What is a true blue Anglican? And what is the positive basis for Anglican unity and identity?
The workshop I’ve been attending on ‘Anglican Identity’ has been very stimulating on this crucial question, especially the addresses by Ashley Null and Andrew Shead on the common authority that Anglicanism rests upon.
According to the norms and rules of the conference, I’m not allowed to report in detail on what happens in the these workshops. What I can tell you is that Null and Shead brilliantly outlined and reaffirmed that Anglicanism has an overarching, identity-shaping, unifying authority in its doctrine of Scripture.
When we look at the core documents of Anglicanism (the Thirty-nine Articles, the Homilies, and the Book of Common Prayer), a very clear picture emerges: Scripture alone is the authority, and the ‘church’ (viewed as the denomination here) is but a keeper and witness to ‘Holy Writ’, and has no power to overrule Scripture, dismiss it, or bypass it. And although the church and its councils may resolve controversies and make decisions about matters of ceremony and order, this authority is ruled and circumscribed by Scripture.
Here are some choice quotes that say it all, first from the Thirty-nine Articles:
VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
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.
XX. Of the Authority of the Church.
The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.
XXI. Of the Authority of General Councils.
General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.
XXXIV. Of the Traditions of the Church.
It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word …
Cranmer’s quite marvellous ‘Homily on Scripture’ puts it more picturesquely:
Let us diligently search for the well of life in the books of the New and Old Testaments and not run to the stinking puddles of men’s traditions, devised by men’s imagination for our salvation and justification. For in holy scripture is fully contained what we ought to do and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God’s hands at length.
In these quotes, we see the vital thing about Anglicanism’s approach to flexibility and inflexibility. Doctrine—which includes matters of faith and of morals—is fully contained in Scripture, and must of necessity be taught and believed. On this there can be no flexibility. However, on other matters—such as ceremonies, rights and other issues of ‘discipline’ or ‘order’—there may flexibility and variation, both geographically, culturally and over time.
In other words, Anglican identity (and thus unity) is fundamentally doctrinal and contained in Scripture. We may expect and accept flexibility and variation in the details of how we organize ourselves and conduct our ministries, but there can no flexibility about those things ‘necessary to salvation’. The irony, of course, is that in recent Anglican history, it has all been the other way around—almost limitless flexibility about doctrine, and officious inflexibility about church traditions and canon law.
One of my own fervent hopes for the GAFCON movement, and whatever emerges from it, is that the positive nature of our unity will be a distinctively Anglican one—that is, based on Scriptural doctrine not on secondaries.
