Where We Start and Where We Finish

Posted on June 10, 2013 by

090815-N-7280V-339Whether systematic or not, all theologies rely on a set of underlying philosophical principles. Sometimes these principles are openly acknowledged, sometimes not, but either way the end point of a given theology is largely determined by where you start. This became somewhat apparent to me in the recent conversation about satisfaction in which a number of Eastern Orthodox commenters said that the scriptural passages that refer to God’s wrath must be metaphorical because wrath simply does not fit into the picture of a loving God. In other words, a particular understanding of the doctrine of God drives the interpretive model of Orthodox theology. There is a rich and diverse theological landscape that one finds in Orthodoxy, but it is all rooted in a common beginning point that sets the stage for how the rest is to be received and processed.

This is not dissimilar to what happens in other theological traditions. Like Orthodoxy, Calvinism also begins with the doctrine of God, particularly emphasizing God’s sovereignty, which leads to a whole host of conclusions about how salvation works, what the purpose of the Christian life is, etc. Lutherans start with justification and the cross. Baptists start with personal conversion and transformation. Roman Catholics begin from the doctrine of the Church and particularly the petrine ministry. None of that is to say that these traditions only care about those things. That would be overly simplistic. Nor is it to suggest that they do not examine all the evidence. A good deal of energy is wasted in our disagreements among ourselves as Christians when we shout verses of Scripture or passages from the Fathers at one another, as if the other side is unfamiliar with them and had never considered them before. For the most part, the difference between varying Christian traditions is not in the evidence. It is in the way the evidence is processed. It is a divergence of first principles that separates us and makes it difficult for us to understand one another.

Wherefore Art Thou, Anglicanism?

In light of this, I have been puzzling over the question of what the starting point is for classical Anglicanism. It is a difficult question to answer for several reasons. Since modern Anglicanism is so drastically divorced from its classical sources, in most enclaves of Anglicanism today the starting point for our theology is being provided by some other tradition. But even where there is consistency with our historical theology, there remain several viable candidates for an Anglican first principle. Classical Anglicanism takes very seriously the notion of common worship, for instance, and so a compelling case can be made for worship as the starting point of our theology. Likewise, there is a good case to be made that the starting point for classical Anglicanism, like Roman Catholicism, is the doctrine of the Church. The Anglican reformers and divines certainly placed a great deal of importance upon both common worship and the doctrine of the Church, but the more time I spend considering this question, the less I think that either of these  are the starting point for our theology rather than the natural fruit that comes from having a theology built upon our actual first principle.

Grounded in Revelation

In the nineteenth century, as the Anglican Communion began to take shape, a great question hung in the minds of Anglicans about how to build bridges with the wider Christian world without losing our own distinctiveness. This question fueled the writing of William Reed Huntington’s classic The Church Idea and eventually led to the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, which remains a hallmark of Anglican theology to this day. The original purpose of the Quadrilateral was simply to lay out the terms upon which the reunion of the Christian Church might be established, paring down to the bare minimum of what is necessary for a body of Christians to be properly called a church. However, over the years, as the Anglican Communion has drifted further and further away from her own foundations, the Quadrilateral has become something of a homing beacon, guiding us back to our roots and to our core convictions. I have written here before about what the Quadrilateral has to say about the sacraments and about the ministry. However, there is an inherent order to the four points of the Quadrilateral, and what we believe about Baptism, the Eucharist, and the episcopate, comes directly out of the first two points of the Quadrilateral:

(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.

(b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

The Anglican Reformation was not about creating something new but about recovering something old. What the Anglican reformers discovered when they read the Fathers of the earliest era of the Church was that they held a particular care for Scripture and they exercised a way of reading Scripture that animates all of the Church’s life with the Holy Spirit. It became immensely important to the renewal of the Church of England that Scripture form the foundation of every doctrine, not in an individualistic fashion in which each man reads and makes up his own mind, but in a communal and traditional fashion, in which the Scriptures are read as the Church has received them. Responding to Rome, John Jewel wrote in his 1562 Apology for the Church of England, “Wherefore, if we be heretics, and they (as they would fain be called) be Catholics, why do they not, as they see the fathers, which were Catholic men, have always done? Why do they not convince and master us by the Divine Scriptures?”

Scripture, Tradition, and Reason Redux

The starting place of Anglicanism is the doctrine of revelation. That is the doctrine that colors how we see all else. Our tradition is founded upon Scripture, tradition, and reason, not as three co-equal categories, and certainly not as three legs of a stool, but as three interconnected parts of a whole fabric of divine revelation that cannot be separated if we wish to see the complete picture of the Gospel. Holy Scripture provides the foundation and it is the final authority. But Holy Scripture cannot be properly understood outside of a conciliar framework. The ancient creeds are affirmed along with the Scriptures because they truly teach what the Scriptures reveal and because they represent the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit within the Church to speak God’s Word to us, not a new Word for each generation but the same Word truly explicated. When we read Scripture in conjunction with the creeds and the teaching of the Church, we can apply reason to our reading to see the patterns and the order that exists in the Scripture. Reason and tradition do not prove anything about God for us apart from their consistent grounding in the Scripture. Scripture needs tradition and reason to be properly understood, but Scripture steers the ship. Even though reason would lead us to expect logical patterns in what Scripture reveals, we correct our faulty, fallen reason with the Scripture and allow God’s revelation to lead the way, even when it seems to lead us into seeming contradiction, even when it seems to lead us away from what we held before. We accept the correction of Scripture, read through the conciliar and patristic tradition, and when we do so we assume that new light will emerge for our reason to ascertain.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

This starting point in the doctrine of revelation differentiates Anglicanism from Rome and the east because classical Anglicanism requires an unswerving fidelity to the Scriptures as the fullness of revelation and the final authority. The Fathers are held in the utmost respect in Anglicanism, but they are not a means unto themselves. By their own writings, they bound themselves to the Scriptures and they bid us to do the same.

On the other hand, Anglicanism’s rock solid insistence upon reading the Scriptures within the life of the Church and through the lens of the Fathers prevents Anglicanism from collapsing into fundamentalism and the rampant individualism of modern Evangelicals and Liberals (excepting, of course, our own Evangelicals and Liberals who eschew Anglican principles in favor of their own). Nor does classical Anglicanism fall into the trap of confessionalism, writing in stone that which the Church has not yet received in a catholic, conciliar fashion. Our formularies are of paramount importance to us, but they are not absolutes. The Book of Common Prayer can be revised. The Catechism can be expanded. The Articles express the Catholic faith, and yet there is freedom for evolution of thought in how we understand and apply them, so long as we do not traverse their plain, grammatical sense.

Where Do We Want to Go?

How does this work in practice? Well, for starters, it means that there is nothing in our theology that we need to protect from Scripture. Returning to the conversation about satisfaction, for instance, Scripture paints for us a picture of a God who is loving and who exercises wrath against sinners. The tradition confirms this picture and puts it in context along with the full range of imagery that Scripture employs. And reason tells us that, while we might see a contradiction between God’s love and His wrath, the problem must not be with what Scripture reveals but with our perception. The starting point determines the outcome. We start with God’s revelation and therefore that is also where we end up, standing in awe, gratefully receiving the mystery of God.

Of course, as with everything else, the degree to which Anglicanism produces this kind of theological fruit is in direct proportion to how faithfully Anglican churches adhere to authentically Anglican principles. It is considerably easier, especially today, to adopt a different theology under the banner of Anglicanism and follow it out to its natural conclusion than it is to rely on the musty, overlooked Anglicanism of the past. But if our starting point becomes something other than God’s revelation, our ending point will be equally divorced from the truth that has been revealed in Jesus Christ. If God’s truth is where we want to end up, then it makes little sense to start anywhere else than in what God has actually said.

Photo is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

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Satisfaction’s Guarantee

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

fb8789a1759b8ab8768cdffc2b2644ebClassical Anglicanism is all about the atonement. The liturgies of the prayer book are saturated with the blood of the cross. This is a scandal to the world and an embarrassment to many modern Christians. As Fr. Gavin Dunbar has pointed out in an article in the most recent issue of The Anglican Way, many liberal Christians in the last hundred years have eschewed the doctrine of satisfaction which teaches that Jesus’ death on the cross not only forgives us our sins but also satisfies God’s holy and just wrath against us for our sin. According to Fr. Dunbar, liberals see this understanding of the atonement as “primitive, violent, vengeful, and sadistic,” and even as “a kind of ‘divine child abuse’ deeply implicated in social and psychological structures of oppression.” I experienced the very sentiment that Fr. Dunbar describes firsthand in seminary. I was taught in my systematic theology class that Saint Anselm, often thought of as the great medieval articulator of the satisfaction theory of the atonement, was a close-minded neanderthal who tried to impose the barbaric class warfare of his culture onto the Gospel.

The Orthodox Itch

Theological liberals, however, are not the only ones who find the doctrine of satisfaction to be revolting. The Eastern Orthodox blogger Fr. Stephen Freeman has written a series of posts recently that are critical of what he calls “forensic models” of the atonement. In his view, the doctrine of satisfaction produces a version of Christianity in which the whole action of salvation becomes extrinsic to the human person. All the action takes place in the court room, so to speak, in which Jesus offers His sacrifice to the Father, changing the nature of our relationship with God without actually changing us. “If God simply declares us to be ‘just,’ ‘forgiven,’ or ‘made whole,’” says Freeman, “then the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection become something of an abstraction. Their ‘necessity,’ would only exist within God Himself, who might otherwise have ‘declared’ us to be righteous without all the bother.”

He contrasts the doctrine of satisfaction with what he refers to as an “ontological model” of the atonement. In this model, sin is treated primarily as a disease. The cure is not to be found in some sort of legal transaction but in true union with Christ:

Christ unites Himself with man (the Incarnation) and in so doing takes upon Himself, and into Himself the fullness of our humanity (excepting sin – which is foreign to our nature). Importantly, however, just as Christ takes upon Himself our humanity, so He also unites Himself to us, we take on His divinity.

Here Freeman echoes Saint Athanasius’ famous maxim, “God became man so that man might become God.”

A Straw Man Argument for an Irrational God

There would be something to Freeman’s criticism if satisfaction were the only thing happening in the atonement. Indeed, many liberals have said just what Freeman purports to say, that the doctrine of satisfaction creates a legal fiction in which God looks upon us as holy without actually making us holy, something which God certainly could have accomplished without the cross. All that’s left then is an irrational God acting out a sick drama for his own benefit, the Father taking out His anger at us on His Son when He could just as easily let the whole thing go.

Perhaps there are strains of Protestantism that have been so rigidly cold, but Anglicanism has never taught the doctrine of satisfaction in isolation from a robust doctrine of sanctification. The same eucharistic liturgy that proclaims that the death of Christ on the cross was “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world,” also includes these words: “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” This sentiment is carried forth in the writings of the reformers and the divines. Lancelot Andrewes also echoes Athanasius when he wrote, “Christ fitted our body to him, that he might fit his Spirit to us.” Similar statements can be found in Taylor, Hooker, Laud, etc. There is no legal fiction here. A real change is taking place in which we are being made one with God through Christ. Such an understanding does not negate the doctrine of satisfaction at all. If anything, it flows from it.

atonement6

The Real Issue is Emotional, Not Theological

Freeman has written elsewhere that “Intricate theories of the atonement which involve the assuaging of the wrath of God are not worthy of the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” And herein lies the real difficulty, both for theological liberals and for many Eastern Orthodox. The issue here is not some sort of false dichotomy between “forensic” and “ontological” models, but a genuine inability on the part of many people to stomach the fact that God’s wrath plays a key part in our salvation. It is an uncomfortable thought, particularly if we assume God is overreacting to our sin. It is easy to picture a tyrannical God who does what all tyrants do and takes out his irrational anger on someone too weak or ignorant to fight back. It is much more difficult to comprehend that God is incapable of tyranny and that His righteous anger against sin is entirely free from selfishness or self-centeredness. We might even say that it is dispassionate, not in the sense of being uncaring but in the sense that it is fueled not by emotion but by the perfect attributes that make up God’s very being: holiness, righteousness, and love.

God is a Big Meanie

Freeman rightly points out that a sacramentally devoid understanding of salvation can make no sense of biblical passages like Romans 6 which focus us not on Christ as a replacement for us but on Christ uniting us to Himself in both His death and resurrection. But the theory of salvation that Freeman champions has no room in it for the great swaths of Scripture that proclaim God’s wrath as an agent of salvation. For instance:

God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Romans 5:8-9)

Why do we need saving from the wrath of God? Could the Father simply choose not to have wrath against us? Certainly, but to do so would be to assume that sin is not really all that big of a deal, that justice is an expendable quality. And frankly, none of us want a God like that. A God who creates a world in which justice does not matter is a God who does not ever make things right, a God who allows holocausts and child abuse without the least bit of outrage or sympathy for the victims. In those extreme examples, it is easy to see the necessity and even the beauty of God’s wrath against sin. Yet we cringe when that same absolute intolerance of evil on God’s part is applied to us, despite the fact that it is in and through this attribute of God that we really are made holy. Hence, Peter writes:

For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him. (1 Peter 3:18-22)

Here we see the convergence of all the models into one. In the days of Noah, the wrath of God was exercised against sin, resulting in the obliteration of both the sin and the sinner by the waters of the flood for the sake of setting the world right again. But Peter says that this same water found in Baptism is much better. It drowns sin just like the flood did, but unlike the flood it leaves sinners like you and me still standing, not because we have become better people since the days of Noah, but because Christ’s sacrifice has accounted for our sin. Christ exchanges His righteousness for our sin in the waters of Baptism, giving us by grace what is His by nature. In Baptism, the work of cross, bloody as all get out, is stamped onto us with an indelible mark. The Son does not save us by asking the Father to be a little more understanding about sin because boys will be boys and what does it really matter anyway? Rather, the Son voluntarily receives our sin into Himself and receives the wrath of the Father into Himself so that sin can be destroyed without destroying us.

The Hidden Sin

This picture of salvation may not be one that many people find appealing. Surely, we think, there must be a less bloody, less barbaric way. But hidden beneath the folds of such a noble and enlightened thought is a self-justification project. We rail against the implications of the doctrine of satisfaction because we rail against the very idea that God has a right to be intolerant of our sin. Indeed, we would much prefer to think about Christ as the great moral example or as the victor over death and the devil than as the priest who places His own sacrifice of Himself between God’s judgment and our souls on a daily basis. Of course, there is just enough truth in the lie to be dangerous. Christ is our great moral example and He is the victor over death and the devil. But He is none of those things if He is not first and foremost the one who sacrifices Himself to save us “miserable offenders.” And we hate that, because if it is true, then we have no business doing anything other than dropping dead and allowing Christ to pour new life into us. If it is true, then He really is the savior, and we, in fact, are not.

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The Authority of the Prayer Book

Posted on May 13, 2013 by

Why do Anglicans hold the Book of Common Prayer in such high regard? Why does it matter how Christians worship? Fr. Jonathan answers viewer questions.

Plus, there’s this.

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Fight For Your Right to Parties

Posted on April 22, 2013 by

tumblr_lk31mstqtn1qb97mlo1_1280One of the developing facets of Anglicanism since the nineteenth century has been the introduction of church parties. Anglo-Catholicism, Evangelicalism and Liberalism all owe their existence as distinct positions on the Anglican landscape to late eighteenth and nineteenth century movements of reform within the Church of England. There is much that could be said about the strange set of historical phenomena that led to the establishment of these varied and often contradictory theological schools all under the Anglican banner, but for the moment what I am most concerned with is how a renaissance of classical Anglicanism might help to bring these movements closer together, celebrating their contributions to the Church while also moving away from their more unfortunate peculiarities.

Kicking it Old School

Anglo-Catholicism and Evangelicalism both began as reform movements aimed at bringing Anglicans back to their roots. This is easily forgotten today, as both movements have become more concerned with aping their corollaries in the wider Christian world than with celebrating Anglican distinctiveness. Nevertheless, the early Evangelical movement in Anglicanism was deeply concerned with communicating the Gospel by means of both impassioned preaching and liturgy. The great Evangelical Charles Simeon wrote gushingly of his love for the prayer book and his belief that “a congregation uniting fervently in the prayers of our Liturgy would afford as complete a picture of heaven as ever yet was beheld on earth.” He distrusted Evangelical efforts that were not grounded in the prayer book. He also joined his fellow Evangelical John Wesley in having a special devotion to Holy Communion, something that had fallen out of fashion in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

In the beginning, the Anglo-Catholic movement was equally imbued with the spirit of the Elizabethan Settlement. There is a fierce desire apparent in the early Tracts for the Times to associate the Church of England not only with its pre-Reformation past but also with the great lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of what is available from the reformers and divines today was re-published and circulated by early Anglo-Catholics, from the commentaries and sermons of William Beveridge to Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Moreover, the early movement was deeply concerned with maintaining the prayer book as the standard for doctrine and faith. Early Anglo-Catholics objected to schemes that would allow for non-subscription to the 39 Articles by those obtaining university posts. Even Tract 90, which was admittedly an effort to find ways around uncomfortable parts of the Articles, was nevertheless an indication of how committed the Oxford Fathers were to explicating the Catholic character that they believed Anglicanism has always had.

The point is, both Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism can legitimately claim a stream of continuity with classical Anglicanism. Moreover, both parties, as reform movements, are able and fitted to make sure that modern Anglicans do not lose an important part of our theological heritage. Evangelicals are well poised to remind us of the ultimate authority of Scripture within the Church, the all sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and the need for personal conversion. Anglo-Catholics, on the other hand, remind us of the power and importance of the Sacraments, the nature of the Church as a divine institution, and the guiding principle of Anglicanism that we judge all of our doctrine and practice by how it relates to the early Church. A full and true Anglicanism has to have all of these things to function.

It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To

What prevents these movements from being reforming and uniting forces within modern Anglicanism? In the course of two centuries, both Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics have become increasingly wedded to their own causes, looking for input on how to behave and what to believe from outside of the Anglican tradition rather than from within it. In recent years, conservative Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals have had occasion to play nice for the sake of opposing the worst excesses of Liberalism. But playing nice is not the same as being united in one faith. In the past, Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics had fierce battles for the soul of Anglicanism because both sides believed that they represented the truth of Anglicanism. As unfortunate as that strife was, what we have now is considerably worse. Today the battle is not so much for what Anglicanism is as whether or not we will be left alone within it. Both sides have come to a tacit agreement that Anglicanism is nothing more than the field in which we happen to operate. As long as we keep our common statements to a vague minimum and do not get in each others’ way, we can pretend to be church together.

Who Invited Those Guys?

The addition of Liberalism to the mix further muddies the waters. Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals do not like to talk about Liberalism as a party within Anglicanism, and in some ways they are right not to. Liberals sometimes see in what they do a line back to Latitudinarianism, but it is a rough line at best. In point of fact, Liberalism is not concerned with history or doctrine but only with the way that the Church interacts with the wider world today. For that reason, Liberalism is only able to function as a piggy-back off of something else. There are Liberal Catholics and Liberal Evangelicals/Low Churchmen but no Liberals outright. That’s because Liberalism requires something to work with, some raw material to shape in one direction or another. Liberalism in the Church is therefore always reactionary in nature. Nevertheless, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals need to come to terms with the fact that Liberalism exists as its own party stream in Anglicanism today, regardless of the historical merits of this position. To grant this reality is not the same as agreeing to Liberalism’s conclusions, but we must come to see that out of the Liberal party we have received our most challenging engagement with questions of culture, science, higher criticism, and the like, and these are questions that we have to be prepared to answer if we want to have any hope of reaching the modern world with the Gospel.

Party On

Despite the inherent challenges, it is possible to envision a future for Anglicanism in which the parties remain distinctive from one another in their emphases and yet united in common faith. As Catholicity and Covenant and others discussed some months back, we might learn to think of our parties in the way that Roman Catholics think about the differences between Dominicans, Jesuits, Franciscans, etc, not as completely independent movements but as paths that shed light on particular aspects of the whole. What Carmelite spirituality offers to the Catholic Church is different from what comes from Jesuit devotion and scholarship, but neither could survive in isolation from the other streams, which all freely acknowledge, because they share a common faith. It is this last piece that is missing from the debates between our church parties within Anglicanism, though much work has been done in recent years, in the covenant process in particular, to try to find that common ground. What has been missing from that effort, however, has been a genuine commitment from all sides that the basics of classical Anglicanism are where that common ground is to be found, not in appeal to the lowest common denominator of what we are able to say together currently. In practice, what that means is that we have to be prepared to be challenged by one another by means of the very same formularies. Evangelicals do not need to run out and start buying incense, but they ought to be able to receive the Anglo-Catholic emphasis on the sacraments and the orders of ministry not as quirky things that those people do but as a genuine expression of what Anglicans have believed since long before there was such a thing as Church parties. Equally, Anglo-Catholics must concede that the formularies are clear about things like the authority of Scripture and justification by faith, and they must genuinely find a way to make peace with our Reformation heritage. And Liberals must learn to cope with the absolute borders of creedal orthodoxy, even as the rest of us start to take more seriously the questions that they are posing.

In other words, we need to get back to basics, not so that we can recreate the Church of some better bygone era, but so that we can genuinely be the Church in this era. Seen in this light, the restoration of classical Anglicanism is not so much an historical project as it is a way of grounding ourselves for the ministry of the future. In a postmodern world in which everything is a la carte, we are called as Christians to share with the world a faith that is biblical and rooted, a faith that can weather the storms of our lives. The only way that happens is if we find ourselves in the midst of a common narrative about who we are, and since inventing such a narrative from scratch does not seem to be working, perhaps it is time to give the one we have already inherited a try instead.

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Ask an Anglican: The Hail Mary and Corpus Christi

Posted on April 15, 2013 by

Derek writes:

1.) I have been studying the articles, and have a question about the invocation of the Saints. Now, even as someone who identifies as “Anglo-Catholic”, who is closer to a “Prayerbook Catholick”, I have never, ever thought that St. Joseph will sell my house, St. Clare would cleanse my T.V., or St. Jude would find my missing keys. I have also never thought that “flying to the patronage” of the Blessed Mother would “save me”. But, what is doctrinally wrong with the Hail Mary in regards to asking for prayer? How is it different than me asking you for the same?

2.) Why is Eucharistic Adoration frowned upon? Is it true (as Fr. Benedict Grochel states) that the first Eucharistic procession and adoration was in Canterbury Cathedral?

Although they are not quite the same, I am going to answer these two questions together. Both deal with a popular medieval practice that was attacked and then marginalized within Anglicanism during the sixteenth century. Furthermore, each practice was revived in the nineteenth century, and it is not uncommon to find Anglicans today who are familiar with, or even incorporate, such devotional practices into their own lives. In what follows I want to first look at the historical roots of these changes before answering the questions themselves. Sometimes it is difficult to find grace in someone else’s devotional practice(s), but we must strive to overcome judgmentalism, which sustains and is sustained by the scandal of Christian division.

Reforming Popular Devotion

Why was popular medieval devotion attacked in the sixteenth century? One could argue—and not unfairly—that the reformers were sometimes quite harsh in their approach to less intellectual expressions of the Christian faith. One could also argue—and again, not unfairly—that the reformers spent far too little time explaining why they deemed some long-standing devotional practices unacceptable. Condemnation is not the same as catechesis. These points are fair and sound. But we must also inquire into the historical origins and roots of the reformers’ critiques. However flawed in their application, their pastoral concern was real.

Erasmus of Rotterdam
by Hans Holbein the Younger

I know of no finer (or funnier) pre-Reformation attack on popular religion than Erasmus of Rotterdam’s The Praise of Folly. For Anglicans, Erasmus is especially important. His Paraphrases—short commentaries and summaries on each book of the Bible—were among the official texts of the Edwardian and Elizabethan reformations. Every priest was expected to own and study the Paraphrases and every parish was expected to have them on hand as well. Like the Paraphrases, The Praise of Folly was translated and reprinted in sixteenth-century England. Although never an official text, it shaped the opinion of many people. It therefore offers us much insight.

From start to finish, Erasmus writes in the voice of Folly, a female jester, who opines on the state of religion. She concludes that there is one fundamental problem with pilgrimages, prayers to saints, and excessive liturgical pomp (not to mention overcurious scholastic speculation): each is a distraction which marginalizes the fundamentals of Christian faith and life. Consider the following statement on devotion to the Blessed Virgin:

What a crowd of them can be seen lighting candles to the Virgin Mary, and in broad daylight, when there is no need for them! Yet how few of the same crowd try to imitate her in the chastity and modesty of her life, in her love for celestial things?[1]

Erasmus advocated the philosophia Christi (‘the philosophy of Christ’). From this point of view, external devotions are far less important than the intentional pursuit and practice of piety. Importantly for the first question, Erasmus also opposed assigning particular tasks to particular saints. Such things are the folly of a worldly life, but Christians should pursue the folly of God: the wisdom of Christ.

One might argue that in his criticism, Erasmus was unkind; only a fine line can occupy the ground between satire and cynicism. Yet at the same time, I suspect that we agree with his primary concern. Devotion should always be intentional; it should deepen self-knowledge and strengthen virtue. If devotion becomes a means of distraction or escape, it can become a form of self-deception, indulgent delusion, or an idol. (The same is no less true of theological study, I might add.) First things must come first.

The Hail Mary and Corpus Christi Today

To answer your first set of questions: ‘what is doctrinally wrong with the Hail Mary in regards to asking for prayer?’ Answer: nothing. ‘How is it different than me asking you for the same?’ Answer: it is no different. First, the Hail Mary is based on Scripture. It begins by repeating the archangel Gabriel’s greeting to the Blessed Virgin. By consciously making Gabriel’s words our own, we may better enter into the central mystery of the Christian faith: the Word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. How could such an affirmation be wrong?

Some people might be upset by the second part of the Hail Mary, which asks the mother of our Lord to intercede for us both now and at the time of our death. This request directs our attention to the communion of saints, the wider body of Christian believers both past and present. To use Biblical terminology, the communion of saints is more than just the living; it also incorporates those who are “asleep in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:18). We live on even after death, and our life-after-death is in Christ.

The Bible tells us little about what lies between our “death” (or, to use a more traditional word, “dormition”) and our resurrection. We do, however, have a small number of interesting tidbits. For example, the apostle Paul says that “to be absent from the body is to be home with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). Furthermore, in the Apocalypse/Revelation, John writes that when he beheld heavenly worship, he saw “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Rev. 5:8; cf. 8:4). By the word “saint,” the New Testament simply denotes any faithful Christian. Insofar as Christians live on in some way after death, and insofar as that death involves prayer, then Mary is among those who intercedes before the divine throne. Requesting prayers of her is no different than requesting the prayers of the Christian next door, for the communion of saints includes Mary no less than your Christian neighbor. If one disagrees with this, I fail to see how one can make sense of Scripture. (Incidentally, this does not necessitate a high Mariology. Mary’s intercessions are nothing if not part of the wider collection of intercessions offered by the whole communion of saints.)

To answer your second set of questions: ‘Why is Eucharistic Adoration frowned upon?’ Eucharistic Adoration was rejected in the sixteenth century because it was seen as something that undermined the original purpose of the Eucharist: communion with Christ. I do not know how Eucharistic adoration is practiced today, but in the medieval era it did not culminate with the celebration of communion. Rather, people prayed before the Eucharist but did not receive it. The liturgy was no different, for laity could only receive the Eucharistic bread once per year. (They were forbidden from receiving the Eucharistic wine.)

This raises an interesting question. Which expresses greater reverence for the Eucharist— paying much attention to elaborate theology while receiving the consecrated bread only once per year, or receiving the consecrated elements more often while paying less attention to elaborate theology? For Anglican reformers, the latter was preferable to the former. The Church of England maintained a broadly medieval theology of the sacraments as “effectual signs of grace.” This language was maintained in Article XXV in the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion. However, the Church of England rejected transubstantiation, a technical definition enshrined at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Anglicanism has never defined the mode of Christ’s presence. Consequently, over the course of Anglican history various definitions have sometimes jostled with one another. (We should note that this variety is little different than the variety of the medieval era; transubstantiation may have been the official view, but it was neither the only view nor the most traditional view.)

Cranmer and other reformers were inspired by a far higher vision of the Eucharist than was prevalent at the time. Because of this, they rejected Eucharistic adoration, which made the Eucharistic something seen but not received. (And just for the record, the first Eucharistic Adoration actually took place in Liège, although it was certainly popular in England.)

Grace in Devotion

But what of today? Despite ecumenism, one of the great, unresolved issues in the Church concerns popular devotion. At a basic level, popular devotion always implies a theology, even if its practitioners are not theologically articulate. In condemning Eucharistic adoration, for example, Cranmer did far more than just condemn one expression of popular devotion: he condemned both a liturgical practice and the divorce of elaborate sacramental theology from frequent sacramental participation.

The pastoral methods of the reformers did much but they also left much undone. I practice neither Eucharistic adoration nor any form of Marian devotion, but I have friends that do. Can I find the grace made manifest in their lives through such practices? Yes. The same is true of evangelicals and their Bible devotions: I can see grace made manifest. We must be able to look at devotion—so often the most intimate and sensitive expressions of faith—and respond with words of grace, rather than judgment. This can be immensely difficult, particularly if we have left one form of Christianity for another. Yet maturity entails proactively preventing my experience from determining how I view the experience(s) of others. When we look at the devotional practices of other Christians, we should be like the Blessed Virgin and “ponder these things” (Luke 2:19). How else can we keep first things first?

Some Further Reading

The Praise of Folly is available in a wide variety of editions. Gregory D. Dodds, Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England (University of Toronto Press, 2009), is an excellent survey of Erasmus’ influence in England through the end of the seventeenth century. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1992), is the standard history of the rise, development, and partial demise of Corpus Christi celebrations.

[1] Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, in Robert M. Adams, ed. and trans., The Praise of Folly and Other Writings (W. W. Norton & Co., 1989), p. 48.

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Faith Alone and the Sacraments

Posted on April 12, 2013 by

Very glad to finally have a new video up. This one answers a question from a Baptist about how Anglicans can believe that we are saved by faith alone if we believe that we receive God’s saving grace through the sacraments.

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Ask an Anglican: The Reformers and the Divines

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

800px-Cranmer_burning_foxeWesley writes:

 I have seen and heard you make reference to the classical Anglican divines. Who are the Anglican divines? Who were they, what was their place in Anglican history, what contributions did they make to the church, what are some of their best writings I could explore, and what kind of authority do they have in Anglican belief and practice with respect to Scripture, tradition, the Formularies, etc.?… [Also,] who were the English Reformers?…

The above is my primary question, but I also have others that I would be interested in hearing you address…

There were three waves of sixteenth century reformers who had a deep impact on the development of Anglicanism. The first were the continental reformers, men like Martin Luther and John Calvin. They never set foot in England, but their work was read with great interest by theologians in England and thus their influence upon the Anglican Reformation is undeniable.

The second group of reformers are those who were actually responsible for instigating and shaping the Reformation in England. Chief among them was Archbishop Thomas Cranmer who was largely responsible for the compiling of the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer is a figure of immense importance. There would be no Anglican Communion today if it wasn’t for him. Nevertheless, there is a reason why we are called Anglicans and not Cranmerians. The reformers in Cranmer’s generation knew that the Church of England needed to be reformed and they were united in opposing Romanism, but there was not theological unanimity amongst them otherwise. Some of these reformers, like Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli, were not even English but spent some time in England trying to encourage the fledgling Reformation to take hold there. These early reformers must be taken seriously for the contributions which they made to the development of Anglicanism, particularly Cranmer, but they have to be understood as forming what might be called a kind of pre Anglicanism. Their major work was in liturgical revision and in working to free the Church of England from the tyranny of the papacy. They were playing with big ideas, but there was not yet consensus as to how those ideas ought to come together. In addition to Cranmer, this set of reformers includes figures like Nicholas Ridley and Robert Barnes.

The third set of reformers are those who played a part in the Elizabethan Settlement. In the preceding two decades, the Church of England had swung violently back and forth between extremes as monarchs lived and died. Under Queen Elizabeth I and largely at her behest, the Church of England came to an official theological consensus about the heart of the faith. This is not to say that every question that could ever be dreamed up was decided, nor that every Christian in England was happy with the results. Nonetheless, through painstaking effort, the Elizabethan Settlement produced a coherent, cogent, and even elegant articulation of the Christian faith that we call Anglicanism today. The reformers of this period include men like Bishop John Jewel who wrote An Apology for the Church of England and Archbishop Matthew Parker who presided over the Convocation of 1563 which produced the 39 Articles (revised from an earlier set of 42 by Cranmer). It’s a bit of an historical stretch, but I also tend to include in this period slightly later figures like Richard Hooker and Richard Field whose theological work defending the Elizabethan Settlement has been highly influential.

The Anglican Reformers did a great job of whittling down to the basics of the Christian faith and lifting up the heart of the Gospel that had been so long obscured. But the Anglican theologians of the seventeenth century took that same Gospel and made it sing. The seventeenth century was a golden era in Anglican theology, despite the fact that Puritans nearly destroyed the Church during that time. Sometimes called the Caroline Divines, the majority of these great theologians lived during the reign of King Charles I and, after the Restoration, King Charles II, but there were great divines throughout the seventeenth century who were deeply committed to the faith articulated by the Elizabethan Settlement. These divines filled in the gaps left by the reformers and created detailed pictures of what it meant to be a Reformed Catholic. They were committed to holy living, to prayer, to the careful explication of Scripture, to the sacraments, to the continuation of the sacred ministry, and to the monarchy. They included men like Lancelot Andrewes, William Laud, Jeremy Taylor, William Beveridge, Thomas Ken, and many, many more.

No individual reformer or divine is infallible. Their authority is always subordinate to the formularies, as well as to the writings of the Fathers and the Scriptures. Yet by reading them, we get a much fuller, richer picture of what it means to be Anglican. Many of them were imprisoned or killed for holding to the Anglican faith. Their example is inspiring and their writing is illuminating. And because they pre-date the modern Anglican idea of “church parties,” their work helps to clarify what it actually means to be Anglican and what essentials need to be held in common by all who would call themselves Anglican.

But you said you had a couple more quick questions…

What place do the Puritans have in classical Anglicanism, if any? Are any of the Puritan divines given any kind of consideration in terms of Anglican thought, belief, and practice? I realize the Puritans were at odds with the via media mentality, but I wonder if they still hold any kind of significance for Anglicans?

Nope, not really. Well, that’s being a bit cheeky. There were certainly Puritans who wrote good and interesting things that hold appeal across the theological spectrum. The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter, for instance, is a masterpiece of pastoral theology. And certainly there were Anglican figures who had the occasional Puritan leaning that comes out in their writing. The line between Puritanism and Anglicanism was always very solid on paper but not always so solid in practice. By and large though the Puritans were set on a different trajectory than the Anglicans were, one which ultimately led them away from the Catholic faith. There is no reason to follow them down that same path unless we want to find ourselves similarly bereft.

Where does John Wesley and Methodism fit into classical Anglicanism?

It doesn’t.

It is my understanding that Wesley never separated from the Church of England and never intended Methodism to become a church separate from the Church of England. So where does he and his movement factor in, if at all?

It’s true that neither John Wesley nor his brother Charles ever officially left the Church of England, although John did sanction the formation of an American Methodist church without apostolic orders. Many of Charles Wesley’s hymns are in Anglican hymnals. Other than that though there is no ongoing connection between Methodism and Anglicanism. The Methodist movement coincides with the development of the Evangelical movement in Anglicanism and thus there are some shared features, particularly surrounding the topic of personal conversion. But the reformers and divines would likely have been quite puzzled by Methodism and its emphasis on the personal and subjective experience of God in conversion over the concrete and objective reality of God in Word and Sacrament (not that Methodism necessarily lacks the latter, but it does seem that all the weight is placed on the former).

Fourth is a question completely unrelated to the others; what is the Anglican position on clergy celibacy? Do any of the priests or bishops have to be celibate to hold their office?

With the exception of monks and nuns who take vows of celibacy, all Anglican clergy are free to marry. Article XXXII says, “Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, are not commanded by God’s Law, either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage: therefore it is lawful for them, as for all other Christian men, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to godliness.”

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Welcome, Benjamin Guyer

Posted on April 6, 2013 by

It is a joy for me to read the questions that come in on an almost daily basis, but as the mailbag has gotten more full, the responses have slowed way down. So I have been recruiting some new folks to help me out with Ask an Anglican. Benjamin Guyer is the first to graciously accept my invitation and become an official Conciliar Anglican contributer. In the coming months, I hope to have two or three more folks become contributers as well.

If you have not yet encountered Benjamin’s work, you should. He is the editor of two books, including this one on the Caroline Divines. He has also written some fine essays that you can find on the net, including this one refuting the often repeated false claim that Queen Elizabeth I was trying to establish a church where what people believe does not matter. For a fuller look at him, check out his bio on Covenant. He is dedicated to the Reformed and Catholic truth of Anglicanism and is well versed in Anglican history and theology. I look forward to his contributions to the conversation here and I hope you all will welcome him aboard.

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Unplugging for Lent

Posted on February 12, 2013 by

lentiscomingDuring Lent this year, my use of the computer will be limited to Sundays. I wrote a brief blog post about why on my parish’s website. I won’t reiterate any of that here, except to say that there are some exciting things in the works for when I return. Some new folks will be joining me on the blog to help me answer your questions in a more timely fashion. Likewise, some new investments in technology should allow me to do more videos which will hopefully be of a slightly better quality. I can’t reveal much more yet than that, but I’m very excited about some of the things that are underway. A lot of cool classical Anglican stuff coming, here and elsewhere, that I feel blessed to be a part of.

May you all have a holy Lent. Many blessings to each of you. See you in six weeks!

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Ask an Anglican: The Canonization of Saints

Posted on February 12, 2013 by

Elizaveta_FeodorovnaNick has a very specific question about a Russian saint that I’m not sure I can answer, but it opens the door to talk about the saints in general. He writes:

A few years ago, a statue of St. Elizabeth the New Martyr of Russia was carved and placed above the great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London with images of other “20th Century Martyrs.”… Elizabeth was canonized by the Russian Church Abroad in 1981, and by the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow in 1992 immediately after the fall of communism.  She is recognized as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople as well.

Am I to understand that Elizabeth has been or will be added to the Anglican calendar of saints, or simply that her presence (along with Martin Luther King and others) is a sign of deep respect?

I must admit that I know next to nothing about Saint Elizabeth except what I have read on Wikipedia. But the bigger issue to be explored here is how someone comes to be recognized as a saint in the first place.

The word saint is used in the New Testament to speak of all those who have faith in Christ and are a part of His Body, the Church. Nevertheless, since very early on in the life of the Church, certain men and women have been recognized after their deaths as having lived exemplary Christian lives, worthy of emulation by those of us still running the race. These heroes of the faith were called saints in a special sense. Saint comes from the same Greek word from which we get the word holy. A saint is someone who has been made holy, someone who has been sanctified. When the Church pronounces that someone should be addressed as “saint,” she is telling us two things about that person, that he or she is in heaven and that he or she lived the Christian faith in such a remarkable way that we ought to take notice, honor them, and try to do the same in our own circumstances.

Needless to say, those requirements mean that the Church has to set a very high bar. While there are countless men and women who may be properly numbered among the saints, the Church recognizes only a comparable few. The question is, how does she do so? By what mechanism can we be assured that we should be referring to Saint John Chrysostom and not just Mr. Chrysostom? (Yes, that is a joke. A little one.)

In the Roman Catholic Church, there is an elaborate system that involves testing, the performing of miracles by the saints, and finally the seal of the papacy. In Eastern Orthodoxy and in Anglicanism, the approach has always been a bit more bottom up. Saints are recognized first at the local level, as a particular community remembers someone and begins to venerate that person. As time goes by, the veneration spreads and is adopted by other churches in other places. Eventually, entire national churches sign on and canonize or officially recognize a saint, giving the saint his or her own feast day to be remembered throughout the Church. Generally, the feast day corresponds to the day of death, the day when the saint entered into glory.

Each province of the Anglican Communion has its own system of canonizing saints, though we all tend to share a common set of ancient saints derived from the calendar in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. In my church, the American Episcopal Church, our official calendar of saints is called Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Every three years at our General Convention, representatives of our dioceses propose adding new saints to the calendar (in theory, they could also propose to remove saints from the calendar, but this almost never happens). If approved by both the bishops and the deputies (clergy and lay delegates sent by each diocese), the feast is adopted provisionally for three years and the saint’s name is added to the calendar in brackets. During the three years that follow, the entire Episcopal Church is invited to receive that saint, to celebrate the saint’s feast day, to look to the saint’s example, and to determine if the Church has made a wise decision or not in adding this name to the calendar. If all goes well, at the following General Convention, the brackets come off and a fully canonized saint emerges. If not, the name comes off the calendar and the veneration becomes just a local custom as the bishop allows.

There are several Saint Elizabeths in the Episcopal Church’s current calendar, but Elizabeth the New Martyr is not one of them. The same appears to be true of the Church of England, though Elizabeth’s addition at Westminster Abbey might be a sign that there is momentum to canonize her there. Canonization, however, is not about categorically stating that someone is or is not a saint. Rather, it is about whether the person in question is a saint that the whole Church ought to recognize and celebrate. Perhaps in time that will become true of Elizabeth. In the mean time, we may be comforted with the knowledge that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses that help us to run the race set before us (Hebrews 12:1). It is far less important that the Church recognize us as saints than that God recognize us as such. Saints are not superhuman men and women but sinners just like me and you who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and given the grace to surround us with their prayers and their love, that we might also come into the glory of everlasting life in Christ.

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