A Wasted Heritage
October 29, 2012 23 Comments
The wealth of Anglican belief and spirituality is immense and appealing. It stems from Holy Scripture and is defined in the Book of Common Prayer, The Articles of Religion, and The Ordinal (as Aquinas says of the creed, and we may say of our standards, they “are not added to Scripture but extracted from it”).
And then there is the vast amount of literature consonant with the classic Anglican Way – Biblical, doctrinal, devotional, pastoral, and homiletic. Anglicanism has been earnest and industrious in the propagation of the gospel and Christian knowledge the world over. Its endeavors have been appreciated by believers of different traditions, Protestant and Catholic.
The Church of England and its off-shoots have been instrumental in spreading the Word of God and the message of his grace to countless “people of every kind and type”. There is a profound richness in the Anglican blend of Scripture, liturgy, sacramental administration, and pastoral provision, all deeply imbued with an acute awareness of the magnificence of God and the mightiness of his grace.
Anglicanism has ministered effectively to those within the fold and those in the fields of world mission. Home and abroad the churches of the Anglican Communion have labored with sympathetic friends in the faith to make Christ accessible and join souls to God. There has been no Golden Age (better times, yes) and much evidence of checkered history in the Anglican corner of the Lord’s vineyard, but it has been, under God, initially the shaper, and latterly the heir, of an invaluable heritage that, restored by God, has the potential to address mankind very powerfully with the message of the Lord recorded in Scripture and relayed by the Spirit. The great need in our time is for Anglicanism to embrace and activate the bequest that has been entrusted to us as “a witness and a keeper of holy Writ” (Article xx). We are to adhere to, proclaim, and protect the content and integrity of Holy Scripture. We may not deny, deviate from, or doctor, one whit of revealed doctrine. Rather, we are to grow into and firmly grasp every utterance of the Spirit preserved for us in God’s Book.
There is no end in our prayerful research into the mind of God and we can always request the widening of our minds in the comprehension of heaven-sent wisdom. But man, preferring not to yield to the instruction of God, is always tempted to meddle with the divine word, tamper with it, trim it, ignore it, or contradict where it corrects our thoughts and condemns our sinful behavior. Left to ourselves we are not submissive to our Teacher and seek to invent the notions that are preferable to us. We will either tweak the word or cast it aside…
Read on in VirtueOnline here.
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… but no mention of the worm at the heart of it all, “Erastianism,” whether in the proper form of Erastinaism that still legally defines the Church of England, or the “social Erastianism” that seems to dominate unestablished Anglican churches in the Anglo-Saxon world – cf. Dr. Geoffrey Kirk’s comparison of the Church of England as the “Established Church” with the Episcopal church in the USA as the “Church of ‘the Establishment’” and cf. also my piece here:
http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=0599-tighe
Indeed one cannot but wonder what affect this kind of “scribal” work will have on the pastoral centre of the Church, if any? Scholarship simply must be pastoral in approach! And as I have said, the Free Church has had a great affect on the Church Evangelical, and in America we see this today with the Federal Vision theology, in some Presbyterian Churches! Indeed the so-called idea of the Independent, or Local Church, has always been a central part of the Church Evangelical, in both America and too Great Britain (I say the latter, to include both the Irish Republic, and the churches Protestant of Scotland). And yes historically, the Erastian fits more in the American Republic and Church! We see this certainly in the so-called Great Awakening, and with Jonathan Edwards, etc. Let’s not forget too, that the great Anglican George Whitefield is buried in Boston, Mass.!
Thank God the “Catholic” Church is much bigger than both Anglicanism and R. Catholicism, etc.! Some of the High Church positions would like to live out many other historical churches, I think of the great “catholic” affect of the brothers Wesley here, especially their Hymnology!
*leave-out
A Catholic responds…. the authentic Gospel can only be guaranteed by the successor of St peter..confirmer of the brethren. The so called Reformed Church of England denied essential truths such as:
1) The authority of the Papacy.
2) Purgatory and prayers for the dead.
3) intercession of the Saints
4) The objective real pressence and the worship of the consecrated species.
5) The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
The schismatic and herical Church taught unbiblical doctrines like justification by faith alone and Sola Scriptura…both man made.
Today in its liberal form it promotes contraception, divorce and re-marriage, women’s ordination and gay liberation.
Sounds like what you’re really describing is the Medieval Roman Catholic Church, but certainly not the Church of the Patristic Era (esp. as regards the papacy and purgatory). Even though I’m not Lutheran, Luther destroyed the misguided scholastic thinking behind the essentially inter-related concepts of indulgences, the super-treasury of merits, and purgatory (all “controlled” by the RCC). I’d encourage you to study the first 800 years of so of Christianity and Christendom and then compare that to the next 800 or so.
Forgot to note that you left off Limbo from your list (as well as indulgences and the super-treasury of merits). I used to love reading all about it in the pre-Catechism Era. Used to be in all the older RCC systematic theology works and catechisms. Don’t think they ever decided if Limbo was an Annex of Purgatory or Hell (that was waiting to be decided), and then one day Rome let Limbo…disappear…into the Ether of bad medieval scholastic theology?
A close study of the RC CCC brings out the absolute inter-connectedness of indulgences (paragraphs 1471-1473 & 1478-1479), “the Church’s treasury” of the spiritual goods of the communion of saints (para. 1474-1477), and purgatory (para. 1030-1032 and 1471 & 1479). Purgatory only makes “sense” when combined with indulgences and the treasury, and when these are controlled only by the RCC (para. 1478). These ideas are not in accord with Scripture or the Apostolic & Patristic Ages, but from the scholastic Medieval RCC.
Well said Michael, indeed Medieval Roman Catholicism is a thing of past “Roman” scholasticism! Quite dead really, or should be! And it is nice to hear someone who actually knows what the great Reformer Martin Luther was called by God to accomplish! (However, let us remember, and seek balance too with Luther, who simply missed any true Jewish understanding. Here was Luther at his worst!)
Sadly our friend from Wales seems to express what we used to call “Roman fever”, a convert to Rome who sees everything “Roman”, without biblical, theological and historical discipline!
*And there is no Christian love in any idea that God saves, or will so, only Roman Catholics, this is a sectarian spirit, simply!
The Reformation was needed due to the sad state of scholasticized Medieval RC theology and worship. I think it unfortunate that Luther, unlike Calvin, wasn’t a systematic theologian. I agree he was called to preach against evils like indulgences and the super-treasury. And I say “evil” purposefully, as CCC para. 1478 is truly evil (regardless of whether indulgences are true or not), for it declares the RCC knowingly unwilling to apply the limitless, infinite, inexhaustible treasury of merits to the “poor souls” in Purgatory. So IF the souls are there and IF they are suffering (in any sense), they are only there and suffering because the RCC demands so as to motivate its members to “works” of devotion, penance, and charity. (The theology of annulments, para1629, is also evil.)
Fr Robert, Forgot to get your thoughts on the location of Limbo when it was part of RC systematic theology. I lean more towards Annex of Hell, since the unbatized infants still have original sin and they can’t ever get to Heaven. Since Purgatory is only for the saved (i.e., those who are saved but are now in the process of being cleansed for admittance thru St Peter’s pearly gate), I doubt he’d (either God or St Peter) leave any infants crawling about there?
@Michael: I don’t have a scholastic position of Limbo for non-baptised infants, as I don’t see it biblically, and I don’t hold to baptismal renegeration, strictly. But, we should also look at the words Gehenna, Hades, Sheol, etc. Note in 2 Peter 2:4 “Tartarus”, which is neither Sheol nor Hades nor Hell, but the place where those angels whose speical sin is ‘to be reserved unto judgment;’ a region described as “pits of darkness”. The verb “tartaroo”, “cast down” means to consign to, i.e. again “reserved by God unto judgment”!
Btw, you might find of interest the older 60′s & 1970 books by the Catholic George Dyer on Limbo. Of course they take the Catholic scholastic position/positions. But indeed, it is a non sequitur for me, both in logic: the doctrine of God, and in scripture revelation.
The RCC is the Kingdom of God on earth and endowed with the Keys of heaven. Indiulgences are a great blessing and limbo is theological speculation and never has been defined Catholic doctrine.
As for purgatory, whihin that state thee is joy beyondall earthly joy and pain beyond all earthly pain.
Catholic teaching is beautiful, biblical and coherent.
The spiritual advantages of a Catholic has are profound, but to those that much has been given, much will be required, for judgement begins with the household of God.
Don’t you just love it when Protestants mutually masturbate each other and call it “dialogue”?
I’m EO. The lovefest appears to be between two consenting Catholic adults.
The problem with staying stuck in the Patristic and Apostolic age, is the apparent incompatibility of the institution of it as it exists in the world. While the Church is of God, and not of the World, it is still in the world. So we can’t be a mere museum of Saints, or just rather a living relic from 2,000 years ago, but we must be the vital agent of God on Earth, to look for the sinner, and to give them Salvation- that is what Christ would have wanted.
But instead, there is the tendency of “But that’s not what the Apostles/Church Fathers would have done” I cannot deny how important the Tradition as imparted by the Apostles and the Church Father are, but they are in Heaven now, and the person we must listen to is the Pope, and the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church; he is the living voice of authority that enables, say, my disagreement with Robert Ian Williams about the Ordinariates and the “Anglican Patrimony” or even the historic disagreements of various Catholic orders, a possible but still constructive thing. If there is no Pope, then the Jesuits would have formed their own church; the Dominicans would have formed their own church; the Augustinians (of whom Luther was formerly a member) would have formed their own church, and each of them invalid, because they have no connection with the person given authority by Christ to bind and loosen what needs to be bound and let loose; Christianity would instead look a lot like Judaism, now broken because of the loss of their Temple; or like Islam, now broken and DANGEROUS, because of lack of central authority that at least existed in the Caliphate and the rise of Islamic schools of opinions rather than any single authority- other than the “Koran” as some bibliolatrous Christians would treat the Scriptures.
Ha! What separates a Protestant and an Eastern Orthodox is 500 years. What gets them together is their mutual hatred of the Pope.
Still protestant in another name. Broken apart, and many-headed like a monster.
I can’t forget, of course, the drama the Patriarch of Moscow started with the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the Estonia during talks in Ravenna.
Never would have happened with a Pope.
Ioannes, You need to study the history of the Papacy. You’ll be shocked at the sorry state of both the institution and the incumbent at so many times throughout history. I do pray that someday we’ll see an 8th Ecumenical Council where Constantinople and Rome will reunite. And you should seriously study the history of Christianity during the first 1,000 years and compare that to the next 1,000. (Do keep in mind that none of the 7 Ecumenical Councils were called by popes or attended by popes and the majority of bishops were Eastern not Western. The Protestants you so dislike are Western Christians, part of your family. Benedict has great respect for them; he works to reunite with “his” German Lutherans.)
You forgot “And Linus was the first Pope, not Peter!”
I have only had to read your “Pillar of Orthodoxy”, Mark of Ephesus, to find that I’m running out of sympathy for the Orthodox, who I sincerely felt sorry for because of horrible things that have happened to them historically and the beauty of their preservation of Tradition which I find lacking in the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet, the Roman Church is my mother, and I have read and heard too many attacks against her, even from her own children. And so, I stand with the Bishop of Rome; I can’t do anything else.
Surely Michael the whole “lovefest” is toward Roman Catholicism! And western Christians should know better! Nein to Ratzinger/Benedict, and “Catholicism”! Some respect certainly, but not “love”! I can love some Roman Catholics, but never the papal “institution”!
Oh and may I add, ” Unless the Lord build the house , those that labour do so in vain. ”
Offered in a spirit of Christian love.. ” For do I become your enemy that I tell you the truth.”