Faith of the Episcopal Church

The Catechism appearing in the American editions of the Book of Common Prayer (1789, 1892, 1928) conforms to the structure and content of the Catechism found in the English editions of the Book of Common Prayer, beginning in 1549 and taking final form in the edition of 1662. Both strictly maintain a teaching tradition, firmly in place before and after the English Reformation, of using questions and answers to focus attention on the key matters of the Creed, the Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments. In addition, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer provides two “Offices of Instruction” as services of worship for teaching the content of the catechism, along with a brief study of the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon.

The Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church took a different approach to reflect the spirit and the content of the new services that were being approved for the new Prayer Book of 1976/1979. They established a small committee to draft an entirely new catechism from the new services already approved or in trial use. The doctrines of the new catechism were drawn from the new services as opposed to the faith handed to us by generations of Christians. Their justification for this was – the law of praying is the law of believing or “lex orandi, lex credendi.” The unusual twist in their approach is the prayers were determined before the beliefs were taken into consideration.

The inductive approach used by the Episcopal church said basically, “let us poll various members of the Episcopal Church as to what they believe, or are willing to believe; let us examine the new prayers and services for what they teach or imply about God and man; let us factor in our own expert opinion of what life in the modern world requires; and let us construct a new catechism to summarize these data as the faith of the church.”

It was not the theologians, but the liturgical experts who ended up defining what the Episcopal Church was to receive and believe as Christian Doctrine. Thus the House of Bishops and the General

Convention approved “An Outline of Faith, commonly called the Catechism.”

The Alpha and Omega of the new catechism is humanity itself since the first and last sections are entitled “Human Nature” and the “Christian Hope”. It says that by nature, we are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God.” And to be made in the image of God “means that we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.” Three words stand out in those statements; “free,” “create,” and “harmony.”

Free to choose is a maxim promoted by the social movements as more important than the choices actually made. This “freedom of choice” becomes the moral justification for supporting such anti-Scriptural causes as elective abortion, easy divorce and re-marriage, and same-sex unions.

The ability to create is, likewise, greatly exaggerated. God creates from nothing, as he wills. Human beings create according to the limits, opportunities, and materials provided by God. The new catechism implies that “creation” is a single activity in which both God and humanity engage on the basis of an equality of action, if not an equality of power or scale.

The theory of harmony as the perfection of purpose, salvation, and true righteousness is not a part of Christianity at all. It is the intrusion of a principle common in Far Eastern Religions and mysticism. Being in harmony with creation and with God is to imply we can affect God through harmonious living. To the contrary, God was the First Mover who set everything in motion, and God is understood to exist perfectly outside the material harmony he created.

“What is the Trinity?” is a question answered under the heading “The Creeds” with the spare, algebraic answer, “The Trinity is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The studied vagueness of the statement leaves room for almost any interpretation an individual cares to give it. One might imagine three gods (the false doctrine of tritheism). One might consider these names three ways of speaking about God – the false doctrines of Socinianism (Unitarianism) and modalism (one God, three forms, never simultaneous). One might think that these names are poetic metaphors for a “spiritual wholeness” that can be called “Mother” as easily as “Father” (the false doctrines of theological feminism and theological post-modernism). The fortunate might be blessed enough to stumble across the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity or an orthodox teacher, so that one came to believe that the indivisible
Godhead is made up of Three Eternal Persons of one divine substance (essence), and of equal might, majesty, and dominion.

The 1928 BCP contains:

• First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me and all the world.
• Secondly, in God, the Son, who hath redeemed me, and all mankind.
• Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the people of God.
• And this Holy Trinity, One God, I praise and magnify, saying, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

This minimal but complete statement of the glory of God will define and form the human person, rather than leaving the human person to define and form the truth for himself as the new catechism does.

“What do we mean when we say that Jesus is the only Son of God?” is answered by, “We mean that Jesus is the only perfect image of the Father, and shows us the nature of God” (Arian denial of the divinity of Christ). Again, one might believe that a mere difference of degree separates any man from the Son of man instead of recognizing that He is of one divine substance with the Father.

Original sin is strangely missing from the new catechism. When asked “Why we live apart from God and out of harmony with creation?” the response is, “From the beginning, human beings have misused their freedom and made wrong choices”. “Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” While true, this leaves Jesus out of the picture altogether. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

The new catechism asks, “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God?” It answers, “We call them the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.” And it says, “We understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures.” While the text of the catechism does not tell which “Church” has the authority of “the true interpretation of the Scriptures,” subsequent events imply the authority can be held at the diocesan level subject to the approval, implicit or otherwise of the General Convention.

This right to interpret the faith and discipline of the Church is more evident when we consider the catechism’s definition of “Holy Matrimony” - Holy Matrimony is Christian marriage, in which the woman and man enter into a life-long union.” Even ignoring the question of divorce, the words “woman and man” clearly do not include two people of the same sex. And yet the Episcopal Church is permitting same-sex relationships and “marriages” while retaining this catechism as its official statement of doctrine.

Our concern is not whether the catechism can be made orthodox, but rather whether an honest but uninformed soul can be made orthodox by this catechism. A return to the traditional catechism is required to make unchanging truth available to the people of today.

For more details, read “Neither Orthodoxy Nor A Formulary” by The Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, M.A., D.Phil.

and The Rev. Louis Tarsitano

(Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society of the USA 2004