This

"No one doubts that Cranmer, Jewel, or Hooker were deeply committed to the witness of the ancient Church and the Fathers. The real question is whether or not their reading of Christian antiquity and the Church Fathers was superior to that of the Caroline divines, non-jurors and Tractarians (the theological lineage from which Anglo-Catholicism derives). If not, the question then arises whether the Church should change, adjust, or nuance its theology and interpretation of the Formularies, or uphold Reformed doctrine over and against the witness of Christian antiquity as understood by our best scholarship. Anglo-Catholics answer yes to the first question, and then recommend adjusting the Church’s theology accordingly. In fine, you’re right that the Reformers were committed to, and saw themselves in continuity with, the ancient Church; but what matters is whether or not their reading of the ancient Church is correct. Some of the Reformation and Classical Anglicans’ arguments that our Formularies, read (so they think) according to their plain, historical sense, demand a Swiss/Rhenish Reformed interpretation, and therefore require of us Reformed theology, taken together with their subsequent pleading the English Reformers’ commitment to antiquity, seem to me an evasive attempt at not having to do any real, constructive patristics work against the Anglo-Catholics. And, if I had to place bets, a fiddle of gold against your soul to think Pusey, Austin Farrer, E.L. Mascall, et al. are better than you." - The Rev'd Seth Snyder commenting at The North American Anglican.

My own similar thoughts set forth here.

"The other three books detail the issue of Anglican identity, and each in their own way demolishes, expressly or implicitly, the argument that the English Reformers' appeal to the mind of the Fathers could be defended in the final analysis, and accordingly that either Caroline or Tractarian divinity, or perhaps a combination of them, represented a greater degree of patristic authenticity.

Well!

 

Unfortunately, Anglo-Protestants such as the UECNA's Presiding Bishop Peter Robinson have impaled themselves on the horns of a dilemma.  As I responded on Bishop Robinson's Facebook page tonight, any Anglo-Protestant worth his salt must hold true to the Reformation's positions on the fallibility of ALL creeds and confessions (and in the strange case of the Church of England, a collection of homilies), as well as the principle that the church is ever-reforming. IF it is the case that the 39 Articles is a fallible confession, and IF it can be shown that they have actually or even possibly missed the biblical mark somewhere, then "semper reformanda" kicks in. It is then the duty of Anglo-Protestants to either correct the error or to simply admit, in accordance with the Protestant view of creeds and confessions, that the Articles are in fact fallible, have erred, and that certain other possibilities follow regarding the Anglican view of authority.

The change of language in the form of subscription was deliberate.  We are asked to affirm today, not that the Articles are all agreeable to the Word of God, but that the doctrine of the Church of England as set forth in the Articles is agreeable to the Word of God.  That is, we are not called to assent to every phrase or detail of the Articles but only to their general sense.  This alteration was made of set purpose to afford relief to scrupulous consciences. (E.J. Bicknell, A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of of the Church of England, pp. 20-21.)

By "scrupulous consciences" Bicknell is surely referring to those Anglican academics and clergy, who, after a couple of hundred years of scholarly analysis and reflection, and on a biblical and catholic basis, have found certain of the Articles and Homilies defective at points.  Alister McGrath provides a sterling example here.  In the 17th century, a number of scholars in the Church of England had become uneasy with the solafidianism of the Edwardine and Elizabethan divines.  This slow but steady shift away from it began with Caroline divinity:

"With the exception of their Arminianism, the Westminster Assembly confirmed the chief features of the early Caroline doctrine of justification:

1) Justification and sanctification are distinguished.

2) The formal cause of justification is declared to be imputed righteousness.

However, perhaps as a reaction against the theology of the Westminster divines, the divines of the Restoration developed a very different doctrine of justification, as will become apparent.

The doctrines of justification which emerged in the writings of the Caroline divines in the period after the Restoration of the monarchy (1660) may be characterized as follows:

1) The teachings of Paul and James are harmonized, so that both faith and works are held to be necessary for justification. This position frequently involved the assumption that faith was itself a work.

2) Justification and sanctification are no longer distinguished, so that justification is understood as a process which includes the sanctification of the believer.

3) The formal cause of justification is stated to be either infused righteousness alone, or both infused and imputed righteousness- but not imputed righteousness alone.

4) As before, an Arminian doctrine of the universal redemption of
mankind in Christ is taught.”

However, it must be pointed out that these opinions can be shown to be in circulation prior to the Civil War. Thus the Considerationes of William Forbes, the first Bishop of Edinburgh, can be shown to contain elements of this doctrine of justification. Although written before 1634, these Considerationes were only published after their author's death, and it cannot be proved that the Restoration divines drew upon this work (which appeared in 1658) for their own teaching. Of this school, the most important are Henry Hammond (1605-60), George Bull (1634-1710) and Jeremy Taylor (1613 - 67). . . .

The pre-Commonwealth divines followed Richard Hooker, insisting that justifying righteousness was imputed to man, that faith was not a work, and that justification was to be considered distinct from sanctification. The post-Commonwealth divines taught, in general, that justifying righteousness was either inherent to man, or a combination of inherent and imputed righteousness; that man was justified on account of 'believing deeds'-i.e., that faith was a human work and that sanctification was essentially an aspect of justification. The intervention of the Commonwealth between these two schools of thought suggests that the new directions taken within Anglicanism relating to the doctrine of justification arose as a reaction against the teaching of the Westminster Divines, whose theology of justification was similar, in many respects, to that of the pre-Commonwealth divines. . . .

What, then, remains of the via media? The possibility of a coherent Anglican theology of justification as a tertium quid is no longer taken seriously. In practice, it may be regarded as near-certain that Anglican theologians will continue to embrace a spectrum of theologies of justification, as they have in the past. Those with evangelical persuasions will continue to hold doctrines of justification which are essentially Protestant in substance and emphasis, while those who are Anglo-Catholic will continue to hold doctrines which are closer to the teaching of Trent. The Anglican Church, therefore, by its very nature, may be said to possess a via media doctrine of justification. This does not, however, mean that Anglicans are agreed upon a single doctrine of justification which mediates between Protestant and Roman Catholic, but rather that the tensions which are everywhere evident between the Protestant and Catholic wings of the Church of England inevitably lead to a spectrum of theologies of justification within one church.

Regarding the Homilies, Browne avers:

All writers on the subject have agreed, that the kind of assent, which we are here called on to give to them, is general, not specific. We are not expected to express full concurrence with every statement, or every exposition of Holy Scripture contained in them, but merely in the general to approve of them, as a body of sound and orthodox discourses, and well adapted for the time for which they were composed. For instance we cannot be required to call the Apocrypha by the name of Holy Scripture, or to quote it as of Divine authority, because we find it so in the Homilies. We cannot be expected to think it a very cogent argument for the duty of fasting, that thereby we may encourage the fisheries and strengthen the seaport towns against foreign invasion. And perhaps we may agree with Dr. Hey, rather than with Bp. Burnet, and hold, that a person may fairly consider the Homilies to be a sound collection of religious instruction, who might yet shirk from calling the Roman Catholics idolaters. The Homilies are, in fact, semi-authoritative documents. . . .

The foregoing should serve as ample witness that a number of standard divines and many other Anglicans find Article 11 and some of the Homilies "incomplete", and yet it is only the die-hard Evangelicals who have suggested that those "scrupulous" folk should leave Anglicanism.  Sorry, but we're having none of it.   As I wrote here, "The term 'Anglican' didn't come into usage until about 1800, long after Edwardine divinity was left in the dust and only 30 years before the Oxford Movement."  The "Anglicanism-As-Established" crowd therefore has no exclusive claim on term "Anglican".  Quite the opposite is true.

"You Can't Handle The Truth!"

I am - for now anyway - still a member of a Facebook group owned and moderated by two crypto-puritans associated with Donald Philip Veitch, and which is ostensibly dedicated to "prayer book Anglicanism".  I say "still"  because I was thrown off Veitch's group and was consistently blocked from posting on another group run by one of the two above-referenced fellows, resulting in me leaving the group.

The "prayer book Anglican" group severely moderates me (this comment later deleted dy the admins), but so far they still allow me to comment - that is, until I start winning debates.

The comment posted below is one of several they deleted in a discussion about the 39 Articles, but not before I was able to copy its text as it was being edited by me and simultaneously being deleted by one of the moderators. Having become used to their censorious modus operandi, I now get screenshots of everything, and I have screenshots of the other comments they deleted from this particular discussion.  This comment, however, was preserved by copying the text as it was being deleted while I was in the process of editing it.  It states an inconvenient truth, one they just can't handle, and like the Puritans of old they simply cancel their opponents or those who think differently.  It was posted in response to someone who suggested to me that if I can't toe the "Anglicanism-As-Established" line, I should hush my mouth:

"Well, if you disagree with the theology of the denomination, I think it most appropriate to not teach against it, but to keep private judgments to oneself."

My reply:

"(Ah), 'the theology of the denomination. . . .'

The theology of the denomination has evolved over time, with the original Reformed Cranmerianism left mostly behind and the theology and praxis of the Puritans being completely rejected, which is why most of them took off for New England. What's more, since the English Reformation, many Anglican theologians and clergymen have expressed varying degrees of unease with one or more of the Articles and/or their authority in general, as well as that of the Homilies. Correspondingly, the subscription requirements for clergy became much more lax over time. Few if anyone suggested they should shut up about their assessments or leave the communion, and they didn't. Quite the contrary.

The term "Anglican" didn't come into usage until about 1800, long after Edwardine divinity was left in the dust and only 30 years before the Oxford Movement.

What I meant in my reference to lex orandi lex credendi was that if it becomes clear that one or more of the Articles or Homilies have erred, we fall back on the principle that what we pray is what we believe. For those of us in the United States, that means an anaphora that is shaped by the Non-Jurors and the Scottish Episcopal Church, who became much more concerned about faithfulness to the teaching of the Early Church Fathers, especially as it pertains to the Eucharist, and altered their Canon accordingly. The Tractarians would move even more decidedly in a Catholic direction, and although they were strongly criticized and sometimes persecuted by Evangelicals in places of power in the Church and State, they managed to retain the titles "Anglican" and "Episcopalian."

All to the chagrin of the Anglo-Calvinists, who happily ended up in the margins, whence they noisily pontificate about who is an Anglican and who is not."

Theological Word Salad

From our favorite crypto-puritan, Donald Philip Veitch.  Read it.  Trust me, this is standard Veitchian fare.  The only reason I pay attention to  him and his tiny band of sycophants is that they claim to be Anglicans.  The only true Anglicans, in fact, as if Richard Hooker's theological demolition of the Puritans in the Church of England doesn't  matter in the least. 

Be warned, those of you who are attracted to Anglicanism.  This isn't the Anglicanism you're looking for.

Apostolic Succession in the Early Church

"It is the contention of certain Protestants that the traditional Orthodox/Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession was not truly present in the earliest days of the Church. Instead, they argue, the only essential component of apostolic succession during this time was a succession of doctrine, with the succession of office simply being the material occasion for that to occur. On this view, the absolute necessity of receiving a sacerdotal office from a man who himself possesses that office is rejected, and the only thing truly necessary to be a “valid church” is the possession of orthodox doctrine. While the vast majority of Protestant denominations hold this view today, the present article seeks to demonstrate that it is absolutely nowhere to be found in the early Church. We’ll start by considering the New Testament data, and then move on to the witness of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian of Carthage, St. Cyprian of Carthage, and St. Hippolytus of Rome. The contents of this article are largely indebted to Felix L. Cirlot’s excellent book, Apostolic Succession: Is It True?."

Read more here:

The English School of Catholic Spirituality, per Martin Thornton

Anglicanism and Revivalism

A must read on the Asbury Revival and revivalism in general.  

"Tillotson's sermons 'Of the ordinary influence of the Holy Ghost on the minds of Christians' are required reading in order to understand the deep-seated and enduring Anglican caution, reserve, and scepticism regarding revivalism. They point to a significant Anglican alternative - in terms of theology, preaching, and piety - to revivalism. This should be an Anglican response to the 'Asbury Revival': offering a meaningful alternative, deeply rooted in scripture, shaped by the church's prayer and sacraments, sober and thoughtful in its teaching, quietly and modestly ministering to 'bring forth in us the fruit of good living'".

The Debacle Continues

Certain Anglicans and COVID

Bumping after recent edits.  Archbishop Mark Haverland's views on civil disobedience ("If the government rules that all people must wear orange beanies, then all Anglicans must wear orange beanies") are hereby shown to be wholly indefensible. 

The End of Dispensationalism

A must read from First Things.  This Evangelical/Fundamentalist heresy can't die soon enough.

I'll Just Leave This Here

Greg Boyd: Open theist

Al Kimel:  Universalist

G.K. Chesterton on Calvinism

"I told Mr. Shaw (in substance) that he was a charming and clever fellow, but a common Calvinist. He admitted that this was true, and there (so far as I am concerned) is an end of the matter. He said that, of course, Calvin was quite right in holding that “if once a man is born it is too late to damn or save him.” That is the fundamental and subterranean secret; that is the last lie in hell.

The difference between Puritanism and Catholicism is not about whether some priestly word or gesture is significant and sacred. It is about whether any word or gesture is significant and sacred. To the Catholic every other daily act is dramatic dedication to the service of good or of evil. To the Calvinist no act can have that sort of solemnity, because the person doing it has been dedicated from eternity, and is merely filling up his time until the crack of doom. The difference is something subtler than plum-puddings or private theatricals; the difference is that to a Christian of my kind this short earthly life is intensely thrilling and precious; to a Calvinist like Mr. Shaw it is confessedly automatic and uninteresting. To me these threescore years and ten are the battle. To the Fabian Calvinist (by his own confession) they are only a long procession of the victors in laurels and the vanquished in chains. To me earthly life is the drama; to him it is the epilogue. Shavians think about the embryo; Spiritualists about the ghost; Christians about the man. It is as well to have these things clear.

…..though Mr. Shaw and his friends admit it is a superstition that a man is judged after death, they stick to their central doctrine, that he is judged before he is born.

Man is a misshapen monster, with his feet set forward and his face turned back. He can make the future luxuriant and gigantic, so long as he is thinking about the past. When he tries to think about the future itself, his mind diminishes to a pin point with imbecility, which some call Nirvana. To-morrow is the Gorgon; a man must only see it mirrored in the shining shield of yesterday. If he sees it directly he is turned to stone. This has been the fate of all those who have really seen fate and futurity as clear and inevitable. The Calvinists, with their perfect creed of predestination, were turned to stone. The modern sociological scientists (with their excruciating Eugenics) are turned to stone. The only difference is that the Puritans make dignified, and the Eugenists somewhat amusing, statues."  ("What's Wroing With the World?")

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do... Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine... He was damned by John Calvin... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits... The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason... Materialists and madmen never have doubts... Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.” ("Orthodoxy")

"A miracle only means the liberty of God. You may conscientiously deny either of them, but you cannot call your denial a triumph of the liberal idea. The Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom. Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God. Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up God as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves nothing free in the universe. And those who assist this process are called the 'liberal theologians.'” (Orthodoxy")

More on Presbyterians With Prayer Books

Yes, Virginia, Anglicanism really did reject Calvinism.

Book Review - Reformation Anglicanism: Essays on Edwardian Evangelicalism (The North American Anglican)

"Reformation Anglicanism thus seeks to draw attention to this period and explore it more deeply. It is composed of several essays that were delivered, save one, at the Reformation Anglicanism Symposium at Moore Theological College, Australia in 2019. The first four essays discuss “some foundational documents of the English Reformation” (10) such as the Homilies and the Forty-five Articles of Religion. The latter five focus on “foundational people and places” (12) such as Heinrich Bullinger and Martin Bucer. Some of the essays cover more familiar ground, such as Mark D. Thompson’s discussion of the Homily “A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture.” Others get into relatively obscure topics that shed light on the Edwardian period in interesting ways. Examples include Joe Mock’s chapter on Bullinger’s correspondence with Thomas Cranmer (as well as other key figures of the English Reformation) and N. Scott Amos’s analysis of Bucer’s funeral, subsequent disinterment and burning, and rehabilitation.

If the book were simply an exploration of various facets of the Edwardian period of the English Reformation, it would be a fine collection. Sadly, a number of this volume’s contributors cross the line between scholarly interest in their chosen subjects and transparent wishcasting, a tendency made apparent right from the start. . . .

There have undoubtedly been many Anglicans who can rightly be called Calvinists. Some even of the English Reformers could be characterized as such. But to insist that the very formularies of the Church of England are Calvinist in essence is mistaken and tedious. Moreover, appealing to documents that never had any formal authority in the Church as evidence for its Calvinist nature, as many contributors for this volume do, strains credulity. Those yearning for a church that has Calvinism baked into its very foundations should become (or remain) Presbyterian and save everyone a great deal of heartburn. Then again, the Australian Diocese of Sydney—with which most of this volume’s contributors are affiliated—is not known for rigorously adhering to the Anglican tradition, so this book is hardly an unexpected departure.^[2]

Let me reiterate that Reformation Anglicanism does contain some interesting material on the Edwardian period of the English Reformation. Readers who can appreciate what there is and don’t mind the overt attempts to Calvinize Anglicanism will find some value in it. The unmistakable and ill-founded tenor of the project keeps it from reaching its full potential, though."

Britney Spears, Presbyterianism and Anglicanism As Established

"Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism" The Anglican Way Institute - Summer 2023

Catholics vs Protestants

This. 

"As an Anglican, and an Anglo-Catholic at that, I don’t easily fit into any of the usual boxes, and that can be difficult for some people. I don’t subscribe to papal infallibility, but I do pray the rosary daily; I love the Book of Common Prayer, but I go to Mass regularly. I am not confused, my theology has been perfectly articulated by many scholars before me, from William Laud to Edward Pusey, King Charles I to Vernon Staley. I see the Anglican Church as the English expression of the Catholic faith and the Reformation as an unfortunate necessity - recovering the Gospel, returning to the Church Fathers, restoring the faith and ridding the Church of corruption and superstition. All very noble ideas in principle, and as Mark Twain is accredited as saying, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform, pause or reflect.” Lord knows the Church needed reform. Papal corruption (armies, empires/dominions, illegitimate families, greed) and dodgy practices (the ‘selling’ of indulgences) needed addressing. But in the process of reforming, the more puritanical Protestants took to being anti-Catholic, in opposition to the majority who saw the reformation as pro-Catholic, if anything. That problem has never been resolved. Whilst many Puritans were driven out of the Church, wars raged, attempted coups were fought off, and tribal lines were drawn in the sand. I am, of course, condensing a vast period of history, but the point I am trying to make is that, as Christians, we were never intended to be divided. Schism is not good, separation is not to be desired, and we should pray and work toward a united Church. The Council of Vatican II reported that Catholics today should not hold Protestants of today to blame for the sin involved in the separation, and I think that works both ways. We should focus on the things that unite us, such as our faith in Christ, over the things that divide us, such as our worship styles.

It is also worth mentioning I will not even entertain the tired revisionist argument that the Church split entirely because King Henry VIII wanted to re-marry. That dismisses the call for reformation from the continent, ignores the Catholicity of Henry VIII, and forgets we were still a Catholic nation until Elizabeth I was excommunicated by Pope Pius V. The English people maintained their Catholic faith and chose to submit to the King over a foreign Pope. They didn’t instantly become ‘Anglicans’ in the sense that we use the word today. The Church of England was historically Catholic (I shall write a separate piece on that), and followers were described as Anglicans as far back as 1215, centuries before the Reformation. Anglicanism is a 19th-century innovation - encompassing the ‘via media’ approach of the Reformation, being broad enough to allow for nuanced disagreements in doctrine (i.e. real presence vs transubstantiation, or sola scriptura vs prima scriptura) and worship (evangelical, charismatic, catholic). For better or for worse."

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is With Thee. Blessed Art Thou Among Women, and Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus"

Someone has edited this recent YouTube video from Phil Veitch by slicing out his recitation of the invocation of the Virgin Mary from the Anglican Office Book.  Beautiful, Phil.  Thank you for the devotion and passion we hear in your voice. We can only hope and pray something Freudian may be taking place here. 

The edited video is going viral in Anglican circles.  It's hilarious.

"Show us Jesus."  Indeed, and seriously now. That's the point of such prayers.  It's not "Mariolatry".  They are wholly christological, but these über-Presbyterians can't even see their own christological heresy.

"Show us Jesus."

A Thief or a Messenger?

When death finally stares you in the face, will you see it as a thief or a messenger?

The singing monks of Norcia, minions of the Whore of Babylon and the Antichrist according to so many "Prayer Book Anglicans" = Presbyterians with prayer books.

Whose Christianity is authentic, that of the Benedictine monks shown here or the modern radical descendents of J. Gresham Machen?

"I am the very model of a pious Presbyterian!"

Dedicated to all my Truly Reformed (TR) friends, especially to those who call themselves Anglicans but who are really nothing more than Presbyterians with prayer books. 

It's been a hell of a week arguing with a few of these guys online.  Now that it's winding down I feel like I need a spiritual bath.    Once again, please, if you're investigating Anglicanism, stay away from these guys, even if you lean in their direction theolologically.  They are coiled vipers, full of venomous hate.  They are to Anglicanism what Jack Chick is to American Baptist fundamentialism, except that they aren't really Anglicans.

From a Facebook friend, source unknown:

"If you know the Gilbert and Sullivan tune, sing along!

*******************************************

I am the very model of a pious Presbyterian!

I've cultivated habits which I never, ever weary in!

I know the points of Calvinism, quoting them with gravity,

And lingering especially upon 'Total Depravity!'

It is my fate to contemplate predestination gleefully -

And verily, I speak 'King James' - it's always 'thou' and 'thee' for me!

At public prayers my countenance is solemn, stern and serious -

You've never seen a Presbyterian so Pres-by-TEER-ious!

I am the very model of a pious Presbyterian -

Indeed in matter doctrinal as fierce as an Assyrian!

With zealous joy do I deploy, for resolution of disputes,

A leather-bound deluxe edition of John Calvin's Institutes!

How bless-ed you are to attend this church we are together in,

Where faithfully I pull motes from the eyes of all my brether-en -

My tender ministrations are directed towards perfecting you,

And if I ever erred I'm sure I would accept correction, too!

If in my conduct you might note the tiniest disparity,

A slight lack of humility, a deficit of charity -

I am so busy day by day asserting my authority

That personal devotions cannot always take priority.

My pompous piety is on display to all humanity!

(The only thing not evident might be my Christianity!)

But still in matters doctrinal, as fierce as an Assyrian,

I am the very model of a pious Presbyterian!"

Iveitch the Terrible

He is an Anglican bishop, doncha know.