Anglicanism (eBook)

2

The Catholicity of Anglicanism

(Articles 1–8)

Anglican churches all claim to be an integral part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church that is confessed in the Nicene Creed. By far the greater part of their theology is shared with other Christians, and Anglicans have never claimed anything else. From the Reformation until today, almost everyone in the Anglican Communion has been concerned to stress this commonality, partly because they believe that it reinforces the integrity of Anglicanism as authentic biblical Christianity, and partly because it links Anglicans to all who confess the name of Christ. Anglicans have always claimed to be part of the one church but have never suggested that they are the only true church, or even the purest and best of the many denominations into which the universal church is now unfortunately divided.

The Anglican claim to catholicity does, however, have to be qualified to some extent in that:

1.Anglicanism belongs to the Western tradition of Christianity, not the Eastern one;

2.Anglicanism is Protestant, not Roman Catholic; and

3.Anglicanism is Reformed, not Lutheran, Anabaptist, or Pentecostal/Charismatic.

ANGLICANISM BELONGS TO WESTERN CHRISTIANITY

This is a distinction that is still relatively unfamiliar to many non-specialists, but one of the greatest and most enduring divisions within the Christian world is that between the Western (or “Latin”) tradition and the Eastern (or “Greek”) one. It is rooted in the cultural duality of the Roman Empire, where the Western half spoke Latin and the Eastern half Greek. The Eastern half was always more diverse, in that it included the non-Greek churches of Egypt, Syria, Armenia, and so on. It was also internally divided after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when the Roman definition of the person of Christ as “one divine Person in two natures” was rejected by many in the East. These non-Chalcedonian churches still exist, but they are little known outside their home countries, and Anglicans did not have much to do with them before the great missionary expansion in the nineteenth century.

There was somewhat more contact with the Greek Church in the seventeenth century, but not enough to produce any lasting effect on either side. In modern times, emigration from Greece and Eastern Europe has created substantial communities of Eastern Orthodox Christians in English-speaking countries, but they tend to remain ethnically based—Russian, Romanian, Serbian, or Bulgarian as much as anything else. Their essentially mystical (or “apophatic”) theology is little understood in Anglican circles, despite some effort to make it better known. For their part, Eastern Christians generally know very little about Anglicanism and seldom engage with it at a serious theological level.

The Western tradition, represented above all by Rome but also by the Protestant churches that have broken away from it, is much more central to Anglican concerns. The Reformation was an exclusively Western affair, conducted in Latin according to theological concepts established by the medieval Western church. It is highly juridical in nature. A large part of our theological vocabulary reflects a background of law—justification, election, validity, etc. The way in which we express theological concepts and develop arguments (and counterarguments) comes straight from the medieval classroom, which was heavily influenced by legal antecedents. To put it succinctly, an Anglican in dialogue with a Roman Catholic may disagree with his partner on any number of issues, but he will be talking the same language. An Eastern theologian, by contrast, might wonder what the discussion is all about and fail to understand why it is important, because his mental framework of ideas is different.

ANGLICANISM IS PROTESTANT

There are some Anglicans who reject the term “Protestant” as a description of themselves, but they are a minority. Most are prepared to recognize that Anglicanism is an offshoot of the sixteenth-century Reformation, even if it has its own distinctive characteristics, and they are happy to describe themselves as Protestants. All Anglicans have to admit that they are not Roman Catholics, and since Rome brands all Western Christians who are not in communion with the pope as Protestants, they are forced to accept this designation whether they like it or not.

Anglicans are Protestants, not only because they reject the authority of the Roman pope but also because they have repudiated many of the practices and disciplines associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Anglican clergy are not obliged to be celibate. They have always worshiped in the living language of the people, not in Latin, as Rome did until the 1960s. They do not canonize new saints, and devotion to ancient and medieval ones, if not entirely non-existent, is not a major feature of Anglican worship. The Virgin Mary is not given the exalted status that she has in the Roman Church. Lay people play a significant part in Anglican church government, and Anglicans do not excommunicate people for disagreeing with pronouncements made by the church hierarchy. They also celebrate and receive holy Communion in both kinds—bread and wine, whereas Roman Catholics have habitually received the bread only.

Beneath these differences of practice lie numerous differences of doctrine, which formed the basis for the sixteenth-century Reformation. On matters like the supreme and unique authority of Holy Scripture, justification by faith alone, assurance of salvation, and the nature of the sacraments, the Thirty-nine Articles make it abundantly clear that Anglicans are on the side of Martin Luther and John Calvin, the great leaders of the Reformation in the German- and French-speaking worlds, respectively. Individual Anglicans may downplay or dispute their doctrines, but those who do are out of step with their Church. They may be strong and influential in some places, but in the Anglican Communion as a whole, they are a minority—and often an eccentric one at that. When controversies between Protestants and Catholics arise, as they have done over the ordination of women, for example, it is the (often liberal) Protestants who usually carry the day, leaving the dissenting (often conservative) Catholics to make their way to Rome.

This is not to say that all “Protestant” Anglicans support the ordination of women (many do not), nor that the “Catholics” who oppose it are wrong to do so, but only to observe that when arguments of this kind surface nowadays, it is more often the Catholics who are forced to give way and leave the Anglican fold because it is too Protestant (i.e., liberal) for them. Of course, that has by no means always been the case. In the nineteenth century, it was common for convinced Protestants to leave the Church because of what they saw as creeping Anglo-Catholic tendencies, and there are whole denominations, like the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States, that reflect that trend. Today, conservative Protestants may still be inclined to leave the Church, not so much for that reason as because of the liberal stance many take on same-sex issues and similar moral questions, but this is a dispute among different kinds of Protestants. Those who leave Anglicanism for these reasons do not become Roman Catholics, and of course those who stay know that their Church’s liberalism is pushing them further away from Rome than ever.

ANGLICANISM IS REFORMED

Within the Protestant world, Anglicans are more closely aligned to the Reformed tradition, represented by Presbyterians, for example, than to anything else. Once again, many individual Anglicans dissent from this analysis, pointing out (among other things) that the Reformed churches are usually non-episcopal, but these are differences of church government and not of theology. When it comes to the sacraments, for example, Anglican statements on baptism and the Lord’s Supper are much closer to classical Reformed teaching than they are to what is now regarded as Lutheranism, something that many Lutherans are quick to point out. Anglicans do not place the theology of Martin Luther at the center of their concerns in the way that Lutherans do, and are generally more open to Reformed influences, mediated through such figures as Karl Barth (1886–1968), for example. It is true that in many parts of the world, Anglicans have found it easy to work alongside Lutherans and to enter into communion with them, so the differences must not be blown out of proportion, but even so, classical Lutheranism appears strange to most of them. Anglicans will sometimes debate the relative merits of Calvinism and Arminianism (both forms of Reformed theology) but almost never discuss whether they are Philippists or Gnesio-Lutherans in their approach to the Eucharist, not least because (for the most part) they have no idea what the historic controversy underlying that distinction was all about.

It must also be borne in mind that the supreme governor of the Church of England is a Presbyterian when she goes to Scotland, not because she is expected to change her theological views, but because the two national Churches of the United Kingdom are ordered differently. This flexibility is possible because the Church of England shares a common Reformed heritage with the Church of Scotland, allowing the monarch to belong to both at the same time without sacrificing any significant theological principle. It is certainly true that many individual Anglicans recoil at the mention of Calvinism and do their...