The Anglican Way and Authority in the Catholic Church

The writing of this was inspired by a recent post at the Continuum blogspot by Fr. Robert Hart;  it also draws inspiration from earlier reflections on this theme from Charles at his superb Anglican Rose. While my conclusions are the product of a careful thinking-through of the source material, they are at best tentative, and open to correction from those with a firmer grasp on the patrimony of Anglicana. In this sense, the post is really an invitation to further discussion, rather than an essay. In any event, I will begin with a quote from M. F. Sadler’s Church Doctrine, Bible Truth, and then expand upon his premise as I go on.

Whilst the Church of England upholds the paramount authority of the Holy Scriptures, she explains these Scriptures in accordance with interpretations which she finds in the very earliest Christian writers, rather than with interpretations struck out at a later period. Her whole Service-book is framed on a model to be traced to the remotest times…we of the Church of England defer to antiquity and early Patristic teaching, without making anything except the written word our standard.

Here, Sadler says nothing particularly new. By his time (the mid 19th-century) the double appeal to the “written word” as the “paramount authority” and singular “standard” and to “the very earliest Christian writers”, had become something of a truism of Anglican identity. The appeal here to antiquity (one of two licit uses of tradition, according to old high-church principles ) is more specifically an acknowledgement of the debt English catholicism owes to the hermenutical tradition of the ancient Church. It can be found in the writings of our Reformers, and it held a high place in Caroline theology. It even makes an appearance in the Prayer Book (thus imbuing the principle with an authority deriving from an official formulary), where the Preface to the Ordinal speaks of “Holy Scripture and ancient Authors” as grounds for asserting the reality and antiquity of the three-fold office of Bishop, Priest and Deacon.

However, Sadler’s appeal to “antiquity and early Patristic teaching” has a particular contour. It is a fundamentally chronological argument, which assumes that the teachings of the primitive Catholic Church will be truer expressions of Apostolic doctrine than those of later ages; due to the closer chronological proximity of that era to the Ist-century, and because of the living memory of unwritten Apostolic tradition, or what Harold Browne calls “the personal instruction of the Apostles and their immediate companions”.  Thus, if there are works from Christian authors “who lived just after the time of the Apostles”, and “who enter at all fully into Christian doctrine…with no motive for misrepresenting the teaching then current amongst Christians”, Sadler is at a loss to understand why the Church should not set “the highest value on their testimony to the way in which the Scriptures of the New Testament were interpreted in their day.” Indeed, reason dictates that she must; since those ancient Christians “had the oral teaching of the Apostles and apostolic men to enable them to ascertain the true meaning of Scripture.”

Writers of the second century, for instance, had access to nearly the same writings of the Apostles as we have; they had the same Spirit of God to enlighten them, and they were familiar with that Christian doctrine which was then in existence, which was derived from the oral teaching of the Apostles, before the writings of the New Testament were collected into one volume.

If we did not give some weight to the testimony of such early writers, we should be wilfully, and of set purpose, putting from us a means which God has given to us of ascertaining the right interpretation of His word. If men with such advantages bear witness that the Scriptures were uniformly interpreted in one way, and not in another, it is a strong proof to us, who hold that one way of interpreting Scripture, that we are right in so doing.

Another mid 19th-century Reformed-Catholic, Harold Browne, expresses precisely the same view in his exposition of Article VI:

With regard to Hermenutical tradition, we view matters thus: Those early Christians who had the personal instruction of the Apostles and their immediate companions, are more likely to have known the truth of Christian doctrine than those of after-ages, when heresies had become prevalent, when men had learned to wrest Scripture to destruction, and sects and parties had warped and biased men’s minds, so that they could not see clearly the true sense of Holy Writ….We believe, therefore, that if we can learn what was the constant teaching of the primitive Christians, we shall be most likely to find the true sense of Scripture preserved in that teaching: and wherever we can trace the first rise of a doctrine, and so stamp it with novelty, the proof of its novelty will be proof of its falsehood; for what could find no place among the earliest Churches of Christ can scarcely come from the Apostles of Christ, or from a right interpretation of the Scriptures which they wrote…we look to their writings for evidence as to what were the doctrines prevalent in the Church during the earliest ages; and we believe that, if we can discover what the doctrines of those early ages were, we have a most important clue to guide us in our course through the Scriptures themselves…We know, that in those days, men had many advantages over ourselves for the interpreting of the New Testament. A knowledge of the language, the customs, the history of events, which illustrate the Scriptures, was of itself most important. Some of them must have had in their memories the personal teaching of the Apostles, for they were their immediate hearers and followers. Many of them lived within a comparatively short time from their departure. They took the utmost pains to preserve the purity of the Apostolic faith in the Church. The Church of their days still had the charismata, or miraculous gifts of the Spirit, visibly poured out upon it; and we may say that in every, or in almost every manner, it was qualified, beyond any subsequent Church or age, to understand Scripture, and to exhibit the purity and integrity of the Christian faith.

The least that can be said, is that the doctrine of the ancient Church is an useful check on any new interpretation of Scripture. Antiquity is a mark of truth, and novelty a mark of error in religion; and this rule has ever been found valuable in important controversies…Thus tradition may be useful in the interpretation of Scripture, though not as adding to its authority. We well know that Scripture is perfect in itself, for the end for which it was designed. But we know also, that no aid for its interpretation should be neglected.

The note of antiquity as “a mark of truth…in religion”  is a thoroughly Anglican principle. Simon Patrick, for example, would write of tradition as supplying “considerable assistance is such points as are not in so many letters and syllables contained in the Scriptures, but may be gathered from thence by good and manifest reasoning. Or, in plainer words, whatsoever tradition justifies any doctrine that may be proved from Scripture, though not found in express terms there, we acknowledge to be of great use, and readily recieve and follow it, as serving very much to establish us more firmly in that truth, when we see all Christians to have adhered to it. This may be called a confirming tradition: of which some ancient fathers call an Apostolical tradition…We look on this tradition as nothing else but the Scripture unfolded: not a new thing, but the Scripture explained and made more evident.”

Daniel Waterland would allow ” no doctrine as necessary which stands only on fathers, or on tradition, oral or written. We admit none for such but what is contained in Scripture, and proved by Scripture, rightly interpreted. And we know of no way more safe in neccesaries, to preserve the right interpretation, than to take the ancients along with us.”

Abp Cranmer himself would affirm that “every exposition of the Scripture, whereinsoever the old, holy, and true Church did agree, is necessary to be believed. But our controversy here is whether anything ought to be believed of necessity without the Scripture.”

The canons of 1571, established what amounts to a consensus patrum when it admonished CoE priests “to deliver nothing from the pulpit, to be religiously held and believed by the people, but that which is agreeable to the old and new testament, and such as the Catholic Fathers and ancient bishops have collected from therefrom.”

Ridley went so far as to invoke “the wise council of  Vincentius Lirenensius…who, giving precepts how the Catholic Church may be in all schisms and heresies known, writeth in this manner: ‘When, saith he, ‘one part is corrupted with heresies, then prefer the whole world before that one part; but if the greater part be affected, then prefer antiquity.”

The above quotations amply demonstrate the Anglican aversion to that raw biblicism, which typified the more radical Protestants in England and abroad. And, yet, in every case we find that the weight of authority accorded to ancient authors, Catholic fathers and bishops, oral tradition etc., assumes a decidedly subordinate position to the Scriptures themselves. That, at the very least, confirms how pervasive the theology of the formularies actually was in the thought of these great churchmen. There is not one statement which isn’t perfectly amenable, for example, with the principles laid out in Arts. VI, VII, XX and XXXIV of the 39 Articles.

This is a truly biblical catholicism; an irreducible hallmark of our patrimony, which is both expressed in and guarded by the formularies of the Common Prayer Book, Ordinal, Articles of Religion and Canons. Returning to Fr. Hart’s post (Fr. Hart is, of course, a committed partisan of the formularies and of classical Anglican principles), there  seems to be an unhealthy bias in the continuing churches against the formularies, the Articles of Religion in particular. In most cases, that bias will not be expressed in terms of overt hostility; rather, the formularies are accorded a very nebulous position in the constitutions and canons of such churches; rendering them all but toothless, as standards which determine the bounds of doctrine and discipline.

This bodes ill for the future of Prayer Catholicism, in my opinion. Anglicanism has a glorious legacy, reaching back to the remotest years of Christian antiquity. But, after centuries of decline, that same legacy was reformed in the 16th-century by godly prelates who wished to see the English Church return “Ad fontes”, to the fonts of Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers. The primitve catholicism which they restored to the CoE, (and here the adjective “primitive” is key. Without it, our Catholicism might just as well be termed Tridentine ) is chimerical, unless it remains rooted in the formularies which have defined its principles for more than four centuries.

I say this having no axe to grind against against the Continuum. As a member of a parish belonging to one of the ACNA jurisdictions, I feel that authentic Prayer Book Anglicanism has a much better chance of flourishing within the continuing churches. But that is precisely why I find their conflicted regard for the formularies so problematic.

My apologies for the length of this post. I welcome your responses.