The Anglican Position
Last weekend it was our privilege in the parish to convene a truly formidable array of Anglican scholars (together with Lutheran and Orthodox guests) for our Annual Conference. They were here to address the subject of what it means to be Catholic.
This topic is of central importance for all Christians since we all seek to uphold the Christian faith as a universal message of salvation for all who would follow Christ. Nonetheless, we do so here as Episcopalians who are part of the world-wide Anglican Communion and we do so even more specifically as Anglo-Catholics, which reflects a consciousness of a further specific identity.
Combining the words “Anglican” and “Catholic“ can sometimes cause confusion when people forget that the real meaning of the word catholic is universal. So it is important to recognise that we are indeed Anglican and not, for example, Roman Catholics “lite” in an Anglican guise. Again, we are without question heirs of a heritage shaped profoundly by the Reformation. But it is characteristic of us that we do not see ourselves as part of a church that started with the Reformation, for we are an offshoot, ultimately, of the Church in England which long pre-dated the Reformation, and indeed the Roman mission led by Augustine of Canterbury.
Exploring the fulness of our distinctive Anglo-Catholic identity is something we can best do over time, as it is indeed a rich heritage and we shall seek to do that systematically through our Christian education program. This will be an important ministry for our newly formed Grafton House initiative whose very purpose will be to resource and advance wider understanding of the Anglo Catholic tradition. We can all look forward to hearing more about how this will unfold in the coming months.
For now though, by way of illustrating one aspect of our distinctive Anglican voice, it is apposite to recall, as Dr. Walter Hannam did in his lecture last week, Article 6 of the famous Thirty-nine Articles of the Book of Common Prayer. That states firmly that, “HOLY Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”
This Anglican position, stood in contrast to that of the Council of Trent of the Roman Catholic Church, which had decreed, as the Anglican Divine Richard Hooker put it, that, “Scripture …be so insufficient, as if, except traditions were added, it did not contain all revealed and supernatural truth, which absolutely is necessary for the children of men in this life to know that they may in the next be saved.”
Anglicans freely admit, of course, that if unwritten traditions could be proven to be of either dominical or apostolic origin, they would have an authority equal to Scripture, “yet,” as Jeremy Taylor explained, “there is no dispute, whether they be to be preferred or relied upon, as the written or unwritten Word of God; for both are to be relied upon, and both equally; always provided that they be equally known to be so”.
But here the Anglo-Catholic distinctive comes in for, as Dr Hannam argued, we uphold in continuity with the apostolic Church, that Scripture and Apostolic Preaching shared one unified content – Christ according to the Scriptures. An appeal to sola scriptura is not, therefore, a negation of the authority of the Apostolic Deposit of faith: rather we uphold that this “deposit is itself enshrined in the Scriptures of the NT and has as its content nothing but Christ, demonstrated from the Scriptures….”
Hence, “the mind of the ancient Church to which Pusey points…can legitimately be seen as a source of doctrinal authority in the sense that it can be demonstrated to arise from the faithful reflection of the Church upon the same Scriptures and according to the same principles of interpretation as delivered to the Apostles by Christ himself, those principles being discernible from the apostolic writings of the New Testament. Nevertheless, the patristic interpretation of the Scriptures themselves stand under the judgement of Scripture, such that Scripture alone must be understood as the ultimate source of doctrinal authority or standard of faith.”
In the words of the Collect let us “read, marke, learne, and inwardly digeste them; that by pacience, and coumfort of thy holy woorde, we may embrace, and ever holde fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast geven us in our saviour Jesus Christe.”
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector