Treasures Of The Anglican Patrimony: The Prayer Of Humble Access

Part One

The Prayer of Humble Access. What kind of a series on the Anglican Patrimony would this be if it had started anywhere else? I find that those who have little or no experience with Anglo-Catholicism often pick out this one prayer above all else. Rightly so, it's a fantastic example of everything the Anglican Patrimony is about: theocentricity, piety, meekness, contrition, hieratic language, beauty, eloquence, solemnity, nobility, and so on.

The Prayer of Humble Access was composed by Thomas Cranmer especially for the 1548 Communion Service and was later incorporated into the first Book of Common Prayer (BCP) the following year. Here's how it appeared initially (a contemporary transliteration follows the original):

"WE do not preſume to come to this thy table (o mercifull lord) truſting in our owne righteouſnes, but in thy manifold & great mercies: we be not woorthie ſo much as to gather up the cromes under thy table: but thou art the ſame lorde whoſe propertie is alwayes to have mercie: Graunt us therefore (gracious lorde) ſo to eate the fleſhe of thy dere ſonne Jeſus Chriſt, and to drynke his bloud in theſe holy Miſteries, that we may continuallye dwell in hym, and he in us, that our ſynfull bodyes may bee made cleane by his body, and our ſoules waſhed through hys moſt precious bloud. Amen."

"WE do not presume to come to this thy Table (O merciful Lord) trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his Blood, in these holy Mysteries, that we may continually dwell in him, and he in us, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood. Amen."

The prayer was revised slightly for the 1662 Prayer Book (the book still in force in the Church of England), which is identical to the version that appears in both the 1928 American BCP and traditional language rite of the 1979 book:

"WE do not presume to come to this Thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under they table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen."

"Strange to say, it was in the Middle Ages, 'the Ages of Faith', that Communion [of the laity] was less frequent than at any other period of the Church's history," (Catholic Encyclopedia). It is likely that this was due largely to the influence of the development and prevalence of Jansenistic tendencies, many believing that they could never approach the Sacrament in confidence by virtue of their great unworthiness. While it is, of course, true that we shall never merit the great mercies which Christ deigns to bestow upon us, this does not mean we should not accept them when he does, provided we are aware of our unworthiness and properly disposed as a result. Aside from the stain of serious sin, it is the simple acknowledgement of our lowly estate that puts us in the right place to receive grace. That is humility, which is all God asks. This is, in fact, precisely what Saint Paul prescribes:

"Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged," (1 Cor. 11:27-31).

One of the common tenets of the Reformation was the stress of more frequent Communion of the laity. To be sure the more radical strains, including that of Dr. Cranmer himself, emphasized this as a result of their belief that the Eucharist was not a recapitulation of the Sacrifice of Christ, but nothing more than a memorial meal. The "virtue [of the Eucharist] was limited to the receivers of the communion, and the laity derived no benefit from private masses performed by priests," (Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation, 1489-1556).

Of course the Reformers also called for a more central role for Holy Scripture in the life of the Church, and Saint Paul explicitly enjoins humility before the Lord's Table. If, as proper Bible-believing Christians, we are to obey this command, the laity ought to be given the opportunity to express this humility liturgically prior to their Communion, right? Well...yeah.

As with so many other things, for whatever reason Dr. Cranmer did what he did, the result is not only beautiful, but, in and of itself and leaving aside historical implications, doctrinally sound and praiseworthy. In this particular example, we can even see a direct fulfillment of the wishes of the the Council of Trent, which also sought to reform the Church, though whilst preserving unity and orthodoxy, of course. Consider the following prescriptions from the Council:

"'Frequent and daily Communion...should be open to all the faithful, of whatever rank and condition of life; so that no one who is in the state of grace, and who approaches the holy table with a right and devout intention, can be lawfully hindered therefrom.' (2) 'A right intention consists in this: that he who approaches the Holy Table should do so, not out of routine, or vainglory, or human respect, but for the purpose of pleasing God, or being more closely united with Him by charity, and of seeking this Divine remedy for his weaknesses and defects'. Rule 3 declares that 'it is sufficient that they (the daily communicants) be free from mortal sin, with the purpose of never sinning in future', and Rule 4 enjoins that 'care is to be taken that Holy Communion be proceeded by serious preparation and followed by a suitable thanksgiving, according to each one's strength, circumstances, and duties,'" (Catholic Encyclopedia).

In other words, the Reformers weren't all wrong. Funnily enough, the Prayer of Humble Access provides a near perfect liturgical expression of these Tridentine instructions. But more than that, it is beautiful. I can speak from experience, unlike many of the prayers of the current Ordinary Form, if one is paying attention at all, it is really very difficult to pray the Humble Access and not mean it; like all good prayer, it evokes that for which it is petitioning God. Of course, grace has something to do with it, but who's to say that the grace of God cannot be mediated to us through the agency of liturgical language itself? Isn't that just to say that there should be a reciprocal relationship between words and belief? Prayer and work? Liturgy and life?

Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Next Up: Choral Evensong

Imprecision Of Language

A friend of mine recently pointed out her frustration with the rampant overuse of hyperbole in contemporary speech: "Man, that's awesome!" and the like. Really? Does the iPhone 4S really inspire awe? Maybe it does.

Hyperbole is a legitimate rhetorical and literary device used to draw attention to the way one perceives something as opposed to the way it really is. Of course, hyperbole is never meant to be taken literally, and, as such, critiques like the one above are a bit harsh. Thing is, when you use a device meant to draw special attention to something every other sentence, it stops being special and you undermine your whole purpose in using it.

This particular situation is, I think, symptomatic of a larger and more serious problem, namely, rampant carelessness with language. Consider this quote from The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson:

"It is often said that what most immediately sets English apart from other languages is the richness of its vocabulary. Webster's Third New International Dictionary lists 450,000 words, and the revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000, but that is only part of the total. Technical and scientific terms would add millions more. Altogether, about 200,000 English words are in common use, more than in German (184,000) and far more than in French (a mere 100,000). The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between 'I wrote' and 'I have written.' The Spanish cannot differentiate between a chairman and a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care.... English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. 'Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist,'" (13-14).

This is one of the reasons why I believe Shakespeare could only have happened in English. But, to whom much is given, much is required. As a native English speaker, one has no excuse for imprecision. If I'm having an interesting experience, in all likelihood the perfect word to describe it exists. It's nobody's fault but my own that I don't know it.

Words represent things. Nouns represent substances, all kinds: general, specific, proper, common, abstract, concrete, collective, and so on. Verbs represent actions like walking, driving, talking, and writing. Verbs also represent passions, or received actions like being talked to or being carried. Adjectives represent qualities; adverbs represent the manners in which actions can happen; and prepositions represent relationships.

All of this is to say that words have their foundation in the real world. Things exist in the world around us. We know these things through our senses. When we speak about them, we're relating this conceptual knowledge to other people, and we do so according to the conventions of our language and culture in order that we will be understood. The transitive property dictates, then, that when, via language, we communicate our conceptual knowledge of the world to others, we're also communicating the natures of the things in the world which gave rise to our own knowledge of them.

Some would make the argument that, in the end, what we say doesn't really matter that much as long as we communicate ourselves. While it's true that our language must abide by certain conventions in order for us to be understood, it is not only our impressions of the world that we are attempting to communicate. When we utter a word, we are transmitting knowledge of the forms in things.

Imprecision in and carelessness with language is, then, carelessness with our knowledge of things, and the things themselves. To deny the importance of choosing one's words carefully is to deny the real connection between our words, our mind, and the world. In other words, we should all mean what we say, and say what we mean.

Evangelism: A Linguistic Approach

Our word "evangelism" entered into the language in the early 17th century, coming ultimately from the Latin evangelium (Gk. evangelion), meaning "gospel." "Gospel" itself comes from Old English godspel, from god "good" + spell "story, message;" i.e., "good news."

But what is the "good news" that we have heard? When the Magi arrived at the Epiphany, representatives of the Gentile world, what was the gospel that they received? Was it a set of ideas, a system of moral and theological principles to which they were now bound to ascribe? No. It was a person, the arrival of the true God-Man. To be sure, his arrival necessarily refers to a set of ideas and theological principles. Nevertheless, these are not primary. These flow from who he is, not the other way around.

If evangelism is sharing this Gospel with others, how, then, are we to go about it? Blessed Cardinal Newman distinguished two types of conversion: intellectual conversion and "real" conversion. Intellectual conversion is the simple fact of accepting Christianity as true according to the dictates of logic and reason. This is necessary and related to "real" conversion, but it is not its essence. Real conversion is imaginal, meaning, to be really converted to Christ does not primarily mean accepting the theology. It involves this, but primarily it means the submission of one's very self to Christ, body and soul, so that one lives and breathes the Truth, quite literally seeing it in the world around oneself all the time.

This is exactly what the Catholic Church professes to do. By means of the operation of the Saints, the Sacraments, the Church itself, and the Holy Spirit the Church brings Christ himself to us continually. Our Lord even uses the Church to come to us in his very flesh. It is this Personhood of Christ, transmitted through the Church that we are called to bring to the world. This is why after Communion Mass wraps up fairly quickly. The Church is encouraging us to take what we've received, to take Christ himself: body, blood, soul, and divinity, out into the world without delay or hesitation. And this means a life lived in love (caritas), and loving sacrifice, even unto death.

Our first, most fundamental, and most important task when it comes to sharing the Gospel is living Christ in this way, so that we become conduits of not only the intellectual principles of Christianity, but the Truth himself. We must unite ourselves to him and his life so completely that others see him through us, as we live a life of love, service, and sacrifice.

To be sure, we must "always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls [us] to account for the hope that is in [us]," (1 Pet. 3:15). But it is the Person of Christ which we are to transmit primarily. In other words, we are not called to argue people into the Church, but to love them into it. After all, that's how he goes about it.

Temperaments And Personality Types, Part One - The Ancients

In the middle of the last century, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs dusted off a copy of Carl Jung's 1923 work Psychological Types and began developing a questionnaire based on it designed to "sort" people into one of sixteen possible personality types called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Neither the work of Mrs. Myers nor Carl Jung was particularly revolutionary, however. They stand at the near end of a long tradition of personality "sorting" that can be traced back to the beginning of Western Civilization. This post will be the first in a short series tracing the development of that tradition.

In his book Please Understand Me II, David Keirsey recounts the early history of "personology" thusly:

"It was the Roman physician Galen who, developing the ideas of Hippocrates, proposed (around 190 AD) that it is neither the stars nor the gods that determine what we want and what we do; rather, it is the balance of our bodily fluids, the four 'humors,' as they were called. If our blood predominates Galen called us 'Sanguine' or eagerly optimistic in temperament; if our black bile or gall predominates, then we are 'Melancholic' or doleful in temperament; if our yellow bile predominates, then we are 'Choleric' or passionate in temperament; and if our phlegm predominates, then we are 'Phlegmatic' or calm in temperament," (23).

An artist's unflattering rendition of the Four Temperaments.

Of course, we all know how the application of Galen's theory of Humorism worked out when applied medicinally. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the personological element has merit, technically unrelated to bodily fluids as it may be. If you think about it, it's probably pretty easy to sort everybody you know into one of Galen's four temperaments. Try replacing his terms with some more familiar ones: "Sanguine" with "cheerful," "Melancholic" with "broody," "Choleric" with "excitable," and "Phlegmatic" with "calm."

"Nearly six hundred years before Galen, Plato had written in The Republic of four kinds of character which clearly corresponded with the four temperaments attributed to Hippocrates. Plato was more interested in the individual's contribution to the social order than in underlying temperament, and so he named the Sanguine temperament the iconic (artisan) character, endowed with artistic sense, and playing an art-making role in society. He named the Melancholic temperament the pistic (guardian) character, endowed with common sense, and playing a caretaking role in society. He named the Choleric temperament the noetic (idealist) character, endowed with intuitive sensibility, and playing a moral role in society. And he named the Phlegmatic temperament the dianoetic (rational) character, endowed with reasoning ability, and laying the role of logical investigator in society," (Ibid.).

The Greek words Plato has used here to identify the driving forces behind Hippocrates' four temperaments can be translated as follows: icon = "image", pistis = "trust", noein = "insight", and dianoia = "reason". In other words, if you're Sanguine, you're driven by imagery (iconography) and will likely be drawn to the arts, crafts (such as carpentry or masonry), and creativity in general; if you're Melancholic, you're driven by honor, duty, and trust in others and society, and you'll likely be drawn to traditional leadership (guardian) roles; if you're Choleric, you're driven by intuition and insight and will likely be drawn to activities involving ethics, relationships, and establishing harmony; and if you're Phlegmatic, you're driven by cold and calm reason, and you'll likely be drawn to logical, mathematical fields.

"A generation [after Plato], Aristotle defined character in terms of happiness, and not, as his mentor Plato had done, in terms of virtue. Aristotle argued that there are four sources of happiness: 'The mass of men,' he said, find happiness either in 'sensual pleasure' (hedone) or in 'acquiring assets' (propraietari), while some few find happiness either in exercising their 'moral virtue' (ethikos) or in a life of 'logical investigation' (dialogike)," (Ibid.).

 Not surprisingly, the categories we have thus far established (humors, temperaments, drives, societal roles, sources of happiness) were eventually seen as corresponding to other groups of four like the seasons, the major organs, and the four elements. After a brief survey of the Classical temperaments, then, we end up with the following chart:

Next up: the Medieval World's contributions.

Linguistic "Affectation"

While vs. whilst, who vs. whom, split infinitives, dangling prepositions, farther vs. further, the list goes on and on. I know what you’re thinking. These are mere affectations having little to nothing to do with actual communication, what’s their use? Good riddance, I say! Hmm...

Here’s the question: Do such things contribute to the goodness and beauty of the language, or do they not? What is beauty in a language? It might be true that a certain combination of sounds determines something of a language’s beauty. It could also be that phonology is simply arbitrary, and a preference for the way one language sounds as opposed to another is simply a result of either taste or cultural conditioning. I don’t know, and it is beyond the scope of this post to probe into such an issue. We must, therefore, leave it aside for the time being.

At the very least, language is meant to serve a function—that of the communication of ideas from one mind to another. Like a chair, table, or anything functional, then, a language’s beauty is at least tied to its functionality; that is, how well it serves its function of communication.

Due to its unique and somewhat tumultuous history, contemporary English is home to a dizzyingly vast array of vocabulary as well as syntactical forms. These two elements which make up the matter (in the case of vocabulary) and form (in the case of syntax) work together to provide nuances of meaning to which other languages are simply not privy. To quote Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue: “English retains probably the richest vocabulary, and most diverse shading of meanings, of any language. We can distinguish between house and home (as, for example, the French cannot), between continual and continuous, sensual and sensuous, forceful and forcible, childish and childlike, masterful and masterly, assignment and assignation, informant and informer. For almost every word we have a multiplicity of synonyms. Something is not just big, it is large, immense, vast, capacious, bulky, massive, whopping, humongous. No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. It has been said that English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly—so that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror, or trepidation, and think, ponder, or cogitate upon a problem.”

Read it. I seriously  just saw it at Half Price for cheap. Ish. Do it.

Likewise, on the syntactical level, it is possible in English to distinguish linguistically between a person performing an action simply (“I walk”) and doing so continuously at this very moment (“I am walking”)—a distinction of which most languages are woefully incapable. This variability of speech is so because of the many and sundrous languages that have wielded influence over English through the ages, so that it has become a truly cosmopolitan tongue, having absorbed the best of those languages which were its progenitors (chiefly Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman) and borrowed much good from many others with which it has had contact.

It is not true, however, that English has a monopoly on nuanced vocabulary and grammatical forms. A classic example in which English is deficient lexically is our word love. We use this one term to signify many different meanings. As I’m sure you know, the Greeks had four: eros, storge, philia, and agape, which stood for romantic love, the affection between a person and a thing or animal, familial love, and unconditional love, respectively. It is true we have terms which we might use to communicate these ideas. We could, for example, use “friendship” for philia and “affection” for storge, though these don’t usually carry quite the same meaning as the Greek words, and were we to translate them so, we would need to qualify in what exact sense they were being used.

This is the case grammatically as well. Vietnamese, for instance, makes use of a grammatical principle called “clusivity,” in which there are different words to indicate when one intends to use we inclusively (“You and I together did something.”) or exclusively (“This other person and I did something.”)

Nevertheless, I would argue that English is, on the whole, capable of far more complexity and nuance than most other languages. Evidence of this might be that children in other countries learn English partly so they can read Shakespeare in the original, whereas we read their literature in translation. Of course, it also might simply be evidence that children in other countries are better educated. Either way, all of this is to say that it is this very intricacy, in service to its function of communication, which makes English beautiful.

To return to our initial inquiry, it is true that there is room for natural development in a language, and that such development is a good thing. If there were not, the Middle English of Chaucer, though beautiful, would never have evolved into the Modern English of Shakespeare, also beautiful, though in different ways. Diversity itself is good, even in one language over time. Bill Bryson again: “One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change.” The question, then, is whether or not a particular development contributes to the ability to communicate with clarity or does not. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

What about while vs. whilst and the other words that follow the same pattern: among/amongst, amid/amidst, and mid/midst? The “-s” in these constructions is a relic of the Middle English adverbial genitive. In other words, when adjectives were used as adverbs they were put into the genitive case, so that an “-s” was added as in our contemporary possessives. The “-t” is simply a parasitic particle formed in accordance with the old phonetics (but as they’re residual forms, it’s a package deal). That being the case, the list of these relics turns out to be considerably longer than at first glance, including: alway/always, toward/towards, backward/backwards, one/once, two/twice, three/thrice, here/hence, then/thence, when/whence, and others. It turns out, then, that these distinctions are actually of significant value, namely, to differentiate between a word’s adjectival and adverbial forms. Here’s a commonplace example in which we would never consider not making the distinction: “I walked to the store two times today,” as opposed to “I walked to the store twice.” In like manner we should say either “I walked forwards,” or “I walked in a forward direction,” but never “I walked forward.” After examination, the same conclusion can be reached for the distinction between farther and further, continuous and continual, between and amongst, and many others, albeit on different grounds. After all, an affectation is only an affectation if there is no reason to practice is beyond pretension.

On the other hand, a prescription like that against split infinitives is really pretty absurd. The idea is that in many languages an infinitive is one word (for example, that language most revered for centuries, Latin). Since it is impossible to split an infinitive in Latin, one shouldn’t in English. Other than that, though, why exactly is it better to say “to go boldly” than “to boldly go”? They mean exactly the same thing. Silliness.

In conclusion, one last quote from The Mother Tongue: “It seems to me there is a case for resisting change—at least slapdash change. Even the most liberal descriptivist would accept that there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one’s lap and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to house-break. In precisely the same way, clarity is generally better served if we agree to observe a distinction between imply and infer, forego and forgo, fortuitous and fortunate, uninterested and disinterested, and many others. As John Ciardi observes, resistence may in the end prove futile, but at least it tests the changes and makes them prove their worth.”

To put it simply, it seems to me the hermeneutic of continuity applies equally well to the development of language as it does to that of everything else.