laudable Practice

Continuing with his account of the doctrine of Absolution in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), John Shepherd turns to the Holy Communion: The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was likewise an absolution, and was called το τελειον, the perfection of a Christian. To all who had never fallen into the greater sins, which required public penance, it was a general absolution. It was likewise an absolution from the penalties of excommunication. To faithfully partake of the Lord's Supper is "a general absolution". This, Shepherd notes, was a patristic understanding: To penitents at the point of death, it was, what the Latin fathers call viaticum, or provision for the passage from this life to the future. In case the sick penitent recovered, he was obliged to perform the rest of the prescribed penance: at least he was to receive the imposition of hands at the altar, which was accompanied with prayers for his absolution. But if he...

We saw last week how E.H. Browne - then Bishop of Winchester - in his An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles: Historical and Doctrinal (1874), set forth an Old High understanding in which the Prayer Book's provision for private confession and absolution followed " the same wise and moderate view " of the Continental Reformers regarding this ministry. In this week's extract, Browne repeats the wisdom of ensuring that this ministry is available, but robustly warns against it becoming the normal and routine form of confession and repentance, which is to be "confession to God": There can be no doubt, that a distressed conscience may be soothed and guided by confidence in a spiritual adviser. Most people, much in earnest, and much oppressed with a sense of sin, have yearned for such confidence. Hence the Church should always afford to the sin-stricken soul the power of unburdening itself. But, on the other hand, whatever tends to lead people to substitute con...

It is the eve of Gloriana Day, the discreet commemoration of the birthday of Elizabeth I (7th September, marked by the obscure St. Evurtius) introduced to the BCP Kalendar in 1604. As such, it is a day to rejoice in and give thanks for the Elizabethan Settlement, the Reformed Catholic order of Elizabeth's Church: its episcopally-ordered ministry, the decent rites of the 1559 Prayer Book, the modestly Augustinian Articles of Religion, and the quiet, sober dignity of the Elizabethan parish church. And it is to that quiet, sober dignity of the Elizabethan parish church that our thoughts turn on this eve of Gloriana Day, aided by a sermon  by of one the pillars of the Elizabethan Settlement, John Jewel, preached in the presence of the Queen. In the sermon, Jewel referred to David's joy in the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem: Therefore when the Tabernacle was restored; when the Arke was fet home from Obed-edom, and set in the mount Sion; when religion Revived, which t...

There is no concept of "consecration" anywhere in the service at all. The only "moment" is reception—and the only point where the bread and wine signify the body and blood is at reception. If a point of "consecration" has to be sought - then it is at reception. This, of course, is the famous and influential judgement of Colin Buchanan in What Did Cranmer Think He Was Doing? It is, perhaps, no surprise that laudable Practice rather firmly rejects Buchanan's interpretation. Cranmer, after all, did have a theology of consecration, as set out quite clearly in his Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ (1550): Consecration is the separation of any thing from a profane and worldly use unto a spiritual and godly use. And therefore when usual and common water is taken from other uses, and put to the use of baptism, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, then it may rightly be c...

... beseeching thee to inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant, that all they that do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity, and godly love. Cranmer wrote these words in the very midst of the passionate disputes and bloody violence of the Reformation divisions. The significance of the petition is perhaps illustrated by  Diarmaid MacCulloch's suggestion that "the Reformation might indeed be viewed simply as two centuries of warfare". Against this background, we might have a greater appreciation of the words of the author of this prayer, a man described elsewhere by MacCulloch as a "cautious, well-read humanist", with a warm commitment to "concord by discussion". It is this which may have been a source for the deeply eirenic quality of the petition in the Prayer for the Church Militant. This deeply eirenic quality also had profound theological depth whic...

On this date which marks the coronation of Elizabeth I in 1558, it is appropriate to turn to the Injunctions of 1559 , the means by which Elizabeth set about undoing the Marian counter-reformation and establishing her ecclesiastical settlement. For those of us pondering what a New Elizabethan Anglicanism might look like, the Injunctions - perhaps surprisingly, mindful of the context and their, to say the least, robust tone - can be a source of wisdom, encouragement, and guidance. Today I look at three of the Injunctions in particular and consider what they might suggest for a New Elizabethan Anglicanism.   Firstly, the Injunctions restored Cranmer's vision that "often reading and meditation in God's Word" was at the heart of common prayer: exhort every person to read the same with great humility and reverence, as the very lively word of God, and the especial food of man's soul, which all Christian persons are bound to embrace, believe, and follow, if they look t...

Recently reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's charming essay 'The Bay Psalm Book' (in his excellent All Things Made New ), I came across this reference to the Church of England's Reformed identity in a description of the English Protestant settlements in the New World: from Church of England Virginia through Separatist Plymouth to 'Congregationalist' Boston, they were all variants on a Protestant theme: an English version of the great family of Reformed Protestant Churches which, back home in Europe, stretched from the Outer Hebrides to Transylvania. The Reformed were 'Reformed' because they were not Lutheran, a form of Christianity which they regarded with almost as much loathing as that of the pope in Rome. On this day when Richard Hooker is commemorated, we might want to question this assumption (an assumption also shared in Stephen Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England ).  Now to be clea...

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 ...

In a recent North American Anglican article, it was claimed of Anglican-Lutheran ecumenical agreements, "Helsinki, Niagara, and Porvoo clearly and closely echo Augsburg Confession art. X, and as such signal the ascendancy of the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence in ecumenical Anglicanism". Is this the case? Consider the relevant statements from each of these Anglican-Lutheran agreements: In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, crucified, risen and ascended, is truly present in his body and blood under the elements of bread and wine - Helsinki Report , 1982; We believe that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper - Niagara Report , 1987; We believe that the body and blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper (Eucharist) - Porvoo Common Statement , 1993. These statements do indeed cohe...

An Anglican should sound like a reformed Catholic Christian, grounded in the genuinely humanist implications of the Bible and the writings of the church Fathers. Someone committed to an authentic local and rooted expression of a universal faith. Someone with a strong sense of the integral unity of reason, scripture, and tradition. Of the unity, also, of artistic expression with care for nature and metaphysical vision. John Milbank, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham - Church Times 1st October 2021. John Milbank's words were in response to a Church Times request for "concise suggestions ... about what an Anglican sounded like".  Note, not a definition of doctrine (a debate for another time), more a description of ethos. I confess that I think Milbank has done so in a superb and deeply evocative manner.    Reading the description over the past week, I was particularly struck how it brings to mind what it...

... it's received, it's eaten, it's consumed - Augustine, Sermon 227 , on the Eucharist But the reception of communion was not the primary mode of lay encounter with the Host ... for most people, most of the time the Host was something to be seen, not to be consumed - Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars . For much of the past year in these Islands and elsewhere, the Eucharistic practice of Anglicans has been described by Duffy's account of late medieval practice in England.  We have sat and watched through screens.  We have not received, eaten, and consumed.   We have reverted to un-Reformed and un-Augustinian Eucharistic practices: private masses, laity observing the Eucharist through a screen, communion in one kind when in-person worship was permitted. The successful roll-out of the vaccination programme in the United Kingdom and the impending relaxation of restrictions allow us to now begin to think about a return to Reformed Catholic, Augustinian practice....