Cleaning Up the River: An Assessment of the “Three Streams, One River” Paradigm

Hickling Broad, Norfolk

By Robin G. Jordan

As a boy, a teenager, and a young man I did my share of “messing about in boats.” I built rafts with my older brother and his friends. I helped my grandfather build a small motor boat and built a Sitka kayak myself. I owned a dinghy and a Folbot kayak. I also did some canoeing later in life. I have spent a good part of my life on lakes and rivers and I have some knowledge of the nature of water ways.

When I lived at Iccleshall St. Andrew’s in Suffolk, the closest river was in Beccles and Bungay. Beccles is on the River Waveney near the edge of the Norfolk Broads. Bungay is west of Beccles on the edge of the Broads, and at the neck of a meander, or loop, of the River Waveney. The Waveney divides Norfolk from Suffolk. Beccles is in Norfolk and Bungay in Suffolk. My family would also go down to the sea at Lowestoff and Southwald. On occasion we would rent a sailing dinghy.

When my family immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s, we lived for several years on the West Bank across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. We would cross the river on the Algiers ferry and then take the bus to Audubon Park. The park had a public swimming pool and a zoo.

In the early 1960s my family moved to the North Shore across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. My grandfather and my mother had bought acreage in the pinewoods of West St. Tammany Parish and my grandfather had built a house on the property on weekends. We added to the house after we moved. Our house was not far from the Pontchatouwala Creek which was a tributary of the Tchefuncte River.

The Tchefuncte River has a number of tributaries that drain into it. Its largest is the Bogue Falaya River at Covington. The Tchefuncte River in turn drains into Lake Pontchartrain. I rafted on the Pontchatouwala Creek, boated on the Tchefuncte River, and kayaked on Lake Pontchartrain. I prayed on the banks of the Bogue Falaya River.

I moved to the Jackson Purchase what will be twelve years ago this coming June. The Jackson Purchase is the westernmost region of Kentucky and is bounded and intersected by rivers. It separated from Missouri on the west by the Mississippi River, from Illinois on the north by the Ohio River, from the rest of Kentucky on the east by the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, and from Tennessee by West Sandy Creek, a tributary of the Tennessee River, and a fork of the Olbion River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. The East Fork and the West Fork of the Clarks River flow through the Jackson Purchase into the Tennessee River. The Clarks River is named after William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The East Fork begins south of Murray and the West Fork north of the town. The region has numerous creeks that drain into the Ohio River, the Tennessee River,  the Olbion River, or one of the forks of the Clarks River.

I do not believe that you can walk in any direction without stumbling upon a creek or freshet. I have a dry creek bed behind my house that fills with water every time we have a thunderstorm. It drains into a creek that eventually flows into the East Fork of the Clarks River. The Shannon Creek winds its way behind the house my grandfather built in Uzzle Hollow and makes its way to the Tennessee River. The house is derelict and the creek keeps changing its course. One day the house may tumble into the creek.

One thing that I have learned from being around water ways a good part of my life is that the flow of water down the tributaries changes with the time of year and that the volume of water flowing down one tributary will be greater or less than the volume of water flowing down the other tributaries. In nature one is not going to find three streams flowing into one river with the same strength. One stream will be stronger than the others and whatever that stream is carrying with it—debris, farm runoff, garbage, industrial wastes, sewerage, silt—will pollute the river into which it flows. This is one reason that I cannot take seriously the “three streams, one river” paradigm. It may look good on paper but the real world does not work that way. One stream is going to dump more water into the river than the others and that stream is going to influence the character of the river.

At the present time the stream that is influencing the Anglican Church in North America the most is the Catholic stream. It is also carrying the most pollutants. The other two streams—evangelicalism and Pentecostalism—are sluggish and weak. The clear, pure water of the Reformed stream has been dammed up.

When one tributary of a river is dumping a lot of water into the river, it can have a detrimental effect on the other tributaries. It can cause them to back up. It can block the mouth of the other tributaries. The result is that when the flow of water from this tributary subsides, only a trickle of water from the other tributaries may flow into the river. The river will become muddy and stretches of the river will dry up. The other tributaries may find a new course.

If the river that is the Anglican Church in North America is going to be a genuinely Anglican, the water of the Reformed stream needs to be undammed and allowed to flow into the river, washing away the effluvia which is polluting it, and causing the river run clear and pure. This may unplug the mouths of the evangelical and charismatic streams and allow them to flow once more into that river. The Reformed and evangelical streams have always flowed together in the Anglican Church.

While the charismatic movement may a latecomer to the Anglican Church, it must be remembered that the English Reformation was a movement of the Holy Spirit, a movement that restored the gospel to the English Church.

Like the European Reformers, the English Reformers took the position that none of the writings of the early Church Fathers or later divines were God-breathed as had been the writings of the apostles. This also included the pronouncements of the Bishop of Rome and oral church tradition in which the Roman Catholic Church set such great store.

While the English Reformers rejected the claims of special personal revelation and other excesses of the Anabapist pneumatics, they did not entirely reject the charismas of the Holy Spirit. The author of An Homilie Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whitsunday takes the position that the charismas of the Holy Spirit did not disappear entirely but diminished in magnitude. The Thirty Nine Articles commend the two books of Homilies published during the times of Edward VI and Elizabeth I respectively, for their “godly and wholesome teaching.” They expound upon doctrine defined in the Articles.

In his writings John Owen, a leading Puritan divine, drew attention to Christ’s presence not only in the word and sacraments but also in the Holy Spirit. “And Christ hath no vicar, but the Spirit" (Works 9:444). Indeed Christ is present in the word and the sacraments through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the representative of Christ who acts “in the person” of Christ, that is, who acts as Christ’s agent. Without the Holy Spirit, the church cannot carry out the mission that Christ entrusted to it. We should not forget that Puritanism was a movement within the reformed Anglican Church and is a part of our Anglican heritage.

A number of more recent Reformed theologians have revisited and reappraised the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I posted links to a series of articles that Sam Storm has written on that topic.

The Reformed stream does not require that we replace the more exuberant forms of worship with a cold formalism as those who are familiar with the worship practices of the Puritans are aware. Their worship was much more heart-warming than we give them credit for. They prayed with uplifted hands and enthusiastically sung metrical Psalms in praise of God not only when they gathered in church but also as they went about their daily lives. They also wore lace and ribbon. They unfortunately have been stereotyped as joyless ascetics and rigorists. We need to disabuse ourselves of the hair shirt image.

Anglicans who subscribe to the Reformed doctrine of historic Anglicanism take great comfort from the knowledge that God takes an active part in our salvation from beginning to end. God does not force us to earn our way into heaven through good works and sacraments. He works in us to will and to do that which is pleasing to him. He supplies us with persevering grace that enables us to finish the race and to wear the victor’s crown.

This view differs markedly from that of the Roman Catholic doctrine which teaches that we have no assurance of salvation. The Council of Trent specifically rejected the doctrine of perseverance.

If any one saith, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end,-unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema. (Sixth Session, Canon XVI)

Roman Catholic doctrine also teaches Particular Judgment:

Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or immediately, --or immediate and everlasting damnation. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1022)

To gain entrance to heaven we must accumulate a sufficient measure of sanctifying grace through good works and the sacraments. Otherwise, we must be purified in the fires of Purgatory or suffer eternal damnation. The Roman Catholic Church also teaches that through the earning of indulgences, the intercessions of the saints, and the celebration of Masses on their behalf the length of time that a deceased person undergoes purification may be shortened. The English Reformers rejected these beliefs but a number of clergy in the ACNA’s Anglo-Catholic-philo-Orthodox wing continue to teach a modified version of them. The most important change involves the earning of indulgences since the Roman Catholic Church teaches that only the pope as successor to the chief apostle Peter and Christ’s vicar on earth may grant indulgences. While the ACNA’s catechism and proposed service book do not specifically teach these doctrines, they do not prohibit them from being taught. They do, however, teach doctrines and mandate or sanction practices that are congruent with such doctrines.

The “three streams, one river” models only works if someone is carefully regulating the flow of water from each stream into the river so that each stream contributes an equal volume of water to the river. To do that would require building a dam at the mouth of each tributary to control the flow of water into the river. If too much water flows into the river from one tributary, an equal quantity of water would need to be pumped into the river from the other tributaries.

However, the Anglican Church in North America has not created such a system. It has allowed the Catholic stream to dump the most water into the river. Among the reasons that has happened is that the “three streams, one river” model is a defective model. It was originally a descriptive model and not a prescriptive one. As a prescriptive model, it is unworkable. It does not take into account the actual behavior of theological systems and water ways. It also does not take into account the critical differences between theological systems and the flaws and weakness of each system. It is built on a false premise: Catholicism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism can be integrated into one theological system that does justice to each tradition.

No river is an equal balance of water from each of its tributaries. No synthesis of three disparate traditions will be an equal balance of those traditions. One tradition will be dominant. The dominant tradition need not be the tradition of the largest segment of clergy and congregations in the ACNA. It may be the tradition of the segment of the province that had the foresight to entrench itself in positions of influence in the days leading up to the formation of the province.

It may come as a surprise but historic Anglicanism does have a system for regulating the flow of water into the river. It is called the Thirty-Nine Articles. It does not try to balance the flow of water from each tributary. What it does is prevent dirty, polluted water from flooding the river while permitting clean, uncontaminated water to flow into it. It filters out what the English Reformers concluded were harmful pollutants. It seeks to restore the unspoiled beauty of the river, to cause the river to run clear and pure again.

This system worked pretty well until the nineteenth century when those who wanted to muddy the river pushed to dismantle it and prompted others to question its usefulness. It can work well again today.

The Thirty-Nine Articles require uniformity on key core beliefs but permits wide diversity on other matters. The first GAFCON conference declared that the Articles contain the true doctrine of the Church, are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, and are authoritative as the Scriptures for the Anglicans today. The conference also called upon the provinces of the Anglican Communion to accept the Articles’ authority.

The Anglican Church in North America can set an example for the other Anglican provinces and wholeheartedly embrace the Articles’ doctrine and principles. Such a move would be an important step toward establishing the ACNA as the vanguard of authentic historic Anglicanism in North America.