Journals

The Revd Colin Williamson of Aberdalgie counsels us to read liturgical prayer not in a ‘personal’ way as if we had composed it but ‘I am leading you as we pray this’. We do not seek to insert meaning but, if it is a good prayer, it does not need us to emphasise and inflect but will do its work on its own. He attacks the habit of speaking too slowly; this can destroy a collect and other set material.

Union with God - the Teaching of St John of the Cross, Desmond Tillyer, Mowbray, reviewed by William G Neil

Sacraments and Liturgy, The Outward Signs, Louis Weil, Blackwell, reviewed by Ronald A Farrell

Learning about Vestments and Altar Service, Raymond Wilkinson, Mowbray, reviewed by R E C J

Draw Near with Faith, Geoffrey Shilvock, Mowbray, reviewed by R E C J

Delivered at Edinburgh and Aberdeen November 1982 by the Revd Principal A Raymond George.

Pre-Reformation rites are reviewed but the bulk of the paper consists of a searching analysis of some recently revised rites: the Book of Common Order 1979 (Third Order), the Roman Mass of 1970 (eucharistic prayer IV) the Alternative Service Book 1980 (First Eucharistic Prayer of Rite A), the Methodist Service Book 1975, and the Eucharistic Prayer of the Joint Liturgical Group. These are compared in the contexts of liturgical scholarship, of recent ecumenical scholarship (particularly the discussion of presence and of sacrifice), and of the consensus of wider theology.

These are so titled to indicate that they are complementary to the morning service and neither a substitute nor an alternative. It is more liturgically structured than that service, the shape derived from the Taizé Evening Office and using some material from it. It also has a ‘led Bible Study’, prayers for the sick by name, a responsorial psalms, and uses Sounds of Living Waters and Fresh Sounds for items of praise.

During the 500th anniversary of South Leith Parish Church, Edinburgh.

Two papers given at the Annual Meeting of the Church Service Society in 1983 given by the Revd R Stuart Louden and the Revd David Beckett. They are followed by a Comment by the Revd Professor T F Torrance.

Stuart Louden finds unseemly irreverence and trivialisation in some common practices, such as how the elements are shared, certain rules and regulations regarding admission to Communion added by Assemblies, the practice on the part of some ministers of receiving the elements after the elders or even the congregation. A substantial section discusses holiness in the context of outlining a theology of the Sacraments which is bedded in true catholicity, citing books by Donald Baillie and Harry Wotherspoon. He laments an absence of devotion and reverence in many congregations, caused by a lack of vital belief in God the Holy Trinity, the supreme Christian mystery, related to a Unitarian outlook strand in Protestant piety.

David Beckett, Louden’s successor at Greyfriars, in responding to his paper, endorses his main message and his call for worship that is fully trinitarian and doxological. He is less supportive of quarterly Communions, finding that (taking the evidence from attendance at preparatory and thanksgiving services) the momentum of the former pattern has collapsed, and that the attempts to continue that makes for too much pomp and circumstance which makes it more difficult for congregations to welcome more frequent celebrations. He criticises the 1979 Book of Common Order for its lack of alternative orders for Communion, and welcomes services of a different atmosphere and ethos. He calls for better sound teaching in college and from the pulpit. With regard to Louden’s call for the transcendental to have prime place, while agreeing he also reminds that there is also a human element, but they must not be polarised. And we must remember that God’s grace is stronger than our disobedience.

T F Torrance makes three comments: the unfortunate absence of the pouring of the wine as counterpart to the breaking of the bread; the too great a focus in the Latin and Western tradition, which we follow, on the body and blood and not enough on the Resurrection; the conflating of the coming of the Holy Spirit with the eschatological final Advent of Christ devalues the latter.