MetaCatholic

In an email one reader of my series on the Church of England’s 39 Articles of Religion asked some general questions about their status. At about the same time Peter Kirk asked me in a comment how I could be as critical as I had been and still remain and Anglican priest. (I’m glad – given his subsequent note on my reply – I took this as a genuinely curious question rather than an expression of moral outrage, but its a reminder that blog posts and comments don’t necessarily convey tone very well.) This post is an attempt to try to deal with some of Scott’s emailed questions, and also fill out what I said to Peter.

The best evidence of the current status of the 39 articles in the contemporary Church of England is the declaration of assent that every ordained minister has to make, both at ordination, and subsequently on every new licensed appointment. This part of the declaration is also made by licensed Readers (lay preachers).

[The Church of England] professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation. Led by the Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to Christian truth in its historic formularies, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons.

Two things are worth noting here. The articles are described both as being historic formularies, and as having borne witness. This is a step or two down from the catholic creeds which set forth the faith, which are themselves a step down from the Holy Scriptures where the faith is uniquely revealed. (That hierarchical description is not particularly accurate, but conveys the general sense.) This picture strongly suggests the need for reading the articles in historical context, rather than as a straightforward set of boundary markers for today. They do not exercise any kind of immediate authority.

The second point is the characteristic way in which they are listed together with the BCP and the Ordinal, and the three together have been traditionally encountered by Anglicans as bound together between the same covers as “The Prayer Book”. Doctrine and worship are bound up together. Anglicans have traditionally stressed the maxim Lex orandi, lex credendi (”The rule of praying is the rule of believing”, or, more colloquially, “If you want to know what we believe, look at how we pray”.) In fact the relationship between the two halves of the Latin tag is much more mutual in their interactions than it is commonly taken to be. Doctrine has shaped (and does shape) liturgy as well as liturgy doctrine.

Historically, the 39 articles, as a light revision of Cranmer’s original 42, and coming at the beginning of the Elizabethan period, seem to me to represent in some ways the high-water mark of Calvinism in the Church of England. One could construe the theological politics of the Elizabethan era as a conflict between those who wished to advance that position (those who came to be called Puritans) and those who, led by Richard Hooker, were rowing back to a very moderate Calvinist position, that was also open to strands of mediaeval thinking on revelation and reason, and especially to the spirituality and theology of the Fathers. They were effectively aided and abetted by the ritual of set liturgies, and the persistence of the liturgical drama and choral tradition of the cathedrals, that in practice gave a more traditionally catholic feel to things than the bare text of either the liturgy or the articles would suggest. Whether one calls this the via media or schizophrenia is a nicely balanced question. The subsequent history of the Church of England has often seen the see-saw tipping one way and then the other.

The mutual relationship of articles and liturgy meant that in practice the articles never achieved anything like confessional status. In form they are not unlike the Augsburg Confession, and indeed they borrow substantially from it. They could, in principle easily have developed in the direction of the Westminster Confession, as the Puritans wanted. But, bound up as they were with the liturgical material of BCP and Ordinal, they effectively took on a different character, almost as an addendum to the larger work of liturgy, both affirming the church’s anchor in the great creedal tradition of the early catholic and apostolic Church, and setting out what were a number of boundary markers in relation to Reformation controversies. Unlike other Reformation confessions, some of which they resembled in form, they never stood in isolation as a confession themselves. Most Anglicans’ doctrine would be far more affected by the weekly (and daily) affirmations of the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds held in common with the Great Church, than by the controversy-engaging statements of the articles.

When it comes to the present day, we unfortunately enter la-la land. The officially stated position (especially beloved by conservative evangelical groups) is that the doctrine of the Church of England is to be found in the aforementioned articles, BCP and ordinal. Yet the major rounds of liturgical revision that have been going on for the last half-century have in part happened because these traditional sources no longer seemed adequate to meet either the theological demands or spiritual needs of the contemporary church. Officially, all modern services are “alternative” to the BCP. In practice they are a replacement. (And some churches, especially evangelical ones, sit quite lightly to them, finding even this updating not up-to-date enough) Although the articles are in principle revisable, since they themselves point to scripture as their underlying authority, and also confess that even Church Councils (how much more then Cranmer) may err, the Church has never summoned the courage, wisdom or means to consider how this might be done.

The articles are therefore increasingly stranded as an historical curiousity, divorced by language and ethos from the liturgical material which continues to shape theology, worship and mission. Unfortunately, historical accident, poor theology, and hopelessly sprawling diversity means that the Church of England has no real means of working out how to set about revising its formularies, not any real clarity about its doctrinal development. Because the new liturgies are texts agreed by representatives of all traditions (even down to debating the minutiae of how to translate the Greek preposition ek in the Nicene Creed – from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary – if you really want to know) they are probably the nearest thing the Church of England has to a repository of doctrine as it is currently understood, prayed and believed. The articles look more and more resident in some kind of limbo, in my view well worth engaging and updating (hence my series), but in practice a shibboleth to be called on in time of need by those who feel they are losing the argument.