| Gregory Dix |
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As a scholar, Dix worked primarily in the field of , Consecration , Fraction , Communion . This was, he believed, even more fundamental to the rite than are the Words of Institution, which the Liturgy of Addai and Mari does not include, and which may not have been part of the earliest celebrations of the Eucharist. Dix's work heavily influenced liturgical revision both in the Church Of England and in related rites of the Anglican Communion (and on the Church Of South India . More recent scholars, however, have criticized it as lacking historical accuracy, and newer rites such as those in the Alternative Service Book and Common Worship represent a reduction of his influence. In particular,his claims for the 'shape' of the liturgy, which laid emphasis on the significance of the Offertory , have been argued to rest on weak evidence historically and were criticised on the theological ground that the Offertory was in danger of Pelagianism , in other words that it suggested a natural goodness in human kind who could give God anything. (This objection originated in a comment by Archbishop Michael Ramsey about the dangers of a 'shallow and romantic sort of Pelagianism' but which was taken up by Evangelical liturgical scholars not as a warning but as a prohibition of offertory processions of any sort.) On the other hand Dix's thesis was defended by members of the English Parish Communion movement, such as Gabriel Hebert and Donald Gray, who saw the offertory as representing the bringing of the world into the eucharistic action, and by those scholars who noted ancient ideas of Sacrifice particularly associated with the work of St. Irenaeus . . REFERENCES
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