By Robin G. Jordan
Those who champion the recognition and acceptance of
Anglo-Catholicism as a legitimate theological strand in Anglicanism make a
number of arguments to support their claim. Among these arguments is the
assertion that Anglicanism has evolved since the sixteenth century and modern
day Anglicans cannot be expected to conform to sixteenth century standards of
doctrine and practice. Anglicans have moved on. Anglicans have become broader
in what they comprehend.
One of the problems that I have with this argument is that
it is the identical argument used by those championing the recognition and
acceptance of liberalism as a legitimate theological strand in Anglicanism. It
defines the limits of Anglican comprehensiveness in terms of the present state
of affairs in the Anglican Church, or perhaps more accurately in terms of what
is perceived to be the current state of affairs in the Anglican Church. This
perception may not involve the entire global Anglican community but may be
confined to a particular segment of that community.
Making this argument is analogous to moving the boundary
markers of a parcel of land and then claiming the locations to which the
boundary markers have been moved mark the boundaries of that parcel of land.
The Scriptures contain a strong warning against moving a neighbor’s property
line (Deuteronomy 19:14). While this passage applies to land, the underlying
principle has wider application.
If we adopt the logic of this argument and pursue that logic
to where it leads, then Anglicanism is no more than whatever each successive
generation of Anglicans decide what it is. We can assert as do liberal
Anglicans that Anglicanism is a big tent that shelters all kinds of diverse and
disparate views. These views do not have to agree with the teaching of the
Scriptures and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies. They do not have to be
even remotely Christian. They simply have to be recognized and accepted by one
part of a particular generation of Anglicans as being, in their estimation,
genuinely “Anglican.”
An accompanying argument is that the Thirty-Nine Articles,
contrary to what the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans upholds in The
Jerusalem Declaration, is not authoritative for Anglicans today. The Articles
represent the views of the sixteenth century English Reformers. They do not
represent the views of modern day Anglicans. They are not binding upon the
consciences or minds of contemporary Anglicans on matters of doctrine and
practice.
What this argument is basically asserting is that each
generation of Anglicans is its own authority on such matters. They may look to
church tradition, the Council of Trent, the Jesus Seminar, the College of
Bishops, or a similar authority for guidance but ultimately they are their own
authority.
If we study the history of the Anglican Church, we will see
where this kind of thinking has led. In the nineteenth century it led into the
morass of ritualism and unreformed Catholicism; in the twentieth century it led
into the swamp of apostasy and unbridled heresy. In both cases it led away from
the Scriptures and the Anglican formularies. The result has been the loss of
the gospel in those quarters of the Anglican Church where this kind of thinking
has prevailed.
We do not need to perform good works or to receive the
sacraments in order to be reconciled to God. We do, however, need to hear the
good news of Jesus Christ, to repent of our sins, and believe in him.
This is not to say that doing good to others, undergoing
baptism, and sharing the Lord’s Supper with our fellow believers do not play a
part in the life of a Christian. However, it is faith in Jesus Christ and faith
in him alone that justifies us in God’s eyes.
Anglo-Catholics would like to claim Bishop John Jewel, the
benchmark Anglican theologian Richard Hooker, and the Caroline divines as their
antecedents. However, scholars in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first
centuries have shown that these claims have no credible basis.
Whatever apologists for the Oxford Movement may claim,
nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism was not an expression of historic
Anglicanism. Rather the Oxford Movement broke down the hedge that separated
Anglicanism from Roman Catholicism. The Tractarians and the Post-Tractarians
introduced nineteenth century Roman Catholic doctrines and practices into the
Anglican Church as well as revived pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic doctrines
and practices. Nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism was at its heart a rejection
of the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement.
The success of the so-called Catholic Revival in the
nineteenth century can be attributed to the temper of the times. It was a period when antiquarianism,
medievalism, and Romanticism gripped the Victorian imagination.
Does High Churchmanship of any kind have a place in the
Anglican Church? In the nineteenth century the Tractarians would claim to
represent the only genuine High Churchmen in the Church of England and would
appropriate the term “High Church” for themselves and their movement. They would claim that only their particular
form of High Churchmanship was authentically “High Church.” This claim, like so
many other claims of the Oxford Movement, was spurious. As Adolph Hitler would write a century later
in Mein Kampf, if you tell a lie
often enough people come to believe it. Those telling the lie may come to
believe it themselves.
A Protestant form of High Churchmanship existed in the Church
of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--long before the Oxford
Movement. The term “High Church” was first used in 1668. Those who practiced
this form of High Churchmanship within the Church of England did not venture
beyond the boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness that the Thirty-Nine
Articles set. High Churchmanship of this kind has a place in the Anglican
Church. It does not like the Anglo-Catholic variety disregard those boundaries.
In the fledgling Episcopal Church a different form of High
Churchmanship would emerge very early in the history of that church. Those who
practiced this form of High Churchmanship questioned the need for the addition
of the Thirty-Nine Articles to the 1789 Prayer Book, believing that the
doctrines of the church were sufficiently declared in the creeds and the liturgy in
that book.
When a revised version of the Articles was finally adopted
by the young church’s General Convention in 1801, clerical subscription was not
required. Every Episcopal minister would be permitted to be his own judge of orthodoxy
and his personal prejudices would be allowed to color his judgment.
High Churchmen in the Episcopal Church would find in the writings
of the Oxford Movement opinions congenial to their own. “Oxford Divinity” as
Bishop Charles McIlvaine described it would make rapid advances in the
Episcopal Church. By the middle of the nineteenth century, to the alarm of
Episcopal Evangelicals like McIlvaine, ritualism and unreformed Catholicism
were flourishing in the Episcopal Church.
The High Church party would defeat in the General Convention
an Evangelical proposal to regulate the ornaments of the church and the clergy.
The High Church party-dominated General Convention would refuse to consider an
Evangelical plea for revision of the 1789 Prayer Book. The Evangelicals
requested the addition of an alternative baptismal service to the Prayer Book
or alternative language to the existing baptismal service. The High Church party would secure the
passage of a canon prohibiting Episcopal clergy from fraternizing with the
clergy of other denominations and ministering outside the Episcopal Church.
This canon was aimed at the Evangelical practice of associating with the clergy
of evangelical churches and exchanging pulpits with them.
In the Diocese of Kentucky the ritualists would form a
powerful voting block in the diocese’s standing committee and convention. They would
refuse to allow Bishop Benjamin Bosworth Smith to take up residence in New York
City as the Episcopal Church’s new Presiding Bishop until he agreed to prohibit
Assistant Bishop George David Cummins from exercising his episcopal authority
in his absence. The ritualists feared that Cummins would use this authority to
suppress ritualism in the diocese.
Cummins would eventually leave the Episcopal Church and with
other disaffected Evangelicals form the Reformed Episcopal Church. By 1900 the
Episcopal Church would no longer have an Evangelical wing. The Evangelicals who
did not leave the Episcopal Church in the 1870s had become Broad Churchmen.
By 1900 the earlier form of High Churchmanship found in the
Episcopal Church had also disappeared, replaced by the Anglo-Catholic variety.
The twentieth century would see a number of developments in Anglo-Catholicism
in North America. One of these developments was the emergence of a liberal form
of Anglo-Catholicism. Another development was the splitting of two groups of
Anglo-Catholics from the Episcopal Church. One group would form what would
become the Continuing Anglican Churches; the other group would migrate to the
Roman Catholic Church. The opening decade of the twenty-first century has seen a
third development. Two more groups of Anglo-Catholics have split from the
Episcopal Church. One group would play a role in the formation of the Anglican
Church in North America; the other would migrate to the Roman Catholic Church.
The group of Anglo-Catholics that split from the Episcopal
Church and played a role in the formation of the Anglican Church in North
America is seeking to shape the doctrine and worship of the ACNA. It has found
an ally in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Reformed Episcopal Church. The
emergence of this wing is a recent development in the REC. It has been
influential in reshaping the doctrine and worship of that ecclesial body. What
we are seeing in the ACNA and the REC is a resurgence of ritualism and
unreformed Catholicism in what passes for North American Anglicanism.
It is this kind of
High Churchmanship that really has no place in the Anglican Church. It is not
only outside the boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness set by the
Thirty-Nine Articles but also it is contrary to the spirit of authentic
historic Anglicanism. Anglo-Catholics need to choose whether they are going to
be Anglicans or unreformed Catholics. They cannot be both. To be Anglican is to
accept the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies. To be Anglican
is to uphold a reformed faith in a reformed church. Those who style themselves
as “Anglo-Catholics” are, by no stretch of the imagination, doing either.
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Photo: layanglicana.org
2 comments:
You're the only one sounding the tocsin. It's needs to be said; strike the hard-hearted so the simple will learn and be wary; speak kindly to the teachable; and teach, teach, teach.
Phil,
The Biblical principle underlying Ezekiel 33:6-7 applies to all Christians. God expects us to warn our fellow Christians of any approaching danger. This includes dangers within the Church as well as those outside the Church. James 5:19-20 also tells us that we have an obligation to turn back from their wrong way those who wander away from the truth. We may not succeed but the possibility of failure does not free us from that obligation any more than the possibility of our fellow Christians' refusal to heed our warnings frees us from the obligation to make them.
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