VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE HERE
You may find the link here and you can see it on the calendar here.
This is NOT the Archbishop’s original topic it has been changed at his request. The event will be livestreamed if you want to listen at the link provided–KSH.
Please note the time of the event is 6:15, but the Archbishop is to speak at 7:00 p.m.
This is a great alert, thanks. I sure hope the livestreaming works well.
I’d hope we could understand his message…not into any casting of aspersions, but we heard Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria speak at the Trinity Seminary graduation when his son graduated, and could not get a word he said.
I should hasten to add that our old Episcopal parish once in a unthinking moment hired a priest who came from the Church of South India, whom we could never understand when he preached.
We finally had to negotiate a severance package with him…Stacy Sauls shoved it down our throats.
This was the same Sauls who once approved a rector summary in our search for a woman who had retired from the active priesthood following brain tumor surgery, and then exploded when we ran an ad in Living Church looking for candidates.
As should be obvious since the event is in South Carolina, 7:00 p.m. is EST.
I have heard Archbishop Wabukala speak. He is softly but clearly spoken in English. If the microphone levels are checked previously and the equipment well placed beforehand, there should be no problem. I too hope the livestream works – when I checked on the stream link it demanded a log in from me! Hopefully we will be able to hear him speak.
It appears to be video as well as audio. Used the first link in Kendall’s post and it came right up.
IF we can get a text of this we should discuss the points the Archbishop is making during our Church History class.
This was great! Thank you Ridley Institute!
Thanks for the opportunity to watch this and for the good recording.
Much to think about there – be good if the text is made available sometime.
It was announced at the end that a transcript would be available in the morning.
This is a very important talk. He states clearly that Gafcon is a servant of the Gospel. His talk drove home to me something that should have been quite obvious to me- one core difference between the GS churches and those in North America and the “West” (including NZ and most of Australia) is that the Anglican Formularies, especially the Articles, are NOT just historical documents to the GS churches. And that once TEC and others consigned those documents to an appendix in the back pages, the discipline of the Articles and the adherence to Scripture they demanded were lost.
I know there is ongoing concern on the part of Anglo Catholics that the GS view of Anglicanism, with its strong affinity to the Formularies, and to Cramner, may not leave much room for Anglo Catholicism. But it has been my own observation through conversations that there is a recognition that when the more learned Anglo Catholic scholars debate the interpretation of the Articles, they do so through the lens of the early church and its councils (those councils recognized by the Articles as authoritative). And I think there is a respect for that point of view, even if most GS bishops would take a more “Reformational” approach.
The revisionist views the Articles (and Scripture, for that matter) as though they were a resolution of General Convention- a sort of “mind of the house” resolution stating where the church was at the time they were adopted, but not at all binding on the next GC (or Synod). And any interpretation is through the lens of personal experience and recent societal trends.
#11 tj
I agree with you both about the importance of this address by +Eliud Wabukala and about the importance of the Articles of Religion of the Church of England.
I have to say, probably like many Anglicans, I had managed to grow up in the church and be confirmed in complete ignorance of their existence. It was in my early 20’s talking to of all people a Free Presbyterian [‘Wee Free’] from the Western Isles who regarded me as from a brother church, though a bit off the rails, and him asking me about my view of them that I first became aware that they existed and had anything to do with my church. It was checking in the back of the prayer book a grandparent had given me that I found them and in the years subsequently have come back to them.
I don’t think that it is that they have any sacred value such as the Scriptures or perhaps creeds have, but they do describe carefully what Anglicanism is. The fact that some Anglican churches have never had our Prayer Book or Articles, such as the Scottish Episcopal Church [as far as I know] does not alter that.
I think there are two key areas where the Articles are helpful:
1. the role and interpretation of Scripture
The articles describe and set out the Scriptures [Article VI] and importantly how they are to be read so that no part of Scripture is to be read as contrary to another, and that the church may not teach contrary to the Scriptures [Article XX];
2. Doctrine and Salvation
Based on the above the Articles go on to spell out that we are not to be required to believe anything as necessary for our salvation which is not contained in the Scriptures [Article VI}. What we receive in the Scriptures, read consistently, is all that we need to believe and do in order to be saved.
Thus while the door is not closed to speculation and other practices, the Articles are concerned that nothing should be required of the believer for his salvation than what is set out in Scripture. They go on to spell out particular areas of what this means: who is God; what is the Church; what are the sacraments ordained of Christ; and particular issues for the Christian such as swearing oaths or naughty preachers and whether that invalidates acts done by them.
Seen in that way, the Articles spell out clearly important principles, but are not in detail necessarily to be followed to the letter. I don’t think for example that preachers should stop writing sermons and read only from the Homilies – I would probably stop going if they did.
The value of the Articles is that they define our Doctrine in terms of the Scriptures and the way to Salvation in the Christian Faith as the Anglican Church has received it. They describe who we are and their value in our time is that they remind us of who we are, at a time we have forgotten and lost our way. They also provide many of the tools we need to be followers of Christ and members of His Church.
Some of those tools such as not reading one passage contrary to another get us out of the difficulties and the wrong paths we have taken. It is difficult of course – what is one to make of the massacre of the Canaanites? But what it teaches one to do is not to just dismiss difficult passages, but to see the whole of Scripture together and to come back to those passages in the future where perhaps they may resolve themselves rather than to make the liberal mistake of assuming they are wrong or to be explained away in some cultural hermeneutic. These are points +Tom Wright often makes.
I think for Anglo-Catholics, there should not be a problem, specifically in relation to the Eucharist. The Articles define the two ‘Sacraments ordained of Christ’, i.e. those he specifically instituted – baptism and holy communion. That is not to say that there are not others nor that they do not have the character of ‘holy estates’ such as marriage, but they are not those Christ specifically ordered us to observe for our Salvation; one always has to remember that from the point of view of the Articles, the test is whether belief in them is something which it is necessary for our salvation to believe. Thus the operation of the Eucharist while not defined so as to exclude an Anglo-Catholic understanding, nevertheless does not see such an understanding as necessary to be believed in order to obtain salvation. The thoughtful Anglo-Catholic, like the Scottish Episcopalian, should have no problem therefore with the Articles even if they have not been part of their teaching to any great degree.
As I have come back to the Articles, many of my questions over the years have been answered, and I have found them helpful in my Bible reading and understanding of my faith as an Anglican, so I agree with Archbishop Wabukala, they are a precious gift and resource for our situation and our time.
Most importantly, they remind us of who we are and encourage and guide us to be followers of the Saviour.
With all due respect to my esteemed fellow Anglican bloggers, TJ (#11) and Pageanmaster (#12), I’m afraid that you’ve seriously underestimated the difficulty of relying on the historic Formularies IN THEIR CURRENT AND HISTORIC STATE. i wholeheartedly applaud the recent moves by GAFCON I and II to recover the central place of our classical confessional and liturgical documents, and to once again treat them seriously as far more than mere historical relics from the past. However, I contend that they are in great need of major UPDATING if they are going to function adequately as standards of Doctrine and Worship. IOW, I fully agree that we Anglicans are in desperate need of recovering what has been lost, and of putting the classic Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of Christ as we Anglicans have received them back into the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of those provinces where they have been ignored, forgotten, or even deliberately suppressed.
But the Articles reflect where the CoE stood in 1571, and the 1662 BCP reflects where the Mother Church stood at the Restoration, but NEITHER adequately reflects the global Anglicanism of today, which has evolved in extremely important ways since then, both for the better and for the worse. In particular, for at least four reasons, the classic Articles and the classic BCP represent where we’ve come from, but they DON’T adequately where Anglicanism is today, even in the bastions of orthodox Anglicanism, whether they be in Abuja, Kampala, Nairobi, Singapore, or anywhere else. They represent our cherished past, but not our confused present, and they certainly can’t and won’t represent our future as a Global Fellowship of Confession Anglicans. In the process of reclaiming them from the dustbin or the shelf where they’ve been stored and ignored, we must also UPDATE them.
To wit, those four key ways that Anglicanism has evolved are:
1. The rise of the Evangelical Revival, under the Wesleys, Whitefield, etc., and continued in the likes of Charles Simeon, the missionaries of the CMS, and down into the present in the likes of John Stott, J. I. Packer, Michael Green, and so on. For one thing, John Wesley was Arminian, whereas the Articles are often heavily Reformed in emphasis. Being Evangelical (gospel-centered and gospel-driven) and being Reformed are definitely NOT synonymous. For example, as a Wheaton grad I’m proudly evangelical, but I’m most definitely EX-Reformed.
2. The emergence of the Catholic Revival from 1833 on led to even more profound changes in Anglicanism. No need to belabor that point, but whether you view the radical changes positively or negatively, or some mixture thereof, there is no disputing that Anglicanism has been changed permanently and radically by the movement that Newman, Keble, and Pusey started at Oxford in 1833. For like the Evangelical Revival that preceded it, the Catholic Revival has endured, with various ups and downs, into the present. And just as Evangelical Anglicanism birthed the low church CMS to take the gospel to all the world, so Catholic Anglicanism gave birth to the UMCA and dominated the existing SPG in order to transplant high church Anglicanism around the world.
The excessive Protestantism of the Articles, from the standpoint of Anglo-Catholics like myself, renders them seriously problematic as a standard for Doctrine in Anglicanism in the 21st century. For example, Article 29 is blatantly false, from an Anglo-Catholic perspective. No good Catholic-minded Anglican can sincerely subscribe to it as it stands. Nor could any good Lutheran or anyone else who believes in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I know that I sure can’t agree with Article 29, and yet I’ve signed the Jerusalem Declaration (as have +Jack Iker, and many more traditionalist Anglo-Catholics) as the best that we can do in an interim fashion, until a more adequate confession suitable for our own time is crafted and agreed upon worldwide.
More to come…
David Handy+
An excellent speech by Archbishop Wabukala. The point that particularly leapt out to me was the contrast between the “structures” on which old and revisionist Anglicanism is based and the Scriptures upon which confessing Anglicanism is based. That and the creation of a new orthodox primates’ meeting in place of the one in the old structures that was no longer fit for purpose. It seems increasingly clear that that on the one hand there is an older, colonial Anglican “communion” made up of a shrinking group comprised largely of a joyless TEC and elements of the COE, while on the other there is a working, missional group of provinces centered around GAFCON who actually are in communion with each other. The split is not formal; it has just occurred as a substantial part of the communion no longer participates in the former structures.
I am reminded of hearing a TEC representative a while back saying that the global south had failed to have TEC kicked out of the Anglican Communion. When it was pointed out that as a consequence, the orthodox provinces were essentially no longer participating in the communion and that TEC was no longer in actual communion with the bulk of the global south, he essentially answered “good riddance”. I don’t think this is an uncommon view, and when Welby visits TEC, I am sure he will be given a warm welcome from the snobbish, Anglophilic hearts which still make up a nice part of TEC, even as they don’t care a whit for the rest of the lower case “c” church. Whether this concerns Welby, I don’t know.
3. A third and crucial change is the rise of Liberalism within Anglicanism. This is the cancer that is destroying Anglicanism from within, and which must be attacked and eliminated from Anglicanism before the cancer spreads to the point of killing the whole Church. In the video, ++Wabukala lays much stress on the rise of what he calls, following +Fitz Allison, “Moralism” in the latter 17th and 18th century. I good example would be the notorious bishop Benjamin Hoadly, who can no more be considered a Christian at all than Thomas Jefferson the Deist was, and yet Hoadly held several prominent bishoprics during the mid 18th century, and Jefferson served on vestries in VA most of his life. For now, let me describe the essence of the kind of Liberalism I’m talking about as Relativism. Today, theological and moral Relativism is the chief archenemy of the Gospel, the chief perversion of it into a false gospel that must be explicitly identified and excluded from Anglicanism in our time. Just as the Barmen Declaration of 1934 (drafted by Karl Barth and other champions of orthodoxy in Germany) attacked the chief danger then facing the Church due to the rise of the Nazi ideology, so we must do the same today. And the Articles just aren’t sufficient for that purpose.
4. Finally, last but not least, I will mount my digital soapbox once again to call attention to perhaps the most important change of all since 1571 and 1662, the change from a Christendom social world to a post-Christendom world in the Global North, where we Christians are definitely a minority these days, and an increasingly marginalized, misunderstood, and even suspect minority at that. The venerable CoE may still be technically an established national Church, but the reality is that what once was truly THE Church OF (not IN) England has dwindled and shrunk to the point where it’s now merely the Church of a TINY MINORITY of England. And that changes everything.
I contend that Anglicanism has to be drastically redesigned for a post-Christendom social world, or it simply will not survive, or at least it can’t thrive. That doesn’t mean trashing our cherished formularies, or sweeping them conveniently under the rug and ignored, as has so often been done in the past in the Global North, but it does mean UPDATING them to suit our new social and ecclesial context. And I mean that in the very radical way that Vatican II was an UPDATING of the outdated Catholicism that had been nearly frozen and almost petrified since the Council of Trent.
But can the Evangelicals, the Anglo-Catholics, and the Charismatics who are in the GFCA movement agree on some sort of updated form of the Articles and the 1662 BCP? That is the million dollar question, to my mind. I’m not at all sure that we can. But the agreement on the final Communique in Nairobi at least suggests that we just might pull off such a stunt, by God’s grace.
In closing, I think the 1571 Articles and the 1662 BCP share the status of cherished CLASSICS in Anglicanism, but they nonetheless remain period pieces. Just like the celebrated KJV of 1611. Only a couple years ago we rightly celebrated that remarkable translation, done by Anglicans for Anglicans (although almost half of the translators were Puritans, they were still Puritan Anglicans within the established Church). But who uses the KJV these days?? Hardly anybody in Anglicanism. Because while the AV was the best that we could do back in 1611, it’s not the best that can be done today. Similarly, what our forebears in the faith produced in 12571 and 1662 was the best that could be achieved back then. And those were noble, worthy accomplishments that we rightly honor and preserve, just as we do the KJV of 1611.
But we can, and MUST, do better today. Yes, we must again become CONFESSING Anglicans, but we dare not, we CANNOT, merely repeat the words that our spiritual ancestors used. Instead, we must be brave and try to be as faithful to the gospel in our day as they were in theirs.
David Handy+
#13 & #15 Fr Handy – thank you indeed for mounting your digital soapbox again and for your thoughtful comments. If I may pick up a few threads from the rich tapestry which you weave:
1. You give the example of Article XXIX which you say:
“No good Catholic-minded Anglican can sincerely subscribe to it as it stands. Nor could any good Lutheran or anyone else who believes in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist”
Well
[blockquote]XXIX. Of the wicked which do not eat the body of Christ, in the use of the Lord’s Supper.
THE wicked and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as S. Augustine saith) the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a thing.[/blockquote]
Surely this is catholic teaching too, that we should come to the Eucharist, not sinless, but repentant and with a determination not to commit the sin again. Surely this is the essence of the Christian faith – repentance, forgiveness, receipt of God’s Grace. This is why we make our confessions prior to receiving and we are enjoined not to come to receive holy communion without going to our brethren and sorting out any quarrel or sin first. As far as I know that is the teaching of the Catholic Church too, which is why they insist on penitence first before taking communion again and perhaps they may be catholic enough for you?
Holy Communion is not some sort of drain cleaner or antiseptic – it is a gift, and much as in the Old Testament God rails against sacrifices given in His honor when the people giving them are unrepentantly sinful [he describes them as a ‘stench’] I see no basis for seeing the Eucharist as any more acceptable when participated in by the unrepentantly wicked. Do you want to reconsider your position on this or have I missed something?
2. While what you say is true about the differentiation in streams of churchmanship since 1571, yet do you not think at the time these Articles were being worked out, the extremes were as much, if not more marked between the Reformed as you put it, by which I assume you mean the Puritans on the one hand and the Catholics, by which I assume you mean the Tudor Roman Catholic Church with its chantries, indulgences, dodgy popes and all the rest. If the Articles survived and were accepted in that environment, I would argue they may also be fit for purpose in other streams of churchmanship and later times, not because they are all-prescriptive, but because they set out what is common doctrine for all Anglican Christians who accept the Scriptures as their guide. They leave open the door for the quirks and foibles of different streams and instead concentrate on purely what is to be required of believers for salvation. I think you will find that is why African Primates from the CMS and USPG streams were able to sign up to them in the Jerusalem Declaration and also why Bishops Iker and Ackerman were also able to assent to them. They are, after all, incorporated into the Doctrine of the Church of England in terms which almost exactly match the wording carefully chosen in the Jerusalem Declaration.
Indeed that is one of the reasons why the Jerusalem Declaration is so powerful and hard to challenge – its doctrine clauses intentionally track almost word for word the Canonical Doctrine of the Church of England. The Jerusalem Declaration merely repeats what we have asserted with our lips and challenges us to live it out in our lives. The Articles provide us with a guide to conformity in essentials for salvation and space for diversity in non-essentials.
3. There is a great temptation for us when faced with any church problem to want to tear everything up and start again. I completely disagree with that. The Jerusalem Declaration does not do so – it goes back to our Doctrine and reasserts it. From my point of view we have Doctrine, and it is set out in the CofE Canons which are my benchmark.
There is a big problem with starting again or as you put it updating our formularies and it is this: The Articles were the result of a century of strife and thought and drafting from generations of brilliant Anglican minds. Are we, and Americans in particular, really willing to take 70 to 100 years to get this right, or will it be shoehorned into the attention span of a few hours at the end of a conference before delegates catch their flights, lose interest and move on to something else?
If you really want a new confession, there are plenty of them off the peg, so to speak – the Westminster Confession is pretty good, and you can probably come up with a pretty good new handy confession to join all the others. It won’t be Anglican however, because as I pointed out in my comment #12, it is our formularies, and our Articles in particular which inform and remind us who we are.
Good luck though with the new confession, and it can join all the others along with the myriad new prayerbooks popping up all over the Communion including the ACNA. Sixty years ago, there were the 1662 Prayer Book, the Articles, and the King James and Revised Standard Bibles in the Anglican Communion: now we have progressed to the position where there are strange and diverse books of prayers [some more wacky than others], a new Bible translation almost as often as a new star is found, confession and catechism writing mania particularly in the US, and the Anglican Church has turned into Alphabet Soup.
NRA and PM,
Excellent dialogue! As I watched Archbishop Wabukala, I thought how wonderful it is that men like him have taken the bull by the horns in Anglicanism. He seems so normal and his speech is so straightforward. If I were Pope Francis, I would say to myself, “This is a man with whom we can do business.” I hope he does communicate with ++Wabukala.
I believe the task ahead for ACNA is somewhat different than the Global South. We need to have all our members go through catechism once more with our new catechism to eliminate the leaven of TEC. Many folks have left TEC but hold to a human focused, Christ diminished theology. The 1979 catechism contributed to the fall of TEC.
#17 Greetings Fr Dale – pull up your digital soapbox and join us.
My [1662] Book of Common Prayer contains The Catechism. However, I expect ACNA would rather, and have much more fun, writing their own, even if it is common only to themselves.
The Catechism interestingly ends with this section on preparing for Communion:
[blockquote]Question. What is required of them who come to the Lord’s Supper?
Answer. To examine themselves, whether they repent them truly of their former sins, stedfastly purposing to lead a new life; have a lively faith in God’s mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his death; and be in charity with all men.[/blockquote]
Q.E.D.
NRA-
“but we dare not, we CANNOT, merely repeat the words that our spiritual ancestors used”
I disagree
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth…”
We MUST use the words our spiritual ancestors used. The church militant exists across time as well as space. The NT is 2000 years old. We should not change things for the sake of change. That is what TEC is all about, and look where it got them.
While you may be of the opinion that no catholic minded Anglican can subscribe the 39 Articles, somehow they could be interpreted in such a way by Newman and Pusey that they, who were much more catholic minded than much of anyone living today, could subscribe them (although Newman gave up trying to hold in tension what he saw as positive in the CoE with the doctrine of church unity, and in the end, the latter won out). The key all along has been that the Articles themselves place the early councils of the church in a higher place, and Scripture above those. Insofar as the Articles are compatible with the ecumenical councils, they can be accepted as authoritative by any catholic minded Anglican.
The main point of contention, as I am sure you know and are referencing in your comment, is transubstantiation. A particularly “catholic” argument is that what Cramner meant was the widely held concept (both at the time and current among poorly trained clergy and laity) that this was some form of magical process performed by a priest upon the bread and wine. Honestly even as an Anglo Catholic, I think it is a stretch to suggest that Cramner merely addressing a misunderstanding on the part of poorly trained Catholic clergy. However, my own take would be that he was attacking not the concept of Real Presence, but rather the idea that the Real Presence was achieved through the particular metaphysical process suggested by Thomas Aquinas and others in the Middle Ages, which in turn was so badly misinterpreted in the 1500s. The “hedge priests” of the time understood transubstantiation about as well as the former Pres of the HOD understands Pneumotology. (“SPIRIT!!!”)
Now, I suspect that Archbishop Wabukala holds a more strict interpretation of the Articles than I do, or most Anglo Catholics. But I also believe that the point he made about allowing for variations on the “non-essentials” was directly addressing the concerns of some Anglo Catholics that Gafcon might leave them by the wayside. My own view is that while TEC and CoE no longer allow our practice, Gafcon invites us in, so I am inclined to accept the invitation. When an old friend, undoubtedly the most catholic priest I know, either Anglican or Roman, was deposed by TEC, with the hour he was handed a document recognizing his orders, signed by none other the Greg Venables, hardly someone who comes to mind when you say “Anglo Catholic.” I’ve had several email conversations with GS bishops, and not one has suggested that Anglo Catholicism was in any way unacceptable to them, or that there was some deficiency in our adherence to Scripture or Anglican Formularies. Those criticisms have been reserved, in my experience, to TEC and some ACNA clergy and laity. The former are convinced we are a bunch of stick in the mud misogynists, and the latter see us as dangerous threats to new age Evangelicalism and as near heretics for having liturgies more than 2 years old that do not include either banal praise music or multimedia projectors.
I agree with #13. We cannot ignore what has happened since. To write off the Oxford Movement and the what has been called the Century of the Holy Spirit gives an incomplete faith for out times.
#18. PM,
“My [1662] Book of Common Prayer contains The Catechism. However, I expect ACNA would rather, and have much more fun, writing their own, even if it is common only to themselves.” Actually, the 1928 BCP has an almost identical Catechism to the 1662 Catechism. The problem is the “Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism” in the 1979 BCP was greatly expanded and intended to take the church in a new direction, which it did. More was not better. Now we need a Catechism more suited to a contemporary pagan culture and even a church culture misinformed and misled by the 1979 Catechism which purports to define human nature, God the Father, The Old Covenant, Sin and Redemption, God the Son (a questionable Christology), The New Covenant, The Creeds (only 2) etc. etc. etc.
Well, some real dialogue at last. Thnaks to the various commenters who have responded to my quite provocative two comments above (#13 and 15). Let me respond chiefly to PM’s #16 and TJ’s #19, not least because I was responding to them initially and they’ve replied most extensively.
PM, I appreciate your thoughtful and spirited response, but I don’t think you’ve really grasped the nature and depth of my objections to the historic formularies in their classic state. That’s hardly surprising. The vast majority of conservative Anglicans don’t either (they are conservatives after all). But to borrow a medical analogy, when you’re trying to come up with a treament plan for a sick patient, it largely depends on your diagnosis of the illness(es) the patient has. You and I differ in our diagnosis, so naturally we think different treaments are in order.
For example, as for Article 29, I agree with what you wrote about the need to receive the Eucharist in a penitent and humble spirit (as captured so beautifully in Cranmer’s beloved Prayer of Humble Access). But you missed my point, which was that Article 29 implicitly denies the doctrine of the Real Presence (as the 1552 BCP explicitly did with its infamous Black Rubric). Don’t be misled by appearances. Article 29 clearly takes the Swiss Reformed position (perhaps closer to Bullinger than Calvin) that is often described as “receptionism,” whereby the Presence of Christ is confined to heaven, and we only receive Christ “in our hearts” by faith, and not in our mouths (as in Cranmer’s infamous words before communion: “Take and eat “this” in remembrancde that Christ died for thee, and feed on him IN THY HEART by faith, with thanksgiving.” In my over 25 years of presiding at eucharists, I’d estimate that I omit that sentence at least 90% of the time (which is perfectly OK in North America, the 1979 BCP makes those words optional, and with good reason). IOW, I contend that Cranmer and the English Reformers were wrong to suppose as they did that receiving Christ in your mouth and in your heart was an “Either/Or” when it is properly a “BOTH/AND.”
IOW, I agree that those who receive the eucharist unworthily do so to their condemnation and spiritual harm instead of to their benefit. I fully agree with the thrust of the article there, of course. The problem is that Article 29 is one of the places where the Articles takes the Reformed position in conscious opposition not only to the Roman Catholic position, but also to the exclusion of the Lutheran position, which also affirms an objective eucharistic presence that is not dependent on the recipient’s faith. That’s the point. (Usually the 39 Articles try to include the Lutheran-minded English minority as well as the Reformed majority, but Article 29 is a blatant exception to the general rule).
And as for the Catechism, you may not realize that the ACNA is indeed close to releasing its new Catechism, which a blue-ribbon taskforce has been carefully working on for some time. It goes to the College of Bishops in January for a second reading, and if they approve it, the new Catechism will be published early next year. It once featured about 300 Q and As. I’ve heard that the current proposal has 234 questions. It’s FAR longer and FAR more orthodox than the lousy catechism in the 1979 BCP. But it’s also radically different from the historic catechism in the Cranmerian prayerbooks, and that again has everything to do with our new post-Christendom social context, where the general population is virtually ignorant of the Bible and the whole Christian tradition, and so a much more extensive catechism is demanded for our times. That’s the kind of radical UPDATING I’m talking about, PM.
More to come…
David Handy+
TJ (#19),
You and I likewise disagree about what sort of treatment plan is necessary to cure the ills of modern Anglicanism because we disagree on our diagnosis of the root problems. I freely admit that I’m the unusual one here, since I’m much less content with the historic formularies than you seem to be. You also seem to have missed my point in comparing both the 1571 Articles and the 1662 BCP with the 1611 KJV. All three are classics and worthy of praise and honor. But all three are period pieces that are seriously outdated these days. I’m NOT suggesting that the Articles and the venerable 1662 BCP should be scrapped and we should start over. I’m talking about UPDATING them here, not replacing them by creating something new from scratch. But all three of those great classics from our past are seriously flawed.
Allow me to illustrate briefly and highly selectively in a way that I hope is representative and illuminating.
Take the 1662 BCP. Yes, it’s still the legal standard in the CoE, and in much of the Global South too. But the reality is that hardly anybody uses the noble 1662 in its historic form. And that’s not just because of the old fashioned Elizabethan language, with all the thee’s and thou’s, etc. There are very good reasons why the good old 1662 has been in mothballs for many years. Let me list just a few of those serious problems:
1. 1662 still employs Coverdale’s Psalter, with all its manifest errors in translation. Coverdale after all knew no Hebrew, and was working from the Greek and Latin versions of the Psalter. Yet by 1662, 51 years after the KJV had come out, everybody who knew anything about Hebrew conceded that the KJV was vastly superior as a translation of the Psalms, yet Coverdales severely flawed translation was retained for public worship in the CoE. Why? Well, at least in part, because it was even more beautiful!
2. The infamous Black Rubric of 1552 was put back in the Communion Service, albeit in very significantly modified form. Whereas the ultra-Protestant and hyper Reformed 1552 had explicitly denied that kneeling to receive Holy Communion implied any belief in the “real presence” of Christ, the 1662 version softened that to deny an “corporeal presence” in the Eucharist. However, even this weakend rubric was a major step backward. 1559 was much better. And of course, 1549 much better yet, for it allowed a Catholic understanding to be read into the BCP liturgy (better, of course, from an Anglo-Catholic perspective).
3. As a charismatic, I especially object to the 1662 service for “the Visitation of the Sick,” which is totally lacking in any sense that God still heals miraculously today. After all, the English Reformers, following the Swiss tradition, were cessationists, who imagined (wrongly) that the supernatural gifts of the Spirit, including healing, had died out after the passing of the apostolic generation. The 1662 service is wholly concentrated on preparing the sick to die in peace, with their sins all confessed and forgiven. It’s awful. No wonder that NO ONE uses that part of the 1662 BCP these days.
4. Last, but not least, the 1662 BCP has been fairly and justly described as a Cranmerian prayerbook with Laudian rubrics. That is, it’s a highly Protestant, even Reformed liturgical text with High Church, re-catholicizing rubrics (thanks to +John Cosin and other High Church revisers like him at the Restoration). Now in one sense that’s an admirable sort of Via Media kind of compromise, but in actuality I think the end result is simply incoherent. The Protestant text and the Catholicizing rubrics are really incompatible. For example, in the Communion service, the 1662 book adds a heading that would’ve caused Cranmer fits, for it calls the prayer over the bfread and wine “the Prayer of CONSECRATION,” whereas Cranmer and his Reformed ilk denied that material things could be blessed and consecrated. That ritual act was reserved for people, in the Reformed understanding.
I hope that clarifies the sort of objections I have, and why I insist that a radical UPDATING (in the Vatican II style of aggiornamento) of that classic work is needed in our time.
More to come…
David Handy+
PM and TJ,
This final comment (at least for now) is addressed to both of you, and all other readers of this thread who are still following my rantings and ravings. Let me briefly address the manifold problems with using the classic Articles in their historic form, without modifying them to suit our very different times today.
It is often thought (following the lead of Richard Hooker) that the Anglican Via Media is a middle way between the two extremes of Rome and Geneva. But while that may be an appropriate way of seeing 17th century Anglicanism, it is wildly inaccurate with regard to the earlier, highly Reformed Anglicanism of the second half of the 16th century. In particular, I think that the venerable 39 Articles could be justly described as a via media between Wittenberg and Zurich, not between Rome and Geneva. The goalposts were set in quite different places in Queen Elizabeth’s time. Some of the early English reformers had been quite Lutheran in their views, including William Tyndale, who was executed in 1536, before Calvin had started to publish much. And on the whole, Lutheran views are accommodated as much as possible in the Articles and the 1559 BCP, not least in the treatment of the sacrament of baptism, where baptismal regeneration is clearly taught and stressed. But the later articles clearly favor the Reformed position in sacramental theology over the Lutheran one, as I noted above is especially emphatic in Article 29. It’s worth noting that Article 29 is the one that was left out when the 38 Articles were adopted in 1563. Article 29 only got approved in 1571, and there was good reason for the resistance to it (IMHO).
But let’s take a step back and look at things from a broader perspective. As much as I appreciate ++Wabukala’s fine speech at St. Andrew’s, I have a major problem with his whole approach, and with the whole GFCA approach as well. I can put it in a nutshell this way. If we’re going to try to recover “authentic” Anglicanism, what is the standard, the criterion, to be used in that process? Clearly, the Jerusalem Declaration privileges the historic Formularies, which ends up privileging the Reformation era and implicitly making it the standard. St. Andrew’s, Mt. Pleasant, and the Diocese of the Carolinas under the admirable +Stevve Wood is explicit in trying to champion “Reformation Anglicanism” as the gold standard for a renewed, revived Anglicanism. My old Yale classmate Ashley Null, an expert on Thomas Cranmer and Reformation Anglicanism, has been prominent in the new courses being offered by that parish and diocese. That actually pleases me, as I like Ashley very much (we once were seminarians together at St. John’s, New Haven, virtually the only evangelical Episcopal church in New Haven back in the early to mid 1980s).
But personally, I look to the High Church Caroline Divines of the 17th century as setting the gold standard in Anglicanism, not the Low Church Protestant reformers of the 16th century. Now don’t get me wrong. Unlike Newman, Keble, and Pusey, I admire and appreciate the English Reformers. I’m grateful for their costly witness and their immense contributions to the Anglican heritage. But I’m also quite critical of them theologically and liturgically, because I believe that they over-reacted against the manifest errors and problems of medieval Catholicism, and often threw the baby out with the dirty bathwater. The 17th century Caroline Divines, starting with the noble +Lancelot Andrewes, began the process of recovering much of what has been needlessly lost through their love of the ancient Catholic Fathers.
In a nuitshell, I admire ++Thomas Cranmer, +Hugh Latimer, and +Nicholas Ridley. I admire them very much and am grateful for them and the sacrifice of their lives for the sake of the true gospel, as God had given them grace to understand it. But I admire +Lancelot Andrewes even more, and I think that he understood the gospel and some of its vast implications even better. It’s not Hooker, but Andrewes who is the true father of High Church Anglicanism (Hooker is more the father of Broad Church Anglicanism, although he certainly had a catholic side, not least because he was the only major Protestant thinker of the 16th century who really knew and understood Thomas Aquinas). Similarly, I value the Caroline Divines John Donne+ (died 1631), George Herbert+ (d. 1646) and Nicholas Ferrar+ (a contemporary, friend, and neighbor of Herbert) even more than I admire Latimer and Ridley. Yes, I admire +John Jewel and his protege Richard Hooker, but I resonate even more to the High Church views of patristic expert +John Pearson, +William Beverley, and +Thomas Ken, among others.
In the video, and in the good Kenyan archbishop’s address, ++Wabukala attacked the “Moralism” that began in the late 17th century, which was indeed Pelagian. I’ve already mentioned the infamous +Benjamin Hoadly 9early, not mid 18th century) as a prime example of that horrid Moralism that came in with the new regime of William and Mary in the 1690s, when the Broad Church party came to the fore and was favored by crown and populace alike. But my point is that it’s the late 17th century Latitudiarians who were guilty of that awful moralism, not their High Church predecessors. The two parties were antithetical to each other.
Or to sum it all up, it makes quite a big difference if you’re trying to renew Anglicanism by taking your cue from the Reformation Anglicanism of the 16th century, or from the Classical Anglicanism of the 17th century. I greatly prefer the latter. But both are a valued part of our Anglican heritage.
Cordially,
David Handy+
P.S., I’m sorry for apparently monopolizing this thread with three long comments in a row and it looks as if I may have unintentionally stifled a promising discussion (or even debate) in the process. But even though I intended my last comment to be my last, I now think I should offer an important correction or two, for the record.
First, while I in haste allowed way too many typo’s to survive a cursory proofread before posting, one may be particularly in need of correction. Toward the end of #24, among the 17th century church leaders that I admire most is +William Beveridge (not Beverley). who was one of the leaders at the influential Savoy Conference at the time of the Restoration and who was a canon at Canterbury Cathedral for about 20 years before being made a bishop.
More importantly, I want to clarify what I was trying to say about the Classical Anglicanism of the 17th century being, in my eyes, the gold standard for authentic Anglicanism. I realize now that in my haste, I oversimplified matters inexcusably, creating confusion and a false impression. I want to try to set it right.
Bishop Fitz Allison is right in attacking a Pelagian sort of Moralism that arose in the 17th century. I too deplore that moralistic reductionism that amounted to a false gospel. My mistake was in giving the impression that only the Broad Church party was guilty of that heresy and error. Yes, they were the worst offenders, and +Benjamin Hoadly of the early 18th century does epitomize that tendency. As bishop successively of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and finally Winchester, Hoadly was Moralism on steroids. He never gave any sign of being a converted man, or a new creature in Christ. He represents Latitudinariansm at its worst.
But I will now admit that there were High Church leaders of an earlier time who also reveal that Moralism was already making very dangerous inroads within the CoE. Two examples would be Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln during the Restoration era under Charles II, and Jeremy Taylor, chaplain to Charles I during the War, and later bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. Both men had some redeeming qualities that +Hoadley lacked, but they were moralists just the same.
But I still stand by my claim that the High Church wing of Anglicanism in the 17th century was mostly free of that awful tendency. Just look at men like +John Bramhall, or Thorndike, just to mention two other High Church worthies of that illustrious era. Low Church evangelicals may not like the Caroline Divines much, but great leaders like +Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne+, George Herbert+, or +John Pearson weren’t guilty of the Moralism that +Alison rightly condemns. Or so I believe, at any rate.
And if some High Churchmen like the notorious ++William Laud or +John Bramhall were undeniably harsh or even downright tyrannical in their zeal to overthrow Purtianism and root it out of the CoE (as ++Laud especially was inexcusably guilty of being), that certainly wasn’t true of all those High Church leaders. Godly men like +Lancelot Andrewes and +John Pearson actually got along well with their Puritan opponents. Thus, +Pearson (bishop of Chester 1672-1686) was good friends with the noble Puritan leader Richard Baxter. The two men respected each other highly, even though their theological convictions and ecclesial agends were incompatible with each other. Alas, that was the exception rather than the rule during those troubled times.
David Handy+
David+ In #13 above you say you are Ex Reformed. Does that mean you have embraced Arminianism?
Bill (#26),
Not exactly. I was raised Presbyterian, and became a Pentecostal while attending Wheaton College in the 1970s. So it’s true that for a while I was an Arminian (Protestant). And it’s also true that the 17th century Caroline “Divines” (i.e., theologians and CoE leaders during the reigns of kings Charles I and II) were ofen given the label “Arminians” by others, because they were non-Reformed or even anti-Reformed Christians at a time when the vast majority of Anglicans as well as other Protestants were part of the Reformed tradition. Back then, it was taken for granted that all Anglicans were some sort of Protestant, no matter how high church they might be. So if you consider +Lancelot Andrewes, or John Donne+, etc., as being “Arminian,” then I guess you can call me one too.
But personally, I think that label is quite misleading. Because the category “Arminian” implies that someone is a Protestant, and that really isn’t a fitting word for me. Although I often describe myself as a “3-D” Christian: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic, I do not assume, as so many people do, that being evangelical necessarily implies being some sort of Protestant. For me, it means being gospel-based, gospel-centered, and gospel/Evangel-driven. But personally, I think it’s quite possible to be very evangelical and also be a Roman Catholic, or, as in my case, an Anglo-Catholic.
That is, since the Catholic REvival began at Oxford in 1833, there have been a significant minority of us in Anglicanism, myself included who don’t consider ourselves Protestant at all. That doesn’t make me ANTI-Protestant, just non-Protestant, or perhaps more accurately, I’m only partially Protestant.
To sum it up in a nutshell, I think the English Reformers basically got their doctrine of salvation right (“soteriology”), but unfortunately they also got their doctrine of the church fundamentally wrong (“ecclesiology”). ++Cram,er. +Latimer, +Jewel, ++Parker, etc. were basically right with their [b]Sola Fide[/b] emphasis, but basically wrong with their [b]Sola Scriptura[/b] emphasis. [Now don’t jump to the wrong conclusion, I agree that Holy Scripture as God’s Word written is our primary, supreme, and ultimate authority, under Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word; however, it’s not our only divine authority]. IOW, Holy Scripture is the supreme and most normative part of Holy Tradition. That is, as an Anglo-CAtholic, Tradition is also, at least in part, of divine origin, inspired at a lesser level, and hence Tradition is always subject to correction by Scripture, while at the same time the central patristic consensus also provides the normative context and controlling guide for the proper interpretation of the Bible’s central message of salvation through Christ.
I hope that helps clarify things, Bill. But if my reply only leads you to conclude that I’m just a muddled-headed and confused guy, well, you wouldn’t be the first one to thinks so. Nor doubtless the last.
Anyway, thanks for asking. Other readers may also be wondering what I meant by “Ex-Reformed.” It’s a theme that comes up repeatedly in some of my postings at T19.
David Handy+
David+ thanks so much for your reply. My question had more to do with the differnce between Reformed theology and Arminianism. By being Ex Reformed does that mean you no longer subscribe to TULIP and believe that everyone is capable of being saved? Is that the position of Anglo Catholicism? I just don’t don’t know and that’s why I’m asking. Thanks again.
Hi, Bill.
Sorry that I misunderstood what you were getting at. Yes, by calling myself “Ex-Reformed,” I’m certainly saying that I’ve rejected the whole TULIP system of Reformed theology, but I was also saying more. However, let me try to explain a bit not only about how I’ve moved beyond TULIP personally, but also how 17th century Anglicanism likewise did the same.
As you may know, the TULIP system developed out of the famous (or infamous) Syond of Dort in Holland (1617-19), that was an international gathering of Reformed leaders from all over Europe, called to address and refute the challenge presented by the Dutch anti-Reformed theologian Jacob Arminius. At that time, almost everyone in Europe assumed that the CoE was a Reformed Church, il.e., much closer to the Swiss than the Lutheran form of Protestantism. King James I dispatched a team of delegates to represent the CoE in Dort. But after that group of English leaders got there and saw which way the currents were running, they became disenchanted and eventually left Dort without signing any accord. Basically, their attitude was: “If this is what it means to be a true Calvinist, or Truly Reformed, we want no part of it. That’s too extreme.” And yes, in particular, it was the L in TULIP that was the most problematic. The English reps rightly reject6ed the unbiblical notion of Limited Atonement (which isn’t based on Scripture but on logic, i.e., on logical deductions based on the premiss of God’s absolute sovereinty). Now personally, I also reject the notion of the Perseverance of the Saints )the P in TULIP). That is, I reject the fallacious notion that “once saved, always saved.”
I hope that clarifies matters, Bill. Thanks for being patient and persistent with your questions. I sincerely hope that what I’ve written above is helpful in at least clarifying the issues at stake, even if you can’t go along with all my own Anglo-Catholic ideas.
David Handy+
#29. David+
Great thoughts with which I agree. Matt Kennedy+ I would guess, would not agree. And thus we have a sample of the ACNA.
David+, thanks again for the clarification. I guess I’m Anglo Catholic in the sense I enjoy the dignity, majesty and mystery of the Anglo Catholic service. I haven’t figured out the theology though and likely never will. Bill