By Robin G. Jordan
Why does the direction in which the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is moving matter? What difference does it make? Is it something that we really need to get worked up about?
Biblical Christianity is already in jeopardy in North America and one less denomination committed to Biblical Christianity further weakens its position. North America has no jurisdiction that represents unadulterated historic Anglicanism, confessional Anglicanism that has not been diluted or watered down by the addition of a Prayer Book that is not quite in step with the Anglican Church’s historic formularies and by various ritualistic practices that carry a heavy theological freight of their own.
Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism share a number of common characteristics. Both affirm the Bible as the supreme and final authority for Christians in matters of faith and practice. Both recognize the Lordship of Christ over his Church and view the Bible as a reliable witness to the character and work of Christ, to his teaching, and to the Holy Spirit-inspired teaching of his disciples. Both see the Bible as containing everything that is necessary for our salvation and sanctification. Both view the Bible as being perspicacious—clear and self-interpreting—when it comes to such matters. These characteristics are not the only ones that Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism share but they are important ones.
At the heart of Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism is the gospel. This is why historic Anglicanism is not only described as Protestant and Reformed but also as evangelical.
I am not talking about being evangelical in the sense that the term has been used in the last few years but in the older sense of being committed to the gospel and is shaped by it. The Anglican Church, when it is true to its Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical heritage, is a gospel church.
As J. I. Packer has pointed out, the gospel sets the limits of Anglican comprehensiveness. If a doctrine or a practice is not compatible with the gospel, it has no place in the Anglican Church.
This is why the movement of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) away from Biblical Christian and historic Anglicanism should concern us: it is a movement away from the gospel—from the good news that God sent his Son into the world to be a propitiation for our sins, that in suffering and dying on the cross he made up for all our rebellious thoughts and actions for all times, including Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God. Those who place their faith in Christ and what he did for us are put right with God.
It is a movement toward the belief that Christ’s offering of himself on the cross did not entirely restore our relationship with God, that we need a priest doling out little bits of holiness, little bits of spiritual life, in the sacraments for God to accepts us and then we do not know whether he will accept us for certain. All we can do is keep receiving the sacraments and hope that he does.
While some readers may object to this analogy, the trappings that are offered as an inducement to accept this movement away from the gospel are like the candy that a molester offers a child to lure him or her into his car. They are poor compensation for what will be lost.
We must ask ourselves, “Are they so important that we must abandon the gospel for them?” “Are we guilty of making an idol of them?” The arts, gestures, processions, and that sort of thing have their place in Christian worship but only where they genuinely serve the gospel.
The direction in which the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is moving is indeed something that we should get worked up about. It is not something that can be treated lightly. North America has enough churches preaching false gospels vying for our attention. We do not need to add another one.
4 comments:
Robin that is ridiculous. Laughable. Consider Investing your time doing something for Christ and to grow his kingdom. Still happy to set up a Mt 18 with you and the leaders if you are willing. #the9thcommandment
Quigg,
Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, what gospel the proposed ACNA formularies encourage or permit its clergy to preach is a real issue. Can you honestly say that the gospel as the New Testament teaches it, the English Reformers understood it, as the historic Anglican formularies embody it, and as those who stand in continuity with the English Reformers preach it is what is preached in a number of parishes and missions in the ACNA? I don’t believe that you can, not without bearing false witness as are fond of accusing me of doing. One of the criticisms of the proponents of the Anglo-Catholic movement from the nineteenth century on has been that they preach a different gospel. If one examines the theology in question, it is clear that it departs from what the New Testament plainly teaches and relies heavily on “sacred tradition.”
As for those who may be guilty of bearing false witness, I believe that you need to look in your own backyard. The ACNA’s former prelate and present interim dean of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Tallahassee, Florida is on record as recently having said, "So the 2019 book is actually a fresh assessment of 1662; an attempt to be completely continuous on what it is that Anglicans have always believed and how they've always prayed." The bishop in question is prone to exaggeration and at times to stretching the truth. A more accurate description of the 2019 Proposed ACNA Prayer Book is that it is an abandonment of the doctrine and liturgical usages of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force cannibalized texts from the 1662 Prayer Book but that is the only thing that they took from that venerable Prayer Book, which together with the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, forms the historic Anglican standard of faith and worship. The 2019 Proposed ACNA Prayer Book is far from "completely continuous" with what Anglicans have always believed and how they have always prayed. For example, the 2019 Proposed ACNA Prayer Book teaches that confirmation, ordination, penance, matrimony, and anointing of the sick are sacraments as does To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism. This is certainly not what Anglicans have always believed but represents what Jim Packer has called a “party line.” What the bishop in question says may be true for Anglo-Catholics and perhaps for those whom Gerald Bray describes as "charismatic open evangelical ritualists" who are a more recent phenomenon, but it certainly not true for Anglicans who have remained faithful to historic Anglicanism, to the doctrine and principles embodied in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the 1662 Prayer Book, and the Homilies and to what Jim Packer describes as "the central Anglican theological tradition.”
All is not well in the ACNA. ACNA’ers who are genuinely committed to Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism need to face up to reality. The ACNA has gotten on the wrong track and is heading away from Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism. They have two choices: they can put on the brakes, back up, and get the train back on the right track. They can get off the train, leaving it to those who are happy to go in the direction that it is going. They don’t have to ride as helpless passengers to wherever it is headed.
Robin, this is the last time I will engage you electronically. First, brother, who appointed you as the expert and judge? Second, while I cannot speak for every ACNA church, the ones in my diocese and the ones I have visited absolutely preach the Gospel and invest their time building up the body of Christ and doing evangelism. . Churches in my diocese sure preach the gospel. To suggest that ACNA churches do not preach the Gospel and teach the whole counsel Of God’s word, is ridiculous. You break the clear teaching of scripture by accusing an elder without the confirmation of two or three witnesses and more importantly by breaking the clear principle of Matthew 18. It’s hard to hear your lecture people about being biblical when you don’t follow the Scriptures yourself.
Quigg,
The witnesses are those who heard or read the statement of the bishop in question and who have evaluated the doctrine and liturgical usages of the 2019 Proposed ACNA Prayer Book and recognized the numerous ways that they depart the standard of the 1571 Articles of Religion and the 1662 Prayer Book. I suspect that they exceed two or three in number.
The reason that you are insistent that the matters under discussion should be handled in the "Matthew 18 process," I suspect, has little to do with what the Bible teaches. My impression is that you do not like anyone drawing attention to the problems of the ACNA especially when there is more than a grain of truth in what they are writing. To control any damage that they might do such as cause a loss of confidence in the leadership of the ACNA, including yourself, you have been seeking to limit the parameters of the discussion, insisting that it should be handled behind closed doors and not in the open.
However, the issues that I have been raising, including the veracity of the ACNA's spokesmen, as I have said before, are issues that should be discussed openly and publicly. They concern problems which should be brought to the attention of ACNA'ers and Anglicans outside the ACNA to disabuse them of any misconceptions of the ACNA that they might have. What they chose to do then, I leave up to them. I offer suggestions and may urge a particular course of action. The final choice, however, is theirs.
I am just a boy scout on the side of the tracks waving a red lantern to warn the oncoming train that the bridge is out. The engineer can ignore me and kill himself and the train's passengers. Or he can stop the train, back up, and switch to a different track. It is as simple as that.
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