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Permalink: http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/383
Fulcrum Subjects: Anglicanism, General / Spirituality Other articles by Graham Kings are available from this site Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum See the 15 comments on this article Formed by God through Scripture
in the Daily Office Fulcrum Newsletter, January 2009published in the Church of England Newspaper, 20 February 2009by An address given at the Covenant Conference, Church of the Incarnation,
Apart from ‘Daily Prayer’, ‘The Office’ reminds me of two things: firstly, the popular English comedy series, which was recontexualised in In the wonderful collect for Bible Sunday, we pray ‘help us to hear [all holy Scriptures], to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them…’. As we say the Daily Office, we are formed by God through his Scriptures. Officium is the Latin word for ‘duty’. Whenever we think of ‘duty’ in the Anglican Communion we also think of ‘joy’: ‘It is our duty and our joy at all times and places…’. So, at Morning Prayer, you report for duty and get your orders. At Evening Prayer you clock off, if you like, and you salute. That is one way of looking at the Office. It has got to be done. As we shall see, it is enjoined upon clergy, but also with the ‘tolling of the bell’, it involves lay people as well. The collect for Bible Sunday uses the profound vocabulary of ‘digestion’. The Latin words ruminatio and mundicare suggest cows ‘chewing the cud’: they spend a long time digesting their food. Robert Atwell, the new Bishop of Stockport, England, has compiled a very fine book, ‘Celebrating the Seasons: Daily Spiritual Readings for the Christian Year’ (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1999). In his introduction he states: Our forebears’ belief that the slow digestive process of cows was well-suited to describe the process of engaging with Scripture, stands in marked contrast to the language and expectations of a fast-food generation. Their wisdom calls us to a more gentle rhythm of prayerful reading in which patience, silence and receptivity are vital ingredients. In a world of sound-bites we need to learn again the art of listening with the ear of the heart. To this end when we are praying by ourselves, reading the Bible or saying the Office alone, perhaps we should experiment with the custom of earlier generations and speak the words out loud? (p. v) This is something I really want to encourage people to do. If you are saying the Office, or using some other sort of Bible reading system, rather than just saying it to yourself, say it out loud. It sounds very different. At St Mary Islington in
We consider first what Scripture says about the reading of Scripture. (a) Colossians 3:16 Paul writes: ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God.’ We are encouraged to let the word dwell in us, so the word inhabits us as we inhabit the word. In this Pauline exhortation, there is a double indwelling, which is very ‘Johannine’. Perhaps ‘spiritual’ indicates that these songs were directly generated by the Spirit and thus more spontaneous than psalms and hymns. (p. 70) (b) I Timothy 4: 13 Paul says to Timothy, ‘Until I arrive give attention to the reading...’ That is the literal meaning. It is usually translated in our Bibles as ‘Give attention to the public reading of Scripture’, which is what Paul implied. He continues ‘…to exhorting, to teaching.’ Paul is referring to the public reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. Public reading is alien to our culture: we are so used to it in church that we fail to notice this. Outside of church, where does the public reading of very ancient documents happen? Sometimes at court or at an inauguration, but it is very unusual. In church, regularly, morning and evening, we read in public. Our Anglican ancestors, Cranmer and Hooker, were clear that the ordered public reading of Scripture is theologically prior to preaching, and provides the context and text for preaching. This public reading is actually good in itself. The corporate, public reception of the read Word of God is foundational for all our formation. (c) Luke 4: 16-21 Jesus is in the synagogue at He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ In the synagogue, through the public reading Scripture, Jesus sees himself in that Scripture. The modern Morning Prayer service of the Anglican Church of Kenya (1991) includes a ‘Song of the Messiah’, which echoes messianic passages from the Old Testament. For seven years I taught and learnt theology at St Andrew’s College, Kabare, in the foothills of Jesus the Seed of Abraham blesses the nations: Jesus the Prophet like Moses frees the oppressed: Jesus the Lord of King David leads his people: Jesus the Servant of the Lord suffers and saves: Jesus the Son of Man destroyed and raised. Jesus saw himself in Scripture and fulfilled it. Since we are ‘in Christ’, we can read that passage and see that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us also, clergy and lay people, to preach good news to the poor. It is not that Jesus is over there and we are over here. We are actually ‘in Christ’, and so some of the things which apply to him, apply to us as well.
Before the fourth century, the evidence for a particular type of Daily Office is scanty. In the fourth century, the monks in the Egyptian desert recited the Psalter complete. The Holy Spirit inspired the Psalms, which was Jesus’ ‘prayer book’, and the monks got caught up in the circular movement in saying them back to God. That is the heart of the Office. The Daily Office eventually developed into eight offices, seven during the day and one during the night. We consider now two great historical figures who were movers and shapers of liturgy, Benedict and Cranmer. (a) Benedict of Nursia Benedict (d. 550 AD), the founder of the Benedictine Order, maintained the Psalter being recited once a week, rearranged the offices and the readings, introduced ‘antiphons’, ‘versicles’ and ‘responses’ and set readings. Our Daily Office has its roots in the work of Benedict. As Anglicans and Episcopalians we are Catholic and Reformed. We are Catholic especially because of Benedict. We are Reformed especially because of the second great mover and shaper, Thomas Cranmer. (b) Thomas Cranmer Cranmer died in 1556, almost 1000 years after Benedict. Cranmer had two influences on him as he reshaped the Office. One was a Spanish Cardinal, Francisco de Quinones, the other was a German Lutheran, Johan Bugenhagen, who wrote ‘The Daily Office for Quinones wanted to reform the Daily Office. It had grown huge. In 1535 he reduced the eight offices to two: morning and evening prayer. For thirty years, Quinones’ Breviary was very popular, then, in 1568, the Council of Trent published the Breviary Romanum and made the Office much more complicated again. Johan Bugenhagen wrote the Order for Denmark in 1537, combining Compline, the night office, with Vespers, to make Evening Prayer. In 1538, King Henry VIII and Cranmer were negotiating with the Lutherans. In the end it came to nothing, but Cranmer in 1538 was also writing his first Daily Office scheme and was influenced by both Quinones and Bugenhagen. In that scheme Cranmer reduced the Office to Morning Prayer and Vespers. Morning Prayer only used parts of Matins and Lauds, and he combined Vespers and Compline. Radically, he dropped all the lesser offices. In the preface, he was heavily indebted to Quinones. He mentioned, ‘the thread and order of Holy Scripture should be read entire and unbroken’. He cleared everything else out of the way, having a chapter of the Old Testament and of the New Testament at each of the two services, and not much else. Cranmer dedicated himself (cp Ezra In 1549, Cranmer’s first Prayer Book was published, with Matins and Evensong giving the orderly reading of Scripture. He left out all the lesser offices and the Hail Mary. The central block was of pslams, lesson, canticle, lesson, canticle: all of them from Scripture. So people were formed by God through Scripture in the Daily Office, ‘…letting nothing interfere with the orderly reading of Scripture.’ Most of the canticles came out of Luke’s Gospel: the Benedictus, the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis. Cranmer’s famous preface adapted the one written by Quinones. Quinones wrote: There was never anything by man so well devised which could not later be rendered more perfect by the added insight of many. Cranmer changed that to: There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so surely established, which through age and continuance of time hath not been corrupted. Instead of ‘later be rendered more perfect’ – a sort of Thomistic idea – Cranmer has the Reformed emphasis, ‘hath not been corrupted.’ In 1552, the his second Prayer Book, the obligation to say the Office was made more explicit: All priests and deacons shall be bound to say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer either privately or openly, except they be letted by preaching or studying of divinity or some other urgent cause. Then Cranmer added ‘to toll the bell thereto, a convenient time before he began that such as be disposed may come and hear God’s word and to pray with him’ – saying, in effect, ‘tolled you so’. Cranmer also added a penitential section. The 1549 service of Holy Communion was so strong on people examining their own lives that it had an unintended consequence: many stopped going to Holy Communion. So Cranmer needed to update Morning and Evening Prayer as the main service, and added a penitential section at the beginning. (c) 20th Century Revisions The 1928 Prayer Book of the Church of England, which failed in its passage through the Houses of Parliament and so was not official, was widely used. The services of Morning and Evening Prayer began with a shorter exhortation, confession and absolution. After Vatican II, The Divine Office was published in 1971 and translated into vernacular languages. It simplified the services and indicated that Morning and Evening Prayer were the principles services. In 1979, The Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer included noon day and compline services, and in 1980 The Church of England’s Alternative Service Book, included shorter, as well as longer, forms of Morning and Evening Prayer during the week. In 1992, the Franciscans in In 2005, The Church of England published Common Worship: Daily Prayer. It is part of a series of eight books of Common Worship (2000-2007) and one of the most widely sold and used. As well as Morning and Evening Prayer, it has ‘Prayer During the Day’ at the beginning and ‘Night Prayer’ (Compline) at the end. Finally, we return to In the confession for Morning and Evening Prayer, there is the phrase ‘lighten our hearts with the glory of Christ.’ The word ‘glory’, kabod in Hebrew, related originally to the word ‘heavy’ or ‘weight’ or gravitas, and then, through Ezekiel, developed into ‘radiance’. The Kenyan confession plays and prays on this development: ‘our sins weigh heavily on our hearts’ and then later goes on, ‘lighten our hearts with the glory of Christ’ - in effect, saying ‘make our heart less heavy by something which is heavy’. So ‘lighten’ implies both ‘lift our hearts’ and also ‘make us radiant’ with the glory which comes from Christ. Modern Services also changes the songs of Paul into vocative addresses to God. In Colossians chapter one, ‘Christ is the image of the invisible God’ becomes ‘You are the image of the invisible God…’ and in Philippians chapter 2 the song becomes ‘You, O Christ, were in the form of God…’. These echo the famous vocative shape of the Te Deum - without some of the tedium… Concluding Scriptural Allegory In Genesis 2:7 we read, ‘The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into this nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.’ This reminds me of 2 Timothy 3:16, ‘All scripture is inspired by God…’, which means literally ‘God-breathed’. Perhaps we may think about this passage at the beginning of our Bible in two allegorical ways, concerning both Scripture and ourselves? Scripture may be seen, like man, as formed from the dust of the ground. It is something basic: people spoke, wrote, edited, gathered, decided, translated, bound, illuminated and sold Scripture. There is a materiality about it which is striking, but there is much more than that: for God ‘breathed’ Scripture into being and it is lively and active. Out of the dust of the ground and by his own ‘inbreathing’, God also forms us, who say the Daily Office. When we meet in the evening and the morning of the first day and the second day and the third day etc, that is what is happening. God is actually forming us, through his Holy Scripture – from the dust of the ground and breathing into us. God reforms us by his Word when he speaks and he renews us by his Spirit when he breathes. We finish, as we began, with the collect for Bible Sunday, which in Common Worship is the Last Sunday after Trinity: Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. Canon Dr Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum Forum Posts About This Article:
Posted by: Graham Kings
Thursday 19 February 2009 - 01:40pm
The Church of England Newspaper has published this week, 20 February 2009, an edited version of my Fulcrum Newsletter for January 2009 'Formed by God through Scripture in the Daily Office'. Posted by: James Monday 2 February 2009 - 09:12pm Phil, I'm not surprised you find people rather cagey about engaging with your questions. On every thread you ask the same kind of question. Often the question is only tangentially relevant to the subject under discussion. When someone does answer your question as Graham has done here, then you reveal with a flourish what everyone suspected all along, that actually the first question was only a prelude to another question, and probably more after that too which are intended to lead towards some destination of debate, logic or argument which you are unwilling to reveal. To be frank, it looks as though you are in the process of setting a rhetorical or logical trap. I say this because if you recognise what your posting style looks like, you may appreciate why people are so reluctant to engage with you. Perhaps you could show us where you think your line of argument is going, and how it relates to the ways in which the pattern of the use of scripture which we find in the Daily Office is used by God to form us. Or if your argument isn't really related to the subject of this thread, perhaps you could start a thread of your own which clearly states the argument you are trying to make in the opening post rather than expecting us all to be led by the nose by you through this kind of question and answer process. Posted by: Phil Almond Monday 2 February 2009 - 08:09pm Graham Many thanks for you reply. You are right that I ‘have been regularly asking similar questions on various Fulcrum forums for many months’. Your encouraging reply of ‘yes’ is, as I see it, the first time any member of the Fulcrum leadership team has given an explicit unequivocal answer to my question whether God and Christ did say what the Bible represents them as saying. I think that if you examine my exchanges with Ian Paul you will find that he never did so. Of course those exchanges came to an inconclusive end because Fulcrum declined to publish my last contribution to Defining-evangelical, which contribution I subsequently posted on Anglican Mainstream on the thread ‘defining-evangelical’, which led to an exchange with petebroadbent in which he, likewise, declined to give an explicit ‘yes’ to my question. But as I said in a post on the AM thread, I would be amazed if petebroadbent, (and the Fulcrum leadership team), do not believe that God and Christ did say all the things that the Bible represents them as saying. It is just that for some reason, until now, there has been a reluctance to say ‘yes’. Now that we are agreed that Jesus did say those words in the synagogue at Nazareth, I wonder if you will mind if I explore further, either on this thread or another of your choosing, about what God is represented as having said in the Old Testament. In order of occurrence in the Bible (not necessarily of course in chronological order) the first such statement by God is Genesis 1:28-29, and the last is Malachi 4:1-5. Did God say both these statements? Did he say all the ones in between, including Deuteronomy 21:18-21, about which you made some observations in ‘Don’t Throw Stones: Deuteronomy and the Prodigal Son’? Phil Almond Posted by: Deleted user 1543 Sunday 1 February 2009 - 11:09pm er David - have I missed something? How can you comment on using the Daily Office if you have never experienced using it? What is the distinction you are drawing between private devotions and, what? other kinds of devotions that are somehow not as devotional? And what is this nonsense about using Elizabethan English? I use Common Worship Daily Prayer - not a thee or a thou to be seen. And if I were to use any number of the other existing office cycles - a Northumbrian one, a Franciscan one, a Benedictine one, the Little Gidding one - not one of them uses archaic language. There is a world of stuff that you could experience, but don't seem to have, and seem rather uninformedly to be writing off. Common prayer is the calling of God's people, and it may happen in monasteries, cathedrals, churches, groups, families, couples, or alone. Using the Daily Office is a way of connecting my praying - if I happen to be doing it alone or with a small group - with the prayer of the church militant (here on earth) and triumphant (there in heaven - the cloud of witnesses) . Frankly I don't think it matters that much what sort of an office you choose to use, though as others have pointed out here, as Evangelicals have lobbied for daily Scripture Reading and Prayer to be included in the canons it makes sense for anglican evangelicals to use some form of Anglican Common Prayer. If the Daily Office seems to much to cope with (though how it can be as it is mostly pure Scripture beats me!??) then why not use Time to Pray - the admirable slim volume that contains the new Common Worship Prayer during the Day provision and also Night Prayer? Anyway - I hope you will explore all this richness, and fall in love with it all! Posted by: Celinda Sunday 1 February 2009 - 08:45pm The American Book of Common Prayer also has "Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families"--maybe we just got it from the British BCP. Anyway, it's a good bit shorter than the daily office. We have a link to it on the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer website, as well as a link to the Lectionary and to the whole Book of Common Prayer. I agree with the person who said how good it was to think of people throughout your communion who were reading the same passages in Scripture. --Many diocesan websites in the US (as well as devotional and spiritual organizations) have links to daily prayers and to the Lectionary. Is that true in the UK? --About "Elizabethan English" --there are contemporary versions of the prayers which don't use the "archaic" second person singular pronoun. However, a hallmark of "Elizabethan English" is its breadth and precision of vocabulary, even minus words which have become archaic. A bit of trivia: Shakespeare used a vocabulary of 35,000 words in his plays, many of which he added to the language and we still use. There are 8,000 different words in the translation of the Bible King James appointed to have done. I imagine the difference has to do with expansion in technological, commercial, domestic, and psychological language since the writings of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of the Bible. --I have a Presbyterian minister friend who says it's fine for clergy to make up their own prayers at formal occasions, but only if they know the prayers in the BCP by heart and can draw on them. About prayer in general: of course it's important to pray spontaneously as an individual and in small groups, or even in large groups. No one is saying that should not be done. Posted by: James Mercer Sunday 1 February 2009 - 05:50pm I was introduced to the regular daily office at theological college where I found the discipline of a start of the day time of corporate prayer and scripture reading to be of real value, not least in ordering clamouring priorities. The practice was continued a little less regularly (twice weekly) in my curacy within an Evangelical parish, but was foundational in enabling shared prayer and biblical conversation especially (but not exclusively) amongst team colleagues. It also provided fixed points during the week where you normally expect to find people in order to fix diary dates! The daily office has been revived at in my current parish. Sometimes the discipline proves irksome, there are always many things else that jostle for attention but thats partly the point, the discipline is good for me and, I hope, for my colleagues. Again it orders priorities and provides for the regular, orderly reading of scripture, following the lectionary. Sometimes we will have a congregation of eight or so; sometimes its just down to the parish administrator and me. But the bell is tolled and prayers are said for the sick, the parish, the church and the world, every weekday. The parish website has a link to the daily Common Worship: Daily Prayer feed to encourage those not able to attend to participate. Personally, and I hope Im not being hopelessly romantic here, I take great delight and comfort in the knowledge that friends and strangers throughout the UK and elsewhere are sharing in the same liturgically seasonal office, with its common readings and prayers, more or less at the same time. For me that is a surprising joy. Posted by: DavidR Sunday 1 February 2009 - 04:01pm David H - clearly a little while since you took a look at the Anglican Daily office (40 years?). But in any case what is wrong with using Elizabethan English to pray to God - the Quakers did. 
Posted by: Tim Goodbody
Sunday 1 February 2009 - 01:39pm
Er, I thought it was the evangelical movement in the Church of England which pushed hard for the Canons to include stuff about daily Bible reading and prayer. Seems a bit stiff therefore to be debating the usefulness of the office given its there because we asked for it (or at least our forebears did) Posted by: Celinda Sunday 1 February 2009 - 01:16pm David H--I don't think anyone said the Daily Office for personal devotion should be done instead of the things you mentioned, such as Bible study. Don't most people do both? I don't see any abandoning of the evangelical tradition in using the Book of Common Prayer regularly, in addition to the Bible, for personal devotions. (And Thomas Cranmer himself was an evangelical, if not a puritan. He was anxious to have copies of the Bible in as many hands as possible, and believed in its regular use as essential to the spread of the gospel to individual human beings as well as to groups). Posted by: Dave Sunday 1 February 2009 - 08:45am Jeremy, Perhaps I missed something, is Grahams article limited to priests? The daily office in the context of a ministry team may indeed bed valuable, but I have never experienced it. I question it's value for private devotions. I believe that the evangelical and puritan traditions include elements of family prayer, bible study and prayer that are being lost in our busy world. There is a danger of "Anglicanising" evangelicalism in a way which corrupts it and puts God at a distance as if he can only listen if addressed in Elizabethan English. David Posted by: Deleted user 1543 Sunday 1 February 2009 - 02:11am David - I am not sure what to make of your post. I thought Anglican priests were under a canonical obligation to pray Morning and Evening Prayer daily. You simply dismiss the tradition without justifying your stance. It is simplistic to say that it has its roots in daily corporate worship in monastic contexts: in fact the roots of it come not only from the monastery, but from other collegiate settings as well - the cathedral tradition of daily services is nourished at least as much by this as by monastic roots. In either case the daily praises of God are said, or more correctly, sung through the recitation of the Psalter, and the Scriptures are read and reflected upon. How can this be anything other than helpful? Evangelicals have historically been notoriously lazy and cavalier about this part of our heritage. I have yet to hear any good reason for this, when the Daily Office is so thoroughly scriptural.
Posted by: Graham Kings
Saturday 31 January 2009 - 10:29pm
Thanks, Phil Almond. My answer to your question is yes. You have been regularly asking similar questions on various Fulcrum forums for many months .... I thought Ian Paul engaged with you well on another thread. Posted by: Dave Saturday 31 January 2009 - 08:59pm Graham, The Daily office grew out of daily corporate worship in monastic orders. I am not sure that this is the best model for private devotions. We do have weekly public reading of scripture which I believe was the practice of both Jews and Christians in the 1st century. I used the "scripture union method" for many years. This is the practical bedrock of 20th century evangelicalism across denominations in Britain. Of late I have tried to follow M'Cheyne bible reading plan with the notes by D A Carson in "For the Love of God". In order to hear scripture I find podcasts and recordings beneficial. I have found extra-biblical material helpful for meditation, although I realize that some evangelicals frown on this, subject to various exceptions. John Baillie's "A Diary of Readings" is wide ranging. David Posted by: Phil Almond Saturday 31 January 2009 - 08:04pm “Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth: He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” Graham, are you willing to affirm that Jesus did say, in the synagogue at Nazareth, the words (in italics) attributed to him in this passage? Phil Almond
Posted by: Graham Kings
Saturday 31 January 2009 - 07:19pm
We have just published my Fulcrum Newsletter for January 2009 , 'Formed by God through Scripture in the Daily Office'. This is co-published with Covenant and was an address at the first Covenant conference in Dallas, Texas on 6 December 2008. Looking forward to comments. |
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