Monday, January 09, 2012

The ACNA Theological Lens: The Guiding Principles Behind the ACNA Prayer Book – Part 2


By Robin G. Jordan

As noted in the first article in this series the Prayerbook and Common Liturgy Taskforce of the Anglican Church in North America follows its summary of the principles that are to guide its creation of a Prayerbook for use in the ACNA with an explanation of its view of worship. This explanation is incorrectly titled “An Expanded Explanation of Our Guiding Principles.” Instead of a further explanation of these principles we are instructed in the taskforce’s understanding of worship. In this article we will examine sections I through IV of this part of the report.

As in the preceding sections of the report, the taskforce does not provide Scripture references and annotation. It makes a number of statements that require further explanation but offers no such explanation. A Google search of selected phrases from this part of the report generated a substantial number of matches in documents that were Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic in their theology.

In this part of the report the taskforce appears to equate ritual and ritualism with worship. Its recognition that the definition of worship is broader than the performance of ritual acts comes almost as an afterthought. It does not mention the Bible’s emphasis upon the worship of the heart.
“And he said to them, ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,’ “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”’” (Mark 7:6-7 ESV)

The taskforce assumes to be true statements that may at best be only partially true. For example, it states:

Worship is the primary way in which we live out our share in the Christian story; it enables us to come to know God, to know ourselves, and to know our place in God’s world.

In this statement the taskforce fails to identify in what sense it is using the term “worship.” If it speaking in terms of the performance of ritual acts, what it is asserting is open to debate. The Scriptures do not support this view:

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. "When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies--I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your New Moons and your appointed feasts. My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow…. (Isaiah 1:11-17 NKJV)

What God desires is heart worship. Heart worship is evidenced in the way that we live our lives, not in the performance of ritual acts.

An individual can attend Mass and receive Holy Communion every Sunday and feast day and live a life no different from those who do not go to church. Can this individual be said to be truly living out his share in the Christian story? Is “worship” truly enabling him to come to know God, to know himself, and to know his place in God’s world?

The taskforce goes on to state:

Worship brings us into and unites us with the Christian Community.

This may be the case in some Christian communities but it is not the case in all Christian communities. The New Testament is full of examples of individuals who heard the gospel and came to faith in Jesus Christ and joined the growing number of believers outside the context of worship. In China and other parts of the world we have thriving cell churches and house churches in which entrance into the Christian community is not through a worship gathering and participation in a worship gathering is not what unites believers to the Christian community.

In this part of the report the taskforce appears to be promoting the doctrinal view that a loss of understanding of God’s love or God’s purposes for the human race arising from sin lies behind our estrangement and separation from God. The result is an inability to fully love God or others. The task force appears to infer that human beings are not totally incapable of loving God or others.

This view conflicts with Article 9:

Original sin stands not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusts always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserves God's wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature 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 confesses that concupiscence and lust has itself the nature of sin.

One of the fundamental truths for which Bishops Ridley and Latimer and Archbishop Cranmer suffered martyrdom was the doctrine of revelation: “It teaches that God has revealed himself uniquely through Jesus Christ, and through the prophets and apostles who bear witness to Christ, and that the permanent written form of his revelation is Scripture” (Roger Beckwith, The Church of England: What It Is, and What It Stands For, London: The Latimer Trust, 1992, 2006, p.6)

In this part of the report the taskforce appears to limit revelation solely to Christ and the Incarnation. While Christ plays a unique role in our salvation, Article 7 reminds us:

The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Wherefore there are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet, notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.

The taskforce does not explain where in the Scriptures it found the doctrine that the human race at one time shared in “the Love between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” and through Christ’s entrance into human history “to redeem, reconcile, and restore fallen human beings back into fellowship (communion) with God” once more shares in this Love. It does not indicate what passages of Scripture supports this doctrine, which theologians developed this doctrine, in what works, and in what period in Church history.

These omissions are serious defects in the report particularly since historic Anglicanism requires that the truth of all doctrine must be tried by the test of Scripture: “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation” (Article 6).

The New Testament tells us that Jesus announced the Kingdom of God, he proclaimed the gospel of the Kingdom, and preached the good news of the Kingdom of God. The New Testament, however, does not tell us that he preached a “new Kingdom of God,” as the taskforce maintains in its report. Rather he proclaimed the inbreaking of the righteous reign of God to which the Old Testament pointed. The taskforce further maintains that Jesus proclaimed “a new relationship with God by means of his self-offering to God the Father” but does not provide the Scriptural basis for this statement.

The taskforce goes on to infer that baptism gives new life to the baptized and restores communion with God, which is an Anglo-Catholic view of baptism, and reflects an Anglo-Catholic interpretation of Romans 6. Anglicans do not agree on this view of baptism or this interpretation of Romans 6. In the nineteenth century Gorham Judgment the Judicial Committee of the Privy Counsel ruled that the doctrines of baptismal regeneration was not the doctrine of the Church of England. The sacrament of baptism did not operate ex opere operato. Regeneration did not automatically or invariably accompany baptism.

The taskforce does not offer an explanation of what it means by the statement, “Because Jesus Christ is Himself the incarnate Son and the Word of God, His words of forgiveness are the very Word of God.” We are left to draw our own conclusions as to its meaning.

The taskforce also does not explain the meaning of the statement, “…our worship is only possible through our participation in Jesus’ ascended life…,” or provide the Scriptural basis for this statement. This statement is suggestive of the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice articulated by the 1958 Lambeth Conference and found in the 1976 Book of Common Prayer, in its Eucharistic Prayers and its Outline of Faith. As J. I. Packer and Roger Beckwith have shown in The Thirty-Nine Article: Their Place and Use Today, this doctrine is no more agreeable to the principles laid down in the Thirty-Nine Articles than the medieval doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. (J. I. Packer; Roger Beckwith,The Thirty-Nine Article: Their Place and Use Today, Vancouver, British Columbia: Regent College Publishing, 2007, pp. 80-85; 95)

From reading this part of the report as well as subsequent parts of the document one receives the distinct impression that the taskforce does not accept the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles and in not accepting the Articles’ authority, they do not accept the authority of the Scriptures from which the Articles’ authority is derived. This is not surprising if one considers that the ACNA Fundamental Declarations’ affirmation of the Articles is very weak: “We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.” This is even more evident when we compare this statement from the ACNA Fundamental Declarations with The Jerusalem Declaration: “We uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.” In Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today the GAFCON Theological Resource Group stresses, “Though they were written in the sixteenth century debates about Christian doctrine, the Articles remain critically important for the church today.” This attitude toward the Articles is not reflected in the report.

In the third article in this series we will continue our examination of this part of the report.

Along with the ACNA constitution and canons and the ACNA Ordinal, the ACNA “theological lens” is very revealing regarding the theological direction in which the Anglican Church in North America is moving. It is certainly not the same direction as the Global Anglican Future Conference as reflected in The Way, the Truth, and the Life,, The Jerusalem Statement, and Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today.

What we see occurring in the Anglican Church in North America is the entrenchment of Anglo-Catholic views. This happened in the Continuum in the 1970s and 1980s. The ACNA may be described as comprehensive to the extent that it includes charismatics and supporters of women’s ordination. In this sense the ACNA is more liberal than the Continuum. But its comprehensiveness excludes any group who disagree with its Anglo-Catholic position on other key issues. With acceptance or tolerance of the Anglo-Catholic position on such issues laid down as a mandatory requirement in the ACNA constitution and canons, the ACNA does not offer the kind of environment that is conducive to the development of a strong evangelical wing committed to the Scriptures, the gospel, the classic formularies, and historic Anglicanism. It needs such a wing to prevent it from drifting back in the direction of The Episcopal Church.

Related articles:
Gavin Dunbar: A Critique of ACNA’s Initial Report of the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force
The ACNA Theological Lens: The Guiding Principles Behind the ACNA Prayer Book – Part 1

4 comments:

Charlie J. Ray said...

I could not agree more with your final paragraph, Robin. A Reformed and Calvinistic Evangelicalism is the only way to prevent a drift back toward the theological liberalism which caused the breach with TEC in the first place. Neo-orthodoxy is also a problem since there is no belief in the literal verbal and plenary inspiration of the Bible in every word and sentence. Scripture is not a "story". Scripture tells historical narratives to be sure. But what makes Scripture unique is that it makes propositional truth claims that must be accepted by reason and faith. When Scripture says that Christ died on the cross to redeem His sheep that is to be either believed or rejected (John 10:11, 15; Matthew 1:21). The late David Broughton Knox makes this very point in his commentary on the 39 Articles:

The Thirty-Nine Articles accept as axiomatic a view of the character of revelation which is now widely rejected as inadequate. In assessing the place of the Articles in the modern church it is essential to re-examine the presupposition about revelation on which the Articles are based.


Professor Lampe has pointed out that the Articles rest upon the presupposition that revelation comes to us in our day and generation in the form of propositions or statements, so that if these statements are properly interpreted to bring out their true meaning, 'the truth of that doctrine is decisively established and is not open to question. The appeal to the text of Scripture may be expected to provide a final solution to controversial questions . . .' It is on this score that Professor Lampe presses his criticism of the Articles. He writes: 'To many of us the matter is not so easily resolved. God's revelation is disclosed in certain historical events, as these have been witnessed, evaluated and subsequently recorded, by men gifted with insight to perceive their signficance, but, since they were limited and fallible men, not necessarily able to discern their whole meaning and implications or to express this perfectly, and, since their thought is inevitably conditioned by the circumstances of their time, not necessarily able to transmit their understanding of the revelationary events in a form which will be meaningful to later generations.'ii Here is the crux. This understanding of revelation (inspiration as a concept has apparently gone by the board) means that God's revelation is confined within the historical events, so that no statements about God, even though made by the biblical writers themselves, are of final authority for our own thinking about God. Christian doctrines about God, Christ, salvation 'are subject to reinterpretation from age to age and are to be modified as science changes our views'.iii It follows that the documents -- whether the Creeds or the Articles -- which state these doctrines, no matter how closely they may reflect the statements of Scripture, are involved in the same relativism.


This question of the nature of revelation, and consequently the character of Scripture, is crucial in evaluating the Articles; for, as Professor H. E. W. Turner has written, 'They depend closely upon the theory of propositional revelation.'iv If the truth of the Articles is to be established and the propriety of requiring assent to them to be vindicated, the nature of revelation must be carefully investigated and its propositional character verified.
The Nature of Revelation

Charlie J. Ray said...

The chapter on Holy Scripture as the final authority in matters of doctrine is also pertinent to your critique of the ACNA's new doctrinal "formularies":

Thus Trent, by placing Scripture and tradition on an equality, ensured that Scripture would be effectively subordinated to the current teaching of the Church, so that Scripture could no longer fulfill its proper role (which inalienably belongs to it as the Word of God) of correcting current church teaching and practice. The Authority of Holy Scripture D.B. Knox...

The trouble is that when Anglo-Catholicism goes liberal in combination with a view that the traditions of the church are equal in authority with the divine revelation of Holy Scripture then it follows that the "church" can make a tradition that contradicts Scripture based on a bad exegesis of Scripture and on modernist revisionist views on sexuality and other issues. Thus, women's ordination naturally collapses into the ordination of practicing homosexuals and other such heresies and aberrations. Basically, the ACNA is laying the foundation for future compromise in moral issues.

Although Rome has adopted false theology, it is at least consistently opposed to immorality. Rome has safeguards thus far to prevent moral defections based on a hierarchical authority from the top down. Liberal episcopalian Anglo-Catholicism has no such safeguards to prevent apostasy on moral issues.

The bottom line is that unless Scripture is the final authority and accepted as perspicuous and plainly revealed, then there is no hope of preserving a true visible church or congregation on earth.

Charlie

Charlie J. Ray said...

Thank-you for your work in critically reviewing the ongoing developments in the Anglican Church in North America, Robin.....

Your brother in Christ,

Charlie

Robert Ian Williams said...

This all needs to be printed in a pamphlet form for historical record. Your work is so thorough.