenment – which placed man, not God, at the center of the stage – then they will surely never get straight the Christian understanding of man, of communion between man and God, and of the divine society, the Church.

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

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

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

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

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

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

O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can

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do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed I have been wicked from my birth,

A sinner from my mother’s womb.

My readers may wish to consult such other translations as the Revised Standard Version, the

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New English Bible, and the Jerusalem Bible.  The difference between the two translations printed above is clear: the first traces sin or a sinful nature back through procreation to the parents, and their parents, while the second only allows King David to have been a sinner from his birth.

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

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

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all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?" (1979, p. 302).

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

But to proceed.  What we may call the modern view of our common humanity also makes its appearance in the way that ancient canticles and hymns are translated and the way in which biddings for prayer are framed in the new books.  To begin with the latter, it has often been observed that much of what is called "the prayers of the people" (1979, pp. 383ff. & 1985, pp. 110ff.) is the agenda of the United Nations or enlightened secular humanism rather than that of the kingdom of God.  That is, so many biddings or intercessions do not connect the social, legal, and physical improvement of the lot of people in the world with the knowledge of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior.  To pray "for those in positions of public trust that they may serve justice, and promote the dignity and freedom of every human person" sounds like support of the civil rights’ and feminist movements rather than desire for men and women to worship and serve the Lord our God in freedom and to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God. Further, several people have

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pointed out to me that while there are several prayers for prisoners ("political?"), there are no prayers for the victims of crime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, if we translate the Greek literally, we get: "Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel because he visited and wrought redemption for the people of him."  The point is that we ought to translate the

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Scriptures honestly and then explain their content rather than trimming the translation to contemporary calls for freedom.  Modern secular ideas of freedom do not include freedom from sin but only freedom to be the slave of sin while enjoying a greater economic and social freedom.

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

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

Already in this chapter the subject of sin has been raised!  Now I wish to make reference to the growing practice of leaving out any confession of sins or of not allowing a confession of sin followed by the absolution in both Eastertide (the so-called "Great Fifty Days" from Easter to Pentecost) and Christmastide (the days from Christmas to Epiphany).  (I say more on the "the Fifty Days" in Appendix 2, which I invite my reader to peruse after he has read this chapter.)  This novel practice for Anglicans can

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not be justified by the rubrics of either the 1928 or 1962 BCP.  Further, it is not allowed by the 1979 book which before the Confession of Sin in the Holy Eucharist has this rubric: "A Confession of Sin is said here if it has not been said earlier.  On occasion the Confession may be omitted" (pp. 330 & 359).  Such words can hardly be said to cover a period of fifty days which, where there is a daily Eucharist, is a very long time.  In his commentary on the 1979 book Charles P. Price tells us that the rubrical provisions "are intended to ensure a full, general confession of sin for most services" (Introducing the Proposed Book, p.77).

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

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

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forgiveness and cleansing in order the more sincerely and lovingly to serve Him.

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

Throughout the "prefaces" of the BAS it is [wrongly] suggested that the Anglican tradition has suffered from a morbid preoccupation with penitence.  In contrast to Anglicans of yesterday, the new redeemed community is to be celebratory, standing not kneeling before God.  This attitude is written into the BAS and emphasized by Charles P. Price (with

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reference to the 1979 book) who speaks of the need to "mitigate this tone of unrelieved penitence and unworthiness" (Introducing, p.41).  It comes in part from a general turning away from the written Word of God in Scripture, and a viewing of Cranmer and St. Paul through Dix’s blinkered or prejudiced eyes.  As Robert D. Crouse explains:

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

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

This was a reform of immense importance, because it involved the explicit recognition, liturgically, of the character of sin as the betrayal of that divine charity

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

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

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

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

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

Unlike the Common Prayer Tradition, these two services do little to indicate that marriage, as instituted by God but set now in a world of sinfulness, becomes by the grace of God a redemptive structure or sanctifying order of relations.  In and by it, according to the traditional Christian message, the sinful appetites of man may be educated, corrected, and

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perfected by the grace of Jesus Christ.  The purposes of marriage as set forth in the new rites can be taken to be an uncritical acceptance and endorsement of a self-indulgent sensuality, and of self-fulfillment rather than self-giving, all set in the language of Zion.  What is missing from them is the sense that normally marriage is definitely for the procreation of children who are to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord and to the praise of His holy name.  Further, the new texts are silent concerning the chaste single life (which is a gift of God according to the service in the 1662 BCP), and they can give the impression (in a sensual culture) that chastity is neither virtuous nor necessary where there is no vocation to marriage.

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

It is interesting to compare the order of the traditional and new services.  For the 1928 and 1962 and the 1979 BCP the content is: consent; vow; optional prayer over the ring; the giving of the ring; prayer for blessing on the couple that the vow and covenant may be kept; sentence from Matthew 19:6; and ratification of the marriage by the officiating minister.  Here the couple make their vows, the Church prays for God’s blessing on the covenant, and then the important scriptural formula is pronounced ("what God hath joined..."), with a declaration of what has been done.  The marriage is constituted by God’s blessing of the couple’s vow and covenant.  The role of the priest or bishop is to declare

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and ratify and only then to bless.  In the 1985 BAS the order is consent; vow; prayer over the ring; the giving of the ring; the minister’s declaration that they are husband and wife; and then the scriptural formula, followed by prayers and the blessing.  Here the priest makes no petition to the Lord for His blessing on the vow and covenant before declaring that they are married.  The difference between the two may seem minimal; but if it is taken in the context of the whole service, then it may be said that where the traditional BCP assumes that marriage is a work both of grace and human resolve, the BAS tends to suggest that it is only human resolve upon which the Church gives the blessing.  God does not act in and through the man and woman: rather, they act as autonomous individuals.  Their vows appear to be equated with the (claimed) act of God in uniting them as one flesh.  In terms of classical theology, there is the tendency to fail to distinguish between the realms of grace and nature and thus uncritically to affirm natural, sexual relationships in an individualist and subjectivist form as if they were in and of themselves Christian!

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