Anglicanism as 'unabashed Protestantism'?

What is an ‘Anglican’? In one sense the term itself is anachronistic. The Church of England is primarily an institution, the national church of a particular country. It was only with the growth of the British Empire that the question of ‘Anglicanism’ arose – especially when there was now a political separation between England and the US. The Episcopal Church was not governed by the King of England from 1776 – so in what sense could it, and other former Church of England churches, understand their continuity with the church that had given them birth? It was an identity question that was felt with a particular pressure in the nineteenth century and which has decisive significance for the way we consider the question of ‘Anglicanism’ today.

Those of more Catholic disposition have emphasised the continuity of the English church today with the church of the pre-Reformation period. Even when it was in communion with the Church of Rome, the English church (the ecclesia Anglicana) had its own remarkable and somewhat independent identity. The tension between the papacy and the English monarchy – which came to a head in the Reformation – had many precedents, including the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, in 1170 by King Henry II’s henchmen. However, any assertion of a continuity of heritage between the pre-Reformation Church and what came later has to reckon with the complexity and diversity of that history. For example, in the seventh century AD both Celtic and Roman styles of Christianity competed for supremacy in the English Church. Which is to be held as more authentically ‘Anglican’? Or is it a synthesis between them? Where in the story does the radicalism of the Oxford scholar John Wyclif (1330-78) and the movement of his followers, the Lollards, fit in? That is to say: describing a continuous line from the pre-Reformation period to the present has more challenges than the standard Anglo-Catholic description allows. The demand for reform and the appeal to the authority of Scripture is part of the picture that ought not to be obscured.

Since the 1980s, revisionist historians such as Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy have tried to describe the English Reformation as a top-down and chiefly political movement which had little traction amongst the English people themselves. There is no doubt that the English Reformation was achieved through the workings of statecraft as much as through the conversion of souls. Henry VIII’s ‘great matter’ - the problem of his barren marriage to Catherine of Aragon – was the catalyst not only for an institutional break with the Church of Rome and with the papacy, but for a change in the theological outlook of the English church. While Haigh and Duffy try to paint this as entirely engineered by a coterie of theologians like Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, there is no question but that the faith of Reformation Europe had made some inroads among the English people, however clandestine.

Thomas Cranmer is not a figure for Anglicans equivalent to the way Martin Luther is for Lutherans. Nonetheless, Cranmer’s Reformation bequeathed to the English Church as particular theological outlook which cannot be eclipsed in any description of Anglican identity. Though some have tried, Richard Turnbull notes ‘[I]t is difficult to deny the formative role of the Reformation on the polity, theology and ministry of the Church of England.’

Cranmer set down three large foundation stones upon which henceforth the English church was subsequently built: the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. These have not come down to us unaltered from his pen. They were subject to a degree of refinement and alteration. Even so, the attempt to minimise the importance of these formularies in some parts of the Anglican church in recent years only reveals an embarrassment with the unabashed Protestantism of these documents. While it would be historically naïve to think of the career of Cranmer as the reset point for Anglican identity – as if nothing has happened since then, or as if he is an Anglican Muhammad – it is certainly the case that no description of Anglican identity can bypass or minimise his contribution to the theological distinctiveness of Anglicanism.

‘Unabashed Protestantism’ – is that an overstatement? That the liturgy was now to be in the vernacular was in itself a recognition of a different – Protestant (or better, ‘evangelical’) - understanding of the very nature of Christian faith itself. The words of the Prayer Book were not meant to be experienced by the people as a mystery evading their understanding. The service of Holy Communion was, in successive editions of the Prayer Book, moving in a more Protestant direction. Recent work by renowned Oxford historian Dairmaid MacCulloch shows that Cranmer’s Eucharistic theology was becoming even less like Luther’s understanding of the ‘real presence’ and shifting towards a Reformed understanding. The document that became The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion is unmistakeably Reformed in character. It is true that the articles do allow for a deal of flexibility, and do not pronounce on some controversial matters. Yet that should not be mistaken for some policy of reticence or the endorsement of infinite variety. The embarrassment of liberal and Catholic Anglicans at the Articles is a fairly strong indication that the plain reading of them sees them as an expression of a Reformed theological outlook.
The Articles assert the primacy of the authority of Scripture for Anglican faith and practice. That is not to say that Scripture is the only authority, but it is held to be the supreme authority, even over the great creeds of the church (Article VIII). Article VI reads: ‘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 the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation’. According to the articles, Scripture is to act as the measure of what Anglicans believe.

For two great Elizabethan Anglicans, Scripture was likewise of paramount importance. Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is often held up as the doyen of Anglican divines – ‘judicious’, rational, careful and moderate in tone. He was an opponent of the Puritan extremists in the Church of England who were moving against the episcopate and against all customs not explicitly sanctioned in Scripture. For a long time it was thought that he had endorsed ‘the three-legged stool’ of Scripture, Reason and Tradition as equal, mutually-informing authorities in Anglican thinking. Careful reading of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity tells another story. He writes:
What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever ( Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).

Scripture, reason and tradition do not have equal weight for Hooker. Quite clearly, Scripture has precedence, then reason and third, church tradition. Though the Puritans were mistaken when they opposed tradition where Scripture was silent, they were correct in placing Scripture ahead of all other authorities. Hooker can be described as endorsing the ‘normative’ view of Scripture with regard to church order and ceremonies, as opposed to the ‘regulative’ view championed by his Puritan opponents such as William Perkins and Thomas Cartwright. He conceded that the threefold order of ministry – bishop, priest and deacon – cannot be directly established from Scripture, but that the historic episcopate is nevertheless a good way to frame the polity of the English church.

In his 1562 work Apology of the Church in England, Bishop John Jewel (1522-71) of Salisbury made an ardent defence of the Reformation settlement in England, setting it over against the abuses of the Church of Rome. He depicted the Church of England as episcopal, but thoroughly Reformed in doctrine. The Church of England in its stance against Rome needed to be convincingly apostolic. It could do so by appeal to Scripture; but also by appeal to the Church Fathers and to the Councils. This was not to invest them with an authority independent of Scripture, but to show that, even on their preferred ground, the Roman Church was not the true heir of the apostolic teaching.

To the work of these two Elizabethan divines we might well add the declaration of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral in 1888 as an instance in Anglican history when the primacy of Scripture was clearly asserted. The 1888 Lambeth conference of bishops received in slightly amended form a document which had been passed by the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America in 1886. The four points of the quadrilateral are, in order: Holy Scripture as ‘the rule and ultimate standard of faith’; the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed; the two sacraments; and the historic episcopate. The basis of the unity of the Anglican Communion is thus a common confession of faith derived from Scripture.

What these examples prove is quite modest, but it is sufficient. They demonstrate that those who hold that it is thoroughly and authentically Anglican to view Scripture as the supreme authority have a more than reasonable case grounded in the major documents of Anglican history and in the thought of its major theologians. Furthermore, on soteriology and the sacraments it is quite clearly possible to discern a succession of authoritative figures and documents that assert the Reformed view, however distasteful this might be to some contemporary Anglicans. There are other readings of Anglican history – most notably the reading perpetuated by the Oxford movement in the 19th century, which emphasised the Caroline divines and their appeal to the Church Fathers. Yet even this sketch of Anglicanism shows that this reading of Anglican history could only ever be a selective and polemical one. A Christian faith which places it emphasis on the supreme authority of Scripture for doctrine and practice and which upholds the Reformed view or salvation and the sacraments can with confidence assert its continuous place within the Anglican story. A view of Anglicanism which places Scripture as supreme authority and which has a Reformed soteriology and which has a flexible attitude to liturgical practice certainly has a good case to be considered as authentically Anglican. However, this plurality and flexibility is not infinite.