Anglicanism: Protestant or Catholic

My comment is that this piece does not deserve comment.
Rudy+

Great piece, Matt.  Thanks!

I have no problem being called Protestant, and indeed, I am. 

Likewise, I enjoy conversing with and being with my Anglo-Catholic allies and friends.  Ironically, barring ECUSA [which yes, is kind of hard to ignore] I believe that I am enjoying the best of Anglicanism right now, thanks to all the contacts and friends made via blog and otherwise.

Dr. Packer, who knows a great deal more about these matters than I do, is nevertheless simply wrong.

He seems to suggest that “Anglo-Catholicism” had its origins in the Oxford movement of the 19th century.  Perhaps the term “Anglo-Catholic” did, but the Oxford Fathers saw themselves—correctly—as speaking in the tradition of the Caroline Divines of the 17th century and (to some extent) the non-jurors of the 18th, who in turn looked to Hooker of the 16th (Keble in particular revered Hooker), to certain elements in the English Reformation that were there from the very beginning and to the canonical charge of 1571 that the clergy were to interpret the Bible and preach “according to the ancient bishops and catholic fathers.”

Moreover, it has a great reverence for what has grown slowly,. what has been tried, what has been generally accepted - in short, for tradition (not to be confused with the Catholic concept of tradition).

Nor to be confused with Dr. Packer’s, either.

I could go on, but Dr. Packer’s presentation is at least as one-sided as anything that Newman or the later Ritualists said, if not more so.

He has a point about the hypocrisy of the Anglican Missal.  But some of the more contemporary manifestations of evangelicalism have distorted Anglican worship even more, perhaps not so formally supplanting or diminishing the Book of Common Prayer, but in effect relegating it background noise behind all sorts of other trendy innovations.  While some will read this piece as a broadside attack on Anglo-Catholics, Packer’s points apply equally—and perhaps now, especially—to the evangelical Protestant wing.  As they inevitably and rightly jettison the mess of porridge that is the 1979 book, they’d best be careful to ensure that they don’t sell as Anglicanism a form of worship that is decidedly not.  Peter Toon looks increasingly wise in his insistence that if we are to have truly common prayer, we need the (real) Book of Common Prayer, and that it needs to maintain its central place (after Scripture) in our worship—whatever the variations in our belief at the edges.

The tragedy of Anglicanism since the 17th century has been its almost incessant warfare between catholic and evangelical patisans.  You can see where this has gotten us: the triumph of the latitudinarians, with the reinvention of Christianity by the Pikes and Spongs of this world.
I agree with IRNS completely.  I revere Dr Packer immensely and owe him a considerable debt.  But I’m equally grateful for Dr Eric Mascall.
Packer for the doctrines of salvation, Mascall for the doctrines of church and sacrament.

He seems to suggest that “Anglo-Catholicism” had its origins in the Oxford movement of the 19th century. 

I don’t think that’s quite fair. He merely points out that the <u>current</u> wave of Anglo-Catholicism has its roots in the Oxford Movement. He doesn’t suggest for a moment (and who could?) that the work of Keble, Newman and others was a novelty, just that it was inconsistent with the English Reformation of the 16th Century, as clearly it was.

He doesn’t suggest for a moment (and who could?) that the work of Keble, Newman and others was a novelty, just that it was inconsistent with the English Reformation of the 16th Century, as clearly it was.

IF the work of Keble, Newman and others “was inconsistent with the English Reformation of the 16th Century” (and I do not concede that it was), then so was the work of Andrewes, Cosin, Pearson, Ken, Montague, etc.

Dr. Packer simply privileges certain aspects and moments in 16th century, making them “definitive” of Anglicanism.  No one can stop him, but his reasons for doing so proceed from the theological prism by which he views the facts, not from the facts themselves.

These days it is fashionable to declare that the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is the “definitive” Prayer Book.  Readers might consider when that the book was produced (the 17th, not the 16th century), under what circumstances (in reaction against Puritanism), and what were the overall views of its editors (such as Peter Gunning).

David Ould is correct.

The bishops who laid the foundations of Anglicanism during the time of Elizabeth I were not striving for an unprincipled compromise between Romanism and Protestantism. In their writings there is not a trace of Romish sympathies. When they battled puritanism, they were concerned about protecting the Church against premature and shortsighted abolition and against disorder and liturgical dissoluteness.

My Goodness, what an article.  I haven’t read anything quite like this other than material published during the last part of the 19th century.  Dr Packer needs to take a look inside the cover of an Anglican or English Missal—he will be surprised to find a variety of usages including the straight-line BCP available.  But more than that, he needs to look to the writings of some of the bishops he condemns, like Charles Grafton, for instance.  Although he looked like a Romanizer, a few pages from any of his writing will quickly show him to be a Non-Roman Catholic.

As an Anglo-Catholic priest for over thirty years, I hardly recognize myself in Dr. P’s piece.  I’ve learned from him too, but this article is of little use.

One would think that our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect, wouldn’t one.

To All,
The Anglican Church itself being an offshoot after Rome was kicked out is more of Roman Catholic heritage.  It is definately not of the protestant genre.  It is this flare for being protestantism that has brought on the liberalism of sin.  Stay firm with Jesus!
With Jesus,
Bishop-The Badlands

I respect this site and Matt, as I do Dr. Packer.  But what good is served by posting here this divisive polemic?  Dr. Packer’s historical analysis is undoubtedly correct: Anglicanism is protestant, and some Anglo-catholic laity (including myself as a child) have been mislead.  But his anti-catholic rhetoric is gratituous and uncharitable.  Strangely, Matt seems to understand this.  Whereas the custom on a blog is to excerpt the most salient part of a larger ariticle, linking to the full version at the bottom of the quote, in this case Matt has expurgated Packer’s piece, judiciously excising the most divisive and rhetorically unnecessary portions.  Finally, the website itself describes this non-denomination’s history as a very small group which has failed to find peace through the incessant splintering of Anglicanism (a warning to us?!)  Which begs the question: why publish it?

Did J. I. Packer actually write this article?  It comes from the website of one of the miniature manifestations of the Continuing Church, and I do not find his name actually attached to it there.  The rantings about internal squabbles of the CC and the wickedness of the Anglican Missal are hardly worthy of a great scholar, and I doubt that an Oxford D.Phil would misspell Ultra-montane as ultra-Montaigne.  It would be helpful to know the original venue of this essay before it fell into the hands of Bishop Charles Morley and his Protestant Alliance.  It is interesting to explore other essays on that website: fulminations on the subject of KJV only, an attempt to revive Dean Burgon’s defense of the textus receptus, a vituperative attack on the Charismatic movement (admittedly I agree with it!), and a presentation of C. S. Lewis article, “ forbidden word in the Church.”  Something tells me Matt and Bishop Morley wouldnt be happy with each other very long, in spite of their Protestant convictions.

I echoe Laurence K Wells’ question.  This certainly doesn’t sound very much like Packer, and it isn’t labeled as his.

Goodness.  I suppose that following the article we now have another group to blame for all our troubles.  If only those Anglo-catholics would stop asserting “romish” doctrines like Real Presence, we could get back to the “Biblical” faith and the liberals would go away.

I am sorry to note, as Laurence above, that the essay appears on the website of some sort of small “continuing” Protestant Anglican church, which seems dedicated to preserving ... what, I don’t know.  Englishness?

The copyright on the article is held by the Traditional Protestant Episcopal Church, an Alabama based organization headed by Bp Morley.
Odd.

LKW,

I recieved this via email. Dr. Packer was identified as the author of the piece. Dr. Peter Toon’s list email also recognizes this as being authored by Packer.

John L+,

It may be divisive and had it come from another author I would probably not have posted it. But, as you may know, JI Packer is, with John Stott, the most widely known and justly reknowned Anglican in the wider evangelical Christian world. If, indeed, he wrote it, then this is certainly a newsworthy and postable item. Not to post it, I think, would be far more irresponsible.

As a follow-up, I agree with Sam Keyes.  The article (whoever wrote it) implies that the Anglo-catholic movement opened the door to liberalism.  Rubbish!  Most historians would agree that protestantism arose as an expression of the Rennaisance/humanistic world view.  The protestant spirit gave rise to the notion of individual (experiential) interpretation, to political reform including liberal democratic institutions (think Calvin), to the questioning of authority—which allowed for the rise of science, etc., etc.  Protestantism is about individual judgment, moderated by/empowered by majority rule.  In its extreme and corrupt form it gave rise to the consecration of Gene Robinson and the rejection of Lambeth teaching.  Furthermore, our attempts to reform Anglicanism into a more conciliarist (think catholic) structure constutes an acknowledgement of the inherent weaknesses in existing protestant structures and a need to recover an ancient (neither reformation nor Roman, but ancient) catholic governance.

Dr. Packer greatly overstates his case in arguing that Catholic sympathies played no role in the settling out of Anglicanism in the aftermath of the Reformation.  As others have shown, that is decidedly false.  At the same time, it’s hard to show that Anglo-Catholicism has ever been anything other than the rearguard action of a misfit minority.

If we look at the Oxford Movement as the high water mark, what has it ultimately left us?  Mostly, a consensus that it’s not papist to wear vestments and put candles on the altar.  As to actual theology on the ground, we have Protestant evangelicalism dominant on the right and a parody of Catholicism on the left - female priests conducting lesbian “marriages” at which Buddhists commune, but calling the thing “Anglo-Catholic” because Palestrina and thick clouds of incense float in the background.  Rowan Williams himself doesn’t believe we should have councils, and the richest province ignores both the closest things to it and its communion partners in general.

As an Anglo-Catholic, I say with sadness that, while Packer has misstated some of the details, his conclusion is essentially correct.  “We coulda been a contender. We coulda been somebody, instead of a bum.”  No more.

John+

you said:

“Protestantism is about individual judgment, moderated by/empowered by majority rule.”

This is as untrue and unfair and as polemical as you portray Packer’s article.

Digging further into the website where the article is posted is informative.  Would Dr. Packer be writing an article that mentions recognition by Canterbury (and its lack in the case of un-named Anglo-Catholic continuers) for publication on a website published by “Protestants” also not in communion with Canterbury? (But then, who cares about that much anymore?) Curiouser and Curiouser, in the words of one Anglo-Catholic who was in communion with Canterbury.

Would someone who knows Dr. Packer please contact him and settle the question of authorship?  Thanks in advance.

One aspect of catholic ecclesiology as it is embraced by many TEC conservative AC anglicans that certainly lends itself to the current liberal dominance is the faith in and reliance upon and obedience to the visible structure of a given jurisdiction.

What to do when the religion espoused by the structure is no longer consistent with that which God revealed in the scriptures? This institutional dependence is the link Barth identified between Rome and liberalism.

If someone would forward Dr. Packer’s email address to me here:

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address),

I will check with him

And, just one more question about authorship; if this is a Packer piece, wouldn’t the website want to say so in order to bolster its own credibility?

Matt:  if the posting of this article is strictly contingent on the authorship, would it not be the mature thing on your part to verify that Packer is indeed the author?  You state that you would not publish the article had anyone else written it, but then you admit your own uncertainty on the matter.  You cannot have it both ways.

LKW+,

I did not admit my uncertainty. It was passed on to me by two sources 1. Peter Toon’s list-email which identified it as a Packer piece and, independently, by another source. Both identified it as being from Packer. So, when I posted it I was not at all uncertain.

2. Since questions have been raised, I am more than happy to make inquiries. I am still fairly certain however. If it is not Packer’s piece I will gladly change the title. I will not at this point, with over 15 comments, take it down.

[OFF TOPIC WITH APOLOGIES]

Brien, I see that you are online and I sent you a reply to your comment at this thread on the commenter supper in Baton Rouge, but I have not heard back from you.

http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/4263/

Just wanted to make certain you received it.

But we don’t need to look to the Oxford Movement as the high-water mark, since (by at least one definition) the Oxford Movement ended in 1845.

The high-water mark would more likely be placed in the 1920s, with the great Anglo-Catholic congresses and the liturgical reforms of that era that resulted in the 1928 ECUSA prayer book, the 1929 Scottish prayer book and almost the 1928 English book, which passed in the C of E but failed in parliament by one vote.  I have sometimes wondered how history might have been different if that 1928 book had passed.

As for what it has left us, well, how about Austin Farrer, Gregory Dix, Eric Mascall, C. S. Lewis (yes, C. S. Lewis), Michael Ramsey, et alii?  Yes, various aspects of these men’s work has been under attack of late (particularly Gregory Dix), but their monuments languish only because not enough people read them.

If one is looking for the seeds of Anglo-Catholic failure, it might be better to seek it in the acceptance of a fairly radical Biblical criticism and rejection of almost any authority beginning with, say, with the various post-Lux Mundi publications such as Soundings.

Fair enough, Matt.  I did indulge in a bit ‘o polemic. 

I do think I’m right that protestantism arose out of the Renaissance/Humanistic world-view as it rejected the authority of tradition, re-discovered the value of observation and research, and opened the way to modern historical-critical methods and science.  And I think it is fair to extrapolate that the 18th C revolutionary ideals and the 19th and 20th C liberal Western institutions are part of that stream.  These are ideals and institutions that have made me and us who we are, and for which most of us would give our lives.  I could never reject them!  Nevertheless, as American and European society has grown corrupt, these liberal ideals and institutions are also showing signs of corruption (Duh!)  And protestantism, as it has co-evolved, is implicated!  (Whether you look at St. John the Divine in NYC or Saddleback Church you see the selling out to American cultural corruption, as Charles Colson has argued.)  Finally, our seeking of new Anglican conciliarist episcopal structures (Primates and councils of bishops) have little or no precedent in the history of protestantism.  They are a harking back to ancient catholic structures.  God willing, they may rescue Anglicanism!  A bit of humility in the worn out catholic-protestant rhetoric would be helpful here, and I apologize for indulging in it myself.

With regards to whether it was Protestantism or Catholicism that opened the door to liberalism, I don’t think that it is fair to completely to place the responsibility entirely on either wing. I would say that it took the worst aspects of the evangelicals (a lack of respect for tradition and historical order, plus prominence of the individual conscience), combined them with the worst aspects of the Catholics (a belief that the magisterium alone can interpret scripture; placing the councils and canons of the church on a level with scripture), to make something considerably worse than either. I note that the most Catholic churches, held in line by their tradition, and the most Protestant (such as the baptists), held by their sole reliance on scripture, are the ones least affected by liberalism.

One aspect of catholic ecclesiology as it is embraced by many TEC conservative AC anglicans that certainly lends itself to the current liberal dominance is the faith in and reliance upon and obedience to the visible structure of a given jurisdiction.

Ah, but Matt, note your qualifier: “of a given jurisdiciton.”  What lends itself to liberal dominance is the unqualified obedience to the jurisdiction, not the “visible structure.” 

Additionally, the meaning of that “visible structure” is in fact at the heart of many of the arguments going on on this website.  Can we say that there is an Anglican, or even Anglo-Catholic, understanding of that “visible structure”?  As opposed to the RC and EO understandings?  I think there is, but that would perhaps take this thread off in another direction . . .

Three searches using phrases from the article above took me to this site: http://www.reformer.org/articles/articles.cgi?action=fullscreen&primary_key=10

But, no author is cited for the article.

“If, indeed, he wrote it,....”

“I did not admit my uncertainty.”

The subordinating conjunction “if” used in conditional clauses, strengthened by the adverb “indeed,” generally implies a substantial doubt.  But now, I gather, you have committed yourself to the Packer
authorship of the article in question.

“In the hands of the rationalistic school of Tubingen the new historical approach led rapidly to the scepticism of D. F. Strauss, who in his notorious Leben Jesus (1835-6) argued that the supernatural element in the Gospels was a ‘myth’ entirely without historical foundation, having grown up during the long interval between the days of Jesus himself and the middle of the second century, when the Gospels were written.  Not unnaturally it seemed to the conservatively minded that ‘biblical criticism’—that is, the application of scientific historical method to the literature of the Bible—must necessarily be ‘destructive’; to any Christian believer, who was alive to the challenge of the new historical thinking, the question became all at once cruelly urgent.  The abyss of historical scepticism had been terrifyingly uncovered.  The two most sensitively religious minds of the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman (1801-90) and Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), illustrated two quite different forms of reaction to the terror of the abyss.  Newman, recoiling in horror from the yawning chasm of doubt, sought the security of an infallible dogmatic authority; Kierkegaard, in shuddering dread yet strangely revelling in the sensation of vertigo, essayed to pass over the chasm by means of the ‘leap of faith’.”  Alan Richardson, The Bible in the Age of Science, p. 50

Argg, LKW+

When I posted it I WAS NOT UNCERTAIN. Hence my answer to John+. Since questions have been raised, I BEGAN TO WONDER. Hence my use of the word “if”

As someone who has known Jim Packer as a dear friend and mentor for more than 35 years, I have to tell you this is classic Packer. I suspect he was addressing a particular audience, thus some of the way in which it is phrased, but it reflects that Protestant Anglicanism that is at the roots of the faith for those of us who were formed as evangelicals in the Church of England in an earlier generation. Certainly, as one shaped by the traditional evangelicalism of England during the Sixties, I have always leaned in a Protestant and Reformed direction and value the catholicity of Anglicanism with a small rather than a large C. In this I am not unsual. I suspect in that Packer and I are not too far apart.

While much is changing as we move further into the confusion of this new reformation that is taking place around us, what I believe Jim Packer is doing here is presenting a very important corrective. Packer says, “Yes, Anglicanism has a wide vision, but we distort the lens if we forget that at its heart it is a product of the Reformation”—The Catholic must not be emphasized at the expense of the Protestant.

I remember watching the funeral of John Paul II on television and as it began thinking that if push came to shove I could fit myself into the Roman tradition, not that I would necessarily be comfortable there. By the time the Mass had been consecrated and the saints and Mary had been invoked I knew that I as a Protestant Anglicanism was doctrinally a long, long way from being able to lean in that direction. I would hazard that Jim Packer’s mindset would be somewhat similar.

Indeed, Jim Packer has told me in conversation that he believes that with all its many shortcomings, Anglican Christianity is the very best way of being Christian—and it is this “ecclesia catholica semper reformanda” that is at the root of that statement.

This sort pf polemical article, and the ensuing exchanges, are just my “cup of tea.”  for the moment, however, I will limit myself to recommending three scholarly books, for those who are interested in these matters.  They are:

*John Jewel and the English National Church: the Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer* by Gary W. Jenkins. 308 pages.  Ashgate Publishing, 2006; ISBN: 0754635856.

*English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors* by Christopher Haigh. 384 pages. Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN: 0198221622.

Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600-1640* by Anthony Milton.  617 pages.  Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2002.  ISBN: 9789521893299.

The first of these is by a dear friend of mine (on whose dissertation examining committee I had the honor of serving).  It is a rich and dense book. Essentially, it deminstrated that Jewel was a throughly “Reformed” Protestant whose “appeal to the Fathers” had as its purpose to show that the Fathers did not support Roman Catholic beliefs and practices in certain key area, and that he “shaped” the questions on which he chose to argue in such a way as to ensure either that he would win the debate or else it would end in deadlock.  more importantly, Jenkins demonstrates that Jewel himself did not regard the Fathers or any Patristic “consensus” as normative for the church of England, and that in fact he thought that “the Fathers” were in error on numerous key issues.  He also shows that Jewel privately detested many of the “traditional features” that the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 retained: the use of vestments, the retention of any imagery whatsoever in churches and the fact that the church of England had not followed closely the model of Zurich (where he had spent the reign of Mary Tudor in exile) in reforming its worship and practice in 1559.  He also shows that Jewel thought that any form of Church Order mandated by ‘the Prince” was tolerable ad that bishops and presbyters were identical: the former being simply presbyters to whom “the civil authority” chose to exercise certain supervisory functions.  Later articles by Jenkins have uncovered carefully coded evidence in Jewel’s private correspondence with his only close friend (Jewel never married), Peter Martyr Vermigli, that privately he regarded Elizabeth I, whom he praised so fulsomely in his publications, as a person of uncertain paternity and loose morals, using as his code name for her “Glycerium,” the female character in Terence’s play *The Girl from Andros.* 

Haigh’s book is a very readable upmarket textbook.  It demonstrates, among other matters, how it was almost solely Elizabeth I’s own (by the standards of the time) “eccentric” religious opinions and predilections, plus her fear in the initial decades of the reign, of a Catholic or “traditionalist” rebellion, coupled with a French, Scottish or Spanish invasion, that drove her to insist on as much preservation of Catholic “paraphernalia” as possible, in the face of a desire on the part of virtually all of her bishops for further religious changes in a “Reformed” (or “Swiss”) direction; and how “Puritanism” originally arose from among those “hot Protestants” who were disappointed, some 12 to 15 years into her reign, by their slow and horrified realization that she would never permit any further “reform” of the liturgy or official doctrine of the Church of England.

Milton’s book, which I reviewed briefly here:

http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1198-tighe

demonstrates, in the context of the present exchange, that many of the “innovations” (but not all) that seem to be attributed to the Tractarians of the Oxford Movement or their Anglo-Catholic successors in the present exchange, were actually first embraced (in the context of the post-1559 Church of England) by the “Caroline Divines” (Lancelot Andrewes and his friends [Buckeridge, Overall] and disciples [Laud, Montague, Wrenn, Cosin and many others]), who came to control the Church of England between 1625 and 1640 and who permanently altered its ecclestical self-conception, as well as “inventing” the concept of Anglicanism as an “ism,” forever after, even if only by providing a set of beliefs which were (and are) decidedly at odds in some respects with those of Cranmer, Jewel and the dominant figures of Elizabeth’s reign, and by providing for future generations of post-Oxford-Movement “Catholic Anglicans” a model for further progress in a Catholic (or Patristic) direction by discarding awkward or embarrassing Protestant features of the “Elizabethan Settlement.”

In the interest of full disclosure, and in an attempt to satisfy those who will probably accuse me of trying to smuggle in “Catholic propaganda,” please note (a) that Christopher Haigh, having been variously a Presbyterian and a Methodist in his youth, is now “an agnostic Anglican” (as he describes himself in his book’s preface) and a “Student” (i.e., don) at Christ Church, Oxford; (b) Anthoy Milton is a “thoroughly unrepentant lapsed Catholic” (as he describes himself in his book’s preface) and teaches at the University of Sheffield, England; (c) and Gary Jenkins, having got a divinity degree from the Reformed Episcopalian seminary in Philadelphia before taking his doctorate from Rutgers University, was for many years a “ruling elder” in the local Lehigh Valley congregation of the Presbyterian Church of America before converting to the Orthodox Church in 2001.  I know all of these scholars personally, ans count Gary as one of my close friends.

“Protestantism has been modernity’s specific form of Christianity”—Robert W. Jenson

I do rather hope this article, assuming it truly is from Dr. Packer, was written a long time ago. At this crucial time, when unity among orthodox forces in North American Anglicanism is so essential, I find it quite discouraging to think he might still be speaking this anti-AC way.

I am a supporter of the idea of a new province, and a supporter in particular of the more “forward” elements of the Network and the Common Cause partnership.

Unfortunately I have had to spend a good deal of time recently calming (I incerely hope ungrounded) fears of clergy friends in my diocese (Fort Worth) that this new province will be dominated by Calvinists who will try to use the 39 Articles as a club to “purify” the new body of Anglo-Catholic practice and teaching. I had reassured my friends here that no one will come and try to take away Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament from them, and that Ango-Catholics will be respected as full and equal partners in the new province. Not to worry.

And then I read this piece, who would seem to imply that many of the parishes in my dioceses are not authentically Anglican. It makes my blood run cold. PLEASE, friends, PLEASE let’s not go back to the bad old days of internal strife between Evangelicals and AC’s of the 19th century in our attempt to rid ourselves of the folly of 20th century liberalism. We must all hang together, giving full room of both evangelical and Anglo-Catholic expressions of Anglicanism.

I very much hope Dr. Packer did not write this in the last few years. It doesn’t help a bit in the present crisis.

I completely agree with texanglican.  I’m a fan of Dr. Packer, but this article was not constructive at all.

If I may add, orthodox Anglicanism would be greatly dimminished without orthodox Anglo-Catholicism.

I recommend to all Paul Zahl’s Protestant Face of Anglicanism as a good and very readable perspective on this issue.

I agree with texanglican!

Anglo-Catholicism, once embraced as a remedy against rationalism and humanism, has proved inadequate to the job. Historically foreign to the true tradition of English and American churchmanship, it has become exactly what it initially sought to combat: it is liberal, lawless, and radical in the extreme.

This is probably a place where I should fear to tread, not being formally trained in theology, but whether this is written by Dr. Packer or not, this conclusion obscures the reality.  The modern radical revisionists are anything but Anglo Catholic. They may indeed be “high church” in the sense of thuribles, fiddle-back chasubles,  elevating the Sacrament, or genuflecting every now and then.  BUT, if one does not BELIEVE the words of the creeds or does not hold the seven Sacraments (including Holy Matrimony and Confession/Absolution) sacred one is NOT an Anglo Catholic, at least not according to the catechism I was brought up with.
  What has happened, especially over the last 30 years or so, is that the trappings and appearances of Anglo Catholicism have been taken on by that portion of the church (particularly within TEC, but clearly we see this happening in other places in the Communion as well) which styles itself as “prophetic” because it makes the pseudo-church look so much like a real one.  One must admit that taking over an AngloCatholic parish is generally easier for revisionists than taking over an Evangelical one, because the liturgical focus of Anglo Catholics means that many people won’t notice what is going on as long as the Mass looks the same, and weddings and funerals have plenty of pomp and circumstance.  Unfortunately, all too few recognized that the sermon lost its focus on Christ, did not take the time to examine what their children were learning in catechism class, and weren’t bothered when new priest didn’t hear confession, because they really didn’t like having to go.
  Let us remember also that many Anglo Catholics are the original “Fed-Cons” (to borrow Sarah’s terminology)- in the Continuing Church movement.  They left TEC 30 years ago over revisionism in the church, recognizing what was happening long before GC03.  While justifiable, those departures left a void within the Episcopal Church that the modern TEC-ers were happy to fill with a facsimile that utilized vestments, smells and bells but lacked belief.
  Anglo Catholicism is indeed liberal in the sense that Anglo Catholic clergy have for the last couple centuries, especially in the urban US, reached out to people in urban areas who would not have been thought of as “natural Episcopalians” (which is to say, not WASPs).  Most of the Anglo Catholic clergy I have known personally were Democrats (this may have something to do with growing up in Chicago, where until the late 70s, only about .05% of the total population was Republican), so maybe the charge of being “liberal” sticks that way.  But in matters of faith and doctrine, the Anglo Catholic clergy of my acquaintance have been steadfast in their adherence to Scripture and Tradition of the Church.
  The great hope of Anglicanism (dare I speak of hope in these seemingly dark times) is the model, albeit imperfect, it presents of a potentially reconciled Christian Church.  The Anglican Communion is unique, as a Church, in its acceptance of a broad range of doctrine, and custom, of worship.  Last Sunday, I worshiped at a church which was many things, but certainly not Anglo Catholic.  But this does not mean that it was not also a beautiful service glorifying God.  My hope is that we can continue in this tradition that allows Anglo Catholics and Calvinists to debate and learn and break Bread with one another.
  It took me a while to write this, so if it restates things that have appeared on the thread in the meanwhile, please bear with me.
Yours in Christ,
TJ

The link between liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism has been described as romanticism.  In both theology and liturgy, romanticism has been seen as an antidote to rationalism.  I believe that the essay briefly mentions rationalism.  There are people online as I

So many excellent posts above on this most excellent thread!

I really do like Boring Bloke’s contribution who wrote: 

With regards to whether it was Protestantism or Catholicism that opened the door to liberalism, I don’t think that it is fair to completely to place the responsibility entirely on either wing. ...  I note that the most Catholic churches, held in line by their tradition, and the most Protestant (such as the Baptists), held by their sole reliance on scripture, are the ones least affected by liberalism.

I’ve made the same observation too.  I think it’s fair to say that Via Media has its own unique set of challenges.

I see that TJM has commented on this as I wrote.  I agree that the Affirming Catholic crowd is more interested in haberdashery, as Bp. Pope has put it, than doctrine and that they are only the liberal end of Anglo-Catholicism.  Unfortunately, these are the folks who are in power in pecusa (note the p!).

TexAnglican-
I am with you 100% on unity of the orthodox.  The powers that be within TEC (and no small number of trolls here on SF) try to use the doctrinal differences between Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals as a wedge to split us apart (as they are now beginning to use the “Commcon-Fedcon” distinctions).  I sincerely believe that if we can put the current crisis behind us, developing an Anglican Covenant that recognizes both the Anglo Catholic AND Calvinist interpretations of Sacraments and the Real Presence will be the first step in the revitalization of the Church.
  I am led to wonder, since, unless there is a radical change of course by TEC before the end of September, we will be called upon to build a new province (or provincial structure in the form of pastoral council, etc.), we should not examine the structure of the Church.  Maybe not a good time to be changing the way things are done, but it seems to me much of the current problem of the church is caused by the geographic nature of diocese.  In the first century, this was a virtual necessity- a diocese was demarcated by a radius from the see.  But in the current world, communications have allowed churches to seek oversight from bishops thousands of miles distant.  Would it make more sense to put together a system in which an Anglo Catholic parish is part of an Anglo Catholic diocese, regardless of it being several hundred miles distant?  With periodic meetings of all bishops, of whatever stripe, in council (might look something like the Network/Common Cause meeting). It would seem that initially something similar will be forced upon us in any case, as even with the Common Cause consecrations, and even if ALL the Windsor bishops make the leap, there will be precious few bishops looking after North America.

If one wants a good taste of Anglo-Catholicism, then I suggest that they go here

http://anglicanhistory.org/acc/2/

to the report of the 2nd Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923.  Before clicking on any of the various headings, the reader might note its ecumenical and irenic tone, both within (note the letter of the bishop of Chelmsford) and without (note the blessing by the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan).  Then the reader might consider this from Charles Gore on the Prophets:

I believe that there is no duty which is so pressing upon the Church of Christ at this moment as the duty of re-erecting the ethical standard of Christ-or reasserting the only Way. It is evident to-day that the current rejection of Christianity is not primarily or mainly a rejection of its theology but a rejection of its moral claim. In regard to the sexual appetites the Christian standard, within marriage and without it, is being quite explicitly repudiated over very wide areas of society. This is commonly recognised. But it is at least as true that our industrial and social system have been largely built up on the repudiation of the Christian principles of justice, spiritual equality and brotherhood: and that the current maxims of our commerce, our current attitude towards wealth, our current toleration of selfishness as the normal ideal for the individual, the family and the nation, are direct repudiations of the principles of the prophets and of Christ. At the same time there is a very deep and wide feeling in the best of men, inside and outside the Church, that the Christian Life is rooted in the truth and that there is no alternative to it. And I cannot but acknowledge that it is very largely from outside the church that we have been, of recent years, relearning the moral meaning of Christ. I say that I think the first duty of the Church to-day is again to study and teach the Way, as William Law taught it in the 18th century in his “Serious Call.” This demands from the preachers and teachers of the Church very serious study. And it will involve a very serious alteration of emphasis in our preaching. In particular this is true of the Catholic movement in Anglicanism. It has perforce been occupied in recovering forgotten or ignored elements of Catholic doctrine, for instance about the Sacraments. In doing this it has run a great risk. It has distorted the emphasis. it has not made it constantly evident that the sacramental institutions of Christendom are means, not ends; that there is only one end and this is likeness of God: and that we have no authority to substitute any lower standard as sufficient. This is the lesson which we owe in the first instance to the prophets of the Old Testament; but since the very God was manifested in the flesh, the meaning of their root principles has gained a quite new clearness. “I,” says Jesus, “am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” “God is love; and he that abideth in love”-which is the social principle of brotherhood-he and he only “abideth in God and God abideth in him.” And to abide in divine love is to frame one’s life in active correspondence with God’s purpose. It is not merely negative attitude-to abstain from doing evil. It is the devotion of oneself to promoting the Kingdom of God-which is justice and peace and love-in every department of human affairs.

Fitz Allison would probably call this “moralism.”  But I call it “words to live by” . . .

Given the fundamental theological differences between Evangelical Anglicanism and Catholic Anglicanism—and these differences are truly fundamental and church-dividing—why the energy and passion to keep everyone together in one house?  At this moment when Anglicanism is poised to reconfigure itself would it not be appropriate and beneficial for Anglicans to confront their differences, instead of papering them over?  If Anglicanism is big enough to shelter both Paul Zahl and Keith Ackerman, it is simply too big.  Stephen Sykes many years ago identified the incoherence of Anglican comprehensiveness.  Is it not time to admit the problem?

I think Dr. Packer’s letter makes for a very sad day when Anglicanism is trying to come to an orthodox unity. Anyway, see my comment on my new blog de cura animarum

Fr. Kimel has divided but that need not be the case for others.  I believe that the Network has worked hard and admirably to keep the orthodox tent large enough for A-Cs and Evangelicals.  I think that an orthodox Anglicanism ought to have room for both biblical expressions.  Where either is in error, they should be corrected.

UKI, I looked at your piece and with your disparaging use of Baptist and Puritan it is obvious that you have as much sympathy for Dr. Packer’s churchmanship and theology as he has for yours!  However, you might pick up a Packer book and look at the bibliography; he does read more that just protestant theology.

I’ve tracked this article to:

http://www.goodshepherdaoc.org/ProtestantOrCatholic.html

The following, explanatory document should shed some light:

http://www.goodshepherdaoc.org/ProtestantOrCatholica.html

(notice the “a” added just before the “.html”). This document brings to light a few things:

* This document was posted, per the info at the bottom of the web page, August 19, 2005. It’s 2 years old, and it refers to the same article +Matt posted here and to which the first link above references. Therefore, one may conclude both are old documents.

* This document is written as though it were a response to someone who had commented on the first article. One may conclude it has already been posted years ago and some discussion of it has already occurred.

* This document was written by Charles Morley, bishop of TPEC.

* The author says the original document was by J.I. Packer.

* The author says he is (at the time of writing 2 years ago) no longer in possession of the original document which is why he gives no accompanied credit to the original writer (though he is clearly doing so in this expanatory document).

* The authors says, “I have circulated that piece for years and have yet to have a response other than positive.” Given he is writing in 2005 and says this piece is years old, we can conclude +Matt’s posting, despite having arrived to him recently in email, is years old.

So certainly we must consider this could be (a) a youthful treatise from Dr. Packer, or (b) Dr. Packer was responding to a particular issue (not a generic, sweeping statement) and trying to establish a point specific to that issue.

We might also be aware that since this is an old document for which the original is no longer available, it may be an errant quotation or selectively edited from a larger piece.

I think it would be best if we determined the exactitude of this piece as a whole and under what circumstances it was written. The origin and purpose of it seem to be shrouded in a bit of mystery. Until that is clarified, we are responding to a document that is years old, of claimed origin but for which the original is designated lost or destroyed and lacking clarity of purpose and context for which it was written.

Peace.

Well, I recommend Catholic or Protestant? by my spiritual director Canon Arthur Middleton.

1.  “I am with you 100% on unity of the orthodox.  The powers that be within TEC (and no small number of trolls here on SF) try to use the doctrinal differences between Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals as a wedge to split us apart (as they are now beginning to use the “Commcon-Fedcon” distinctions).”  [TJMcMahon]

Versus

2.  “Given the fundamental theological differences between Evangelical Anglicanism and Catholic Anglicanism—and these differences are truly fundamental and church-dividing—why the energy and passion to keep everyone together in one house?  At this moment when Anglicanism is poised to reconfigure itself would it not be appropriate and beneficial for Anglicans to confront their differences, instead of papering them over?  If Anglicanism is big enough to shelter both Paul Zahl and Keith Ackerman, it is simply too big.  Stephen Sykes many years ago identified the incoherence of Anglican comprehensiveness.  Is it not time to admit the problem?”  [Fr. Kimel]

This is a really hard nut to crack.  I can see strength of reasoning and validity to both arguments.  Be that as it may, I think the greatest danger is the heresy and apostasy that’s virulently metastasized by the influx of liberal revisionism.  And the honest fact is that some dangerous forms of falsehood can only be confronted by courageous, standing-firm conflict.

TonyinCNY,

You should be aware that “ukimmigrant” (whom I met in the UK only a fortnight ago) is fully aware of Dr. Packer’s books and writings.  He is a one-time hard-shell Calvinist and PCA minister who came to Anglicanism via the REC.  How he is an orthodox Anglo-Catholic, deacon at a Forward-in-Faith/UK parish and a member of Forward-in-Faith himself who sees (re)union with the Catholic church as the only reasonable goal for Catholic Anglicans.  His lack of sympathy for Dr. Packer’s theological stance stems not from ignorance, but from considered rejection.

Furthermore, I do not perceive the sense of your statement that

“I think that an orthodox Anglicanism ought to have room for both biblical expressions”

since if both “experssions” are compatible they ought to be reconciled, but if they are incompatible, then both of them cannot be “orthodox,” but only one of them (or another “expression” entirely; and an Anglicanism that has “room” for both orthodoxy and heterodoxy already exists in (P)ECUSA and elsewhere, so why you would wish to reinvent that particular square wheel might make for interesting reading.

I will await Dr Packer’s response.  In a sense this is truly “vintage Packer,” as he truly is a classical Calvinist who has little use for the
various Missals introduced into the Episcopal Church, long before the CC movement got underway.  And the article does have a degree of validity, in pointing out that poorly trained clergy sometimes tactlessly inflicted the Missals (which they themselves didn’t know how to use properly) on tiny fledgling congregations of folk who were more used to “Morning Prayer and Sermon.” 
But I doubt that Packer would have such a keen interest in CC problems, and my impression is that his worship preference is not 1928 BCP but more free-church Calvinist non-liturgical.  At the risk of being proved wrong, I venture to speculate that some of the language goes back to Packer himself, with heavy scribal redactions from the hand of Bp Morley.  It is impossible for me to believe that Packer (always a succinct but careful writer) would use such an expression as “most of who” in the same paragraph as “ultra-Montagne.”

If Laurence K Wells is correct about Packer’s liturgical preference, and from what I know of his writings he is, then that is all the more proof that he is historically in error. Simply because the Puritans had a loud voice in England during the late C16 and early C17 surely does not mean that their novelties were the lex orandi lex credendi of Anglican worship. One only need to stroll into the chapel of Lancelot Andrewes to get a nose-full of incense an eastern altar with eastern facing prayers and other “Catholic” ceremonials to see how ridiculous such a rant by Dr. Packer actually is. When the Anglican Church has returned to these fathers of the C17 the only result has been a more Catholic ecclesiology and liturgy. C19 Anglo-Catholicism did just that, then they returned to the early Fathers, after which they saw the same Church and concluded the absolute novelty of Puritan/Calvinistic liturgy and theology. I say, if you want to be a Presbyterian, then be one; just don’t try to make Catholic Anglicans believe its historical Anglicanism.

If Anglicanism is big enough to shelter both Paul Zahl and Keith Ackerman, it is simply too big.  Stephen Sykes many years ago identified the incoherence of Anglican comprehensiveness.  Is it not time to admit the problem?

Perhaps, but I would be suspicious of such a move. The urge to develop a “rational” ecclesiology is a noble one, but to me may miss the larger point and most essential gift of Anglicanism: unless you are saying that there are two faiths in Anglicanism, one Christian and one not, then the Vincentian unity that Anglicanism provides is precious and must not be squandered. There is tremendous value and humility in a body unified by sacrament and liturgical order, opportunity for exchange across boundaries that would not otherwise be possible. (I am assuming here that such interaction is within the boundaries of orthodoxy, genuinely orthodox and ecumenical in the best sense, not the tired impostor notion of “listening” trotted out by the liberal side, in mockery of genuine Vincentian ecumenicism.)

To me it’s an amazing and wonderful thing that Matt Kennedy preaches Calvinist, evangelical sermons in the midst of a high-church Oxford-influenced service. That sort of accidental polemic would be lost if the two were divided by hard ecclesial boundaries. The very fact that Anglicanism can still have this kind of conversation about itself in 2007—are we Catholic or Protestant?—to me is a strength, not a weakness.

The church, as Dr. Radner constantly points out, is broken and needs healing, and Anglicanism at its best has always reflected this in genuine humility and anticipation of restoration, but an incarnate restoration rather than an abstract “rational” one. I’m less enthused by the idea of perfectly cloistered and “rationally coherent” ecclesial structures (such a notion is both a Roman and a Reformed error, IMO) than I am by the incarnate Church that we have right in front of us, and all the polemical and ecumenical possibilities that entails.

By the way, tjmcmahon—an excellent post earlier! I couldn’t agree more.

Of course, not all Anglicans, and certainly not all Anglo-Catholics, have admired Anglican “comprehensiveness” or have thought it amounted to much more than a result of political compromise and ongoing theological and intellectual laziness, “making a virtue of necessity rather than the conviction of a coherent and constructive theological position,” as the author cited below wrote at another point in that same essay.  As one of them wrote, speaking of the “three schools of thought” idea of Anglicanism containing in tension and cross-fertilization the “insights” of “catholics”, “evangelicals” and “liberals”:

“The fundamental incoherence of the three-school theory can be seen from the obvious fact that the existence of each one of the schools can be justified only on the assumption that its characteristic theological assertions are true.  But in that case the characteristic theological assertions of all three schools must be mutually compatible.  And in that case there is no reason why we should not accept them all and a great many reasons why we should.  But then what will have happened to the three schools?  It is quite ridiculous to envisage the Church as a tricorporate society, each of whose parties is committed to holding one-third of the truth.  Regrettable as this no doubt is, it is because each school has not been convinced that everything that the others were holding was part of the truth that the schools have remained recognisably distinct ...”

“Whither Anglican Theology” by E. L. Mascall, in *When Will Ye Be Wise? The State of the Church of England* ed. Anthony Kilmister. London, 1983: Blond & Briggs.

re: Packer’s essay: it’s strange to me that he points to the positions of the early Anglican bishops (Cranmer, Jewel) as somehow a kind of “normative” Anglicanism, and ignores the Carolines (not that the Carolines are “normative” either.) One could point back all the way to Henry if one wanted to argue for the “catholic” origins of Anglicanism…but of course who would want to point to Henry?

It’s a bit of a sucker’s game, IMO, to make any one era of Anglicanism more “Anglican” than another, or to label anyone “Neo” Anglican. With respect to Henry, Elizabeth was “Neo” Anglican. Towards the end of the essay, Packer gets back on track, although at the expense of nearly contradicting what appeared to be his opening thesis:

Yet, it also preserved a certain openness to the Catholic and the Reformed interpretations of the faith. It has taken seriously the principle “ecclesia catholica semper reformanda” - the church catholic, always reforming. By nature Anglicanism has a wide vision. Moreover, it has a great reverence for what has grown slowly,. what has been tried, what has been generally accepted - in short, for tradition (not to be confused with the Catholic concept of tradition).

This passage is both encouraging and somewhat confusing. He affirms that Anglicanism has always been open to both Catholic and Reformed tendencies, but not too catholic? What is one to make of this? To me this is illustrative of the incoherence one will fall into trying to privilege one against the other historically. Further, such historical privileging was not the point of the Oxford Movement as I’ve come to understand it. The Tractarians took one strain of Anglicanism—a legitimate and historically grounded strain—and emphasized it and its strengths. Yes, Newman and others wanted to make this reform absolute and normative, but others like Michael Ramsey tempered Anglo-Catholicism’s ambitions by attempting to show that both the catholic and evangelical strain of Anglicanism were urging towards the same thing: the proclamation of the death and resurrection of the Messiah. This was not an attempt to recover “real” Anglicanism, any more than Wesley attempted any such thing, but was simply to make the most of what Anglicanism already was, and even to allow it to become more than it was.

Anglicanism must always be looking forward to what God would make of it, rather than assuming this or that era is more “Anglican” or normative than any other. Else one falls into the Anglican incoherence that Fr. Kimel described earlier.

I disagree with Fr. Kimel 200%.  I, for one, and this only my opinion, am amazed that Paul Zahl and my bishop can exist under one roof, even with the theological differences.  I think it is important that, if we can live under one roof, it should certain be considered.  I don’t think the differences between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals necessary have to be church-splitting.  If that happens, the liberals win!

Of course, not all Anglicans, and certainly not all Anglo-Catholics, have admired Anglican “comprehensiveness” or have thought it amounted to much more than a result of political compromise and ongoing theological and intellectual laziness…

Point taken, but then hasn’t Anglicanism always taken that point? The accidental and serendipitous nature of Anglicanism has always meant there would be a basic incoherence, an inability to dot all ecclesial i’s and cross all its theological t’s. This of course begs the question of whether a “coherent” ecclesiology is possessed by anyone at this point. For the convinced Roman, Orthodox, Reformed and congregationalist believer this is a settled question, and there is no such thing as ecumenicism, there is only the ongoing battle to convert those who disagree. There are Orthodox who will not budge vis-a-vis Roman Primacy, there are congregationalists who will not budge vis-a-vis Presbyterianism, etc., on and on. Any one group may be right, and it is important that they debate and hash this out; but one can legitimately wonder whether such debates are actually addressing themselves to the real problem. I’m not a postmodern and I don’t disregard the need for reasonable debate, but it seems to me that ecclesiology has never been primarily a rational issue. The Church simply is what it is, and at any given point in history it has been in need of a particular sort of restoration. This of course betrays my catholic leanings on the question: I believe that there is the fact of the gift of the Church, and then ecclesiology may come in after the fact and describe the nature of that gift, but ecclesiology is not an attempt to construct an abstract edifice around which the church may be built. But then I guess that puts me at odds with RC ecclesiology, which has constructed exactly that: an abstract, absolute and unquestionable juridical order.

If one looks honestly at the state of the Church today, what can one say besides, yep, it’s a mess?? Is it intellectual laziness or humility for Anglicanism to declare itself part and parcel of that mess?? Is ecclesiology an intellectual problem to begin with? Are we to look for abstractions to resolve our divisions, or are we to pray for genuine revival? As far as I can tell from Scripture, there is no blueprint for Church—there is only the account of the Holy Spirit gifting the Church to us. Ecclesiology underwritten by pneumatology. It would be good for someone to come up with a perfect biblical and abstract ecumenical resolution to our divisions, but who would follow it?? Who among us is competent to judge, to be objective? Matt or another Calvinist might say the plain reading of scripture by an objective intellect is sufficient (correct me here, Matt). A Roman Catholic will say look to the Majesterium. Maybe one is right. I personally have problems with both perspectives

But to be honest I think we in this era have the Church we deserve, and what is more needful than anything else is prayer, repentance, and a move of the Holy Spirit. Anglicanism’s incoherence is held tentatively in the face of this brokeness of the Church—it is not or should not be dogmatic about it’s own unresolved issues; and yet to me, more than any other ecclesial expression, Anglicanism at its best is the most hopeful and full of possibility.

“Yes, Newman and others wanted to make this reform absolute and normative, but others like Michael Ramsey tempered Anglo-Catholicism’s ambitions by attempting to show that both the catholic and evangelical strain of Anglicanism were urging towards the same thing ...”

This seems to imagine that Anglo-Catholicism is “one big schmere” and cites Michael Ramsey to prove the point.  I spent a week in Oxford in July reading the letters and final unpublished book manuscript (ca. 1984) of Eric Mascall, whom I quoted above.  Among the letters there are a number of tense exchanges between Mascall and Ramsey over the Anglican-Methodist reunion schemes, the 1968 Lambeth conference and other matters.  Ramsey had come to think that Methodist ministers’ “Orders” could be accepted without “reordination” so long as Methodists accepted episcopacy; Mascall thought that this would “discredit” Anglican claims to have “Catholic Orders” and show the Church of England to be merely “a Protestant body with superintendents called ‘bishops’ like Methodist ‘bishops’ in America or Lutheran “bishops’ in Germany.  Ramsey thought that the reasons for opposing WO (which he did oppose) were “social and ecumenical reasons” but that “its time would come” whereas Mascall thought that WO was “destructive of Catholic Orders” and “invalid.”  Ramsey though that Anglican churches had a “special vocation” to convey “Catholic Spirit and Order” to Protestant bodies and to “test the spirits” for other Catholic churches on such matters as WO and “eucharistic sharing,” while Mascall thought that this was “nosensical” and showed “a Hegelian attitude.”  Anyone who knows anything about the ecclesiology of the Tractarians and later Anglo-Catholics, as well as that of the most distinctive (or forthright) Caroline divines, will easily be able to see which one of these two theologians faithfully transmitted their views to a later generation, and indeed those of Catholic Christianity as a whole.  Ramsey’s reunion schemes were opposed by all of the distincitvely “Catholic” societies and organizations in the Church of England, and supported by “liberals” of all sorts.  In a section of his final unpublished book manuscript Mascall treats in some detail the rise, in the 1920s and 30s, of what was termed in the Church of England “Liberal Catholicism” and shows, both how this school departed form classical and orthodox Anglo-Catholicism and how its distinctive views were derived rather uncritically from the Roman Catholic “Modernists” whose views were condemned by Rome in the decade after 1900, and from Liberal Protestant sources; and he discusses the manner in which “Liberal Catholics”—in some cases in spite of their own conservative instincts—left the door wide open for doctrinal, practical and moral innovation based largely on “what most experts think” and “where the Spirit seems to be leading today.”

I think he was prescient, although ignored by most of his academic colleagues and fellow-theologians.  Clearly Ramsey, although a man of great piety, ended up as more-or-less a “conservative Liberal Catholic,” just as today Rowan Williams seems to be Liberal Catholic who, while he is unwilling to accept the destructive consequence of the views that he holds, is unwilling to—to use one of Mascall’s phrases—reculer pour mieux sauter (recoil in order better to jump ahead) by adandoning his liberal innovative views and return to the doctrinally and morally orthodox Anglo-Catholicism of his youth.

I agree with tjmcmahon that today’s ECUSA is anything but Anglo-Catholic; much of the ritual is adapted because it simply makes for such great theater (remember VGR was into drama as an undergraduate, if I remember correctly). 
Since we all have been faced with such heresy and apostasy, and want to reform our church back to its pure state, it may be tough to keep Evangelicals and Anglo Catholics together.  It should be interesting to see how things develop.

Liturgies, chalices, chausibles, linens, naves, windows, organs… though lovely, are not the essentials of the Faith.  They are icing on the Bread of Life and do not affect or effect our salvation.  These things should not divide the Body. 

It is unlikely they were present from the beginning, or in the Upper Room.  Nor were the Desert Fathers so encumbered.

It is the Lord, in His power by the Holy Spirit Who must act to save, heal and deliver souls.  It is the Holy Spirit Who must produce the fruit and increase for the Kingdom and the King.
The age and beauty of the form does not trump or manipulate the work of the Holy Spirit on a willing human heart.

We must NOT place our confidence in a form of worship or Godliness, and deny or detract from the simple beauty of the Faith or the power thereof.

Rather the disorder and turmoil of a mighty rushing wind and three thousand saved, than a perfect cathedral service with a flawless perfectly ordered liturgy and homily, and no power, fruit, healing, conviction, deliverance, discernable presence of the Holy Spirit.

This made me laugh out loud (in a good way):

Ramsey though that Anglican churches had a “special vocation” to convey “Catholic Spirit and Order” to Protestant bodies and to “test the spirits” for other Catholic churches on such matters as WO and “eucharistic sharing,” while Mascall thought that this was “nosensical” and showed “a Hegelian attitude.”

I’d agree with Mascall here that’s exactly the problem—and the basic problem with liberalism—the Hegelian or Whig historiography, where all (or most) new ideological developments are by definition salutary. Are you aware of any comments Ramsey might have made about the Whig view of history?

The age and beauty of the form does not trump or manipulate the work of the Holy Spirit on a willing human heart.

I agree in principle but I’m uncomfortable with the nascent dualism at work here. Yes, the beauty of liturgy is not of particular necessity—it could have developed differently, and of course it did: Syriac, Ethiopian, Eastern rites of all sorts, etc. But I do think it’s needful that worship be done beautifully, that we give our best and reflect the truth that Christ is beautiful, and that his Passion is beautiful, and that for the Christian, the unity of Truth and Beauty surpasses anything Wordsworth had in mind.

Agreed, Dave, Jesus IS beautiful!

“Are you aware of any comments Ramsey might have made about the Whig view of history?”

None offhand.  I should add that both before and after his time as ABC Ramsey could be much more “traditionally” Anglo-Catholic.  When Mascall published his first theological book, *Christ, the Christian and the Church* in 1946 and in it defended the utility and acceptability of the term and concept “transubstantiation” in regard to the Eucharistic presence, and was attacked by liberals and evangelicals as a result, Ramsey (then I think, Bishop of Durham) wrote to Mascall to assure him of his support and freely spoke of the “ignorance” and “silliness” of the critics.  Later on, when Mascall wrote to Ramsey about how acceptance of the Anglican/Methodist scheme would so upset the consciences of conservative Methodists and conservative Anglo-Catholics that some might have to leave their respective bodies rather than go along with the union, Ramsey wrote back insisting that he understood all that, but still he couldn’t believe that Mascall would allow “a small rump” to have “a permanent veto” over “progress” and concluded that Mascall surely wouldn’t want “a die-hard Protestant faction” to exercise a veto over the reconciliation of the Church of England and the Church of Rome if that day would come, as he fully expected it would (“although we may not see it in our lifetimes”).  Mascall replied, however, that he would never support any “scheme,” however acceptable to him or dear to his heart, if it would drive people out of the Church (and that was one of his reasons, a lesser one to be sure, for opposing WO).  Then, in 1976, when the uproar over the liberal symposium “The Myth of God Incarnate” was at its height, Ramsey, in rertirement, wrote to Mascall saying how silly the revisionists’ views were and that he has written “a little essay” against them—but that the matter was perhaps little more than “an Oxford controversy” and perhaps would be better off being ignored than attended to.

Mascall also wrote to Abp. Coggan in 1976 to observe that what a disgrace it was to the Church of England, and how injurious to the view that Rome—where he had just spent some months at the Anglican center there while lecturing to Catholic seminarians—took of Anglicanism that the Chairman of the Doctrine Commission of the General Synod should be a man, Prof. Maurice Wiles, who had published a book and essays denying the doctrine of the Trinity as “an outmoded concept,” and entreating the Archbishop to do something. Canon Cleverly Ford, the Archbishop’s Chaplain, replied first to Mascall, and then the archbishop himself, both of them saying, in effect, yes, there are serious matters, but next year we will most likely have a new chairman of the Doctrinal Committee, so while we appreciate your concern we really don’t think that any action is called for at the present time.

I need not say who it was that, in retrospect, was prescient and who the lotus-eaters in these exchanges.

I am much closer to the orthodox Anglo-Catholic perspective than what is generally understood to be the traditional Evangelical Anglican one (and of course, to speak of either one or the other is to say the least, a glittering generality), so obviously, my reaction to much of Dr. Packer’s interpretation of the history of the Anglican tradition is not going to be among the most favorable ones.  But interpretation of church history aside, I am deeply disappointed with the tone and timing of this article.  Whatever some orthodox Anglicans at particular points in history have tried to make the Church of England or the Anglican Communion to be on paper or by practice or by establishment of doctrinal standards, it has not become, in the main, any of what those schools of thought have wanted.  Therefore, to pick a particular window along the timeline of the English Reformation period from 1529-1662 and claim that as being the most authoritative to tell us who and what we are (or should be) is not a search for truth or authority (and from an evangelical/protestant perspective, never could be), but a search for a polemical advantage or self-justification.  In addition, by doing so, he also leaves himself open to counter-arguments like this:  No matter how much Protestantism the 1559 BCP maintained in the liturgy, the Latin Prayer Book and Primer authorized by the Crown and the Archbishop of Canterbury over the next few years, and approved by the leading bishops and theologians of the church, allowed for a number of things that were thoroughly anti- protestant (understood as that particular Protestant, anti-Catholic trend of the day in England) such as a number of extra-biblical saint and feast days, traditional Catholic prayers, and prayers for the dead in the funeral service (Those additional books ultimately passed out of use, but the Injunctions that were part of the Bishops’ “visitations” to their dioceses over the next few years did not forbid prayers for the dead or the use of images in prayer, only certain “abuses” associated with those practices).  That we are, ultimately, neither protestant nor traditionally catholic is the historical reality that has to be accepted above all others, and as orthodox Anglicans have extremely difficult work ahead to re-build the Communion and bridge our gaps while remaining faithful to Holy Scripture (understood through the mind of the early Fathers AND Councils first and not the mind of our 16th and 17th century Reformers first, which is the common denominator of the stand our 16th and 17th century Reformers took), the wisdom and particular forms of grace that have been passed down to us in our universal tradition, going back to the old protestant vs. catholic debate is to major in minors. 

We have to ask ourselves first what God has formed us to be - why the various orthodox sub-traditions (and there are way more than two) of the Anglican Way, while having significant soteriological and ecclesiological differences have nevertheless recognized the deep work of Christ and the Holy Spirit in one another and are finding that we actually have dovetailing visions and very similar understandings of God’s design for His Church (much as C.S. Lewis, the Wesley brothers, and Richard Hooker are seen by many of various schools as being fundamentally traditional orthodox and catholic, very different philosophically and soteriologically from eachother, but in many important respects unmistakably evangelical and reformed as well). 

I have great respect for Dr. Packer and will always be grateful for how God used his work, Knowing God, to begin leading me away from fundamentalism/hardline evangelicalism and to the orthodox, catholic, and evangelical Faith of the One Church.  However, I’m afraid he is simply doing what he has always done well, but without any real consideration of what its ministerial impact will be in the current crisis.  He is fighting a hermeneutical/theological battle that is important for Christian academics and scholars to fight from time to time, but we all understand now that the winner of that argument will not be known until the Lord reigns on Earth.  The Anglican faithful are presently in serious need of tools to fight a very painful spiritual battle that will have to be waged on many levels.  That battle will have to be first and foremost within ourselves against our spiritual pride and intellectual and moral self-sufficiency, and our very Americanized (and sadly, reformed protestant) level of comfort with being a church of a thousand camps where we shout at one another atop boulders that we keep rolling back and forth to properly adapt to the trends and counter-trends of American religion.

One final comment:  If this is indeed from Dr. Packer, it is deeply disappointing that he misses the fact that so much of Anglo-Catholic liturgy continues to be drawn from and focused on biblical themes and specific biblical texts.  And that most traditional old-school High Church and Prayerbook Anglo-Catholic parishes have as much Bible study and Sunday School in a week as we do Matins and Vespers. 

I do appreciate many of the comments on this thread, however, especially those of Dave, Sarah Hey, I’d Rather Not Say, Truth Unites…and Divides, Laurence K Wells, Brien, and of course, Dr. Tighe (although I think you might help us by moving beyond Mascall’s well-formed theory, as strong as it is, and contemplating what group of schools besides the old big 3 might be theologically compatible)

I’m with Fr. Kimel on this one.  The current FedCon vs. ComCon divide is symptomatic of the underlying Protestant vs. Catholic divide that has existed since the beginning of the Anglican separation from Rome.  As a ComCon, I cannot sign on to FedCon “contingency plans.” For all of their talk of creating a “big tent,” their underlying ecclesiology is Protestant to the core.  Perhaps it’s time to deal with our differences in an honest, forthright way.  Perhaps it’s time to say, “Fare thee well and God be with thee.”

Christ’s church has both Anglo-Catholics and Calvinists in it.  It’s a shame if orthodox Anglicanism ever ceases to reflect that.

Rather the disorder and turmoil of a mighty rushing wind and three thousand saved, than a perfect cathedral service with a flawless perfectly ordered liturgy and homily, and no power, fruit, healing, conviction, deliverance, discernable presence of the Holy Spirit.

Floridian, I don’t think any of us here, Anglo Catholic or Evangelical, would argue that point.  I would go so far as to say that one saved is more important than a perfectly ordered cathedral service. 

The Masses I remember as most important and moving were not those which were most impressive, but those which were the most intimate.  It is not pomp and circumstance that makes one an Anglo Catholic, but the utter wonder and beauty of the Eucharist and other Sacraments.  The sheer awe of approaching the communion rail in the realization that Christ made His sacrifice for us.  The focus on the liturgy is an attempt to connect across 2000 years with those first Christians, in hope that we might experience Christ as they did. 
  Personally (and at risk, I suppose, of sounding more Protestant than Catholic) I think that the way to approach a Eucharist service is to start with a priest, bread, wine, and a BCP.  From that point, you may add what you wish to add- altars,maniples, thuribles, choirs- and so long as what you add increases the communication between the congregation and God, you may keep the addition.  For me, the bells help me focus, the vestments are a reminder of ancient tradition, the music of the organ is a reminder of the grandeur and majesty of the Lord. This may not be true for everyone, and so we may take different approaches in the attempt to bring ourselves and our neighbors into communion with our Lord and Savior. 
Time for me to get off the blog and prepare for tomorrow’s bible study. 
Peace be with you all
TJ

Calvinism is a destructive force to Anglicanism, which has been proved time and time again.

Dr. Tighe:

Sorry - I apologize for the ignorance which led to my comment regarding your focus on this thread.  I missed your earlier post from 7:03 this morning, and only read your later posts regarding Mascall and Ramsey.

Dave writes: “But then I guess that puts me at odds with RC ecclesiology, which has constructed exactly that: an abstract, absolute and unquestionable juridical order.”

Actually, I don’t think this accurately describes, say, the ecclesiology of Lumen gentium, which sought to constructively deal with the manifest ecclesial reality of the Eastern and Protestant Churches, while at the same time maintaining the Catholic insistence that both the three-fold order of ministry and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome are ordained by Christ. 

But I agree with you, Dave, that ecclesiology always has an ad hoc element to it.  Every Church “ecclesiologizes” its empirical existence, claiming for itself divine sanction.  Contemporary Orthodox, for example, create a eucharistic ecclesiology that excludes papal primacy; contemporary Catholics, on the other hand, create a eucharistic ecclesiology that includes it; and Protestants create ecclesiologies, or non-ecclesiologies, to justify their continued separation from Catholicism and Orthodoxy.  [Sigh.]  I do not know any way to escape this problem.

Third Mill, please enlighten us all by providing the factual basis for your statement.

“Calvinism is a destructive force to Anglicanism, which has been proved time and time again.”

One word: Puritanism.

Where they are biblical, and I don’t think anyone can question evangelicalism’s commitment to Scripture, then they can stand together.  Where the A-C party has taken to itself that which is unbiblical from RCC theology or practice, it should be removed.  As for basic liturgical practice, that which is not consonant with biblical belief ought to be rejected as well.  I am not in favor of any heterodoxy whatsoever, which I hope would have been clear from my postings.  I am also not in favor of any square wheels.
 

“I think that an orthodox Anglicanism ought to have room for both biblical expressions”

since if both “experssions” are compatible they ought to be reconciled, but if they are incompatible, then both of them cannot be “orthodox,” but only one of them (or another “expression” entirely; and an Anglicanism that has “room” for both orthodoxy and heterodoxy already exists in (P)ECUSA and elsewhere, so why you would wish to reinvent that particular square wheel might make for interesting reading.

Puritanism?  I thought you said Calvinism.  Now its Calvinistic Puritanism, much of which existed outside the COE.  I think you should explain yourself.

uki certainly doesn’t demonstrate any awareness of JIP in the piece on his blog.  His lack of sympathy is obvious, but his considered rejection sounds more like extreme prejudice than a reasoned position.

“You should be aware that “ukimmigrant” (whom I met in the UK only a fortnight ago) is fully aware of Dr. Packer’s books and writings.  He is a one-time hard-shell Calvinist and PCA minister who came to Anglicanism via the REC.  How he is an orthodox Anglo-Catholic, deacon at a Forward-in-Faith/UK parish and a member of Forward-in-Faith himself who sees (re)union with the Catholic church as the only reasonable goal for Catholic Anglicans.  His lack of sympathy for Dr. Packer’s theological stance stems not from ignorance, but from considered rejection.”

Tony,

You asked for a factual basis for asserting that Calvinism is a destructive force within Anglicanism, and I gave you the most obvious (or should have been most obvious) one from history: the Puritan movement.  Puritanism was NOT something that existed outside of the CoE, at least not until the Great Ejection of 1662, but was rather a movement WITHIN the Church of England, vying for the further purifying or reform of the Church.  Moreover, Puritan thought stems from direct descent from the ideals brought back by the returning Genevan exiles after Mary’s reign, who sat at the feet of Calvin.  This is hardly worth debating.  Any history book can fill you in on the gory details of the 17th century clash between Puritanism and Laudianism.

Where the A-C party has taken to itself that which is unbiblical from RCC theology or practice, it should be removed.

If you can show definitively that a particular practice contradicts Scripture, then I’m with you, but then of course so would any good Anglo-Catholic. But what you seem to be heading towards is something like the Regulative Principle, which pretty much doesn’t fly in any expression of Anglicanism at all. But maybe that’s not what you’re saying.

Puritanism was NOT something that existed outside of the CoE, at least not until the Great Ejection of 1662, but was rather a movement WITHIN the Church of England, vying for the further purifying or reform of the Church.

Not so. Not so. There were three strands of Puritanism in early 17th century England: Presbyterianism, Congregationalism/Independants and Separatists. Only the Presbyterians could be said to be fully within the CofE. The Separatists were fully outside, and the Congregationalists/Independents were mixed. Baptists, who count as Congregationalist in their ecclesial polity came in both Calvinist and Arminian camps, the General and the Particular Baptists.

And let’s remember that New England was largely Puritan due to the Great Migration 1629-1642 under King Charles I.

Any hope that Mascall’s final unpublished book will see the light of day?

... I don’t think anyone can question evangelicalism’s commitment to Scripture…

I think you’re correct, Tony, that no one can question evangelicalism’s commitment to Scripture.  It’s evangelicalism’s approach to Scripture that is often dubious.  Scripture divorced from the interpretive context of the Church (yes, ecclesiology again) is nothing more than a Christian “Koran.”

Well, Dave, if you’d like to get into specifics, I believe that some Mariology contradicts Scripture (e.g. sinless perfection, perpetual virginity- and yes, there are A-Cs that believe these things), the practice of Benediction, and as a Calvinist I do find Arminianism in general to be unbiblical.  Does that open enough cans of worms?

But as Anglican evangelicals, we don’t divorce Scripture from tradition or reason, Third Mill.

Moreover, Puritan thought stems from direct descent from the ideals brought back by the returning Genevan exiles after Mary’s reign, who sat at the feet of Calvin.

And this isn’t quite accurate either, as Calvinism was present BEFORE Mary Tudor’s reign. Cranmer’s liturgy shows a very definite movement toward Reformed thought.

Chistropher,
Of course there was a radical fringe, i.e., the Separatists (i.e., Barrowists, Brownists).  But these were nowhere near being anything more than a marginal presence in England.  Moreover, they were called “Separatists” for a reason—they separated from the CoE out of frustration with the progress of reform.  The other two parties of which you speak (Presbyterians and Congregationalists) were parties WITHIN the CoE until the Commonwealth period.

I hesitate to rejoin this discussion after Third Mill’s comment, but I see the flames are not so high as I expected when I read it.  And anyway, I am not often prophetic, but earlier today on this thread I said:

The powers that be within TEC (and no small number of trolls here on SF) try to use the doctrinal differences between Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals as a wedge to split us apart

Now, I do not mean to imply that Third Mill was trolling, as I have not noted his many previous posts as being troll-like, however, his remark

Calvinism is a destructive force to Anglicanism, which has been proved time and time again.

appears to be aimed at driving just such a wedge, even if his motives are well intended (or better intended thursean those of the trolls, at any rate). 
  For myself, when I was 15 or so, I had what I remember as a pretty amusing conversation with another parishioner at the Church of the Ascension in Chicago (which was referred to once, by Bp. Montgomery if I remember correctly, as the “Anglo Catholic cathedral of Chicago”).  At any rate, the parishioner in question had a relatively stilted theological view, and was firmly convinced that only strict Anglo Catholic Episcopalians would ever go to heaven, and that clearly the Roman Church, Eastern Churches, non-PECUSA Protestants of any Church, along with any Episcopalian who did not genuflect often enough would be damned for eternity.  Oddly, he had developed his own definition of the “elect.”  He was trying to explain to me why Martin Luther King would not find himself in the company of angels after his assassination. 
  Even at my (then) young age, I recognized that it is rather arrogant of us to assume to dole out God’s judgment upon one another.  I am quite confident that Peter resides close to our Lord in heaven, even though he was a bishop of Rome, and that Martin Luther King, although a sinner like the rest of us, brought many people into a relationship with Christ, and has indeed found himself in “the promised land.”  I rather suspect that John Calvin has as well.
  Now, I recognize that what I just said may sound a bit heretical to some Catholics, Anglo and otherwise.  But I think that we must approach one another first in a spirit of charity.  We will not prove our point to our “Anglo-Calvinist” brothers by anti-Calvinist invective any more than they will win us over by telling us we are “papists” or idolaters.  We must ask ourselves whether Christ intends us to hold together and “stand firm” for an orthodox witness in the Anglican Communion, or if He intends us to divide into many churches.  Perhaps, indeed, He intends us (the Anglo Catholics) to return to communion with Rome in some fashion.  Perhaps the events of the next year will make the Lord’s will more apparent to all of us.  For the moment, though, I will follow the lead of Bp. Ackerman, who seems not too worried to associate with some Evangelical friends of his now and again.
TJ

Tony, I think Mary’s perpetual virginity is perfectly consistent with Scripture, unless you CHOOSE to read it in an opposite way. It is also consiostent with a common sense view of 1st century Jewish peity and with the uniform witness of the early church.

Correction, Christopher: Not Calvinist thought, but Zwinglian.  And thank God that Cranmer did not succumb completely to that agenda, although he was under great pressure to do so (during the Northumberland regime).  His keen judgment and liturgical sleight of hand saved us from that bitter pill.

Christopher, Mary’s perpetual virginity is not consistent with the gospel witness to the Holy Family.  The RC contortions on this are extreme.

Most of my library is at my church office.  This is from the Columbia Encyclopedia:

Origins
Historically Puritanism began early (c.1560) in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I as a movement for religious reform. The early Puritans felt that the Elizabethan ecclesiastical establishment was too political, too compromising, and too Catholic in its liturgy, vestments, and episcopal hierarchy. Calvinist in theology, they stressed predestination and demanded scriptural warrant for all details of public worship. They believed that the Scriptures did not sanction the setting up of bishops and churches by the state. The aim of the early Puritans such as Thomas Cartwright was to purify the church (hence their name), not to separate from it. However, by 1567 a small group of lay rigorists was discovered meeting secretly in London to worship after the pattern of the service of the church in Geneva. 
Branches
Although Puritans believed that if they searched the Scriptures long enough they would eventually agree, they early differed on the nature of the church polity advised in the Bible. The parish was the unit of the Puritan church; the parochial group of church members elected ministers. The main body of Puritans, the Presbyterians (see Presbyterianism), favored a central church government, whereas the separatists, Independents or Congregationalists (see Congregationalism), defined the church as any autonomous congregation of believers, emphasized the point that one could arrive at one’s own conclusions in religion, and opposed a national, comprehensive church.   
Persecution and Emigration
During the reign of James I, the Presbyterian majority unsuccessfully attempted to impose their ideas on the established English church at the Hampton Court Conference (1604). The result was mutual disaffection and a persecution of the Puritans, particularly by Archbishop William Laud, that brought about Puritan migration to Europe and America (see Mayflower). Those groups that remained in England grew as a political party and rose to their greatest power between 1640 and 1660 as a result of the English civil war; during that period the Independents gained dominance. The great Puritan apologist of this period was John Milton. During the Restoration the Puritans were oppressed under the Clarendon Code (1661–65), which secured the episcopal character of the Established Church and, in effect, cast the Puritans out of the Church of England. From this time they were known as nonconformists.

Well, TJ, just to confirm that your better instincts about me were not in vain, let me assure you that I am no troll.  You can check out my humble excuse for a blog over at http://www.3rdmillennium.blogspot.com.  I will concede to you that sometimes my remarks are provocative.  I will try to restain that baser instinct.
Kind regards,
Dan Dunlap

Which confirms everything I said, Tony.  No?

Third Mill…
Thanks for the link to your blog.  Should I ever take a theology class from you, I will remember to leave positive remarks about Calvinism out of any paper you might grade. (That is meant as a poor attempt at humor, please take it in that vein)

I hope you won’t mind my quoting from your blog, the following gives me a much more positive opinion of your outlook-

Also, I in no way question the commitment to the Anglican Way of anyone or any group that is not part of or connected in some way to the Anglican Communion. These are serious times, and I respect those of serious mind who see things differently than I. I also applaud all efforts to re-connect the various pieces of the Anglican jig-saw puzzle.

Good night all.  Calvinist or Anglo Catholic, you will all be in church tomorrow, right?
Pax,
TJ

“Tony, I think Mary’s perpetual virginity is perfectly consistent with Scripture, unless you CHOOSE to read it in an opposite way.”

I agree. It is not just RCs that believe Mary was a perpetual virgin. The early reformers (Luther especially, but Calvin allowed for the possibility) and modern day Orthodox have accepted Mary’s perpetual virginity. And a minority of Anglicans accept it as well. In fact, Mary is called ever-virgin in Pope Leo’s Tome (quoted at the Council of Chalcedon), and in the statements from the fifth and seventh ecumenical. A whole host of very qualified individuals (Church Fathers like Jerome and so forth) have seen Mary’s perpetual virginity in Scripture.

This is certainly the view held in the Commonwealth of Virginia (and its dioceses) until - well, until the Diocese of Virginia filed its lawsuits and suddenly the Diocese of Virginia turned into an Anglo Catholic view of hierarchical church (in fact, Bishop Lee used a “Protestant” argument initially in defending his vote for Gene Robinson that New Hampshire should have any bishop they want, who’s he to tell them not to have their elected choice, which is certainly not a hierarchical viewpoint).

It is amazingly ironic that the Diocese of Virginia is now championing the Anglo Catholic view of the Episcopal Church as hierarchical.  If the Diocese is concerned about the graves of the pioneers in the The Falls Church or St. Paul’s graveyard, if there is any spinning in the graves going on is from those who hold Packer’s view.

Packer teaches what I learned when I came into the Episcopal Church.  But again, I want to make it clear that this disagreement has gone on for over a century and the miracle of the “troubles” in TEC is that the disagreements that separated the Protestant Anglicans (or low church evangelicals) from the Catholic Anglicans (or the high church Anglo Catholics) for the past century pale in comparison with what we are now dealing with inside The Episcopal Church.

The miracle is, friends, that we have built deep friendships formed in the foxholes of resistance.  I happen to agree with Packer, but I am not going to do a damn thing against those who think women shouldn’t be ordained or that the Eucharist is a Mass - if they love Jesus, that’s what matters.  I say, God bless them.  What we are, as I heard in a sermon tonight from my new rector, is that we are the Community of the Holy Spirit formed around the person Jesus Christ.  You want to wear a tie or you want to wear vestments, who cares in a foxhole?  What we care about is whether it’s Jesus or a Clown.

bb

“And let’s remember that New England was largely Puritan due to the Great Migration 1629-1642 under King Charles I”.

One could also debate whether or not the movie/play “The Crucible” illustrated the “merits” of Puritanism. 

Even with all of its warts, give me the Anglo-Catholicism any day…

Well-said, bb.  And, I might be the Anglo-Catholic flavor, but I always love Jesus and believe the Faith’s core should be the Scriptures-as-written, regardless of all the surrounding ecclesial foibles. 

Prayers abound—God bless—

YSIC

This thread amazes and depresses me.  Long before VGR and KJS, before the AMiA, CANA, and all the other alphabet soup there was the Evangelical and Catholic Mission.  There was an honest effort to work for the furtherance of orthodoxy that did indeed embraced both sides of the anglican heritage.  The beauty of the liturgy was intended to be filled with inspired preaching and both should fire evangelical zeal in the believer.

Now here we are at the brink of a wonderful release from the necrotic albatross that is TEC and the we are squabbling like a bunch of school kids about who has a better house, car or whatever.

The Catholic bashing has to stop.  Catholic practice and worship has been expressed in the East and West in an unbroken manner for 2000 years.  Mass, devotion to Mary (not Mariolitry), veneration of the saints, sacraments, three fold apostolic ministry and the liturgy are all founded in Holy Scripture.  Without a doubt there have been abuses and abberations, but to claim that catholicism is in error is ludicrous at best.

As a tempering and correcting force the Reformation was gift to the whole Body of Christ, but was not and end in itself. 

The two branches do complement and fulfill one another.

Check the ego at the door.  Worship Christ and unite the Body.

This is not the time for a “mine is bigger than yours” argument.

Christopher, Mary’s perpetual virginity is not consistent with the gospel witness to the Holy Family.  The RC contortions on this are extreme.

As to the perpetual virginity, it was not only accepted by Luther and (I think) Calvin but accepted and even argued for positively by several Caroline divines (e.g. Andrewes, Pearson).

The “contortions” are themselves scripturally based, if one reads the Scriptures in the original language.  Thus the argument that “brothers” really means “cousins” sounds lame until you realize that “brother” was indeed a standard semitic term for the more general “kinsman” (see e.g. either the Greek, Latin or Hebrew of Genesis 14:11-14, where “brother” stands in for “nephew.”)  I could go on, but that should do it for now.

Actually, Tony in CNY (my old stomping grounds, by the way), I would agree with you about benediction (unpatristic, unAnglican and even unOrthodox), but sometimes you just have to be charitable.  And you might ask yourself whether Anglican formularies taken in toto (Articles and Prayer Book and Ordinal) really do support an unqualified Calvinism.  Making them do that involves enough contortions to make a Jesuit blush.

“And this isn’t quite accurate either, as Calvinism was present BEFORE Mary Tudor’s reign. Cranmer’s liturgy shows a very definite movement toward Reformed thought.”

The confusion here is that “Calvinism” = “Reformed Thought.”  Maybe in Scotland and in the Netherlands, but not elsewhere, and certainly not in the Swiss homeland of Reformed Christianity (RC).  The theological heartland of RC was Zurich, under Zwingli and then Bullinger (from 1523 to 1575), its political heartland, Berne; the other Protestant cantons lined themselves up behind these two, with the exception of Basle (which, although originally Reformed, swung in a Lutheran direction between the 1540s and the 1580s) and Geneva, which was politically dependent on Berne, but in which Calvin, from 1541 onwards, tried to pursue a via media between Zurich and Wittenberg, like his teacher Bucer before him. Calvin (1) had sacramental ideas, especially on the Eucharist, that were closer in some respects to Lutheran ideas than to Zurich ideas, (2) had ideas on double predestination that were more definite than those of the Zurichers (and so closer to Luther’s ideas), but unlike both the Zurichers and Luther, he regarded this question as an essential aspect of Christian theology, so therefore to be taught, preached and expounded, whereas both Luther and the Zurichers regarded it as “philosophical” rather than properly theological, and so to be avoided in preaching, teaching and the like, as liable to induce despair or presumption in the hearers, (3) had ideas about expunging all remnants or reminders of “popish idolatry” from churches and worship services that were totally at odds with Lutheran practice and belief but which were fully shared by the Zurichers and (4) believed that the NT witnessed to a pattern of “Church Order” (Pastors, Elders, Teachers and Deacons) that while not strictly speaking required of all Reformed Churches, was a model to be followed if possible, in this differing from both the Lutherans and the Zurichers, who believed that there was no set Church Order in the NT, so that of doctrine was pure ans superstition avoided, then the civil authorities could structure the church as they pleased.  Eventually, Calvin reached agreement within the Zurichers on Eucharistic doctrine in 1549, the Consensus Tigurinus, in which (as Calvin privately acknowledged and regretted) he had to make all the concessions and the Zurichers under Bullinger none —a compromise that had the effect of allowing Reformed Christians to adopt either a strictly “Calvinist” view of the Eucharist (and Baptism also) or else a Zwinglian/Bullingerian one.  The latter has always been the majority position, the former the minority, such that I have met many self-styled “Calvinists” who have no idea of what Calvin taught about the Eucharist, and find it almost as disagreeable as Catholic or Lutheran ideas when informed about it.

Cranmer’s Eucharisitc views appear to have been identical with those of Bullinger, and if Bullinger’s were identical—although expressed in very different terms than those of Zwingli —to those of Zwingli, then he was a Zwinglian.  Zurich ideas and theologians had a great influence on Cranmer and all of the Edwardian Protestant Reformers, Calvin almost none.  In Mary’s reign, all of the most influential Protestant exiles (like Jewel) ended up in Zurich, only those who advocated physical and political resistance to the Marian regime ended up in Geneva.  Calvin himself allowed for at least the possibility of rebellion by the “godly” against the “ungodly,” while the Lutherans and the Zurichers alike condemned it, and Calvin’s most embarrassing and logorrheiac guest, John Knox, advocated rebellion against all Catholic rulers as a godly duty.  The result was that “the Church that Elizabeth built” in 1559 was staffed and run for the first two decades of her reign by bishops and leading clerics that had bought into Zurich ideas, and when it became clear by about 1567/1570 that Elizabeth was never going to allow “further reform,” those who were not willing to keep their annoyance at this to themselves found themselves finding solace in Calvin’s writings (the crystalline clarity of his writings, and the compelling nature of his predestinarian views were already by 1569 taking over both Cambridge and Oxford, and would remain dominant there for the next 60 years), and especially his ideas about “Church Order:” if the NT really did strongly support a “presbyterian” church structure, then the unReformed “popish” structure of the English Church needed sweeping away, especially seeing how “good Protestant preachers” tended to become as “prelatical” as their catholic predecessors once they became bishops.  However, these “English Calvinists” remained sublimely indfferent, for the most part, to Calvin’s sacramental theology, resting content with that of Zurich, and their novel belief (alien to that of Calvin) that “the elect” not only might, but actually must, be aware of their “elect status” if truly elect (hence individual “testimonies” as a condition of church membership, as in New England) brought in its train a remarkably thoroughgoing moral legalism, manifested in that unique English contribution to Reformed Christianity, the “Sunday Sabbath.” 

Calvin’s successors in Geneva did regard a “presbyterian” Church structure as required by the NT, and for a while “Calvinist” or “Reformed” defenders of the Church of England’s structure and of bishops walked a fine line in professing respect for Dr. Calvin as a godly teacher, but dissenting from his and his successor;s ideas of Church Order.  But by 1590 more robust defenders of episcopacy began to assert that if any church polity had the best claim to be “primitive” and “apostolic” it was the episcopal one and not the presbyteral one, and others began to note that as the Reformation had come to Geneva as part of a (successful) Genevan revolt against their overlord, the Duke of Savoy, Calvinism was therefore in its origin “a seditious sect” and totally unfit for the English monarchy.  This tag was originally aimed only at those who advocated the replacement of episcopacy by presbytery in England (those to whom the term “Puritan” was originally applied) but by 1620 that small minority of English divines that had come to reject Calvinism root and branch, theologically as well as in terms of Church Order, hit on the idea that all Calvinists = Puritans, and therefore that all Calvinists = seditious subjects, and on this (having half-persuaded the originaly Calvinist James I of this in his last years and then winning over Charles I totally and unconditionally to this view) took over the Church of England after 1625 and adopted the view of Calvinism as “a foreign plague” that has been the view of most “high-church” Anglican partisans ever since.

As IRNS indicates, it helps to know the original languages of the text.

It also helps to think like a pious Jew who has learned that the Almighty God has become incarnate and born from his new wife’s womb. I can think of no holy man of that era that would have considered entering her physically for his own needs and seed. We tend in this age to be so self-absorbed and irreverent that the idea of Joseph not sexually enjoying his wife later merely because The Lord had sanctified her for His birth shocks and apalls our modern minds. I think the ancient mind would be shocked in turn at us.

Did Mary NEED theologically to remain a Virgin? I am agnostic. That she did so historically I am relatively certain, and as any fact about the Mother of our Lord would be next in line in importance to facts about our Lord Himself I hold that those (perhaps accidental) details of history weave themselves into the fabric of the universe such that to orthodox eyes history would make less sense without them.

“Any hope that Mascall’s final unpublished book will see the light of day?”

Well, the Pusey House staff seemed to think that it was not “Mascall at his best” (he was about 79 when he wrote it) and that it would not “bring credit to his name if it were published” but now that I’ve read it myself I’m not really sure that I agree.  It is kind of a grab-bag of disparate critiques, as were many of Mascall’s more polemical works from *The Secularization of Christianity* (1966) onwards, and some parts are very dated, but not all.  The first, rather long version, the only bits of which survive are the title page and those parts which were not incorporated into the second draft, and which includes a more detailed critique of the notions of Anglican comprehensiveness, “Liberal Catholic” Anglicanism of the interwar years, post Vatican II RC theological disarray, determination of truth by “votes in synods” and the like, than the final version, has two chapters which were published separately: *Jesus: Who He Is and How We Know Him* (1985) and *The Triune God* (1985).  The final draft version, entitled *The Overarching Question: Divine Revelation or Human Invention,* begins with a chapter, “The Overarching Question,” is a general critique of modern “progressive” or “revisionist” or “antidogmatic” Christianity. Chapter Two, “Reflections of a Sociologist,” is a searching critique of the views of Peter Berger and his advocacy of a Christianity based on “religious experience” rather than on doctrine, authority or the Bible.  Chapter Three, “Incarnation and Creation” deals with the necessity of a thoroughgoing and robustly realistic orthodox theology of the Incarnation (and Sacraments) in order for Christianity to be able to address credibly the contemporary world.  Chapter Four, “God or Christ? A Sociopsychological Dilemma,” deals with the book of some French priest which appeared in English translation in 1984 that argued that all throughout Christian history Christian thought and piety has swung between “Theocentrism” and “Christocentrism” but that since the Counterreformation it has been “stuck” on Christocentrism, and that this, in turn, has given birth to secular humanism, secular messianic movements (like Marxism), “religionless Christianity” and the like.  Perhaps this thesis got some attention then, but the book seems so far-fetched in both its conclusions and its pseudoscientific “method” that I wonder that Mascall felt it worthwhile to spend time on it.  Chapter Five, “Is Liberation Theology Really Necessary?,” is a long and detailed critique of LT and mostly of the writings of Leonardo Boff (whom he thinks more confused than heterodox) and Jon Sobrino (whom he thinks basically rejects Christian doctrine in favor of of Marxist ideology), and is, even if dated and far from comprehensive, very good indeed. Chapter Six, the final chapter, “—- And Anglicanism Whither,” is subdivided into sections, “Votes and Synods,” (how votes in synods seem to be treated by liberal Anglicans as irreversible and almost infallible: if 54% of those voting at a synod vote that “there are no theological objections to WO” and 46% against, well, that settles the question forever and we can go on and enact WO without any further consideration of the matter, except for practical questions), “The Problem in Orthodoxy” (i.e., an analysis and application of several books and essays of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s concerning why it is that Orthodoxy is so “hobbled” in addressing the contemporary West), and “Lambeth and Authority (a jeremiad on the state of contemporary Anglicanism in general and of Lambeth Conferences in particular, especially wrt to the “amazing theological ignorance and ineptitude” of many contemporary Anglican bishops and their consequent reliance on “experts” whose expertise the cannot themselves adequately assess).  I had photocopied only the first and final chapter, and those pages that survived from the first draft version—and I also copied a number of letters in the correspondence for my own use, including letters from American Episcopalians from the 70s onwards decrying WO and the triumph of “Liberal Protestantism” that they saw it as effecting, a wonderful letter from an Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, Andreas Rinkel, agreeing wholeheartedly with Mascall’s critique of WO (which is of course hugely ironic in the light of the Old Catholic descent into the abyss of both WO and SS in the 1990s), and others for a good friend and correspondent whom I hope will be able to deploy them effectively in the pages of future issues of *New Directions* in the cause of Anglo-Papalism and opposition to WO.  You might think of perusing the manuscript yourself if you are able to be in Oxford; it is 106 pages in length.

and as a Calvinist I do find Arminianism in general to be unbiblical.

as do those shockingly unAnglican documents, the 39 Articles and the Homilies.

Let’s see if I’m following this rant correctly…

Henry was wrong. Edward was wrong. Mary was wrong. Elizabeth was wrong. James was wrong. Charles was wrong. Cranmer was wrong. Hooker was wrong. Luther was wrong. Calvin was wrong. Presbyters were wrong. Puritans were wrong. Evangelicals were wrong. Catholics were wrong. The English were wrong. The Continentals were wrong. The Reformers were wrong. The Protestants were wrong. The Roman Catholics were wrong. The Pope was wrong. Augustine was wrong. [fill in the blank] was wrong.

Have I understood properly?

I’m reminded of something Jerry Clower once said. “Everywhere I go, everybody’s got some complaint about the way this country is run. And I say, ‘Well, sir, what do you think needs to be done to fix the problems with this country?’ And they’ll everyone have some idea or another but it won’t never involve them doing nothin’ different than they way they’re doing now.”

I’m just curious if the entrenched debaters (over a 2+ year-old document of uncertain veracity), each of whom seems to think they have exclusive rights to ownership of the term “orthodox” while all others are usurpers, actually know the word, “humility”. Or isn’t it fashionable in Christianity these days?

TJ,

Thanks for quoting from my blog, and from a fairly recent entry at that.  Yes, those words express my genuine feelings in these matters.  That being said, I am no longer of the opinion that the AC can stay together, or even that it should.  For me, Dr. Radner’s recent resignation was a wake-up call in many respects.  We are fooling ourselves if we think that the two different conservative positions are reconciliable. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better, and if the FedCons feel they must separate, then I am of a mind to let them go with affection as fellow Anglican travellers, assuring them (for what it’s worth) that they have our best wishes and prayers.  And if they can manage to pull together some or even much of the Anglican diaspora (e.g., Common Cause) into a united front, all the better.  However, I cannot go with them on this journey.  During my ministry, I have served two separated Anglican jurisdictions, and I have experienced the pitfalls.  While I love both groups, and still have good friends in both, I cannot go back into Protestantism, even if it is dressed up in catholic vestments.  That is not a slam.  It’s just not where I am.

The 39 Articles are Calvinist?  Really?  Here, all along, I mistook them for Augustinian.

I’m just curious if the entrenched debaters ... each of whom seems to think they have exclusive rights to ownership of the term “orthodox” while all others are usurpers, actually know the word, “humility”.

“Humility” should probably be added to the revisionist dictionary.  It doesn’t seem to be there at the moment.  The word is typically used to mean the following: “Truth is unknowable by man. As a result, no man can make credible exclusive truth claims.  We can each of us therefore pretty much believe anything we like, and not worry about it, because all truth claims are equally (in)valid.  If God was really concerned with Truth, we wouldn’t disagree about it.”

carl

That being said, I am no longer of the opinion that the AC can stay together, or even that it should.  For me, Dr. Radner’s recent resignation was a wake-up call in many respects.  We are fooling ourselves if we think that the two different conservative positions are reconciliable. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better, and if the FedCons feel they must separate, then I am of a mind to let them go with affection as fellow Anglican travellers, assuring them (for what it’s worth) that they have our best wishes and prayers.

This leaves out a vital element, and as such, it can only be characterized in charitable terms as an unintentional and regrettable misrepresentation.  What is woefully missing, much to my astonishment, is any recognition of the possibilities, however slim, that (a) TEC will genuinely repent (no more SSB, no more GLBT ordinations, cessation of predatory lawsuits) or (b) the ABC and the primates will discipline TEC shortly after 9/30/07.

If those possibilities were to occur, then the FedCons will not separate.  What part of contingency planning is hard to understand?  I have not heard or read of any GS Primate or FedCon leader say that they will separate regardless of what happens on 9/30/07.  They are waiting to see what happens.  Hence, this excerpt above is an unnecessary distortion of FedCons. 

I suggest a reading of primate Peter Akinola’s article for a greater understanding of the theological reflections undergirding the GS primates and FedCons.

ThirdMillCatholic is correct about the 39 Articles being Augustinian.

Now they can be referred to as “Moderate Calvinist” inasmuch as they are Augustinian rather than Arminian in doctrine.

God Bless,
William Scott

Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

and as a Calvinist I do find Arminianism in general to be unbiblical.

as do those shockingly unAnglican documents, the 39 Articles and the Homilies. 

</blockquote>

I quote from Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei, considered the definitive work on the subject (emphases mine):

The seventeenth-century churchmen collectively known as the Caroline Divines may, in general, be regarded as exponents of an Arminianism which immediately distinguished them from their puritan opponents, whom we shall consider presently.  In May 1595, William Barrett, a fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, preached a sermon which touched off the predestinarian controversy which ultimately led to the Lambeth Articles of 1595.  These strongly predestinarian articles never had any force, other than as a private judgement of those who drafted them.  The seventeenth century saw their failing to achieve any authority in the Church of England, particularly when the Puritan representative John Reynolds was unable to persuade the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 to append them to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.  This left Article XVII—-easily harmonised with an Arminian doctrine of election—-as the sole authoritative pronouncement of the Church of England on the matter.

Readers may wish to look at http://rathernot.classicalanglican.net/?p=160

Alas, my comments box is still not working, but comments here are anywhere would be welcome.

RE: “If Anglicanism is big enough to shelter both Paul Zahl and Keith Ackerman, it is simply too big.  Stephen Sykes many years ago identified the incoherence of Anglican comprehensiveness.  Is it not time to admit the problem?”

Wow.

If Anglicanism is big enough to shelter Paul Zahl, Keith Ackerman, and Bishop Jefferts Schori, it is too big.  But not simply Zahl and Ackerman.

I think it is a strength of Anglicanism that it shelters Zahl and Ackerman.

And indeed, though I know neither Zahl nor Ackerman, I suspect that both would be thrilled to be in a Communion with the other.

This is one [of the many] reasons why I am a part of the Anglican Communion, is because it shelters Zahl, and Ackerman, and Kennedy, and Dunlap, and Witt, and IRNS.

I positively relish it and revel in it.  I am thrilled that Anglicanism shelters all of these folks.

Father Kimel [rightly] discovered that he believed and held to Roman Catholic doctrine.  Others have [rightly] discovered that they believed and held to Presbyterian doctrine.  I suspect [though I can’t be positive] that Ackerman, Dunlap, and IRNS can articulate quite handily the theological and ecclesial reasons why they are not Roman Catholic.  I suspect [though I can’t be positive] that Zahl, Kennedy, and Witt can articulate quite handily the theological and ecclesial reasons why they are not Presbyterian.

Those of that group who do discover that they do indeed believe and hold to the faith of the Roman Catholic church or the Presbyterian church of a particular branch, will no doubt join them.

I continue to maintain that I do not believe that the Anglo-Catholic and [for lack of a better word] Protestant differences will be the dividing line between all of the traditional Anglican groupings.  Nor do I believe that it will be WO/non-WO.  I think that other serious disagreements may cause the divisions, but not those things.

I’m with Baby Blue.

And my suspicion is that were some miracle to occur and the Communion to hold together as a disciplined, boundaried, ordered unit we would see very little divisions at all amongst traditional Anglo-Catholics and Protestant Anglicans.  Nearly NONE.  There would be an occasional person who discovers that he really holds to a Presbyterian regulative principle and the Westminster Confession lock, stock, and barrel.  And there would be an occasional person who discovers that he really holds to all of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church.  And I believe that those people, as actions of integrity, would leave the Anglican Communion and travel to those churches.

But on the ground, here in ECUSA, I am thrilled at what has happened with traditional Anglo-Catholics and Protestant Anglicans.  It is one of the most wonderful gifts I’ve received in the past four years.

Signed,

Aspiring Anglican Samurai Warrior, Little Black Cloud, & Protestant Anglican

My post yesterday disappeared into etherspace so I am attempting to repeat my thoughts in condensed form.

Anglo Catholicism and Evangelicals can live together in the same Church without ecclesial schizophrenia if they agree on all the essential points.  Allowing differing points on non-essentials is not the same as mindless post-modern relativism.  An Anglo Catholic can believe he is truly right on the non-essential points, an Evangelical can believe he is truly right on non-essential points, and yet complete consistency on debatable points does not invalidate a tradition (indeed, it is a sign of balance as minor points that are debatable are unclear enough from Scripture and early tradition that we are to a certain extent making best-efforts rough guesses).

The real issue is whether Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals differ on any essential points of doctrine.  If I may toss out one bone—if an Anglo Catholic believes that grace is dispensed when we venerate the relics of a saint, and an Evangelical believes this is a vain and idolatrous practice that tends to interfere with our relationship with Christ, this may touch on an essential issue of faith that cannot be reconciled.  In my opinion, the belief in the mediation of the saints (with grace dispensed to us as we venerate their mortal remains) is the type of position at the high, high end of Anglo Catholicism that an Evangelical will never accept.  I have problems with such practices, for example, from personal experience (having tried them for years).
Time to take the kiddos to church.
Peace in Christ,
John Clay

The Anglican Communion lacks (at least one) essential factor in order to be a truly catholic church: a central form of authority to decide what Scripture says and what it does not say and decide what the church teaches and what is does not teach and to mete out discipline to those who stray.  As long as each of us can pick and choose our own beliefs we are utterly Congregationalist (fairly extreme too) and thus utterly Protestant.

John Clay,

You may be right about reconciling the highest of the high with the lowest of the low. However, that’s not where the battle is being fought. As a somewhat rabid high-churchman, I can tell you that the adoration of the saints is minor as opposed to the credal doctrines. I can not speak for anyone else in this, but if I must forgo prayers to the saints, then I shall. I will not, will never forgo the dogma in the creeds. Never. That is where the battle is and that is where all of our effort and attention must be directed.
I’ve learnt my lesson. I will no longer by distracted by appearnaces. I have nothing in common with a New Jersey High Churchman who is a Spong disciple. I have everything in common with a low church Christian. If by such alliance, I must forgo incense, a proper appreciation of the Mass, the adoration of saints and all other doctrines and practices consistent with what I believe to be a full and correct theology, then I shall.
The Mass is not necessary to salvation. Incense is not required. I am not bound to pray to saints, it is purely voluntary. What is required is an awareness of just who God is, what He has done for us in all three of His persons and how we are required to believe and respond. None of which is ever negotiable or to be compromised upon.
Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me.

My earlier comments were not in reference to whether or not Anglo-Catholics and Traditional Evangelicals could get along. Blimey there are probably at least three different strands of “Evangelicals” in the C of E and I know of two Anglo-Catholic positions (traditionalists and Aff Cath). My point was to simply make the argument that what Dr. Packer is describing as the “root” of Anglicanism simply cannot be fully supported by our own history. The Caroline Divines fully acknowledged a number of issues of the Reformation but they didn’t want to take the C of E to the extremes that they saw on the Continent and in Puritanism. They also sought to correct the over-corrections in the C16 in order to maintain the Catholic ethos of the English Church. In their deep discovery and life spent in the Fathers, they learned that what was happening on the Continent was not the Church they knew and loved. That change brought back some of the ceremony in the liturgy. The Roman Catholics were no longer seen as the great enemy though not fully embraced either. (see Milton’s book _Catholic and Reformed_)

No doubt that what many Anglo-Catholics believe and practice today is not what they could have gotten away with in their contexts in the C17. But, with a lot of theological research into sacraments and mystery, understanding about devotion to the saints, real presence (objectively in the elements), Eucharistic sacrifice, a better understaning of a sacramental world (thanks to the Orthodox) these things have become a benefit and a part of the great mystery in our devotion to Jesus. That is not because we no longer believe in the grace of Jesus Christ alone for eternal life with him but because we believe that truth we are devoted to the symbols and saints who illumine that truth. Dr. Packer seems to treat the very means of coming close to Christ, i.e. the centrality of the Eucharist to be somehow “Roman” with negative connotations and hence denying how the Church has taught us about the historical act of Jesus on the cross being made present and applicable for the forgiveness of sins now. His view in this particular letter is neither Anglican or Calvinist and much less Catholic in the historical sense. Heck, it was Calvin who argued that the Eucharist ought be received “at least” once a week. Dr. Packer has done the Anglican Communion and particularly those of you in America a disservice by this letter. It is stuff like this that pushes many ever so closer to the edge of the water. I submit this in grace and love.

  de cura animarum

What amazes me is that pre-GC03 we recognized the differences between A-Cs and Evangelicals, but we lived together in the same church along with all the liberals.  Now that we are arriving at a place that the church is disciplined and the liberals have once and for all walked apart we can’t get along ourselves (I know, this is a faith statement).  We’ve gone from the heretical church to now two “pure” expressions of Anglicanism that can’t live together?  Is this really where we want to be?  Is this really where the Lord is calling us to be?

“And indeed, though I know neither Zahl nor Ackerman, I suspect that both would be thrilled to be in a Communion with the other.”

I suspect—and have reason and evidence for my “suspicion”—the contrary; but I will gladly compromise with Sarah, and voice my own “suspicion” that he is just as “thrilled” to be in communion with Zahl as he is to be with +Barbara Harris or +KJS.

My comments served at least in part as a catalyst for this unfortunate and tiresome thread.  Yet everyone avoided the salient point, which I shall dare to repeat:  Humility vis a vis the catholic/protestant thing is in order precisely BECAUSE we are face to face with a fatal flaw within Anglicanism.  The cure, a conciliar transnational (catholic) governance is one that would have been anathema to ALL the Anglican heros, both Presbyterian and Establishment, Calvinist and Roman.  Imagine Cramner, Hooker, Jewel, Elizabeth, any of them appealing to a body of non-English primates to intervene in the affairs of their oh-so-preciously-sovereign national church!  You all are discussing worthy matters.  But you’re missing the point.  We “orthodox” Anglicans are praying for a solution that in effect acknowledges a deep flaw in the seminal concept of Anglicanism: the autonomous national church governed after the style of its secular government.

John+,

I agree that there is a fundemental flaw in Anglicanism and I also agree with others that this flaw need not necessarily lead to division between AC and evangelical. However, I will say that a purely conciliar solution with no confessional element is rather a thin solution and unlikely to provide a workable solution.

I think that perhaps a conciliar model of governance founded not on a “covenant” that merely defines function and role but upon a confession, like the Articles, that defines faith might serve better. In this way the question of authority is resolved both theologically and ecclesiologically.

Father Matt,
I find it hard to believe that the 39 Articles would be sufficient to deal with the issues that surround the AC today! Where do the Articles mention sexuality and love as defined by the likes of Robinson, et al? I think it is time that we honestly face up to the fact that our underlying problem here is authority and will always be authority until that problem is resolved. Who is going to say that your and my interepretation of the Articles is correct? Who has the right to expand them to speak against homosexuality and abortion? Who is going to decide what is a secondary issue for whom and who is going to say when and how “secondary” issues like priesthood (not that I believe they are seconary issues) are to be handled? Who is going to determine what will and what will not happen in the liturgy and the shape that the liturgy must take? Must each Sunday service contain the Eucharist? Why not? Why? Who says? Radical autonomy is the killer!

Matt:
Now that’s what I’M talkin’ about!

Text and Interpretation.  What is interpreted?  Who has the charism to interpret?  Of course, we want to assert that that which is interpreted is the Bible.  But as everyone educated in church history knows, the Arians and most other heresies asserted its authority.  Most heresies end up begging a different question:  Who gets to interpret it?  So those in whom the Holy Catholic Church discerned the charism to discern rightly (bishops of the universal church) gather in troubled generations to do their duty.  They end up creating shorthand summaries that anathematize wrong belief (Creeds, “statements”, resolutions).  Regional councils are sometimes trumped by universal councils.  And yes, councils can err.  But over time they do a better job than putting on a pedestal a single theologian (whether Augustine or Calvin or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker) or a single churchman (Pope or Archbishop) and making him the sole arbiter of truth.  The sad story of the Reformation is not that Protestants returned to the Bible/Text, because they did.  The tragedy is that they never resolved the problem of who in the church has the charism of interpretation.  So they divided, rather than accepting the ancient solution.  As my Dad says, “Jesus forgot one thing: he forgot to tell us how to govern the church.”  My answer is that the Holy Spirit answered this question by developing the ministry of episcope.  But too many of us refuse to accept it.  This Reformation tragedy was compounded by a consolidation of Papal authority and eventual to the doctrine of infallibility.

So, yes, the draft covenant could tighten up in its language of the 39 Articles and the 1662 BCP (it does rather directly bow to them.)  But the draft covenant, as imperfect as it stands today, would go a long way to slow down, perhaps to halt for a time, the heresies that are destroying us.  Because it atttempts to enshrine a ministry of governance rooted in the universal episcopacy.

Thank you, Matt for agreeing with me about this fatal Anglican flaw of autonomous nationalism.  It is “Our” heresy.  May the Holy Spirit root it out of us and heal us.

I find it hard to believe that the 39 Articles would be sufficient to deal with the issues that surround the AC today! Where do the Articles mention sexuality and love as defined by the likes of Robinson, et al?

ukimmigrant, While I am not the greatest expert or exponent of the 39 Articles , I am hard pressed to see any way in which one could interpret them (particularly VI Holy Scriptures and XX Authority of the Church) as not dealing pretty effectively with issues such as Gene Robinson’s lifestyle or same-sex blessings.  No less an scriptural expert than +Rowan Williams has stated categorically that there is no plain reading of Scripture in which VGR’s lifestyle fits within the doctrine of the church.  And under article XX, the church has no authority to establish a rite for same-sex blessings as such rites would be blessing a practice that is clearly condemned.
  Beyond this, Article VIII (of the Creeds) would seem to eliminate VGR from consideration from the Episcopate based upon his public statements.
  Or am I reading the Articles the wrong way?  Is there a different “post listening” interpretation?

I want to add my voice to those who are in agreement with Fr. Matt. In our reformation, we must become a confessional church, around the 39 Articles, which, as tjmcmahon points out correctly, speak unambiguously to the issues facing today’s apostate ECUSA.

TUaD writes:

What part of contingency planning is hard to understand?

The part where, prior to September 30, some primates chose to act independently and in disregard of all four instruments of unity, including the one to which they happen to be members.  Rather than insisting on the prosecution of DeS, they have denuded it.  Rather than strengthening the hand of the primates (as a whole), they have lost both momentum and the upperhand.  The only chance now is to attend Lambeth in force, which they no doubt will boycott, due to the fact that, unlike the ecumenical councils of old, there is no emperor, no pope, nor even the “commandment and will of Princes”  (cf. Article XXI) to compell their attendance.

RE: “I suspect—and have reason and evidence for my “suspicion”—the contrary . . . “

Then—as you will note that I said, William Tighe—“Those of that group [above listed] who do discover that they do indeed believe and hold to the faith of the Roman Catholic church or the Presbyterian church of a particular branch, will no doubt join them.” 

How odd that you did not see that line.  ; > )

If Ackerman is unhappy to be with Zahl, then I am sure that he will join that expression of Christianity with which he holds.

And . . . unhappily for you . . . the point still stands that I made.

Anglo-Catholics who are not Roman Catholic are perfectly able to articulate and describe why they are not.  Anglican Protestants who are not Presbyterian or another confessional body are perfectly able to articulate and describe why they are not.

And the two, I believe, will do just fine together.

And I will continue to relish the two being together.

Third Mill,
I believe a close reading of the communique will reveal that the Pastoral Council/Primatial Vicar plan was to be put into effect with all deliberate speed, and was not subject to waiting for September 30.  As a matter of fact, my recollection is that the ABoC called for nominations from the Primates sometime in March.  815 then started making public statements about not being sure the HoB would approve, followed by the refusal of the HoB to even consider the matter.  THEREFORE, the primates, having made assurances that they would make provisions to provide pastoral oversight for the orthodox in this country if the pastoral plan was not implemented, proceeded to do so. They are not in Communion with TEC, and TEC refuses to take the steps necessary to restore that Communion.
  Now, was this the best course?  No, it wasn’t.  The best course would have been for the Archbishop of Canterbury to have publicly stated that TEC was in violation of the stated agreement of its PB at DeS, and that he was going to take actions necessary to implement the PC/PV plan, and that any bishop who did not publicly accept Lambeth 1.10 and the other Windsor recommendations by September 30 would not get an invitation to Lambeth.  Unfortunately, he did not do that.  He sent out the invitations early, let TEC off the hook on the PC/PV plan, and to make matters much worse, apparently to this day has not communicated to the GS primates, or anyone else, what his plans are or where he stands on these issues.  Under the circumstances, the GS primates are acting in pastoral manner to provide episcopal oversight for people who would otherwise leave or be thrown out of TEC (and hence the Anglican Communion).
  While we must continue to pray for +Rowan, we must be wary at pointing fingers at our strongest allies.  The churches in Nigeria and Rwanda have more at stake in this than we do, and much less in the way of resources, so their risk is great.

John Liebler,

But you’re missing the point.  We “orthodox” Anglicans are praying for a solution that in effect acknowledges a deep flaw in the seminal concept of Anglicanism: the autonomous national church governed after the style of its secular government.

This is not a flaw; it simply refers to a different time.  When “Anglicanism” was co-terminous with “the Church of England” or even “the Church of England and a few odd spots in the colonies,” a very good case could be made for the “seminal concept,” a sort of primitive species of Gallicanism.  All that is happening now is that, geographically and numerically, the Anglican Communion has outgrown that model of the “national church.”  The current crisis has forced us to face it, and either the communion will collapse or something new is aborning.  We’ll see.

Anglo-Catholics who are not Roman Catholic are perfectly able to articulate and describe why they are not.  Anglican Protestants who are not Presbyterian or another confessional body are perfectly able to articulate and describe why they are not.

Actually, they are not able to articulate why they remain in communion with those who teach and practice what they privately, and sometimes publicly, regard as contrary to gospel truth and catholic dogma.  They cannot do so because they know they are betraying fundamental theological conviction. 

We are not speaking here of adiaphora.  We are not talking about the use of candles or incense.  We are speaking about fundamentals.  Anglo-Catholics truly believe, for example, that God makes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood.  An evangelical such as Paul Zahl or Fitz Allison must reject this belief as heresy and must regard Anglo-Catholic worship of the eucharistic elements as idolatrous.  And a true Anglo-Catholic, if there are any left, must regard the denial of eucharistic presence and sacrifice as rank heterodoxy.  Everyone saw this clearly in the 16th century, but Anglican vision has been blinded during the past 150 years as Anglicans have sought to comprehend within their communion that which is truly incompatible and have invented ridiculous rationales to justify the unjustifiable. 

I acknowledge that the distinguishment of that which is essential and that which is adiaphora is not an easy task, and I agree it is better to remain in communion than to enact premature separation.  But we really are talking about fundamentals here, though evangelical and Anglo-Catholic prefer not to address the problem.  And the result is theological incoherence and ecclesial chaos.

Why is the blessing of homosexual unions the decisive issue and eucharistic transformation, baptismal regeneration, and the abandonment of apostolic orders (through the adoption of women’s ordination) are not?  For Anglo-Catholics at least, the latter are the more serious matters, and if they haven’t said so in this forum, shame on them.

RE: “Actually, they are not able to articulate why they remain in communion with those who teach and practice what they privately, and sometimes publicly, regard as contrary to gospel truth and catholic dogma.  They cannot do so because they know they are betraying fundamental theological conviction.”

That’s not been my experience with Anglo-Catholics, Al Kimel.  The ones that I have known have been well able to articulate their theology—and why they are not Roman Catholic too!

And the Protestant Anglicans that I have known have been well able to articulate their theology—and why they are not Presbyterian or some other confessional body too!

We’ve had plenty of discussions about this on many many threads in this forum.  And the shame that you wish would adhere onto Anglo-Catholics I trust will be rejected by them.

Those Anglo-Catholics who indeed are Roman Catholic in their theology and ecclesiology I expect will behave as you have done.  And the same with those Protestant Anglicans who should not be Anglican.

I suspect that you are talking about yourself—and that would explain why you honorably chose to become a Roman Catholic.

In this discussion of Anglo-Catholic vs. Evangelical (which is of some, but very limited, value, given the varieties of both), it might be useful to recall what “covenants” and “confessions” and “conciliar government” mean.

The difficulty with a “confessional” covenant is, as I have pointed out elsewhere, that it locks the Anglican Communion into a particular theological identity, which is, well, not very Anglican.  Since the Anglican Communion explicitly says that it is NOT the sum of the Church Catholic in the manner of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthdoxy, then the more specific that “confessional” identity, the more sectarian and indeed more “protestant” its character, which makes Anglo-Catholics unhappy; the less specific, or more based on an appeal to classic (scriptural and patristic) sources without spelling out doctrine beyond creeds, councils and previously accepted formularies (e.g. the Prayer Book), the less happy Evangelicals seem to be.

Thus some of the evanglicals posting here would like, I suspect, some sort of iron-clad statement on, say, justification.  Well, I would like an unqualified endorsement of the Seventh Council.  Do you think that either of us are going to get them?  I doubt it.

Personally, I consider the Common Cause statement of faith, though far from perfect, a fair first step in the right direction.  Something like that is about as far as we’re going to get for now, and a covenant that coupled that with some disciplinary mechanism might (might, might, might . . . ) give Anglicanism a future.

But “conciliar government” on a supposed “early church model” is also misleading, because the early church developed a conciliar mechanism—the Ecumenical Council—that by its very nature Anglicanism cannot use.

In other words, being too specific and writing doctrinal statements in stone commits us to a sectarian future that is the antithesis of any sort of Catholicism, Anglo or otherwise.  Bu appealing solely to the Fathers, Tradition and Scripture without commitments to certain specific doctrinal stances characteristic of the Reformation upsets evangelicals.

That’s what we need to be thinking about.

IRNS:

you said:

“Personally, I consider the Common Cause statement of faith, though far from perfect, a fair first step in the right direction.  Something like that is about as far as we’re going to get for now, and a covenant that coupled that with some disciplinary mechanism might (might, might, might . . . ) give Anglicanism a future.”

Yes, I agree, although I was unhappy with the final wording of paragraph 7 wrt the Articles, I can live with it. It is the best and, for now in my view, the only way forward for catholics and evangelicals together

Sarah, I need to qualify my statement.  I agree that the typical Anglo-Catholic can usually explain why he has chosen not to become Catholic or Orthodox.  But what they do not do is explain why they choose to remain in communion with those who teach what, by Anglo-Catholic standards, must be judged as heresy.  Believe me when I tell you that when an Anglo-Catholic reads the works of, say, Paul Zahl (a wonderful Christian gentleman!), he is filled with horror.  He may not say so publicly, but that is what he feels. 

For the Anglo-Catholic, the catholic distinctives are not optional; they are not adiaphora:  they are essential elements of the apostolic deposit of faith.  I do not deny the deep unity of faith that exists between evangelicals and catholics; but honesty requires that we also state the profound disunity of faith.  This disunity is easier to admit when one belongs to different denominations; but it is very difficult to admit for those who inhabit the same ecclesial body and are invested in the same institution.

Fr. Kimel,
Forgive me for butting in with a personal question, but since you are having this conversation in public, I hope you will not mind.  I glean from the previous entries that you are indeed a (Roman) Catholic priest, correct?  Were you at one time an Episcopal or Anglican priest who faced the decision you are discussing?

I sometimes joke that I am the last Anglo Catholic layman in this diocese.  In reality, I have met one or 2 others, but we are certainly few and far between.  There are a number of self described “affirming catholics” although in truth I am not clear on what exactly they are affirming, and they seem more attached to appearances than theology, and as far as I can tell, cast aside doctrine for personal convenience.

I will say that most of the Anglo Catholics I know are in the same boat I am, essentially I think we are all going through a “period of discernment” to decide whether to stay or move on to Rome or the East.  I have a certain personal reason for staying- my Dad was an Anglo Catholic priest, something that would not happen in the Catholic Church.  Rome has its share of errors as well, but in the current state of TEC, it is undoubtedly true that whatever the errors of the Roman Church, they pale by comparison to the heresies we encounter from the sees and pulpits of TEC.  For the moment, I stay because there is a good priest here, and he needs my support.  But if the Catholic Church were to establish some sort of Anglican liturgy prelature (am I using the terms correctly?) as is sometimes rumored, I think there might be a number of takers, including a bishop or 2.

“For the Anglo-Catholic, the catholic distinctives are not optional; they are not adiaphora:  they are essential elements of the apostolic deposit of faith.”

Fr. Kimel is certainly correct historically, and it applies equally (historically) to individuals who were conservative anti-papal Anglo-Catholics such as Pusey, Liddon, Symonds, Mascall (although Mascall’s anti-papalism declined considerably from the mid-1960s onwards) and the happily living Canon Arthur Middleton or moderately liberal Anglo-Catholics such as Gore and Ramsey, or out and out “Liberal Catholics” such as N. P. Williams or “Anglo-Papalists” such as Dom Gregory Dix.  I knew Mascall and I have spoken with both Ramsey and Middleton and I have read in all of them (which is probably more than Sarah can say).  There are those who call themselves “Anglo-Catholics” but who are really either Liberal “Catholics” (such as Rowan Williams or Jeffrey John) or high-churchmen who mistake a liking for liturgy and sacraments and an institutionalist attitude towards their particular “ecclesial community” that leads them to attribute a kind of pseudo-Catholic rationale for their adhesion to it that the kind of firm 19th and early 20th Century Anglo-Catholics that I am so given to admire termed “decorated Protestantism.”

As an example of mistaking this kind of “highchurchianity” for “Catholicism” I am sad to say that “Third Mil Catholic” fits the bill precisely—not, I should add, on the account of the matters which were raised and discussed on another thread concerning Anglican “Catholicity” compared with that of all and every pre-Reformation Catholic church, but on the basis of this statement which he made higher up on the present thread:

“... if the FedCons feel they must separate, then I am of a mind to let them go with affection as fellow Anglican travellers, assuring them (for what it’s worth) that they have our best wishes and prayers.  And if they can manage to pull together some or even much of the Anglican diaspora (e.g., Common Cause) into a united front, all the better.  However, I cannot go with them on this journey.  During my ministry, I have served two separated Anglican jurisdictions, and I have experienced the pitfalls.  While I love both groups, and still have good friends in both, I cannot go back into Protestantism, even if it is dressed up in catholic vestments.  That is not a slam.  It’s just not where I am.”

His own attitude demonstrates that, far from taking himself “out of Protestantism” (such that he should wish to avoid “going back” into it), he is “in it” and has merely gone from an Anglican body, the REC, which espouses a particular brand of conservative Anglican Protestantism to one, ECUSA, that espouses at best an attenuated Anglicanism in liberal “decorated Protestant” framework.  He is a candidate for Orders in the Diocese of Texas, a diocese that not only purports to ordain women, but which has a “female bishop” among its clergy; and whatever his own personal attitude to WO is, it is clearly not a matter on which he is willing to go to the wall.  This, by all traditional standards of “Catholic Anglicanism,” is not Anglo-Catholicism.  It may be Aff Cat’ism or it may be liberal-ish “highchurchianity,” but it is not (historically) Anglo-Catholicism, especially considering the absolute centrality of “valid orders” to the “Catholic claims” of Anglo-Catholicism and the willingness to fight a l’outrance against any proposed practice or alleged “development” that would “compromise” the “Catholic status” of Anglican churches in the sight of other Catholic churches—something that WO and SS have both done in equal measure.

For the Anglo-Catholic, the catholic distinctives are not optional; they are not adiaphora: they are essential elements of the apostolic deposit of faith. I do not deny the deep unity of faith that exists between evangelicals and catholics; but honesty requires that we also state the profound disunity of faith. This disunity is easier to admit when one belongs to different denominations; but it is very difficult to admit for those who inhabit the same ecclesial body and are invested in the same institution.

Al, I couldn’t agree more. Which is why, while disagreeing with you on matters of theology, I want to reiterate my profound respect for the step that you took. It showed the same sort of integrity which Newman had. The more I read his work the more I both disagree with him over matters of theology and warm to him as a man of principle.

This, by all traditional standards of “Catholic Anglicanism,” is not Anglo-Catholicism.

Thanks for the press time, Dr. Tighe…I think.  You seem to know more about me (not just the facts, but the motives of the heart)  than I know about myself!  I don’t think we’ve ever met or corresponded in any other context other than an occasional blog entry.  Have we?  (Pardon my memory if we have.)  Perhaps I should just sit back and let you tell my story since you seem to know it so well, and how this sad existence of mine will end.  (That’s meant as humor.  Sad attempt, I know.)

And, just for the record, I have never claimed to be an “ANGLO-Catholic.”  Now “neo-Laudian” I’ll own, and certainly “Anglican Catholic.”  (The former I just made up on the spot.  But it’s probably a fair description.)

Fr. Kimel and all, what exactly do Anglo-Catholics believe about the nature of Christ’s presence in the elements of the Eucharist?  I personally believe in a non-transsubstantiation real presence, which to me is consistent with Scripture as well as the 39 Articles.  One could make a case for a Zwingli approach as well. 
Also, I am not sure what Paul Zahl and/or Fitz Allison consider as abject heresy.  It would be worth asking them forthright, rather than speculating.  I know that while at Advent, PZ had bona-fide Anglo-Catholics as guest preachers.

“It would be worth asking them forthright, rather than speculating.”

Fr. Kimel has no need to “speculate” as he was once an ECUSA priest in South Carolina and is very well acquainted with Bp. Allison’s views in the Eucharist.

“You seem to know more about me (not just the facts, but the motives of the heart) ..”

I never said anything about the “motives of your heart” and the details of your shifting allegiances I have gathered both from your own comments on various blogs, and from conversations with, among others, Jeff Steel.  And if you would characterize yourself as a “neo-Laudian,” well, I suspect that Laud, Montague, Cosin and, yea, Andrewes himself, would have no more truck with WO (nor hold communion with those that practice it) than would the most “ultra” of Anglo-Catholics.  But if you are “merely” a neo-Laudian, then I think that the moniker “Third Mil Catholic” is either a spoof or a suggestio falsi.

Neo-Laudian?  Is that in sympathy with this society?

Physician without health,

Fr. Kimel can probably answer that one better than I, but it would be worth your while (and that of everyone else) to check out this site:

http://web.mac.com/brian.douglas/iWeb/Anglican Eucharistic Theology/Welcome.html

Click on, for example, the entry for Lancelot Andrewes.  Overall, in the words of the sites creator and editor, Fr. Brian Douglas, men such as Andrewes and Laud, while denying transubstantiation, taught what Fr. Douglas terms “moderate realism” based on the Incarnation.  A Zwinglian understanding of the eucharist was out of the question (and would seem foreclosed by the Articles as well).

But there are others on this thread who know this sort of thing better than I do.

I’m rather puzzled by your bombastic ways, Dr. Tighe.  You assign more motives and positions to me than I can keep up with, nor wish to address in a forum such as this.  (That’s the last time I blow my anonymity, thank you.)  And why you continue to bait me on WO is, well, intriguing.  This is obviously a sticking point to you, and you take my “silence” on the matter (off-topic though it be) as an indication that there is an “imposter catholic” in the house (perish the thought).

Needless to say, I hardly recognize myself after I read your descriptions of me.  Shifting allegiances?  Sure, I shifted ONCE in my life, quite recently to the AC.  But going from REC (America) to FCE (England) back to REC (America) doesn’t constitute a pattern of shifting allegiances, considering that they are sister churches.  The FCE just happened to be able to provide a modest living for me and my family (since the REC obviously couldn’t) while I was studying in the UK.

Honestly, have I done something to offend you?  I can’t think that I have ever treated you with anything but deep respect.  Or is my “mere” existence a stench to your nostrils?

Dear Physican,

I do not need to speculate about Dr Zahl’s views on the sacraments.  I have read his books.  I refer especially to his Short Systematic Theology.  Paul is more iconoclastic than the iconoclasm denounced by the 7th Ecumenical Council.  It is accurate, I believe, to describe him as a Zwinglian, though perhaps he would prefer Cranmerian.  But do not take my word for it.  Read his book. 

The single finest presentation of the Anglo-Catholic understanding of the real presence is Robert W. Wilberforce’s The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.  This book, now available for download from the Internet Archive, deserves careful reading by all Anglicans.  It is a great work, IMHO.
 
The chasm between Zahl and Wilberforce is breathtaking.

I hope no one interprets my critique of Paul Zahl as in any way impugning his faith and godly service.  But from an Anglo-Catholic perspective, his anti-sacramental understanding of the gospel is ... well ... heterodox.  There’s just no way around it.  Two years ago I wrote a series of articles on Paul’s views.  As I point out in this series, Martin Luther was willing to break the Reformation precisely on the question of the sacramentality of the gospel. 

As long as Anglicanism refuses to confront the incoherence of its “comprehensiveness,” it will continue indefinitely in its present identity crisis.  Sentimentality will not make the problem go away.  Create new institutional structures, if you will, but the crisis will and must continue.

Father John,
I agree with your comments and am glad to see you add to the discussion.  Which I must admit has floated over my head several times.    I fully accept the teachings of the Catholic Church.  I believe that the Anglican Church is a Protestant one, whether its form is high or low.  The debate between the branches show one reason a Covenant agreement is important.  It also shows why a means of discipline must be established.  I would hate to see orthodox believers forgetting the charity of Christian teaching.  But real differences should be addressed forthrightly so as to avoid the confusions that often lead to heresy.

I hope you are recovering from your fall.  Evalyn mentioned you had been in quite a bit of pain.  I pray that Our Lord will gather up your suffering and bring you relief.  May the joy of His Resurrection give light to all your days.

Matt and all
Yesterday morning the issue was raised about the attribution of this article to Dr JI Packer—I don’t know if you’ve had any other confirmation. I was a student of Dr Packer’s in the mid-1990’s at Regent College, and edited a 4-volume collection of his “shorter writings”. I seem to recall something similar to this article in that collection, but as I’m on holiday’s, I haven’t been able to get to my study at the church where the collection is to confirm it.
As further corroboration, the article was also forwarded to me from the Rector’s Assistant at St John’s (Shaughnessy) Church in Vancouver, BC where Dr Packer attends. It was attributed to him, dated August 15, 2007, with the following reference:

—-The Rev. Dr. James I. Packer is professor of Theology at Regent College, in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is also a senior editor, Visiting Scholar, and Institute Fellow for Christianity Today. This article is drawn from The Protestant Alliance

The thread seems to have moved on in the last day, but thought I’d add this.
Jim

Dr. Tighe:

This is actually not easy for me to write since over my foray into the Anglican blogosphere over the last few years, I have become something of a fan of yours.  However, where you have generally been very faithful to stay within your role as an outsider who offers clear and well-balanced correction of the historical misconceptions that most of us have, on this thread you appear to be acting as though you see yourself as the one with encyclopedic gifts that the rest of us must defer to, or a bit of a psychology of Anglicanism professor who is rather hasty in assessing your students’ maladies and grades them rather harshly when they don’t apply the medication that you recommend. 

To criticize Third Mill Catholic for “not going to the wall” against Women’s Ordination would demand that you also criticize Fr. Kimel for not going to the wall against the general liturgical practices associated with the Novus Ordo, or against a complete lack of discipline of American bishops and archbishops who have provided cover to pedophiles, or against the progressivism and permissiveness towards homosexuality that is entrenched in the majority of American Roman Catholic seminaries. 

But honestly, to be truly consistent, and act on your own beliefs that your church is the true Church, you should actually give a little slack to someone like Third Mill Catholic who has been trained in an American denomination that in many quarters has ceased to be a church, and where the most catholic-minded of bishops have had to coexist with an abundance of theological nonsense and constant doctrinal obfuscation by individuals who have been trained (by example, generally) to do a kind of rhetorical dancing to hide that their deepest commitments are to progressive politics and ideology above the Faith of Christ.  And after giving a very thorough list of a whole number of different kinds of Anglo-Catholicism, all with significant followings, on a continuum of traditionalism, does it make any sense to accuse Third Mill Catholic of just being another self-styled high church protestant when the combined weight of his posts on this thread demonstrate that he is moving by a strong current in an orthodox catholic direction? 

And why is someone guilty of wishy-washiness because their is a lot of theological error in the diocese in which they are a candidate for ordination?

I apologize to any and all whom I may have offended by my last comment here.  In particular, I want to assure “Third Mil Catholic” that he has done nothing to offend me, which, alas, is more than I can claim for my self towards him, as I see from his most recent posting on this thread.  It was not my intention to offend him, and it grieves me almost to the point of tears that my words have evoked the final paragraph of his 08-19-2007 8:34 pm paragraph.

I am particularly grateful for the “words of admonition” of “joe from old oc.”  I hope that this appreciation will be reflected in my future comments on this venue.

I ask Dr. D’s forgiveness for the hurt I have caused him, and crave his prayers, particularly for my own awareness of my own “waspish” proclivities.

I wonder if this essay is really newsworthy.  I mean, Packer playing up the Reformed origins of Anglicanism is about as chokcing as Ackerman playing up its Catholic continuities.  Isn’t this an divide that goes back to the beginning? 

If we Anglicans have discovered anything about ourselves the centuries its that we are too Catholic for some and too Protestant for others.  Personally, I rather like the fact that so many of us are so uncomfortable (even embarrassed) with our own Church.  I also enjoy that those on either end of the spectrum outside of Anglicanism find our comprehensiveness, messiness, and mass of contradictions so infuriating. 

Now, if we could just stop being so defensive about it all…heck, enjoy it, have fun with it, and, to paraphrase a deep theological assertion, “Don’t worry, be Anglican!”

Dr. Tighe,

Apology accepted with utmost respect for you as a Christian and a scholar.  I am a very private person, and because of that, perhaps a tad over-sensitive.  I very much enjoy my occasional discussions with you, and want to see that continue.

All the best,
Dan Dunlap

I found the article offensive.  Unlike Sarah, who I amdire deeply, I am not at all sanguine about the chances of a reformed anglicanism in the US surviving these stresses; certainly not absent the legitimacy conveyed by recognition by Canterbury.  Currently, reasserters are held together by oposition to the heretical actions of TEC’s leadership.  If some alternative, communion recognized, entity emerges (a new province) to replace TEC , these issues will loom larger and larger.  I wonder why those who hold such extreme views as those expressed by Dr. Packer in the subject article didn’t go to the REC long ago.

Dr. Tighe:

Still a fan (and actually, maybe now even an admirer), but I really believe that much more than that, a brother in the One “who is head over all things to the Church”. 

And the admonition was given - I hope in humility - by one who has crossed the line himself far too many times.

By His Grace

Dear all, I want to thank you, I’d rather and Fr. Kimel for your responses to my query.  The website on the history of Anglican Eucharistic thought looks interesting, as does the book.  I will need to take time to read mark learn and inwardly digest this material.  In terms of PZ’s thoughts, I have no doubt, after hearing his preaching at Advent and reading several of his books, that he is Zwinglian.  I am not sure, though, that he would go so far as to label the “other side” on this as abject heresy.  This is what I think one would have to ask of him.  Anyway, I really appreciate the time you all took to answer me.  I apologize that I did not respond sooner; the clinic today was really busy!

Anglo-Catholicism is an important part of the present reformation.  There are two ways to get some structure in the Christian faith: (1) sola scriptura, or (2) some sort of hierarchical Church tradition and discipline.  In the Anglican tradition, the quintessential hierarchical focal points were the BCP, the 39 Articles, and (later) the C-L Quadrilateral and Lambeth resolutions.  Right now, the question is whether the Lambeth resolutions, Windsor Report, and Dar are hierarchically binding or not. 

In a world in which we do not believe that the Bible is literally word-for-word true and that some Biblical prescriptions (like old Levitican rules or various and sundry prescriptions scattered throughout even through the NT) are either metaphorical or otherwise not wholly binding anymore, it is of oxygen-level importance that the Church have some consistent means of discipline and theological mooring.  Otherwise, the Protestant experiment will degenerate from its own internal weakness.

This issue is a lot deeper than the Doctrine of the Transsubstantiation or what we think about Mary.  Those issues are merely symbols of the deeper issue here.

Reason & Revelation said:
“There are two ways to get some structure in the Christian faith: (1) sola scriptura, or (2) some sort of hierarchical Church tradition and discipline.  In the Anglican tradition, the quintessential hierarchical focal points were the BCP, the 39 Articles, and (later) the C-L Quadrilateral and Lambeth resolutions.”

R&R;is on to something that needs a bit of a massage.  Structure in the Christian faith requires submission to two sources: (1) the authority of Scripture, and (2) a fallible but trusted body in whom the charism of discernment/interpretation of Scripture is vested—traditionally, councils of bishops.  Over time, these councils have produced other documents (Creeds, Articles, BCP, etc.) that hold derivative authority insofar as they faithfully and definitively interpret the Holy Scriptures.

Protestants have traditionally distrusted the councils, for well known historical reasons.  Unfortunately, Anglicanism originally vested this interpretive/discerning function in the crown (the fatal flaw I referenced earlier).  As the crown lost power with the rise of democratic institutions, Anglicanism never developed an alternative instutional structure in whom to vest authority.  Lambeth is the obvious structure, and the Covenant process is taking us in this direction.  With patience and grace, the Holy Spirit is using this current catastrophe to correct Anglicanism and bring it back to its original vision: a truly catholic and reformed expression of the Christian faith.

Unfortunately the current ABC is stuck with the unenviable task of making decisions in early October that will ultimately decide whether or not Anglicanism adopts what I believe to be is this Godly correction, or breaks in half.

“fallible but trusted body in whom the charism of discernment/interpretation of Scripture is vested—traditionally, councils of bishops.  Over time, these councils have produced other documents (Creeds, Articles, BCP, etc.) that hold derivative authority insofar as they faithfully and definitively interpret the Holy Scriptures.”

I think Cranmer would have agreed; this acknowledges that :“councils may err”, and that scripture is the authority against which the decisions of the Church will judged to be binding

What has fascinated me about this whole thread, and I confess that I have not had time to read everything, is on the one hand the lack of understanding of the Protestant face of Anglicanism, and the other is the surprising hostility toward it. As one whose whole formation has been in the Protestant and Evangelical traditions of Anglicanism I find this saddening.

There are a great many non-Anglicans on this thread, let alone protestants fwiw.
So your contribution will be greatly appreciated Rev. Kew

Protestant Pageantmaster

whether it’s protestant or catholic, people can disagree on.  i’ll just add this:  having recently converted to catholicism (after having been a faithful episcopalian for 22 years), my belief in the real presence of christ in the eucharist is far, far stronger now than it ever was while i was an episcopalian.  for what’s it worth . . .

tjmcmahon wrote:
“But if the Catholic Church were to establish some sort of Anglican liturgy prelature (am I using the terms correctly?) as is sometimes rumored, I think there might be a number of takers, including a bishop or 2.”

Watch this space in the coming months:

http://anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com

A point about Dr+ Packer’s article that seems not to have received the attention it deserves (though I believe Dr Tighe touched on it briefly) is that it carefully makes the distinction—now apparently lost in most discussions—between high-church Anglican and Anglo-Catholic.  Note the extended discussion of the practice of replacing the BCP with the Anglican Missal.  By the same token it we should perhaps distinguish more carefully than we do between “Anglo-Evangelical” and “low-church Anglican.”  I read Dr+ Packer’s article as a criticism of the extreme Catholicism of some, rather than the emphasis on Catholic aspects of Anglicanism by many, just as I read FrKimel’s excellent <a > discussion</a> of Dr Zahl’s theology as a rejection of the extreme Zwinglian views of (apparently) some Anglo-Evangelicals rather than of the emphasis on the Reformed aspects of Anglicanism of our low-church bretheren.

As one formed from Baptism on in the Diocese of Fond du Lac, made famous by the very +Grafton mentioned in a comment above, I have to say I never saw a Missal or Rosary in the church, though the line among the local Lutherans and Presbyterians was that Fond du Lac was the only Episcopal diocese in the country that regarded the Pope as a low churchman…

Perhaps, Al+, the giveaway was Dr+ Zahl’s book on systematic theology.  Not much has ever been systematic in Anglicanism, any more than it has been in British politics or jurisprudence.  Now, if he had written a volume entitled Anglicanism: Muddling Through the Gospel, that would clearly get to the heart of our faith tradition…

Friend Albion-
I will keep an eye on your blog.  Although, truth be told, I rather expect I will hear by phone from an old friend before you get the post up on the site.  (Three or four administrative types at 815 just went rushing to their search engines to try to figure out what the heck we are talking about, lol)
TJ

What has fascinated me about this whole thread, and I confess that I have not had time to read everything, is on the one hand the lack of understanding of the Protestant face of Anglicanism, and the other is the surprising hostility toward it.

Fr. Kew, you appear to assume that such “hostility” (if that’s what it is) stems from a “lack of understanding.”  Perhaps that “hostility” instead comes from understanding it all too well.

I think a look at the way Archbishop Williams defines Anglicanism in his book Anglican Identities might be helpful:

The word “Anglican” begs a question at once. I have simply taken it as referring to the sort of Reformed Christian thinking that was done by those (in Britain at first, then far more widely) who were content to settle with a church order grounded in the historic ministry of bishops, priest and deacons, and with the classical early Christian formularies of doctrine about God and Jesus Christ–the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon. It is certainly Reformed thinking, and we should not let the deep and pervasive echoes of the Middle Ages mislead us: it assumes the governing authority of the Bible, made available in the vernacular, and repudiates the necessity of a central executive authority in the Church’s hierarchy. It is committed to a radical criticism of any theology that sanctions the hope that human activity can contribute to the winning of God’s favour, and so is suspicious of organized asceticism (as opposed to the free expression of devotion to God which may indeed be profoundly ascetic in its form) and of a theology of the sacraments which appears to bind God too closely to material transactions (as opposed to seeing the free activity of God sustaining and transforming certain human actions done in Christ’s name).(p2)

Regardless of what one thinks of Archbishop Williams’ theology, he is a good scholar and is hardly representative of any neo-puritanism.  I think he gives one of the better definitions here.

Jody: in other words (from my Catholic viewpoint anyway), Anglicanism considers the visible Church at best a necessary evil?

Jody: in other words (from my Catholic viewpoint anyway), Anglicanism considers the visible Church at best a necessary evil?

Well, there is the old joke of the Lutheran minister and the Anglican priest having a conversation about ecclesiology in which the Lutheran declares that Lutherans believe that episcopacy is desirable but not necessary; whereupon the Anglican replies that Anglicans believe that episcopacy is necessary but not desirable.

I might add that, contra William Temple, getting out of bed on a Sunday morning when one would rather sleep in is a form of asceticism; and if we all get together in church, it is a form of organized asceticism.  Sorry, some things just cannot be argued away so simply, however fine the prose . . .

Tdunbar:

I think there may be some truth in the jest that IRNS mentions.  I’ll give an example.  In the interests of full disclosure, I consider myself to be a High Church Evangelical or a Reformed Catholic depending upon one’s inclinations.  Basically I find a great deal to appreciate in pre-tractarian and even tractarian high churchmanship but I think the Ritualist movement, while some of it brought a necessary awareness of the importance of the liturgy and, well, ritual back into the church, I find that much of later Anglo-Catholicism seems (to me, and this is an opinion, not an attack) to have a tendency to slip into a caricature of itself and to overly privilege a sort of mythologized view of the Roman Church.  Just my impression.  And that’s not to say I don’t find plenty of things to pick on in the evangelical camp.

But, I will say that while I appreciate Rome, and find a great deal that is right and true in many of her theologians, and indeed in JPII’s many moral stances in defense of humanity, I think there is a fundamental difference between Roman Catholics and the Reformed/Lutherans—and it does largely center practically on ecclesiology and anthropology.  For a long time I wasn’t aware of just how deep the divide was, but then I had the opportunity to attend the “Toward a Free and Virtuous Society” conference at the Acton Institute.  I had a wonderful time.  But I witnessed a bit of an ugly argument between several young bright male Catholic High School teachers and a poor protestant girl who happened to make a reference to the Church repenting of something—even referencing an apology by JPII for something or other—right before we all got on the elevator together.  The basic distinction is this: Protestants, to greater or lesser degrees—tend to think of the Church primarily visible in this world as a fallible human institution with a particular function centered on the great commission.  They would agree that the Church is Holy because the Holy Spirit dwells within her, but just as Protestant anthropology names us simul iustus et pecator so too is the Church seen as capable as error, in the sense that her members are capable of sin.  Certainly the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church will be found without blemish on the day of the Lord’s coming, but that’s an eschatological reality, not a current one.

In contrast, the Roman Catholics we had our discussion with refused to admit that the Church was capable of any error or sin as an institution.  Individuals may err they said, but not the Holy Church.  So there you have it.  Looking at the Church as a necessary evil may not get it right—looking at humanity as necessarily evil probably hits closer to home.

My goodness!  Such blinders as I have not seen in a long time!

It would be helpful to understanding the Roman/Protestant battle if one takes a somewhat larger view of history and human nature, rather than attempting to divine the past in bird entrails, which is what the nit-picking of various theologians represents to the modern mind.

Protestantism flourished because men rebel against tyranny.  The Roman empire, whether “imperial” or merely “Holy” (i.e., the First and Second “reichs”), was imposed at the end of a sword on its subjects, many of whom resented and despised this imposition over the course of generations and centuries.  When the conditions were such that freedom became possible, the common man himself rebelled against Rome. 

Of course, the common man did not write his motivation in great tomes… he simply acted.  He voted with his feet, as it were, and joined and supported Protestantism wherever it was found, in whatever form his “Powers that Be” implemented it.

Today, Roman Catholicism is still seen by many ordinary Americans (and others) as the province of women and servile creatures unworthy of citizenship.  While perhaps bigoted, this view is based on certain observable facts, and correlates well to the governmentla structures, the national characters, and historical trends of the Roman Catholic and Protestant realms. 

To reduce this to some unalterable trajectory stemming from the Englightenmient is just plain ignorant.  Throughout post-enlightenment history and through to the current time, most men never heard of the Englightenment, have never understood its arguments, could not care less about them, and continue to live their lives more or less as they have always been lived: based on their upbringing and their personal experience.

This is freedom, a quality the Church of Rome, rump of the SQVR, cannot tolerate.  If “Protestantism” (as though a 500 yo term can be applied to a phenomenon of the early 21st C…) is too “free” then it is guilty as charged.  However, better to live free and suffer the honest consequences of one’s actions than live a slave—even a spiritual slave—to a foreign sovereign.

“My people shall know the truth and the truth shall make them free” as someone once said.  Spiritual bondage to a man—call him “priest” “bishop” or “pope” is an insult to Christ.

Protestantism—or whatever it might better be called today—for all its faults recognizes this essential truth Jesus himself gave to us.  The Church of Rome is as guilty of the sins of the Pharissees as they were themselves.

Leaving aside the frankly bizarre reading of history of the last comment . . .

So then, joeofthemountain, when Vicki Gene Robinson declares that “the Spirit is doing a new thing” while he lives with his partner, he is just exercising his God-given Protestant freedom, instead of bending to the tyranny of Rome?

The BCP has not been forbidden or abandoned by Continuing Anglicans, and the Missal really is the BCP Communion Service with the addition (not the subtraction) of usages, but only by opening the real thing can you see the proof that is in the pudding. Furthermore, most of these churches have the BCP in the pews, and teach the ideal of using it for daily Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. Many of them do not use the Missal at all.

Furthermore, it is misleading to use contemporary language to describe the 16th Century mind. Especially incorrect is the use of “Catholics” and Protestants” which, in that era, would have been unintelligible both to “Papist Catholics” and “Protestant Catholics.” You will not find the contemporary usage of “Catholic” and “Protestant” as mutually exclusive of the other in any old C of E document.

I must laugh when people charge Anglo-catholics with not knowing the obvious Protestant facts of the C of E Reformation. Of course we know it, for crying out loud. What the C of E, and Anglicanism always maintained, is that this was not to such a degree that we lost the validity of sacramental grace. Does anyone anywhere actually read such important Anglican documents as Saepius Officio?

Concerning the “historical analysis” of “joe of the mountain” (who seems to be a reprise of one Rip van Winkle):

“... (i.e., the First and Second “reichs”) ...”

The “First Reich” (and “reich” = kingdom or realm, for the Gothic “riks,” so no need to place it is “scarequotes”) was the Holy Roman Empire of 800 to 1806; the “Second Reich” was the German empire of 1871-1918.
STRIKE ONE.

“When the conditions were such that freedom became possible, the common man himself rebelled against Rome ... He voted with his feet, as it were, and joined and supported Protestantism wherever it was found, in whatever form his ‘Powers that Be’ implemented it.”

Nonsense.  Every religiously-inspired revolt or uprising in the 16th-Century (apart from some iconoclastic movements in some cities of Germany in the 1520s and of France in the 1560s, as well as the German “Peasants’ Revolt of 1525, in all of which professions of Protestantism on the part of the “footsoldiers” formed part of a religious rationale for goals that were primarily social or political; and Kett’s Rebellion in East Anglia in 1549, in which its leaders thought that a profession of Protestantism would dispose Lord Protector Somerset to look favorably on them) was a revolt against the Protestantism that their “betters” were trying to force upon them: the uprising of the Bernese peasantry against the Reformation in 1529; the four revolts in Sweden between 1527 and 1542, culminating in Nils Dacke’s Revolt, whose purpose was to restore Catholicism and extirpate Lutheranism; the Pilgrimage of Grace in England in 1536, the “Cornish Rebellion” of 1549 and the “Revolt of the Northern Earls” of 1569.  All of these were mass movements enjoying wide popular support; by contrast, the only “Protestant Revolts” that enjoyed any popular were the German “Peasants’ Revolt” (which Luther condemned so unreservedly) and perhaps Kett’s Rebellion (I leave out the only successful “Protestant” revolt, the Dutch Revolt of 1568 onwards, which began as a revolt of Catholic nobles and burghers against Spanish rule, to which Calvinists were encouraged to attach themselves on the promise of a limited degree of religious tolerance if the revolt succeeded; but the Calvinists seized control of the revolt, outlawed Catholicism and eventually, rather as the Bolsheviks did to the Social Democrats in Russia in 1918, destroyed the power of those Catholic nobles who had begun the revolt in the first place).
STRIKE TWO

“Today, Roman Catholicism is still seen by many ordinary Americans (and others) as the province of women and servile creatures unworthy of citizenship.”

Enter here Turk, Jew or Atheist/ any man except a papist (as the old ditty began)

“SQVR”

Whazzat?  Do you mean “Senatus Populusque Romanus” (SPQR)?
STRIKE THREE

“Protestantism—or whatever it might better be called today ...”

Yes, well, let’s not go there.

Still, it is a rare comment that convicts its author of ignorance and nonsense at one go, and on that account alone it deserves a place in the Annals of Stand Firm, whenever they come to be written.

The bishops who laid the foundations of Anglicanism during the time of Elizabeth I were not striving for an unprincipled compromise between Romanism and Protestantism. In their writings there is not a trace of Romish sympathies.

Here, Dr. Packer engages in a semantic sleight of hand, implicitly equating “Romish” with “Catholic.” Except for the more extreme elements of the Ritualist wing, Anglo-Catholics reject this equation. They argue that Rome itself had departed from the tradition of the Undivided Church of the first millennium, and was therefore less than completely Catholic.

High Churchmen could join the Puritans in denouncing Rome - in fact, they had to during Elizabeth’s reign, since the Pope was promoting her overthrow. Their attachment to the pre-Reformation traditions of English Christianity did not make them traitors to their queen. In fact, the queen herself was judged too Catholic by the Puritans, who objected to the crucifix she retained in her private chapel.

IRNS:  thanks , i’d not heard that apt bit of humor.

Jody: Yes, I agree with you that differing ecclesiology is at the root of the disagreement (Mark Noll’s “Is the Reformation Over” argues that too) and thank you for taking the time to expand on my terse remark.
  When you say “Looking at the Church as a necessary evil may not get it right—looking at humanity as necessarily evil probably hits closer to home”  my impression is that while there is a range of viewpoints about the second part of that [extent of original sin] both among various Protestant groups and within the Catholic Church, it is really the former that is at the core of reformed disagreement with, for example, the representative “Theology of the Church” by Charles Journet.
  While you say “Church as necessary evil” may not get it right, I contend that that is precisely what Anglicanism and other reformed views are built upon. I do not have the intellectual nor persuasive talent to show that; however, that’s my impression having spent 30+ years in the evangelical community before entering the Catholic Church recently.

Dr Tighe,
You are da man!!!

Gotta hand it to you, Dr. Tighe.  You’ve pitched a no-hitter.  Well stated.

While you say “Church as necessary evil” may not get it right, I contend that that is precisely what Anglicanism and other reformed views are built upon.

Anglicans have always believed in the Holy Catholic Church of the Creeds. The BCP is a book that makes sense only in the Church community. The Ordinal with its preface is a major Formulary, and without a Catholic view of the Church it makes no sense. So the remark is just plain wrong.

William Tighe:

Nice cherry picking.  Since I have to work to earn my living as a billable professional, I simply do not have the time to research a rebuttal that would meet your high, exacting standards.  So I’ll have to summarize and beg your indulgence… my OED and rather nice personal library are 300 miles away from me at the moment, as I write from a hotel room in the mountains of West Virginia, earning money to pay out to the dozens of welfare recipients that depend on my ability to earn a taxable living…

1.  You got me on “SPQR” (Senatus Populusque Quiritum Romanorum - The Senate and People of Rome).  I should have taken the three seconds to look it up.  I note that you screwed it up yourself.  But screw me anyway, right?!  And screw me for hitting the stupid “enter” key before I proof-read my admittedly knee-jerk response to some knee-jerk anti-protestant bigotry here.

2.  Your assinine, cherry picked examples are so trivial and so utterly beside the point that it is almost indulgent to address them.  So I will presume that you are being argumentative and a smart-alec becasue you like it; it is not possible that you fail to see the plain, obvious, statistically provable correlation between tyranny and historical Romanism, between freedom and Protestantism.  But then, when one’s mind is closed, one cannot see outside it, can one?

3.  THE TSARS WERE ORTHODOX. ALL OF THEM.  I’ll let your own judgment serve to judge you in this case.

4.  I note you completely skirt my main points, prefering instead to nitpick.  If I could sit around all day looking for nits so that I could avoid actual thought…  I wouldn’t do it. 

But whatever turns you on, as they say. 

In your case, I would say what turns you on most is dictating what other must think.

JUST LIKE A CATHOLIC.

Protestantism’s main fault is that it will not impose itself on others and so it is constantly reorganizing itself.  To the freedom-loving Protestant, organizational structures are almost irrelevant. We do not worship them as do others.  When they fail to further the objective, they are discarded.  We shake the dust from our sandals, as it were.

Buy you, William Tighe, you go right on doing what you’re doing.  I presume the only audience you have is found in the annals of Stand Firm.  Who am I to take that away from you????  It wouldn’t be, umm…  Christian.

TDunbar,

I don’t doubt that you’ve seen a lot of “the church as a necessary evil” in evangelical circles, but Anglican ecclesiology has to be distinguished from that of protestant groups that had their origins in dissent.  Yes, I know, that sounds funny coming from a protestant.  But that’s the reality of church history in England—the established Church was (at least officially) seen as *the* Church, all other worshipping communities were somehow lesser, hence the fact that they had to use the designation chapel.  I’m not saying that was necessarily right in practice, merely that it reveals a higher ecclesiology than saying the Church is a necessary evil.  I have to agree with Fr. Hart, Anglicanism rests upon the assumption of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and its visible nature.  I still believe one of the primary world-view (church-view?) differences comes in how one views the institutional church.  Obviously there’s the little matter of the authority of the Holy See—but there’s also a lot more underneath it all as well.

Dr. Tighe—

Your pith and your knowledge are to be admired.  And you are admired—for these reasons and for others. 

Your last post is beneath you, sir.

You can, of course, criticize Joe and his mountain on points of historical fact or linguistic nicety.  A lot of us share many of your concerns, and some of us share your perspectives.  But to turn this response into a flyting session—well, it ought to be beneath you.  Some may see a connection between your musings on WO and King Charles’ head, but are mannered enough not to scold.

Indeed, while Joe and others may do work as billable professionals—dealing with, among other things, church and denominational litigation—believe me, if we responded as curtly as you to some well-intentioned (if occasionally ill-informed) posters in this forum, we might be lynched.  If we did so in court, we would be jailed.

As said above, we admire your wit and try not to hold you in contempt for your contretemps.  It is the sting—the needless sting of delight in the giving of offense—that should concern you.

Does anyone anywhere actually read such important Anglican documents as Saepius Officio?

Father,

As I recall it was a pretty big deal for Archbishop Ramsey to receive an episcopal ring from the hand of Paul VI, and that +Rowan wears that same ring, at least on state occasions now and then.  Our line of bishops goes back to Peter too.

Personally, I would be satisfied if people got so far as Form V of the Intercessions…oops…errr…Prayers of the People in the ‘79 BCP.  Or took a look at the Mass, ....I mean Eucharist, in the ‘28 BCP. 

Joeofthemountain:
As a “freedom loving Protestant”, just what denomination are you part of?  If you are Anglican, you are subject to the rule of bishops, and it doesn’t matter whether you are in TEC, CANA, AMiA, one of the Continuing Churches, or the diocese of Sydney Australia, which last, as far as I can tell, is about as Protestant as the Anglican Communion gets.  If you are an Anglican, you need to adjust yourself to the fact that this Church is full of Catholics, we are all over the place.  I have a crucifix with a graven image, a Bible with pictures, a Madonna and Child engraving hanging on the wall.  And my view of Holy Communion borders on Transubstantiation (if you consider Tract 90 as bordering and not identical to). 
  An enormous time and effort by thousands of good people has gone into trying to keep the orthodox Anglicans in this country, whether Catholic or Evangelical or Charismatic, unified in the face of a great threat to the Church.  There are theological differences, there is no doubt about that.  But we all have a decision before us: are we going to be part of the solution or exacerbate the problem.

It should be recognized that those people who translated the Bible and those who claimed the right to read the Bible in their own language made the Reformation possible. Many of these people were Protestants, some were Catholic and now some of us consider ourselves both catholic and protestant because they are both part of the heritage of our Church.

Fr. Kimel wrote:

Actually, they are not able to articulate why they remain in communion with those who teach and practice what they privately, and sometimes publicly, regard as contrary to gospel truth and catholic dogma.  They cannot do so because they know they are betraying fundamental theological conviction.

 
This is very individualistic - dare I say “Protestant” - reasoning. An individual Catholic layman is in no position to break communion with anyone. That’s a job for bishops. And for the past few years the bishops of the Anglican Communion have been addressing this very question relentlessly. The whole point of the Windsor and Covenant processes is to determine who will be in the communion and on what terms.

We are not speaking here of adiaphora.  We are not talking about the use of candles or incense.  We are speaking about fundamentals.  Anglo-Catholics truly believe, for example, that God makes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood.

If Evangelicals deny this, then they are in defiance of the teaching of the Episcopal Church. The traditional Eucharistic Prayer in American Prayerbooks beseeches the Father that we “may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood” (p. 335). The current BCP even includes propers for what Anglo-Catholics would call a Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist (pp. 201, 927). And in 1971, ARCIC issued a statement that the Catholic Church and the Anglican Churches had “reached substantial agreement on the doctrine of the eucharist.”

It is very easy for Anglo-Catholics to live in the same church with Evangelicals on such Catholic terms. Evangelicals are appearing less comfortable with it.

I think this is a major motivation of the Evangelicals who are breaking away from TEC: They agree with Fr. Kimel that they cannot coexist in the same church with Catholics. They find Anglicanism, as it now stands, too Catholic, so they are starting new denominations founded on explicitly Protestant principles. The war with the Revisionists provides the pretext for their moves, but they are consciously trying to steal a march on the Anglo-Catholics while they’re at it. (I first formulated this hypothesis the day after the first AMiA bishops were consecrated, and I have not yet seen any evidence to the contrary.)

Fr Hart: “just plain wrong” .. well, I’m certainly not going to try to dispute one of the Hart brothers!  Especially since I know so little about the complete (convoluted?) history of the Anglican tradition. At any rate, blog comments are probably not the place for that, tho I do find SFiF one of the most educational sites around.  A year or two ago I asked your brother “When will there be a followup book on ecclesiology?” and David said “I don’t think I have anything to say on ecclesiology..everyone has there own opinions.” Nevertheless, I continue to look forward to such a book, thinking that nature/grace relationship and other pure “theological” matters have ecclesiological implications that must be addressed.

Jody:  If Anglicanism does, in fact, rest on the visible One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church then I’m encouraged that Anglican events after September will turn out better than I anticipate, for which I would be glad. However, my own limited knowledge/opinion of the history of “The Church” in England doesn’t match yours. I think the Church got put down so by rulers that the Catholicism oozes and pushes out in all sorts of confusing manners. 
  What little first hand knowledge of “Anglicanism” I have is via my wife’s membership in an AMiA congregation, which seems pretty typically protestant to me.

Joeofthemountain,

I’ll leave the hash that you made of history to William Tighe (and just what the Tsar has to do with it, I’m not quite sure).  I want to address what I take it is the basis of your intellectual objection to any form of visible, institutional divine authority, viz. that such authority is an assault on “freedom,” something happily recovered by the Reformation.  No such thing happened, as any resident of Calvin’s Geneva could have told you.

Ultimately, in the final analysis, at bottom, any form of revealed relgion—Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, etc.—requires an authority that involves some form of submission of the intellect.  Period.  It is called “faith,” and if your religion does not have it, it is not a revealed religion.  It may be some form of natural religion or philosophy, but it isn’t a religion based on revelation, and it certainly isn’t Christianity.

If you are going to insist that you have “freedom” while catholics suffer from the tyranny of an institution, all that means is that you have either a) substituted a book for an institution, or b) substituted yourself.  If a), then you are no more “free” than any catholic.  If b) then you no longer believe in a revealed religion, and are thus no longer Christian.

So comments to the effect that Catholics are slaves while Protestants are free are pointless.  The question is not whether there is an authority to which to submit, but which one, and how does it operate?  What sort of authority is most consistent with the revelation of Jesus Christ, the church he founded and the Scriptures His Spirit inspired?

My wife once worked for a man who wanted to preach in the church to which he belonged.  The authorities of that church would not let him because he was divorced.  His solution?  He went off and started his own!  If that is the freedom that you are declaring, well, you can have it.

Did the Reformation contribute to the rise of the secular freedoms we all now enjoy?  You bet.  So did the Enlightenment.  But while arguing over the details may be useful, they don’t go to the heart of the current dilemma.  TEC has rejected any sort of authority to which its members must submit except the theological whims of General Convention.  It has in effect declared that either General Convention is a new source of revelation (“the Spirit is doing a new thing”) or that human reason trumps revelation (“modern science demonstrates that sexual ‘orientation’ is immutable and benign”).  In either case it has explicitly rejected historic Christianity.  What folks in this thread are arguing over is not “freedom” versus “tyranny” but to just what sort of authority the Anglican Communion has submitted, or should submit, itself.

Joe mountain guy; speaking as a fellow protestant; I have often wondered at the connection between the American view of freedom and the reformation. It seems obvious in a way. But there is a seeming paradox; Luther, the one who exercised his freedom in standing up to the Church hierarchy; also wrote The Bondage of the Will. He was skeptical ( to say the least) of the idea of individuals exercising free choice and anything good coming from it.

I have come to see that the Gospel is counter to the American idea of personal freedom. God acts to save us when we are dead in our sins, and cannot act to save ourselves. It is only on that foundation that we can begin to talk of freedom, as a gift from God, and still only partial as we continue sinning and rebelling against him as saved people.

[comment deleted—offensive vulgarity and gratuitous insults]

What are the standard texts on ecclesiology at Anglican seminaries?

Joe of the Mountain,

This is the first time I have returned to this thread in days and I have not read the comments leading up to your last comment—perhaps there are other comments above as bad as yours.  But sexual vulgarity and gratuitous insults are in violation of the comment policy here.  This is your one warning.

It sounds as if you are gone forever, but since all of us StandFirm bloggers have noticed an alarming tendency amongst some commenters to flounce away proclaiming that they will never return and never comment again, and then a sudden return weeks later thinking all is forgotten, or worse yet, a change of blog name in order to obscure the fact that they have “caved in and returned,” be assured that we will be on the look-out.

You are welcome to comment at this site, but please follow the comment policies which have been often and well-reminded.

Thank you Sarah.  I was wondering when one of you would step in and muzzle JOTM, whose entire tone on this thread has been aggressively insulting.

Actually, Tundbar, I do understand how one can come to the conclusion you did if reading specific writers like Jewell. But, the C of E as such (the views of individuals not withstanding) was quite firm in their belief that they were part of the Holy Catholic Church. Frankly, the attitude of “church as necessary evil” really is quite a recent thing among Evangelicals who, frankly, just don’t get it.

I’m still wondering about the Packer authorship of this article.  (Even if wholly or partially spurious, it has surely generated some fascinating discussion.)  I believe it was established that the article is at least two years old, and like Mark Clavier, I wonder why it was deemed newsworthy at this point in time.  How it fell into Bp Charles Morley’s copyright is also intriguing.  “Inquiring minds want to know.”  Since SF is running old articles these days, Dr Packer did publish an article on WO a couple of years ago.  That also might be of interest.  The tone of the article would not be surprising from the pen of Bp Morley (an Irish born ex-RC, btw), but its curious that such a bitter attack on the Continuing Churches could come from a signatory to “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.”

Don’t know if this was covered in the long thread above, but FWIW, the internet archive shows the http://www.reformer.org web site having a link to this article as far back as 2001.

Makes me wonder about the date posted here.

I have apologized for unfair characterizations or excessive rhetoric (as I did to Dr. Dunlap, which he graciously accepted), but I honestly disagree with “Paladin 1789”  about my exchange with “joe of the mountain.”  His posting was factually nonsensical from beginning to end, aggressively so and, in the end, he proved himself to be both wantonly incorrigible and vulgarly insulting.  I gave him what he deserved, no more and no less; and I thank Third Mil. for his supporting comment.

Thanks evan miller.  This afternoon/evening I am going to read the comments on this thread and one or two others, since there seems to have been a lot of commenter friskiness in the past 72 hours, culminating with a banning on another thread.  I try to audit a few threads, but none of the bloggers can audit every single one.

I quite understand Sarah, and I was delighted when Greg banned the obnoxious Michael Moore clone on the other thread.

But where, Fr. Hart, does one get the doctrinal position of “the C of E as such” rather than the views of this or that individual? Why should one favor Jewell over Mascall or take either as having any sort of magisterial authority? If someone asks me (silly them about the Catholic doctrine of the Church, I direct them to the recent Catechism and Journet’s Theology of the Church; however, other than the 39 Articles (completely inadequate, in my opinion, whether right or wrong), what can one say for Anglicanism?

Sometimes it seems that trying to engage Anglican ecclesiology in a positive manner is like wrestling with a tarbaby and bag of feathers at the same time.

I do find it interesting you acknowledge that “church as necessary evil” is not an uncommon attitude among Evangelicals nowadays and I also note that “was quite firm” uses the past tense.

Grace be with you,
  thomas

Paladin 1789:

While I appreciate the spirit of your last post, I am compelled to stand up for Dr. Tighe.  When someone begins his post by placing himself upon a mountain where he believes, apparently, that he alone has a view above the dark forest that he charges virtually all the rest of us of walking in (“such blinders…”), and then goes on to use insulting and probably racist language in the midst of completely ideologically-charged commentary (”...province of women and servile creatures unworthy of citizenship”), I don’t think we should be expected to handle him with kid gloves.

And then what I’m sure he thought was the coup de gras - “...the Church of Rome, rump of the SQVR…” & “...than live a slave—even a spiritual slave—to a foreign sovereign” - was just a regurgitation of the kind of nonsense that you would only hear today at a Nation of Islam or a Klan rally. 

Joe of the Mountain’s conclusion(s)(?) to his sermonette - “Spiritual bondage to a man — call him “priest” “bishop” or “pope” is an insult to Christ” &  “The Church of Rome is as guilty of the sins of the Pharissees as they were themselves” (as if the moralist/legalist sanctification paradigm of any number of ultra-conservative Baptist, Pentecostal and other fundamentalist groups ... need I say more really?) - could only add injury to insult, and even an Eastern Orthodox-leaning small-c catholic Anglican like me was beginning to get a little upset.  I think it’s quite fair to say that any faithful Eastern Rite Catholic like Dr. Tighe had the right, after that rhetorical drag through the mud, to be just about near the boiling point.

I agree with joe from old oc.  But I can understand the squeamishness of other readers who don’t like watching the formidable Dr Tighe taking on an unarmed man in a battle of wits.

Chris M (et al),
I think this was a case where Dr. Tighe was minding his own business, reading through the blog entries, when a fellow barged in and pretty much stated flat out the 1.5 billion Christians in this world were damned for eternity based on some pretty flimsy illogical connections to some even shakier and totally incorrect historic premises.  That Dr. Tighe said what he said probably checked the baser instincts of the rest of us to call for joeonthemountain to be burned at the stake, kept our blood pressures down, and let us remain rational in our responses.
  As to being unarmed in a battle of wits, well, if one reads through this thread, one would realize that there are any number of very well armed (in the sense of intelligence and debating skill) individuals who are contributing, and one enters at one’s own risk.  One of the benefits of reading the articles and participating in the discussions here at stand firm is that if one pays attention, one will be better armed in the future.

“I think it’s quite fair to say that any faithful Eastern Rite Catholic like Dr. Tighe had the right, after that rhetorical drag through the mud, to be just about near the boiling point.”

Actually, and at the risk of continuing to flog a “dead horse,” I wasn’t anywhere near the “boiling point,” since the posting was such a farrago of nonsense, combining wild allegations and plain historical error, that my reaction was akin to that that one might have to a tub-thumping orator who inadvertently refutes his whole argument without any outside assistance: wonder and bemusement, followed by a determination further to assist such a public act of hari-kari.  The business about the Reichs and SPVR might well be criticized as “cherry picking”—but all that stuff about the “common man” choosing Protestantism whenever he could and in whatever form was available was both so delirously and totally wrong, on the one hand, and so central to the Mountaineer’s argument, on the other, that I think that I was rather “picking” a very large pumpkin in a very tiny room.  And to the examples that I gave off the top of my head of “Catholic rebellions” against he imposition of “Reform” I could have added more, such as the resistance of the Icelanders to the imposition of Lutheranism in the 1540s that was ended only by the forcible kidnapping and removal to Denmark of one of the island’s two bishops (where he died of old age and maltreatment on arrival there) and the beheading of the other one and the heroic resistance of the Swiss of Uri, Schweiz and Unterwalten, together with Lucerne, to the demands of Zurich and Zwingli that they either turn Protestant or suffer the fate of the Canaanites, in which it was the Zurichers who were put to flight and Zwingli slain on the field by the descendants of William Tell.  By contrast, after the initial enthusiasm of the German peasants to adopt Protestant language in support of their social goals (for the promotion of which they had been rebelling in ever more widespread and violent fashion from 1488 onwards, until in 1525 they evoked their own Gotterdammerung) “the common man” in general (there were, of course, individual exceptions) and almost everywhere manifested either hostility or sullen resentment at the changes that their “betters” thrust on them—an attitude that persisted for two to three generations and which was most easily assuaged in Lutheran countries, where so much Catholic religiosity survived, pruned and curtailed, into Lutheran practice, and most bitterly resented in countries or regions that adopted “Reformed” Christianity.  As an example of “Protestant revolutions” I might have mentioned the seizure of power by Calvinists in scotland in 1560, but that was a revolution led by for the most part religiously tepid nobles who bought into Calvinism as a quid pro quo for militant Calvinist support and as enabling them, or most of them, to carrry an extensive plundering of the Church’s properties in Scotland in the 1560s.  In Norway, as well, the imposition of Lutheranism and Danish rule had forst to overcome two rebellions in the 1530s and for decades thereafter Norwegian rural peasants frequently murdered Lutheran preachers who were too persistent or vehement in their denunciations of popular Catholic customs and beliefs that persisted, amazingly, in rural norway for nearly 250 years after the “official Reformation” and that without and reenforcement from outside by Catholic priests, missionaries or devotional literature.

Dr. Tighe,
Are you Eastern Rite Catholic?  Here, all along I thought you were Latin rite.  I don’t know how I missed that before.  Anyway,  I’d love to chat privately sometime about your journey.  If you’re willing, you can contact me via my blog http://www.3rdmillennium.blogspot.com.
Blessings,
Dan Dunlap

This is very individualistic - dare I say “Protestant” - reasoning. An individual Catholic layman is in no position to break communion with anyone. That’s a job for bishops. And for the past few years the bishops of the Anglican Communion have been addressing this very question relentlessly.

Roland—

Glad you dropped by. I had not seen anything from you on the upper reaches of this lengthy and truly interesting thread.

re the above quote: I would suggest that there is one way an individual catholic layman could break communion with “someone” and that would be with his feet. Of course, in doing so, he would be giving up his own church as well, but it could be and has been done.

I have broken communion with TEC by using my feet to move to a church in a province which has broken communion with TEC. Of course, having done so, I am, in the eyes of some Anglo-Catholics in the TEC, heretical for having left TEC.

Interestingly, I could care less what they think. I only care what God and Christ think. And despite some of the pontifications here and on other threads, I do not believe that I will be punished as a heretic for leaving a church that is heretical.

As a pewsitter, I’m also more than a bit confused by the animosity reflected here between the anglos and the protestants. It seems that we have coexisted in the Episcopal Church, at least, for the 40+ years that I was a part of that church.

As one brought up in the Baptist Church, I suppose I am more protestant than catholic, but it does not offend me when those more catholic than I genuflect or bow to the crucifix. When I serve as an usher, I do so, as well, but I do not believe it is necessary and that has been confirmed by priests in virtually every church I have attened.. At the same time, I do love the Anglican liturgy for its catholicity.

For me, it seems that Anglicanism is what it is because of the contributions of both catholics and protestants and I really can’t understand what all the angst is about. I

really don’t think it matters to God whether we’re more one way or the other as long as we believe in Him and the salvation he provides us through the crucifiction and resurrection of His son.

Been There…,
Individualistic Protestant reasoning from you is not a surprise. But coming from Fr. Kimel it is . . . paradoxical. Most Anglo-Catholics are waiting for a lead from their bishops, and the bishops are, as one would expect, operating in a conciliar manner with their fellow bishops.

Third Mill,
Thanks for the links to your blog. Last night I read the series on pre-Chalcedonian christological development. I’ll point readers of my own blog to this series.

A link to this article to the AOC website was posted recently on Virtue. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6512 It was posted there by a man that even questions whether or not Anglo-Catholics are even Christians. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6289&com_id=72449&com_rootid=72449&com_mode=thread&#c;omment72449;Unfortunately, I know this individual well.

I wonder if this article has become newsworthy due it simply appearing on Virtue????

David Straw, Evansville, IN

Frankly, the attitude of “church as necessary evil” really is quite a recent thing among Evangelicals who, frankly, just don’t get it.

speaking as one of those Evangelicals, I don’t get it either. Church is not just necessary, it is unavoidably wonderful.

I’m afraid that the “protestantism” that “——-” describes is not only not Anglicanism, it is not Christianity at all.  I’m pretty sure it’s described well in The Screwtape Letters, though.

Re authorship of this article:
I’ve just received confirmation that this is NOT from JI Packer.

Dr. Packer has issued the following statement, which is also attached:

A Statement from the Rev. Dr. James I. Packer
Vancouver British Columbia, Canada
August 24, 2007

Regarding the article, “Anglicanism: Protestant and Catholic, August 15, 2007”
This piece is not by me.  It contains information, which was new to me. Its source is identified as the Protestant Alliance, a body with which I have no links and of which I know nothing.  It has apparently been on the Internet for a number of years anonymously and to have my name attached to it with the date, August 15, 2007, is, simply, a mistake. 
The views expressed do not match my present attitude towards Anglo-Catholics in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
I ask that no one be misled into supposing that this piece, which clearly was written by someone in the Episcopal Church, is connected with me in any way.

Thanks Comoxpastor. 

Whoever that hoaxster was… sure did generate a lot more heat than light on this thread.

But then again, maybe it was for the better.  I don’t know.

I also want to thank you Comoxpastor for this information. I hope that Stand Firm will note your information on this and make a public note of it (which is particularly necessary because this thread is about to go off the front page—and thus it is likely that few of those who read or contributed will see your information).

God Bless,
William Scott

Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Also thanks to Comoxpastor.  And we might expect some acknowledgement, explanation, or apology from the management of SFIF for a very strange episode.  Apology is due to Dr Packer, obviously, for dragging his good name into this hoax,  and to the readers, for imposing on their trust, and perhaps even to those who were defamed by the vile and vituperative comments in this forged article which would surely not be tolerated from ordinary participants.  Had one of us written such scurrilous nonsense, we would have and should have been banned.  Dr Packer’s statement should be prominently posted, where it will not be overlooked.  How about it Matt, my friend?

Glad to see that Packer probably did not write this.  I have enjoyed many of his writings even if I do not completely agree with his theology.

I’d just like to second Fr. Hart’s remarks.  Many, many words today mean different things than they did 500 years ago.  In order to engage in productive discussion, we must use terms in the appropriate context and, thus, with the relevant meaning.  “Protestant” and “Catholic,” as originally understood, were not mutually exclusive.  “Protestant” simply pointed to disagreement with the Roman Catholic distortion of the papacy (i.e. Papal Supremacy), regardless of theology.  By the original understanding, “Protestant” is the opposite of “Papist” (or “Romanist”) while “Catholic” is the opposite of “Heretic.”  A proper Anglican is the epitome of a Protestant Catholic (i.e. Western Orthodox), rejecting Roman Catholic as well as Reformation innovations.  We (virtually) alone uphold the Orthodox Catholic faith of the Western portion of the undivided Church.  Proudly proclaim yourself a Protestant Catholic!

I will certainly take this down with apologies to Dr. Packer.

http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/5300/

As evidence that Matt has taken the high road, compare his apology to the handling by two other blogs. Virtueonline has silently removed it, without explanation (although it remains in the index).  PBS has done nothing about it as of 8:46 am EST.

Fortunately, last time I checked the PBS site had publicly noted the error. I think the delay was simply because they were not aware of the information from JI Packer until later this morning (I sent a quick copy of Comoxpastor’s post to the thread yesterday and it didn’t go through till later this morning, at which time the error was also noted and the article removed).

God Bless,
William Scott
Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.