The Articles once more

The Thirty-nine Articles provide the only secure anchor for an authentic Anglican identity. This is after all the foundational doctrinal statement of the reformed church of England, drafted by the reforming bishops, endorsed by the lay members of the church in parliament, and situated as the touchstone of Anglican theology and practice ever since. Whatever other categories, principles or documents may be presented as integral to the heart of Anglicanism, the simple fact is that the Articles tell Anglicans who they are.

The Articles were never intended to be exhaustive. They are not a comprehensive systematic theology, an Anglican answer to Calvin's Institutes or Melanchthon's Loci Communes. Nevertheless, they do provide the contours of Anglican polity, Anglican practice, and the Anglican commitment to biblical doctrine. They do not claim to be the final authority — that final authority was and is Scripture itself, the word of God written (Article 20) — but they do have a subsidiary authority. Insofar as they are in fact a faithful expression of biblical truth, they rightfully test all contemporary claims to the Anglican inheritance.

One of the freshest and most exciting developments in recent Anglican theology is a return to a serious and respectful study of the Articles. A number of studies have been published in the past few years and are about to be published over the next year or so, all of which seek to expound the doctrine of the Articles as a powerful force in the renewal of Anglican identity worldwide. The Articles do not present us with a moribund theology, one bound irretrievably to discredited epistemological and ontological commitments. Here is a lively confession of trust in Christ which still has the capacity to challenge us to greater fidelity to God's self-revelation in Christ and through the inspired Scriptures. Here is an antidote to fearful, sloppy thinking. The failure of courage that has characterised so much Anglican theology in the last two centuries — as one conviction after another has been surrendered in the doomed attempt to win favour with the world around us — need not determine the future. The 39 Articles are once again the cutting edge!

However, not all references to the 39 Articles today take them seriously on their own terms. Current attempts to revive Newman's interpretation of the Articles lack integrity today just as they did in Newman's time (even he could not sustain it in the long run). Attempts to read an Arminian theology into them, when plainly this is at best anachronistic and at worst a reading of them that is determinedly 'against the grain', must also fail. The suggestion that they are an historical document locked into the debates and concerns of the sixteenth century but without any real relevance to the twenty-first, fails to account for (1) the express intent of the authors; (2) the reaffirmation of the Articles in 1662, one hundred and ten years after they were drafted, when very different circumstances prevailed. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, who at one time assented to the Articles at his own ordination, has recently stated that the differences between Rome and the Anglican Communion — even the controversial ones such women's ordination and the acceptance of homosexuality — are merely secondary matters that ought not delay continued ecumenical advance, simply reaffirms his highly intelligent muddle-headedness.

Are the Articles open to revision? In principle the answer must be 'yes', since they claim to be completely dependent for their authority on the teaching of Scripture. If it can be shown that at one point or other they contradict the teaching of Scripture, then the Articles must give way to Scripture. But the Articles must not be bent to any contemporary ecclesiastical, political or social agenda. They stand over against contemporary theologizing as a check on our hubris and idiosyncracies and as a challenge to our own blind spots. It would need an extraordinary consensus, and a clear demonstration that the changes were drawing us closer to the teaching of Scripture and not further from it, if there was any any substantial revision today.

What is more, as legal argument in the nineteenth century established beyond doubt, the Articles interpret the Book of Common Prayer and not the other way around. Liturgical practice must flow out of theological conviction, not vice versa. Some of the official pronouncements from such bodies as the highly politicised Anglican Communion Office continue to peddle the argument that our theology is derived from the Book of Common Prayer or from the Ordinal. Of course these too are our foundational documents, alongside the 39 Articles. But each of these has a particular function, and the doctrinal standard is the 39 Articles. A failure to recognise this has brought in its wake a host of problems.

The need of the moment is for the obfuscation of the establishment to be replaced by the clarity, boldness and rich edification of Anglicanism's foundational doctrinal statement. This can only result in the future health of this ailing denomination, as Christ crucified, risen and regnant takes his proper place amongst us, which will always be demonstrated by a thoroughgoing submission to the word by which he rules.

G K Chesterton on Daring Orthodoxy

For various reasons, I have found myself pondering recently the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. In the contemporary climate they are unfashionable concepts, better replaced with 'generosity' and 'tolerance of diversity'. It is very easy to demonstrate how the terms 'heresy' and 'orthodoxy', and others like them, became weapons in the service of political and ecclesiastical agendas of various sorts. Even today they can be used unwisely and in order simply to marginalise those with whom we disagree. As I've mentioned before, I well remember a question time following a paper given by Colin Gunton in which he was accused of embracing heresy and retorted, 'I may just be mistaken. It is possible to get something wrong and not to be a heretic isn't it?'

It has always been possible to psychologize points of view with which you disagree: 'they would think like that, because they are afraid of ....' And so we have homophobia, an attempt to psychologize all opposition to homosexual practice, and more recently Islamophobia, a way of arguing that everything said in opposition to the beliefs and practices of Islam is borne of fear.

We evangelicals have often been accused of cloaking our own fears with the mantle of an appeal to 'orthodoxy'. It is our desperate search for security and certainty that has led us to embrace the doctrines of verbal inspiration and biblical inerrancy, the uniqueness of Christ, penal substitution, predestination, and [add the evangelical doctrine you are trying to debunk here]. The accusation is baseless and unfair but it is still being made, even by people who should know better.

So I was delighted to stumble across a piece written by G. K. Chesterton more than a century ago which suggested that it takes courage to embrace orthodox Christian truth and that the easier path would be to surrender to the intellectual fads of the moment (reminiscent of Matt. 7:13–14, but still — note to self — read more Chesterton!):

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so as exactly to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom — that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. (Orthodoxy, pp. 183–185)

Sure, this piece is itself a product of its time. It reflects the renewed strength of Catholicism at the beginning of the twentieth century. There are other things to be said, nuances to be added. But there is still something here we need to remember — and who else would have put it in such a tantalizing way?

Preaching or ministry?

A conversation I've had in the last couple of days raised in a slightly different way one of the concerns I've written about in previous postings on preaching. A friend remarked how the activity of preaching is sometimes detached or isolated from the somewhat larger category which we might label 'christian ministry'. He made the observation that in previous generations books specifically on preaching were far less numerous while a vast number of books and pamphlets were produced on Christian ministry. The notion of the specialist 'preacher' (ditto for the specialist 'leader' or 'counsellor') is a curiously recent phenomenon. John Stott didn't just preach and write. Neither did Ryle, Simeon, Whitfield, Baxter, Grindall or Cranmer.

Another friend recently blogged about his discovery that

'the word "minister" (diakonos, e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:23) as used by Paul is a very specific term for God's appointed agent, and it doesn't just mean "servant" in the waiting-at-tables sense'.

I spent a few moments reflecting on how this observation, if true, might refine or even challenge the line I learnt many years ago:

'everything contained in the word "minister" that is not there in the word "servant" might be considered an unbiblical accretion that distorts the biblical idea'.

It seems there is room right now for a discussion about 'ministry' as a broader concept than simply pulpit expertise and one which gives a particular shape to each of its constituent elements, not least of all to 'preaching' itself.

I wonder whether an appropriate starting point for such a discussion might not be a very serious consideration of the inseparable connection of 'pastors and teachers' in Ephesians 4:11.

Larry Hurtado on 'How did Jesus become a God?'

I've just stumbled across a video interview with Larry Hurtado on the early worship of Jesus. There is a rather strident critique of Hurtado's work in the latest number of the Tyndale Bulletin, but there is no doubt that Hurtado is someone whose arguments need to be heard. Essentially those arguments centre on the worship of Jesus as a feature of the earliest Christianity and the place of an encounter with Jesus in 'making space' for Jesus while retaining the basic contours of Jewish monotheism.

Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLeXpSCLrD8

John Stott on Anglican Evangelical Identity

This quote from John Stott in the 1980s continues the theme of Anglican Identity discussed in earlier postings. It reveals yet again why John Stott has remained for so many of us the real voice of Anglican evangelicalism throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. There were points at which I found myself, reluctantly, in disagreement with this great leader, but on this matter I am in the most profound agreement.

First and foremost, by God's sheer mercy, I am a Christian seeking to follow Jesus Christ. Next, I am an evangelical Christian because of my conviction that evangelical principles (especially sola scriptura [Scripture alone] and sola gratia [by grace alone]) are integral to authentic Christianity, and that to be an evangelical Christian is to be a New Testament Christian, and vice versa. Thirdly, I am an Anglican evangelical Christian, since the Church of England is the particular historical tradition or denomination to which I belong. But I am not an Anglican first, since denominationalism is hard to defend. It seems to me correct to call oneself an Anglican evangelical (in which evangelical is the noun and Anglican the descriptive adjective) rather than an evangelical Anglican (in which Anglican is the noun and evangelical the adjective). (Quoted in R. Steers, The Inside Story, p. 191)

David Bentley Hart on the New Atheism

Thanks to David Palmer, my attention has been drawn to another Bentley Hart book, this time a response to the new atheists: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale, 2009).

An interview based on the book, one well-worth listening to, can be found at http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/audio/090330JJM01HARTFINAL.mp3

A theological critique of modern and postmodern philosophy?

The relationship between theology and philosophy has been one fraught with danger from the time of the early church. We do not have to buy into Ritschl and Harnack's assessment of the development of dogma to realise that many early theologians were wrestling with how to expound Christian doctrine in the context of very powerful philosophical trends. Tertullian famously asked, 'What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' (On Prescription against Heretics, vii) Aquinas, alongside so much of high and late medieval thought, was powerfully influenced by the recovery of Aristotle's writing in the thirteenth century. Yet Luther famously declared 'the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light' (Disputation against Scholastic Theology, thesis 50). The list could go on.

The question of critical interaction between the two disciplines was raised for me again when I read recently this intriguing paragraph from John Webster:

Modernity is commonly reputed to have laid in ruins the account of Christological reason just outlined. It did not, in fact, do so; it simply installed in the centres of greatest intellectual prestige (the research universities) one contingent version of instrumental reason to which most Protestants and, later, some Roman Catholic, theologies found themselves hard put to respond by anything other than concessions. The failure to respond and the readiness to make concessions were rooted in internal failures in Christian theology in the post-Reformation (and possibly the early modern) periods, notably the reluctance to deploy primary Christian doctrine (Trinity, Christology, pneumatology) in criticism of philosophical teaching, and the assumption that methods of inquiry are content-neutral. (Word and Church, pp. 124–5)

Two questions that come to mind are 'Who are the best (most persuasive, most intellectually rigorous) voices actually doing today what we failed to do in the past? Who has or is deploying primary Christian doctrine in criticism of modernist (and postmodernist) philosophical teaching?'

Do you have any suggestions?