MetaCatholic

The Anglican Communion is clearly in a parlous state at present, and there are a variety of current reasons for that. However, blogging my way through the 39 articles has brought home to me some of the ways in which today’s problems have their roots in the past. There are two particular aspects I want to note by way of concluding the series, before ending with some positive affirmations.

The first is that except for the fairly light revisions reducing Cranmer’s forty-two articles in 1552 to thirty-nine by 1571, the articles have been largely stranded in the past. Cranmer’s original work represented the high-water-mark of Calvinism in the Church of England (though Cranmer was never a five-point Calvinist), which somehow managed to live with most of his 1552 Prayer Book and the greater part of his formulation of the articles, long after the tide had receded to a far more moderate Calvinist position. In various ways the retention of episcopacy, the battle against the Puritans, the survival of the cathedral tradition, the routine of a daily liturgy of set prayers that also incorporated readings from the deutero-canonical books, and very noticeably the trauma of the Interregnum all combined to offset that Calvinism with something much more self-conscious about its (small-c) catholicity. In some ways the articles were always out of date, fighting the battles of a very particular period in history, and yet never updated.

In legal terms, the articles are now downgraded to historic formularies (although it took a long time to so) and clearly one among others. This is the preface to the declaration of assent required of all clergy:

[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.

In practical terms, most lay Anglicans are fairly unaware of them. If asked about what statements of faith are used by Anglicans, most would be more likely to answer in terms of the catholic creeds. The articles themselves, of course, strongly suggest their own reformability by the place they give to scripture, and the statements they make about the possibility of error even in ecumenical councils. Unfortunately, no-one found a way to reform them in practice, however needed or desirable such reform might have been. One thing I believe I have shown in my examination is that there is no group currently in the Church of England that really upholds the articles in their entirety, however much some small conservative evangelical groups like Church Society claim to do.

This lack of an agreed mechanism for, or possibility of, reforming the articles (and perhaps thereby making them a useful set of boundary markers for the contemporary church’s thinking and practice) leads into the second problem that seems to occur again and again. There is no really coherent ecclesiology in the articles, whether that be working out the relationship between congregations and the catholic church, or the eschatological nature of a divine society in human and historical institutional form. The Holy Spirit gets short shrift in the articles. Assertions about a national church are hardly well-grounded theologically, and depend on a mix of misapplied Old Testament typology and a pragmatic obedience to the monarch as the only alternative to papal authority.

The role ascribed to the Crown-in-Parliament becomes in practice a fig-leaf for covering diversity and calling it comprehensiveness. But once Parliament admitted first Dissenters and then Roman Catholics, its role as a lay assembly of the church gathered round the chief lay minister of the Realm could no longer be upheld with any integrity even by the most romantic, Erastian or imaginative Anglican. The question of where authority resided had always had an inadequate answer, but now even that inadequate answer was exposed as a fiction.

Furthermore, this model was not fully capable of export, although it appeared to function within the British empire about as well as it functioned at home. But in the USA, with its democratic traditions, lay votes were far more powerful than anywhere else, and its polity was far less episcopal than its name suggested. And in the newly formed post-imperial cultures of Africa, even among evangelicals, bishops attained a power and authority that would embarrass many a European Catholic. (That confusion worse confounds the dialogue of the deaf between many Anglican bishops today.) It seems clear to me that what Anglicanism needs most is a vast amount of ecclesiological work, that actually tries to address some of these many inherited problems.

Having said all that, you may be wondering whether there’s any point to being an Anglican after such an indictment. But if my trawl through the articles has revealed what I see as significant problems, it has also helped me clarify where I think the strengths lie.

• Its doctrinal statements exist in the context of a worshipping church, and more of what it believes can be found in its liturgy than in abstracted arguments.
• It shows a commitment to rooting itself in the scriptures guided by the scriptural reasoning of the patristic era especially, but also tradition more generally.
• It tends to distrust absolute commitments to inerrant truth and absolute authority, even if it achieves this both through and at the cost of muddle and mess.
• It is necessarily particular, and if that has proved to be a real problem in its concept of monarch and national church, it is nonetheless essentially committed to inculturation.
• The now outdated model of Crown-on-Parliament still bears witness to an essential role for lay people in the governance of the church, which is always balanced by its commitment to episcopacy.
• Wherever possible, it is a both-and church, and not an either-or one, however confused and confusing that con sometimes be.

I’m still reasonably convinced I’m in the right place.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

I take the two final articles together, since they raise essentially the same concern. (Not purely from a desire to be finished with this series!) Their statements perhaps, first of all, remind us that the articles are in many respects more like boundary markers than a confession of faith. Certain positions are dealt with and options ruled out simply because they are there, rather than from any significant internal logic.

XXXVIII. Of Christian men’s Goods, which are not common
The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.

XXXIX. Of a Christian man’s Oath
As we confess that vain and rash Swearing is forbidden Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ, and James his Apostle, so we judge, that Christian Religion cloth not prohibit, but that a man may swear when the Magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the Prophet’s teaching, in justice, judgement, and truth.

They are interesting less for what they actually say, and more as an example of the problems which the stress on “the plain meaning of scripture” could lead to. In the case of the first it would be quite easy to infer from Luke’s work generally, and the example of the apostolic church in Acts specifically, that the preferable model of the church is of a community that holds all things in common. Yet at the same time Paul’s letters clearly reflect social differences continuing to exist in the church, and the various house churches dependent on both the wealth and generosity of heads of households. Indeed, in the case of Phoebe, for example, it is her model generosity as a patron of Paul’s that is expected to commend her to the church in Rome.

In this case, there is clear diversity in the scriptures, and the enthusiastic picture painted by Luke of the eschatological community is relatively quickly sidelined in the face of a call to be generous with wealth, rather than surrender ownership. Within a few centuries the idea of common life becomes part of the vocation of monks and their witness to a more demanding form of discipleship. The day to day world of social interaction in a world of inequality is confronted by the more prevalent scriptural call to generosity, and not by this early form of communal existence. Here the tradition steers the reader between competing but equally plain texts.

In the second case, it is less obvious that there are competing texts in the face of a plain command; “Do not swear at all.” (Matt 5:34). Far from referring to “vain and rash Swearing” as the article puts it, the commandment in context refers to the taking of solemn oaths before the Lord. The difference between the oaths the text refers to, and those the article refers to appears to lie not in the rashness, but in whether they are voluntary self-decided oaths, or those required by authority (not addressed in the text). Unlike the idea of communal living, there are no other obvious counter-examples to this command in the New Testament, although Paul is reported as being under a vow (Acts 18:18 – which need not include swearing an oath) and Hebrews makes play of God’s swearing an oath (Heb 7:28). Peter’s swearing of an oath at his denial is hardly intended as a positive example to follow.

Looking at the text here, it seems rather more obvious that the “plain meaning” of scripture is more on the side of the Anabaptists than the Anglican Reformers, although it has to be said very clearly that there is no direct reference to a situation where an oath is required by a competent authority, far less a competent Christian authority. Noticeably, recent precedent, even in the Church of England, has given more credence to the Anabaptist reading: clergy on being ordained or licensed are now allowed to affirm their vows rather than swear them. The article, however, is quite clear that the “plain meaning” is that judged to be a fair interpretation by those who hold authority, and that traditional interpretations together with what seems a reasonable requirement of authority, will guide that interpretation.

What does seem evident is that not just the existence of the articles as a guide to how the Church reads scripture, but the content of these and others of them, continue to point to a need for authoritative interpretation, and a place for both present authority and past tradition. The idea of the “plain meaning of scripture” is one which is not meant to include just anyone’s reading of what the Bible says. Indeed these last articles exclude certain “plain meanings” in favour of (in article 38) other reasonable readings and (in article 39) traditional and pragmatic understandings of the scriptures. The Anabaptists showed the Anglican Reformers some of the possibilities of what sola scriptura might mean, and they did not like what they saw. The articles, and the continued testimony of the prayer book, both by their existence and their content, show that while the primacy of scripture might be deeply valued in the Anglican Church, one could never describe its position as “scripture alone”.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

I’m vaguely aware that Christmas is past and that I want to get to the end of the 39 articles by the end of 2007. Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure what to make of the next one to come under scrutiny, the thirty-seventh. More than many, it breathes the air of a bygone age, but it also throws up subjects like capital punishment and war which need whole series of posts of their own.

XXXVII. Of the Civil Magistrates

The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction.

Where we attribute to the King’s Majesty the chief government, by which Titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended; we give not to our Princes the ministering either of God’s Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative, which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself; that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evildoers.

The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.

The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences.

It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars.

It is noteworthy that the sole (quite frequently quoted) reference in the articles to the pope comes in this article on civil power. “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” No doubt in part that recognised the de facto reality that the pope was one among many competing political powers in Europe, whatever else his role might have been. Alongside this, during the whole mediaeval period, bishops more generally were powerful nobles in their own right, and exercised considerable secular power from their castles and palaces. On the ground it was not easy to distinguish between temporal and secular authority. Handing heretics over to the “secular arm” for the death penalty because the church could not execute people was in some respects a legal fiction. This jumbling up of authority was the daily reality of life, irrespective of theological perspective, even as it was increasingly coming under threat from the widespread social changes that marked the end of the late mediaeval period, and the beginning of the early modern, with the bourgeoisie coming into their own, and changing the balance of power between monarch, nobles and bishops.

What was largely different theologically was that where the Reformation generally made a theological virtue out of the practical necessity of turning to princes for protection from the pope, the Anglican Reformers developed a particular theory of monarchical power rooted in the Old Testament. So in the early stages of the Reformation they proclaimed the boy-king Edward VI as a new Josiah, and took the model of the Deuteronomic reforms as the model for Protestant reformation. In a way, Anglican England began life as a theocracy, and as the symbiosis between temporal and spiritual power diluted itself in myriad ways in the succeeding centuries, competing accounts and visions of authority emerged, none being particularly successful nor becoming triumphant.

In many respects this was not, and is not, simply an Anglican problem but a Christian one. (Even Rome’s answer is only achieved by maintaining a small corner of the Eternal City as an independent theocracy.) The primary theological resources of the New Testament (and its earliest interpreters)  had little to say about the exercise of power or any theology of the State. The church was ill-equipped to respond to becoming either the official or a majority religion, and has continued to struggle with it. The Reformers’ abandonment of the mediaeval theologians’ work exacerbated the lack of guidance in the patristic era to which they turned. The best they had was Augustine, veering between his magisterial vision of the City of God, and his practical turn to the secular power to defeat the Donatists. In the end, perhaps, they were more ready to follow the lead of Eusebius’ baptism of Constantine’s ascendancy as providence.

Something of the problem is suggested by the last two clauses of the article, asserting the rightness both of capital punishment and waging war. With the partial exception of John Paul II, there really has been very little coherent theology done on either of these two topics by theologians working within the mainstream churches in their varied relationships with the State. The only Anglican theologian of any note working in this area I’m aware of is Oliver O’Donovan, whose work seems a marginal interest for most. The loudest voices come from the descendants of the Anabaptist tradition, ruled out as “slanderous folks” by this article, and generally condemned by the magisterial Reformers. The European consensus on these matters, largely shared by the international left-leaning parties, that both war and the death penalty are largely failures of a civilised society, is usually simply assumed. In fact there is a greater gulf between the Christian tradition and the contemporary consensus here than there is on any matter relating to sexuality.

In the spirit of this article, I fail to see how the Anabaptist tradition offers any answer other than an opt-out, a misplaced application of eschatology to the created order. The Anglican tradition may have been singularly poor at producing a coherent political theology for a multi-cultural democracy in the modern world, but its history points strongly to the need for an affirming one that gives God an interest in the ordering of society, and encourages political participation as a Christian vocation. I cannot see that a term such as Anabaptist Anglican, however well-intentioned, is anything more than an oxymoron. For Anglicans, a commitment to God’s ordering and re-ordering of the world as a question of justice means that a theology of law, statehood and even of war is something at which the church and its theologians should be working. However difficult it is now, and however inadequate or wrong-headed it was in the past, this is an aspect of the tradition that no church—concerned for its members to live in the real world—can afford to neglect.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

Sometimes, blogging through the articles, I find myself at one where there is very little to say. This is one such.

XXXVI. Of Consecration of Bishops and Ministers
The Book of Consecration of Archbishops and Bishops, and Ordering of Priests and Deacons, lately set forth in the tine of Edward the Sixth, and confirmed at the same time by authority of Parliament, doth contain all things necessary to such Consecration and Ordering: neither hath it any thing, that of itself is superstitious and ungodly. And therefore whosoever are consecrated or ordered according to the Rites of that Book, since the second year of the forenamed King Edward unto this time, or hereafter shall be consecrated or ordered according to the same Rites; we decree all such to be rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated and ordered.

What we can see in this article is perhaps the clearest statement of Anglicanism as a via media present in the articles. On the one hand it wishes to maintain against Rome that the ordinal contains “all things necessary” for ordaining men to the historic threefold ministry of the Church. On the other it wishes to maintain against Geneva (the Puritans) that there is nothing “superstitious and ungodly” in the rites provided.

The stubbornness with which Anglicans have clung to the threefold ministry (intensified after the Interregnum) has then and now been a cause of surprise and suspicion to many Protestants, but more than most aspects of the English Reformation has shaped and determined what is involved in the Anglican claim to be Catholic as well as Reformed. Looked at from Rome, the most baffling aspect of this retention of the orders (or at least the same names and claims for them) is the combining of episcopacy with giving the Crown-in-Parliament a role in the lay governance of the Church. Noticeably (and for the first time in the articles) the lay authority of Parliament is noted as confirming the proper validity of the Church’s holy orders.

This role of Crown-in-Parliament has been in all sorts of ways theologically problematic, even when considered as a form of lay participation in church governance. It is hard to produce a particularly strong scriptural, traditional or reasonable case for such involvement of the secular authority. Yet at the time of the articles it was not only a palpable element in constructing and reconstructing the English settlement, it was also in practice the fundamental means by which the via media was established, maintained and enforced.

As the role of Crown-in-Parliament has become increasingly formal and vestigial in England, and most Anglicans world-wide exist in provinces where it has no role at all, it is also observably true that the via media is increasingly hard to maintain. I cannot regret the slow passing of this theological oddity that gave secular power a role in the governance of the Church, although I certainly regret some of the many consequences of its passing.

While I think there have been some outstanding contributions towards an Anglican ecclesiology – most notably Michael Ramsey’s The Gospel and the Catholic Church (out of print)– this article reveals as much as any that underpinning all of Anglicanism’s more recent crises is a fundamental ecclesiological weakness, bound up with what has arguably been its greatest pragmatic strength.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

It feels good to be getting along to the end of this series on the articles, now that I arrive at the thirty-fifth. Again, this article demonstrates something of the huge change in culture between the Church of the Reformation era, and today’s.

XXXV. Of the Homilies
The second Book of Homilies, the several titles whereof we have joined under this Article, doth contain a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and necessary for these tunes, as doth the former Book of Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth; and therefore we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people.
(A listing of the Second Book of Homilies follows)

The homilies not only provided what were then thought of as model sermons. they served to provide sermons for those priests (and there were initially many) who were not licensed to preach, because they were regarded as insufficiently learned – especially in the new expressions of doctrine of the Reformers. The emphasis on a learned clergy, and efforts to create them, slowly obviated the need for the homilies, as the licence to preach eventually became universally part of the priest’s licence. I guess, though, that the Reformers’ judgement on those parishes who allow lay people untrained in theology, and without a bishop’s licence, to preach on a fairly regular basis, would nonetheless still be unprintable.

It is also worth noting that these homilies, taken as patterns, reveal some significant differences with much contemporary preaching, not least in the complete detachment from the Scriptures set for the day. This set up a model which has overall had a negative effect, especially when combined with the relative limitations of the Sunday lectionary in the BCP. In evangelical parishes there was an increasing abandonment of the lectionary in order to preach sermon series from scripture. In the rest of the church there was an increasing detachment from specific scriptural passages, which made the relevance of scripture seem less obvious than it might have done in the hands of a skilled interpreter. The newer lectionaries have been helping restore the link between preaching and the scriptures that have just been corporately read. Such a practice should better inform the individual scripture reading people might engage in in the week.

Stressing the need for a learned clergy was not an unmixed blessing. On the positive side, it produced not only a thoughtful theological approach to scripture and ministry, but also encouraged a general fascination with learning. Anglican parish clergy were noticeable in every field of knowledge, not least the natural sciences, until increasing professionalization and specialisation took over in the nineteenth century. Of course, there was for a long time an effective Anglican monopoly on learning in both universities: college fellows normally had to be ordained, and one had to be Anglican to gain a degree until the middle of that same nineteenth century that saw the disappearance of Renaissance man as an educational ideal.

On the negative side, this was one of the features that set the typical priest on the side of the gentry and apart from the normal run of people in the parishes. It was class division by twinning education with religious affiliation and money. Both the disenfranchised dissenters and the extremely unlearned clergy that came over with the bog-Irish were by contrast pretty much on the same level as their people. Clerical learning, initially intended to serve the gospel, became part of the social pattern that estranged the clergy from the emergent working class.

The church regularly exhibits the desire to fight yesterday’s battles, and having digested the divorce from ordinary people that accompanied this stress on learning, has looked for a broader base from which to call its clergy, and far greater diversity in the methods and modes of training offered. Ironically, of course, this has happened at the same time that more and more people enter higher education, a higher education whose often unspoken tenet and cultural milieu is one that assumes real learning and religion are fundamentally incompatible. The church has, responding to past criticisms, so turned its back on elitism, that it has allowed the elite to assume that Christianity has nothing for them, and propagate that view in the universities and the media.

Preaching and theology need to escape from this false dichotomy that has paralysed too much of their history. Deep learning and good communication need to go together. It is usually the person who has understood something most deeply who can express it most simply. The obfuscating terminology that has affected so many arts and humanities subjects in the post-modern world (so that they can compete with the technical language of science) should have no place in theological discourse, far less spill over into preaching. (Radical Orthodoxy, please note.) At the same time, we must resist all those who would treat “theology” as a dirty word, and try to reduce Christian doctrine to cosy nostrums, and cast a sprinkling of angel dust over secular moralities. The challenges of truly proclaiming the gospel in simple terms to a complex world demand nothing less the greatest learning we can aspire to.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

If the bulk of the articles address issues of controversy with Rome, some look at controversies with the more radical wing of the Reformation, such as the thirty-fourth:

XXXIV. Of the Traditions of the Church
It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times these have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word. Whosoever through his private judgement, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly (that others may fear to do the like) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.

Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying.

The sort of issues at stake in the run up to the 1662 republication of the articles might helpfully illustrate what would have been in people’s minds when reading this article. I take these examples from the Savoy Conference of 1661. Some of them may be surprising. Among other things, the Puritans objected to:

• The Litany, because “the Petitions for a great part are uttered only by the People, which we think not to be so consonant to Scripture, which makes the Minister the Mouth of the People to God in Prayer”.¹
• The keeping of Lenten fast days, and the observation of Holy Days (especially some of them as days without work)
• Readings from the Apocrypha
• Insufficient stress on repentance and both original and specific sins in the words of the confessions in the BCP
• The use of the sign of the cross in baptism
• Kneeling to receive Holy Communion

First, this list shows how things have changed. Today’s inheritors of the sola scriptura mantle would never object to the congregation praying themselves as unscriptural. That, in itself, shows what a slippery concept “consonant to Scripture” actually is, and how prone to traditional interpretations. Nor can one easily imagine anyone today thinking that the lengthy confessions in the BCP liturgy are in any way “light” on sin. Contexts shift rapidly. And how surprised would the Puritans and Bishops gathered at Savoy have been to find that at the start of the 21st century, kneeling to receive communion is as likely to happen in Evangelical churches as standing to receive is in Catholic ones?

At one level, this reinforces the common-sense observation of the article that “It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times these have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners”. At another level it suggest that the actual interplay between traditional practices and competing readings of scripture is never as straightforward as any theory suggests.

There are competing underlying principles between Puritan and Anglicans here: for the former the principle is “If it isn’t in Scripture, don’t do it”, for the latter, “If it isn’t against Scripture, do what the church teaches” and the assumption underpinning that Anglican view is always “Whatever our church teaches is not against Scripture.” Hence those who disagree are, according to the article, setting their private judgement against the authority of the Church.

The article seems to entirely miss noticing its most egregious innovation, to be found neither in tradition or scripture, that moves from noting diverse historical and cultural practices to the assertion that “every particular or national Church” is where the authority in matters of tradition lies. It is this complete blurring of the social and ecclesial orders that has always been the Church of England’s biggest fault, and which lies at the root of many of its contemporary problems, whether adjusting to post-Christian society, or creating and responding to bizarre concepts of “provincial autonomy” across the Anglican Communion.

Another fault-line, which continues to run through the present day life of the Anglican world is the assumption that whatever is in Scripture is by divine authority, and whatever isn’t is by “man’s authority.” This black and white characterization does little justice to the actuality of scripture, tradition or lived experience, and their complicated interplay, whether demonstrated in the making of the canon, the development of the catholic creeds, or the ongoing re-reading of scripture. As noted above, the plain meaning of Scripture to the Puritans of yesterday is the opposite of its plain meaning to their successors today on the question of congregational prayer and liturgy. The difference between the two positions articulated as scriptural can only be understood in the light of tradition and experience.

It seems to me obvious that the Anglican principle “provided it’s not against Scripture” is vastly better than the Puritan principle “only if it’s in Scripture”. Not only does it take seriously the partial and fragmentary picture of the life of the church in the New Testament, it allows us to acknowledge the vast gulf between then and now, and the many aspects of contemporary life completely unknown to the authors. But it is also clear from the issues surrounding the conception of particular and national churches, and the simple bifurcation between scriptural divine authority, and all other human authority, that the article fails to articulate a sufficient doctrine of tradition, and can easily end up seeming to support a somewhat arbitrary authority, insufficiently rooted in doctrines of either the Spirit or the Church, or indeed in Scripture.

There is a partial answer implied in the way the Church’s traditional practice, rooted in past and corporate readings of Scripture, and declared scriptural by competent authority, is opposed to private judgement and individual readings of Scripture. But that lacks sufficient explication of how traditional readings may either challenge or be challenged by fresh ones, and what competent authority is. Again, as in previous articles, we may see here the roots of present Anglican difficulties in an insufficiently clear articulation of ecclesiology in the past. The over-identification and merging of secular and religious authority in monarch and magistrate, which allows such easy (and in my view entirely unbiblical and untraditional) talk of a national church is the besetting sin (heresy?) of Anglicanism, from which its best theologians have never entirely managed to purge it, and from which so many of its current problems flow.

1. Colin Buchanan The Savoy Conference Revisited Grove Books 2002 p.19 [↩]

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

Sometimes the articles make obvious the different context in which they were written, and reveal some of their underpinning assumptions. This is the case with the thirty-third:

XXXIII. Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided
That person which by open denunciation of the Church is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church, and excommunicated, ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful, as an Heathen and Publican, until he be openly reconciled by penance and received into the Church by a Judge that hath authority thereunto.

More explicitly than any of the articles overtly dealing with ecclesiology this reveals certain assumptions about the Church. It places more weight on authority and discipline, and therefore on the Church as an institution. It stresses the Church as more than a local congregation, and, at the least as an interdependent body. And underpinning it seems to be a clear assumption that there is only one Church in this realm of England. After all, the excommunicate actually include various dissenters and, of course, Roman Catholics.

Once there are competing bodies all claiming the name “Church” discipline becomes a much more complex issue. That is illustrated most painfully and powerfully by the current situation in the Anglican Communion. But it can also be found in the Roman splinter group of the Society of St Pius X. Indeed, in the multi-denominational world when for many, Salvation Army members and Quakers are recognised as Christians, and their organisations recognised by some as Churches, it raises the question of what on earth excommunication can mean, if those who are neither baptised or communicate in the first place, are regarded as Christian. That doesn’t stop people talking as though the earlier situation obtained, but it does reveal a great deal of confusion behind the language that is rarely unmasked.

The article’s root lies in its allusions to St Matthew’s gospel:

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17  NRSV)

This special Matthean material appears unknown to the developing Church of the first-century outside Matthew’s community, even if the degree of discipline it implies eventually came to be seen as the normal tradition of the Church, and, for Calvin at least, one of the marks of the Church. Yet, with the exception of one incident in Paul’s writing, (1 Corinthians 5) dealing with an issue of behaviour that was as unacceptable outside as it should have been inside the church, the overall method adopted seems to have been persuasion rather than coercion. No doubt that was in large part due to the rudimentary organisation, and diverse and disparate nature of the church. Coercive discipline was largely out of its reach. It does mean, however, that persuasion as a call to self-discipline has a good New Testament pedigree, and need not simply be a matter of helpless hand-wringing.

That is, I think, unquestionably where we are today. First, the history of the Church’s use of the power of excommunication has not been a particularly happy one. A burning ardour for holiness has all to often resulted in the burning of those declared unholy. Second, we largely lack the possibility of this kind of coercive discipline today. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, persuasive pastoring and prophetic preaching as an appeal to self-discipline are in many ways more congruent with the methods God chose to reach us through the incarnation.

One of the few situations I have myself envisaged as a possibility of excommunication has been the “What if a BNP election candidate turned up at church?” (Note to those outside the UK, the BNP is a racist and fascist political party, which often claims to be upholding traditional British Christian culture – i.e white mono-culturalism.) Yet I wonder what would do more good, the public posture of an excommunication, or regular and repeated denunciation of it from the pulpit, or a strong pastoral confrontation?

I conclude with a slightly off-topic video take.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

Those who sometimes compare the 39 articles to a confession of faith overlook the practical and non-confessional nature of some like the thirty-second. This deals entirely with the non-credal topic of clergy marriage. It is also (at least nowadays) not an issue between the Roman Catholic and other Churches. The Vatican is quite clear that this is not a matter of divine Law, but of ecclesial discipline and tradition, that the Church can change as and when it chooses. In some ways, therefore, there is little to say about it. In other ways, however, it might be worth some reflection. Here is the text of the article.

XXXII. Of the Marriage of Priests
Bishops, Priests and Deacons are not commanded by God’s Law, either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage: therefore it is lawful for them, as for all other Christian men, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to godliness.

This article was part of a move that re-emphasised the virtue of marriage. The marriage of clergy did a great deal practically and symbolically to insist it was not a second-best state of life, and undermined the superiority of celibacy, which seemed to be embedded in the tradition, especially the (not entirely misplaced) traditional interpretation of Paul. It also brought in its wake some unintended consequences, not least of which was the increasing binding of ministry to being a middle-class occupation, often domesticated and in many “clerical” families being made almost hereditary. The eschatological note that celibacy at its best represented was too easily overlooked. Clergy marriage almost certainly contributed to the Church of England’s loss of touch with the emerging working classes.

In today’s context the almost complete disappearance of celibacy among the clergy (and more widely) is a question the Church seems unable to address. It is hardly valuing celibacy to turn it into a compulsory option for a devalued caste of gay clergy, while vaunting the joys of marital sex for everyone else. Turning to it as the solution for homosexuality is not much more than binding heavy burdens for others to carry, unless it is also fully encouraged and promoted as a serious and valued vocation for straights also.

In a society which is, at least by most historical comparisons, heavily over-sexualised, perhaps the Church’s most distinctive stand against modern culture might be found in promoting celibacy as either a time-limited or permanent vow, among ordained and lay alike. As such, it witnesses to several strands of the gospel:

• our name and identity are guaranteed their future by God, not having children
• our most enduring relationship is one of love in God
• the fulfilment of all desire is the full and final vision of God

These are all positive strands in a society concerned about inheritance and property, troubled by swathes of broken relationships, and seeking the instant gratification of desire. Affirming these does not mean we cannot also affirm the many blessings of marriage (and rather less grudgingly than Cranmer’s marriage service, which notoriously presents it as an option for those “who have not the gift of continency” and “to avoid fornication”). But it does mean we should stop talking about marriage as a blessing by which God affirms “normal” people, and celibacy as a prison sentence for queers. Talking up, as many now do, the blessing and enjoyment of straight sex – even inventive straight sex – and the importance of focussing on the family, is itself a partial capitulation to contemporary culture. Arguably it is more of a capitulation than gay and lesbian couples seeking to affirm life-long fidelity (in sacramental imitation of God’s fidelity) in a culture where promiscuity and serial monogamy are increasingly the norm.

What is a clear to me is that the Church of England has forgotten how to value celibacy, and trotting it out as “the gay vocation” is an insult both to gay people and to the celibate call. A positive affirmation of it as a call – perhaps even a call particularly congruent with ordained and apostolic ministry – will do far more in the end to offer a counter-cultural mission to our society, even if it will be less pleasing to our (monogamously challenged) African brothers and sisters than thunderous denunciations of gays. It might even offer a rather more pertinent counter-cultural gospel in their society too.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

For some people, the Church sometimes seems to be a “yesterday’s controversy preservation society”. This is especially apparent in some of the arguments over justification that are currently raging around Bishop Tom Wright. It is also true, I think, of many Christians’ attitudes to the Eucharist. First, then, the past controversy as reflected in the thirty-first article.

XXXI. Of the Oblation of Christ of Christ finished upon the Cross
The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

It is not apparent to me whether this article intends a distinction between a “common view” of Eucharistic sacrifice as a repeated one, and an unspecified more theological view, or if it intends to subsume all Catholic teaching under “in the which it was commonly said”. But there are potentially many ways in which sacrificial language can be used of the Eucharist which continues to maintain the uniqueness of the Cross.

There are two arguments that might be worth considering, which I will not do so here, except to note them, which might reframe some of the questions about the past controversy. One concerns the theory of atonement adopted by the Reformers, and whether models other than propitiation and satisfaction might offer a different set of approaches to Eucharistic theology. It might also be worth discussing if reading Paul entirely in the light of the stress of Hebrews on the “once and for all” sacrificial nature of the Cross doesn’t distort some of the ways in which Paul speaks of the unique salvific role of Christ’s death.

Regarding the dispute, however, both Anglicans and Roman Catholics have moved on. I quote first from the Agreed Statement on the Eucharist of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission.

Christ’s redeeming death and resurrection took place once and for all in history. Christ’s death on the cross, the culmination of his whole life of obedience, was the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. There can be no repetition of or addition to what was then accomplished once for all by Christ.

Any attempt to express a nexus between the sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist must not obscure this fundamental fact of the Christian faith. … Christ instituted the Eucharist as a memorial (anamnesis) of the totality of God’s reconciling action in him. In the eucharistic prayer the church continues to make a perpetual memorial of Christ’s death, and his members, united with God and one another, give thanks for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering.

In response to queries about the statement, ARCIC said:

There is therefore one historical, unrepeatable sacrifice, offered once for all by Christ and accepted once for all by the Father. In the celebration of the memorial, Christ in the Holy Spirit unites his people with himself in a sacramental way so that the Church enters into the movement of his self-offering. In consequence, even though the Church is active in this celebration, this adds nothing to the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, because the action is itself the fruit of this sacrifice. The Church in celebrating the Eucharist gives thanks for the gift of Christ’s sacrifice and identifies itself with the will of Christ who has offered himself to the Father on behalf of all mankind.

Both the statement and the elucidation are worth reading in full. This view is of course consonant with the argument I put forward in an earlier post. I will not repeat those arguments here, although they underpin my own thinking, and explain why I find this ARCIC statement one rooted in scripture and the Church’s traditional reading of it.

Here I want to go on exploring agreed views, not personal ones. While I am reluctant to lend any weight to the “creeping magisterium” view of the Lambeth Conference, currently being attributed to it by the proponents of a traditional view on gay relationships, it is worth noting the Lambeth Conference resolution on ARCIC. This has more authority than the current bug-bear of 1998’s resolution 1:10, since it was agreed after a consultation with all provinces, and thus represents the mind of the Anglican Communion reasonably comprehensively.

While we respect continuing anxieties of some Anglicans in the areas of “sacrifice” and “presence”, they do not appear to reflect the common mind of the provincial responses, in which it was generally felt that the Elucidation of “Eucharistic Doctrine” was a helpful clarification and reassurance. Both are areas of “mystery” which ultimately defy definition.

But the Agreed Statement on the Eucharist sufficiently expresses Anglican understanding.

The Eucharist, in short, while in no sense being a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, is a means of participation in Christ’s self-offering. Seeing it in this way allows us to express in prayer and liturgical enactment the calling “to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:2) and “to make up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” (Colossians 1:24). These actions are responses, but they are not simply responses to Christ, they are responses in Christ, as we get caught up in his work of drawing us and all people into an offering of love to the Father.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

My first thoughts on the thirtieth of the articles were somewhat unhelpful: a) I couldn’t think what there was to say about it, since the point of its polemic is now history, and b) the pleasure at thinking there were only nine more articles to go. On further reflection, however, I felt there were some more or less tangential observations to make.

XXX. Of both kinds
The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.

This has ceased to be a point of division, but there are other issues around the practicalities of administration which might generally worth be subsuming under this heading. The argument of the article is grounded primarily in what happened at the Last Supper, sharing one loaf (unleavened, presumably) and one cup with his disciples. It is less grounded in any theological dispute over the nature of the sacrament, although such issues are related. And it is in the area of theologically informed practice that I want to keep my observations.

First, I note what I see to be an unfortunate attitude that has almost created a doctrine out of receiving in both kinds. You see it when people, having a cold or some other transmittable illness, hold on to their wafer and then dip it in the chalice. Certainly with everyday bread, and even with broken wafers, this runs the risk of leaving lumps in the chalice for someone else to swallow. Yet so important has reception in both kinds become, that people seem unable to do the obvious thing, which is to receive under one kind alone. It does seem to me that one needs to emphasise that Christ is wholly given in either species. Christ and his self-gift are not divided, with one benefit coming from the host and the other from the chalice.

Second, there does seem to be a strange irony in inter-traditional criticism. Many of those who are critical of the practice of using wafers are quite happy to have individual thimbles of grape juice. Those most critical of the grape-juice mini-cups, are appalled by the use of ordinary bread. The latter have at least the justification that unleavened wafers are rather more like what Jesus would have used than leavened bread, though I suspect that his would have been more like chapatti than matzos. It does seem to me that a shared loaf and a shared cup convey something about what the sacrament is, not only in terms of its origins, but in terms of its efficacy as a sacrament of unity. Neither individual wafers nor individual cups serve that symbolism well. In churches like mine, which for the practical reasons of reservation, use wafers, we have for this reason adopted the use of very large wafers, so that everyone shares a broken piece.

Finally, there is the difficult area of inculturation. If we are at least to some extent to be governed by the practice of Jesus, is the use of bread and wine (indeed, wine mixed with water) absolutely essential? I note that there are ways in which we are not governed by the practice of Jesus. We do not only celebrate this meal annually, in the context of a seder. Many Protestant communities have long ceased using wine, and substituted unfermented grape juice or (less commonly) some other fruit-based drink. Most (as also many Anglican Evangelical churches) do not have a mixed cup of wine and water, although that would seem to have been the norm for wine in the first centuries of the church. In the majority of communities that do use a mixed cup, additional symbolic meaning has somewhat obscured the link with normal first century use. But where are the limits to how far churches should go from treating Jesus’ institution as normative?

The use of bread and wine, as also the use of a whole range of linguistic symbols in Scripture, are embedded in the culture of Israel, and the history of God’s specific dealings with his chosen people. Just as I would argue for continuing to use the metaphor of shepherd, even in cultures that don’t know what a sheep is, and develop appropriate footnotes, teaching and explanation, so I would argue for continuing to use bread and wine. I do not say that one can never celebrate the Eucharist with something else. I can easily imagine times and places when bread or wine is simply unavailable, and I do not think that ought to prevent a Eucharist taking place. I am arguing here for normal and normative practice. But the meaning and practice of the Eucharist is not merely found in some generic human practice of shared hospitality, even if it is deeply related to it. It is found in the specific history of Jesus, the Judean who interpreted his death in the light of Israel’s Passover. Bread and wine root the Eucharist in that story. (And even more so unleavened bread and a mixed cup!) In that sense, the essential instinct of this article, that Jesus’ practice should inform our celebration, offers wise guidance.