SCM Study Guide

2nd Edition

Stephen Spencer

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780334060178
• eBook ISBN: 9780334060192
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

The SCM Studyguide to Anglicanism offers a comprehensive introduction to the many different facets of Anglicanism. Aimed at students preparing for ministry, it presumes no prior knowledge of the subject and offers helpful overviews of Anglican history, liturgy, theology, Canon Law, mission and global Anglicanism.As well as offering updated and improved lists of further reading, this second edition brings a greater emphasis on worldwide expressions of Anglicanism, with more examples taken from Asian and African contexts, and a brand new section which considers the rise of the global communion alongside issues of inculturation and indigenisation.

Part 1: Anglican Faith

1. Basis of Faith

1.1 Grace Rediscovered: Martin Luther’s Theological Revolution

Anglicanism began to emerge as a distinct ecclesial tradition within the Western Church during the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Even though the word ‘Anglicanism’ was not used at this point, the sixteenth century’s theologians, church leaders and official statements need to be a first port of call because of the foundations they laid for Anglican discipleship.

Many would expect the story to begin with Henry VIII and his marriage difficulties. Was it not his need to divorce Catherine of Aragon that made him break with the Roman papacy? At one level, of the political realities of the time this is undeniable. But if we ask why Henry was able to succeed in cutting England loose from the authority of the papacy in a way that had never happened before, a different story must be told. This is a story about a broader range of cultural, economic and religious developments, prominent among which was a theological revolution that had begun in the small German state of Wittenberg and was rapidly spreading across northern Europe. It was this revolution that gave permission to Henry, as to other European monarchs at the time, to take the fateful step of ejecting the authority of the Pope from his lands in the Act of Supremacy in 1534. It is to this theological revolution that we now turn.

To make sense of it, though, we must first examine the context out of which it came, the world of late medieval Catholicism in western Europe. A description of this will throw into sharp relief what was fresh and distinctive about the new viewpoint.

In the pre-Reformation period this medieval Catholicism held sway in England as well as on continental Europe. In his authoritative survey of the period, Euan Cameron points out that ‘however greedy, vicious, grasping, or arrogant individual churchmen were, the Church was still “Mother Church” and the means to salvation’. This attitude was instilled into Europe’s population ‘in every aspect of religious life, where (in spite of the theologians’ quibbles) the visible, institutional Church on earth and the Churches triumphant in heaven and suffering in purgatory were seen as indissolubly linked’ (Cameron 1991, p. 79).

Cameron argues that this esteem held in check and balanced people’s dislike of Catholic prelates and church taxation. The depth of the hold of Catholic religion on ordinary people’s lives in England has been thoroughly and convincingly described by Eamon Duffy (see Duffy 1994, 2003).

In such an outlook the Christian life was all about making progress around a penitential cycle (Cameron 1991, pp. 79–83). Human living was understood to begin in God, who ordains and presides over the whole cycle. As soon as a person is conceived in the womb, though, they become subject to original sin (as taught by Augustine of Hippo). This means they will end up in eternal damnation unless they can be absolved of their sins and brought into a state of grace in which entry into heaven becomes possible. The sacraments of the church, ministered through the office of the priest, provide the means for this to happen. A newborn baby must be brought to the church as soon as possible to be baptized so that most of the effects of original sin can be removed. As the baby grows into a child and then an adult it cannot avoid committing further sins. This means it must attend sacramental confession so that these ordinary sins of daily life can be absolved on a regular basis. The priest will give the believer some work of penance which allows the effects of their sins to be removed and for them to come into a state of grace once more. This process will continue throughout their lives until their death when, in most cases, there will still be a need to complete the requisite works of satisfaction. Purgatory, the liminal space between death and heaven, becomes the place where these works of satisfaction are finally completed, and the Christian soul, as Dante classically describes it in The Divine Comedy, is able to pass through the gates of heaven.

An essential feature of this cycle is that the person during their earthly life is not yet a citizen of heaven but is only on the way to heaven. They must strive throughout their lives to confess and seek absolution, and they will not have final assurance that they are near or far from heaven: in fact it is possible they will never make it, especially if they commit serious or ‘mortal’ sins. For committed Christians this was a heavy burden, as the young Martin Luther (1483–1546) found when he endeavoured to do his utmost to reach a state of grace. As an Augustinian monk he became totally committed to the monastic disciplines to achieve this:

I was indeed a good monk and kept the rules of my order so strictly that I can say: if ever a monk got to heaven through monasticism, I should have been that man. All my brothers in the monastery who know me will testify to this. I would have become a martyr through fasting, prayer, reading and other good works had I remained a monk very much longer. (Janz 1999, p. 77)

But the harder he tried the harder it became: ‘my conscience could never give me certainty: I always doubted and said “You did not do that correctly. You were not contrite enough. You left that out of your confession”’ (ibid.). In his famous Autobiographical Fragment he writes:

Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God … (Ibid., p. 75)

This was an existential crisis for Luther, and he describes how he ‘raged with a fierce and troubled conscience’. Thankfully at around the same time he was also lecturing on Psalms and Romans to students in the University of Wittenberg. His attention was drawn to Romans 1.17: ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.”’ Whereas before Luther had taken ‘God’s righteousness’ to refer to God’s just punishment for the sins we commit, he now began see that it might be about something else: God’s forgiveness and acceptance of the sinner in his or her sinfulness. God, according to Paul, through the atoning death of Christ on the cross (as he makes clear in 3.25), may in fact be offering salvation as a free gift, not to be earned through endless works of penance but through simply accepting that gift through faith. Luther in his Autobiographical Fragment comes to the powerful conclusion that ‘the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith’ (ibid., pp. 75–6, italics mine). E. P. Sanders has described this as the way a believer, for Luther, is ‘at the same time righteous in God’s sight but a sinner in everyday appearance’ (Sanders 1991, p. 48). Or as Cameron put it, Luther saw that ‘crucial parts of the New Testament could mean that God spontaneously, from simple mercy, and for Christ’s sake, forgives people their faults while they remain impure’ (Cameron in Chadwick 2010, pp. 117–18).

The effect of this insight on Luther was immediate: ‘Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates’ (Janz 1999, p. 76). He was now assured that he was justified and could live his life out of the shadow of the fear of death:

Suddenly, it was no longer a struggle to become a purer, holier person through sacrament, prayer, and ‘habits of grace’, as in the medieval Church. It was the blissful release of accepting that God is generous, and calls on everyone to believe and trust in the forgiveness which they are offered. Once so forgiven, the believer would strive fervently to live a godly life of study, prayer and neighbourly charity: but out of serene thankfulness, not anxious solicitude for a soul perched between heaven and hell. (Cameron in Chadwick 2010, p. 118)

This, then, is the new perception of the Christian life: a sense of release, trust, gratitude and a desire to live a life worthy of the grace it has received. The Reformation swept all before it because it had this essentially liberating and life-affirming approach to discipleship at its heart. No longer was the believer to be governed by the fear of not making the grade on judgement day: now there was to be a sense of assurance that justification had already taken place.

One of the first consequences of this emerging belief was Luther reputedly pinning his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral (which acted as a public noticeboard). These were an attack on the practice of selling papal indulgences by the church. The Pope, Leo X, was raising money for the rebuilding of St Peter’s in Rome by selling indulgence documents that cancelled a portion of the divine punishment due to the pur...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Voices from Across the World
• Part 1: Anglican Faith
• 1. Basis of Faith
• 2. Forming of Faith
• 3. Expressions of Faith
• Part 2: Anglican Community
• 4. Sacramental Communities
• 5. Distinct Communities
• 6. Communities of Place
• Part 3: Anglican Mission
• 7. Proclaiming the Gospel
• 8. Responding to Human Need
• 9. Transforming the World
• Part 4: The Anglican Communion
• 10. What kind of Communion?
• Conclusion: Continuing the Study
• Appendix: Churches of the Anglican Communion
• Bibliography