By Robin G. Jordan
An important way that North American Anglicans faithful to the
Bible and the historic Anglican formularies can promote the renewal of biblical
Anglicanism in the North American Anglican Church is to form a new North
American Anglican province and bring all Anglicans like themselves together under one
roof.
Such a province needs to have as broad a base as may be possible
within the bounds of the comprehensiveness set by the Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion. This is an important qualification.
The comprehensiveness of the Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion is an “evangelical comprehensiveness.” [1] It is a comprehensiveness
that “results from keeping doctrinal requirements down to a minimum and
allowing the maximum of flexibility and variety on secondary matters.” [2] The
new province should embody this comprehensiveness.
Among the Articles’ doctrinal requirements are that all
clergy and congregations should stand with the Creeds on the Trinity, on the
Incarnation, on the second coming of our Lord, and on the Christian hope. [3]
They should stand with the Articles on “the sufficiency and supremacy of
Scripture,” “the gravity of sin,” “justification by faith alone in and through
Christ alone,” “the nature of the sacraments as seals of gospel promise, means
of grace because they are means of faith,” “loyalty to the gospel in word and
sacrament as the sole decisive mark of the church,” and “the dangerous,
anti-evangelical tendency of Roman doctrines and practices.” [4]
To be authentically Anglican, a new province must be fully
Anglican from a confessional standpoint and not just in name. On one hand, it
should steer clear of the narrowness that characterizes some Reformed bodies.
On the other hand, it should avoid the incoherence that has come to
characterize the Anglican Communion.
To be an agent for the renewal of biblical Anglicanism in
North America, a new province must itself exemplify biblical Anglicanism. Its
doctrine, discipline, and worship must reflect the Protestant and Reformed
principles of the Anglican Church based on the Holy Scriptures and set out in
the historic Anglican formularies, including the two Books of Homilies.
One of the reasons that I do not believe that a new North
American Anglican province should be formed around an existing organization is
that this organization will have developed a culture of its own with its own
assumptions, values, and beliefs governing the life of the organization. The
temptation will be to shape the assumptions, values, and beliefs of the new
province after those of the existing organization. If the existing organization
is not fully Anglican in the confessional sense and is committed to a different
vision of the church than the vision of the church articulated in the historic
Anglican formularies, then the resulting province would fall short of
exemplifying biblical Anglicanism. This includes a narrower vision of the
church than the one the evangelical comprehensiveness of the Articles permits.
Historic Anglicanism is rooted in the English Reformation
and the Protestant Elizabethan Settlement, in the early Reformed theology of
Bucher, Bullinger, Cranmer, Hooper, and Vermigli. The reformed Church of
England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was closer to Zurich and the
other Swiss Reformed Churches than to Geneva. The reigns of Elizabeth I, James
I, and Charles I were marked by growing tension between those who believed that
the English Church was sufficiently reformed and those who wished to further
reform the English Church along the lines of the Genevan Church. The extremism
of the latter party had the unfortunate affect of pushing one segment of the
English Church in a High Church direction. Whether the changes that this party
sought to introduce (and did introduce during the Interregnum) would have made
the English Church conform more closely to the teaching of the Bible is highly
debatable. In a number of instances these changes simply reflected the
preferences of the party in question.
Although a number of the Restoration bishops were Arminian, Reformed
theology would remain the dominant theology of the Church of England. While the
worship of the English Church would become more High Church in some regards, it
was not as ritualistic as it would become during the nineteenth century
Catholic Revival. The Coronation Oath Act of 1688 would affirm the Protestant
and Reformed character of the Anglican Church.
In light of these historical facts a restrained form of High Churchmanship that is Protestant and
Reformed in its theological outlook has a place in the Anglican Church.
Rather than being formed around an existing organization, I
believe that a new province should be formed around a shared vision of the
Church that unites the different elements in and outside the Anglican Church in
North America faithful to the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies, a
vision that is informed by and congruent with the evangelical comprehensiveness
of the Articles. What these elements desire to become collectively in banding
together and what they would like to accomplish over a given period of time
should be very clear from the outset. A clear vision is essential to the
development of an organizational culture that supports the fulfillment of that
vision. It helps to ensure that the assumptions, beliefs, and values of the new
province are fully aligned with the direction that all the elements forming it are seeking to go, and not just the
direction in which one segment wishes to take the new province.
In order to develop such a vision all elements forming the
new province would need to agree on what the Articles mean. This understanding should
be based upon a careful reading of the Articles with attention to their
phrasing, the historic context in which they were framed, and the intention of
their framers. The use of untrustworthy expositions of the Articles such as
Cardinal John Henry Newman’s in Tract 90, E.J. Bicknell’s in Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine
Articles and Bishop John Rodger’s in Essential
Truths for Christians: A Commentary on the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles and an
Introduction to Systematic Theology, which reinterpret the Articles in an
unreformed Catholic direction, would result in a vision that does not genuinely
reflect the doctrine of the Articles.
Endnotes:
[1] J.I. Packer and
R.T.Beckwith, The Thirty-Nine Articles:
Their Place and Use Today, Regent College Publishing, 2007, p. 69.
[2]Ibid., p. 69.
[3] Ibid., p. 70.
[4]Ibid., p. 70.
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