By Robin G. Jordan
We find circulating in the Anglican Church in North America
a number of fallacies that bishops and other clergy of that denomination are
promoting. The
sermon that Bishop Jack Iker preached at the Eucharist for the annual
meeting of the Reformed Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Mid-America’s Synod on
February 21, 2014 illustrates one way bishops are promoting these fallacies in
that denomination.
After acknowledging the existence of “a continuing tension
between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics Bishop Iker makes this comment:
This is true in the international GAFCON movement as well as
here in the ACNA, where evangelicals seem to dominate. Evangelicals emphasize
the 16th-century Reformation and the work of the reformers in the Church of
England. Everything is referenced in terms of the 1662 Prayer Book and the 39
Articles. Anglo-Catholics reference the ancient Church of the patristic fathers
and emphasize the historic faith and order of the undivided church, before the
division of the Church in the West from the Eastern Church. We rather like the
1549 Prayer Book as the standard. We would contend that Anglicanism flourished
in England for many years prior to the Reformation era and that we are a
reformed catholic church rather than a Protestant denomination born in the 16th
century. Henry VIII did not found the Anglican Church and neither did the
reformers. Dr. Edward Pusey, the early Tractarian and the spiritual father of the
Oxford Movement, said we understand "reference to the ancient Church,
instead of the Reformers, as the ultimate expounder of the meaning of our
Church."
What Bishop Iker fails to mention is that evangelicals are
not the only Anglicans who have valued the historic Anglican formularies. So
did the High Churchmen and the Latitudinarians.
The English Reformers who produced the Thirty-Nine Articles
believed that their doctrine was agreeable to the teaching of the primitive
Church and the early Church fathers as well as that of the Scriptures. The
Restoration bishops produced the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. They were in the
main High Churchmen.
The nineteenth century Tractarians held the 1662 Book of
Common Prayer in high regard. They even promoted the 1662 Prayer Book as the
doctrinal standard of the Church of England. In Tract 90 John Henry Newman
reinterpreted the Thirty-Nine Articles in a Romeward direction. He did not
reject the Articles entirely.
What Bishop Iker also does not mention is that the 1662 Book
of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles are recognized as the
longstanding doctrinal standard of historic Anglicanism throughout the Anglican
Communion. The 1662 Prayer Book includes the 1661 Ordinal annexed to it.
When Anglo-Catholics refer to the undivided Church, they are
not referring to one period in Church history but five periods—the New
Testament Church, the Post-Apostolic Church, the Church of Late Antiquity, the
Church of the Early Middle Ages, and the
Churches of the High Middle Ages. The Great Schism, or the East-West Schism did
not occur until 1054.
The Anglo-Catholics like the last four periods in Church
history because the errors and superstitions they espouse were more wide-spread
and for a large part went unchallenged. They do not like the English
Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement because the Edwardian and
Elizabethan reformers challenged these errors and superstitions on solid
biblical grounds and showed them for what they are—errors and superstitions.
As we shall see, the notion of an undivided Church existing
before the Great Schism has no basis in fact. It is mythic.
Anglo-Catholics would make the 1549 Book of Common Prayer the
standard because it is only partially-reformed and does not reflect Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer’s mature thinking. Since the nineteenth century they have used the 1549 Prayer Book as a pretext for the introduction of
pre-Reformation and post-Tridentian Roman Catholic beliefs and practices and
more recently Eastern Orthodox practices and beliefs into the Anglican liturgy.
The 1549 Communion Service may be combined with additional texts and rubrics
from the Anglican Missal to produce a
facsimile of the Roman Mass. The latest Anglo-Catholic venture in the use of
the 1549 Prayer Book as a Trojan horse, or subterfuge, for the introduction of
Roman Catholic doctrines and liturgical usages into the Anglican liturgy is
Holy Communion I and II in Texts for
Common Prayer.
Anglo-Catholics contend that “Anglicanism flourished in England
for many years prior to the Reformation era” solely on the basis that the Latin
name of the Church of England is the ecclesia
Anglicana, literally “English Church.” While John Henry Newman was
originally thought to have used the term “Anglican” to refer to English
Churchmen, in particular High Churchmen, recent research has shown that a
similar term “Anglian” was used as early as the seventeenth century.
“Reformed catholic” is a phrase whose meaning varies with
whoever is using the phrase. For Anglo-Catholics it means one thing; for
evangelicals another. When Anglo-Catholics use the phrase, they are as often as
not referring to unreformed Catholicism, less what Anglo-Catholics describe as
“medieval excesses,” and with a vernacular liturgy. Conservative evangelicals
see the Anglican Church as reformed catholic church in the way that Roger
Beckwith describes the Church in The
Church of England, What It Is, And What It Stands For.
The Church of England is reformed in its emphasis on the
Bible, in its 39 Articles, in its vernacular worship, and in its recognition of
the royal supremacy in its government. But it is also catholic, in that it
retains the ancient common heritage of Christendom, in a biblical form.
Rather than “starting everything afresh,” Beckwith points
out, the Anglican Reformers “simply used the standard of Scripture, applied by
reason, to correct whatever needed correcting in the church’s inherited forms.”
In The Way, the Truth,
and the Life—Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future,
the GAFCON Theological Resource Group makes this important point:
Anglican orthodoxy is catholic in that it values the
catholic Creeds and the Ecumenical Councils of the early church, recognizing
that these have provided a ‘rule of faith’ that is derived from Scripture.
Point 3 of the Jerusalem Declaration states:
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.
Conservative evangelicals tend to shy away from the use of
the phrase “reformed catholic” due to the meaning that Anglo-Catholics give the
phrase. They prefer the descriptor “Protestant” to the descriptor “reformed
catholic.”
As Charles H. H. Wright and Charles Neil note in the Preface
of
The Protestant Dictionary (1904),
the term “Protestant” is often misrepresented. "Protestant" and
"Catholic" are terms which, when rightly understood, are not
conflicting.
True Protestantism holds firmly to the truths set forth in the
Creeds of the Apostolic Church, and protests only against unscriptural
additions made to the Primitive Faith. Protestantism is the re-affirmation of
that Faith combined with a distinct protest against those errors of doctrine,
ritual, and practice which were brought, as St. Peter says, " privily
" into the Church of Christ (2 Pet. ii. 2), but which were accepted as
" Church teaching " in mediaeval times, and are still too prevalent.
The word Protestantism stands for the return to Primitive and Apostolic
Christianity. It is the reassertion of " the faith once for all delivered
unto the saints " (Jude 3). When Protestantism is negative in its
declarations, it is only to preserve and accentuate some truth which is being
perverted. Like the great " Ten Words," as the Jews were wont to term
"the Ten Commandments," truths sometimes appear to be simply
negations, when in reality they are very far from having that character, as our
Lord s summary of that Law (Matt xxii. 36-40) abundantly proves.
With the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement
the Anglican Church did become a Protestant denomination. Doctrinally the
Anglican Church joined the ranks of the Continental Reformed Churches. The
Anglican Church did become a via media,
or middle way, but NOT between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. It became a
via media between Geneva and Zurich. The Continental Reformer Henry
Bullinger would have a profound influence upon the Anglican Church. The
systematic study of Bullinger’s Decades
along with the Bible was mandatory for clergy seeking a license to preach.
Those without a preaching license were required to read portions of the
Homilies in place of a sermon. The Anglican Homilies are clearly Protestant and
Reformed in doctrine.
The Anglican Church would retain some pre-Reformation
practices such as the appointment of bishops to oversee the Church, the wearing
of the surplice and the cope during services of public worship, and the making
of the sign of the cross upon the forehead of the newly-baptized because these
practices were not prohibited by the Scriptures and it was thought to be
expedient to keep them. The Anglican Church would adopt a liturgy that, while
it retained some material from pre-Reformation service books, had all pre-Reformation
error and superstition expunged from it, and in which its doctrine and
liturgical usages were brought in line with the teaching of the Scriptures.
The English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement would
give shape to authentic historic Anglicanism.
In 1688 in reaction to the birth of a Roman Catholic heir to
the English throne, James II was driven from the English throne. James and his
wife were both Roman Catholics. During his brief reign James had promoted
greater lenity toward Roman Catholics and Roman Catholicism and relaxation of
the laws prohibiting Roman Catholics from holding public office. James’
Secretary of State, at his bidding, had replaced office-holders at court with
Roman Catholic favorites. William of Orange and his wife Mary, both
Protestants, were invited to ascend the English throne.
The Coronation Oath Act was passed in Parliament in 1689. It
would require the English monarch at his coronation to take an oath solemnly pledging
to maintain “the true Profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion
Established by Law" This oath left no question as to the character of the
Anglican Church. It was not just Protestant. It was Reformed.
The nineteenth century Ritualists who are the real
antecedents of Anglo-Catholics like Bishop Iker broke the law when they
introduced post-Tridentian as well as pre-Reformation Roman Catholic doctrine
and practices in their parish churches in England. They were deliberately
seeking to Romanize the Anglican Church so that the Pope would recognize the
Church as Catholic and readmit it to the Roman orbit. When the Pope declared
Anglican orders null and void, they sought re-ordination from bishops with a
different pedigree from those of Anglican Church. They would produce the
so-called Anglican Missal that
enables an Anglo-Catholic priest to turn an Anglican Communion Service into a
facsimile of the Roman Mass. Among their heirs was the twenty-first century
Anglo-Papists who used the Catechism of
the Catholic Church and the Roman
Missal in their parishes and would join the Anglican Ordinariate.
Roman Catholic propagandists beginning in the sixteenth
century have spread the pernicious lie that the Anglican Church is the creation
of Henry VIII or the English Reformers. They have sought to discredit the
catholicity of the Anglican Church. Bishop John Jewel were able to show in the
sixteenth century and others have shown since then that the Anglican Church is
more catholic in the sense of its adherence to the primitive and apostolic
faith than the Roman Catholic Church with its innovations in doctrine and
worship. Some Anglo-Catholics cannot resist the temptation to break the ninth
commandment and to repeat this lie.
As J. I. Packer points out in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, the Articles
“were intended to fulfill four functions:”
First, they were
meant to act as the Church of England’s theological identity-card, showing what
she stood for in a split and warring Christendom. As such, the Articles were
intended to be a title-deed to catholic status. Catholicity and apostolicity,
to our Reformers, had nothing to do with an (unproveable) ministerial
succession, but were matters entirely of doctrine. The third canon of 1604
claimed that the Church of England is ‘a true apostolic church, teaching and
maintaining the doctrine of the apostles.’ The Articles were drawn up to make
good this claim, (which, of course, antedates 1604; it goes back to the
Reformers), and to show that the English Reformation, so far from being, as
Rome supposed, a lapse from catholicity and apostolicity on the part of the ecclesia Anglicana, was actually a
recovery of these qualities through recovery of the authentic apostolic faith.
Not for nothing did Rogers entitle the final edition of his exposition of the
Articles ‘The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England’.
Bishop Iker quotes the words of Edward Bouvrie Pusey who
maintained “the ancient Church,” not the English Reformers, was “the ultimate
expounder of the meaning of our Church." “The ancient Church” to which
Pusey was referring was not the New Testament Church but the post-apostolic
Church and later. Pusey would replace John Henry Newman as the leader of the
Tractarian Movement after Newman converted to Roman Catholicism.
Pusey, I must point out, upheld Newman’s Tract 90 “as giving
a Catholic interpretation, i.e. the sanction of antiquity to the Thirty-Nine
Articles.” With John Keble he would maintain “the pure and apostolic doctrines”
of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as the Church of England’s rule of faith.
Pusey would also champion Newman’s theory of the Church of England as a via media between Protestantism and
Roman Catholicism. He promoted the reunion of the Church of England with the
Roman Catholic Church. Rome, however, did not regard Pusey’s views as Catholic
enough and rejected his overtures.
Bishop Iker goes on to say:
Here too Anglo-Catholics and the REC stand together. We
affirm the four essential elements for church unity called the Chicago-Lambeth
Quadrilateral.
1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the
revealed Word of God, containing all things necessary to salvation, and our
ultimate standard and guide in matters of doctrine and morals.
2. The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds as sufficient statements of the Christian
faith.
3. The two Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion as instituted by Christ
himself.
4. The historic Episcopate, which preserves the apostolic succession of
bishops, priests, and deacons.
All of these are pre-reformation realities, dating back to
the first apostles. They are not confessional statements originating in English
Reformation theology.
Bishop Iker confuses Resolution 11 of the 1888 Lambeth
Conference of the bishops of the Anglican Communion with the resolution of 1886
Chicago meeting of the House of Bishops of the then Protestant Episcopal Church
and misquotes both resolutions. The House of Bishops in its resolution stated:
1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the
revealed Word of God.
2. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the
Christian Faith.
3. The two Sacraments — Baptism and the Supper of the Lord —
ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution and of the
elements ordained by Him.
4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods
of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of
God into the unity of His Church.
Note the differences between what the House of Bishops’
resolution says and what Bishop Iker says. The House of Bishops’ resolution
says nothing about the Scriptures “containing all things necessary to
salvation” or being “ our ultimate standard and guide in matters of doctrine
and morals.” Nor does the resolution say anything about the Apostles’ Creed
being a sufficient statement of the Christian faith. It only contains a
reference to the Nicene Creed. Article 3 in the House of Bishops’ resolution
refers to “the two Sacraments—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord — ministered
with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution and of the elements
ordained by Him,” not to “the two Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion as
instituted by Christ himself.” They are not the same thing. Article 4 in the
House of Bishop’s makes no mention of the preservation of “the apostolic
succession of bishops, priests, and deacons.” It does, however, contain a
reference to the local adaptation of the methods of administration of the
historic episcopate “to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of
God into the unity of His Church.”
Now compare what Bishop Iker says and what Resolution 11
says:
That, in the opinion of this Conference, the following
Articles supply a basis on which approach may be by God's blessing made towards
Home Reunion:
(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as
"containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being the rule
and ultimate standard of faith.
(b) The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the
Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself — Baptism
and the Supper of the Lord — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's Words
of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.
(d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods
of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of
God into the Unity of His Church.
Article (a) in Resolution 11 does refer to the Scriptures “"containing
all things necessary to salvation.” It, however, then refers the Scriptures
“being the rule and ultimate standard of faith,” not to “our ultimate standard
and guide in matters of doctrine and morals.”
Article (b) in Resolution 11 adds the phrase “the Apostles Creed, as the
Baptismal Symbol” to Article 2 of the House of Bishops’ resolution. It makes no
mention of the Apostles’ Creed being a sufficient standard of faith with the
Nicene Creed. Article (c) of Resolution 11 adds the qualifying phrase “ordained
by Christ Himself” to the wording of Article 3 in the House of Bishops’
resolution. Article (d) in Resolution 11
reiterates Article 4 in the House of Bishops’ resolution.
Article (d) in Resolution 11 was the most criticized article
in that resolution because it was open to interpretation as not supporting the
Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession.
What Bishop Iker does in his sermon is present his own
reinterpretation of the two resolutions and invite his audience to affirm that
particular reinterpretation as “the four essential elements for church unity.”
He does not explain what he means by “church unity.” The rest of his sermon
suggests that he is not referring to "the restoration of unity among the divided
branches of Christendom,” a Christendom which no longer exists, or to a basis
of an approach to “Home Reunion,” the reunification of the Anglican Church with
the Roman Catholic Church, to which Resolution 11 refers. He does appear to be
promoting his reinterpretation of the two resolutions as a basis for unity
within the Anglican Church in North America.
Note the similarity between Bishop Iker’s reinterpretation
of the two resolutions and the ACNA College of Bishops’ reinterpretation of the
same resolutions in the Letter of Commendation in the front of To Be A Christian: An Anglican Catechism.
The Lambeth Quadrilateral – Resolution 11 of the Lambeth
Conference (1888) affirmed four marks of Church identity required for genuine
unity and fellowship. These are: the Holy Scriptures containing “all things
necessary for salvation,” the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as “the sufficient
statement of the Christian faith,” two sacraments ordained by Christ –Baptism
and the Eucharist – and “the historic Episcopate, locally adapted.” These serve
as a basis of Anglican identity as well as instruments for ecumenical dialogue
with other church traditions.
In 1886 the then Protestant Episcopal Church’s House of
Bishops was dominated by Anglo-Catholic bishops and the resolution reflects the
churchmanship of these bishops. This is clearly evident in the two paragraphs
preceding the four articles of the resolution:
But furthermore, we do hereby affirm that the Christian
unity can be restored only by the return of all Christian communions to the
principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the
first ages of its existence; which principles we believe to be the substantial
deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his Apostles to
the Church unto the end of the world, and therefore incapable of compromise or
surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for
the common and equal benefit of all men.
As inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore as
essential to the restoration of unity among the divided branches of
Christendom, we account the following, to wit….
First, they call for “the return of all Christian communions
to the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during
the first ages of its existence.” Here they are making certain assumptions
about the Church during the first ten centuries of existence before the Great
Schism. One of these assumptions is that no divisions existed in the Church
during this period. This is patently untrue. The Church has never been
monolithic. Since New Testament times it has experienced all kinds of
divisions. The Great Schism itself was the culmination of longstanding
divisions between the Eastern Church and the Western Church.
Second, they assert that these principles of unity are “the
substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his
Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world….” The “sacred deposit” to
which the resolution refers includes what Anglo-Catholics call “Holy
Tradition,” as well as the decrees of the first seven General Councils of the
so-called undivided Church and the writings of the early Church Fathers. This
is evident from the four articles of the resolution themselves.
The Scriptures say a lot more about themselves than does the
resolution’s four articles. While the doctrine of the Nicene Creed is gathered
from the Scriptures and is agreeable to the teaching of the Scriptures, the
Nicene Creed is not found in the Scriptures.
The terms “elder” and “overseer” are found in the New Testament where
they are used to describe the same ministry, a fact which both Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer and benchmark Anglican divine Richard Hooker recognized. However,
the distinguishing of bishop from presbyter occurred after the New Testament
period and we must look to the post-apostolic period for beginnings of the
concept of a historic episcopate. The “sacred deposit” to which the resolution
refers is clearly not the deposit of apostolic teaching found in the
Scriptures.
Third, they assert for that reason the same principles of
unity are from “incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been
ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the common and equal benefit of
all men.” In other words, they were principles upon which they themselves were
unwilling to compromise or give in.
They go on to state what they account to be “inherent parts of
this sacred deposit” and to be “therefore…essential to the restoration of unity
among the divided branches of Christendom.”
Article 1 of the House of Bishops’ resolution does not
exclude a central place for “Holy Tradition,” decrees of the first seven
General Councils of the so-called undivided Church, and the writings of the
early Church Fathers in the teaching of the Church. It simply recognizes the
canonical Scriptures as “the revealed Word of God.” It says nothing about the
sufficiency or the supremacy of the Scriptures.
Article 2 does not explain what it means in referring to the
Nicene Creed as “the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.” As Richard
Begbie points to our attention in
The
Anglican Faith: A Layman’s Guide (1993), the Creeds are not a complete
statement of the truth. They “are not so much a statement of what we are to
believe as what to believe on such doctrines as are included in them.”
Article 8 of the Thirty-Nine Articles states:
The three
Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius's Creed, and that which is
commonly called the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly to be received
and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy
Scripture.
Article 8 does not suggest that individually or collectively
the Creeds represent a sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
Among the reasons that the Thirty-Nine Articles were adopted
was that the Creeds were not a sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
They did not address three critical areas—salvation, revelation, and the
sacraments.
While the four articles in Bishop Iker’s reinterpretation of
the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral are arguably “pre-reformation realities,”
existing before the English Reformation, he is stretching the truth in claiming
that they date back to the first apostles. While a case can be made for the
apostles’ recognition of a number of New Testament writing along with the
Hebrew Bible as Scripture and as the final authority in matters of faith and
practice, the canon of the Christian Bible was not formalized until the
post-apostolic era.
An earlier Roman Creed upon which the Apostles Creed is
based is found in a letter attributed to Ambrose, from a Council
in Milan to Pope Siricius in about 390. Wikipedia, the
online encyclopedia, draws to our attention:
While the individual statements of belief that are included
in the Apostles' Creed – even those not found in the Old Roman Symbol–are
found in various writings by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Novatian, Marcellus,
Rufinus, Ambrose, Augustine, Nicetus, and Eusebius
Gallus, the earliest appearance of what we know as the Apostles' Creed was in
the De singulis libris canonicis
scarapsus ("Excerpt from Individual Canonical Books")
of St. Pirminius (Migne, Patrologi
Latina 89, 1029 ff.), written between 710 and 714. Bettenson and
Maunder state that it is first from Dicta
Abbatis Pirminii de singulis libris canonicis scarapsus (idem quod
excarpsus, excerpt), c.750. This longer Creed seems to have arisen in what
is now France and Spain. Charlemagne imposed it throughout his dominions,
and it was finally accepted in Rome, where the old Roman Creed or
similar formulas had survived for centuries. It has been argued
nonetheless that it dates from the second half of the 5th century, though no
earlier.
The Anglican Church accepts the Apostles Creed as an
authoritative statement of what Christians should believe in relation to the
doctrines included in that Creed, not because of a legend attributing the
authorship of the Creed to the apostles, but due to the agreement of the Creed
with the Scriptures.
The First Council of Nicaea is believed to have adopted the
original Nicene Creed in 325. The Nicene Creed would undergo a number of
developments. For a discussion of these changes, see the Wikipedia article,
“
The Nicene Creed.” The Nicene Creed used in the Anglican Church and the Roman
Catholic Church differs from the Nicene Creed used in the Eastern Orthodox
Churches in that the words “and from the Son,” also known as the Filoque
clause, are added to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit. In
The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles W. H. Griffith Thomas offers this explanation
of how the Filoque clause came to be added to the Western version of the Nicene
Creed.
Chalcedon to the Reformation. The doctrine of the Deity of
the Spirit being fully established, there still remained the question of His
relation to the Father and the Son. The term “Generation” was used to describe
the relation of the Son to the Father, and the term “Procession” was employed
to denote that of the Spirit. But the question was whether this eternal “Procession”
or “Forthcoming” was from the Son as well as from the Father. The problem was
Western, not Eastern, and the attitude indicates a difference which is
explained by the conditions of the two Churches. The Eastern was confronted
with those who tended to regard the Spirit as inferior to the Son, and in order
to protect the full Deity of the Spirit it was regarded as essential to
represent Him as proceeding solely from the Father as the Fountain (πηγή) of
the Godhead. The Western Church, on the other hand, starting with the essential
unity of the Son and the Father, desired to protect the truth that the Spirit
is as much the Spirit of the Son as He is of the Father. Otherwise there could
be no equality. It was this that led the West to express its truth by saying
that the Spirit “proceeded” from the Father and the Son. It was the great
influence of St. Augustine that led the West to endorse this twofold
“Procession,” and it became part of Western doctrine by incorporation into the
Creed at the Council of Toledo in Spain, 589. At Toledo the authority of the
first Four Councils was acknowledged, and the Creeds of Nicæa and
Constantinople rehearsed, and it is curious that in this rehearsal the Synod
imagined that the Latin Creed represented the Greek original. It is thus a
matter of discussion how the words “And the Son” came into the Creed. Some have
thought this was due to a marginal gloss. Dr. Burn adduces evidence to prove
that the Council never added the words at all, that they are due to a blunder
of a copyist of the Toledo text of the Constantinopolitan Creed.[4] The
interpolation did not cause suspicion, but was repeated in several Synods as
the orthodox doctrine, so that we have the remarkable fact of the Council
professing to keep the text of the Creed pure, and yet laying stress on the
Spirit’s “Procession” from the Son. It is probable that increasing error was
rendering further dogmatic definition necessary. “The Toledan Fathers were only
drawing out what seemed to them latent in the Creed.”[5] It is
essential to distinguish between the doctrine itself and its insertion in the
Creed. However and whenever it was inserted, the addition was unwarranted,
because it was without proper ecumenical authority, and it was some time before
the addition became part of the Roman version of the Constantinopolitan Creed.
The Western doctrine is thought to have come to England from Augustine of
Canterbury, and during the Middle Ages little or nothing occurred of importance
in connection with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
Griffith Thomas further elucidates:
We have already seen something of the history of the
doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son,
and it is important to obtain a true idea of the meaning of the Western Church
in expressing and insisting on this doctrine. On the one side the Spirit is
associated with the Father as sent, given, and proceeding (Matt. 10:20; John
14:16, 26; 15:26). On the other hand, He is associated with the Son, being
called the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9); described as sent by the Son from the
Father (John 15:26); bestowed by the Son on the Apostles (John 20:22; Acts
2:33); and called the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7, R.V.). (See also Gal. 4:6;
Phil. 1:19; 1 Pet. 1:11.) So that, in the statement of the Creed, the Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son, there was no intention of denying the
one principium in the Father, but only a general assertion that the
essence which the Father eternally communicates to the Spirit is also the
essence of the Son, and that the Son shares, and is involved in the act and
process of communication. The Eastern Church regards the Procession from the
Son as temporal only through the Mission, and suspects our Western view of a
tendency towards Sabellianism. It would seem as though no reunion were possible
without some change of doctrine; at any rate the Eastern Church does not regard
the difference as merely verbal. On the other hand, if the West dropped
the Filioque, it might be thought to deny or question the
Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father.[7]
One question of supreme importance has been raised during
recent years: Is the doctrine of the Procession from the Son really justified,
and does it represent a vital difference? Several authorities are of opinion
that it is this addition which has given to the West its admitted spiritual
superiority over the East.[8]One writer goes
so far as to say that the denial of the Procession from the Son has done much
to fossilise the Greek Church. It is undoubtedly true that no Western
theologian ever wished to do anything more than to associate in the closest
possible way the Holy Spirit with the Son of God, and in so doing it would seem
as though this was keeping quite close to the characteristic New Testament
conception of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus. And
so we may say that “without the Holy Spirit we have practically no Christ,” and
without Christ we have practically no Holy Spirit.
The Anglican Church, as in the case of the Apostles Creed,
accepts the Nicene Creed as an authoritative statement of what Christians
should believe in relation to the doctrines included in that Creed due to its
agreement with the Scriptures. While the ACNA College of Bishops has gone on
recording as permitting the omission of the Filoque clause from the Nicene
Creed, largely out of a desire to foster closer ties with the Eastern Orthodox
Churches, the 2008 GAFCON Conference with the Jerusalem Declaration affirmed
the retention of the Filoque clause in its upholding of “the Thirty-Nine
Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s word
and as authoritative for Anglicans today.”
The New Testament tells us that Jesus’ disciples baptized
and Jesus by his own baptism sanctioned the practice. In Matthew 28:16-20 he instructs the disciples to baptize new disciples. However, we do not find
any passages of Scripture in which Jesus is described as actually instituting the practice. We do, on the
other hand, find four accounts of how Jesus on the night before his passion and
death instituted the Lord's Supper and instructed his disciples to give thanks over bread and wine and to share them “in remembrance of
me.” The ordinance or sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper can be described as having been both instituted and ordained by Jesus.
The ordinance or sacrament of Baptism may be described as being ordained by Jesus but not instituted by him. In any event the two rites may be regarded as having been officially made ordinances or sacraments of the Church by Jesus.
As previously noted, the distinguishing of bishops from
presbyters occurred after New
Testament times. During New Testament times they were one office. The
affirmation of the Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic view of apostolic
succession that Bishop Iker infers to be a part of the Chicago-Lambeth
Equilateral is predicated upon the
belief that the apostles consecrated the first bishops, setting them apart to
be their successors. This cannot be
proven and is purely conjecture.
Sadly Bishop Iker’s audience in all likelihood did not know
any better and lacked the discernment to recognize truth from falsehood. The
REC bishops whom Bishop Iker recognized as kindred spirits have been leading
the Reformed Episcopal Church away from the evangelical principles of the REC
founders in the direction of Anglo-Catholicism for at least two decades. In the
case of former REC Presiding Bishop Leonard Riches it has been more than four decades.
In the second article in this series, “Common
Fallacies in Circulation in the Anglican Church in North America (Part 2)”, we
will examine eight common fallacies that are circulating in the Anglican Church
in North America.
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