MetaCatholic

The introduction to this series is here.

The first of the 39 articles begins with the traditional doctrine of God.

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

First, I note that this is of a piece with those that follow immediately, and together they locate everything that follows (the immediate disputes of the day) in the shared tradition of the Church catholic. In this it differs from, for example, the Westminster Confession which begins with methodology, with a doctrine of Scripture to set against and sift the tradition. This rooting of Anglican faith in the classic tradition of the Church is one that continues in its major early writers, and should not be overlooked.

It is also of a part with an attachment to the Vincentian canon, that the Anglican Church holds to “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all” (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus). Historians now would dispute that such a state of affairs ever really existed, but such a patristic golden age is a significant myth for Anglican self-understanding. Methodology belongs to subsequent and rational reflection on that inheritance, and to finding appropriate grounds to dispute some of the developments of it.

A very large number of contemporary Christians, conservative and liberal alike, actually have (usually unrecognised) problems with this article, and especially with the phrase “without body, parts, or passions” (incorporeus, impartibilis, impassibilis). For some, this is proof of the Platonizing tendency of the early church, and thus a move away from the (presumed) “simple faith of Jesus”. For others it is simply ignored in favour of straightforward interpretations of biblical metaphors of God’s changing his mind, or of his being angry. For almost all, “God is love” is subconsciously heard as carrying overtones of passionate love.

This article, and the classic tradition which it expresses, is sometimes as much at odds with contemporary understandings of faith than any of the more obviously controversial ones. It requires considerable weight to be given to the tradition of the church, and a trust that these ancient ways of reading scripture were actually rightly guided by the Spirit. The number of verses in the canonical scriptures that suggest passion and change in God far outweighs the solitary verse that appears to affirm divine immutability:

[God is]  the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17)

Ironically, of course, this supporting metaphor for the whole Greek philosophical superstructure of impassibility and immutability comes in the most Jewish book of the NT.

But what this article does is assert the importance of the tradition for reading scripture. Language about God becoming angry is to be seen as metaphor and analogy. All those many references to God changing his mind are not to be read literally. Whatever else the articles will say about the privileging of scripture over tradition (and they will say a lot) they begin in a different place, with the tradition and not against it. They also place the apophatic methodology of those three adjectives incorporeus, impartibilis, impassibilis firmly within Anglican tradition.

This offers a challenge, obviously, to any simple claim to perspicuity or literal readings of which the drafters may not have been fully aware. In their day impassibility was hardly challenged, and so the meaning of scriptures concerning God was probably more clear for them than for us.

But impassibility is about the “God-ness” of God, which traditional doctrine this article so strongly affirms: his perfection in eternity, and his being “not such a one as us.” Not contingent, not in need of growth, not externally influenced. A failure to truly appreciate God’s transcendence lies behind a great many of the atheist objections to God’s “existence,” which they confuse with the existence of all other things, visible and invisible. But it also lies behind many of the trite expressions of Christian faith and worship which all too often reduce the Almighty to the All-matey.