Pastor, Militiaman and Soldier

“I am a Clergyman it is true, but I am a member of the Society as well as the poorest Layman, and my Liberty is as dear to me as any man, shall I then sit still and enjoy myself at Home when the best Blood of the Continent is spilling?...so far am I from thinking that I act wrong, I am convinced it is my duty to do so and duty I owe to God and my country.” -- Peter Muhlenberg, Pastor, Colonel of Virginia militia, 1775 and later Major General, Continental Army.

The European Faithless Will Rue the Day

They think themselves SO enlightened, but they are wallowing in darkness, and they will rue the day they jettisoned the Faith.

Meanwhile, the Kingdom of God continues to leaven the world, and if the West does not return, then, quite literally, to hell with the West (which hell will undoubtedly look much like the Dar al Islam).

William Byrd: Te Deum (And a Happy New Year to All!)

Taking a holiday breather from blogging.  Will be back soon.

Merry Christmas!

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. . . .

In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity . . . down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created.

But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour, too.

In this descent and re-ascent everyone will recognise a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life re-ascends.

It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced: then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult.

So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial: but from that there is a re-ascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth–go down to go up–it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

The doctrine of the Incarnation, if accepted, puts this principle even more emphatically at the centre. The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God. All the instances of it which I have mentioned turn out to be but transpositions of the Divine theme into a minor key. I am not now referring simply to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The total pattern, of which they are only the turning point, is the real Death and Re-birth: for certainly no seed ever fell from so fair a tree into so dark and cold a soil as would furnish more than a faint analogy to this huge descent and re-ascension in which God dredged the salt and oozy bottom of Creation. - C.S. Lewis

First Sunday of Advent

 A blessed season to all.

The Effeminization of the Priesthood

Men will never be drawn to the priesthood in large numbers if they must be adjuncts to women in their most visible role. To the modern man, holiness and manliness seem at odds – he may be hellishly torn between these contradictory drives - because of the loss of male authority and hierarchy. The effusive, emotion-drenched atmosphere of contemporary Christianity is like a gauntlet thrown down before him, a challenge to his elemental, irrefutable identity as a man.

Article here.

Essays on the Ordination of Women from the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

Ordination to the Presbyterate and the Episcopate: A Traditional Understanding (pdf)

The Ordination of Women to the Presbyterate and Episcopate: Where Are We?

The Ordination of Women: The Witness of Holy Scripture

The Ordination of Women: The Witness of Sacred Tradition

Reason and the Ordination of Women to the Presbyterate and Episcopate

Combating Orthodox Caricatures of Western Theology

An intellectually honest post by an Orthodox priest and scholar, Fr. Oliver Herbel:   

A recent post by Fr. Stephen Freeman reminded me of just how common it is for we Orthodox to paint with a broad, reductionistic brush when it comes to the West.  He opened his post on “An Illegal Christmas” by saying:

“The great advantage to thinking about God in legal terms, is that nothing has to change. If what happens between us and God is entirely external, a matter of arranging things such as the avoidance of eternal punishment or the enjoyment of eternal reward, then the world can go on as it is. In the legal model that dominates contemporary Christian thought, the secular world of things becomes nothing more than an arena, the stage on which we act out our moral and psychological dilemmas, waiting only for our final grades to be issued when we die.

In the contemporary world-view, Christ’s death and resurrection change nothing within the day-to-day world. Their effect is entirely and completely removed from this world and reserved for the next. This is a great advantage for Christian thought, for everything of significance becomes theoretical, removed from the realm of practical discussion. Not only does Christ’s work change nothing in this world, it changes nothing within us other than by moral or psychological suasion. And we therefore need argue or labor for nothing other than abstractions. The inert world of secularism is left intact.

This is to say that if “accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior” only brings about a change in my eternal disposition, then it is largely meaningless in this world. Everything Christians do in this world would be but tokens of eternity.

But this is not the teaching of the New Testament or classical Christianity.”

Frankly, I don’t think it’s the teaching of anyone, though the “once saved, always saved” crowd probably does come close to this.  Yet, I don’t think that crowd alone is meant by the “contemporary world-view.”  That’s left undefined, unfortunately, but it seems to apply to “other Christians” or even “the other Christians.”

But Fr. Stephen Freeman is not alone.  Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick makes a slight error in how he presents Luther as well in a recent post on his site also.  He gets Luther partially right.  Luther was reacting against a system that encouraged the likes of Tetzel, who went around selling time out of purgatory.  And yes, Luther does speak and write in places about faith as opposed to works, but if that’s all one gets out of Luther, one read him way too quickly (if at all).  Luther himself actually saw good works as flowing out of faith and as free will even existing in this kingdom (his “two kingdoms” approach also applies here–read up on it if you haven’t encountered this before).  Fr. Andrew wrote, “Luther was wrong that the story was “faith versus works.”  No, it’s “faith and works” on both sides of the question.  The real difference is which faith and works you’re going to follow.”  Thing is, Luther would have agreed with the second and third sentences too. Although a full treatise of Luther’s faith and works is beyond the bounds of my writing here, this extract might help produce a more appreciative view of what Luther was trying to get at.

The two Frs. Stephen are not alone nor is it just an Orthodox blogger problem.  I’ve mentioned Orthodox Constructions of the West before on this site.  It really should be a must-read.  In fact, at some point soon I’ll write a post giving a list of “must reads” for Orthodox Christians.  One of the upshots of that book is that it shows just how prevalent our caricatures often are.  Popular Orthodox writers can tend in this direction regardless of whether they are blogging about it.  It can also happen around the coffee hour table. For example, how easy is it to find simple dismissals of Augustine and Anselm by Orthodox, even well known Orthodox writers?

Now, I am standing on the belief that such reductionist generalizations are not good and appropriate, at least not when perpetuated by people who are educated leaders and influencing the way others interpret fellow non-Orthodox Christians around them.  So, in light of that, what are some things we can do?  Well, one will be to read the books I’ll list in my next post.  Reading those will provide one with a more nuanced and informed view.  Another thing we can do, though, is easy, and if done by the likes of Frs. Stephen and Andrew and other Orthodox bloggers and writers, could be quite effective.  We could articulate our theology and spirituality primarily as standing on it’s own, not needing a heretical “foil.”  So, in Fr. Stephen’s post, his discussion of “transformation” was good and enlightening and a positive expression of what our Orthodox faith is (at least in part) about.  Fr. Andrew’s discussion of good works and faith works quite well without needing an overly simplistic view of Luther thrown in.  Both blogging priests have good things to say to us, as do other Orthodox bloggers and writers.  Heck, now and then, even I might hit the mark (and I hope I am here).  I think if we present Orthodoxy as a positive rather than as a reaction to something, it will help us.

Take fencing.  I mentioned “foil” above, so I hope this will work.  If my whole strategy is only to parry your attack and riposte it, and that’s all I ever do, you’ll pick up on it.  You’ll notice I have a rather simplistic approach to fencing.  You’ll even believe that if that’s the only action I ever do, I don’t even really understand fencing and you’ll want to be instructed by someone else eventually.  On the other hand, if I add attacks and feints and counter attacks and indirect attacks, you’ll see I have a more complete understanding of the sport.  You’ll have to fence me more carefully and, if you’re learning the sport, you might just stay with me as a coach.  Yes, even in fencing, one has an “area of expertise,” and that area might well be certain parries, but to be successful, one needs to be able to create situations that lead to those parries succeeding.  Right now, we Orthodox need a more complete game.  It’s too easy to find caricatures of the West in popular Orthodox writings, whether online or in print.

This hurts us, for it gives us a reputation as ignorant, uneducated, knee-jerk, chip-on-our-shoulders, etc. At least educated and informed non-Orthodox will conclude that and why shouldn’t they? We’d conclude something similar if we encountered simplistic dismissals of Orthodoxy. It also hurts us because it means we are not preparing ourselves or our fellow Orthodox for real meaningful encounters with non-Orthodox. It hurts us because it limits our audience. We end up preaching to the Orthodox choir. To take the two blogs I just mentioned, for example, I highly doubt Ancient Faith wants its podcasts and blogs and such only heard and read by Orthodox (but maybe I’m wrong here). It also hurts us because we set up converts to deconvert later if they come to see their reasons for converting as simplistic and even false. If we truly believe our church has a rich tradition and a spirituality that is open and beneficial to all, why risk that?

Fr. Herbel echoes the assessment of Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart:

The most damaging consequence . . .  of Orthodoxy’s twentieth-century pilgrimage ad fontes—and this is no small irony, given the ecumenical possibilities that opened up all along the way—has been an increase in the intensity of Eastern theology’s anti-Western polemic. Or, rather, an increase in the confidence with which such polemic is uttered. Nor is this only a problem for ecumenism: the anti-Western passion (or, frankly, paranoia) of Lossky and his followers has on occasion led to rather severe distortions of Eastern theology. More to the point here, though, it has made intelligent interpretations of Western Christian theology (which are so very necessary) apparently almost impossible for Orthodox thinkers. Neo-patristic Orthodox scholarship has usually gone hand in hand with some of the most excruciatingly inaccurate treatments of Western theologians that one could imagine—which, quite apart form the harm they do to the collective acuity of Orthodox Christians, can become a source of considerable embarrassment when they fall into the hands of Western scholars who actually know something of the figures that Orthodox scholars choose to caluminiate. When one repairs to modern Orthodox texts, one is almost certain to encounter some wild mischaracterization of one or another Western author; and four figures enjoy a special eminence in Orthodox polemics: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John of the Cross.

I think Anglicans can do business, ecumenically, with folks like Dr. Hart and Fr. Herbel.  Orthodox folks who trash our Western theological heritage, or call our English Reformers "heretics", or seek unconditional surrender to the Orthodox Church, not so much.

New Crusade: Armed Christian Opposition to ISIL Seems to be Building, Slowly but Surely

Praying Like an Anglican

Excellent video from St. Peter's Anglican, Evans, GA. 

New to the Blogroll

Ponder Anew: Discussions about Worship for Thinking People

Return of the Embryo Parson

It's complicated. ;>)

Christians for Biblical Equality?

What if "biblical equality" is an oxymoron?

Homo Hierarchicus and Ecclesial Order.  I have a copy of Horne's article from the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church if anyone desires one.  Contact me if you do.

Abstract

To argue that the concept of hierarchy is a profoundly theological concept is peculiarly difficult at the present time in which there is a general assumption that all hierarchies are hierarchies of power, intrinsically oppressive, and incompatible with human freedom. Consequently there is a deep-seated suspicion of the notion whenever it is invoked – not least in the context of church ‘order’. Such a suspicion would have been inexplicable to those writers from whom we gain our earliest knowledge of the Christian Church. Though we cannot, nor should we try to, recreate the conditions of earlier ages in which the concept was understood with a richness and depth that are lacking in our own age, it is vital to expose the contemporary misuse and degradation of the concept and see that, in the life of the Church, the concept of hierarchy is not intended to be an articulation of power, but an eschatological expression of order. The recognition of the inhuman abuse of the concept down the ages should not blind us to the truth that its purpose is to act sacramentally as a sign of the heavenly kingdom. 

I Received an E-Mail from an Old Friend. . .

who, at his request, will remain nameless, as will his church and the hierarch of whom he speaks.  The lion's share of it is as follows:

Chris, I've been following with interest your own blog on all things Anglican, and I have to say my own journey has taken, not a detour, but a little bit of a re-calibrating.

I am an Anglo-Catholic.  But even with all the resistance to the 39 Articles I read from the Ritualists (I will explain later what *I* mean by that), I feel at heart like a traitor to the English Reformation if I simply ignore it.   The early Oxford movement indeed morphed into something later on that kept very little of the original spirit of Anglicanism.  Some are okay with that; I'm not.  I have an irrepressible Augustinianism (I owe to Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and Hooker) that I cannot simply discard.  It formed me.  I am an unashamed predestinarian, no matter how uncomfortable Newman, Lewis, or Laud would be by that fact.  I am not a 5-pointer (never did become convinced the later mutations of Reformed theology are necessary to preserve the fullness of biblical Augustinianism), but I do subscribe to the Articles here because they are true.  I am a Reformed Catholic, without question.  I think the Oxford Movement was right in recovering certain practices without having to throw into Rome.  Papalism was still a non-starter for the original Oxford Movement guys, and the later anglo-papalists seem to undo most everything from the English Reformation up to the 19th century.  Even the high church Arminians were unambiguously anti-Romanist.  But I don't have to convince you.

 

Saying all that to say this: I am a high church Anglican.  I reject the "charismatic" movement without flinching, but for me to ignore those Anglicans in our tradition who are committed to the Articles as if they weren't authentic is disingenuous.

 

When I was a Lutheran, I learned a high theology of the sacraments co-exist quite nicely with justification by faith alone.  I affirm sola fide.  I affirm predestination and the inability of man to cooperate with prevenient grace.  I affirm the primacy and authority (and dare I say it? *COMPLETELY* inspired nature) of Holy Scripture.  The dirty secret among us Anglo-Catholics is the deep biblical ignorance.  There's no revival of Scripture learning on a broad scale.  This is why we are doomed, and for no other reason.  We actually undermine Tradition because we will not attend to Sacred Scripture as our Protestant forebears fought so diligently to instill.  

 

I used to be annoyed, somewhat ashamed, of my Protestant roots.  Now I see, by God's grace, they are essential to my growth.  The sacraments, rituals, and liturgies must serve the Gospel, for that at the end of the day is why we do what we do.

 

I will make some Protestants angry that I insist in the inviolable nature of the Seven Ecumenical councils, and that the episcopacy is the divinely ordered polity of Christ's body on earth, the efficacy and necessity of the sacraments, but these must be set in the Biblical light.  I do honestly question the utility and necessity of all the "merit" language in our Missal.  The Eastern Orthodox don't seem to need it, and frankly sends confusing signals to an already illiterate laity among us.

 

Just wanted to reach out to you in confidentiality that I appreciate your blog, I don't always agree, but you have valid concerns. . . . When I told (my bishop) I am thoroughly Augustinian in my soteriology, he simply minimized its importance in the high church tradition.  For my money, Augustinianism makes the best sense of Church and Sacrament and the whole of Biblical data.  I even preached from James 1.17 from an Anglican pulpit the full force of the doctrines of Grace, and got the feeling only one or two actually understood what I was saying (because it was so new, not because I was unclear).

 

That said, brother Christopher. I am an Anglican.  The Eeeeenglishness (as you hilariously put it) is part of my blood, but only because I see what God did there in the 16th century, and I fell in love with that body of divinity when I was young man.  I feel most whole when I can uphold the Articles unashamedly.  I am an Anglican Catholic -- Catholic in the *most* Anglican sense, and Anglican in the *most* Catholic sense.  Still insufferably high church and still unapologetically more catholic than most Roman Catholics.  But still.... Protestant, thankfully, in its best and most historic sense.   

 

To which I replied:

Good to hear from you!

As it turns out, I'm doing a bit of recalibrating myself as I'm taking a second look at the English Reformation's Lutheran legacy, and how that may have contributed not only to the structure of the Articles (and the content of some of them, even after the Edwardian revisions), but also to monarchical resistance to further Calvinization of the formularies (e.g., Elizabeth's smackdown of the Lambeth Articles), the end result being that our formularies remain solidly Augustinian but only mildly-to-moderately Reformed.  I've had some experiences with some Truly Reformed Anglicans on a certain Facebook page, and these experiences have created in me a desire to hold that kind of Anglicanism at more of an arm's length from me, despite my own leanings toward Reformed theology in some areas.  As I review this stuff, it seems the Lutherans made more sense, for example, on the use of images in the church.

I'm happy to read what you wrote about the Reformation and your commitment to Augustine's doctrines of grace.  If you haven't read it yet, see George Tavard's Justification: An Ecumenical Study.  Now, granted, Tavard was a somewhat liberal Roman Catholic scholar, but this little book of his is a pretty compelling argument about how Luther's doctrine of justification was simply the expected fruition of Augustine's doctrines of grace -- which are at the end of the day nothing more than Paul's and the other apostles' doctrines of grace.  Tavard shows how all this developed in the historical context of the struggle between Augustinianism and resurgent Pelagianism in the West.   (Our old Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine was a player in this struggle, shortly before the Reformation.)  All this is to say that it is VITAL to be an Augustinian.  Even J.B. Mozley got that, though he still recoiled from some of the implications of the doctrine of predestination.  In his book, A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, he argues that if we have to err, we MUST err in the direction of Augustine and not Pelagius.  C.B. Moss and other high churchers argue similarly.  I'm afraid His Grace . . . is representative of Anglo-Catholics who err in the direction of Pelagius.

I also agree with what you had to say about the complementary nature of sola fide and the sacraments.  There again is an area where classical Anglicanism follows Lutheran theology more closely than Reformed theology.  And I also agree with your assessment about Scriptural ignorance among Anglo-Catholics, though it could be argued that such ignorance is confined to that circle.  I've seen examples among even the Evangelicals, which is why the cry of the Reformation - Ad Fontes!! -- is applicable everywhere.

I have met one other Anglo-Catholic who is an Augustinian and therefore believes in the biblical doctrine of predestination.  St. Bernard, a thoroughgoing predestinarian, is one of his heroes.  I have to believe that there are more such Anglo-Catholics out there if there are two.  May their tribe increase.

All this goes to show the fundamental accuracy of Nockles' analysis.  "Anglo-Catholicism" isn't uniform in belief and practice, and some who call themselves Anglo-Catholics are amenable to the truths recovered by the Protestant Reformation.

ACC Archbishop Mark Haverland: "What Is Anglicanism?"

"A fair question and one that in recent weeks has been much on my mind."  (Monty Python's Flying Circus -- "Flying Sheep" skit)

(Edited substantially on 3/11/2016).

In connection with a recent post here, which has largely to do with the vexing question of Anglican identity, I thought it would be helpful to note Archbishop Havlerland's take on it.  This is an article of his that dates back to 1995 but was reposted at the Continuum blog in 2007 shortly before it became a copyrighted article on the ACC's old web site.  (See the ACC's new and improved web site here.)

It is clear from Haverland's article that "Anglicanism" is pretty much whatever one says it is.  Referring to Fr. Aidan Nichols' book The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism (see my recent post on that book here), Haverland argues essentially that since Anglicanism has been long plagued by doctrinal chaos, it's better to jettison the Anglican ideal of "comprehensiveness" and pick one of the strains.  As for him and his house, they will serve Anglo-Catholicism:

Soon, I am willing to prophesy confidently, the official Anglican Communion will consist of nothing but a liberal Protestant rump. Those who do not want to be liberal Protestants will become Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, stop going to church entirely, or (probably what will prove to be the smallest group) join the ACC (and similar bodies.)

What The Panther and the Hind shows is something well known to those who have studied Anglicanism closely. That is, Anglican history shows several broad strains of tradition, all of which can plausibly claim to be classically Anglican in that they have a long pedigree within the Church of England and her daughter Churches. Yet no one of these strands can claim to be Anglicanism in an exclusive sense if that claim means to imply that most Anglicans in fact historically held to that particular strand. Furthermore, these strands were and are often mutually contradictory and hostile. . . .

So how are we to define Anglicanism in this situation? It seems to me that there are two live possibilities before us. One possibility is that we define Anglicanism precisely by reference to its multiplicity of traditions and lack of uniformity, by its "comprehensiveness". This definition, however, reduces Anglicanism to liberal Protestantism and to the current state of collapse. The irony of Anglicanism-as-comprehensiveness is that persons with theological integrity have no desire to be comprehended by such a communion.

Persons with theological integrity have no desire to be comprehended by such a communion.

I have to say that I agree with that statement, and have quoted other notable Anglican writers here -- Packer, Pascoe, Mascall, Henson -- to the effect that Anglican comprehensiveness, which on the surface seem like such a broad-minded and intuitively unifying ideal, has turned out rather to lead only to shoddy theology and no true unity.   It is truly either creed or chaos.  It also means consistency in praxis, specifically in the area of holy orders. These dioceses and societies that practice an oxymoronic "dual integrity" need to repent, and stop ordaining women to the priesthood.  Period.

Haverland continues:

The other possible definition is in fact something of a redefinition: we may redefine Anglicanism by reference to one of its classical strands or parties and then assert that that single tradition should henceforth be normative to the exclusion of the other classical Anglican parties. If we take the first option, as the old Anglican Communion has done, we are doomed. The ACC, therefore, has adopted the second approach. This approach does not, of course, require us to reject everything ever thought or prayed or developed within the other classical traditions. However, it does establish a norm and it does reject the longstanding Anglican tendency towards "comprehensiveness" or, if you prefer, vagueness. We say, in effect, that what was once merely a minority party within Anglicanism is the sole legitimate form in which Anglicanism can continue.

Haverland is probably correct that the only way to obtain theological integrity is to choose a strand and go with it.  If the ACC has determined that this is true for itself "and similar bodies", the Anglo-Protestant parties could theoretically come to the same decision, and it's not at all evident that even Evangelicals would hang together, divided as they are over the Articles, the charismata, and the ordination of women.  What then about orthodox Anglican unity?  The ACC has recently signaled its intent to achieve a communio in sacris relationship with the APA.  What then of the APA's relationships with the REC, the Anglican Church of Nigeria, and ACNA?  

I do believe with Haverland that if Anglicanism is to survive in the future it must be far less comprehensive than it has been in the past.  Liberalism must be read out of the Anglican Way, and allowed to go die its death.  That being said, I'm still hoping for the kind of comprehensiveness that includes Anglo-Protestant and Anglo-Catholic,  or both may become  conservative "rump" churches.  Unfortunately, at this point in time, neither side seems willing to engage in serious talks about unity with the other.  Too many Anglo-Catholics want to read the English Reformation out of their hair, while hard core Anglo-Protestants such as Lee Gatiss who labor under the delusion that Anglicanism is simply "another branch of the international Protestant Reformed church" and speak fondly of "our beloved Puritans". (!?)  Fr. Rob Desics responds to Gatiss and those who take his position:

An interesting piece, but may I offer some comments? It is fair to say that the history of what we now term 'Anglicanism' is very complex, intertwining cultural, political and theological causes and effects. It is also fair to say that the English (or 'Anglican') church predates the Reformation of the 16th century as well as post-dating it. I wonder whether it is too simple a statement to deny that 'Anglicanism' is a via media between Medieval Romanism and more radical expressions of Protestantism (including Geneva). After all, the English church retained many of the received practices and doctrines of the catholic church (such as liturgy, the historic orders of ministry, the Creeds etc.) whilst also embracing the desire to return to a study of Holy Scripture and the Early Fathers. I would question whether it is true to say that 'Anglicanism' is not Catholicism, after all Cranmer and his fellow reformers were firm in their conviction that they were restoring the English church to a purer form of Catholicism - the Catholicism set forth in the Scriptures and the early councils of the Catholic Church. Those bishops, such as Jewell (and theologians such as Hooker), who followed Cranmer in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, whilst firm in their adherence to the 39 Articles of Religion were clear that the English church was the true Catholic church of this land. This being the case, it is wholly inaccurate to label the view that the Anglican church is a 'church in continuity with the Catholic Church but reformed' to be a 19th century fabrication - a fair reading of the historical sources of the Reformation and immediate post-Reformation periods will not allow us to take seriously such a polemical and unscholarly sweeping denial. It is also unfair and historically inaccurate to believe that the Oxford Movement/Tractarian Movement was merely the expression of the whims and fancies of John Henry Newman. What of Keble? What of Pusey? Both these men were key players in the Oxford Movement, and both regarded Newman's secession to Rome as a great betrayal. For these men the Anglican church was the Catholic church in this land, expressed in doctrine of the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles. Of those Puritans of the 17th Century, may it not be possible that they were not Anglican in any meaningful sense? For some advocated Presbyterianism (as some who claim the name of Anglican do today). Some advocated abolishing the Prayer Book and the Articles (just as some also do today). Then, as now, such persons could not truly be identified as Anglicans in any meaningful sense. After all, Richard Hooker, the great Anglican divine, was critical of puritans who sought to take the English in the direction of Geneva. We must be careful to remember that the peculiarity of the English church owes as much to its political entanglements with the State as it does academic theology. The popular regard for the Church of England as Protestant owes perhaps more to the political machine which sought to preserve Elizabeth the First from Jesuit assassins than it does to reasoned theology! Anglicanism was certainly not invented in the 19th century, nor was it invented in the 16th century. It is the flowering of a rich, long and complex history of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in this land. It is the church founded upon the Apostles; the church of Augustine, Anselm, Cranmer, Jewell, Andrewes; and so down to our day. Beware of simplistic polemics!

I agree with Fr. Desics and others (such as Canon Arthur Middleton) that the only route to Anglican unity is to stress its inherently Catholic nature.  Archbishop Haverland is correct in his observation that the Anglican Communion, at least as it exists in England, North America and Oceania, will soon mutate into a liberal Protestant rump.  However, I would caution conservative Anglo-Protestants, especially those of the Anglo-Calvinist or Neo-Puritan variety and those who ordain women to the priesthood: if you don't seek true catholicity, you will most likely end up as a rump church as well.  

Read the writing on the wall, folks.  Observe how Protestantism in both its liberal and conservative varities have morphed wildly and keep on morphing since the Reformation.  Only one conclusion can be drawn: there is no future in "Protestantism" as such. 

"Christianity With an Anglican Accent"

That's how an Anglican priest I know describes the outreach efforts of the Anglican organization in which he is involved.

When I left the Orthodox Church, I did so with the intent to never again be an ecclesiastical ideologue.  Orthodox theologian Bradley Nassif apparently feels the same way, as he castigates Orthodoxy for its ideological and parochial bent:

Outside of Orthodoxy, have you noticed how the healthiest Christian communities around today are the ones who preach Christ, not their own denomination? They speak of Jesus, not their "Baptist," "Methodist" or "Pentecostal" identities. Yet, all we seem to hear from our pulpits is "Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy!" We are obsessed with self-definition through negation. It is a sick religious addiction. We often shore up our identity as Orthodox by constantly contrasting ourselves with Evangelicals or Catholics. I wish we would talk more about Christian faith, and less about "Orthodoxy."

Amen, amen, amen.  I think Anglicanism tends to suffer from the same pathology.  And that's why I welcome the idea of us Anglicans not being about an "ism", but about Christianity -- and the Gospel -- with a mere "Anglican accent."  It should not be about us: our Eeeeeeenglishness; our devotion to the Book of Common Prayer; our thrice-glorious liturgy and musical tradition; our pride in Oxbridge learning.  It should be all about Jesus, his person, his work, his word, his apostles' writings.  Our liturgy, along with our Anglicanness, should be a heartfelt response to those things.  Our "culture" and our "ism" be damned.

Peter Nockles on "Anglican" and "Anglo-Catholic"

Excerpted from his book The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857, pp. 38-43. (Review here):

The labels 'Anglican' and 'Anglo-Catholic', so familiar in current theological discourse, also underwent a modification of their original weaning in the Tractarian era. The term 'Anglican' is of relatively modern origin. In the seventeenth century, it was mainly used in its Latin forms of `Anglicanus' or `Anglicanae' as a description of the reformed and established church in England. Early examples of its usage to denote individual membership of that church, i.e. an `Anglican', can be dated to Edmund Burke in 1797, and to George Stanley Faber in 1804. . . . 

'Anglican' took a long time to acquire an '-ism'. Its earliest modern use as denoting a particular theological tradition was by Newman in his formulation of the via media in 1837. Yet even as late as 1846, its use in this sense was of sufficiently recent date for Edward Churton to refer to 'what is now called Anglicanism' when describing the Orthodox tradition bequeathed by Hooker and the Caroline Divines. In the Tractarian controversies, 'Anglican' acquired party connotations. The term now denoted a particular understanding of the Church of England_, rather than simple membership of that Church itself. Thus William Gresley applied the title as a substitute for a 'High Churchman' and in direct contradiction to 'Evangelical' which he used interchangeably with `Puritan'.  Certainly, the term 'Anglican' acquired sufficiently unacceptable 'High Church' resonances in Evangelical eyes for it to become suspect and almost synonymous with 'Puseyite'.

On the other hand for the Tractarians, the term 'Anglican' came to denote a 'High and Dry' form of attachment to the Church of England. Thus, Palmer, Hook and Edward Churton were dubbed `mere Anglicans',' <sup>79</sup> to distinguish them from those whom the Tractarian leaders regarded as unequivocal followers of 'apostolical' principles. Only old High Churchmen took pride in the 'Anglican' label and increasingly criticised the Tractarians for being 'essentially un-Anglican'.' Significantly, in his famous article on church parties in the Edinburgh Review in 1853, W. J. Conybeare distinguished an 'Anglican' or 'normal type' of High Churchman from the ‘High and Dry' as well as from a `Tractarian' or 'exaggerated type' of High Churchman.

The label 'Anglo-Catholic' also underwent transmutation.  The original meaning of Anglo-Catholic, like that of that of 'Anglican', had been a descriptive term for mere membership of the Church of England, and was of seventeenth-century lineage.  The term could be used interchangeably with ‘Anglican’.  The non-party meaning of the term endured well into the nineteenth century as was witnessed by Newman's use of the phrase 'Anglo-Catholic Church' in his Lectures the Prophetical Office of the Church.  The same usage was employed in the very title Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology by its Tractarian editors. Similarly, William Palmer of Worcester used the term interchangeably with the 'orthodox Church of England position' in his Treatise on the Church of Christ (1838), and William Gesley adopted the same meaning in his theological manual, Anglo-Catholicism (1844).

The addition of the '-ism' symbolised a new degree of theological 'vision in the title. For Gresley, 'Anglo-Catholicism', like Anglicanism', represented a distinctive theological tradition; a reinvigorated version of traditional High Churchmanship. Yet the label increasingly was appropriated by the Tractarian party. In short, 'Anglo-Catholic'_ceased to he a merely descriptive term for the Church of England as a whole and instead became a particular sub-division of the Church of England itself.

Later generations of the Movement's followers, including the `Ritualists', would claim the term 'Anglo-Catholic' exclusively for themselves. Old High Churchmen objected to this hijacking of a once neutral, unequivocal terminology. They strove to reclaim the term for supporters of what they deemed Orthodox Church of England principles. As a writer in the Church of England Quarterly Review put it in 1843, 'because the writers of the Tracts choose to call themselves Anglo-Catholics, surely we are not to give up our own claim to the title, nor yet to concede to those individuals, a designation which they have assumed, but which belongs to all sound members of the Anglican Church'.  G. S. Faber, who had proclaimed himself an 'Anglican' as early as 1804, maintained in 1842 that his opposition to `Tractarian principles' was based 'on the real principles of our Reformed Anglo-Catholic Church .¹⁸⁶ Some old. High Churchmen even appropriated the term exclusively for themselves. George Ayliffe Poole, a 'Z', and friend and ally of W. F. Hook in Leeds, in 1842 distinguished three separate parties in the Church of England; the 'Evangelical or Low Church', the ‘moderate churchmen or Anglo-Catholics', and the 'ultra-churchmen of Oxford school'. Likewise, the elder Christopher Wordsworth in 1845 asked his son, Christopher junior, whether he might induce the editor of the English Churchman, an avowedly Tractarian publication, to make it 'a really Anglo-Catholic paper'.  It was a conscious throw-back to an older meaning, when Charles Wordsworth in his Annals (1891) made his indictment of the Oxford Movement that it had so soon ceased to be "bona fides" Anglo-Catholic'.  As late as 1877, Anglo-Catholic principles' were defended as synonymous with the 'old historic High Church school'.

The history of changing nomenclature points to that divergence of Tractarianism from old High Churchmanship which will be a theme this study. It illustrates a common perception among contemporaries of the divergence of a Tractarian minority from a High Church majority, in contrast to later historical assumptions that many distinctive features of the High Church tradition were attributable to the Oxford Movement alone. 

I believe the the terms "Anglican" and "Anglo-Catholic" have undergone additional transmutations since then.  Instead of "Anglican" meaning "the reformed and established church in England", whose Protestant faith was inherited by its daughter churches around the globe, it is to many today a reference to the English Church from its beginning until now, encompassing the whole range of theological beliefs (and unbelief) now held in tension: Reformed, Arminian, Wesleyan, Old High Church, Anglo-Catholic, Anglo-Papalist, Charismatic, and Liberal.

I sense as well that many today who refer to themselves as "Anglo-Catholics" are really just Old High Churchmen who, like their predecessors, believe in justification by faith alone and value the 39 Articles.  My sympathies to all you who are new to Anglicanism and trying to make sense of it all.

Deacons (Rise Up O Men of God)

My ordination to the diaconate, September 27, 2014.

 

Rise up O men of God,
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and soul and mind and strength,
To serve the King of Kings,
To serve the King of Kings.

Rise up O men of God,
His Kingdom tarries long,
Bring in the day of brotherhood,
And end the night of wrong,
And end the night of wrong.

Rise up O men of God,
The Church for you doth wait.
Send forth to serve the needs of men
In Christ our strength is great,
In Christ our strength is great.

Lift high the Cross of Christ,
Tread where His feet have trod,
As brothers of the Son of Man,
Rise up O men of God,
Rise up O men of God.

Rise up O men of God,
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and soul and mind and strength,
To serve the King of Kings,
To serve the King of Kings.

ISIL

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

1. Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis.

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

2. Propter fratres meos et proximos meos loquebar pacem de te:

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

3. Propter domum Domini Dei nostri quaesivi bona tibi.

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

4. Rogate quae ad pacem sunt Jerusalem:et abundantia diligentibus te.

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster.

5. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen

Give peace, O Lord, in our time
Because there is no-one else
Who will fight for us
If not you our God

(The following are from Psalm 122)
1. Let there be peace in your strength, and abundance in your towers
2. I wish you peace for the sake of my brothers and my family
3. I have sought good for you because of the house of the Lord God
4. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee
5. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

                              

The Panther and the Hind

I just finished re-reading Aidan Nichols' The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism, and have ordered it from Amazon for my personal library.  I want to especially recommend this book up front for every reader of mine who is currently investigating Anglicanism, because it is written by a former Anglican, now a Roman Catholic living in the Blackfriars Dominican community at Cambridge, whose knowledge of our history and faith is magisterial.   Here is a brief bio.

Nichols wrote this book primarily for Roman Catholics seeking to understand Anglicanism, and also to highlight the fact that Roman Catholic ecumenical engagement with the Anglican Communion is bound to be futile, given the latter’s current trajectory.  Readers new to or investigating will find an excellent summary of Anglican theological history since the Reformation, despite the author's less-than-sanguine assessment of Anglicanism's future.

The bulk of the book is concerned with his historical and theological analysis, which discerns 9 movements in Anglican history: 1) the English Reformation; 2) Hooker and the via media; 3) the Caroline Divines and their successors; 4) the Latitudinarian tradition; 5) the Evangelical revival; 6) the Oxford movement and its aftermath; 7) Liberal Catholicism; 8) Anglican modernism; and 9) contemporary Anglican theological radicalism. Nichols concludes this work by positing three disparate tendencies or parties within modern Anglicanism: Low Church, High Church and Broad Church.  Though there are some important nuances not to be overlooked, generally speaking in Nichols' schema 1 and 5 would today be grouped under the Low Church category; 2, 3 and 6 High Church; and 4, 7, 8 and 9 Broad Church.  (Nichols acknowledges that in reality it's somewhat more complicated than this. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of the High Church Evangelical.)

The Panther and the Hind is a compelling case for the belief that the Anglican Communion is likely doomed, but also in that connection why Anglo-Catholicism is fated to be a rump church existing in small pockets scattered throughout the Continuum and what's left of the Communion -- when it isn't morphing into Liberal Catholicism, a topic he takes up in Chapter 7 (the implication being that Roman Catholics shouldn't waste much time and energy on ecumenical endeavors with the Communion, but simply wait for the inevitable river crossings to Rome.)

The following are some salient excerpts from Chapter 7 on Liberal Catholicism (a successor to Tractarianism and the Yin to traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism’s Yang) and the Conclusion.  (Bolded emphases mine):

                                           From Chapter 7, “Liberal Catholicism”

Unfortunately, while one line of (Anglo-Catholic) development passes from Gore to the biblically and patristically controlled and credally obedient theology of the classical Anglo-Catholics of the mid-twentieth century, a second shoot of the genealogy-of-ideas tree points in the direction of a watery landscape, a more fluid world of theological discourse. It all depends whether greater stress is placed on the substantive, 'Catholicism', or the qualifier 'Liberal'.  Gore's confidence in the compatibility of credal orthodoxy and critical scholarship made the question of the relative priority of faith or reason, to his mind, entirely hypothetical. For a later generation of liberal Catholics, however, should inconsistency be detected between the 'assured results of modern criticism' and a somewhat minimised version of the essentials of the Catholic faith, it was faith which had to give way." On the other hand, those have never been lacking whose reaction was, rather, to wonder whether the critical methodologists might at times be using the 'wrong tool'. The Anglo-Catholic movement today is thus divided between its traditional or classical and 'affirming' or accommodationist wings.

In general, the twentieth century history of Anglo-Catholicism has been marked by early climax, a holding operation, and subsequently since the Second Vatican Council, steady decline. Anglo-Catholics enjoyed their greatest success in the Church of England around the time of the First World War. Though the Crown was on the whole suspicious of them and the bishops mainly cautious, Anglo-Catholics succeeded in taking over a considerable part of the parochial system, especially in London and south-east England, thanks to both lay patrons and the founding of missions later erected as parishes. Like the Evangelicals they also operated through Church societies, whether missionary, like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, or for internal consolidation, like the Church Union. Since the 1960s however their confidence has been deeply sapped, partly through the confusion as to Catholic identity engendered by the Vatican II revolution in Roman Catholicism, partly through the continued and growing institutional domination of con temporary Anglicanism by the Broad Church wing." Now largely existing in embattled enclaves, they are faced with difficult questions about their future in a Church with an episcopate open to Latitudinarianism on such issues as the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, and his Virginal Conception, and proceeding towards the ordination of women priests, and, doubtless, bishops. Four groups can be discerned: those who look to salvation from Eastern Orthodoxy, and hope for a `Western Orthodox' Anglican mini-church;" those who look to Rome for a Uniate scheme of some kind; those who propose to fall back on a 'continuing' Anglican splinter-church (as already found in North America and elsewhere), and those who under the leadership of the bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, are now preparing to make their peace with the Broad Church tradition over a wide range of issues, in return for the preservation of their liturgical and spiritual particularities." So far as one can tell from the somewhat vague yet clamant style of theological utterance which seems to be a mark of 'Affirming Catholicism', its chief doctrinal characteristic is a denial of the historical boundedness of the apostolic revelation in favour of a theory of continuous revelation through discernment of the 'signs of the times':

Our God does new things, does them for the first time, reveals truths hidden from previous generations and made known only unto us in these last days.

Admitting that no 'criteriology' for reading the signs of the times is yet forthcoming, and that therefore what God is leading us towards, or saying to us, by these media is undetermined, it can only be concluded that

The Christian way is as wondrously and as adventurously inexact as life itself.

The drawbacks to an emancipation of theological culture from a clearly identified doctrinal authority, at once preservative yet homogenously developmental, are only too apparent in our next topic, Anglican Modernism.

                                              From the Conclusion

The notion that the three schools somehow complement one another in a richly 'comprehensive' Church requires a lot of swallowing. As Eric Mascall has written

The fundamental incoherence of the three school theory can be seen from the obvious fact that the existence of each one of the schools can be justified only on the assumption that its characteristic theological assertions are true. But in that case all the three schools must be mutually compatible. And in that case there is no reason why we should not accept them all and a great many reasons why we should. But then what will have happened to the three schools? It is quite ridiculous to envisage the Church as a tricorporate society, each of whose parts is committed to holding one third of the truth. Regrettable as this no doubt is, it is because each school has not been convinced that everything that the others were holding was part of the truth that the schools have remained recognisably distinct.

And Mascall accepts Stephen Sykes' suggestion that the `comprehensiveness' argument must be traced back to the (somewhat unplaceable) mid-Victorian divine F. D. Maurice whereupon it becomes explicable, for Maurice's commitment to a romantic idealist view of [English] national character and destiny' predisposed him to the key-notions of complementarily and compromise. As Sykes wrote:

Coined at a time when internal party strife was at its most acute, it apparently offered a non-partisan refuge for that large body of central Anglicans who properly speaking belonged to no party, either evangelical, nor high-church, nor yet in any committed sense to the more radical of the liberals. Theologically speaking, however, the effect of the proposal has been disastrous. It must be stated bluntly that it has served as an open invitation to intellectual laziness and self-deception. Maurice's opposition to system-building has proved a marvellous excuse to those who believe they can afford to be condescending about the outstanding theological contribution of theologians from other communions and smugly tolerant of second rate theological competence in our own; and the failure to be frank about the issues between the parties in the Church of England has led to an ultimately illusory self-projection as a Church without any specific doctrinal or confessional position.

Bishop Sykes' critic D. Wiebe, by countering that comprehensiveness is but an 'appropriate response to the recognition of the in tractable character of the issues involved', and stigmatising as immoral any requirement from the theologian of some 'absolute commitment to particular theological claims' simply on the basis of his or her membership of the Church as such, only confirmed the accuracy of the analysis.' As Dr Paul Avis has written:

The notion of a tacit consensus residing in a common ethos is a post factum accommodation to the demise of doctrinal accord within the Church.