That’s a good question! 

As the question specifies “Episcopalian” I’m going to limit my answer to The Episcopal Church, rather than the Anglican Communion (or Church of England – my home turf). 

In short, no. Generally speaking Episcopalians do not believe in transubstantiation. It was one of the 39 Articles (founding articles of the Church of England) that transubstantiation is “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.”(!) The 39 Articles are at the back of the 1979 BCP, so you can take a read through it (this particular line comes from Article 18).

That said, there is range of belief about what happens at the Communion table. Is it a simply an act of remembering the Last Supper and Jesus’ sacrifice? Or have the elements (i.e. the bread and wine) changed in some way, even if not full transubstantiation? Different views can generally be observable by what people call the Eucharist (e.g. Lord’s Supper? Mass? Divine Liturgy?) or where it takes place (e.g. on the altar or the communion table?), which Eucharistic prayer is used (there are different ones that express things slightly differently) and how the service is led and conducted.

It helps to take a careful listen to the liturgy (this is taken from Rite Two liturgy from the 1979 BCP):

We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension, we offer you these gifts.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him. 

One the one hand we’ve got the Eucharist clearly described as a “memorial” – i.e. not transubstantiation.  We remembering Jesus' sacrifice but we're not repeating it. Yet we also pray and ask that God by His Spirit “sanctifies” the elements to represent Jesus’ body and blood. So we're expressing belief that something is going on spiritually, even if it's unclear exactly what that is.

In conclusion, as a general rule of thumb, Episcopalians do not believe in transubstantiation, but do believe in the spiritual presence of Christ. The elements are special and somehow something is different from before they were sanctified.

But as I say, there’s a range of views.

“It seems to me that John of Patmos would be given "extra credence" if he were the John of the 4th Gospel, but it seems so much time had elapsed. What's the "orthodox" thinking on this, and what is the more modern thinking?”

Who is the John that wrote Revelation? 

Revelation 1:4 attributes the recipient of the visions in the book to God’s servant John. This John is the one sending this letter to the seven churches (1:9). He is John “your brother” who was “on the island called Patmos [an island off the coast near Ephesus]” (1:9). Towards the end of Revelation he is identified as one from among the prophets (22:8-9). It’s highly likely that he’s of Jewish origin, given the richness of the Old Testament imagery in Revelation. However, little else is written to give us clues as to the identity of this John of Patmos—who he was and his backstory and his place within the early church.

It’s worth noting, for the sake of the question asked, that I’m going to put aside the question of pseudonymity (i.e. the belief that some of the New Testament texts were written using the name of a key apostle or figures in the Christian church, perhaps as a nod to that figure’s teaching and understanding of the gospel). Because whether or not Revelation is pseudonymous, the name John is still the name that was used. It’s either the name of the author himself or the name of person that a not-John considered important enough to use in his book. 

So the question remains: which John is it?

As mentioned, Revelation itself gives very little away. If you compare it to the Greek of the material attributed to John the Apostle (and brother of James, one of the Sons of Thunder from Mark 3:17), it’s significantly different. So there’s not much of a textual case to tie John of Patmos to John the Apostle. (Although that also gets muddy pretty quickly, as few would go with John the Apostle as the author of the Fourth Gospel…)

What evidence do we have? 

Well, there’s a significant amount of extrabiblical corroboration from the early church that John of Patmos was John the apostle.

Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century,  identified it with John the apostle (Dial. 81:15), as did Irenaeus,  although the latter describes him not as an apostle but as the “disciple of the Lord” (Adv. Haer. 4.14.1; 5.26.1). Interestingly Irenaeus had a personal connection to him as well. Irenaeus had known Polycarp in his youth—who was a close associate of John’s. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Papias and Origen all accept this identification of John of Patmos as John the Apostle. Although agreement wasn’t universal (e.g. Eusebius and Dionysius), the general view of the early church does identify the author of Revelation with John, the brother of James, disciple of Jesus and eventual apostle. 

Modern scholars are more skeptical. As mentioned, John is nowhere identified as an apostle in the book of Revelation, only a prophet and a brother. Likewise, there’s no personal testimony of knowing Jesus as one of the twelve disciples. And not only is he identified as a prophet but clearly one of a group of prophets (22:9). It’s possible that this in itself counts against identification with the apostle, because (as far as I’m aware) there’s little that identifies John the apostle as taking on the role of prophet. 

Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria,  questioned the John the apostle identification because of the differences between the Greek of Revelation and that of the Fourth Gospel, although that only matters if John the apostle wrote the Gospel (see how confusing it all gets?). He mentions two monuments to two Johns in Ephesus, with the implication being the non-apostle could be the one of Patmos (cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 7.25).

So which is it? Who was the enigmatic prophet and Jewish believer, John of Patmos? The biblical evidence is slim to identify him with the disciple-turned-apostle. The early church evidence is wide that it was. Modern scholarship (as well as Bishop Dionysius) isn’t persuaded for some good reasons.

What do you think?

I recently had this question from a student working on an assignment I’d set (on Revelation). It’s a good one. We naturally open up our Bibles see the chapters and verses (and even the paragraph breaks) and think that’s where the author intended the break to be.

So what do we do when we open up a translation of Scripture? Or even the Greek and Hebrew which also divides by chapter and verse?

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The first thing to know is this: the original texts did NOT have chapters and verses.

This came much later. I’ll be honest, I don’t know all that much about the specifics, other than that it was something that appeared from the 13th century onwards. Turns out with all the books Stephen and I have, I couldn’t find one that could give me some history on it.

Whatever the reason for their creation, they're ultimately just an interpretation. A way of understanding and making sense of the text but not by the original authors and the early church who recognized the spiritual authority of these texts and received them into the canon [Side note: the “canon” are the books of the Bible that are recognized to have authority. Thus 1 Enoch is non-canonical for most Christians, except for the Ethiopian Orthodox]. 

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The second thing to know is: paragraphs and subheadings can be misleading as well.

Take Ephesians 5:22, the famous “Wives, submit to your husbands” verse. It’s often put at the top of a new paragraph or even a new section of the letter to the Ephesians as though a new topic and line of thought is being introduced. 

But it’s not that straightforward. The word “submit” isn’t even there in the Greek. It’s in the previous verse and it is dependent on that verse to understand what the message is. I.e. “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (v.21), wives to your husbands… (v.22)”

So the paragraph should start at v.21, right? 

Well, that’s also not straightforward! Because v.21 is dependent on the verses that come before it as well. [Side note: Ephesians is guilty of long Greek sentences that run on and on and this is a great example of that]. In grammatical terms the “submit” in v.21 is a participle (among a list of participles) that is dependent on v.18 “Do not get drunk on wine… but be filled with the Spirit”. Submitting to one another is one of the things that is part and parcel of a Spirit-filled life! 

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So what do we do? Do we all need to learn Greek and Hebrew? Go back to scrolls and original manuscripts?

Well, I’d never want to say don’t learn a biblical language. It’s great! If you feel a call to theological learning – go for it. That said, the main English translations of Scripture (NRSVue, NIV, ESV, NASB etc) were put together by many scholars who have studied these things and done their best (according to their conscience and theological learning and faith) and have had to make decisions along the way. I don’t agree with every decision in any of those translations, but that doesn’t stop me using them. Because (a) I’m learning too, (b) I’m grateful we have translations and less worried about them being perfect and (c) in this day and age I can always compare translations and see what they reveal. There may be a few places of disagreement but we have in common far more than that which separates us. Only God is the one who holds all truth in His hand--and he bears with us in our imperfections. 

So Ephesians 5:21-22 is one of those points of disagreement, that doesn't have to stop us being grateful for the faithful work of those who have attempted the hard work of translating the Bible into a language we can all understand.

Recently there was a bit of a furore over something the Archbishop of York said about "Our Father" in the Lord's Prayer. I wasn't there. I don't know the context of what he was saying and I don't know to what extent news coverage and social media posts are click-bait, reactionary or reflective of genuine issues. Some have said he was just acknowledging that for some people "Our Father" are tough words to pray. Others have said the Archbishop was saying we need to get rid of language that calls God "Father". I don't know which it is, but it brings up a good question: why do we call God "Father"?

So this musing ended up being way longer than I anticipated. So I've posted to the blog - take a look at my answer here: