Sep 21
Where’s the Church? (art. XIX)
(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)
When he was archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, addressing a conference of evangelical Anglicans (NEAC 1987) challenged them to review and renew their ecclesiology. While he certainly had grounds for doing so, he might equally have challenged himself and other Anglicans. If evangelical Anglican ecclesiology has sometimes looked non-existent, then liberal and catholic Anglican ecclesiology has tended to be promiscuous in its borrowings from the patristic period and contemporary Roman Catholicism. Much of the problem can be traced back to Cranmer and the hopelessly inadequate nineteenth article introducing the section on the Church.
XIX. Of the Church
The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.
As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.
The following two articles will contextualise this somewhat. There is clearly a visible entity that can be referred to as the Church which is a lot more than “a congregation of faithful men.” Unfortunately it is not visible here. Taken at face value, there is no visible church here when it is not gathered for worship. There is no sense of how one congregation might be related to another. There is no body except this local congregation that can know, recognise or declare that what they are engaged in is either the pure word of God, or the due administration of the sacraments, and no-one except themselves to declare that they are “faithful.”
Even worse is the extraordinary geographical definition of separate churches. The church of God in a particular place is potentially quite different from the church of God of a particular place. Where Paul uses “of” it is either in the plural as in Galatia in his very perfunctory greeting, or “of the Thessalonians”: the fuller phrase is “the church of God in Corinth”. But theologically, ideas like being a colony of heaven point to the importance of that “in.” Again, if there are simply all these geographical churches who exactly is to state that they have erred? The only possible implication is that there are lots of different churches, all able to say that the other has erred, and none taking seriously the idea of the Spirit leading the church into all truth. Is it any wonder that this ends up in modern times with the half-baked idea of “provincial autonomy” and a complete ecclesiological mess?
Moreover, how exactly is a specific congregation, or a specific church in one place, related to the “holy catholic Church” of the Apostles’ Creed, or (in its extraordinary Cranmerian version) the “one catholic and apostolic Church” of the Nicene Creed? (I have never understood why the BCP omits “holy” from that article of the creed: was it just a 16th century typo enshrined accidentally for perpetual use?) This is not just a matter of the invisible church, though that omission is bafflingly strange, but of how any particular instantiation of the church is conceived in terms of the global, historic and eschatological church.
The church has one historical foundation in the ministry of Jesus gathering his disciples, and in the constituent events of the cross and resurrection. At this point, its unity is visible, and any body that claims to be the church must trace its identity to this foundational group. That does not simply point to some form of the episcopate alone, but to a continuity of sacramental and missionary practice, of teaching and transmission of the scriptures within an ongoing tradition of reading and reflecting on them. How such things are to be made visible, either historically, or in the present should be a real and pressing question, unless one simply accepts the answer of Rome.
The church has one eschatological destiny in the shared communion of God the Holy Trinity, which is experienced through the animating and guiding work of the Holy Spirit, who is the foretaste of what is to come, and who enables the church to know and respond to the living presence of Christ as her Lord. That presses the question of unity in a different way. As Peter notes in his experience of evangelising Cornelius, as Luke narrates it, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:17 NRSV) The church is not just a human society organizing its life in fidelity to its historical constitution; it is a divine society which God is constantly leading and remaking, and for whom God, not itself, chooses its membership. A church that was simply transmitting tradition faithfully could not easily have welcomed the Gentiles in response to a new and unprecedented action by God. The unity of the church is pressed hard upon us as accepting God’s definition of membership.
It is not enough, however, to take refuge in this eschatological definition, and declare a unity of Christians in the Spirit. The historical institution of the church and the question of how its one foundational unity in the incarnate Christ is expressed in the present needs to be taken seriously as a witness to that fleshly incarnation and bodily resurrection, and the truth that God does not rescue souls, he transforms people, and is renewing all creation. In addition, it is as witness to the identity of Christ as the historical Jesus of Nazareth that the church exists. There needs to be a visible historical connection, which is the thrust of Irenaeus’ answer to the Gnostics, and the development of a theology of episcopacy as a guarantee of succession of teaching.
Finding a way forward through this is not and never has been easy. At the risk of generalization and over-simplification, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have tended to stress the historical pole in this tension, and the Protestant Churches the eschatological one. One of the great disappointments of this article is that it does neither, and so bequeaths an uncertain air to Anglican ecclesiology, leaving successive generations, and different groupings within them, to lurch uneasily from one to the other. No wonder we’re in such a mess.
September 21st, 2007 at 9:47 pm
I wonder if the main thrust of this article, and the reason for its odd form, is that the real main point is that “the Church of Rome hath erred”. Now if the church is defined in terms of continuity of practice with the earliest church, as you seem to insist on as the only possibility, that implies that the Church of Rome, i.e. the body which recognises the authority of the bishop of Rome rather than the sum total of Christians in the city of Rome, is in fact the true church - and that the Church of or in England, which broke away from this, is not the true church. This is why Cranmer defined the true church in terms of faithfulness to the Word of God and Christ’s ordinances, and quite deliberately not in terms of any historical or geographical continuity.
So this led Cranmer to start to work out a new ecclesiology. Clearly it is not very satisfactorily worked out in this article. It is I suppose based on the idea that there is no visible church other than individual congregations. Cranmer might not have been happy with the implication that any higher level structures are administrative conveniences, to be dispensed of when not convenient, rather than divine ordinances. And the way in which this ecclesiology is worked out in the independent congregations of much of evangelicalism may be undesirable in various ways. Also the incarnational and eschatological dimensions have indeed been ignored. But two things are clear to me: this is an ecclesiology, and it is different from what you are claiming an ecclesiology must be.
It seems to me that you are simply repeating the allegation I read somewhere (was it here?) that evangelical Anglicans have no ecclesiology, when in fact what you mean is that their ecclesiology is different from yours. And by widening that allegation to include Cranmer you are effectively conceding that this evangelical ecclesiology is the authentic Anglican one and yours is not.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Peter, did you read the first paragraph, where I specifically said that the problem was not simply an evangelical one? I also did not simply define the church in terms of continuity with the past, but said such continuity had to be part of the definition. I see any other option as a form of docetism. There is more than one form of evangelical ecclesiology, and some take this historical dimension more seriously than others. I am not claiming that “independent congregations” do not have an ecclesiology; I am claiming they have a bad one, but, despite this article, I don’t think it’s Cranmer’s. His local church ultimately seems to be the nation.
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:00 am
Doug wrote, citing Acts: “the same gift”. What are we to make of this as a recognition of unity? ‘Same’ and ‘gift’. I will, Lord willing, blog on this later.
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Well, Doug, I agree that “liberal and catholic Anglican ecclesiology has tended to be promiscuous in its borrowings from the patristic period and contemporary Roman Catholicism”. And I think that is true of your ecclesiology and the source of your insistence on continuity.
I don’t see why the humanity of Christ, which was not continuous but died and was resurrected, implies the outward continuity of the church. Compare also how the people of Israel “died” at the Exile and had to be “resurrected”. Some Reformers, I’m not sure about Cranmer, effectively argued that the mediaeval church had died and needed to be resurrected, not in a completely new form but with a break in continuity.
Yes, I accept that Cranmer did not adequately separate the church and the state, as I discussed here, see also yesterday’s comment with a link to Tim Chesterton’s delayed reply. But my solution to this inadequacy is not to return to the ecclesiology of Rome but to follow Tim’s pointers towards the ecclesiology of the Anabaptists.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Peter, I think this loose application of the metaphor of death and resurrection ignores the fact that Israel has a history, however much that history is transformed, and the church has a history too, that needs to be constantly shaped as a witness in history to the history of God in Jesus, but also should seek to stand as a single people. I also think that you aren’t taking seriously enough either the promise of Jesus to Peter or the promise to all the disciples about being led into all truth. It sounds to me as though you, along with various strands of evangelicalism and the radical Reformation, are saying that God only keeps those promises intermittently: “our” group is being led into all truth, but for the last 500, 1000, 1500, 1900 years no-one was.
Some of the ways in which early Restorationist views of the church were expressed pretty much said the church was inspired by the Holy Spirit and wrote the Bible, then it went wrong, the Spirit woke up for a few years at the Reformation, but went back to sleep, but now we’re here and he’s really with us. I accept that is not what you’re saying, but I think you lay yourself wide open to such views without an adequate defence.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Doug, I see your point, but if you believe that the church is consistently led into all truth, then why do you implicitly agree with Cranmer’s rejection of the authority of Rome? After all, surely the alternative is to say that “our” Anglican group is being led into all truth, but between say 500 and 1500 no-one was. It seems to me that there is no logical way (except perhaps Eastern Orthodoxy) between holding on to all of mediaeval and modern Catholicism and holding that it has no authority at all. So, your ecclesiology should lead you back to Rome, whereas mine, probably closer to Cranmer’s, leads me in a quite different direction.
The Holy Spirit has indeed been working right through church history, when he has been allowed to, and has not been quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:19) by church leaders not giving him a chance to act. But the church, meaning every denomination, has been and still is a mixed multitude, with some truth in it but also some error, with some true believers and others who are not. Organisational continuity is no guarantee of doctrinal purity or the continuing acting of the Holy Spirit.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I think this is part an answer of watch this space for future articles. Hans Küng’s idea (not accepted by Rome) of indefectability is one I’m drawn to. The church isn’t infallible, will make mistakes, and will still be guided back. I see many of the doctrinal emphases of the Reformation as originally intended to be part of a guiding back, that themselves went astray in other areas, most noticeably (and with both sides at fault) in fracturing the unity of the church so drastically. I’m not fully sure exactly how to find the way forward that I want here, that balances continuity and transformation, history and eschatology, but I am sure that working at a visibility for that unity across time and space is important. (I’m not fully convinced the Orthodox actually achieve this either)
September 25th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
It is largely coincidental that my comment coincided with the news that Bishop Steenson is defecting to Rome, about which I had only see a snippet until I read this just now. This quote shows that ecclesiology was at the heart of his concerns: