Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens his friend’s countenance (Proverbs 27:17). I am grateful to the four respondents to my little essay about communion rails. There has been some hacking [ 😉 ] but they have honed my outlook and I hope that, in some degree at least, I can return the favour with more honing than hacking.
I made notes responding to each of my interlocutors as their essays were received so, hoping the readers will forgive this approach, my response will comprise more or less self-contained replies to each. There will be some overlap of course.
I am thankful to Pastor Farley for his confirmation and elaboration of key parts of my essay. I hope you will forgive me, Mike, if I say no more. I only do so in an attempt to reduce the overall length of my response!
I do sympathise with the difficulty in having to respond to me in about 2000 words but I was surprised by Dr Ney’s reaction and suspect a misapprehension of my position on several issues.
First, I must correct Dr Ney’s idea that I was speaking for the Free Church of England (otherwise called the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland). I have no authority to do so and my piece is a personal opinion that was largely written prior to my being ordained into the FCE in 2016. Moreover, I am no longer a member of the FCE.
Memorials and Jesus’ Presence
Dr Ney says: “Kay takes a hard-lined memorialist position throughout his piece–he emphasizes that the Eucharist is an act of remembrance…”
I suspect that by “an act of remembrance” Dr Ney means a fond mental imagination on our part. However, I am unaware that I made any such emphasis on our remembering, not least since I believe the Eucharist to be a memorial that reminds God of Jesus and His atoning work.
Remembering in the Bible is far more than a mere mental exercise. When Israel was commanded to “Remember, the Sabbath day to keep it holy” it was not a command to close their eyes and bring to mind the Sabbath; rather it was a command to memorialise it, to make it an institution, to convene together on that day for the worship of Yahweh (Leviticus 23:3), to rest from selfish concerns and to give rest to others.
For me and, I think, the Bible, a memorial is an object or rite with a there-ness and that-ness to it that acts as a reminder to God and stimulates Him to action. It is not something primarily to stir our memories or imagination. God set the rainbow in the skies, not to remind us, but to remind Him to keep His promise (Genesis 9:16). And Jesus instituted the Supper to memorialise Him and His redemptive work, not so that we should remember Calvary (how could we, who were never there?) but so that God should see and remember. When we remember, all we can do is imagine. Even yesterday is irretrievable to us. It can never be real again. When God remembers, He creates reality – things happen. He makes His memories come to fruition in the present. Nothing is ever lost to Him. Past, Present and Future are all before Him and history unfolds at His behest. For God to remember His oath is to perform it.
In my own church, the pastor lifts up the bread and the wine when giving thanks for them, not for the congregation to worship, but for God to see and to be reminded of all that He has given and gives us in Jesus.
So, the Supper is more than a memorial to an absent friend which we do when we feel like it. It is an act of obedience that we perform every week. It is not merely a reminder to stir up our emotions over what Jesus did for us on the cross. We do not bow our heads in contemplation of a mental image that we have conjured.
If, however, (by the term “memorialist position”) Dr Ney has inferred and is implying that I do not believe that Jesus’ humanity is present in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, he is correct.
Were He not a fully human person it would have been impossible for Jesus to redeem us. He, a human, suffered and died for human sin. And He, a human, came through death to bring about a humanity that can transcend death and the grave. Before His passion and ascension Jesus told His disciples “It is expedient for you that I go away” (John 16:7). Jesus really left them and, when He left and went up into heaven, He could not, in His humanity, be with them. He is locally, physically, in heaven at the right hand of the Father (as we read in 1 Peter 3:22) whereas we are locally, physically, here on earth.
As a human being, Jesus cannot be in more than one place or time at once. He cannot be located everywhere a mass is being held. To assert otherwise is to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. He is absent, really absent from the earth – and will be until the day we are raised from the dead and the whole creation is gloriously transformed into the creation of the new, resurrection, age. In the closing words of Matthew’s Gospel there is an eschatological tension between Jesus’ absence and presence which those who say Jesus is physically present “in the host” attempt to short circuit. Rather, as Paul teaches us, in the Supper we “show forth the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).
Dr Ney says I “strawmanned” my opponents when I said they seem to understand the words of consecration to have the effect of permanently making the bread a holy substance to be revered.
I beg to differ. Take, for example, the Right Reverend Ray Sutton – no strawman he. Rather he is the Presiding Bishop of the REC and a founding member of the ACNA. At about 12 minutes 50 seconds in here, Bishop Sutton presents a slide in which he says –
“Something ontological happens to the bread and wine upon consecration. They change in their essence while the material in some sense remains.”
My argument is that this is wrongly to focus on the elements of bread and wine as the locus of Jesus’ presence with us in the Supper. (And, at worst, to deify them). It has been this historical fixation on the elements (even in “the magisterial streams of the Protestant Reformations”) that has been so unhelpful[1]. Jesus called on His assembled disciples to do something and I have tried to show that we ought to be looking for His presence, not in the elements, but in our assembly and in the faithful enactment of what He called us to do.
The whole Jesus is really present with us humans when we do the Lord’s Supper, but our presence together with Him is accomplished by His Spirit (the Glorifying Uniter of what is separate) – and His Spirit is not somehow trapped in the bread and wine so that they remain holy even after the rite is finished. Rather, we are, like John, “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10).
The bread and wine remain bread and wine throughout the rite but, while we do the Supper, Jesus feeds us with Himself by His Spirit. As the bread and wine settle in our stomach, Jesus settles in us. He is as much a part of us as are the bread and wine. And, because we all share the One Jesus in the common loaf and the common cup, we all become one with Him and with each other. So, because we feed on Him, we are actually feeding on one another – we are indwelt by Jesus and by each other (John 7:38) – because Christ’s body is not only the body sacramental (the bread), it is also the body ecclesial (the church).
When we come together in Jesus’ Name to perform this ritual He has commanded us to do, something powerful happens. Jesus comes to be specially present with us on His day. He comes to give us Himself so that we become, in a special way, His body. The Church is the body of Christ on earth and that affirmation is renewed every time we do the Supper.
So, unlike the Zwinglian straw man Dr Ney thinks me to be, I, with him, affirm “that the celebration of the Eucharist is, as a moment of Divine encounter, at the center of Christian worship.” His priest may receive the same communion as the laity he serves but, for all his argument, they remain on opposite sides of an altar rail. In my own and others’ experience, some laity at least perceive (even come to desire) a division, regardless of ministers’ protestations to the contrary. At the end of the service, they may even see the minister consuming what remains of the elements and understand that the space beyond the rail, and all that goes on behind it, is not for them.
It is precisely because we hold to lex orandi, lex credendi that I am so concerned about the effect of communion rails. What we do in worship affects what we believe; never more so than at the eucharist, the apotheosis of worship. It matters not what verbal protestations are made (in a black rubric for example) when physical posture and positioning convey a message (over generations) to the laity that sinks so deep into the psyche as to form assumptions that colour both thinking and life.
Jesus said, if a son should ask his father for a fish, would he give him a serpent? I ask, would a father put his children behind a rail and make them kneel for their food? Would a bridegroom do that to his bride at their marriage supper?
Holy Orders and the Common Cup
Another of Dr Ney’s misapprehensions is worded thus: “The things that Anglicanism retains that Kaye [sic] worries are vestiges of popish idolatry, including Holy Orders and the common cup…”
I do not understand whence these inferences arose. I did not mention holy orders. My words merely exemplified an apparent hierarchical divide between the priesthood as masters and the laity as servants that communion rails underscore and enforce.
Moreover, Dr Ney wastes his words by mentioning individual cups and synchronicity etc.. Where did I ever mention these? I firmly hold to the use of the common cup and a common loaf when numbers allow[2]. In my own church, once the minister has broken the loaf and a piece for himself. It is passed to the (seated) congregation, whose members each take a good piece (much more than a crumb) before passing the loaf on with the giver saying: “The body of Christ: the Bread of Life!” and the recipient responding: “Thanks be to God!”.
Similarly, once the minister has drunk from the cup, he passes it to the nearest member of the congregation with these words: “The blood of Christ: His peace be with you!”. The congregant takes the cup, responding: “And also with you!” before drinking. And so the cup, with this verbal exchange, is passed from one to another until it is returned to the table. And the Spirit, as Jesus said (John 7:38) flows from one to another.
Dr Ney says: “But the practice of Holy Communion must feature the individual, whatever the architecture, because it proceeds by enabling the consumption of the elements by individual mouths. The historic way of ensuring that this featuring does not become individualistic is to insist upon a single act of consecration, as well as the use of a celebrant’s host and a common cup…”
It is hard to see how a “celebrant’s host” distinct from what the laity consumes avoids a sense of division. Equally, a “single act of consecration” may, in Dr Ney’s view, be a historic way of affirming corporeity but to lump loaf and cup together under one such act before administration of either is simply not the Biblical way.
Old Covenant Distinctions
In a way, I am unsurprised to see that Dr Ney, in some sense, wants to retain the Old Covenant clean/unclean distinctions and indeed the Jew/Gentile distinction. How else to uphold altar rails? He still seems to think we are “Gentile sinners… who have no native right to communion with Israel’s God”. But baptism puts us into Jesus Christ, the proper Israel, and the priestly Judaism of the Bible was finished after AD 30, definitively so in AD 70. There is now only one flock and one Shepherd. Jesus broke down the barrier between clean and unclean (e.g. Acts 10:15). Uncleanness/death used to spread (Haggai 2:10-13; Romans 5:12). Now holiness/life spreads (Romans 5:20-21; 1 Corinthians 7:14 – contrast Ezra 10).
I can reassure Dr Ney that I do not reject holiness as a “New Covenant category” but the 1662 BCP’s little-carrot-and-mainly-stick approach to the Supper was not, I believe, one that rightly encouraged the saints to come to the Table, not least because there was an assumption (even a lay desire) that it would not be celebrated regularly and, at least, weekly. Why, otherwise, the need for an announcement of when the Supper would next be celebrated?
The Ordained Priesthood
The fact that another interlocutor, Rev. Blake Johnson, also infers that I do not like “the concept of an ordained priesthood” puzzles me. But it means that I must, at least briefly, address the issue. I am all for an ordained ministry through which, alone and ordinarily, covenant-renewal worship is led (absolution pronounced, the Word proclaimed and the Eucharist administered). But I find no Biblical basis for an unbroken Apostolic Succession through which conduit bishops inherit apostolic power. Power to convey, through ordination, Spiritual priestly powers: powers to absolve from sin and to bring Sacramental healing and life to souls, thus making bishops the necessary channels of divine grace, and the upshot of which idea is that only those who have received the Holy Spirit at the hands of a bishop are proper ministers of Christ (and, thus indeed, that the Church is effectively contained in the Bishop).
I have personal experience of this very thing. I was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister at the hands of two presbyters in 1983, one of whom was a certain Ray R Sutton, now presiding bishop of the REC (USA). When, in 2016, I was to become a minister of the Free Church of England (and my congregation to join the FCE), the bishop responsible insisted (despite my earlier ordination by Sutton) on my being re-ordained, not with the historic FCE ordinal but in a different ceremony that included my hands being anointed with oil. I was puzzled and uncomfortable with the re-ordination (which cast an aspersion on my 33 years of prior ministry) but went along with it for peace’s sake.
Later, I began to notice that the same bishop (the Primus of the denomination) would refer to non-episcopal churches not as churches, but as “congregations” or “communities” or “bodies” etc.. Equally, their ministers’ orders were not recognised as valid. And any ecumenical effort was focused on linking with other churches that hold to a belief in apostolic succession, or on bringing non-episcopal churches under such an episcopacy.
There is much more to say on this matter but perhaps it would better be dealt with in a different conversation.
The BCP and “kneeling at the altar”
I do not hate the Book of Common Prayer. I was baptised, brought up, confirmed and converted in the Church of England, only leaving it when 18 years of age, and I returned to the BCP when I entered the Free Church of England as a minister (with orders recognised by the C of E) at the age of 65. I love, and have regularly used, the BCP’s Morning and Evening prayers (though without communion they are truncated as a main Lord’s Day service), the daily chanted Psalms, its prayers, thanksgivings and collects, its calendar/lectionary etc.. However, I do not believe in confirmation as a condition for access to the Lord’s Table and I think the BCP Communion service is in need of radical reform (with which, sadly, hardly any Anglicans I know seem to agree).
I would not mind, Blake, if you used the term altar rather than table because the word “altar” and the phrase “table of the Lord” are used interchangeably in the Bible. For example, Ezekiel 41:21-22; 44:15-16; Malachi 1:7,12; 1 Corinthians 9:13-14; 10:16-21; Hebrews 13:10. God’s altar is occasionally called a table in the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant it is mostly referred to as a table (Luke 22:21,30; John 13:28, 1 Corinthians 10:21) and only occasionally as an altar (Hebrews 13:10 – compare 1 Corinthians 9:13-14). On occasion, therefore, but not predominantly, it is perfectly Scriptural and acceptable to refer to the Table of the Lord in the New Covenant Church as an altar.
Equally, I firmly believe that we ought to kneel during worship. But the time for kneeling is when we are in supplication, especially when we first come before the Lord, confessing our sin, not after we are absolved, sanctified by the Word and invited to supper with Jesus.
Liturgical Reconstruction
In response to my appeal for a liturgical posture more appropriate to the setting of a meal than sitting or standing, Blake points to the disciples’ reclining posture at the last supper and to agape feasts, then asks the question “How far should we go in such a project of liturgical reconstruction?” The obvious answer is that we should go as far as the whole Bible leads us. But the question has implicit within it two assumptions – first, that we must “reconstruct” a lost liturgy; second that the whole project is a matter of degree.
I would argue there is no need to “reconstruct” a liturgy as though there are lacunae in the Scriptural record and we must look to extraneous sources to fill the gaps. As James Jordan has shown in many places[3], and Jeff Meyers has amply written[4], provided that we do not ignore the books of the Old Testament (and especially the book of Leviticus), there is ample information to show us what should be the order and content of our worship services.
As one small example of what I mean, consider the relationship of the Tribute[5] offerings (Leviticus 2) to the Lord’s Supper[6].
In a broad sense, all the rites done before God at the Tabernacle/Temple were memorials, but only the rites involving bread or grain are ever actually called memorials (Leviticus 2:2,9,16; 5:12; 24:7; Numbers 5:15).
While Israel was in the wilderness after the Exodus, the only Tribute offering was grains or flour or bread. But, just after the spies returned from the promised land carrying a huge bunch of grapes, Yahweh instituted the drink offering, the libation of wine, to be an integral part of the Tribute offering. Numbers 15:2 indicates that the libation of wine (Numbers 15:5) is to be added to the bread rituals only after they enter the land. In Numbers 15:4-10 and throughout Numbers 28-29, the libation of wine always comes after the flour of Tribute.
Jesus’ disciples were familiar with the fact that, every morning and evening (Exodus 29:38-42; Numbers 28:3-8) in the Temple, the Tribute was offered with the Ascension (whole burnt) offering. All the grain-based Tribute offerings were divided, with the priest receiving a portion, called the holiest of holy portions, after Yahweh had been given His. And the part given to Yahweh was called His “memorial”.
When Jesus took bread and broke it, and giving it to them, called it His own memorial, it would have appeared that Jesus was taking to Himself the very position that Yahweh had occupied in the ritual system.
Of course, none of the disciples had ever eaten the tribute bread because none of them was an Aaronic priest. But Jesus not only treats them as priests, entitled to eat the holiest of holy portions: He shares with them the whole loaf and makes the whole action a memorial – something that was only ever reserved solely for Yahweh. He is effectively saying that, now and henceforth, in doing this they are eating with Yahweh Himself[7].
But then Jesus does something even more amazing. He takes a cup of wine, and having given thanks, He gives it to the disciples and says, “Drink of this, all of you. This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, whenever you do it, for My memorial.”
Every morning and every evening, during the Tribute at the Temple, wine was poured out as a libation at the altar (Numbers 15:1-16; 28:7). None of the wine was ever given to the priests. In fact, priests were not supposed to drink wine or beer on duty (Leviticus 10:9). Unlike the grain tribute, the wine was never called a memorial.
By moving from bread to wine in this way, Jesus was reconstituting the two elements of the Tribute offering in a new way.
The memorial Tribute of bread told Israel that God had started His great work. He had instituted priestly worship. They were allowed to come before God and remind Him that He had finished the beginning, so to speak. They could bring the memorial bread before Him and ask Him to renew His covenant in their generation by building on the beginning.
The kingdom, however, had not arrived. And although they came into the land, and eventually had a Davidic king, the wine was never fully there. Even in the days of the kings (and emperors) the priests might not drink it in God’s presence, but had to pour it out. There was no memorial in the wine, because the end had not come. The kingdom had not fully come. Hence, they could not bring memorial wine before God and ask Him to renew the “ends of the ages” and the “fullness of the kingdom.”
But when Jesus told them that the wine is now to be drunk, and that it is His memorial, He is telling the disciples that the end of the ages has come. The kingdom has come. The rite that He leaves with them for us memorializes first the fullness of the beginning with alpha bread, and then memorializes the fullness of the completion with the omega wine. And, just as the morning and evening Tribute was only ever offered along with the lamb of the Ascension (Exodus 29:38-42); the bread and wine Jesus gave us is only ever given on the basis of His substitutionary death as the Lamb of God.
In the Tabernacle and Temple, there was bread in the Holy Place, a priestly area where the priests did their daily work. God was enthroned as King in the Holy of Holies, but no priest or anyone else was allowed to stay in that room. Man was not invited to share rule with God. This is part of the reason why kingly wine is excluded from the Tabernacle. If man is going to drink wine in the presence of God, then man must be in the throne room with God and seated with Him. And before Jesus, there was no man fit for this glory. Hence, the wine was brought near, but then poured out for God alone to drink.
By instituting His Supper, not only was Jesus telling the disciples they could do more than the priests in that they could eat bread not just before God but with God; He was bidding them, reclining as they were at a table, to drink wine in the presence of God, like kings.
Not only was He telling them that they were like “Aaronic priests” entitled to eat sacred bread, but that they were now also kings who were entitled to be in God’s throne room and share wine, enthroned with Him.
This was a sign that the entire history of redemption and maturation was being brought to its finish. This is why, after the Supper, Jesus says to the disciples (Luke 22:29-30): And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
One thing we may draw from this is that, as the Lord’s people consume the wine of the Lord’s Supper, they do so as kings and are therefore to recline or sit as kings do.
According to the Ordinance
As to “how far” we should go – when we come to do the Lord’s Supper, we surely ought not be asking the question of how closely we should follow what Jesus said and did. Instead, we should be addressing our obvious deviations. We could, at least, begin by giving thanks for, and consuming, the bread and the wine as corporately separate actions. Moreover, any who administer both elements by intincture should desist from doing so. The way we perform worship rituals affects the way we think and, when we do the Lord’s Supper wrongly, it is no surprise to find wrong beliefs and messed-up lives.
David was thoroughly rebuked and Uzza died because they carried the Ark on an ox cart instead of having the Levites carry it by the poles provided for the purpose (1 Chronicles 13 and 15). David learned his lesson. He understood why the LORD broke out against Uzza. He tells the Levites, “Because you did not carry [the ark] at the first, Yahweh our God made an outburst on us, for we did not seek Him according to the ordinance” (1 Chronicles 15:13 – Numbers 4:15; 7:9; Deuteronomy 31:9).
“Well, what a little thing!” some might say – “Cart or poles what’s the difference?” Surely, it’s better to use a cart than have men risking injury lugging the ark all that way on their shoulders? But there is a difference. When God tells you to do something, you don’t go changing it, because you think you know a better way.
It’s possible for us to do something that seems good to us, something that we believe in all sincerity is the will of God, and nevertheless find that God opposes us. At the first “the thing was right in the eyes of all the people” but God broke out against them. He killed a man who seemed to be doing good, who apparently just wanted to prevent the ark from falling to the ground.
Our God is a consuming fire. To disobey Him is a fearful thing. People in the Corinthian church died because of their abuse of the Supper. They were not deeming/treating the sacramentally ecclesial body[8] rightly (1 Corinthians 11:29).
How to Effect Widespread Reform?
Blake’s second question is: “Who gets to decide our common liturgical practices?” He says: “For Anglicans, as much as we might protest this or that piece of the liturgy, we don’t get to decide how we worship together; we receive a tradition, submit and apprentice ourselves to it as the people of God. I’m curious what Arthur would propose for how liturgical change should come about so that liturgy does not become an idiosyncratic endeavor.”
First, I would point out that the traditions we are to receive and absorb must be from Scripture, not the “traditions of men”. Next, I have to say that I find little more idiosyncratic than the north-side celebration with the table hard against the east wall as Laud prescribed. That aside, however, it is noteworthy that the Anglican received tradition came largely from the mind of one man. Unless one person first initiates change, nobody will. True, Cranmer gave deference to a far older tradition but he was unafraid to hack and mould it to his own idiosyncrasies. Spirit-filled individuals can be influential because His sheep discern Jesus’ voice when they hear it.
In Blake’s shoes I would first seek to influence the Diocesan Synod or, if there is one, a standing committee on Doctrine & Worship or some such. It is a question of being firmly convinced by Scripture and winning others to that persuasion within the structures of one’s ecclesial environment. Given the extent of liturgical additions/modifications that have occurred within Anglicanism in the last hundred years, is it beyond the bounds of possibility to achieve a Biblical one?
Beyond that, Theopolis itself is doing an excellent job of convening people like ourselves across denominational boundaries and exposing them to the powerful sway of Scripture. True unity comes when we all, with open and humble minds, submit to the Word of God. We shall all be blessed, not by becoming exactly like each other, but as we each become more conformed to the Word. Unity will not come through clericalism[9] but through the rich indwelling of the Word of Christ.
A Tense Exchange
I agree with Dr. McDermott that what I had to say will not be the last word on communion rails but I had hoped it would be a helpful word, carefully considered. Instead, I came away from his essay astonished at the accusations levelled against me and with the clear impression that he believes the church should major on tension and doubt.
Not content with accusing me of rejecting Old Covenant theology in its entirety, Dr. McDermott also reckons that I am a nominalist and a Hellenist, who “misses the tensions [of Scripture] and replaces them with Greek binaries”. I am no nominalist. I am a covenantalist – one who believes that we must distinguish between, but never separate, what God has joined by His Word and Spirit.
To judge from Dr. McDermott’s and Dr Ney’s responses, together with some on social media, my essay has touched an Anglican nerve. It is remarkable how a confrontation with Anglicans about the assumptions behind their way of doing the Supper seems to make the red mist descend. Many have struggled to define what Anglicanism is. Well here, surely, is part of the core.
I agree that the Bible is full of mysteries – because “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing…” Nevertheless, “the glory of kings is to search them out.” (Proverbs 25:2). Dr. McDermott says there are “tensions in Scripture” that I have ignored but this is, perhaps, a malapropism because God is not in tension with Himself. The tensions we experience are all our own as we seek to search out the hidden depths of God’s Word.
Dr. McDermott talks about heretical traditions collapsing “the tensions in pursuit of what they call consistency or reasonableness”. Yet, as I responded to Dr Ney above, it is those who say Jesus is physically present in the consecrated elements who are the ones attempting to short circuit the eschatological tension between Jesus’ current bodily absence and His coming bodily presence.
Old Covenant Theology and its “Cavalier Rejection”
As one who has spent much of my adult life preaching through Old Testament books, it is beyond astonishing to me to be effectively accused of Marcionism. I did not write that Christians are forbidden to return to Old Covenant theology. I wrote that the “degrees of holiness” idea from Old Covenant theology was something they were forbidden to return to. The epistle to the Hebrews clearly teaches that the Levitical priesthood with all of its exclusionary boundaries and taboos including the temple’s forecourt, the holy place and holy of holies was finished by Jesus. “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us…” (Hebrews 9:24). Now the lowliest saint may have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19). Those Jewish Christians were warned of the imminent destruction of the temple “he that shall come will come, and will not tarry” and that therefore they were to “live by faith” and not to “draw back” to those old ways (Hebrews 10:35-39; 12:27). The altar we have is outside of that camp (Hebrews 13:10ff).
Dr. McDermott writes that Jesus condemned those who relaxed the “least” of Torah’s commandments and says:
“What might be the “least” commandments? Arguably, those of Leviticus, which Jesus-followers in Matthew’s day and ever since have questioned. Why keep them when Jesus and Paul rejected Jewish law in the New Covenant?”
I had written the earlier section about Leviticus and its importance for liturgy before I ever saw Dr. McDermott’s essay. Yet he says:
“My point is not that we are to obey Leviticus as Jews are obligated to, but that we Gentile Christians cannot reject “Old Covenant theology” in such cavalier fashion as Kay suggests.”
But I do not reject “Old Covenant theology” in any fashion, let alone a cavalier one. At best, this accusation is sleight of hand on Dr. McDermott’s part.
The Barrier in the Chancel
Again, Dr. McDermott misrepresents me when he says: “The same thing is true of most of Kay’s other assertions about the Bible. He misfires when he claims laymen are barred from the chancel…”
But I did not say that laymen are barred from the chancel. I said:
“As Anglicans celebrate the Eucharist the idea is perpetuated, for laypeople still find that their habitual journey of ascent ends, not in rest and complete acceptance at Jesus’ family meal table, but in a barrier at which a penitential posture must be adopted, and beyond which the lay person can never go. It is not hard to see how this can engender and reinforce a mindset that the table area is too holy for lay people. They are, quite literally, barred from entering.”
I think it is very clear that I was referring to the railed-off area “east” of the communion rail – “the table area” – not the chancel in general.
Holiness, Maturity and Women Priests
There are so many misrepresentations of my position in Dr. McDermott’s essay that it is impossible to deal with them all: “Kay charges that “degrees of holiness” are foreign to Scripture”. When did I say that?
In an attempt to establish his point, Dr. McDermott wrongly identifies degrees of holiness with degrees of maturity. He seems to forget that Adam and Eve were created without sin but they were babes in terms of their Spiritual maturity. Of course the saints differ in their degrees of sanctification but this cannot be used to argue that priests, with their “holy orders”, are more holy than the laity or that the altar area is more holy than the nave or that the bread and wine remaining after eucharist are too holy to be discarded or are somehow taboo to lay consumption. Dr. McDermott must explain what the rending of the temple veil from top to bottom meant if he wishes to retain old-covenant categories of exclusion that were manifest in the Tabernacle and the Temple.
I never even mentioned it, but, according to Dr. McDermott, I am also supposed to be ignoring a “tension” that exists between men being divinely ordained to preside at the Lord’s Table and women being excluded from that office. I see no tension here: just a God-ordained difference between the sexes. Jesus is the Bridegroom; we are the Bride. A woman cannot represent the divine Husband to His Bride. Might it not be precisely because the Anglican hierarchy has been promoting this exclusion as a category of holiness rather than a simple sexual difference that tension has been felt and that women in Anglicanism have successfully pressed for the tension to be broken (with all of the doleful consequences for society at large)?
Consecration of Things
In my conversation-starting article I wrote: “To bless in the Bible means to give gifts, thanksgiving and praise.” Dr. McDermott’s interaction makes me realise that I should have added that it also means to guard/set apart/sanctify for the purpose of giving gifts, thanksgiving and praise. In this sense God blessed the seventh day as one in which He would specially bless His people and they were to guard that day and to bless Him in it. And, of course, we bless God’s Name by hallowing it. Such a guarding action does not, of course, somehow change the essence or nature of what is guarded.
Dr. McDermott, declares – “Kay denies any sense of “consecration” of the Eucharistic elements in Scripture, and reinforces this denial with the declaration that in Scripture no thing—only persons—is ever blessed.”
What I actually said was: “Blessing is not a magical concept, we don’t put a blessing on things in the R.C. sense, waving holy water over things and murmuring a holy abracadabra. Men cannot manipulate God, but they ought to walk in His footsteps… We bless persons, not things.”
Pax, Gerald – I agree that my words here are easy to misconstrue. What I was trying to convey is that our religious reverence is due to persons, not things; that our blessing inanimate objects does not make them come to life or undergo a change in their being such that religious reverence is due to them. And that our blessing is only ever secondary to God’s blessing. It only “works” if God does the blessing. Only God can bring life to inanimate things.
You quote the go-to verse for those who believe that the bread and wine of the eucharist undergo a permanent essential change at consecration – 1 Corinthians 10:16 – “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”
If we take blessing of the elements as meaning to guard them from abuse by ensuring God’s pearls are not cast before swine then we can and ought to bless the cup – but this involves no change of essence.
And 1 Corinthians 10:16 certainly reads as though we humans can bless inanimate objects. But Paul explains in 1 Timothy 4:4-5 that “…every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” When we are about to use or consume something in accordance with God’s Word, we give thanks to God (bless Him) for it and that thanksgiving, with God’s imprimatur, sanctifies that gift for the purpose and duration of our usage (our thankful reception of it). The thing is blessed directly by God and only indirectly by us. It is sanctified only because of God’s Word and because we have given thanks to God for his gift to us. It does not come to possess holiness in itself ontologically. It does not become alive so that we should revere it.
We do not address the cup or give thanks to the cup. The priest does not say to the cup: “I bless you” and thereby sanctify the cup by his words. The wine does not undergo an ontological transformation because the priest extends his hands over it and utters a formula. What happens when we give thanks is that God makes it into a blessing (a gift) for us. He makes it the “cup of blessing”. It is He Who blesses the Supper’s wine to us and it is the communion of the blood of Christ while we drink it.
If a thing, a work of human hands, is thus sanctified, are we therefore to kneel before it, revere it, reserve it in a tabernacle, or hold it up to be adored? Does not the second Word of the Decalogue explicitly forbid such a thing? Are we not, rather, to honour the Giver?
In light of 1 Timothy 4:4-5 the massive irony of Anglican emphasis upon the 1662 BCP consecration of the elements and the absence of a prayer of epiclesis is that the BCP consecration prayer contains not one word of thanks to God for the bread or for the wine. The priest merely takes the paten/cup and reiterates Christ’s words of institution. A pedant might therefore ask whether the elements are really sanctified 😉 . The only actual thanks come after all have communed.
Is it, perhaps, this absence of thanks for the gifts of bread and wine that has allowed a perception to grow that this “consecration” brings about a kind of alchemical change?…
Ontological Change?
Dr. McDermott further says of 1 Corinthians 10:16 – “Here Paul asserts not only that a thing can be blessed, but that the blessing changes the ontological nature of the thing blessed.” [emphasis mine].
Wow! Not content with putting words into my mouth, Dr. McDermott even does it to the apostle Paul! “The ontological nature of the thing” – now who is adopting Greek categories? Since, as I understand it, substance is that which has a single essence in virtue of which it belongs to its species, it is hard for me to see how Dr. McDermott’s belief differs from a belief in transubstantiation other than by a verbal casuistry which denies the substance is of the same species as its essence.
Moreover, this crass assertion that, post consecration, Christ’s flesh and blood have become the essence of the bread and wine, entirely overlooks the power of God’s reality-creating Word combined with the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit by Whom alone, though feeding on bread and wine, we feed on Christ. In John 6, referring to His teaching about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, Jesus said: “… Does this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:61-63)
Jesus is not somehow trapped inside the consecrated bread and wine so that we should be petrified of dropping a crumb[10] or spilling a drop. He has ascended up into heaven where He was before. Human blood and flesh cannot be in more than one location at once, but God’s Spirit can be, and is. He is the One Who blesses us through Word and Sacrament. Jesus is not locally present in the bread and wine, but, as we do the Supper, He is really present with (and in) us in and by His Spirit.
I have found that some Anglicans tend to equate “Eucharist” with the bread and wine so that, for them, “Eucharistic presence” means presence in the elements of bread and wine. If Christ is really present in the bread and the wine then we ought indeed, as the Romanists teach, to worship them.
This insistent focus on the elements of the bread and wine instead of on the obedient action of communally doing the Lord’s Supper leads to idolatry. Jesus is really present with us by His Spirit in His people as we do the Supper on His day. He is not encapsulated in “consecrated” bread and wine. He said to “do it” as a memorial. He did not say, “set apart the bread and wine” as a memorial in themselves. It is action of the assembled church, our obedient performance of the ritual commanded by our Lord, that is the memorial. This, not the elements in themselves, is what reminds God of Calvary’s sacrifice and of all His covenant promises in Christ and so makes our intercessions in Christ’s Name powerfully effectual.
Doubt and Self-Examination
Again, Dr. McDermott puts words into my mouth in order to erect a straw man: “Kay also declares that no good Christian should ever doubt his salvation when at the communion table. A liturgy that suggests the possibility of doubt is unbiblical, he alleges.”
Like many others he has made, this is an overblown/misdirected assertion. What I, in fact, said was:
“If we do not sit, it not only demonstrates that we do not appreciate what Jesus has done, it is a subliminal lesson to all taking part that our salvation is in doubt and that we must still beg for crumbs at the hand of a priest.”
And, quoting from the BCP, I wrote:
“This exhortation begins: “YE that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins…” which, rather than welcoming Christ’s children to His Table, invites further introspection and doubt. Am I truly repentant? Am I earnestly repenting?”
I was arguing that Anglican way and form of doing Communion is one that engenders doubt. It is, perhaps, a misguided attempt to promote a godly fear – which is a very different thing from doubt, almost its opposite in fact.
Every week in our church, prior to Communion, our liturgy includes the words of Paul from 1 Corinthians 10:6 and ending with verse 12: “Therefore let him who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” This is not to cause Christians to doubt their salvation, but to warn them against falling into sin through prideful complacency.
However, Dr. McDermott then wants to put even more of a premium on doubt by quoting 1 Corinthians 11:28 –
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
But Paul is not calling for introspection here. The verb translated “examine” is dokimazo and this is the only place where that word is translated as `examine’. It is far more commonly translated as `prove’ or `try’ (Luke 14:19; I Corinthians 3:13; II Corinthians 8:8,22; 13:5; Galatians 6:4; I Thessalonians 2:4; 5:21; I Timothy 3:10; Hebrews 3:9; (James 1:3,12); I Peter 1:7; I John 4:1).
The point is that Paul himself has already evaluated the situation, and found it wanting. He is not here telling the Corinthians to sit in self-contemplation. Rather he is saying `let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.’ Let him be tried as gold in a fire. Let him be qualified. In fact, Paul uses adokimos the very opposite of this word in 9:27 where he says: But I buffet my body, and lead it captive, lest proclaiming to others I myself might be disqualified/rejected. So, the emphasis in 1 Corinthians 11:28 is not on a quietistic self-scrutiny of worthiness, but on an external demonstration of worthiness.
In other words, if a man visibly sinned in the ways described here in I Corinthians 11 such as selfish greed and drunkenness, he has disqualified himself from the Supper. Paul exhorts them not to disqualify themselves like the Israelites who ate and drank of Christ but then, through their lusts, fell in the wilderness (1 Cor 10:5ff).
In fact, the same exact words are in 2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine (piradzo, not dokimazo) yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove (dokimazo) your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates (adokimoi = disqualified)?
In no way am I charging that liturgies should not warn against sin. I am charging that liturgies, postures and architecture should not put a premium on doubt as though it is a good thing.
Valleys Exalted and Hills Made Low
Dr. McDermott goes on to say: “Kay’s suggested liturgical changes are more consistent and reasonable, as it were, but in ways that flatten out the peaks and valleys of Scripture. He misses the tensions.”
This is deeply ironic for it is nothing but an attempt to project Anglican deviations from Scripture onto me. Jesus did not have His disciples kneel or stand while He ate the Supper with them. He did not take the bread without giving thanks and then immediately the wine with no thanks either, merely saying the words of institution as he did so. He did not receive the Supper in both kinds Himself and only then proceed to deliver them in both kinds to each disciple individually.
No, the Bible is very clear about what Jesus did while they all relaxed around the table. He took the bread, gave thanks for it, then He broke it, saying: “This is My body which is for you. Do this as a memorial of me.”. In the same way, after they had all eaten, He took the cup saying: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, as a memorial of Me.”
Separate giving of thanks for the bread and wine and separate corporate consumption thereof while relaxed around a table are what Jesus did and He said: “Do this…”. He did not say that we are free to “flatten out the peaks and valleys” of what He said in order to do something we might think more “reasonable”.
I charge that it is not I who hold idiosyncratic and unscriptural views about Communion but those so bold as to choose what they want to do rather than what Jesus said to do.
Tradition
Moving to Anglican traditions he says I reject, Dr. McDermott writes:
“The 1662 also teaches baptismal regeneration for infants, which Kay agrees the Free Church should shy away from. Here is the 1662: “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.””
This astonishes me. Where, in my paper, did I even address the subject of baptismal regeneration? Where are you getting all these extraneous ideas from, Gerald? It might surprise you to know that, nearly two years before joining the FCE, I made known to the Bishop my preference for the C of E BCP over that of the FCE on several issues, and that I could only conditionally subscribe to article 4.5 of the FCE’s Declaration of Principles, viz.
4. This Church CONDEMNS and REJECTS the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God’s Word…
(v) That Regeneration is inseparably connected with Baptism.
I argued that, since Holy Scripture does connect baptism and regeneration, any denial of such a connection must involve an unscriptural understanding of baptism, or regeneration, or both. My assent to the Declaration of Principles was conditional upon using the term “regeneration” in the sense that Bishop Cummins and the FCE founders used it – i.e. as a change of nature, but I do not believe that to be the Biblical use of the term, I believe it to convey a change of relationship. Should you be interested, I will send you the ten A4 pages I sent to the Bishop on “Baptism and Regeneration.”
Dr. McDermott concludes his paper with a paean to tradition, including a stark warning on “the danger of all modern attempts to resist the influence of tradition” and in praise of the Anglican method “to read the Bible and liturgical tradition at the feet of the Fathers”.
It seems that, contrary to what Scripture says of itself, this Anglican method will not allow Scripture to be self-authenticating or self-attesting but must speak only through some filter – “the Fathers” in this case. In other words, Scripture is stifled by the past[11]; made subordinate to some nebulously-defined tradition of the church[12].
This is the trump card of the Orthodox, Roman or Anglo-Catholic perspectives: “Tradition”. “Tradition” makes Scripture a wax nose to be moulded at will. It is ironic that all of them argue that tradition is “consensual” while having serious differences among themselves over what tradition is valid. The Orthodox say that the “Tradition” means only two-dimensional paintings may be put in the Church; statues are forbidden. Rome says that “Tradition” includes the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Infallibility of the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra, both rejected by Orthodoxy. The Orthodox say that the West left the “Tradition” when it put the filioque clause in the Creed, while the Armenian Church says that Orthodoxy left the “Tradition” by writing the Nicene Creed in the first place.
However, the word of God is not dependent upon the Church for its authority or its interpretation. In the beginning was the Word – before ever the Word was inscripturated or incarnate, or the Church came into being. Scripture’s author-ity derives from its author, God, and its interpretation from within itself. The Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, not the other way around (Ephesians 2:20). As the “pillar and ground/mainstay of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15) the Church is not the origin of truth. Rather she, in the persons of all her members, supports and buttresses the truth by faithful guardianship, obedience and witness to what the Scriptures testify. Scripture alone is her infallible authority but not one of her members interprets Scripture alone.
If the false hermeneutic of interpreting Scripture through tradition prevails, error becomes entrenched. The early Church teachers (“Fathers”) are not the best interpreters of Scripture, Scripture itself is. We are not saying that the Bible is to be interpreted in isolation from history and tradition but that it must reign supreme over them. They must be viewed through its grid, not the other way around.
This is not to say that every new interpretation of Scripture will be correct. Nor am I advocating an anabaptist solo scriptura (as opposed to sola scriptura), just-me-and-my-Bible approach where the Scriptures are interpreted in isolation from history and tradition. Rather, teachers in each generation of the Church will cherish old doctrines and discover new insights from Scripture (Mathew 13:52). Such new insights are tested and proven, not by long-dead teachers who never knew them, but by Christ’s faithful sheep who hear His voice and know whether the doctrine is of God (John 7:17; 10:27). The Spirit-indwelled Church responds affirmatively to the Spirit-authored Word. The golden age of the Church is not lost in an irrecoverable past. It lies ahead of us, for our foundations are those of a city yet to come.
Tradition is an uncertain prop on which to lean our faith. God’s Word is the proper object of faith, the best judge of tradition and the foundation of our hope.
It is therefore saddening that Dr. McDermott writes:
“…if Kay’s liturgy were to be accepted, it would no longer be recognizably Anglican. Clever, yes. Anglican, no.
And insensitive to the tensions and mysteries of biblical revelation.”
I never prescribed a liturgy in my paper. All I did was to point to what the Bible tells us Jesus did when He instituted the Supper, and then contrast it with the Anglican way. “Kay’s liturgy” so called is simply an appeal to put Scripture over Anglican tradition. And then, yes, “it would no longer be recognizably Anglican.” But what would be wrong with that?
Arthur Kay, erstwhile Presbyter in the Free Church of England
[1] A participant in this “conversation”, the Rev. Blake Johnson, writes in his review of Matthew Colvin’s “Lost Supper”: “Once you start to appreciate the paschal setting and Jewish expectations around the coming Messiah, focusing on what is happening to the elements seems to be a focus on the wrong thing. Importing metaphysical categories into the words of institution may very well obscure Jesus’ eucharistic intentions, causing us to miss the fully Jewish experience of the supper.”
[2] A large loaf can cater for surprising numbers.
[3] E.g. chapter 6 of From Bread to Wine, Theopolis Books, 2019
[4] The Lord’s Service, Canon Press 2003
[5] The Hebrew word translated in the KJV as “meat offering” (which is old-fashioned English for “food offering”) is minchah. In more recent versions it is translated here in Leviticus as “grain offering” or “cereal
offering”. They have chosen to render it as what the near-bringing was usually and mostly made of – namely grain – but usage outside of Leviticus shows it to mean tribute (e.g. Genesis 32:13; Judges 3:15-18; 2 Samuel 8:2 Psalms 45:12; 72:10; Hosea 10:6).
[6] See Rite Reasons No. 90, Biblical Horizons, July, 2004 – Strange and Glorious New Rites by James B. Jordan
[7] But there’s no mention of oil at the Last Supper. By ingesting that bread the disciples become Tribute grains on which frankincense (prayer) and oil (the Spirit) is poured at Pentecost to be enveloped in flame and become, with the 3000, a firstfruits tribute to Yahweh (Acts 2).
[8] Wherever the body alone (apart from the cup) is referred to in 1 Corinthians it generally refers to Christ’s mystical body – the church (see 10:17; 12:12-27). Even if, in 1 Corinthians 11:29, it refers to the bread, we must take into account the close connection between the body sacramental and the body ecclesial.
[9] Any attempt to seek unity solely via the leverage of episcopacy is surely misguided. Apart from excluding the non-episcopal churches it is a mis-construal of the role of the episcopate itself, the first responsibility of which, in the full knowledge of the whole counsel of God, is self-guardianship and to shepherd the flock by shepherding its pastors, fending off wolves (harmful pastors) speaking perverse things (Acts 20:27ff). Therefore, unity is not to be achieved by Bishops who accommodate both heresy and orthodoxy under their wings in the name of unity, but by mutual submission to the Truth (John 17:17-21; Ephesians 4:11-16) as it is in Jesus (Ephesians 4:21).
[10] It is noteworthy that sellers of communion and “celebrant’s host” wafers are careful to specify that they are sealed after baking so as to be “crumb-free” or they “do not crumble”. I’m afraid I can only think of them as like eating polystyrene foam.
[11] The past prevails in this hermeneutic but in truth God is always doing new things.
[12] The post-apostolic Church did not author the NT Scriptures, with the Spirit’s aid, she recognised the canonical books (John 10:27). Those high churchmen who loftily proclaim that “The Church produced the New Testament, not the other way round” do so in order to justify their unscriptural (and Marcionite) traditions (why not say the same about the Old Testament?). But they close their ears to those Scriptures teaching that the Church is birthed through the Word (e.g. 1 Peter 1:23; James 1:18, 21) and to the fact that the Church of the New Testament era was born through the Spirit-filled preaching of the Old Testament Scriptures regarding the Word incarnate. Only God’s Word creates and God’s Word always comes before man’s (2 Peter 1:21). See also Calvin’s Institutes Book I, Chapter 7.