The Church in Anglican Theology

A Historical, Theological and Ecumenical Exploration

Kenneth A. Locke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317038283
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book is the first systematic attempt to describe a coherent and comprehensive Anglican understanding of Church. Rather than focusing on one school of thought, Dr Locke unites under one ecclesiological umbrella the seemingly disparate views that have shaped Anglican reflections on Church. He does so by exploring three central historical developments: (1) the influence of Protestantism; (2) the Anglican defence of episcopacy; and (3) the development of the Anglican practice of authority. Dr Locke demonstrates how the interaction of these three historical influences laid the foundations of an Anglican understanding of Church that continues to guide and shape Anglican identity. He shows how this understanding of Church has shaped recent Anglican ecumenical dialogues with Reformed, Lutheran, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. Drawing on the principle that dialogue with those who are different can lead to greater self-understanding and self-realization, Dr Locke demonstrates that Anglican self-identity rests on firmer ecclesiological foundations than is sometimes supposed.

Chapter 1

The Reformation and Anglicanism

Any evaluation of the Reformation’s impact on Anglicanism must be conducted over the dead body of the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement. One of this movement’s most enduring legacies is the belief that Anglicanism’s foundational characteristic rests not on the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, but on the teachings of the early Church. The followers of this view, known as Tractarians, sought to distance the Anglican Church from its Reformation heritage, insisting that Anglicanism was the inheritor and defender of the true ancient catholic orthodoxy.¹ Although they accused the Roman Catholics of later adding corruptions to this ancient orthodoxy, they also claimed that Protestantism had allowed private, individual, biblical interpretation to supplant the orthodox teachings of the early Church. Anglicanism alone had maintained the true and undistorted doctrines of Christian antiquity.

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) delivered what is probably the most structured and polemically powerful presentation of the Tracatarian position.² In his famous Prophetical Office of the Church, which first appeared in 1836, Newman argued that Anglicanism represented a superior middle way, a Via Media, between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and that this Via Media was located in Anglicanism’s faithful adherence to the teachings of ancient Christianity. Protestantism, through its reliance on the doctrine of sola scriptura at the expense of tradition, had reduced the Christian faith to a matter of opinion. Newman insisted that, on its own, the Bible was confusing and open to contradictory and divisive interpretations. To rely solely on it as the source of truth, without the interpretative guidance of antiquity, was a self-destructive principle that allowed individuals to form their own views of Scriptural meaning. While Anglicans may, in agreement with Protestants, consider Scripture a sufficient witness, they did not regard it as the sole guide to divine truths,³ but relied “on Antiquity to strengthen such intimations of doctrine as are but faintly, though really, given in Scripture.”⁴ Newman accused Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, of having corrupted this ancient tradition.⁵ He denied that Roman Catholic doctrines could be located in antiquity any more than in the Bible: “[Roman Catholic] doctrines are innovations; because they rest upon what is historically an upstart Tradition.”⁶ Newman based his reverence for antiquity on a belief that the unity of the early Church gave it a greater infallibility than in subsequent centuries. Since the ancient Church was one, its doctrines and teachings had not yet been damaged and distorted by divisive strife.⁷ The Anglican Newman believed that antiquity provided Anglicanism with an unambiguous tradition that prevented the contradictions and divisions of Protestantism and the corruptions and errors of Roman Catholicism.

In spite of the popularity of this antiquity hypothesis, Newman became increasingly suspicious of the thesis he had formulated in the Prophetical Office. He knew that his whole argument depended on the premise that antiquity does provide reasonably clear principles of interpretations, but he came to realize that antiquity underwent the same process of innovation and doctrinal developments that Rome was accused of having carried out in later periods. Faced with this dilemma, Newman eventually abandoned the argument he defended in the Prophetical Office and formulated his idea of the development of doctrine.⁸ His disillusionment with the antiquity hypothesis and subsequent crisis of faith were so profound that he eventually converted to Roman Catholicism.

Newman’s personal change of opinion and conversion to Roman Catholicism, however, have not prevented other Anglicans from supporting the Tractarian idea that their Church rests on the foundation of antiquity. In 1890 R.W. Church insisted that Newman’s thesis in the Prophetical Office had “become the accepted Anglican view,”⁹ and forty years later F.L. Cross described the book as “a magnificent apologia for what may be termed the Anglican ethos.”¹⁰ The argument is found in Lux Mundi,¹¹ in the later works of Charles Gore¹² and E.L. Mascall,¹³ and continues to attract a following.¹⁴ The leaders of the Oxford Movement are held up by many as beacons of theological genius and ecclesiological vitality. For better or for worse, the appeal to antiquity has found a permanent place in Anglican self-reflection.

But the idea that Anglicanism is grounded in antiquity has little basis in historical fact. Even as an Anglican, Newman was aware of this, acknowledging that his “Via Media, viewed as an integral system, has never had existence except on paper ….”¹⁵ Indeed, the influence of the Oxford Movement in general, and Newman’s Prophetical Office in particular, has tended to obscure the Protestant Reformation’s profound impact on Anglican history. As early as 1521, when the not yet stout but stoutly orthodox Henry VIII (1491–1547) put forth the tract Defence of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther (which led the Pope to give Henry the title Fidei Defensor in 1524), Lutheran books were circulating in England. During the 1520s and 1530s the Protestant Reformation gained followers in London, East Anglia and districts centered on ports such as Hull and Bristol.¹⁶ Cambridge became the main center of contact between English and Lutheran minds, where such future players in the English Reformation as Thomas Cranmer and Hugh Latimer read and discussed Lutheran works. The 1536 publication of Jean Calvin’s Institution of the Christian Religion simply added to this influx of Reformation thought.¹⁷ Although the country as a whole remained either neutral or Roman Catholic in its sympathies, this Protestant influence had a profound and lasting effect within the English religion/political arena.¹⁸

This effect may be measured by Henry VIII’s reaction. While prepared to reject papal supremacy to legitimize his marriage to Anne Boleyn, he was not enthusiastic about embracing other Protestant ideas drifting in from the European mainland. While Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540) held favor, reforms progressed at a moderate rate, but once his star began to decline, Henry adopted a more anti-Protestant attitude. In 1539 Henry introduced the Act of Six Articles, which decreed severe penalties against anyone who denied transubstantiation, the adequacy of communion in only one kind, private masses, private confessions or the need for clerical celibacy.¹⁹ Reforming bishops like Hugh Latimer of Worcester and Nicholas Shaxton of Salisbury were forced from their sees, and some expected Thomas Cranmer (appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Henry in 1533) to follow Cromwell to the Tower because of his Lutheran sympathies.²⁰ But these measures failed to stem the tide, and by the end of his reign Henry VIII realized that it would be impossible to eradicate Protestant ideas from his kingdom.²¹

This period also witnessed a large influx into England of Protestant refugees. After the German emperor’s military victory at Mühlberg in 1547, some forty Protestant theologians arrived in England to take up ecclesiastical and university posts. Among them were the extreme Calvinist John A. Lasco (1499–1560), Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500–1562), who became Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and Martin Bucer (1491–1551), who took the post of Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Often consulted, their advice was sought in framing the second Prayer Book of 1552.²² Thomas Cranmer himself had contacts with Melanchthon, Calvin and Bullinger on the mainland. While this foreign Protestant influence should not be exaggerated, it undoubtedly affected English religious thought.

Henry VIII’s death in 1547 marked the beginning of further reforms in the Protestant direction. The constitutional arrangements he implemented for the government of the realm during his son Edward VI’s minority were quickly overturned by Edward Seymour (c. 1506–1552), Earl of Hertford and soon to become Duke of Somerset, who subsequently took control of the country. As Somerset was a convinced Protestant, the Act of Six Articles was soon repealed and Protestant printers were allowed to publish tracts against the mass. In July 1547, injunctions were issued requiring the destruction of idolatrous images and the reading of the Gospels and the Epistles in English.²³ The 1549 Prayer Book incorporated Protestant teachings. The fall of Somerset in October 1549 marked an even more radical departure. He was replaced by John Dudley (c. 1502–1553), Earl of Warwick and soon Duke of Northumberland, who advocated and implemented more extensive reforms. In March 1550 a new ordinal appeared, which placed almost complete emphasis on preaching and pastoral work rather than on the priest’s power to offer the sacrifice of the mass; and, in order to drive the point home, medieval stone altars were removed and replaced by wooden tables.²⁴ The revised Prayer Book of 1552 left no doubt as to the more extreme Protestant nature of the State’s official religious policy. Edward VI’s death in 1553 and the eventual ascension of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (1516–1558) put an end to these reforms. Mary attempted to lead her country back into the Roman fold, but her early death and the subsequent ascension of Elizabeth stopped her counter-reformation.

Far from being a historical hiatus with no lasting impact, the sixteenth-century Protestant reforms left a permanent mark on Anglicanism. Take, for instance, the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. The Oxford Movement rejected individuals’ reading the Bible on their own authority, insisting that people must bow to the tradition of the early Church in order to acquire the correct interpretation. But from the sixteenth century onwards, Anglican teachings have not necessarily denied the Protestant idea that individual judgment may prevail in biblical reading. Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles is at best ambiguous on this matter: while it states that only those teachings need be believed which may be verified in Scripture, it does not state who actually does this verifying.²⁵ Consequently, Anglicans have referred to this Article to support the validity of individual interpretation of the Bible. Bishop Gilbert Burnet, for example, in his exposition of this Article in 1699, presented a very negative view of tradition: sects appealed to it to give credibility to their heresies, the ancient Jews used it in their disagreements with Jesus, and the Gnostics and Valentinians used it to defend their teachings.²⁶ For Burnet, “oral tradition appear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Reformation and Anglicanism
• 2 The Continuation of Protestant Ecclesiology: Anglican Evangelicalism from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
• 3 Ecclesiological Ambiguities in Anglican Support for Episcopacy: Richard Hooker and the Caroline Divines
• 4 Further Ambiguities in Anglican Support for Episcopacy: The Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century
• 5 The Anglican Approach to Ecclesial Authority
• 6 Anglicanism from an Ecumenical Perspective: Dialogues with the Reformed and Lutheran Churches
• 7 Ecumenical Dialogues with the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index