GAFCON messages

Just in case you are not aware of it, Kevin at anglicantv.org has several addresses to the GAFCON assembly on his blog. I highly recommend you to view them.

A Successor Collection?

I appreciate Bishop Duncan’s address to GAFCON this past week. The text may be found here: http://www.acn-us.org/etc/2008/anglicanism-come-of-age.pdf
Much of what he says is helpful and I recommend it to my readers. My only question, at first reading, is about what he says regarding the need for the Anglican Church to develop “some successor collection to the 1662 Book of Common prayer….” He is right to say that there needs to be liturgical uniformity in the Communion and that much uniformity has been lost (thanks, as I understand it, to the innovative service books of the West – there may be other influences of which I am uninformed). However, must some new “collection” be the answer?

I do not believe there is anything wrong with the 1662 tradition. It has, theologically and liturgically, what we are concerned to be maintained in the Communion. Provision is already made in the rubrics for “occasional services” which allow creative use of the Prayer Book. Why not find the answer in a re-affirmation of the 1662 tradition? It is very hard for us modern westerns to critique our tendency toward the chronological snobbery fallacy.

Of course, Duncan may have in view simply a Prayer Book that is 1662+. By that, I mean a prayer book that keeps the 1662 tradition but provides guidance for other services, such as Compline. There does need to be some kind of direction given by the church for other services beyond those currently in the 1662 tradition to guard against the innovations that the more creative, but less theologically astute, among us always have an itch to develop.

Below are Duncan’s words, in the place I am addressing, with my comments in brackets.

Prayerbook Christians

One of the great losses of Anglicanism in the 20th century was the Book of Common Prayer [well, it has been lost in certain bodies]. We were [and still are] what we prayed. Lex orandi, lex credendi. Until the 1960’s everywhere in the world we prayed the same words, even if in translation. The theological and ascetical [does he mean aesthetical? Surely.] foundation of Anglicanism must be recovered in the 21^st century. There can be no Global Settlement without it. How we can have widely varying liturgical texts across the Provinces of the Communion, and still have a common language for prayer and a consistent and reliable theology, is one of the greatest challenges before us [I think the matter for these is already present; is it that great of a challenge? It seems to me most are in basic agreement. I keep thinking, though, that ECUSA people, and their friends in Canada and England, like their 1979, et. al., and don’t want to give up things they’ve grown to like].

Like the emergence of a new Instrument of Unity adequate to a Global Settlement of Anglicanism, some successor collection to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer must emerge [it is this “must” that I question], to guarantee Anglicanism’s coherence and glorious (and reliable) life of worship. But how this shall come about is in God’s gift alone, yet come about it must [yes, something must be done, but must it be altogether a successor?]. This, too, is the future of 21st century Anglicans who are themselves at their best.

I hope you will comment on my post, especially if you see how I might be enlightened in some fashion.

Thoughts on the Spiritual Life - XLII - H. C. G. Moule

Gates to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Chapter XI, continued.

ii. As one part of this general subject, I lay it upon myself and my reader, as we seek to live day by day in the strength of the risen Jesus Christ, all the more to lean our experience before God wholly, solely, upon the finished Work of our redeeming Sacrifice, “the Lord our Righteousness.” The holy thirst and hunger to please God is a radically different thing from the anxious effort to reconcile God. Blessed be His name, that work is done, is completed, for us, by the obedience of One. In the deep words of the Second Article, “Christ, very God and very man, 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.” And in the words of the Eleventh, never to be separated from those others, “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith (per fidem).” Such words, technical as they may sound, speak a truth inexpressibly restful to the fully awakened conscience. Do you see the depth of the demand of God’s law? Do you believe what His Word says, speaking, remember, in the person of an inspired saint, “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified”? Do you see the sin (to speak of nothing else) of the least inadequacy in your love to God, in your love to others? Then, in true proportion to the spiritual reality and fulness of such insight, you will prize, you will adore, you will submit yourself to, you will learn yourself upon, the finished Satisfaction, the imputed Merit, of your Redeemer. In the words of a departed saint, to whose soul the truth of saving love in this aspect was singularly real and sweet, you will rejoice to feel that “the bed is large enough to lie down upon, the covering ample enough to wrap around” the awakened soul.

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/93451647@N00/300955696/in/photostream/

Thoughts on the Spiritual Life - XLI - H. C. G. Moule

H. C. G. Moule, M.A., Principal of Ridley Hall, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Bishop of Durham

XI.

Concluding Thoughts

In closing these simple pages, let me put before my friend and reader a few remarks, somewhat detached in form.

i. First, an earnest caution against an overdrawn introspection. It may be thought that this book itself looks another way, often suggesting and encouraging a close inward examination. I do indeed seek to press, on myself first, the duty of self-examination, a scrutiny within that shall not stop short of motive, purpose, inmost state of affection and will. Many Christian lives, I am sure, greatly lose in depth, consistency, and chastened soberness, by failure to examine within; and the habit and practice of such examination, not without a certain system, is a duty of Christian life. For most of us it would be well to make this exercise a regular element, say, in secret evening devotion.

Nevertheless, introspection is a secondary, not primary, duty of the life of grace; a subsidiary, not direct, means of holiness and strength. “Ten looks at Christ for one at self” is after all the primary rule. “Look unto Jesus” gives us, as has been well said, the Gospel in three words. Introspection ceases to do good and begins to do harm the moment it terminates in itself, the moment it fails to be our reminder of our need of the simplest gaze, every hour, upon the Son of God, “who is made unto us of God wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” Christ is “the Secret of God,” in the literal rendering of the best attested reading of Col. ii. 2. And Christ is not ourselves. Dwelling in the heart of him who is “strengthened by the Spirit in the inner man,” He is not the inner man, nor the heart. And, as the Object of adoring contemplation and humble faith, we must view Him not as He is in us but as He is in Himself; incarnate, sacrificed, glorified. “Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, as by the Lord the Spirit.”