Mist without schism – The Anglican Vocation ?

It was the anti-modernist Austrian layman, Friedrich von Hügel, who observed in an intriguingly Anglican sounding spirit: “Never get things too clear. Religion can’t be clear. In this mixed up life there is always an element of unclearness…” This sounds very Anglican in spirit, since it all too evidently sums up an Anglican reality. But while some might see this as rather a challenge there is an important positive aspect to it as well and it links with a very characteristic epistemic and even metaphysical reticence within the Episcopal and Anglican tradition.

Over three decades ago, the Roman Catholic theologian Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P. (a noted scholar of Bulgakov and von Balthasar among many other subjects) wrote an impressive work about Anglicanism entitled, The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism. The work is ultimately a stern critique of perceived Anglican failures, as well of our strengths. In many ways its findings would be echoed by those within the Anglican tradition who find it at times all too frustrating in its travails––and most especially when it comes to the seeming struggle needed in order to uphold a coherent identity. 

Nonetheless, this book does actually highlight the historical and theological depth which has always underpinned Anglicanism. This needs to be remembered very firmly at a time when many are too quick to allege a lack of intellectual seriousness, merely because of the manifest shallowness of one or another public pronouncement made by high profile figures. 

Certainly, it is not in dispute (and can be seen as a strength) that there are at least three strands that have long defined much of Anglicanism, namely Low Church Evangelicalism, High Church Tractarianism, and Broad Church Latitudinarianism, each of which was rooted in particular historical contexts and the overarching legacy of the Reformation. But it is actually an important and encouraging fact we need to dwell upon more often that Anglicanism has lived with this reality for a very long time. This gives us good reason to think it has enough resilience that it can continue to do so, provided the essentials needed to affirm our distinctive identity are maintained. 

There is an important underlying and very Anglican truth here, which it will be necessary to uphold if this grand project is to succeed. This is that unity does not have to entail uniformity and that our Anglican tradition can still be authentic in its breadth without sacrificing claims to truth. Indeed, the error of supposing that the claims of truth must require a lock-step uniformity is an error that has been of great cost––as the history of puritanism and even modern day totalitarian liberalism (which is in many ways a child of puritanism) have illustrated all too well (and the Salem witch trials showed locally). 

With these considerations in mind, it is easy to see why one commentator observed of Aidan Nichols, that while he had “certainly learned the rules of Anglicanism,” he nonetheless proved “unable to play the game.” There is no doubt at all about Fr. Nichols’ scholarship and acuity regarding the history and development of Anglicanism since the Reformation, and this makes it curious that none of that long history allows him to see how or why Anglicanism can continue to survive––as it does with such vigour––or why all Anglicans should not at once see the error of their ways and hasten to regularise their position with Rome.

To think thus is to think with the error of ‘intégrisme’ which would seek to bring all within one system––from which breaking ranks is forbidden––because unity is more important than the quest for truth.

Certainly, the vision of Fr. Nichols’ would see an Anglican Church united to, but not simply absorbed by, Rome in such a supposedly accommodating way as to allow various different strands to flourish within the greater whole––such as ‘a metaphysic of theocentric humanism drawn from the Cambridge platonists, a doctrinal and sacramental ethos from the Restoration divines (wherein incarnation, liturgy and church are linked), and a missionary spirit borrowed from the evangelicals. But the problem with this putative Roman nirvana is that it rather well describes the Anglican Church which we already inhabit. A church which has moreover for centuries successfully linked these elements in its faith in a pastoral unity that allows for a diversity of practice. 

None of this shows the need for some greater ecclesial framework or additional validation over and above what is already possessed. Moreover, as one commentator has put it, when we think of our Roman Catholic friends, “what I see is a group of people who are very much like me but who have fought to be like me against the very framework which Fr. Nichols says I need.”  

All this suggests for Anglicans the desirability of accepting ecumenically the integrity of the other in the case of both Rome and the Orthodox as well as Oriental Churches, while we hope and pray for ever greater unity and allow our respective churches and communions to grow together in faith, accepting the givenness of the Gospel and the unique truth of salvation in Christ, with patience and friendship as well as a shared witness and common service to our wider culture––a vision which it must be said can seem easier to articulate in the abstract than to live out in the particular. But then again, ease and comfort in this life were never part of the promises of Christ.