By Robin G. Jordan
An Anglicans Ablaze
reader drew my attention to former Nashotah House Dean Robert Munday’s article,
“FIFNA, Anglicanism, and the Seventh Ecumenical Council.” The same reader also
drew my attention to David Virtue’s article, “REC Bishop Responds to FIFNA and Seventh Council.” Both articles were prompted by Joel Wilhelm’s article, “FIFNA vs. Anglicanism.” Both are essentially defenses of changes in the FIFNA
Declaration of Common Faith and Purpose (See my own articles, “Forward in Faith North America Rejects Historic Anglicanism with New Faith Statement” and “Appraisingthe New FIFNA Declaration - Sensationalism or Valid Criticism?”). I am going to
take a look at these articles with attention to what was not said in them,
beginning with David Virtue’s article.
In David’s article we learn that Ray Sutton, Coadjutor
Bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-West of the Reformed Episcopal Church, “wrote
to VOL offering a qualifying point of view….” What is not mentioned is that
Sutton has had a dog in this fight long before the FIFNA Assembly adopted the
new FIFNA Declaration. Sutton has played a leading role in what has been
described as the Reformed Episcopal Church’s own Anglo-Catholic movement. The
changes in doctrine and practice in the REC that this movement has introduced
prompted the Church Society, a conservative evangelical Anglican organization
based in the United Kingdom but with a world-wide membership, to no longer classify
the REC as “reformed.”
When the REC was founded in the 1870s, Sutton would not have
been ordained or licensed in the REC, much less elected coadjutor bishop. His
views are too close to if not identical with those of the Tractarian and
Ritualist movements, the precursors of the Anglo-Catholic movement, from whose
growth and influence in the then Protestant Episcopal Church, the founders of
the REC fled.
Sutton has also boasted that he was primarily responsible
for drafting the initial Common Cause theological statement. This statement
included the following provision:
3) We believe the teaching of the Seven Ecumenical Councils in so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, and have been held by all, everywhere, at all times.
In his article, “Proposed Doctrine for the Network. Can it be improved? YES, very much so,” the late
Peter Toon made this important point:
At the same time one will learn that Councils may err and so one will not accept automatically the teaching of “the Seven Ecumenical Councils.” And this is especially important with regard to the seventh, the Second Council of Nicea, whose teaching on the veneration of icons is effectively rejected by the Articles and specifically by the Book of Homilies to which Article XXXV points. The historic Anglican Way has always affirmed four general councils and stopped at that – leaving to the area of discretion by local churches whether to affirm more. (In this regard the Affirmation of St Louis set forth by Anglo-catholic Continuers in 1977 went way past any previous official, provincial or Lambeth Conference Anglican statement in relation to the Councils by making 7 councils and their teaching mandatory – a big mistake.)
For this reason the Jerusalem Declaration affirms the four
general councils:
We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
Sutton cites C.B Moss in his defense of the FIFNA position
on the Seventh Council. For those may not be familiar with Claude Beaufort
Moss, he was a leading Anglo-Catholic figure of the first half of the twentieth
century who wrote a number of articles, books, and essays promoting
Anglo-Catholicism. Among his works are The Old Catholic Church and Anglican Orders, The Place of the Old Catholics in the Work of Unity, English Catholicism: An Explanation of the Principles and Aims of the Anglican Society, Our Debt to the Eastern Churches, and The Divisions of Christendom: A Retrospect. He ranks with Charles Gore in his influence upon Anglo-Catholics in North America. Gore edited Lux Mundi, a collection of essays by
different authors, which would influence of the Anglo-Catholic movement to
shift in a Modernist direction. Criticisms of C. B. Moss’ own views include that he
denies substitutionary atonement in favor of Christus Victor and teaches
unacceptable liberal views on the inerrancy of Scripture.
Former Nashotah House Dean Robert Munday does not mention in
his article that the Thirty-Nine Articles are not the only key documents in
which the English Reformers reject the veneration of images and relics as
enjoined by the Second Council of Nicaea. Other such documents include the two
Books of Homilies and the Proposed Canons of 1571 as well as the writings of the
English Reformers themselves.
Munday makes no mention of the position the important GAFCON
document, The Way, the Truth, and theLife: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future,
takes in regard to Anglo-Catholicism. (The Way, the Truth, and the Life was written to serve as a theological
introduction and definition for GAFCON.) The Way, the Truth, and the Life identifies Anglo-Catholicism along with
liberalism as the two major challenges to the authority of the Bible and the
Anglican formularies in the global Anglican Church.
Historic Anglicanism takes a different position from
Anglo-Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism in three important
areas of biblical theology—revelation, salvation, and the sacraments. Among the
four main functions that the Thirty-Nine Articles serve is to safeguard the
truth of the gospel. In The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, J. I. Packer stresses the importance
of this function:
The Articles were intended to ensure that the gospel of justification by faith and salvation by grace, so long lost before the Reformation, should not be lost to the church again.
The teaching of the Thirty-Nine Articles in the areas of
revelation, salvation, and the sacraments are closely tied to the Anglican
understanding of the New Testament gospel. Any interpretation of the Articles
without regard to historical context and authorial intent and in an
Anglo-Catholic or liberal direction brings about a concomitant change in the
understanding of the gospel.
While the recent articles have focused upon the new FIFNA
Declaration’s affirmation of the Seventh Council, its affirmation of the Roman Catholic sacramental system and the
doctrine of Transubstantiation, that is, the substantive presence of Christ under
the forms of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist should also be major causes for concern. The doctrine of Transubstantiation is inseparably linked to the doctrine of Eucharistic
Sacrifice. The Roman Catholic sacramental system and these two doctrines comprise together a rejection of the New
Testament gospel. Whatever church teaches the Roman Catholic sacramental system and the doctrines of Transubstantiation and Eucharistic Sacrifice is preaching a
different gospel.
Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism are not only major
challenges to the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies. They are
major challenges to the New Testament gospel, the gospel of salvation by grace
alone by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
In his article Munday suggests that the desire to cause a lot
of disagreement between Anglicans and to cause them to separate into different
groups is what is motivating those who are criticizing the new FIFNA Declaration.
But the fact is that Anglicans are already divided into different groups with
different understandings of revelation, salvation, the sacraments, and most
importantly the gospel. Some hold views consistent with the Bible and the
Anglican formularies; others do not.
A church cannot preach two gospels. The Bible tells us that
those who preach a different gospel from the New Testament gospel are cursed.
The Bible also enjoins us to seek to bring back to the truth those who stray
from it.
Munday also does not mention that FIFNA has its own
judicatory within the Anglican Church in North America—the Missionary Diocese
of All Saints—and all clergy and congregations in that judicatory must be
members of FIFNA and subscribe to its Declaration. A number of FIFNA members
are clergy or laity in the predominantly Anglo-Catholic Continuing Anglican
Movement and subscribers to the Affirmation of St. Louis, which subordinates
the teaching of the Bible to the teaching of Church tradition, as well as makes
the Seven Councils and their teaching mandatory. If the jurisdictions to which
they belong eventually join the ACNA, it will increase the size of the
Anglo-Catholic bloc in that body and with it the number of churches challenging
the New Testament gospel. The ACNA Fundamental Declarations give only token
authority to the Anglican formularies. Their language permits doctrines and practices
inconsistent with the Anglican formularies’ teaching.
Those who are faithful to the Bible, the Anglican
formularies, and the New Testament gospel should be concerned about such
developments. They should not forget how liberalism overtook the Episcopal
Church. The ACNA is at high risk of succumbing to the Anglo-Catholic gospel
challenge. It is pointless to plant new churches if those churches do not
preach the life transforming gospel.
See also
Bishop Sutton on the FiFNA Changes
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