One of the complaints frequently levied against the contemporary use of classical Anglican liturgy (be it the 1662 BCP or the 1962 Canadian or the 1979 BCP’s Rite I) is that its language is archaic, no longer matching the contemporary vernacular. The thees and thous, the vouchsafes and innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same, the humble and hearty thanks all make the use of the old rite incomprehensible or a form of play-acting, or so its critics allege. What I hope to do in this piece is to offer a defense of the use of an archaic vernacular in public worship. My goal is modest: I do not seek to argue that all must use the old prayer-book, that archaic language is the only acceptable register for the public worship of Almighty God. Rather, I will argue three things: first, that the question of what sort of vernacular one should use in public worship is adiaphoral; second, that the common objections to the use of archaic language do not hold; finally, that there are real benefits to the use of archaic language over a more contemporary register.
Scripture does not provide us with a specific answer to this question.
The first step here, as for any question of Christian faith and practice, must be to turn to Scripture: what does the Bible say about the sort of language that should be used in public worship? The answer here, I will argue, is “not much.”
First, we might note that there is never a condemnation of translation of the Bible outside of its original languages; there is no sense that Hebrew or Greek are ‘sacred languages’ in the sense that Arabic is for the devout Muslim. Indeed, the regular citation of the LXX in the New Testament should be seen as an endorsement of the practice of translation: God’s Word can be rendered in languages other than its original one. Surely this is part of the point of the gift of tongues at Pentecost! But this tells us little about what sort of translations are appropriate, or even when translation is required.
Second, we might look at Jesus’ reading at the synagogue in Luke 4. Here, after all, we have a New Testament example of the public reading of Scripture at worship. Now, while reconstructions of 1 c. Jewish worship practices is not an easy matter, as our surviving texts are generally of a later provenance, but it seems likely that Jesus would have read the scroll in Hebrew, not in the Aramaic which he probably used in day-to-day conversation, and then explained it in Aramaic. We are, it is true, moving somewhat beyond the inspired text itself; Scripture itself does not tell us in what language Jesus read from Isaiah. One might add to this Nehemiah 9, where the priests and Levites read the book of the law and then then give its sense so that the people understand; again the text itself is inconclusive but might suggest a reading in Hebrew followed by Aramaic explanation. As the trajectory of the liturgical movement shows, it would be dangerous to base too much on somewhat uncertain scholarly reconstructions. But it does suggest, at the very least, that we ought to pause before assuming that Jesus requires the use of only the most demotic vernacular in worship. Indeed, if one wanted to get a Biblical case off the ground for worship not solely in the vernacular, this is probably where I’d go to do so.
Thirdly, we might look at Paul’s injunctions for worship, especially in 2 Corinthians 14. It is his instruction that worship be edifying, his forbidding of speaking in tongues without interpretation, and his discouraging the use of tongues in worship that our Book of Homilies uses to justify its teaching that worship be in the vernacular. But of course, it is worth noting that Paul is not specifically speaking about the public reading of Scripture here. The broader principle seems to be more that public worship be comprehensible than any specific application to the sort of language used in worship, so long as it be comprehensible.
So, how can we sum up this evidence? Scripture does not have clear instructions about the sort of language that is used in Christian worship, so long as Christian worship is comprehensible to those attending it. That is, the question of whether to use an archaic vernacular or not is - given this condition - adiaphora, a matter indifferent, where we can look to reason and the practice of the church as well as Scripture to settle it. Moreover, it shouldn’t surprise us that this question is adiaphoral. What Scripture is for, Scripture itself tells us, is to “instruct [us] for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15). We shouldn’t expect to find in Scripture a liturgical manual for Christian worship, precisely regulating all aspects of the public worship of God. This is to mistake what Scripture is about!
The use of the archaic vernacular need not alienate, confuse, and mislead.
So, if one grants that the question of an archaic vernacular is not one that can be settled by recourse to Scripture, and is an adiaphoral, prudential question, it is time to turn to some of those prudential objections. What do its critics think is wrong with the use of prayerbook language? In my experience, objections fall under three categories: a worry about alienating newcomers, a concern about it being incomprehensible and confusing, and a worry about changing understandings of language meaning that the old words end up misleading people.
So, is this language necessarily alienating to newcomers? I’m willing to grant that this might be the case; the language is certainly foreign for all of us (though, as we’ll see, I’m not convinced this is a bad thing). But at the risk of sounding pat, I find it hard to believe that the thees and thous are more alienating than the proclamation that the creator of the universe came to earth in human flesh, died and was resurrected for us, that we eat his flesh and drink his blood in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, etc. That is, for the non-Christian, Christianity is plenty alienating itself on its own! I suspect that the use of words like sin and salvation - typically found in contemporary and archaic-language liturgies - are more difficult than a ‘vouchsafe’ for most visitors. Further, I suspect that, in the end, our language has less to do with whether people come or stay than either the proponents or opponents of the prayerbook liturgy might like; I would predict that a strong welcome and help walking someone through the service is more important than contemporary or traditional language. Perhaps there are specific contexts where one would make the prudential decision not to use archaic language on the grounds of potential alienation, but as a critique of this language in all cases, I think it fails to reckon with the real sources of alienation, both linguistic and otherwise, in our worship.
Second, is the language incomprehensible such that it becomes confusing to people? Again, I’ll freely grant that the language and syntax is in some cases foreign, but I am decidedly unconvinced that it is, as a result, impossible for most English-speakers to understand. A word might need to be glossed here or there or perhaps even replaced, but 17th c. English (and in some cases, 19th or 20th c English masquerading as 17th c. English) is not so far from contemporary usage to be incomprehensible. A time may come when this is the case, but I do not believe that we have reached that time. One need only look at the stubborn persistence of the popularity of the King James Bible to demonstrate that people evidently do not think that the archaic language is a barrier to comprehension.
Third, does the contemporary use of this language function to mislead? I see this critique most often leveled at the use of thee and thou, which in the 16th c. were a mode of familiar second-person address as opposed to the more formal you. The use of this language, the critique goes, was originally intended to show our closeness and intimacy with God, but now since this address is only used for God, and only in liturgical speech, it denotes distance and formality. I will acknowledge here that a semantic shift has occurred, but I am not sure that it is a vicious one. I’d say first of all that the history is less clear than the critique suggests; in the 17th c., when the 1662 BCP was put together, I believe the second person familiar/informal pronoun was starting to drop out of common use. But furthermore, I would say that we might just as much see this shift as a development rather than a devolution. While Christians need to know that they can address God familiarly and intimately, it is surely not wrong to address him formally as well; the New Testament gives us both Jesus’ ‘Abba’ and the formal worship of heaven in the Book of Revelation! God’s transcendence is more than the most formal and elevated language could suggest; his immanence is more than the most intimate language could show — and the two are dependent upon each other! The New Testament uses all sorts of language to describe our relationship to God, from the familiar to the formal, and even if a semantic shift has taken place it is hardly wrong for liturgy to draw on the formal register!
The use of an archaic vernacular reminds us of worship’s strangeness and God’s otherness, improves memory and retention, and connects us to the communion of saints.
If you’re with me thus far, you’ll agree that Scripture leaves the church freedom on the question of use of an archaic vernacular, and that the common objections to it are not sufficient to render it unwise. But what I haven’t done yet is make a positive case for the use of the archaic vernacular. Why would one use these unfamiliar, old-fashioned words to worship Almighty God if there is no obligation to do so? I think there are several good reasons: this language reminds us of worship’s strangeness and of God’s otherness, it aids retention and it connects us to those who have come before us.
I said above that the foreignness of the archaic vernacular is not necessarily a bad thing, and this is why: it gives us a verbal enactment of the very strange thing that we are doing. Worship is, well, weird. We gather together to sing and pray to an invisible Deity, to read from an ancient set of books through which that Deity communicates to us, to eat bread and drink wine in order to feed on that Deity’s body and blood. What we’re doing is something different from days dominated by concern with things visible. We are entering into a different way of relating to the world, acknowledging a different lordship than that of Lord Mammon. It seems only fitting to have language to mark and acknowledge that weirdness. Indeed, even our contemporary language liturgy necessarily does this to an extent; the archaic vernacular allows us to do it all the more thoroughly.
Not only is worship weird, but our God is weird - the wholly other, who breaks our language when we attempt to describe him! There is much complicated work on the theology of language and theological epistemology behind this thought that I cannot summarize here, but the point is that our language for God can never capture God, and can only fail in the attempt. Indeed, Herbert McCabe says something to the effect that God precisely is the name we give to that thing/space/etc. where our language breaks down. We cannot talk about God like we talk about other things in the world, precisely because God is not a thing among things in the world. The use of the archaic vernacular, addressing God in a way that we do not address others, can reflect and teach that otherness, that strangeness. I admit that there is a danger here, perhaps; it is not that the archaic language is a sort of spell that can capture God when everyday words cannot, and those of us who support the use of the old liturgy must be sure to be clear about this. But it is fitting that the Wholly Other is addressed otherwise than we address a pal.
I’d like to shift gears now, and move from the high-flying theology to the more prosaic. I have reason to believe that archaic language, precisely in its foreignness and somewhat increased difficulty in reading, actually conduces to learning, comprehension, and memory. There is a robust body of research that suggests that ‘difficult’ learning sticks better than ‘easy’ learning, that learning one has to work at proves more durable over time. So, the fact that worshippers have to work a little more at understanding archaic language liturgies isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and may in fact aid their understanding of it and their recall of the language later. And indeed, while I don’t know about research on this specific point, it strikes me that the traditional-language Our Father tends to be most people’s go-to, and that (at least for me) the cadences of the traditional-language canticles at the office or prayers at the liturgy are much easier to remember than the contemporary-language ones, simply because they are a little bit more different from ordinary speech. Often, when I’m praying the contemporary-language Magnificat, I accidentally flip to the archaic “empty away” rather than “away empty” following “he has sent the rich,” and I’m not sure that’s a coincidence.
Finally, this language can become a means of connection to those siblings in the faith who came before us. It is not the only way to liturgically enact the reality of the communion of saints, of course; far from it! But there is something powerful about praying words that you know have been prayed for hundreds of years, words that are tested and hallowed by long usage, words that Christians of all sorts and conditions have been inspired, or challenged, or consoled by - words by which God has communicated to them.
Concluding Thoughts.
I’m tempted to just append a bunch of my favorite BCP prayers here, but I’d like to do something a bit more substantive than that to close. I’d note that archaic vernacular isn’t the only reason, or even the most important reason, to use the old prayerbook. My commitment to it is first and foremost a theological one: I love the old prayerbook because it sets forth the Gospel! And I’m very supportive of attempts to render the prayerbook liturgy into contemporary English (would that this were the standard contemporary-language liturgy across global Anglicanism!). But I do think that the language of the prayerbook is not the problem it is often cast as, and that attachment to the archaic vernacular isn’t reducible to ‘British museum religion’ or snobbish aesthetic taste. I am not saying that you must use the old language. But I am saying that the question of its use is not a matter of Scriptural mandate one way or the other, that many of the objections raised to it do not hit the mark, and that there are in fact good prudential reasons for its continued use. I hope and pray its use will continue and even grow in the years ahead.