On the Articles: Article XXIV

The Ninth Sunday after Trinity

GRANT to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful; that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

XXIV. Of Speaking in the Congregation in such a Tongue as the people understandethIt is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have public Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

In the earliest days of the Church, Greek was the common tongue between peoples and the language of the educated, though throughout the Roman Empire, different areas would have different local languages. It wasn’t until around the 500s and 600s that Latin, in the West, became predominant over Greek, particularly for Scholarship, and was adopted by the Western Church. In the East, Greek remained the language of the people and thus the language of the Church. When The East brought Christianity to new lands, one of the first tasks it undertook was to translate the liturgy and Scriptures into the local language, while in the West Latin was simply imposed, and only those who received an education (which did not always include the clergy) could understand and speak Latin.

While some efforts were made at times to translate all or parts of the liturgy into languages spoken by the people in the West throughout the course of the first millennium. Ultimately, however, the Roman Church in the West would declare that only the Latin liturgy and Scriptures were to be used, and outlawed the translation of the Scriptures into other languages. This would notably lead to the execution of John Wycliffe who was martyred for seeking to translate the Bible into English. Yet there were some notable reasons for seeking to prevent translation, chiefly that of mistranslation. In the case of English in particular, it lacked theological terminology because until the time of the English Reformation, the English peoples had only truly ever known the Scriptures and liturgies in Latin, and so as English as a language had developed over the course of the centuries it had never needed to develop that vocabulary, much of which was created by the English reformers themselves.

With so many people unable to understand their faith, it begs the question of whether or not they can ever truly believe or come to know God. Christ died to reconcile us to the father, yet if we cannot read or hear the Scriptures in an understandable way, we may still know that we can be reconciled to God, but God remains distant from us because we cannot come to know him.

In addressing this concern through the Article it begins by saying, “It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God,” meaning that it is clearly opposed to Scripture that the people would not understand the language of the liturgy and administration of the Sacraments. St Paul in his first epistle to the Church at Corinth gives a number of passages in which this conclusion can be drawn. He speaks of the need for translation of words from those speaking in tongues, because it would not be edifying for them to speak apart from the ability of the rest of the Body assembled to be able to understand. Similarly, in discussing the Eucharist, St Paul says that we must examine our conscience and discern Christ’s Body before receiving lest we receive to our condemnation. The obvious question becomes how can someone know that if they only know to receive by virtue of following others because they cannot understand the words of institution or anything else relating to what is happening in the preparation of the Lord’s Table?

The article then continues saying it is also contrary to the “custom of the Primitive Church.” Here, primitive simply means old, and does not mean to imply a lack of sophistication. We might now say “early Church.” As was previously noted, the practice was generally to translate the Scriptures and liturgies into local languages in the time of the early Church, though this wasn’t always the case.

Some might point out an apparent irony that today the language of the Book of Common Prayer, being over three-hundred years old now, may well not be “understanded of the people,” any longer. The language of the Prayer Book, along with the language of the Articles themselves, is no longer used in every day English in any country, and in many ways, phrases used in the BCP, King James Bible and Articles of Religion may still be in use, however their meaning has changed. This can lead to misunderstandings.

The reality, however, is that by virtue of the fact that no suitable religious English existed in the 16th century when the BCP was first compiled, English-speakers who used the first Books of Common Prayer had to deal with many similar issues of figuring out precisely the meaning of words. The word “atonement” which did not previously exist in the English language, would have been no more familiar to an English-speaker from the 1550s than would the word “holpen” might to someone today.

Simply because the people may need to look up or ask someone what a particular word means does not necessarily seem to violate the intention of this Article, which is chiefly that the language be that spoken by the people. Looking back to St Paul in his letter ot the Corinthians, the purpose behind his letter lies largely in the realm of order in Church, that everything be done in order and with reverence.

From the language choices of the Reformers it is clear that the issue of reverence was on their minds. In some cases where specific religious language did not exist, they could have used existing religious language to convey the necessary sentiment or information, however instead may have chosen to establish new words that would both convey the sense and be used more exclusively in a religious context.

Today, due to the cultural influence of the Book of Common Prayer and King James Version of the Bible on the subsequent development of the English language along with the broader cultural influence of Christianity in Anglophone cultures in the West, such as Canada, religious language is now often used, in its modern forms, in non-religious contexts. By returning to the use of more archaic English from these older documents, while it can require a bit more work to understand, it seems to more properly fulfil the sentiments of this Article which mean more than just being understood, but being understood in the context of reverent worship of God.