By Robin G. Jordan
The Anglican Church in North America has a doctrine problem.
The problem originated during the days of the Common Cause Partnership. It has
grown progressively worse since the formation of the Anglican Church in North
America. Let’s take a brief look at that
problem and how we might respond to it.
What is the “official
doctrine” of the Anglican Church in North America?
Beyond the doctrinal statements and inferences in its
constitution and canons, what may be considered official ACNA doctrine—at least
at the present time—are the doctrinal views endorsed by its College of Bishops.
These doctrinal views may be explicit or they may be implied—typically
associated with a practice endorsed by the College of Bishops. They are found
in two documents—Texts for Common Prayer
and To Be a Christian: An Anglican
Catechism.
The Anglican Church in North America’s constitution and
canons do not vest in the College of Bishops the authority to determine matters
relating to the faith, order, and worship of the denomination or recognize this
authority as inherent in the body. The constitution identifies the “chief work”
of the College of Bishops as propagating and defending the faith and order of
the Church and serving as “a visible sign and expression of the unity of the
Church.” Whether the propagation and defense of the Church’s faith and order
extends to the determination of matters relating to the faith, order, and
worship of the denomination is debatable.
The constitution vests in the Provincial Council authority
to make canons ordering the denomination’s common life in respect to such
matters as safeguarding of the denomination’s faith and order, common worship,
and standards for ordination among other things. The constitution also
recognizes the Provincial Council as the governing body of the denomination.
Based upon the provisions of the constitution, the Provincial Council is the
denominational organ that has authority to determine matters relating to the
denomination’s faith, order, and worship, not the College of Bishops.
For the foregoing reasons I deliberately avoid the use of
terms like “adopt” or “approve” to describe the decisions that the College of
Bishops makes as a body regarding matters related to the faith, order, and
worship of the denomination. If the College of Bishops and the Provincial Council
were operating strictly in accordance with the provisions of the constitution
and the canons, these decisions might be described as recommendations by the
College of Bishops to the Provincial Council. The Provincial Council would
decide whether it would act on these recommendations or the recommendations of
other bodies that it had created to make recommendations to it on matters
related to the denomination’s faith, order, and worship.
The College of Bishops’ endorsement of particular doctrinal
views must be seen in the light of the present situation in the Anglican Church
in North America. The College of Bishops has been progressively encroaching
upon the authority of the Provincial Council. The Provincial Council has to
date made no attempt to resist that encroachment and to assert its
prerogatives. Rather the Provincial Council is abnegating its authority over
such matters and deferring to the College of Bishops. What is endorsed by the
College of Bishops may under the circumstances be viewed as official ACNA
doctrine albeit provisionally.
The College of Bishops is the only denominational organ that
is doing anything that approximates issuing doctrinal statements—endorsing the
doctrinal material produced by a number of denominational task forces under its
supervision and with its input. These taskforces are technically organs of the
Provincial Council. As can be seen from this description of the present
situation in the Anglican Church in North America how the organs of the
denomination are supposed to operate according to the provisions of the
constitution and how they operate in practice are two different things.
The result is that the College of Bishops’ endorsement of
particular doctrinal views has weight as long as the Provincial Council or any
ecclesial organization or network in the denomination does not challenge such
endorsement. They do not, however, have the force of law: They have not been
incorporated into the canons.
The result is also a state of affairs not unlike that in the
Episcopal Church in which the denomination has not formally adopted a doctrinal
position on a number of key issues. In order to file charges of heresy against
a bishop, the House of Bishops must poll its members as to what in their
opinion is the official doctrine of the denomination and whether the bishop in
question holds views inconsistent with that doctrine.
Doesn’t the Anglican
Church in North America affirm the Jerusalem Declaration?
As I pointed out in a number of articles, the Anglican
Church in North America’s affirmation of the Jerusalem is only incidental to
the narrative of the denomination’s formation in the preamble to its
constitution. As it is only incidental to that account and appears in the
constitution’s preamble, it is not binding upon the denomination. This is the
reason that it was moved from the fundamental declarations in Article I of the
constitution to the preamble. If it has been retained in the fundamental
declarations, it would have technically had the force of law and would have
binding at least on paper upon the consciences of congregations and clergy in
the denomination, including its bishops. Whether the bishops of the Anglican
Church in North America would have paid any more attention to it than they have
other provisions of the constitution is a matter for conjecture.
It is quite evident from the doctrinal views that the
College of Bishops has endorsed to date that the College of Bishops as a body
does not fully accept the tenets that the Jerusalem Declaration identifies as
underpinning Anglican orthodoxy. It is quite evident from statements made on
the Internet that a segment of the denomination, clergy and laity, also do not
fully accept these tenets. The cumulative evidence belies the claim on the ACNA
website that the denomination wholeheartedly embraces the Jerusalem
Declaration.
Doesn’t the Anglican Church in North America receive
the Anglican formularies as doctrinal and worship standards?
When used in relation to a standard, the term “to receive”
means “to accept as authoritative, true, or accurate; to believe.” When one
examines the ACNA fundamental declarations what stands out about its reception
of the Anglican formularies as standards are the qualifiers. These qualifiers
limit its reception of the Anglican formularies as standards.
For example, the fundamental declarations state that the
denomination receive the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a doctrinal standard, in other words, one of a number of doctrinal
standards, which the fundamental declarations do not identify and may include
that amorphous body of beliefs which John Newman referred to in Tract 90 as
“Catholic tradition.”
The fundamental declarations state that the denomination
receives the 1662 Prayer Book as its worship standard along with the books that
preceded the 1662 Prayer Book. Among the books that preceded the 1662 Prayer
Book were the partially reformed 1549 Prayer Book and the unreformed
pre-Reformation medieval service books.
In regard to the Articles of Religion of 1571 those who
drafted the fundamental declarations use language that avoids committing the
denomination to fully accepting as authoritative the doctrine and principles
set out in the Articles. They add an additional qualifier in form a phrase from
the Royal Declaration of Charles I, which Anglo-Catholics associate with John
Newman’s reinterpretation of the Articles in a Roman direction. Newman used
this phrase as justification for his disregard of the historical context of the
Articles and the intent of their authors.
What is official ACNA
doctrine relating to grace, faith, baptism, the Holy Spirit, and regeneration?
What the College of Bishops has endorsed is the view that the
work of prevenient grace is faith, not regeneration. Faith is the cause of
regeneration, not its fruit. This is essentially the Scotian-Arminian view of
the ordo salutis historically associated with Roman Catholicism and
Wesleyanism. It is not the Augustian-Reformed view of the order of salvation
articulated in Article 10 and further expounded in “the Homily for Whitsunday,”
“the Homily on the Misery of Man,” and “the Third Homily for Rogation Week.”
While tying the gift of the Holy Spirit to water baptism, To Be A Christian: An Anglican Catechism
shies away from connecting the new birth, or regeneration, to water baptism. The Order for Holy Baptism, however,
connects the gift of the Holy Spirit and the new birth to water baptism. Members
of the College of Bishops had a hand in the drafting of both documents which
have received the endorsement of the College of Bishops.
What are the
implications for Anglicans in and outside of the Anglican Church in North
America?
The Order for Holy
Baptism leaves no doubt as the direction in which the College of Bishops is
taking the Anglican Church in North America. It is certainly not responding to
GAFCON’s call to return to the Bible and the Anglican formularies. Rather the
College of Bishops has embraced Roman Catholic views of the priesthood and the sacraments
and Eastern Orthodox views of the Holy Spirit and sanctification. It has turned
its back on the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the doctrine and principles
of the Anglican formularies.
In England, as in other countries, the sixteenth century
Reformation was a movement to restore the New Testament gospel to its rightful
place in the Church. Whatever its motivations the College of Bishops appears set
on undoing the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement and reshaping
the Anglican Church along unreformed Catholic lines. Under its leadership the
Anglican Church in North America is becoming a denomination that proclaims a “different
gospel” from the New Testament Gospel—a gospel of sacraments and works.
These developments and other developments in the Anglican
Church in North America should be a major cause for concern to Anglicans who
uphold the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the doctrine and principles of
the Anglican formularies and who see the renewal and revitalization of
confessional Anglicanism as the most reliable bulwark against the encroachment
of liberalism and other systems of beliefs that threaten the authority of the
Bible and Anglican formularies in the Anglican Church. The College of Bishops
is itself espousing such a system of beliefs.
Sooner or later the College of Bishops is going to take the
step of calling for a canon to enforce the use of the ACNA service book and
catechism and to push such a canon through the ACNA legislative process. There
is already a canon on the books requiring the use of the ACNA service book once
it is adopted. In the case of the ACNA service book the only thing required for
the enforcement of its use is its formal adoption. A canon enforcing the use of
the ACNA service book and catechism would make conformity to their unreformed
Catholic teaching and practices a canonical requirement. The doctrine endorsed
by the College of Bishops would have the weight of canon law behind it, not
just the backing of the bishops.
What next?
One response to developments in the Anglican Church in North
America is to do nothing. The result of inaction is that the present situation
in the Anglican Church in North America will not only persist but it will also grow
worse.
A second response is to undertake a major overhaul of the
denomination—its doctrinal foundation, its governing documents, its rites and
services, its catechism, and the like—and to replace its existing leaders with
fresh ones. This involves trying to work within a system that was created to
prevent such changes from happening. It would be a futile exercise.
A third response is to establish new orthodox Anglican province
fully in line with the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine and principles of
the Anglican formularies and to provide an alternative not only to the Anglican
Church of Canada, the Continuing Anglican Churches, and the Episcopal Church
but also the Anglican Church in North America. A drawback of this response is
that it would add to the raft of Anglican entities competing with each other in
North America.
A fourth response is to establish such a province but within
the Anglican Church in North America itself—a second province with its own
doctrinal foundation, governing documents, rites and services, catechism,
bishops, and synodical government. This would require congregations, clergy,
and others in the Anglican Church in North America, committed to the full
acceptance of the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies, to take
the initiative and to form such a province within the ACNA despite the
opposition of those who do not see the need for a second province. It would
also require boldness and resolve on the part of the group forming the second
province.
As for Anglicans outside of North America, they also have
four choices. They can do nothing. They call for meaningful reforms in the
Anglican Church in North America and put pressure on the denomination to undertake
them. They can back the formation of a new orthodox Anglican province in North
America. They can give their support to the group forming a second province
within the Anglican Church in North America.
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