A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

This was part and parcel of his classical education as an undergraduate and it spilled over into his theological writings as well. This manifests itself in two particular ways. One concerns the way in which God’s self-revelation is perceived. In order to illustrate this, Taylor frequently uses the image of the ‘cloud’, to draw out the mysteriousness of the deity and the uncertainty of human life, with repeated references to the ‘cloud’ that reveals the truth partially, as mystery. This is vintage Taylor, as it demonstrates both the theologian and the pastor of souls at work. It also shows how his ‘holy living’ theology of following Christ can embrace the whole of life, moments of revelation, in preaching and sacraments, as well as the many moments and experiences of disorientation and confusion.

      The other main area where this Platonist influence is apparent is in his teaching about the Eucharist, and it comes across in both the main controvertial areas of the time – presence and sacrifice. For any seventeenth-century Anglican of Taylor’s persuasion, living at the particular time he did, this whole area was a bit of a theological minefield. Following in the steps of Richard Hooker (c. 1554–1600) and Lancelot Andrewes, Taylor refuses neat definitions of either aspect of the Eucharist, especially that of presence, bringing in instead a firm but non-evasive reticence.

It is easy for theologians of a later generation, who were not immersed in the polemics of Taylor’s age, to underestimate his subtlety, and to suggest (like Stranks) that he was not sure of his ground, and that his view was receptionist, and no more. For McAdoo, however, Taylor ‘skims the cream off virtualism’, the view that the consecrated elements, by being given and received in the sacrament, bring the virtue or efficacy of Christ’s Body and Blood to the Church.[12] This also comes through in Taylor’s strong view of the role of the Holy Spirit, coming from above to consecrate the elements on earth. In a particularly powerful passage in ‘Worthy Communicant’ (1660), he affirms that ‘only the Spirit operates by the sacrament and the communicant receives it by his moral dispositions, by the hand of faith’. In comparative terms, this distances Taylor from the ‘receptionist’ view, where the presence of Christ is not in the consecrated elements, but the minds and souls of faithful communicants.

      Taylor holds that both baptism and Eucharist are ‘mysteries’. In ‘Real Presence’, he contends that ‘as there [in baptism] natural water becomes the laver of regeneration, so here bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ; but there and here too the first substance is changed by grace, but remains the same in nature’. Later on, he discusses the patristic evidence to support this view, including Augustine’s definition of sacraments as ‘visible words’. He had already hit the nail on the head in ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649) with a brilliant one-liner: ‘I suppose it to be a mistake to think whatsoever is real must be natural.’

For Taylor, above all a theologian of discipleship, sacraments and life are so closely connected that he articulates movement from one to the other. That same process can be seen in how he expresses the Eucharist as a memorial-sacrifice. Following Andrewes and others, he avoids an entirely mental approach. But his particular way is to do so by linking the Eucharist on earth with the heavenly intercession of Christ (Heb. 7.25, 8.1), a constant theme of his. Calvin himself had used this exegesis, and other writers followed him here. But it was honed considerably by Taylor, who – with others − handed it on to later Anglican (and other) writing, including in the hymns of Charles Wesley.[13] ‘Worthy Communicant’ (1660) puts it in characteristic language that combines the doctrinal with the devotional: ‘to represent [Christ’s] death, to commemorate this sacrifice, by humble prayers and thankful record; and by faithful manifestation and joyful Eucharist . . . the Church being the image of heaven; the priest, the minister of Christ; the holy table being a copy of the celestial altar; and the eternal sacrifice of the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world, being always the same; it bleeds no more after the finishing of it on the cross; but it is wonderfully represented in heaven, and graciously represented here; by Christ’s action there, by his commandment here’. Such a perspective makes the Eucharist transcend both space and time. The ‘heavenly altar’ is without doubt a central plank in Taylor’s understanding of the sacrifice.

      It is no wonder, therefore, that McAdoo, Anglican Co-Chairman of the first Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, should see in Taylor an anticipation of the ecumenical agreements of recent years, with those repeated periphrases that try to express ‘anamnesis’ such as ‘representment’, ‘memorials’, ‘exhibiting’ and ‘consigning’. And from these, we gain a picture of the Eucharist as an action of the Church in history that is effected by Christ himself in heaven. It has elicited from Boone Porter and McAdoo the description of ‘pleading’ the sacrifice, which appears in the 1897 ‘Response’ to the Vatican Condemnation of Anglican Orders. Although Taylor does not actually use the term, it began to appear in other writers at the time, including Henry Hammond, Simon Patrick, and the Puritan leader, Richard Baxter; and it has had a noble history in eucharistic discourse in the period since, including in the eucharistic rites both of the Church of Scotland (1940) and the Church of England (2000). All this helps to bring two necessary correctives for eucharistic faith and practice at the time: a sense of the transcendent and reverence, and a sense of the corporate nature of the Eucharist, rather than a collection of individuals hovering before the cross. But the close relationship between the earthly priest and the heavenly Saviour, in a semi-mediatorial role, can come across as too much of a hangover from mediaeval rather than patristic theology.

      Covenant

      It is all too easy to enter into discussions about sacramental theology in a vacuum, and throughout our treatment of Taylor, we have tried to set his writings in their context, and to do the same with how he writes about baptism and Eucharist. The same themes recur; the circumspect way he handles controversial areas, his Platonism in the dialectic between the earthly and the heavenly, and the devotional frame of reference, what McAdoo used to call the ‘moral-ascetic theology’ of much later seventeenth-century Anglican writing, that holds together the challenges of the gospel and the life of public worship and private prayer. It is all of a piece.

There is one important motif that Taylor uses to explain how the two dominical sacraments work and how they are different from each other – covenant. This has been explored, alongside Taylor’s baptismal and eucharistic liturgies, by Bryan Spinks.[14] Although it does not figure in the language of the Prayer Book, it was a prominent feature of Reformed theology, and someone like Taylor would have to address it in some way, because by the middle of the seventeenth century it was common coin. Taylor’s strategy is best described as softening the severity of the more Puritan approach, which could use the term to make the sacraments more restrictive (children of believing parents only) and exclusive (public debarring from communion). In this he resembles other writers of his time such as Herbert Thorndike (1598–1672) and Simon Patrick.

      The covenant of grace is embarked upon by our surrender to God and a desire to glorify him, and God on his part pardons what is past and will assist us in our life of discipleship in the future. We enter that covenant sacramentally at the font and renew it at the altar; covenant figures a number of times in his baptism rite; in his eucharistic liturgy, it appears (as usual) in the words of Christ at the Last Supper, but nowhere else. Taylor likes to describe baptism as ‘the laver of regeneration’, where the Holy Spirit blesses the waters, as he did at the River Jordan, and where the believer is filled with heavenly blessing, to lead a ‘holy life’. Taylor has a high view of baptism. It draws us into the Kingdom of God; it adopts us into a new covenant, with a strong view of obedience; it brings us into a new birth; it confers the remission of sins, including those yet to be committed; and brings us sanctification. ‘By water we are sacramentally dead and buried, by the Spirit we are made alive . . . Baptism does also consign us to a holy resurrection.’ Taylor’s approach differs, however, from Thorndike’s in that while the two dominical sacraments are foundational, Taylor fits baptism into Christian living – as a ‘birth to grave’ process – rather than into a more systematic ‘theology of the Church’, in the way of someone like Herbert Thorndike.

Taylor