Principles for Gospel-Shaped Worship (Part 2)

By Robin G. Jordan

In Anglican churches in North America, in the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in North America, the Continuing Anglican Churches, and The Episcopal Church, we find a number of practices that are one way or another incompatible with the teaching of the Bible and which have no place in the worship of a church that accepts the authority of Bible and the Anglican formularies. These practices gained widespread acceptance in the Anglican Church of Canada and the then Protestant Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century due to the influence of the Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church movements in those denominations.

As well as reinforcing the use of these practices in the North American Anglican churches, the Ecumenical, Liturgical, Ancient Future, and Emerging Church movements would contribute to the spread of the practices outside of those denominations to charismatic and evangelical churches in North America in the twentieth century. With these practices would also spread an uncritical attitude toward them. Those who championed them promoted them as a return to early Church practices and a means of renewal.

Charismatic and evangelical clergy influenced by these movements migrated to the Anglican Communion and to the convergence communions in the twentieth century. This migration shifted to the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission in the Americas in the twenty-first century.

A number of these practices did not originate in the early Church but are later developments that embody doctrine that is not agreeable to Scripture. Among the practices that did originate in the first five centuries of Christianity are practices that also gave liturgical expression to doctrines that are not consistent with the Scriptures.

A number of these practices, while they are not directly or indirectly prohibited by the Scriptures are in other ways incompatible with the teaching of Scripture.

The use of these practices in churches that give a central place to the Bible and the Anglican formularies in their teaching is a example of the modern day tendency to disconnect doctrine from practice in worship—a tendency that affects both Anglican and non-Anglican churches in North America. Outside of church worship the same tendency is observable in the uncoupling of belief from behavior. This tendency the GAFCON Theological Resource Group identifies as significantly affecting the contemporary Anglican Church. See The Way, the Truth, and the Life:Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future, page 26.

In the first part of this article I examined some of the rationalizations given for use of these practices. In this part of the article I look at the practices themselves.

In the eucharistic services of a number of Anglican churches the priest makes a solemn offering or presentation of the eucharistic elements—the bread and the wine—at two points in the service. The gifts of bread and wine to be consecrated are first presented and offered to God at the offertory. This is known as the lesser oblation. The consecrated bread and wine are subsequently offered to God in the eucharistic prayer. This is known as the greater oblation. Both oblations are connected with the medieval Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and eucharistic sacrifice, and form a part of the medieval Sarum rite, the Roman rite used in England before the Reformation. These doctrines are to this day the official doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholics believe that Christ is substantively present in the consecrated bread and wine. In the offering of the consecrated elements in the greater oblation Christ through the priest offers himself to God. The 1993 catechism of the Roman Catholic Church describes the greater oblation as a “representation (or making present)” of Christ’s offering of himself to God on the cross. The canons of the Roman Catholic Church refer to “the fruits of the eucharistic sacrifice,” the results that come from this sacrifice. For Roman Catholics the eucharist is a major source of grace flowing from Christ through the church’s sacramental system. It is with the help of this grace that believers save themselves.

The rubrics of the 1928 Prayer Book direct the priest to “offer up” the bread and wine before placing them on the holy table at the offertory. The 1928 Prayer of Consecration contains an amnensis-oblation after the institutional narrative and before the epiclesis, following the pattern of the 1789 Prayer of Consecration and the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer of Consecration.  In the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice associated with the 1764 consecration prayer the bread and wine are seen as consecrated after the words of institution. When the priest offers them in the amnensis-oblation, he is offering “representations” of the Body and Blood of Christ. The epiclesis serves as a secondary consecration of the elements.

Evangelical churchmen in the Protestant Episcopal Church first explained away the solemn offering of the bread and wine at the amnensis-oblation in the 1789 Prayer of Consecration as a dedication of the elements to God before their consecration. They chose to view the epiclesis or the entire prayer as consecrating the elements, setting them apart for sacramental use. But increasingly they became uncomfortable with this explanation of the offering of the elements in the consecration prayer. They eventually came to regard the prayer as containing incipient Roman Catholic doctrine.

By 1900 the Protestant Episcopal Church would be dominated by the Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church parties. The evangelicals had either left the church after the General Convention had refused to consider their plea for revision of the Prayer Book or become Broad Churchmen. Anglo-Catholics were offering up the bread and wine at the offertory even though the rubrics of the Prayer Book then in use directed them to simply place them on the table. This practice was also imitated in a number of Broad Church parishes. The Anglo-Catholics and the Broad Churchmen would work together unsuccessfully to remove the Thirty-Nine Articles from the Prayer Book and successfully to revise the Prayer Book in a retrograde direction.

The 1979 Prayer Book leaves entirely to the discretion of the priest what ceremonial might be used at the offertory. Both eucharistic prayers in Rite I contain clearly-worded oblations of the bread and wine as do Eucharistic Prayers A and B in Rite II. This oblation may be explained in terms of the medieval Catholic-present day Roman Catholic doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice or it may be explained in terms of the Lambeth doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. The latter is articulated in the catechism in the 1979 Prayer Book.

Like the 1979 Prayer Book, Texts for Common Prayer leaves the ceremonial of the offertory to the priest’s discretion. The Holy Communion, Long Form, is mandated for use on Sundays and feast days. The eucharistic prayer in that rite contains a clearly-worded oblation, which is open to explanation in terms of these two doctrines of eucharistic sacrifice.

Both doctrines have no real basis in Scripture. Both are based upon conjecture and the sketchy interpretation of Scripture.

Contemporary Roman Catholic theologians insist that the eucharistic sacrifice is not a reiteration of Christ’s offering of himself to God on the cross but a representation (or making present) of that offering. Christ’s offering of himself under the forms of bread and wine in the eucharist is not separate from his offering of himself on the cross. They are one and the same.

This representation of Christ’s offering of himself in the eucharist is critical to the Roman Catholic understanding of the eucharist as a primary source of sacramental grace. This grace flows from Christ’s offering of himself. It is tied to the Roman Catholic understanding of justification which includes sanctification. In the Roman Catholic view justification is a process, not “a single decisive event.”

It is incongruous to say the least for an Anglican priest to preach the New Testament doctrine of justification by grace by faith alone in Christ alone from the pulpit and then proceed to solemnly offer the bread and wine at offertory and again in the eucharistic prayer, as if he himself did not believe what he preached. The lesser and greater oblations express liturgically a contradictory doctrine.

Other practices which are associated with this particular doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice include referring to the communion table as a altar, vesting the table with seasonal paraments, placing candles on the table, censing the table, facing the table while saying the eucharistic prayer, bowing or genuflecting before the table, kissing the table, and showing the consecrated elements to the congregation. The seasonal paraments with which Anglican and Episcopal altars are vested were in medieval times viewed as requisite for the adornment of the altar as a throne for Christ substantially present under the forms of the consecrated bread and wine.

The two candles that are also seen on Anglican and Episcopal altars were in medieval times viewed as requisite for a celebration of low mass. The use of lighted candles to honor Christ present in the sacrament has pagan origins.

Censing the altar, bowing or genuflecting before the altar, and kissing the altar are also ways that homage was offered to earthly kings in ancient and medieval times.

None of these practices have a place in the worship of a church that accepts the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies.

On Heritage Anglicans I have reposted my article, “Ceremonial, Ornaments, and Historic Anglicanism”, and accompanying articles from The Protestant Dictionary. These articles go into more detail about the origins and history of the foregoing practices. I have modified the articles to make them more readable than they were in their original form.

I have left the question of eucharistic vestments to last. Even in the churches in which the foregoing practices are avoided, it is not uncommon to see the priest vested in a chasuble and a stole or wearing a stole. While they originated as the street clothes, the chasuble and the stole would become closely associated with the medieval Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and eucharistic sacrifice. They continue to have this doctrinal association in the Roman Catholic Church and in Anglo-Catholic parishes in Anglican churches.

A number of Anglican provinces have a provision in their canons, which address the problem of how vesture of ministers may be interpreted. The canons of the Church of Uganda has such a provision:

The Church of Uganda does not attach any particular doctrinal significance to the diversities of vesture permitted by this Canon, and the vesture worn by the Priest in accordance with the provisions of this Canon is not to be understood as implying any doctrines other than those now contained in the formularies of the Church of Uganda.

To my knowledge the canons of none of the Anglican entities in North America have this kind of provision. Clergy are free to attach whatever doctrinal significance to the vestments they wear as they see fit.

Due to the doctrinal significances that are attached to the chasuble and stole in other churches, clergy in churches in which a central place is given in their teaching to the Bible and the Anglican formularies  would be well advised to refrain from wearing eucharistic vestments. Rather they should wear a cassock, “a decent and comely surplice with sleeves,” and a black scarf.

As far as the vesture of the communion table the Canons of the Church of England of 1604 direct the table to be “covered in time of Divine Service with a Carpet of Silk or other decent Stuff … and with a fair Linen Cloth at the Time of the Ministration….” This makes good sense in the second decade of the twenty-first century in which many congregations do not have a worship center of their own and are meeting in rented facilities and other non-traditional settings. Money spent for a set of seasonal paraments with questionable doctrinal associations might be better spent on mission. 

A bright red Jacobean fall topped with a fair linen runner more than suffices for a celebration of Holy Communion. Among its advantages is that it is not only economical but also it can conceal the fact that the communion table is a small folding table with sections of ABS plastic pipe used to raise the table to the right height.

Indeed returning to the “noble simplicity” that has marked Anglican worship at its best makes very good sense in this century. What matters most in gospel-shaped worship next to glorifying God is making known the good news of Jesus Christ in word and sign.