Foundations of the Anglican Church CXXIII

The Hon. Frederick
Cornwallis, Arcbishop
of Canterbury at the
time of the American
Revolution and uncle of
the famous General

Well, let me get to the next chapter of the Church of England and then I will revisit the challenge the Church faces in preaching the Gospel in this “Postmodern” culture.  I also need to return to my series on why the Liturgical Reforms of and since the 1970 Missal are an improvement over the preconciliar rite.  But that in time.

By the end of the eighteenth century the Church of England still had its Latitudinarian leadership but there was a strong Evangelical movement that had over time morphed into what we generally call “Low Church.”  Today “Low Church” and “Evangelical” are somewhat synonymous terms.  I should also like to clarify my personal prejudices at this point.  I tend to prefer the Low Church/Evangelical approach, at least when it doesn’t shy away from sound Biblical scholarship in favor of a somewhat crazed fundamentalism.  I find, in my limited experience of Anglicanism, that the Diocese of Sydney and a number of Churches in the “Global South” are somewhat religious Neanderthals when it comes to a biblical literalism and gross ignorance of Christianity’s theological and intellectual heritage.  But then every religion has its Raymond Burkes and the accompanying entourage of flying monkeys.  I have always felt comfortable with the Church of Ireland brand of Anglicanism which has a tradition of theological (and musical) quality but avoids liturgical exaggerations.   In fact, when in Dublin I tend to prefer Sundays at Saint Patrick’s over the pro-Cathedral.  I especially like Sunday Evensong after a few gins and tonic and a plate of smoked salmon for lunch; it gives one a cozy feeling, especially when the Dean seems to have had his gins and tonic as well and officiates with that blasé indifference one can only find among the smarter set.  One gets all the sentiment of piety without any sort of ugly demands to take a serious look at one’s life.  

The Evangelicalism of 18^th century Anglicanism was not so much a return to the biblical roots of Christianity as it was a resurrection of its Calvinist heritage which had more or less been abandoned in the Anglicanism of the Anglican Divines and then whatever trace remained shoved into schism with some of the Non Conformist sectaries after 1660.   The theological cross-pollinizing of the First Great Awakening reintroduced to the Anglican evangelicals from the New England Congregationalists a terror that one might be among the pre-destined damned and a certainty that one’s neighbors of differing religious persuasions most definitely were.  Suddenly and once again the Pope was the Antichrist and the flames of hell were already licking the toes of anyone who was not prepared to give himself or herself totally and personally to Jesus in total repentance of sins, real and imagined. 

Now the Achilles’ heal of this sort of Evangelicalism is that it is so personal a religion that it does away with any role for the Christian community and the means of grace (such as the Sacraments) which we Catholics (and moderate Protestants) believe Christ has endowed his Church to assist us on our pilgrim journey.  It is pure “Jesus and Me” experience.  The Church is not a visible and tangible fellowship of believers but a spiritual and invisible association known only to God and comprised of those who are marked for salvation.  No wheat and tares growing together in this field, only the righteous.  No sinners need apply.  (It is interesting how this Calvinist ecclesiology has infected the Katholik Krazies and their desire for a “Church of the Pure” that pushes out the gates of heaven any one who does not conform to their particular moral code.)

Nevertheless Evangelicalism grew strong in late 18^th and early 19^th century Church of England.  It resonated with the English sense of propriety and at the same time gave some release to emotions the English so normally hold in reserve.  Since it stressed private—rather than corporate—devotion, this emotionalism was something most often expressed in one’s private prayer rather than in public.  It was usually intensely moralistic and quite black and white when it came to sin, especially sin of an alcoholic or sexual nature.  As it was linked to the banking and merchant class it didn’t trouble itself with most social sin, save for its abhorrence of slavery.  Most in this socio-economic class did not depend on slaves for their economic well-being though some did make their fortunes in the slave trade.  (The American situation was quite different, of course, but in the period after 1782 we need to examine the Episcopal Church in the United States separately from the Church of England.)

The Low Church party with its commitment to a Calvinist theology undermined the very nature of “Church.” But the doctrine of double predestination not only made the Sacraments in general somewhat superfluous practices, it abolished the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.  It was unnecessary to be “born again” if one was destined for salvation from all eternity and fruitless to be “born again” in baptism if one was damned from all eternity.  By the opening decades of the 19^th century the Church of England had removed itself from the heritage of the Church of the first millennium.  Yes, it had the prayer-book and its liturgy, children were still being baptized and Holy Communion was still being administered.  But the prayer-book was no more than a set of bland prayers and ceremonies to bring English order to chaos; baptism was a social convention; and Holy Communion was only for the pious who still took seriously the doctrine of the Atonement.  At Oxford, the few and bookish remnants of High Church Anglicanism realized that their Church had gone off the rails and severed its lifeline with classic Christianity.  Change was no longer an option.

Some Background About Baptists

  

First Baptist Church of
Providence, the oldest
Baptist Congregation
in the United States

Some readers weren’t overly happy with my pointing out that four of the dunces on the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus who expressed their outrage that Pope Francis recognized Palestinian Statehood were Baptists.  It makes Baptists look stupid was the gist of their complaint.  As long as we are at it, let me point out that the four are also Republicans. 

I don’t mean to imply that all Baptists or all Republicans are stupid.  Far from it.  True, I have no respect for anyone of any party or religion who drinks the ideological Kool-Aid and liberal Democrats and Katholik Krazies can do that as blindly and blithely as conservative whacko-Jesus Tea-partiers.  I have only contempt for those of any party or religion who serve up the toxic potion—they know better—and I would put our four Congressional horses’ asses of the Apocalypse in this category.  I can’t pray “Father, Forgive them for they know not what they do” as they very well know how they are manipulating the truth for the most unsavory of political ends.  But how does this relate to their being Baptists?

Let’s look at Baptist history and perhaps we can discover the flaw that skews our friends both intellectually and morally.

In our series on the history of Anglicanism we saw that the Baptists developed out of the radical congregationalism of non-Conformist groups that broke with historic Established Church in England during the period of the Commonwealth/English Civil War. 

A Church of England priest, John Smyth, had gone to serve an English congregation in Amsterdam as early as 1609 because he had come to believe that the privileged position under English Law of the Established Church was contrary to the scriptures.  Smyth also believed that one must first believe and then be baptized—that the practice of infant baptism was contrary to the Scriptures.  In the Netherlands Smyth had become familiar with Mennonites, a sect who came out of the Anabaptist tradition.  The Mennonites had been founded by Menno Simmons, a Dutch Catholic priest who, in the 1530’s had broken with the Catholic Church over several practices, including infant baptism, which he considered contrary to scripture.  Smyth would eventually himself become a Mennonite as did many of his followers.  Some of his followers under Thomas Helwys returned to England and established a congregation at Spitalfields in today’s East End of London.  Helwys, like Smyth, rejected the idea of an Established Church and believed that the King (that is to say, the Government) had no right over the conscience of his subjects and that all should be free to worship God as he pleased.  This led to his imprisonment in Newgate prison where he died in 1616. 

Meanwhile, Roger Williams who had apprenticed in Law under the great English jurist, Sir Edward Coke, but who had been ordained in the Church of England left England in 1631 for Boston in the great Puritan migration fleeing the High Churchmanship of Charles I and his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.  Williams had moved from a position of Puritanism within the Church of England to a more radical Congregationalist Puritanism, but one that was a bit extreme even for the Boston Puritans.  Williams insisted that the civil authorities must have no power to punish religious dissent.  His principles were: separation from the Established Church, freedom of conscience, and separation of Church and State.  The Puritans at Boston, while not anxious to be part of the Established Church of England, were not about to reject the use of civil power to enforce conformity to their own particular brand of religion, nor were they about to let each person worship as they might please.  When Williams’ opinions rendered him unacceptable to Puritan authorities in Boston, he moved to Salem and later to Plymouth where the Church employed him, but eventually the more traditional Puritans managed to have him summoned before the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to answer for his separatist views.  He was accused of spreading “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions” and before he could be apprehended he fled to Raynham Massachusetts where he was sheltered for the winter by the Native Americans, and from there in the spring he and a band of followers settled in what is now Providence, Rhode Island.  Within two years of his settling in Rhode Island, Williams became convinced of the importance of believer’s baptism and had himself rebaptized by Ezekiel Holliman before the end of 1638.  Williams and his followers constituted the first Baptist congregation in the United States and the congregation survives today as the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island.  Williams did not long a Baptist; he was troubled by the lack of an apostolic continuity and came to believe that Christians must await the Divine appointment of new apostles who would restore the Church.  The Baptist congregation which he established, however, did and does survive as I just noted. 

English Baptists tended to reject the Calvinist doctrine of double pre-destination by which some have been destined from before time for salvation and others for eternal damnation.  With his strict Puritan roots, however, Williams was a staunch Calvinist.  Baptists who believe in double pre-destination are Particular Baptists; those who hold to Free Will are General Baptists.  Perhaps it would be clearer to explain that Particular Baptists hold that Christ died for each person who has been pre-destined by that atonement for salvation.  Salvation is thus particular.  General Baptists believe that Christ died for the atonement of the sins of all people and that while all are not necessarily saved, grace is available to all.   Salvation is thus general. 

Rhode Island was established on the principle of Religious Freedom and there was even a Jewish congregation founded before the end of the seventeenth century.  While there was no overt persecution of Catholics, they were never welcomed in Rhode Island and at the time of the American Revolution there is no record of a single Catholic living in the State which is very strange given that they were found in every other State of the New Republic, even Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia—all of which had strong laws against them. 

Baptists have a very strange intellectual history.  While both Smyth in England and Williams in America were products of the Oxbridge system and competent scholars, and while the Providence Church was associated with the establishment of Brown University, the predominance of Baptists—along with Methodists and Presbyterians—in the Second Great Awakening drastically changed the character of American Baptists. 

The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival, principally on the American Frontier, in the last years of the 18^th century and the first three decades of the 19^th.  The insufficient numbers of trained clergy to meet the spiritual hungers of the rapidly expanding frontier led to a predominance of lay preaching which replaced a biblical literalism for the more intellectually sound biblical theology of classic Protestant thought.  Indeed, the revival marks the triumph of raw religious emotionalism over intellectual integrity in a way that would only appall Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and the other Reformation Fathers.  The Bible came to mean whatever the preacher wanted it to mean, regardless of the eighteen hundred years of Christian prayer, reflection, and study that had gone before.  This fell right in line with the radical individualism that had blighted Protestantism since Luther’s profound conviction that Christ had died “for me” overshadowed the classic doctrine that Christ had “died for humankind.”  This emphasis on individual belief and individual salvation continues to undermine sound ecclesiology in modern America where even we Catholics tend to exalt individual opinion over adherence to a common creed. 

Contemporary Baptists range from the theologically sophisticated like Harvey Cox, Amy Butler, the late Warren T. Carr, Robert Bernard or Dale Wood Peterson to the self-anointed mad men at the other end of the spectrum such as the late Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka.  Unfortunately, the anti-intellectual approach of Biblical fundamentalism that totally ignores the biblical scholarship of the last two centuries tends to predominate among Baptists giving a rather dunce-like cast to their reputation.  Preachers like Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and the late Gerry Falwell have not helped improve the reputation. 

Franklin Graham’s father, The Reverend Doctor Billy Graham, was no bright light of Christian academia, but much like such Catholic figures such as Mother Theresa or Dorothy Day he exercised such a strong example of an applied Christian Faith that he has had an unparalleled moral influence on American life, a stronger influence than any theologian.  Other contemporary “evangelists” have often proved to be at best entrepreneurs, and too often just plain charlatans but Billy Graham is a true American icon.  Unfortunately his son and others have done much to dismantle the Empire of Christian credibility that Billy Graham built by his decades of walking the walk as well as talking the talk.   

A common Texas expression “A Baptist Bar,” for a bar concealed behind panels in a wall when fellow churchies come to visit, has come to typify “evangelical morality” which is seen to emphasize a public righteousness that conceals private iniquity.   Frankly in this 21^st century all Christians of any and all denominations need to clean up our act where we flaunt virtues that are no more than a phony veneer that make us appear more upright than we truly are.  Whether it is the sex scandals in our (and others’) church, the inordinate salaries and lifestyles of some preachers , the fiscal fleecing of the flocks entrusted to our care, or the just general dishonesty that is an universal after-effect of original sin, we need to do some repairs on our own houses before we start throwing stones at the unchurched.  

Merry Christmas--God So Loved The World That He Sent His Only Son

Well, we finally finished the series on what an evangelical renewal of Religious Life might look at.  I was relieved to hear from one reader, Olllddude, that he (I presume a he) “really enjoyed” it because my readership went waaaay down over the two weeks or so I was posting it. It just isn’t as sexy as calling out the krazies or hitting issues like who gets to go to Holy Communion or just how many silk worms have laid down their lives so that Cardinal Burke can cut his dashing figure at Christmas Midnight Mass.   Nevertheless, I am glad to have written it because I believe that the renewal of Religious Life is a top priority for a renewal of the Church.  Love ‘em or leave ‘em, the Nuns on the Bus and the LCWR mavens arguing with the plump prelates of the CDF get the rest of us thinking, arguing, and looking at the issues.  And if these same women—and the guy Religious too—got their act together in terms of a truly evangelical life-style that shook the rest of us out of our cultural complacency, I think our Church would be something very different.  Not only would our favorite member of the Sacred College find himself under inpatient care for his wardrobe affectations that are somewhat of a hybrid of Louis XIV and Lady Gaga, but we would be freed of the web woven by the culture wars that are confusing the platform of the Religious Right for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in how we reach out to Gays, the Remarried, the Cohabitating, and those for whom English is a second language.  But enough about all that for now.  I want to get to the purpose of this particular posting. 

Purpose of this particular posting, Oh! I almost forgot: Merry Christmas.  Let’s remember that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the World, but so that the World might be saved through him.  Not my original idea, but it works so well, I want to borrow it.

About a week and a half ago I had a response from a reader named Christopher.  Christopher got a little itchy about my not responding right away, but that was, I assured him, because I didn’t want just to do a response hidden away beneath the posting to which he was reacting, but to do a posting on the questions he raised  about several of my entries, and in particular about my claim that the translation “for many” is not a good translation of the “pro multis” found in the Latin text of the Mass because the “pro multis” itself is a faulty translation of the Greek original.  But before I go further, let me post Christopher’s remarks. 

I've read your back posts concerning 'pro multis', and you're simply mistaken in your reading of the Greek. The phrase which is rendered into Latin as 'pro multis' is not, as you state, 'hoi polloi' ("the many" or "the multitude") but 'peri pollwn', which can only mean "for many" or "on behalf of many" (which is why it's rendered precisely as such in modern translations of the New Testament, which are based directly on the Greek). And while "for many" CAN be interpreted with a Calvinist slant, it need not be. It's perfectly consistent with the Catholic belief that those who, in fact, are reprobate need not have been and could have freely availed themselves of salvation through Christ. Your preferred translation of "for all," however, is extremely problematic, since the only way you can rule out universal salvation (if indeed you wish to rule it out) is to say that Christ's suffering was at least partially in vain (i.e., his suffering for those who would nonetheless reject salvation on Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVIX

Well, let me begin by coming clean.  When I referred to the Greek word πολλοι I referred to it in the nominative case. (Greek, unlike English, is a highly inflected language, which means that a word changes its case (nouns or adjectives) or tense (verb) depending on its role in the sentence.  A noun, or the adjective that agrees with it, which is the subject of the sentence is in the “nominative case.”  A noun (and its adjectives) which is object of the action of the verb, is in the “accusative case.” And so on, there being distinct cases for indirect objects, to imply possession, to follow certain prepositions etc.  This exists only barely in English but we can find remnants of inflection in pronouns: “I” am the subject of this sentence.   But when you are talking about “me” you might need to use the accusative case following the preposition “about.”  When you give “me” a gift you also would use the accusative case since “me” refers to the object of the action of the verb “give.”   (Actually, that could be a dative since I am the indirect object and not the direct object of the verb, but we don’t have a dative in English and thus the indirect object in English is in the accusative case. And now of course that gift is “mine” which is the possessive form of the pronoun “I.”   I hope you get this concept because in all honesty as a freshman in high school starting Latin I, it was the most difficult concept for me to grasp.  Even though I instinctively get it right in English 99.9% of the time, I never really understood it until well into Latin III.  And then there was Greek.  And German.  And Hebrew.  Fortunately French and Italian are not so highly inflected—they are more like English but you still have to watch out a bit. 

In any case, when referring to a noun in a foreign language the convention is that one refers to it in the nominative case regardless of how it is used in the sentence.  And so I referred to ‘οι πολλοι in the nominative when in fact it is, as Christopher points out πολλϖν, the genitive (possessive) case in the Greek.  The reason that it is in the genitive is that it follows the preposition περι which means, “concerning” and περι takes the genitive case when it means “about” or “concerning.”   That provides us with the first level of our answer. (Just in case you feel like we have slipped through the looking glass, be assured that in academics this surrealism is our version of normal.  Just think of what it would have been like if Sheldon Cooper had gone into Liberal Arts rather than Physics.) 

It has been a long time since I studied last studied Greek (44 years to be precise) though I do remember hashing all this out again when I did my theological work. But just to be sure, I went over the classical languages department and sat down with one of our Greek scholars and had him review it with me. 

Whereas when one refers to a noun in the nominative in Greek, as in English, one usually places the article, in this case ‘οι (which means “the”), the article would not normally be used in Koine Greek after the preposition περι.  (Koine is the Greek dialect used throughout much of the eastern end of the Roman Empire at the time the Christian Scriptures [as well as the Old Testament Septuagint] were composed.  Koine distinguishes the popular Greek of the Graeco-Roman world from the Attic Greek of Thucydides (5^th century BC) or the archaic Ionic of Homer in an even earlier period.  The significance is not in the absence of the yet implied “‘οι” in the word πολλοι (genitive: πολλϖν) itself.  While it means “many” it is not, as it is in English, an adjective nor as in the Words of Institution, an adjective acting as a noun (poured out for you and for many).  The word πολλοι, or more properly, ‘οι πολλοι is a noun and it  means not “many” in a restrictive sense, but “a multitude,” or “the masses,” or in the phrase of Edward George Earle Bulwer Lytton Bulwer (only an Englishman could carry such a name) and much cherished by Winston Churchill: “the great unwashed.”  There is not a universality but an inclusivity built into the word at which the English “many” fails.

So how do we translate it.  The French have, I believe, done it best: pour la multitude.   The problem with a prayer that says that Christ’s blood was shed for “many” is that Christ did not die for many.  He in fact died for all.  This does not mean that all accept the salvation offered them in Christ’s blood, but it is our Catholic faith that the Redemptive Sacrifice offered by Christ on Calvary and renewed in each Mass is sufficient for the salvation of humankind. 

The problem with universal salvation—that all will be saved—is that ultimately it denies freedom of the will.  If we are all saved then we have no choice but to accept the Love of God.  Going back to the beginning of the third century, the Christian tradition condemned this teaching that all are saved precisely because it robs us of our freedom of the will.  Universal salvation requires that we are ultimately compelled to love God and be loved by him for all eternity.  There is no shortage of Catholics greats—including Saint Thérèse if Lisieux who, in forfeit of proper catechesis, so believed however.  And of course, while we cannot hold that all people will be saved we can hope that each person will be saved, the end result being somewhat the same while the later formula leaves the individual’s freedom of will intact. 

When Innocent X condemned Jansenism in 1653 this issue of Christ dying for all, many, some, or a few was raised.  The Jansenists, who in their Catholic mutation of Calvin’s heresy of double predestination, claimed that it conformed to the Semipelagian heresy to claim that Christ died or shed his blood for all men.  Pope Innocent condemned that proposition of Janesnism, and in so doing established that our Catholic faith does indeed claim that Christ died/shed his blood, for all.  Kontemporary Katholic Krazieism today is nothing other than a strain of Jansenism redivivus.  The fuss over the Words of Institution asserting that Christ died for all was a thorn in their double-predestination side as it means that all people are (potentially) saved in as much as Christ’s redemptive act is sufficient for the salvation of all.  Again, remember, though that our free will enables us to reject the gift.    And since the inadequate “for many” translation has been revived in the current translation of the Roman Missal, the krazies in their sermons, talks, blogs, and videos have used the liturgical text to advance their Jansenist poison claiming that the liturgy makes it clear that Christ did not die for all but only for those who will be saved.  I have noticed that since the ascendency of Pope Francis, more and more elements of the previous translation are slipping back into the Mass.  I for one am glad to see many priests going back to the “for all.” 

That being said, let’s slip from the rabbit hole back into the light of day—Christmas Day—and celebrate that wonderful mysterium fidei:  God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the World, but so that the World might be saved through him.   God’s Will, whatever our freedom, is that all people be saved.