THE SCOTTISH RITE IS NOT REFORMED: A WESTERN ORTHODOX RESPONSE TO LUE-YEE TSANG

The Scottish Nonjurors are both controversial and significant in the history of Western Orthodoxy, first because of the 1716 Concordat with Patriarch Jeremias III of Constantinople, in which the Nonjurors affirmed Apostolic Orthodoxy and sought communion with the Eastern Churches, thereby challenging the Reformed narrative that Protestants often impose on Anglican history; and second, because the Scottish Nonjurors, through the development of the 1764 Scottish Communion Office and the consecration of Bishop Samuel Seabury, profoundly shaped the liturgy of the American Episcopal Church, reversing many of the Reformed liturgical reductions imposed by Puritans, Presbyterians, and Lutheran-influenced Anglicans after the martyrdom of the Caroline Divines.

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

INTRODUCTION

In his well-researched article, The Reformed Character of the Scottish Liturgy (June 19, 2025), Lue-Yee Tsang offers a compelling case for reading the Scottish Communion Office through a distinctly Reformed lens. Citing the Nonjurors’ historic relations with both the Eastern Orthodox and Reformed traditions, Tsang attempts to demonstrate that the Scottish Rite, as preserved in the 1764 Nonjuror Liturgy and later transmitted into the American 1789 Book of Common Prayer, remains doctrinally Protestant and theologically consistent with Reformed sacramental theology. He argues that the Scottish liturgy, while elevated in language and structure, never departs from the Reformed distinctives of non-adoration, non-transubstantiation, sola fide, and a symbolic rather than objective understanding of Eucharistic presence.

While the historical citations and theological analysis are commendable for their thoroughness, the article ultimately collapses under its own assumptions. The case Tsang makes rests on a series of false dichotomies, selective framings, and unproven premises, especially regarding what constitutes “Reformed” theology, how liturgy functions doctrinally, and the theological arc of the Nonjuror and early Anglican tradition. In fact, far from undermining a Western Orthodox interpretation of the Scottish liturgy, Tsang’s article inadvertently reinforces the very claims it seeks to dismantle.

This article offers a respectful but direct rebuttal, grounded in the liturgical history of the British Church, the writings of the early Nonjurors, and the undivided theology of the first seven centuries of the Church.

I. THE LITURGY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

The 1764 Scottish Communion Office, derived in part from the 1637 Scottish Book of Common Prayer and influenced by ancient Eastern models, contains theological content that simply cannot be harmonized with the essential distinctives of Reformed liturgical theology. Among its features:

1. A clear and explicit Epiclesis: an invocation of the Holy Spirit to bless the elements and make them to become the Body and Blood of Christ;

2. An offertory oblation of the unconsecrated gifts prior to the Epiclesis;

3. A post-consecration “eucharistic sacrifice” of the now-hallowed elements as “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”;

4. The self-offering of the faithful, described in sacrificial language drawn directly from Romans 12:1;

5. A narrative structure patterned not after Zurich or Geneva, but after the Eastern Anaphoras, especially those of St. Basil and St. James.

This structure is not merely ceremonial but theological. The order of oblation, invocation, and thanksgiving places the Scottish rite in line with the Eucharistic theology of the Fathers, not with the later dogmatic simplifications of the Reformed world. It is significant that even The Book of Common Prayer 1789 in the United States preserved this structure, not out of sentimentality but out of theological fidelity.

II. BEGGING THE QUESTION: “REFORMED” BY WHOSE DEFINITION?

Tsang’s entire article hinges on an equivocation: that “Reformed” means “not Orthodox,” and therefore the Scottish Rite must be interpreted so as to remain within “Reformed” parameters. But this simply assumes what it needs to prove.

When the Nonjurors described themselves as “Reformed,” they did not mean they accepted Calvin’s theology as a final authority. They meant that they rejected the papal abuses of the later medieval West, and that they aimed to reform the Church in light of Scripture, the Fathers, and the first Seven Ecumenical Councils, which is precisely what Orthodox Christians affirm. “Reformed” in their context is not a fixed confessional identity but a process of recovery and correction, which led many of them to reconsider Roman errors in light of the East, not Geneva.

Indeed, the Nonjurors were the first Anglicans to enter formal theological dialogue and concordat with the Eastern Orthodox Church. In their 1716–1725 correspondence with the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Church of Russia, the Nonjurors openly professed belief in the Real Presence, the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the elements, and the mystery of Eucharistic transformation, all while expressing pastoral concerns about certain practices, such as the kissing of icons (which was not indigenous to the Western tradition), not rejecting them outright.

III. VIRTUALISM, ADORATION, AND THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST

Tsang quotes John Johnson of Cranbrook, whose doctrine of “virtualism” has often been mischaracterized. Johnson did not deny the objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Rather, he emphasized that what is received is not Christ’s “natural Body” (i.e., in physical, spatial terms) but His glorified Body, “after a manner which flesh and blood cannot conceive.” This is identical to the language used in the Liturgy of St. Basil, which likewise proclaims that the bread and wine become “the precious Body and Blood of Christ … changing them by thy Holy Spirit.”

To reject transubstantiation (as defined by the Roman Church at Trent) does not entail a Zwinglian memorialism or “symbolic presence.” It is not a uniquely Protestant gesture. It is also the position of all the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which confess a mysterious transformation, not a metaphysical definition based on Aristotelian categories.

The Scottish Rite likewise makes no scholastic claim about the mode of Christ’s presence, only that the faithful receive His Body and Blood truly, in faith, for sanctification and eternal life. That is not “Reformed theology”, but simply the position of ancient orthodox Catholicism.

IV. ICONS, SAINTS, AND THE QUESTION OF ADORATION

Tsang also argues that the Scottish Nonjurors rejected the veneration of saints and images, and therefore must have held to a Protestant minimalism incompatible with Orthodox faith. But this is a misreading of diplomatic language. The Nonjurors were writing in a period of ecclesial negotiation. They did not say these things were heretical, but they said they were “afraid of giving scandal,” “not persuaded at present,” and requested further clarification from the East. The very act of submitting their concordat to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem assumes the authority of the East and the rightness of the Orthodox Church. 

In other words, their concern was not with the theology behind these practices, but with their pastoral and cultural application in the English context, where anti-popery was still in full force. Their instinct was not to condemn the East, but to approach it cautiously and respectfully, as legitimate heirs of the apostolic tradition.

That is a fundamentally Orthodox instinct.

The Scottish Nonjuring Church Called Itself the “British Orthodox Church” in the Early 1700’s 

The Scottish Church Stands Distinct in its Use of the Divine Liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem

Returning to Scripture and the Fathers, the Nonjurors Challenge the Convenient Narrative of Protestantizing Anglicans, Who Hate Orthodoxy and Attack the Ancient Christian Tradition

Bishop Thomas Deacon, One of the Last Nonjurors, Outlines the Powerful Beliefs of the Scottish Orthodox Church in his Catechism

The Scottish Church Stands as a Testament of Western Orthodoxy and the Deconstruction of the Protestant Heresy through Prayer, Apostolic Teaching, Concord and Communion

V. TOWARD A WESTERN ORTHODOX READING

The Western Orthodox Church is not seeking to impose foreign categories on the Scottish rite. We are rather recognizing in it a liturgical theology that is:

• Epikletic (calling on the Holy Spirit to consecrate the elements);

• Sacrificial (offering both the gifts and ourselves to God);

• Mystical (acknowledging the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist);

• Communal (joining the prayer of the Church on earth with that of the Church in heaven);

• Apostolic (rooted in the practices and theology of the undivided Church).

To read the Scottish rite through a strictly “Reformed” lens is to reduce its theological grandeur to the limitations of 16th-century polemics. But to receive it as a Western Orthodox liturgy, purified from Roman errors, Protestant denials, and modern individualism, is to do what the Nonjurors themselves aspired to: restore the Church of the West to her primitive integrity and catholic fullness. This is our jurisdiction’s project and the fulfillment of many years of intuition, struggle, theological research, and repentance within our Holy Patrimony. 

CONCLUSION

The Scottish Rite is not “Reformed” in any narrowly confessional sense. It is a via media not between Rome and Geneva, but between East and West, antiquity and reform, mystery and clarity. It contains within itself the DNA of a Western Orthodoxy, which is rooted in Scripture, shaped by the Fathers, and carried in a vessel both English and ancient.

Tsang’s article does not refute this vision. On the contrary, it proves what we have always said: that the Anglican Patrimony and tradition, at its best, was reaching back not to the heretical Calvin, but to the consensus of the first one thousand years and the Ecumenical Councils. And that is exactly where we, as Western Orthodox Christians, intend to stand.

A COLLECT FOR THE PRESERVATION OF CATHOLIC TRUTH IN THE WESTERN LITURGY

O Lord God of our Fathers, who didst plant thy Church in the West with the same divine Root from which sprang the Faith once delivered to the Saints: Grant, we beseech thee, that we may with reverence receive the holy traditions handed down from the Apostles, and discern in the liturgy of our forebears not the fragments of schism, but the fullness of thy mystical Body. Preserve us from the errors of both Rome and Geneva, and graft us ever more deeply into the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, that we, with all thy saints, may offer unto thee a pure sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.