What Is Anglicanism?

Urban T. Holmes III

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Year: 1982
• Print ISBN: 9780819212955
• eBook ISBN: 9780819224651
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

An accessible introduction to and basic understanding of Anglican heritage.

The early chapters explore the Anglican consciousness, authority within the Church, and how Anglicans read the Bible. Other chapters cover Anglican understandings of the Incarnation, sacraments, liturgy, the Episcopacy, pastoral care, spirituality, mission, church and state, and prophetic witness.

Chapter Three

The Bible

Surely among the great Christians of recent times is Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831-1906). He is remembered in the calendar of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (October 15), but when his commemoration rolls around each year there are more jokes about the pronunciation of his name than appreciation for the incredible witness of this saint.

Born a Jew in Lithuania, from his early years he exhibited a remarkable talent for languages. While studying to become a rabbi in Germany he read the New Testament in Hebrew and came to believe that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah. In 1854, he emigrated to the United States and began studying for the Presbyterian ministry. While in seminary, however, he concluded that Calvinistic theology and polity were not biblical and he sought to complete his studies and to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. The priest who gave him the greatest support was Theodore Lyman, then Rector of Trinity Church, Pittsburgh, and later the fourth Bishop of North Carolina. The sponsorship of Schereschewsky was probably Lyman’s greatest single contribution to the church.

While at the General Convention the first Anglican Bishop of China, William J. Boone, visited the seminary and the course of Schereschewsky’s life was set. Leaving in 1859 for China, his goal was to translate the Scriptures for the Chinese people. A scholar without peers, he learned Chinese while aboard ship on route to China (it took twenty-three weeks!). From 1862 to 1875 Schereschewsky was in Peking, during which time he translated the Bible into Mandarin. He also started a translation into Mongolian, after a visit to that part of China.

In 1875 while in the United States on furlough, Schereschewsky was elected Bishop of China. He declined, principally on the grounds that he wished to finish his translation of the Mongolian Bible and do one in Easy Wenli, the classical written language of China. He was elected once again the next year, was persuaded, declined again, and repersuaded. He was ordained bishop in 1877, and served until 1883. During his episcopate he founded St. John’s College in Shanghai, which later became a university and one of the great educational institutions of China. In August 1881, while living in the intense heat of Wuchang, a city to which he had come because of problems in the church, he suffered heatstroke. As a result of the very high fever he was completely paralyzed. He never fully recovered.

The remaining twenty-five years of Schereschewsky’s life were spent struggling with his profound disability while translating the Scriptures into Easy Wenli and editing a reference Bible in that language. He traveled Europe and North America, seeking relief with but the one goal in mind: to complete this third translation. Often he lived in poverty. He could never sleep more than four or five hours a day. His wife, up until the last year or so nursed him through it all, while he typed out the translation with one finger. He finished his Easy Wenli translation in 1894 and then went to Japan to seek the assistance of a Chinese secretary in polishing the translation. There he lived out his final years, often in much pain, but with little complaint. His last words, most reminiscent of Dame Julian of Norwich, were, “It is well; it is very well.”

Schereschewsky was not the “typical Anglican.” He was neither born to it nor did he join as a result of a desire to move socially upward. He was convinced of Christianity and its Anglican expression by reading the Bible. He spent the rest of his life making the Bible available to the people of China, enduring all kinds of strange vicissitudes. This understanding and devotion to the Scriptures is in the best Anglican tradition, and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, a Lithuanian Jew, is the patron saint of all who in our tradition seek to live and teach the Scriptures.

I do not know what Schereschewsky’s convictions were as to the nature of biblical interpretation. He was contemporary with the great Cambridge (England) triumvirate, B. F. Westcott (1828-1901), J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889) and J. A. Hort (1828-1892), who initiated the Anglican tradition of biblical criticism. It is difficult to determine how well Schereschewsky knew their work and shared their viewpoint, although a scholar such as he must have been conversant with Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament and the landmark commentaries of Lightfoot. Schereschewsky believed that the Bible tells a story which can be a means of God’s saving grace changing the lives of those who read it. It is this understanding of the Bible that is characteristic of Anglicanism.

Our tradition understands the cultural conditioning of the books of the Bible as self-evident. Many of the books are products of an oral tradition centuries long and the result of an editorial process. Some of them are like a montage, where different versions and points of view overlay one another. Two different accounts of the same thing can appear side by side, such as the two creation stories (Genesis 1:1-2:4 and 2:5-25). Different points of view, shaped by different cultures, can be readily identified. For example, there are at least three different interpretations of the experience of Jesus in the New Testament: Palestinian Jewish, Greek Jewish and Gentile. The authors and editors of the books of the Bible were historical human beings with the normal biases we would expect.

We know there is no perfect text of the Bible and until modern times every copy of the Scriptures was done by hand. We may have fragments of manuscripts from the second century of the New Testament and whole manuscripts from the fourth (our Old Testament manuscripts are older), but no autograph copies. The fact, for example, that there was a shorter and longer ending appendixed to Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9-20) or that the story of the woman taken in adultery was added to John’s Gospel at a later date (John 7:53-8:11), for example, are questions of historical interest, but do not gainsay the authority of the Scriptures. They illustrate in a dramatic way the living form of handwritten manuscripts and the attitude of the copyists.

It is evident, as well, that the books of the Bible reflect the various literary genre of the time and that many contemporary anecdotes and aphorisms found their way into the account. For example, when Paul writes, “Bad company is the ruin of good character” (I Corinthians 15:33), he is quoting a Greek playwright, Menander (342-291 B.C.). Some of the sayings attributed to Jesus are from the common wisdom of the times. The Gospel stories of the star of the magi, the visit of the young Jesus to the Temple, and the changing of water into wine are examples of folk motifs commonly found in contemporary tales told of other heroic or divine figures. The writers had no idea that what they were doing required “all new material.”

Each biblical author or editor took the material available to him and shaped it for his own purposes. In the Old Testament, Ruth and Ezra, each written about the same time, argue for different points of view as to whether or not a Jew may marry a foreigner. In the Apocrypha, II Maccabees is a more romantic version of some of the same events in I Maccabees. Matthew wrote his Gospel as the new Law, Mark constructed his account around the Messianic secret, Luke reflected on the Christ event from his philosophy of history, and John, thinking in terms of his particular Christology, used seven “signs” as a device for telling the story.

The ability to discern the way in which the Scriptures have come together to tell the story of the God who reveals himself in the history of Israel and finally in Jesus of Nazareth in no way threatens the authority of its message. It is clear indication of our understanding of the nature of biblical inspiration. We do not believe that the Bible is just like any other great literature, such as the Greek tragedies, Beowulf, or the plays of Shakespeare. Likewise, we do not believe that every word was dictated by God. The latter view is unreasonable. What we do believe is that within the totality of the Scriptures the story of God’s love for humankind confronts us, convicts of our sin and calls us to new life. Within all the variety and human bias evident in the various passages, this story stands clear. This is what we mean by plenary inspiration as opposed to verbal inspiration.

The effect of this particular doctrine of inspiration is seen in our discomfort with the use of “proof texts,” a verse or two taken out of context to “prove” a particular point. For example, Hal Lindsay, the author of The Late Planet Earth, claims that Revelation 17:12, which reads “The ten horns you saw are the ten kings who have yet begun to reign,” is a reference to the European Common Market, and that Armageddon, the last great battle before the end of time (Revelation 16:6), is upon us. Lindsay makes no effort to take into account the stylized imagery of apocalyptic literature of that period, of which Revelation is a typical example, nor does he appreciate the historical situation in which the author finds himself in the Roman Empire. Furthermore, he seems unaware of each century’s attempt to apply the number found in Revelation to themselves, with no greater or less success than he.

The Bible must be read intelligently and as whole. This is why in the Anglican Communion we do not allow ourselves to cherish our favorite book, dismissing those that do not appeal to us, and we reject efforts to pick and choose texts in our sermons that support our own interests. Instead, we read publicly during several years in the Eucharist and Daily Offices (i.e., Morning and Evening Prayer) the major percentage of the entire Bible: Old Testament, Apocrypha and New Testament. We believe that it is of the utmost importance that we hear the Bible read in course, in order that we may listen to the story in its entirety.

Our manner of listening to the Scriptures is that of an intentive intuition. We read Holy Writ with hope and the faith that as we wait upon God he will speak to us through these words. There is some technical theology in the Bible. There are specific ethical admonitions. The prevailing literary form is story and poetry, language of the left hand. It is important that this be so, since the Bible is the record of God’s personal self-disclosure of himself to us. It recounts a lover’s longing for the beloved; and if we are to move beyond the words to experience that love, it is the power of the story and the rhythm of the poem that will draw us there.

There is a simile in the writings of the Byzantine spiritual master, Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022) — the “old theologian” in the Byzantine church was Gregory of Nazianzus (330-390) — in which the Scriptures are likened to a “solid and well-secured chest.” Simeon points out that you can carry the chest about with you constantly. You can memorize every word of the Holy Scriptures, but unless you know how to open that chest, you will never know the treasure within. It is the Holy Spirit working in the church that enables us to unlock the chest.

The Holy Spirit does not open the meaning of the Scriptures for us easily in a kind of lightening flash. He does it through years of pondering texts and thoughtfully drawing out their meaning. In order for God to speak to us through the Bible we must do some things which may seem to some very pedantic, which do not guarantee when accomplished that we will understand the Scriptures. Without attention to these steps, we can be sure we will not understand them.

First, we have to understand the words. What did the words mean when written? Revelation 17:12 is not speaking of the European Common Market. Only a controversialist could come up with that absurd notion. It is equally foolish to think that Matthew in 16:18 had in mind the infallibility of the Pope. It is neither desirable nor possible for us to approach Holy Writ with an empty head, but we need to avoid as best we can reading into the words objects of reference which are alien to the period in which they were written. You cannot prove prohibition, for or against the ordination of women to the priesthood, or the superiority of the capitalist system from the Bible. Both are totally out of the ken of the times in which the words were written. There was no Christian ministerial priesthood, there was no capitalism in the first century and without alcohol to drink ancient folk would have died of thirst or disease.

Secondly, we have to understand the author. This comes through discerning what the author would be likely to think and do, given his culture and society. This means we have to understand how he builds his reality — his language, his symbols, his self-concept, his purpose in writing, his rules of truth, and so forth. Whoever first recounted the Virgin Birth, as it now appears in Matthew and Luke had no interest in parthenogenesis; he was not privy to the mind of the Mother of Jesus; and it never occurred to him that to tell that story he had to have certain eye-witness knowledge of the sex life of Joseph. He may have been recounting a “brute fact.” He was certainly using a classical folk motif to convey the unique relationship of Jesus to God, which is a pivotal theological point.

Thirdly, we have to understand ourselves. The power of the Scriptures is its ability to illumine our lives. This means that we have to be reflective about our world and secure in our own place in it. There is no value in pretending we live in the first century A.D. We have to be willing to let the text call us and our pet theories into question. For example, we in Anglicanism have insisted for centuries that the threefold orders of Bishops, Priests and Deacons is of dominical institution (i.e., Jesus planned it that way). We even said so in the preface to the ordinal in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Anyone reading the Scriptures with an open mind knows this is not true — which is not to say that we want to do away with the three orders. They evolved early in the tradition and this is their authority.

Fourthly, we have to risk our interpretation within the larger dialogue. The Scriptures are not in our view a matter for private interpretation. When this is the case we are too ready to settle for half-baked answers. The exploration of the Bible should evoke questions whose answers evoke even more questions. This happens as we share our insights into Holy Writ and allow our interpretation to be challenged by others. The process is one that calls us into new understandings and never lets us think that we have exhausted the meaning of the Scriptures for our times.

It is clear that in the Anglican tradition that the authority of the Bible is without question, but that hearing what the Bible says is not a simple matter. Its message is one that is f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• The Anglican Consciousness
• Authority in the Church
• The Bible
• The Incarnation
• Church and Sacraments
• The Liturgy
• The Episcopacy
• Pastoral Care
• Spirituality
• Mission
• Church and State
• Prophetic Witness