laudable Practice

As Ussher continued to reflect on 'the priest's power to forgive sins', he looked towards the East. He pointed to two examples from the liturgies of the East to demonstrate that this power directly belongs only to God: Add hereunto the prayer of Damascen, which is still used in the Greek Church before the receiving of the Communion: "Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who alone hast power to forgive sins, in thy goodness and loving-kindness pass by all the offences of thy servant, whether done of knowledge or of ignorance, voluntary or involuntary, in deed or word, or thought; and that which is used after, in the Liturgy ascribed to St James, wherewith the priest shutteth up the whole service: "I beseech thee, Lord God, hear my prayer in the behalf of thy servants, and as a forgetter of injuries pass over all their offences. Forgive them all their excess, both voluntary and involuntary: deliver them from everlasting punishment. For thou art he who didst command us, sayin...

When we consider the characteristics of Old High piety (sober, rational but not rationalistic, modest, reserved), its consistent critique of Enthusiasm, and its suspicion of excessive asceticism, the monastic spirituality of the Christian East may not, to say the least, be the first tradition we think in terms of identifying similarities. However, reading Rowan Williams' recent little book on this spirituality - Passions of the Soul - has led me to wonder about such similarities. Consider, for example, Williams' account of how the early Eastern monastic classics responded to the reality of temptation in the Christian life: In the long run, the pattern of integrated, restored human life that we're called to and drawn to in the labour of prayer and service and love is in all sorts of ways - quite appropriately - a prosaic matter, a matter of doing the next thing (p.16). This would function very well as an Old High description of what the Christian life is like: not a matter ...

Bringing to a close this series of posts on the influence of Eastern theologians on Taylor's thought in  The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), we turn to a passing reference in the work's dedication: But in the Greek Churches [transubstantiation] could not prevaile, as appears ... in Cyrils book of late, dogmatically affirming the article in our sense. Taylor is here referring to the Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith (1629) by Cyril Lucaris, Ecumenical Patriarch 1620-38. Having previously come into contact with Reformed churches and theologians, Cyril sought to give expression to his understanding of agreements between Orthodoxy and the Reformed. Taylor's reference, of course, is particularly to Cyril's statement on the Eucharist: This is the pure and lawful institution of this wonderful Sacrament, in the administration of which we profess the true and certain presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; that presence, however, which...

Last week we considered how Section XII of Taylor's The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654) affirmed the East's theologies of sacramental change - "conversion, mutation, transition, migration, transfiguration" - as agreeing with the theology of the Church of England. Also evident in Section XII is evidence of Taylor's knowledge of some of the lesser of the Eastern patristic thinkers.  Taylor points to Ephraim, the 6th century patriarch of Antioch, quoting him to the effect that our partaking of the Lord in the Eucharist is spiritual, not in substance: St. Ephrem the Syrian, patriarch of Antioch, is dogmatical and decretory in this question, τὸ παρὰ τῶν πιστῶν λαμβανόμενον σῶμα Χριστοῦ καὶ τῆς αἰσθητῆς οὐσιας οὐκ ἐξίσταται φύσεως, καὶ τῆς νοητῆς ἀδιαίρετον μένει χάριτος: "The body of Christ, received by the faithful, departs not from his sensible substance, and is undivided from a spiritual grace." He adds the similitud...

Section XII  of Taylor's The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654) abounds with quotations from the Greek Fathers. Taylor demonstrates how the teaching of the Greek Fathers regarding the change effected in the bread and wine in the Holy Mysteries does not support transubstantiation; that is, "the passage and conversion of the whole substance, into the whole substance". He points to the terms used by "the Greek Church" to describe the change occurring in the Eucharist: When the Fathers in this question speak of the change of the symbols in the holy Sacrament, they sometimes use the words of μεταβολὴ, μεταρρύθμισις, μετασκεύασμος, μεταστοιχείωσις, μεταποίησις in the Greek Church: conversion, mutation, transition, migration, transfiguration, and the like in the Latin; but they by these doe understand accidental and Sacramental conversions, not proper, natural and substantial. Such change is also affirmed by the Greek Fathers - and ...

In Section XI of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), Taylor's use of Fathers of the Eastern Churches continues. He invokes them in the context of affirming that - in the words of the so-called Black Rubric - "the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here" (emphasis added). The first Eastern father to whom Taylor turns in this section is Theodoret of Cyrus: Christ as man according to the body is in a place and goes from a place, and when he comes to another place is not in the place from whence he came ... So Theodoret, Domini corpus incorruptibile resurrexit & impatibile & immortale, & divinâ gloriâ glorificatum est, & à coelestibus adoratur potestatibus; corpus tamen est, priorem habens circumscriptionem. Christs body even after the resurrection is circumscribed as it was before. And therefore as it is impious to deny God to be invisible: so it is profane, not to believe and professe...

In Section IX of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), we see further evidence of Taylor's commitment to 'breathing with both lungs' by again turning to Origen.  The key part of this Section is a commentary on Origen's eucharistic theology: we might regard it as part of Taylor's contribution to the ' Origenist moment in English theology '. He sees in Origen an understanding of the Eucharist which coheres with that of the English Church - "say we too" - in which heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material realities are affirmed, with the Lord's body "eaten in a spiritual sense", for "this is the plain and natural sense of the words of Origen": he plainly distinguishes the material part from the spiritual in the sacrament, and affirms, that "according to the material part, that meat that is sanctified by the word of God and prayer, enters into the mouths, descends into the belly, an...

In Section V of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), we continue to see Taylor quote extensively from theologians of the Christian East and point to the liturgies of the Eastern Churches. The opening paragraph of this Section quotes from Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret, to demonstrate the reality of the bread and wine in the Eucharist: St. Cyril of Alexandria; "called bread his flesh." Theodoret saith that "to the body he gave the name of the symbol, and to the symbol the name of his body. The pairing is, of course, interesting, as Theodoret challenged Cyril's Christology. This in itself is suggestive of how Taylor generously viewed the Christian East as embracing both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian theologians and churches. Another extract from Theodoret - "In the exhibition of the mysteries he called bread his body, and the mixture in the chalice he called blood" - appears, as do words from the Byzantine John M...

In Section IV of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), Taylor continues to invoke the teachings of the Greek Fathers and practice of the Eastern Churches. Addressing the matter of how consecration of the holy Eucharist is effected, Taylor points to the East against the late Latin and Tridentine view that the Words of Institution are "wholly called 'words of consecration'": The Greek church universally taught, that the consecration was made by the prayers of the ministering man Justin Martyr calls it "nourishment made eucharistical by prayer;" and Origen calls it "bread made a body, a holy thing by prayer;" so Damascene, "by the invocation and illumination of the Holy Ghost," "they are changed into the body and blood of Christ." But for the Greek church the case is evident and confessed.  Having called upon Greek Fathers to support the view that it is the whole Eucharistic prayer that is cons...

In Section III of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), Taylor continues to 'breathe with both lungs', invoking fathers and theologians of the East alongside the West.  Discussing John 6, refuting that there "our blessed Saviour taught the mystery of transubstantiation", alongside the Latin Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine, Taylor quotes Athanasius, Origen, and Theophylact (who died in the early 12th century): St. Athanasius ... saith, "The things which he speaks, are not carnal but spiritual: for to how many might his body suffice for meat, that it should become the nourishment of the whole world? But for this it was, that he put them in mind of the ascension of the Son of man into heaven, that he might draw them off from carnal and corporal senses, and that they might learn that his flesh, which he called meat, was from above, heavenly and spiritual nourishment. For, saith he, the things that I have spoken, they ...

In a previous post , I highlighted how in The Worthy Communicant (1660), Jeremy Taylor evoked Eastern liturgy and piety, in the form of the Liturgy of Saint James, to illustrate the mystery of the Eucharist. This highlights a possible theme in Taylor's writings on the Sacrament: a turn to the East, seeing there a richer Eucharistic theology which, he believed, had more in common with an Augustinian understanding of the Lord's presence in the Eucharist - retrieved in the Latin West by the Reformation - than with Tridentine accounts of transubstantiation. Something of this is seen in the Section I of his The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654). Here Taylor turns to another Eastern liturgy, that - I assume - of Saint Cyril (used by the Copts), to demonstrate how, as he states, "the spiritual sense [of the Lord's sacramental presence] is the most real": For every degree of excellency is a degree of being, of reality, and truth: and ...

In a recent post , laudable Practice drew attention to the Hookerian reverence for mystery and gift in Jeremy Taylor's understanding of the holy Eucharist in The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654). Today's extract from The Worthy Communicant (1660) provides another example of Taylor's emphasis on the mystery of the Sacrament.   Taylor evokes Eastern piety and liturgy, particularly the Liturgy of Saint James . This is one of the most significant and beautiful aspects of the passage, seeing the eucharistic mystery as celebrated in the ancient liturgies of the great Churches of the East in the Prayer Book Holy Communion and the eucharistic theology of the Articles. Whatever propositions any man shall entertain in his manner of discoursing of these mysteries, let him be sure to take into his notice and memory those great appellatives with which the purest ages of the church, the most ancient liturgies, and the most eminent saints of God use...

That prudent and pious Moderator of Controversies, George Cassander, who did much for the peace of Christendome ... So said Taylor in the Preface to his 1644 work The Psalter of David . The thought of the Flemish Catholic humanist George Cassander (d.1566) was clearly highly esteemed by Taylor. Committed to the reunion of the churches, and regarded by Papalist critics as much too favourable to Reformation theologies, "the excellent Cassander" exemplified an eirenicism which recognised the need for significant reform while also promoting reconciliation. As Taylor was to say in The Liberty of Prophesying of these efforts, "George Cassander was design'd to this great work, and did something towards it".  Amidst the violence and bloodshed of the Thirty Years' War, the ruin brought by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and the bitter sectarianism which contributed to these conflicts, it is not at all difficult to understand the appeal to Taylor of Cassander's t...

The first Charles promoted the Laudian vision.  The second Charles restored a Laudian vision.  And the third Charles? The Coronation liturgy of the third Charles is demonstrating the continued resonance of a Laudian vision. Let us reflect on five ways in which the Coronation liturgy is deeply Laudian. Firstly, the Eucharistic rite in the Coronation liturgy is fundamentally rooted in the Prayer Book tradition.  Yes, it is not 1662 - but is much closer to 1662 than the Eucharistic rite in the vast majority of Church of England parishes. The words of 1662 will be heard in the preface, Sanctus, Prayer of Consecration, Prayer of Oblation, the words of administration, and in the post-communion prayer. Mindful of current liturgical practice in the Church of England, this is an outcome worthy of recognition and support. It reflects the King's well-known commitment to the Book of Common Prayer. As Prince of Wales, he was patron of the Prayer Book Society.  He presented prize...

I have previously mentioned how much I enjoyed recently reading Brett Salkeld's Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (2019).  The exposition of Thomas's teaching in the context of the eucharistic debates of previous centuries in Latin West was particularly useful, as was the engagement with Calvin's teaching.   The final sentence, however, ensured that I finished the book with a renewed gratitude for Article 28's robust rejection of Transubstantiation: Transubstantiation, properly understood, highlights and reinforces our agreements about God, creation, Christ, the Church, and the destiny of the world - a world Christ is drawing to himself, bread first. 'Bread first'?  The Apostle Paul declares that the Risen Christ is the firstfruits of the redeemed creation (I Corinthians 15:22). Being 'in Christ', the Church therefore, in some way, shares in this: bearing "the fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22) and "the fruits ...