What I learned from the poppies and cornflowers in an English cornfield.
By Robin G. Jordan
Because two prayer books share language and texts does not mean that they share doctrine. This is a fallacious argument into which I keep running in discussions of the connection between The Book of Common Prayer 2019 and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. As I noted in yesterday’s article, Ben Jefferies uses this argument in his description of the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019.
A number of historical prayer books share language and texts but their doctrine is quite different. Three examples come to mind.
The first example is Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s two Prayer Books, the 1549 and 1552 Prayer Books. Among the factors that contributed to Cranmer’s revision of the 1549 Prayer Book was Bishop Stephen Gardiner’s critique of Cranmer’s magnum opus, A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. In An Explication and Assertion of the true catholic Faith touching the most blessed Sacrament of the Altar Gardiner argued that the 1549 Communion Service, in particular the 1549 Canon, taught the medieval Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass.
Cranmer would conclude that the 1549 Prayer Book was insufficiently reformed and drafted the 1552 Prayer Book. It is the 1552 Prayer Book that represents Cranmer’s mature thinking as a Reformed theologian.
The 1662 Book of Common Prayer is essentially the 1552 Prayer Book with a number of minor alterations and additions. Nineteenth century Tractarian writers would claim that these changes brought about a change in the eucharistic doctrine of the Prayer Book. This claim, as Neil and Willoughby point out in The Tutorial Prayer Book for the Teacher, the Student, and the General Reader, like so many Tractarian claims, is fallacious.
A second example is the 1928 Proposed English Prayer Book and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. These two books not only share language and texts but they also share services. An alternative Order of Administration of Holy Communion, an alternative Order for the Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants, an alternative Order of Confirmation, an alternative Order for the Communion of the Sick, and other alterations and additions to the proposed book, however, completed changed the doctrine of the English Prayer Book.
For example, the Prayer of Consecration of the alternative Order of Administration of Holy Communion was modeled on that of the 1549 Communion Service and incorporated an invocation of the Holy Spirit in the consecration. Archbishop Cranmer did not include such an invocation in the 1552 Prayer of Consecration on the grounds that it was contrary to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures as well as suggested that the bread and wine underwent a change in substance upon their consecration. The Holy Scriptures teach that the Holy Spirit indwells people and sanctifies them. The Holy Spirit does not sanctify inanimate objects. The alternative Order for the Communion of the Sick permitted the administration of communion to the sick from the reserved sacrament.
A third example is the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book and the 1662 Prayer Book. The two books share language and texts but their doctrine is not the same. This is evident from a comparison of the Prayer of Consecration in the Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, the Prayer over the Water in the Font in the Ministration of Holy Baptism, and the Ministry to the Sick in the two books. The 1962 Canadian Prayer of Consecration is open to interpretation as teaching that, when the priest consecrates the bread and wine, he represents or re-offers Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The 1962 Canadian Prayer over the Water in the Font emphasizes the role of the priest in the sanctification of water for the purpose of baptism.
In the 1662 Order of the Ministration of Baptism the petition for the sanctification of the water is redundant since the Ark Prayer teaches that God has already sanctified all water for “the mystical washing away of sin” through the baptism of his Son in the river Jordan. The 1962 Canadian Order for the Ministration of Baptism omits the Ark Prayer. The 1962 Canadian Prayer Book adds forms for the laying on of hands on the sick and their anointing with oil to the Ministry to the Sick.
When one does a rite by rite, service by service comparison of The Book of Common Prayer 2019 and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, it is quite evident that not only is the doctrine of the two books different from each other but so are their practices, which are an embodiment of a prayer book’s doctrine even when they are optional. The two books represent two different theological traditions. The ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 represents the Catholic Revivalist tradition, which is essentially a rejection of historic Anglicanism, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer represents the Protestant, Reformed tradition in which historic Anglicanism stands. The Restoration bishops, while they made a number of minor alterations and additions to the 1604 Book of Common Prayer, retained the essential Protestant, Reformed prayer book of Archbishop Cranmer.
Further Reading:
ʻFor the More Explanationʼ and ʻFor the More Perfectionʼ: Cranmerʼs Second Prayer Book
The Reformed Worship of 1552
Cranmer and the Lord’s Supper
Small Steps, Big Leaps
1552 and All That
Cranmer—Psychologist as well as Theologian
Thomas Cranmer’s ‘True and Catholick Doctrine of the Sacrament’
Pulling up the Roots of Error: The Importance of the Eucharist in the Theology of Thomas Cranmer
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