The Place of the Scriptures

The ambient Christianity of Southern California tends to be evangelical and non-denominational. In these churches, Bible exposition comprises the entirety of Sunday service, and individual reading forms the main activity of Christian daily life. Reading the Bible is seen as the primary occasion for encountering God, and this encounter with God has a transformative effect. There tends to be, as well, a focus on the power of extemporaneous reading. I have often seen a numinous application of that Augustinian exhortation to “take up and read!” Within these communities, there is often a dichotomy in practice between expositional preaching, which scrupulously follows the literal sense of the Scriptures, and private devotions that attempt to derive God’s will simply by opening and reading in any given place. This Biblicist emphasis can incline one to believe that anything less than this predominant presence and authority of Bible study in a church’s practice presents a dangerous diversion from the solely reliable stream of divine truth.

Given how different our worship looks when compared with these Bible Churches, it can sometimes surprise newcomers (especially those coming from evangelicalism) to learn that Anglican Catholics take the Scriptures with as much seriousness, if not more. Our reputation typically depicts us as traditionalists who spend most of their time fussing over ritual and ecclesial politics. As Anglicans, though, our identity is grounded in The Book of Common Prayer, in which Scripture is arranged for communal prayer. And as Catholics, moreover, we are constantly returning to the fountain of the apostles’ teaching, expressed in the Scriptures as well as in the meditations on those Scriptures in the creeds, councils, theology, spiritual writings, and liturgies of the Church from the time of Christ through every age. The surprise is rather due to how Scripture is placed and experienced differently in our churches. So, in this brief series, I’d like to address the place, sense, and purpose of the Scriptures as we understand them in the Anglican Catholic tradition.

Our primary experience of Scripture is together on Sunday during Mass. The language of the Liturgy is itself the Scriptures arranged in such a way to guide our encounter with Christ in appointed readings of Scripture and in Holy Communion. The Scripture readings and the prayers surrounding them comprise what we call “the liturgy of the Word,” in which the eternal Word of God is communicated to us in the opening of the Scriptures, as they are proclaimed and preached. In its most robust form, the liturgy of the Word leads us through a preparatory prayer by which we acknowledge our need for God’s grace to make it possible for us to encounter and know Him. The liturgy leads us to praise God in an outpouring of grateful love for Him, acknowledging Father, Son, and Spirit as the Ones who create, redeem, and perfect us. In many places we then proceed through a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, witnessing how the Lord revealed Himself through His ancient, chosen people, even as He prepared them and the world for His Incarnation. A selection of the Psalms then follows, representing the height of those Scriptures, of words that become the song that the faithful sing to God. We then shift into a reading from the Epistles, allowing the Apostles to lead us to believe in Christ through their preaching and teaching. Finally, as we hear the “alleluias” of heaven pronounced, the Gospel is opened, and we hear the words of the Lord Jesus Himself. He becomes present to us, which is why we hail the reading of the Gospel with the words: “Praise be to Thee, O Christ!”

The place of the liturgy of the Word on Sunday, however, prepares us for a greater encounter beyond it in Holy Communion. As the Scriptures are opened to us, it vivifies our souls, making a place within them to receive the Lord Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. We hear His words so that we might then profess our belief and enter together into a foretaste of the Supper of the Lamb. We are led beyond belief to abide with the Lord: He in us, and we in Him. Scripture makes us encounter Christ through the anticipation of Him in the Hebrew Scriptures and through the remembrance of Him in the Apostles’ preaching and practice. But then we commune with Him; we receive His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity into ourselves. Scripture readies us for union with God.

From this first experience of the Scriptures we receive in the first hours of the first day of every week, we then depart in peace to love and serve the Lord, on a mission to bear witness to Him in our daily lives. Anglicans observe this liturgy of time through the practice of the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer—every day is framed by Scripture set to prayer. This is where the lectionary becomes most apparent. Every morning knows a cycle of readings from the Old Testament, Psalter, and New Testament. And every evening knows its own cycle of readings from these sources as well. The lectionary of the Daily Offices emerge from and lead into the lectionary of appointed readings from Sunday to Sunday, reflecting on them and anticipating the next one. In practice, the regular Anglican is reading methodically through up to five books of the Bible at any given time, filling each day with plentiful material for devotional meditation and preparing them for their next Holy Communion.

Moreover, the Daily Offices mirror the shape of the Mass, in that the Scriptures prepare us to make our intercessions as the Church before God, in Christ. Our daily reading of Scripture at morning and evening is, again, a preparation for prayerful union with God. The Persons of the Holy Trinity are revealed through the Scriptures so that we might pass through that revelation to commune with them. Further, we do this in a community of people who are doing likewise. Note that all of our experience of the Scriptures to this point have been part of our fellowship. We have not yet approached the personal or private reading of the Scriptures, though that surely follows. For Anglicans, the place of the Scriptures becomes a well that draws us toward a common point, closer to each other the more we seek them. This is the vital principle of common prayer. We are led, in the midst of our various stories, to enter together into the story of Scripture in the same place at the same time.

At St. Matthew’s, our practice of the Daily Offices also includes a meditation on the Scripture readings, as the opening of the Scriptures obliges those with learning to unfold their meaning for the benefit of others. The gift of being able to perceive the Word in the words of Scripture is not given for the benefit of the one who receives it, but for the benefit of those among whom they are placed. Yet, even for those churches that do not follow this practice, one can still find this practice of deep reading of the Scriptures in the form of parish Bible studies. Bible study provides the opportunity to meditate slowly and extensively on the Scriptures from the level of language and history, through the many interpretive traditions of the Church’s history, to the typological patterns that emerge and reveal the unity of the many writings, to the application of the truth we find in the Scriptures that teaches and trains us in all righteousness. Bible study also provides opportunities for dialogue and questions to be asked by parishioners. It moves at the pace the community needs. Over years, a steady practice of Bible study deepens every other encounter with the Scriptures, which again ready us more completely for communion with the Lord.

It is only after the Mass, Offices, and Bible study that Anglicans approach the Scriptures for personal, devotional reading. We should start by remembering that it is a privilege even to have access to the Scriptures in a private way. Many, if not most, Christians have not had the literacy or access to a Bible of their own such that they might sit and read the Scriptures to themselves. That is a recent, relatively expensive, and difficult ability to acquire. Assuming we have access and enough literacy to take up and read, we do well to do so along the well-trod pathways that those before us have carved out. We should be wary of novel and eccentric readings. It is easy to lean on our own understanding, even while intending to lean on the illumination of the Scriptures. As Anglicans, framing the individual experience is the common prayer of the Church with its sacraments, prayers, creeds, homilies, and meditations. These voices comprise one of the main ways that tradition stands with Scripture. If we avail ourselves of them, we are often rescued from the many ways we read the Scriptures in error. We are brought back from an over-reliance on ourselves (with our profound limits of perspective and insight), and are led to trust those who have gone before us. We are also loosened from the constraining prejudices of our present moment so that we are less likely to attempt to conscript God into the anxious demands of our time. Scripture is the gift of a doorway into the Lord’s anointed time, not a power we are free to co-opt to fuel our designs on life.

In the next post, we will discuss the senses of Scripture and a few different modes of personal reading. My hope is that as we learn to appreciate the diversity and unity of the Scriptures, as well as the diversity of reasonable approaches and reading traditions, we will grow into a more mature response to this inspired and holy revelation of God to us. As we pray during Advent: “Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such-wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy holy word we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast promised us in our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”