3. The Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix

Fantastic book. Very long. About 750 pages. I appreciate Dix’s irenic tone to other traditions, even though he himself is an Anglo-Catholic monk. There are some Christians who have a pretty good grasp on the big picture, and history itself. I think this particular monk is one of those men. I appreciate his survey of liturgical forms from the beginning of the Christian church to the present. Anyone who says their liturgy has remained unchanged since the early church is lying. A basic, and core form does persist, and pervades the ancients forms. But the ancient forms were varied according to local customs. And liturgies developed extensively over time. And most liturgical type churches are not really that ancient. They maintain some kind of mixture of medieval and/or late antique forms.

Some have noted that Dix quotes sources that are debated or seemingly non-existent. So, certain aspects of his scholarship have been called into question. I don’t know if these claims are true, but I don’t think it detracts significantly from the book. Perhaps it does. But I just note it as something to be aware of and to do your own research if you’re so inclined. But what Dix shatters is any idea that the church has ever had a unified formula of words or overly scrupulous forms for worship. This is undeniably true and messes up radtrad hair – those who an unhealthy attachment, and rigid attachment to particular forms and formulas.

The other prominent thing Dix is doing here, and I don’t fully grasp this, even as one who has spent quite a good deal of time in liturgics, is dismantling Cranmer’s conception of the Eucharist. So, in this sense Dix is pushing in a more Roman direction. He disagrees strongly with what he calls Cranmer’s Zwinglian outlook. I’m not sure this is fair to Cranmer or Zwingli, but there are qualitative differences in understanding the elements and the rite between Dix and Cranmer.

One thing I appreciated in this book is that Dix frequently draws the comparison of monastic devotional life and Puritan devotional life. He does this in a commendatory way. That both traditions are concerned with introspection, solitude, and direct communion with God. It’s fashionable to bash Puritan introspection these days. And in some important aspects it did create problems, such as the half-way covenant, defended by men like Jonathan Edwards. But in principle a rigorous introspective life striving for purity and direct communion with God is a not only a good thing, but a great thing. And like all great things, it can be mishandled, abused, and done wrongly.

Here is an extensive quote from the book.

“Every rite which goes back beyond the sixteenth century is to a large extent the product not so much of deliberate composition as of the continual doing of the eucharistic action by many generations in the midst of the varying pressures of history and human life as it is lived. The immense local variety of rites represents the immense variety of cultures, races and local circumstances in which the One Body of Christ has incarnated itself by ‘doing this’ in the course of two thousand years. During that time several great civilizations and empires and innumerable lesser social groups have risen and flourished and passed away. Many of them have left a mark in their time on the local liturgy as it survived them, in the wording of a few prayers or in some gestures and customs, on the cut of a vestment or some furnishing of the sanctuary. But under all this superficial variety there is the single fixed pattern common to all the old churches of the East and the West, which was not everywhere wholly destroyed among the churches of the Reformation. This is always the same, not by any imposed law or consciously recognised custom that it should be so, but through the sole force of the fact that this way of doing the eucharist alone fulfils every need of every church in every age in the performing of the eucharistic action with its essential meaning.

The outlines of that ritual pattern come down to us unchanged in christian practice from before the crucifixion, the synaxis from Jesus’ preaching in the synagogues of Galilee, the eucharist proper from the evening meals of Jesus with His disciples. The needs of a christian corporate worship gradually brought about their combination. The needs of a christian public worship have added to these inheritances from our Lord’s own jewish piety only an ‘introduction’ of praise and a brief prayer of thanksgiving. The whole has a new meaning fixed for all time in the Upper Room. But the form of the rite is still centred upon the Book on the lectern and the Bread and Cup on the table as it always was, though by the new meaning they have become the Liturgy of the Spirit and the Liturgy of the Body, centring upon the Word of God enounced and the Word of God made flesh.

At the heart of it all is the eucharistic action, a thing of an absolute simplicity – the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread and the taking, blessing and giving of a cup of wine and water, as these were first done with their new meaning by a young Jew before and after supper with His friends on the night before He died. Soon it was simplified still further, by leaving out the supper and combining the double grouping before and after it into a single rite. So the four-action Shape of the Liturgy was found by the end of the first century. He had told His friends to do this henceforward with the new meaning ‘for the anamnesis’ of Him, and they have done it always since.

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human need from infancy and…to extreme old age…, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church;…for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America…one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.

To those who know a little of christian history probably the most moving of all reflections it brings is not the thought of the great events and the well-remembered saints but of those innumerable millions of entirely obscure faithful men and women, every one with his or her own individual hopes and fears and joys and sorrows and loves – and sins and temptations and prayers – once every whit as vivid and alive as mine are now. They have left no slightest trace in this world, not even a name, but have passed to God utterly forgotten by men. Yet each of them once believed and prayed as I believe and pray, and found it hard and grew slack and sinned and repented and fell again. Each of them worshipped at the eucharist, and found their thoughts wandering and tried again, and felt heavy and unresponsive and yet knew – just as really and pathetically as I do these things…The sheer stupendous quantity of the love of God which this ever repeated action has drawn from the obscure christian multitudes through the centuries is in itself an overwhelming thought…

It is because it became embedded deep down in the life of the christian peoples, colouring all the via vitae of the ordinary man and woman, marking its personal turning-points, marriage, sickness, death and the rest, running through it year by year with the feasts and fasts and the rhythm of the Sundays, that the eucharistic action became inextricably woven into the public history of the Western world.” (pp. 743-745)

2. The Puritan Hope: Revival and Interpretation of Prophecy by Iaian H Murray

A great book that surveys Puritan eschatology that some might call postmillennial. What I appreciated most about this book is how he shows that the Puritans viewed the Jews as still being significant in redemptive history. That the Puritans had a particular, though not absolutely unified, understanding of Romans 11. That the conversion of the Jews in history is going to be a significant event. This is how I have understood the Scriptures. And unlike many modern, popular, postmillennialists, the Puritans were both covenantal in that they viewed the Church as true Israel, but that they also viewed the Jews as still elect, though apostate. The book is a historical survey of the Puritan Hope and he touches on various relevant topics, like how 19th and 20th century progressivism essentially took the Puritan Hope and gutted it of the gospel, leaving only an ideology of secular utopia, and how this has often soured Christians to postmillennialism, because most Christians don’t make the necessary and foundational distinctions between progressivism and postmillennialism. They are just conflated and so postmillennialism is bad. He touches on the competing eschatologies of dispensationalism and their rise and popularity. It’s a good book dealing with an important topic, and it brings to light a glorious doctrine espoused by the Puritans, and others like them, who may not have been Puritan, but held the same hope.

“[W]hen John Wesley arrived in New-castle-upon-Tyne in May, 1742, he wrote these memorable words: ‘I was surprised; so much drunkenness, cursing and swearing (even from the mouths of little children) do I never remember to have seen and heard before in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him who ‘came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’. And the great evangelical revival which was then dawning proved this conviction to be right. The gospel of grace does not need promising conditions to make its reception a certainty. Such a result depends upon the will of him who declares his love to the ungodly. Thus in various centuries revivals of apostolic Christianity have broken out in the most improbable circumstances and have powerfully, rapidly and extensively affected whole communities. ‘When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him'(Isaiah 59:19). The wonder of God’s saving works ought therefore to make Christians slow to believe that only doom and catastrophe must away the vast population of this evil earth. If, as men predict, the world population is to double in the next thirty years, why should it not be that God is going to show on a yet greater scale that truth is more powerful than error, grace more powerful than sin, and that those given to Christ are indeed ‘as the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multitude?'” (p. xx)

1. Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion by David Chilton

This is probably the easiest to read, and best treatment of postmillennialism I’ve read so far. It’s not comprehensive, but it touches on enough relevant passages and elucidates them enough to be a solid go-to book for anyone not familiar with postmillennialism or wanting a further treatment of it after being exposed to a primer like Heaven Misplaced by Doug Wilson. If you’re wanting something more exhaustive and academic, He Shall Have Dominion by Kenneth Gentry is your go-to. But this is a happy medium between the two types of books.

Chilton addresses most of the key passages, like the Olivet Discourse and then passages in Revelation, which he describes as an elaboration of the Olivet Discourse. I would agree. He also has an extensive appendix of quotes from Josephus about the destruction of Jerusalem. These are incredibly helpful in understanding how terrible the siege on Jerusalem was. And how the things recorded by Josephus vindicate the Biblical prophecies. Some people may think that these things are just fun intramural debates between Christians. And some often just throw their hands up, and say I’m a panmillennialist, it’ll all pan out in the end. But when we take the preterist approach, it does a significant amount of work in proving the inspiration of Scripture, and vindicating Christ’s own prophecies. Otherwise, we needlessly invite various criticisms. Or confused thinking even among men like C. S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis, in The World’s Twilight says this:

“Say what you like, we shall be told, ‘the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And He was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.’ It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.”

Lewis tells us in this work that he is not an expert on these things, and he certainly proves that here. He goes on to seemingly resolve the issue by saying these predictions were made in Jesus’ humanity. But Lewis is making some incredibly ignorant and foolish statements regarding these things. The fact is, the Son of Man did return, in judgment on Jerusalem. And just as the Jews didn’t recognize when their Messiah came to save them. Many Christians like Lewis still don’t recognize when their Messiah came to judge them. Is it so strange to think that the people of God didn’t recognize the coming of their Messiah in one instance, and the people of God don’t recognize the coming of their Messiah in another?

Chilton also begins each chapter with a quote, often from an early father, showing their postmillennial view of the world. I remember reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation and thinking, this guy sounds postmillennial. He believes the kingdom has already come. He believes all kinds of prophecy has already been fulfilled. He is acknowledging Christ’s victory in the world in his time. Chilton includes brief quotes like this before each chapter.

There is far too much to quote. The whole book is just worth reading. But here are a few good quotes on interpretation:

“”Understanding Biblical symbolism does not mean cracking code. It is much more like reading good poetry.” (p. 18)

When the Bible tells us a story about water, it is not ‘really’ telling us about something else; it is telling us about water. But at the same time we are expected to see the water, and to think of the Biblical associations with regard to water. The system of interpretation offered here is neither ‘literalistic’ nor ‘symbolic’; it takes the ‘water’ seriously and literally, but it also takes seriously what God’s Word associates with water throughout the history of Biblical revelation.” (p. 19)

Here’s good quote about dominion and why Christians are losing on virtually every front. This needs to be further developed with the covenant in mind. And various distinctions between what resisting the devil looks like need to be made here. I do this in Contra Mundum Swagger if anyone is interested. But in general, this is a good quote.

“A very common evangelical worldview is that ‘the earth is the devil’s, and the fulness thereof’ – that the world belongs to Satan, and that Christians can expect only defeat until the Lord returns. And that is exactly the lie that Satan wants Christians to believe. If God’s people think the devil is winning, it makes his job just that much easier. What would he do if Christians stopped retreating and started advancing against him? James 4:7 tells us what he would do: he would flee from us! So why isn’t the devil fleeing from us in this age? Why are Christians at the mercy of Satan and his servants? Why aren’t Christians conquering kingdoms with the Gospel, as they did in times past? Because Christians are not resisting the devil! Worse yet, they’re being told by their pastors and leaders not to resist, but to retreat instead! Christian leaders have turned James 4:7 inside out, and are really giving aid and comfort to the enemy – because they are, in effect, saying to the devil: ‘Resist the Church, and we will flee from you!’ And Satan is taking them at their word. So then, when Christians see themselves losing on every front, they take it as ‘proof’ that God has not promised to give dominion to His people. But the only thing it proves is that James 4:7 is true, after all, including its ‘flip side’ – that is, if you don’t resist the devil, he won’t flee from you.

“What we must remember is that God doesn’t ‘rapture’ Christians out of the world in order to escape conflict – He ‘raptures’ non-Christians! The Lord Jesus prayed, in fact, that we would not be ‘raptured’: ‘My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.’ (John 17:15) And this is the constant message of Scripture. God’s people will inherit all things, and the ungodly will be disinherited and driven out of the Land. ‘For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be uprooted from it’ (Prov. 2:21-22). ‘The righteous will never be uprooted, but the wicked will not remain in the land’ (Prov. 10:30). God described the land of Canaan as having been ‘defiled’ by the abominable sins of its heathen population, saying that the land itself ‘vomited out its inhabitants’; and He warned His people not to imitate those heathen abominations, ‘so that the land may not vomit you out also’ (Lev. 18:24-28; 20:22) Using the same Edenic language, the Lord warns the church of Laodicea against sin, and threatens: ‘I will vomit you out of my mouth’ (Rev. 3:16). In His parable of the wheat (the godly) and the tares (the ungodly) – and note the Edenic imagery even in His choice of illustrations – Christ declares that He will gather first the tares for destruction; the wheat is ‘raptured’ later (Matt. 13:30).

‘The wealth of the sinner is stored up for the just‘ (Prov. 13:22). That is the basic pattern of history as God saves His people and gives them dominion. This is what God did with Israel: in saving them, He brought them into already-settled lands, and they inherited cities that had already been built (Ps. 105:43-45). God does bless the heathen, in a sense – just so they can work out their own damnation, in the meantime building up an inheritance for the godly (cf. Gen. 15:16; Ex. 4:21; Josh. 11:19-20). Then God smashes them and gives the fruit of their labor to His people. This is why we need not fret over evildoers, for we shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37). The Hebrew word for salvation is yasha, meaning to bring into a large, wide, open space – and in salvation God does just that: He gives us the world, and turns it into the Garden of Eden.” (pp. 54-55)