On the Authenticity of the Great Commission

Looking over the whole Lead thread on CWOB, this brief aside from Donald Schell jumped out at me:

I will note that ‘The Great Commission’ a poorly attested addition and arguably late addition to Matthew’s Gospel

Ok—let’s talk about this. I’ve seen this kind of thing in several places and it is begging for some informed discussion.

Basically, the bibles that we read from in church are “eclectic texts”. What does this mean? It means that they are translated from a base Greek text that has been compiled from literally thousands of manuscripts by hundreds of scholars who have been at work on this process for about a hundred and fifty years. The goal of this eclectic text is to recover the earliest possible form of the text; to read the books of the New Testament in the state in which they left the authors’ pens—or, at least, the best that we can do towards that.

Our evidence consists of three major bodies of Greek texts and two additional categories. We have three types of Greek biblical texts determined by style of writing and materials which is roughly correlated to age: papyri, uncials, and miniscules.

Papyri tend to be the oldest. That is, we have papyrus fragments of the New Testament that date anywhere from the 7th century (fairly late) to roughly the year 200 (the celebrated papyrus P46). The problem is that the papyri tend to be fragmentary meaning that we only have bits and pieces. P46, for instance, only has parts of the Pauline Letters. Most contain only a few verses. So—they’re old, but very spotty.

Uncials get their name from their letters—all uppercase. Many papyri (particularly the earlier ones) are written in these letters two but the key difference between the two is material: the uncial manuscripts were written on parchment (prepared skin) rather than papyrus (early fiber paper). As a result, the uncials preserved a heck of a lot better than the papyrus. Uncials containing large sections of the Bible were big projects and expensive to produce in Antiquity—we only get them after the legalization of Christianity. Thus, our best, most trustworthy, and most extensive witnesses to the NT text are the big early uncials. There’s a handful of them that are considered the primo references often referred to as the Great Uncials.

Then we have the miniscules. They’re called this because they’re written in lower case characters and they tend to be later than the uncials.

The two other categories are early translations from the Greek into other languages, and citations from the Church Fathers. The latter will become quite important in a moment so file that away…

A whole bunch of Germans (other people too—but mostly Germans) have dedicated their scholarly lives to going through all of the little bits and manuscripts and have sorted them based on the quality of their readings. The best manuscripts are those with the most careful and accurate scribes and that give us a faithful reproduction of the text. Because of their work, we can rank the various manuscripts and sources on how well they represent the earliest recoverable text by specific books. The best are referred to as the “First-Order Witnesses” and these are the places where we go when we want to see what a text said.

Basic procedure for assembling an eclectic text, therefore, is to start with the major first-order witness uncials, create the text where they agree, then supplement from any papyri that are earlier than the actual base uncials in question. Miniscules provide minor evidence.

Going back to original claim on the authenticity of Matthew 28:19 let’s be very clear: There are no first-order witnesses that omit any part of this verse as we are familiar with it. None. One of the major later unicals (D) adds in a “now” that also appears in early pre-Vulgate Latin versions and two uncials (B and D) have a slightly different form of the participle “baptizing”, but  nothing is missing. There are no surviving papyri of Matthew earlier than the Great Uncials that contain this verse. Remember, the papyri are fragmentary—we don’t have an old one that covers this section.

So—where is this claim coming from if there is no hint of it whatsoever in the actual manuscript evidence? A dude named Conybeare noticed that when the early Church Father Eusebius of Caesarea (died 340) cited this verse—and he did it a couple of times—that he consistently cited it in a different form: “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations in my name”. No mention of baptism or of the Triune formula. The argument goes that since Eusebius was writing before the Great Uncials were written, and since Eusebius was relying on the great text-critical work of Origen, he may be referring to an earlier form of the text than the Great Uncials.

Thus, one Father may have recourse to an earlier form. However, nobody else writes it that way and, by way of counter-example, we have Tertullian (died 220 or so) citing the usual form of the verse in his treatise On Baptism (Ch. 13).

The problem with this argument is that there is no way that it can be disproven. We can establish that Tertullian writing around the year 200 in North Africa knew the standard text but that doesn’t rule out Conybeare’s suggestion.

The big problem, as I see it, is that Conybeare’s suggestion (also forwarded by Kirsopp Lake and other contemporaries) rests entirely on a textual paradigm of citation. That is, the assumption is that Eusebius is looking up every passage and copying it word-for-word from an older and possibly unique text that also happens to be better than all of the surviving ones. Rather than, say, writing it from memory in the form he likes it best…

I’ve noted in my other research that Eusebius’s version of the Beatitudes actually was different from the received version—he flips Matt 5:4 and 5. So does Origen, the Great Uncial D, and some of the Latin, Syriac, and Boharic translations. Note that—here there was a material change and it leaves a number of footprints in the tradition…

Furthermore, the Eusebius theory fits handily into a philosophical construct favored by certain modern folks. That is, some people believe that the Church only gradually came to think of a Trinity and therefore they view any mention of the Trinity with suspicion and call it a late addition to the text whether there’s any textual warrant for it or not.

The claim, again, is this:

I will note that ‘The Great Commission’ a poorly attested addition and arguably late addition to Matthew’s Gospel

The evidence is this:

  • The verse appears as received in all of the first-order witness that contain it.
  • One Church Father, Eusebius writing in the early 300s, writes it differently
  • Other earlier Church Fathers don’t write it differently
  • In other cases where Eusebius was looking at a genuinely different text we see signs of that change in other text traditions

On the strength of the actual evidence, then, we’ve got to conclude that, contra the starting claim, the Great Commission in its familiar form is very well attested textually and there is only one hint read through a particular philosophical construct to the contrary.

QED: Not buyin’ it.

The Difference

So—what’s the difference between the Last Supper and when Jesus fed 5,000 not counting women and children on the mountainside? It’s all the same basic meal practice, right?

Wrong.

The difference? All thirteen attendees of the Last Supper died for their faith—except (tradition tells us) St. John who died in exile. No word on the fates of the 5000+…

 

Stuff Like What I Would Be Writing

As I have all too many other things going on to draft blog content, I’d like to point you to some good stuff from folks who have more blog time than I do but who are writing the kind of stuff I wish I’d written.

One of my favorite topics where is ascetic theology which examines the place of spiritual practices and the cultivation of virtue within the Christian journey that is best described as living into the life of God. In that vein, check out Robb Beck’s take on McCabe’s On Aquinas and the discussion there of the relationship between cultivation of the virtues and divinization.

On the Bible front, if your interesting in a neo-patristic alternative which takes modern investigation of the Scriptures seriously yet still retains a primary focus on the life and practice of faith, you need to keep an eye on the post.catholic project—I think Fr. Thomas is going in some similar directions.

Much Weariness…

Things have been crazy all around. Lent and all of its accompanying programs have hit hard especially as I promised M to do some teaching at her church. Actually, some of you would probably be interested in last Sunday’s course… The overall topic for Lent is life and politics in the time of Jesus with an eye to better understanding the Passion Narratives/Holy Week. I kicked it off with a big-picture overview: 1,000 years of Jewish history in just under 45 minutes. We went from David and the foundation of the United Kingdom down through the destruction of the Second Temple with repeated glances back at how David was a constant touchstone for understanding and constructing Israel’s political and religious  identity. Great fun… I’ve also been working on other writings and projects that are massively overdue.

Hence, no blogging.

Hopefully this’ll change soon. In any case, I couldn’t not say something about the latest post at the Daily Episcopalian. Yes, it’s hard to find a good church, and modern parenting isn’t easy, but “home-churching” seems like a simplistic appeal to cafeteria religion (just take the parts you like, feel free to leave the rest) that falls short of the mark that we promised our children in Baptism.

AKMA on Faith

In lieu of actual content on this blog (which is forthcoming—I’m just really busy now…), you need to read AKMA’s post on faith. I quite agree with what he says here; of course, my intellectual roots in this discussion are functionally the same as his—Lindbeck by way of the Yale School that produced the four mentors who have had the most influence on me through my academic journey.

Go read it.

Academic Reading and Devotional Reading of the Bible

With all the recent discussions whether or not laypeople should read the Scriptures, I’ve decided that it’s worth some reflection on the topic. I am, of course, a trained biblical scholar. I have been studying the Scriptures from an academic point of view from my freshman year in college up through receiving my PhD this past year. That comes out to be over 20 years of focused study on the scientific interpretation of the Bible. Throughout that time, I’ve also been an active Christian and have been reading the scriptures for my own edification. In addition, the bulk of my work for my dissertation has been on the pre-scientific readings and understandings of the holy Scriptures, particularly that of the church fathers and the early medieval monastics. With that kind of history behind me, I think I speak from an informed position both about the academic interpretation of the Scriptures, and the devotional interpretation of the Scriptures.

Indeed, the whole point of my dissertation was to argue that the academic interpretation of Scripture is a very particular way of reading for a very particular purpose that is located within a very particular context. I then set this way of reading in relationship with the early medieval monastic reading practices which were likewise a particular way of reading for a particular purpose located within a particular context. I tried really hard to express that neither one of them was better or worse than the other, but that they were doing different things for different reasons.

What I came to over the course of that 270 some pages, was a certain clarity about the purposes of the Academy over and against the purposes of the seminary and therefore the purposes of the church. As a New Testament scholar coming intentionally and deliberately from an ecclesial perspective I often felt a tension throughout my coursework between my academic studies and my own devotional and preaching work. When I taught preaching students the craft of biblical exegesis for the purpose of Christian proclamation, I felt the tensions between the academic work and the kind of reading and proclaiming necessary in a church environment.

The thing about George Clifford’s piece and the discussions that have ensued at the Café and also here, is that the question truly is not an either/or; it is most definitely a both/and. Yes, the Episcopal Church needs to embrace the academic study of the Scriptures. However, the academic study of the Scriptures does not give to us the bread that feeds, nor the wells of living water that spring up within our hearts. ‘Cause—it’s not supposed to. And that, my friends, is the crux of the matter from my perspective. We can be careless about questions of fitness and purpose.

One of my favorite expressions is, “To the man who has a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.” That is, to a person who has a good and effective tool, the temptation is to use it anywhere and everywhere possible. Typically when I use it, this phrase means I’m going to try and turn something into a database. However those who learn about the academic study of the Bible often fall into this trap as well. The academic study of scholarship is a tremendous tool for understanding the Scriptures. However, it is one means for gaining knowledge that is applicable in certain circumstances. I don’t care how good the hammer is, I don’t care how shiny the hammer it is, a hammer is no substitute for a toolbox. No one can be a master craftsman without properly understanding the application and limitation of their tools. And that’s the problem: the limitation of the tools. The difference between a journeyman and a master craftsman is that the master craftsman understands why and when to apply each tool. The journeyman simply fixes his attention on the tool he thinks is the best.

Here’s the thing. Most clergy take between 3 to 5 classes on Scripture over the course of their seminary career. You typically have an introductory course on the Old Testament, sometimes to introductory courses to read through the whole thing. Then you have an introductory New Testament course that is often paired with a methods course. A decent preaching course will reinforce what you learned in these introductory classes and in your methods class, but there’s simply too much stuff to cover in preaching for this to qualify as another exegetical class. What ends up happening is that we are not turning out master craftsman of the Scriptures. In most cases, we are not even turning out journeymen. This may seem harsh, but I would say that your average master of divinity educated clergy person is an advanced apprentice in using and applying the techniques of the academic study of Scripture. And honestly, that’s to be expected. Four semesters within the scope of three years is not enough time for anyone to master anything worth knowing. What it does mean, is that all too often clergy come out with a taste of modern biblical scholarship, but are unclear on its limitations and most appropriate applications. They know that it is important, they know that it can be helpful, and it would be one thing if it stopped there—but it doesn’t. Because there’s this thing called a commentary.

People are often surprised when I say this but I’ve come to really dislike commentaries. This dislike has grown over the years and it is rooted in how people use commentaries. Commentaries themselves are not good or bad; they are tools. But, commentaries exist for one purpose: they tell you what someone else thinks the text means. It doesn’t matter if it’s a modern biblical scholar or one of the patristic fathers– the point of a commentary is to tell you what they think the text means. The problem is that far too many people surrender their own reading authority over to a commentary. Rather than read the text for themselves, they go and find out what some authority says instead. And all too often, this is where a blind faith in the academic study of the Scriptures leads: to the assumption that these methods are essential and therefore the commentary is right and any other reading is wrong.

So, to recap briefly, learning the scientific study of Scripture takes time. Most of our clergy have not spent that time (and that’s not necessarily their fault). In lieu of mastering the tools, they go to commentaries where such tools are used.

Now it’s time to pick up where we started. It’s all about the question of purpose. Why do we read the Bible? We read it for a whole host of reasons: we read it for reflection, for inspiration, for information, for nourishment, for solace, for answers, for questions, for security, for strength. This is why Christians read the Bible. The academic study of the Bible is most directly applicable when we read for information. The academic of Scripture study focuses on a circumscribed set of questions: what were the circumstances around the writing of these books and their collection into one document? What do these texts teach us about what the people who wrote them thought? What do these texts reveal about the history and organization of the communities that created them? The bottom line is that the academic study of Scripture is securely located within the History of Ideas. It wants to know what things were thought by which people at which time and what would have been intended by what they wrote. The way that we typically wrap this up is to talk about the “literal” or “literary” meaning of the text and to make statements about “authorial intent.” Don’t get me wrong—authorial intent is important. But authorial intent is only part of a text’s possible or total meaning. The end of the academic study of a particular text is an interpretive guess about what it meant. Commentaries are therefore collections of such guesses that relate around a broader and bigger guess about the intent of the work as a whole.

My research is part of an evolving direction of Biblical Studies that has come about in the last thirty years or so that looks less at what the author meant and more at what the interpretive life of the text has been since it left the author/authors. That is, the question that I like to ask is not, “what did the author intend” but “what have communities found in this text?” As a result, I look at how preachers, monks, ascetics, and liturgies have interpreted, re-used, or re-purposed biblical texts to further their own reading strategies and goals. What I found in my intensive study of early medieval monastic reading practices is that they had a very clear purpose in mind: how do we enact the text in order to become saints? This is a very different purpose for reading and studying the Scriptures than what the academic community does. And, I would argue that it is far closer to the modern church is trying to accomplish. We frame it differently, but the end goal of our reading process is neither a guess nor, more broadly, an idea.

I’m in the same camp with the early medieval monks; the interpretive process has not been completed until someone’s habits have changed.

It’s not enough for us to read the Scriptures. Our work has not been completed until we have been transformed by them. And when I say “we” I mean “we,” not “you and me”—the whole community, the whole body of Christ, needs to be about the work of growing into the mind of Christ.

This is what the church needs to be about. This is the kind of reading that we have to be doing the good results of well done academic scholarship are useful to us—but they cannot do our work for us. They are fundamentally not asking the same questions that we’re interested in; they are not finding the answers that will ultimately transform us.

What I see emerging within the church is the recognition of the need for a “neo-patristic” method.

What exactly do I mean by neo-patristic?

  • By the “patristic” part that it shares fundamental and necessary qualities with patristic reading:
    • The Scriptures are the Church’s book to be read paradigmatically within the Church’s liturgy that bring us into a deeper relationship with the God embodied, celebrated, and proclaimed within the Church.
    • The purpose is located biblically within 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and Ephesians 4—Scripture is intended for the entire body of Christ to do the works of righteousness. In a word: edification.
    • The controlling hermeneutic is the twofold love of God and neighbor. As Augustine, as Gregory the Great laid out time and time again this is the fundamental hermeneutic revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
    • Meaning is found in the sensus plenior. That is, there is no one meaning for anyone text; there are many—sometimes competing, sometimes complementary—meanings that can be found within a single text. No one meaning (like authorial intent) can be the “right” or “most meaningful” meaning. The best meaning of the text is the meaning or the constellation of meanings that is most edifying to the church in its whole and in its particularities.
    • The literal meaning or the authorial intent is not necessarily the dominant reading. While it usually is one of the dominant meanings, there are times and places where it must give way in the face of more primary meanings. (I’ll say more about this later.)
  • By the “neo-“ part I recognize that it diverges from classical patristic reading:
    • For the patristic authors, the primary author was always the Holy Spirit. When they would speak of authorial intent they referred to what they believed the Spirit intended to say. While we recognize the Holy Spirit to be integral to both the writing and the reading of the text, we recognize the humanity of the authors and their inevitable propensity for both sin and limitation in a way that the patristic readers did not.
    • It does not seek to simply parrot patristic commentary. Rather, it recognizes the patristic tradition to be a living one where the Fathers interpreted in similar ways yet argued with one another and disagreed. Rather than simply being a replication of patristic teaching it is an on-going living use of the methods that they demonstrated in their own writing.

There’s a lot more about this that I’d like to say, particularly in terms of what this looks like both in relation to modern scientific Scripture study and in terms of direct application. However, since I’ve gone on at some length, I’ll post this part now as I work on the next part.

On the Bible

As my Doktor-vater used to say, it was always nice picking up works by certain people because you could begin reading with the assurance that what they would argue would be wrong. George Clifford has a piece up at the Cafe today and—in a similar fashion—when I see his name on a piece I can be pretty sure that I’m going to disagree with it.

Today’s is no exception.

It’s a retread of the old clericalist captivity of the Scriptures: you can’t read it unless you promise to read it the way I do. One wonders how George believes that the Scriptures and the Christian faith were able to survive until the rise of German Rationalist scholarship in the mid-ninteenth century.

I need to write something more on this but currently lack the time…

The Congregation and The Ministers

bls is asking some good questions on the previous post so I’m starting a new post to keep the conversation moving. Her questions are around the various parts in worship. What I’m suggesting is that each set of liturgical participants should, as much as possible, be consistent in what they do and how they do it. In particular with reference to the previous post, I’m suggesting that priests should be consistent in either singing or speaking their parts and not switch back and forth.  That led to a variety of other topics include which parts are assigned to which people—particularly the congregation—and bls noted that in composed Masses, the choir sings the part of the people.

This is true. And it’s one of the chief ambivalences that I feel against such services. Yes, they can be quite beautiful, but her point is precisely my objection—they’re stealing the congregation’s part…

To sort all of this out, I think it’s helpful to go back to principles. And while I mean “principles” generically, I also mean it’s time to go back to W. H. Frere’s Principles of Religious Ceremonial, the third chapter, which is entitled “Congregation and Ministers.” Frere begins by railing against the notion of a service as a duet between a priest and clerk who do the talking and doing while everybody else eavesdrops.  After talking about the Office a bit, he then turns to the Eucharist:

With regard to the Holy Eucharist the case stands differently; for here, from the nature of the case, there has always been a distinction between the ministerial and the congregational part of  the service. This rite, however, was not in early days a duet, for the whole company of the faithful took its part in the Holy Mysteries in graduated order. The celebrant had necessarily his ministers to attend on him, some sharing with him in the recitation of the service, some ministering in the ceremonies accompanying the rite, some singing the music which alternated with the lessons and the prayers; while the congregation itself, in the days of heathenism and under the system of church discipline, had its own gradations, and took a greater or a smaller part in the service accordingly.

. . .

Here again, then, there is little or no sign of the idea of a duet with which are familiar: all is co-operative. For example, in the due performance of the Latin rite, as seen before the great period of liturgical decadence had set in, the Liturgy was everywhere normally the work of the whole Christian community, worshipping God in its several grades. The celebrant had the solemn prayers to say, the variable collects and the fixed forms as well, including of course the actual consecration. The deacon had the Gospel to read and subdeacon the Epistle; while the former also was responsible for the leading of the people, though this duty soon shrank to very small dimensions in the West as compared with the East. These two sacred ministers, or two groups of sacred ministers, were also in attendance upon the celebrant; they both waited upon him themselves, and also served as intermediaries between and the lesser grades of ministers, such as thurifers, taperers, etc., so far as their ministry concerned the celebrant. Again, besides these ceremonial attendants must be reckoned the singers or Schola cantorum, who were not concerned with ceremonial, but had their own part of the rite; they were responsible for the more elaborate and variable part of the music and such chants as employed soloists, especially the Introit and Communion with their psalms, the Gradual, Alleluia, and Offertory. Lastly, the congregation had its part both in the psalmody and in the prayers of the rite. At first the Kyries and Sanctus, and then later the Agnus Dei and Creed, and lastly the Gloria in excelsis, represented the popular element or congregational parts of the singing, while the responses to the celebrant, and especially the solemn Amen after consecration, represented their share in the prayers.

One can hardly fail to see, even in the dim obscurity which surrounds all early liturgical history, that the tendency to deprive the people of their part of the service, by making it so elaborate that it was of necessity confined to the choir, was one which showed itself at very early stages. The simple psalmody which once went on between the lessons or during the ceremonies of the Offertory became ousted by the elaborate chants of the Graduals or of the Offertories. Next, the psalmody that still survived at the
Introit and at the Communion was cut down, and became also uncongregational. Meanwhile the congregation was making its voice heard in new ways instead, and was singing the Agnus Dei at Communion, or on occasions the Creed. It managed for the time to retain its rights over these parts of the service and to acquire rights over the Gloria in excelsis, which at first was a purely sacerdotal element in the service; but, on the other hand, to a considerable degree it lost the Kyries, as these ceased to be the simple responses to a litany and became the elaborated melodies of the later mediaeval period.

Yet, in spite of all such changes, the old ideal still remained, viz. that all should contribute their share to the corporate Christian worship; and it is not too much to say that without any doubt this is the only true ideal of Christian worship.

It survived, however, down to the end of the mediaeval period only in a shrunken and a steadily shrinking form. A baneful process of decay was all the time in growing operation, which eventually reduced the oratorio to a mere duet, if not to a monologue, for the ordinary Latin Low Mass became little more than that. The congregation forfeited much of its share, partly through coldness and carelessness, but more still through the changes by which Latin ceased to be a tongue understood of the people. Simultaneously all the ministerial parts were also being cut down, and the co-operative principle was being lost. The Mass was said instead of being sung; so at one blow the whole of the functions of the Schola cantorum were gone, and the musical texts were transferred to the celebrant’s part. Or it was said without the attendant ministers; thereupon the celebrant took into his own hands so much of their functions as could be, or must be, managed, and the rest dropped out. So again at one blow the co-operative principle was obscured and almost lost. Then the relics of the Liturgy which remained were conglomerated into the hands of the celebrant and formed the Missal, or compound sacerdotal book; the participation of the faithful disappeared, and the resultant service was rightly called ‘Low Mass,’ for it represents the low-water mark of eucharistic service, and is a painful contrast to the true but almost lost dignity of the old celebration of the Holy Mysteries, with the full and intelligent co-operation of all the faithful, each in their several spheres and grades taking their own proper part in the adoration of Almighty God.
(Principles, 34-7)

While Frere gets pretty harsh here on the change, he acknowledges that there were several factors that led to it and that several of them are positive even if their impacts on the liturgy weren’t so great. So—the establishment of daily worship, Office and Mass in cathedrals and other large foundations where a sizable daily congregation wasn’t a reality was a factor. So too was the proliferation of village churches. This is the real culprit in his eyes:

For in practice, as the Church grew, and small churches and parishes belonging to special shrines or connected with landed estates took their place in the Christian economy side by side with the town churches, the materials were not available for the old solemnity of the Liturgy. For choir and ministers the parish had to make the best shift it could with whatever materials were available; and when it became necessary to define the lowest terms which should be considered possible for a celebration of the Eucharist, the minimum requirement was fixed at two persons, the priest and a clerk to serve him. And so we come to the duet. What wonder if the people soon came to regard the service as something done for them instead of something done by them? (Principles, 39-40)

Frere does say that the English had an advantage over other groups because of the way that their liturgical books were normed:

The character of pre-Reformation Service-books in England was especially calculated to keep up a good deal of the old ideal. While continental mass-books very constantly contemplated nothing better than Low Mass, the English books always had High Mass in view. Indeed, this is so much the case that it is a matter of great difficulty to reconstruct what an English Low Mass was like before the Reformation, since the Service-books make little or no provision for it. Moreover, many of the Service-books, both for the Eucharist and the Divine Service, incorporated as rubrics large sections of the ceremonial and ritual directions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury. By this means there penetrated even to the village churches some echo of the dignified and corporate worship of that illustrious cathedral body; and the smaller bodies were encouraged to do their best to maintain the same ideal, and to resist as far as possible the progress of liturgical degradation and decay.

While what he says is true, we must resist the temptation to triumphalism—the retention of the old pattern probably had less to do with a consciousness of theological principles than the scribal habits of the Salisbury book trade.

There was an opportunity to restoring the old pattern at the Reformation, but it was neither recognized nor seized (as they were too busy seizing other things…):

This failure to restore the ancient ideal of worship was probably not so much a matter of design as of accident. The reformers no doubt wished to reduce the elaborateness of ceremonial, to simplify the services and make them more congregational. They objected to the ceremonial partly because it seemed to men of that age, as the result of bad traditions, to be in itself an un-spiritual thing, and partly also because it was intimately bound up in the popular mind with doctrinal views which they wished to eradicate. They did not see that, in abolishing the provision for it so much as they did, they were destroying good as well as evil, and were robbing a number of the people of the privilege of a share of their own in the worship. Nor did they perceive that, while attempting to abolish the sacerdotalism which they had seen so much abused, they were in fact, so far as service went, erecting a new barrier between clergy and laity, and a sharp line of demarcation between priest and people, such as had not existed previously in the days when priest, deacon, subdeacon, acolyte, clerk, incense-boy, and congregation still had each his appointed share, and ministered in his several degree. (Principles, 43-4)

As has happened so many times, the old clericalism simply gave way to the new clericalism… Frere closes the chapter with his recommendations on the matter which, though lengthy, are totally worth recounting in full:

Liturgical worship must be co-operative and corporate. It is a false sacerdotalism that seeks to comprehend as much as possible in the one pair of hands of the priest or celebrant. It is always a gain that, with due regard to structure and liturgical principles, the services should employ many persons in divers functions. The clergy and other ministers, servers, clerks, and choir, all have their own part. The different parts of the ceremonial action must be harmonious; but, so long as this is the case, it is no harm, but only good, that different people should simultaneously be doing different things. A good deal is needed to get rid of the false idea of the duet of parson and clerk, or parson and choir, or even parson and congregation. For example, it is far better that the psalms, when read, should be read as they are sung, from side to side, and not as a duet; that the lessons at Divine Service and at the Eucharist should be assigned to different persons; that the first part of the Litany should be sung by clerks; and that many other survivals of the old ideal be retained. And most of all it is desirable that the true ideal should be so clearly set before the congregation that it may become less of a cold critic of a ceremonial which it does not understand and perhaps dislikes, and more of an active and hearty participant in a great act of corporate and co-operative worship.

For this purpose it is necessary that the musical parts of the service which ought to be congregational, should be kept so simple that the congregation can, if it only will, take its part in them; and of such moderate pitch that the men’s voices can sing as well as the women’s. All elaborate harmonised music is out of place for these parts of the service, except in those churches, which, though rare, do yet exist in England, where a large section of the congregation is able to take the various vocal parts, and is not confined merely to singing the melody.

The Kyrie and Creed at the Eucharist, and the psalms in Divine Service, are the special parts which both can be made, and ought to be kept, congregational; and where psalms are congregational there is great gain in singing them for ‘Introit’ and ‘Communion,’ as well as the best possible authority for doing so.

But when the congregation has its own part it must not grudge others their part, nor expect to follow or share in all that others are doing; such an expectation is a very common cause of complaint on the part of the laity, and it results from the misconception of the idea of corporate worship. No one expects or demands that on the stage only one actor should move at a time; and if this is not expected on the stage, where all is done for the benefit of the audience, and adapted to the spectator’s capacity for taking in the situation, far less is it to be demanded in religious ceremonial, which is done not for the benefit of the congregation, but for the honour of Almighty God; and where, therefore, there is no need, as in the other case, that it should be adapted to the congregation at all, except so far as to be decorous and uplifting in its general effect.

Each person in his own sphere has taken his due part in the public worship if he has contributed his own quota, be it great or small, according to his responsibility and place, to the general sum; and if at the same time he has followed generally the whole of the action. This is the ideal whether for the Eucharist or for Divine Service. These two differ widely in their general character, and therefore differ widely in the nature of their ceremonial. The Eucharist is one homogeneous and continuous action, and goes forward, if one may so say, like a drama; it has its prelude, its working up, its climax, its epilogue. The Divine Service has no such unity; it has a series of different actions which are not necessarily closely connected, and might almost equally well be placed in any other order as in their existing order. If the Eucharist may be called, in regard to the nature of the structure of the service, a dramatic action, the Divine Service may be called by contrast meditative or reflective. But, great as is this difference of nature between the two, they are alike in their ideal of corporate worship, and alike in requiring that the whole body of the faithful should as far as possible, and in very various degrees, co-operate. And in both cases this work of worship done by the Church on earth is a work in co-operation with the heavenly hierarchies in their celestial worship, whether it is the definite sacrificial climax of the Eucharist or the subsidiary work of preparation and thanksgiving, which, properly speaking, is the essence of the Divine Service.

So, that having been said, Frere puts forth strongly the fundamental principle that worship should be as communal and as corporate as possible—each group having and knowing its own roles and appreciating the roles of the others. It’s therefore on the strength of that recognition and understanding that I think we should parse the distinction between the priest’s roles and the other roles and try to maintain proper consistency within them. Of course it’s not the only way to do it, but I think it helps us better understand and keep the corporate ideal alive.