In the first part last week of this series the understanding of a person as an “individual” was compared with the “person-in-relation”, and we were invited to see how these understandings about the human person have influenced the ways that Western Christians have understood the Bible, have worshipped God and have interpreted personal and social morality. Dr. Toon now continues …

Turning to the new paraphrases and dynamic equivalency translations of the Bible which have appeared in many forms since the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, we do (if we have eyes to see!) meet modern expressive individualism (usually in a weak form, but present) in them in the way in which human beings are situated in relation to God and to their moral lifestyle.

Indeed one may say that the very use of the technique of dynamic equivalency leads necessarily to the statement of Christian standing and privilege in terms of human rights and self-worth/dignity before God and man, and away from the Biblical emphasis on responsibility, duty, fear, love, trust and so on. It does so for it seeks to put things in ways that are in vogue today in this place and time.

Now to the forms of worship in church which were put together in the 1960s and 1970s and have appeared in official and semi-official forms since then. What is very clear—if one takes a bird’s eye view of their content from 1967 to 2007—is that they quickly move to a position of regarding expressive individualism in restricted form as the ethic of the Gospel.

God “wills” that each of us be what we are according to our individual orientation: and holiness for each of us is only possible this way. At the same time, to seek to make sense of having churches, the liturgists of the new order put great emphasis on community (where individuals come together freely for celebration and self-realization), and to this end they emphasize baptism as the entry into a community of equals with a commitment to peace and justice. To be absent is to sin by denying in practice both community and also self-realization as the way to holiness.

Here we have also to make the perhaps surprising point that the only real difference between those whom we think of as progressively liberal (e.g. leaders of churches in North America such as the United Churches or the Episcopal Church) and those who identify themselves as “orthodox,” but yet use in essence the same liturgies from the 1970s era as the progressives, is this: the former take the new innovatory principles all the way (from women’s priestly ordination to same-sex blessings including serial monogamy and the renaming of fornication as holiness etc.), while the latter go in general with women’s priestly ordination and serial monogamy but turn the expressive individualism away from gay sex into more traditional Christian concerns such as a “personal relationship with Jesus” which they believe is true to Scripture and which leads to charismatic style, nonconformity, church growth and outreach.

That is, these “orthodox” use as much as they can of the 1970s forms of worship in ways that have connections with the pre-1960s traditions and common doctrine. At the same time they are decidedly modern, that is post 1960s, in their general mindset and ethos for expressive individualism.

We know that not a few are moved by the quality of the language and by general aesthetic considerations with regard to the old texts. It would appear that they enjoy these dimensions and possibly never really make an attempt to get inside the general cultural, religious meaning and ethos through and behind the texts. So they can bring to the text a mindset of expressive individualism in a mild or strong form—and not sense any real discord, because their attention is to the quality of the text as pleasurable. And their worship of God and its inner devotion are usually very personal and not themselves topics of conversation. They also love both good music and genuine silence with the liturgy.

Then we know that there are those—and they are probably the minority in the minority—that welcome the quality of language and aesthetics, who also truly desire to enter into the Bible’s message and the meaning of services such as those of the traditional Prayer Book, in a real and committed way because they believe that this is a valid way truly to God the Father through Jesus Christ in truth. That is, they really want to find truth, and to worship in truth, as well as with beauty and good order.

For other similar meditations go to www.anglicansatprayer.org.

See also www.churchofenglandcayman.com for local commentary and information.