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Cranmer’s Preface to the Great Bible: The Gift of Scripture

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In 1538 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer ordered that an English translation of Scripture—known thereafter as the Great Bible—be placed in every church in England. In the preface, Cranmer lays out his understanding of the perspicuity (or clarity) of Scripture. He articulates the belief that all Christians should have access to Holy Writ because it is accessible to their intellect and beneficial to their spiritual health.

Cranmer leans heavily on a sermon of St. John Chrysostom and argues first that it wrong to suggest that Holy Scripture is only for those in cloisters or colleges. God’s Word is for all stations and callings. Cranmer thus imagines the layman saying to him, “I am a man of the world, it is not for me to read the Scriptures, that belonged to them that hath bidden the world farewell.”

Cranmer argues that the opposite is true. Those who live a cloistered life, who are away from the cares and trials of the real world, live in a “sure haven.” The cloistered benefit from the reading of Scripture, he argues, because they have the benefit of the silence and the relative stability of their community. Yet Scripture is for those who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life. The cloister is not the place of tribulation. Rather, the world is. Scripture is not a text for the comfortable but the weary.

“Thou art in the midst of the sea of worldly wickedness,” Cranmer writes, “therefor thou needest the more of ghostly succor and comfort.” The world is the place of distraction and frenetic drives that fray our attention and weigh down our souls. Scripture contains balm for the weary soul. The struggles of life, marriages, and children; battles and war; enemies and friends; poverty and mourning—these things come to each of us unbidden. The study of Scripture for the Christian, in Cranmer’s reckoning, is as important to the carpenter as his lathe, or to the smith his hammer. The words of Scripture contain the tools for salvation, the “salve for thy sores.” It is in the daily reading of Scripture that a Christian is formed to withstand the lusts of the flesh.

Cranmer, however, doesn’t stop at offering moralizing reasons to engage with Scripture. Scripture is the armor for the spiritual battles of this life. He adds motifs from Ephesians 6 and Matthew 6 and sees the individual who is girded with Scripture as one who is ready to face principalities and powers.

He writes, “for like as thieves be loath to assault a house where they know good armor and artillery; so, wheresoever these wholly and ghostly books be occupied, there neither the devil nor none of his angels dare come near.” The very presence of the book of Scripture is a supranatural gift. It is for Cranmer a quasi-sacramental presence that serves to convict the guilty conscience and dissuade the demonic.

Once Cranmer establishes his claim that Scripture is for everyone, he must immediately deal with the problem of perspicuity. He anticipates the objection that Scripture is a dense and opaque text that can only be understood with intellectual study. In response he has three points. First, so what? Opaque does not mean impenetrable. Holiness is something to be wrestled with, not something to be grasped unknowingly.

Second, don’t conflate Holy Scripture with a vanity project. To assume that Scripture can only be interpreted by the learned is to misunderstand the nature of the text and God’s condescension to make himself known.

Third, trust the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit uses Scripture as an instrument to make Christ known, and the gift of Scripture is entrusted to the church for that gospel purpose.

Not understanding everything in Scripture, he argues, is no excuse for not engaging with it. “Suppose thou understand not the deep and profound mysteries of Scripture.” It is in the act of wrestling with the sacred text that holiness can begin to be fostered. In other words, it is through the sacred text that one meets Christ. Scripture is, to use familiar imagery, a light on the path, a guide on the way, provision in the wilderness, and food for the hungry.

It is, moreover, a fire that purifies and refines. Like iron is tempered, so too is the believer who is thrust into the words of Scripture. It is, likewise, both a bridle and a spur, finding the lost and driving one to an encounter with the divine. But as for those “obscure mysteries,” Cranmer writes in the first homily of the First Book of Homilies, the Christian ought to be “content to be ignorant in them until such time as it shall please God to open those things unto him.”

He argues that to think that Scripture is too opaque to be useful is to conflate Scripture with the writings of the Philosophers. The great works of philosophy were made for “vainglory.” Those works were constructed to bring their writers praise for their style and sophistication. Scripture, on the other hand, was written for everyone.

“The Holy Spirit hath so ordered and attempered the Scriptures, that in them as well as publicans, fishers, and shepherds may find their edification, as great doctors their erudition.” One is reminded of John Foxe’s account—possibly apocryphal but accurate in sentiment—of Cranmer’s contemporary William Tyndale announcing that his goal was for the ploughboys of England to know more of Scripture than the priests.

Cranmer argues that Christians engaged in the reading of Scripture can trust that the Holy Spirit will illumine their hearts and minds to new understandings. He argues that if one never reads Scripture then one will never understand it. He adds that people very often invoke the excuse of complexity as “coverings of their own idle slothfulness.” A poverty of desire to engage with Scripture reveals a failure in formation. But it also betrays a critical misunderstanding of the function of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of Scripture. Cranmer believed that the Holy Spirit brings clarity to complexity. And if the text remains obscure, the individual reader should turn to clergy for help. Ultimately, the reader must trust that Scripture has something to say and that the Holy Spirit will illumine minds through it.

As we inherit this wisdom from Cranmer, how might we use his insights to enrich our ministries today? It should serve as a reminder that personal engagement with Scripture must happen beyond Sunday mornings. The lectionary is a gift. Having common readings in worship brings a universality to the Church.

But the relatively short selections of Scripture we hear briefly in worship will not carry us through the rocky waters of this life. And Cranmer felt likewise. In the Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer provided a simplified but fairly traditional and therefore Christocentric plan for the Eucharistic lectionary, but he also set a lectio continua lectionary for the Daily Office, a program of daily reading to work through whole books.

Cranmer’s re-emphasis on the study of Scripture should serve as a reminder that we cannot duck or flinch in engaging with our sacred texts. No matter whether they are called “texts of terror,” or “tools for patriarchy,” all of Scripture is useful for our edification. If we could hear Cranmer’s assertion that Scripture is for the worker and not simply for the philosopher, it would allow us to trust in the perspicuity of our sacred texts.

More than that, it would allow us to trust in the experiences of those who have come before us. Clergy in particular ought to soak and saturate in Scripture. Consequently, the church should expect more from seminaries and the clergy they form. Perhaps, if we take seriously the claim that the Holy Spirit uses Scripture to give everyone Christ, then everyone has the capacity or potential to be a theologian.

There is, then, wisdom emerging from the traditional fonts of theological reflection (seminaries), but also from communities of believers attempting to live the Christian faith. My quiet Pentecostal grandfather offered me a good deal of wisdom while working on cars in his auto shop—wisdom that continues to inform my theological formation.

Scripture, then, is a gift for each individual believer. There is no better salve for the wounded heart, nor remedy for the wearied soul. It is a companion on the quest for holiness. Through the word, the Holy Spirit seals the promises of the gospel. Cranmer concludes his introduction by writing, “to the reading of the Scripture none can be the enemy, but that either be so sick that they love not to hear of any medicine or else that be so ignorant that they know not Scripture to be the most healthful medicine.”

Jonathan Leonard is a Guest Writer. He is a Postulant of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. Leonard was recently awarded the Master of Religion in Public Life from Candler School of Theology, Emory University and will continue his preparation for ministry at Virginia Theological Seminary.

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