Those unfamiliar with the broad outlines of Hooker’s theology may wish to peruse the article “Law, Liturgy, Wisdom: An Introduction to Richard Hooker“ (or here, with illustrations).

Myths of Anglicanism

No Anglican Covenant Coalition (hereafter, NACC) launched its website on November 3, 2010, stating the feast day of Richard Hooker was the “ideal” day for beginning their campaign.  However admirable this sentiment may be, their understanding of Hooker fails on three fronts.  First, they tell us that “Hooker argued that the Church should use the full range of reasoning faculties in matters of faith and should develop in light of changing circumstances.  New ideas and differences of opinion, therefore, have a proper place within the Church.”  It is worth noting that NACC offers us only one citation of Hooker on their website: “The Church hath authority to establish that for an order at one time, which at another time it may abolish, and in both do well.”  Regrettably, they do not offer the reference, thus disguising that they have, in the worse sense of the phrase, given us a mere “proof-text.”  Second, and like MCU/IC, NACC misunderstand what Hooker and the Puritans were arguing about, especially in terms of reason.  They claim that Puritans believed that the Bible “wholly transcends reason” and thus denied reason a place in the Christian life.  As Hooker himself notes, this is quite wrong.  Finally, they claim that Hooker “is best known for his appeal to three authorities—scripture, reason, and tradition—often described as his ‘three-legged stool.’”  Yet, this latter claim has been decisively rejected by current Hooker scholarship.

Let us begin with NACC’s last point – the so-called “three-legged stool.”  Generally speaking, this is a curious claim as Hooker considers the relationship of these three only once in the Laws – and even then, they are considered only in passing.[1] The interrelationship of scripture, reason, and tradition can hardly be the pivot around which Hooker’s theology moves.  Nonetheless, let us look to the wider body of Hooker studies for additional insights.  One of the companion volumes to the recently-completed Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker is A. S. McGrade’s Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, an excellent collection of essays by leading historians and theologians concerning Hooker and his times.  In an essay entitled “Hooker on Scripture, Reason, and ‘Tradition’,” W. David Neelands writes that only in the last hundred years has it become “a commonplace of Anglican self-understanding to refer to the triple authority of Scripture, reason, and tradition.”  During this same time period, Neelands continues, “Richard Hooker has been identified as a principal and original source of this position.”  Neelands cautions us, however, that we should in fact be “more cautious in implicating Hooker in the development of the triad.”[2] He offers two reasons for this warning.

First, he notes that Hooker was a Thomist in his views on Scripture and reason.  The relationship between these is the same as that between grace and nature: the former perfects the latter.  Hence Hooker’s point that “the principal intent of Scripture is to deliver the laws of duties supernatural.”[3] Reason cannot attain to what Hooker calls “a more divine perfection” without the revelation mediated through Scripture.[4] Under the tutelage of divine truth, human reason does not stand alone but is instead corrected and enabled to pursue what is right and good for all.  Hooker writes, “the laws of well doing are the dictates of right reason.”[5] Hooker locates authority not in reason as such, but in right reason.  Second, and as Neelands puts it, Hooker looked upon tradition as a Roman Catholic idea that was “merely human” and inferior to Scripture and reason.[6] Ergo, even if Hooker had argued for a “three-legged stool” – and Neelands is clear that Hooker did not – there would be no reason why any of us would be bound to accord independent authority to tradition, given Hooker’s own views on the primacy of Scripture and right reason.  Furthermore, if Neelands is correct that the image of the “three-legged stool” is first found in Francis Paget’s 1899 Introduction to the Fifth Book, then we cannot claim that this metaphor represents the Anglican tradition.  Other historians agree with Neelands that the “three-legged stool” is a misrepresentation of Hooker’s theology.[7] Why then use it?

Surely the answer has to do with the curious understanding of “reason” advocated by NACC.  To understand Hooker, we should outline some of the broader context.  Hooker’s Puritan opponents were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, two Reformed Englishmen who believed that the Church of England was under the sway of antichrist because it had an episcopal polity and shared liturgical practices with Roman Catholicism.  Cartwright and Travers first claimed that they were free to disobey the civil and canonical laws of England and its church.  Hooker wrote against this in his monumental work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a work of political theology.  In the beginning of its first book, he writes, “the point about which we strive is the quality of our laws” (not, we should note, a three-legged stool).[8] Cartwright and Travers, after claiming the right to some form of civil and canonical rebellion, advocated a new reformation for the Church of England which would bring it into line with the Presbyterian churches abroad, especially in Geneva, Switzerland, where John Calvin had led his brand of reform.  This new, Puritan reformation would have resulted in rejecting the Book of Common Prayer, further destruction of English churches, the end of the episcopate and – if Scotland’s Presbyterian movement is any indication – the demotion of the monarchy beneath the sometimes violent sway of a Presbyterian theocracy.

This latter point is especially important.  John Calvin had offered a theological justification for revolution in the final chapter of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which concluded with these words: “we should not enslave ourselves to the wicked desires of men – much less be subject to their impiety.  God be Praised.”[9] Hooker never came out and directly accused his Puritan opponents of fomenting revolution, but his printer John Spenser felt the need to make clear these political concerns.  To this end, Spenser appended a short letter to the end of the first volume of Hooker’s Laws.  In it, he writes against the “unnatural growth and dangerous fruits” of the Puritan stance, and expresses his hope that Hooker’s Laws might “help give an end to the calamities of these our civil wars.”[10] As is well known, religious controversy continued into the seventeenth century, and with the advent of the Anglican Counter-Reformation, took a decidedly bitter and eventually violent turn resulting in murder of both the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1645 and then King Charles I in 1649.[11] At the very least, we do well to consider that the Puritan complaint against the Church of England was no product of anti-intellectualism, but part of a broader and wholly articulate worldview that offered a sophisticated vindication of religious violence.

Unlike his opponents, Hooker maintained a view of church order which was found among the first European reformers – namely, that church order was not a matter of divine command but was, instead, a “thing indifferent” which each national church could reform as it saw fit.[12] Hooker’s argument for the use of reason rather than Scripture can only be understood against this backdrop.  He was not arguing for a theological method that could flourish in any context.  Rather, he was arguing about church order and whether or not Scripture itself offers a command concerning it.  He believed that it did not.  Therefore, he writes, “matters necessary unto salvation are of a different nature from ceremonies, order, and the kind of Church-government.”[13] For the latter – ceremonies, order, and ecclesiastical polity – right reason is sufficient.[14] Hooker thus writes that “laws human must be made according to the general laws of nature, and without contradiction unto any positive law of scripture.”[15] What is not prohibited in Scripture is a matter open for consideration and development as any given church sees fit.

There is, however, a second point that should be made about Puritans and reason.  As the above makes clear, every church needs both grace and nature – that is, both revelation and reason.  The Puritans rejected nature and reason when it came to ordering the church and determining the content of its liturgy.  Hooker argues that this is irrational on the part of his opponents: “they never use reason so willingly as to disgrace reason.”[16] We do well to meditate upon this argument.  Our Anglican divine claims that far from being anti-intellectual, Puritans were instead “learnedly mad.”[17] He goes on to claim,

These being wholly addicted unto their own wills, use their wit, their learning, and all the wisdom they have, to maintain that which their obstinate hearts are delighted with, esteeming in the frantic error of their minds the greatest madness in the world to be wisdom, and the highest wisdom foolishness.[18]

MCU/IC and NACC claim that Puritans were opposed to reason – and yet, this is precisely the opposite of Hooker’s argument.  Hooker’s point is that all claims to the contrary, Puritans did believe in reason.  The problem is that their belief in reason was so wrapped up in their own desires that they had become “learnedly mad.”  Hooker’s argument is well summed up in his brilliant one-liner: “The word of God is a two-edged sword, but in the hands of reasonable men.”[19] Claiming that Puritans simply denigrated reason rather misses what Hooker was arguing.  Puritanism was for more complex, idiosyncratic, and tortured than MCU/IC and NACC concede.

Finally, we turn to NACC’s claim that according the Hooker, the Church “should develop in light of changing circumstances.  New ideas and differences of opinion, therefore, have a proper place within the Church.”  In order to back up their claim, NACC offers an unreferenced statement by Hooker: “The Church hath authority to establish that for an order at one time, which at another time it may abolish, and in both do well.”  We cannot help but notice that this statement comes from the eighth chapter of the fifth book of the Laws – the very same section in which Hooker offers his only discussion of interrelationship of Scripture, reason, and tradition.  Perhaps this is all of Hooker that the members of NACC have read?  One wonders.  Their citation of Hooker appears in context as follows:

The Church hath authority to establish that for an order at one time, which at another time it may abolish, and in both do well.  But that which in doctrine the Church doth now deliver rightly as a truth, no man will say that it may hereafter recall and as rightly avouch the contrary.  Laws touching matter of order are changeable, by the power of the Church; articles concerning doctrine not so.[20]

We saw above that the idea of a “three-legged stool” is erroneous.  We also saw that Hooker divides matters necessary for salvation from matters which are unnecessary – namely, liturgical rites and church order.  Here we see the same.  The Church may change its order but cannot change its doctrine – not least because it has no “three-legged stool” to appeal to.  We may therefore thank NACC, for they have offered us a sweeping argument for why the Anglican Communion has every right to adopt the Anglican Covenant.

III. Conclusion: Anglicans Covenanted

The Anglican Covenant does not change doctrine – indeed, in the first part of its first section, the Covenant text merely restates the basic outlines of long-standing Anglican norms.  Because the Church is bound by doctrine but free in matters of polity, as Hooker rightly notes, the provinces of the Anglican Communion are indeed free to change their polity by entering into a covenanted life together.  This does not, of course, alter polity in the way that the Puritans argued for; the Covenant envisions complete continuity in episcopal order (1.1.6; 3.1.3), conciliar consultation (3.1.2), and the Instruments of Communion (3.1.4).  One cannot claim that the Anglican Covenant envisions any changes in current Anglican structures.  One must recognize, however, that a covenanted Communion will be one that recognizes the need for seeking “a shared mind” (3.2.4) and for living in a committed and robust form of “interdependence” (4.1.2; cf. 3.2.2).  This is very different than envisioning constitutional changes for any province – and the Covenant in fact eschews a centralized push for such alterations (4.1.3).  The only changes in polity that the Covenant envisions are those which are created locally by a given province so that it may live faithfully in covenanted interdependence (4.2.9).  The Covenant thus bolsters the creative capacity of each Anglican province to enter “freely” into deeper communion with other Anglican provinces by structuring and reforming itself for the good of the whole (4.1.1).

Richard Hooker advocated reason in matters which were otherwise indifferent.  There is no divine command that Anglicans enter into Covenant with one another, but there is indeed the Biblical command of charity and unity (John 13:34 – 35, 17:21).  The Church is free to order its common life so that charity and unity might be witnessed to, and the Anglican Covenant has been proposed as the primary means for doing so in the Anglican Communion at this point in time.  If it is rejected, Anglicans must be willing to answer two questions.  First, how will the Anglican Communion embody charity and unity given that the current state of the Communion is now so fractious?  Before any province in the Communion rejects the Covenant, it should keep in mind how much division and chaos has ensued amidst Anglicans in the five years between the time that the Covenant was proposed, drafted, and then finalized for adoption.  To reject the Covenant is to prolong this process of division and chaos.

Second, and on a more personal note for the present author, I ask each province to consider how, if it rejects the Covenant, the Anglican Communion will be passed on to the next generation.  Every generation is given particular institutions on trust.  Does any generation have the right to deny its own children these same gifts?  As someone who is young, I hope to inherit and pass on the Anglican Communion to my own children.  The Anglican Covenant offers a way of doing so.  Interdependence, we are so often reminded today, is a central principle of ecological order.  Can it therefore be any less important for the Church?  As Hooker advocated, nature itself is a sure guide in some things.  Surely, right reason apprehends this.  Voting for the Anglican Covenant is not merely a vote for the present, but a vote for all future generations.  It is a recognition that the Church of Christ is not delimited by the horizons of the present but reaches out in loving and sanctified arms to the future, wholly aware that it is not only called to imitate the eternal steadfastness of the Holy Trinity but that any and every failure to do so will be called to account and judged.  We profess to believe in the communion of saints.  But how can this be true if our own Communion is content to abandon its children and its children’s children to a faithless tomorrow?

May the bishops order themselves according to the messianic vision and become nursing mothers and fathers to all later generations (Isa. 49:23).  May they affirm the Covenant and thereby show the world that when it comes to the Communion’s future, hope – the hope of a new world, which no generation should have denied it – will not be disappointed.  If the bishops follow the anti-Covenant lobby, they will in fact give place to what Richard Hooker fought against: “For the scope of all their pleading against man’s authority is to overthrow such orders, laws, and constitutions in the Church, as … would peradventure leave neither face nor memory of the Church to continue long in the world, the world especially being such as now it is.”[21] That the Church should die out among a particular people – that the Anglican Communion should die out among Anglicans, and especially those who are young – would be a great betrayal of not just one saint and not just one ecclesiastical vision.  It would, in this world, be the total dissipation of our own “great cloud of witnesses” and a wholesale abandonment of all perseverance (Heb. 12:1).  As for ourselves, we advocate the vision of Hooker:

Though for no other cause, yet for this; that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream, there shall be for men’s information extant thus much concerning the present state of the Church of God amongst us, and their careful endeavour which would have upheld the same.[22]

We hope that we are heard.

- Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, I.8.2

Écrasez l’infâme! Such is the clarion call of a recent ad in the Church Times directed against the Anglican Covenant.  Jointly authored and sponsored by Inclusive Church and Modern Church, the ad proclaims that the Anglican Covenant would be “the biggest change to the Church since the Reformation.”  Without hesitation, the authors of the ad even claim that the Covenant is intended “to re-establish a Puritan dogmatism” within Anglicanism.  Similarly, on 3 November, the feast day of Richard Hooker, a group calling itself No Anglican Covenant Coalition offered to the wider Anglican Communion a second protest against the Covenant.  Like the Church Times ad, No Anglican Covenant Coalition claims to uphold a historic Anglican orthodoxy which they neither delineate nor define.  In what follows, we query the identification of the Covenant with Puritanism, just as we reject the forced union of Richard Hooker with anti-Covenant sentiment.  Rhetoric is no substitute for logic; logic has nothing to fear from historical study.  Our argument is simple: the Anglican Covenant is wholly un-Puritan, and instead maintains the rich liturgical legacy of historic Anglicanism.  Are the images of Hooker and Puritanism, used by the anti-Covenant lobby, accurate?  This question offers a corollary: if the anti-Covenant crowd is incapable of evincing even the slightest understanding of Hooker and Puritanism, why should we pay attention to their denigration of the Anglican Covenant?  We propose that a failure to understand the past yields an in ability to grasp the present.

I. Myths of Puritanism

We begin with a claim made in the MCU/IC advertisement.  Its authors write:

Behind the campaign for an Anglican Covenant lies an attempt to re-establish a Puritan dogmatism. Reformation Puritans believed Christians should submit to the supreme authority of the Bible and therefore agree with each other on all matters of doctrine and ethics. Refusing to allow reason a role, their disagreements have often led each side to accuse the other of not being true Christians.  This is why parts of Protestantism have a history of repeated schisms.

There is confusion here on three fronts.  First, MCU/IC attributes to Puritans two beliefs that they had no monopoly on – namely, the supremacy of Scripture, and a belief in agreement on doctrinal and ethical matters.  Second, MCU/IC claims that Puritans refused to “allow reason a role.”  This so oversimplifies Reformed anthropology that it is a veritable falsehood.  What is more, suspicion towards human reason was present on all sides of sixteenth century debate.  Context will help us understand this facet of Puritan polemic.  Third and finally, the MCU/IC ad reveals only confusion on the matter of Puritan ecclesiology.  On the one hand, MCU/IC writes that Puritan a-rationality caused them to accuse “each side” of “not being true Christians.”  Regrettably, these purported sides (each side of what?, we might ask) are not named.  On the other hand, we are told, this same a-rationality has apparently resulted in “parts of Protestantism” having “a history of repeated schisms.”  We assume that the “parts of Protestantism” being referred to are those that descended from Puritanism (surely, Lutheran schisms are not due to Puritanism).  But this too is a false claim.

In terms of Puritans alone believing in the supremacy of Scripture, this is so silly that we need not spend any significant amount of time on it.  Surely, Martin Luther’s claim of sola scriptura was not of Puritan origin.  As early as 1521, Luther’s young protégé, Philip Melanchthon, wrote in the dedicatory epistle of his Loci Communes that “Anyone is mistaken who seeks to ascertain the nature of Christianity from any source except canonical Scripture.”[1] This was not a new idea.  As John Van Engen has recently noted in his work on the fifteenth-century Devotio Moderna, belief in the sole authority of Scripture was a thoroughly medieval belief and found expression not just in the teaching of both the canon law and medieval schoolmen.[2] Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas evidenced a very simple theology of Biblical inspiration: “That God is the author of holy Scripture should be acknowledged.”   Perhaps one may wish to counter at this point that the problem with the Puritans was the fact that they were “literalists.”  Aquinas gives us insight here, too.  “All meanings [of Scripture] are based on one, namely the literal sense,” for “nothing necessary for faith is contained under the spiritual sense that is not openly conveyed through the literal sense elsewhere.”[3] The Angelic Doctor practically bequeathed to us the fifth article of the Articles of Religion: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not red therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite as necessary to salvation.”

Clearly, Puritans were not alone in their views on Scripture.  Did they alone believe in doctrinal and ethical uniformity?  There is much evidence to suggest that, contrary to the claims advanced by the anti-Covenant lobby, uniformity on doctrinal and ethical matters was once of central importance to Anglicans.  For example, in the Elizabethan Injunctions of 1559, the Queen commanded the preaching of sermons and instruction of the laity (e.g., Injunctions 3 – 5); she detailed key facets of the theological education of the clergy (Injunctions 6 and 16); she prohibited the clergy from fornication by encouraging marriage, and cited Scripture and the early Church as justifications for this (Injunction 29); she directed the giving of money and other goods to the poor (Injunctions 11 and 25).  Notably, she also decreed, “that no man shall wilfully and obstinately defend or maintain any heresies, errors or false doctrine, contrary to the faith of Christ and his Holy Scripture” (Injunction 31).  This latter point dovetails flawlessly with the formal title of the Articles of Religion, passed in 1562: “Articles whereupon it was agreed by the archbishops and bishops of both provinces and the whole clergy … for the avoiding of the diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching true religion.”

It seems that Anglicans, far from encouraging theological pluralism, were in their earliest days advocates of uniformity no less than the Puritans.  In fact, Anglicans were really no different than any other Western Christian body in the sixteenth century.  Roman Catholics lived according to the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent; Lutherans held to the voluminous body of confessional documents in the Book of Concord; the Reformed also developed a large body of confessions, the boundaries of which were determined at the Synod of Dort (1618 – 19).  Anglicans had the Prayer Book, the Articles, Homilies, English Bible, the Paraphrases of Erasmus upon the New Testament, and above all the monarchy.  Together these aimed at “the avoiding of the diversities of opinions.”  It is of course true that this avoidance of diversity did not preclude differences in aspects of liturgy.  Thus in article 33 of the Articles of Religion, it is written, “It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places utterly alike.”  This was taken directly from the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, which held forth the hope that “unto the true unity of the Church, it is sufficient to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.  Nor is it necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by men should be alike everywhere” (I.7).  Neither Lutherans nor Anglicans appear to have been willing to countenance differences in doctrine or ethics.  Rather, the only acceptable differences were those that pertained to liturgical aesthetics between (rather than within) different churches.

Let us turn now to the second claim made by MCU/IC – namely, that Puritans refused to “allow reason a role.”  As with the above discussion, it appears that here too the opponents of the Covenant err.  Generally speaking, all Christians in the sixteenth century were skeptical about the abilities of reason.  This is true of Roman Catholics no less than Protestants.  For example, when the English Roman Catholic William Tresham, a canon of Christ Church, debated in Oxford against the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli, both agreed that reason was inimical to matters of faith.  Toward the close of the first day of debate, Tresham tells Vermigli, “Neither reason nor sense is to be followed in matters of faith; otherwise, many absurdities would result.”  Vermigli agrees: “I acknowledge what you say, that in matters of faith we must not follow reason or sense.”[4] Yet again, this was not a unique point among these two disputants.  In its very first article, the Lutheran Formula of Concord stated in no uncertain terms that “Original Sin is no trivial corruption, but is so profound a corruption of human nature as to leave nothing sound, nothing uncorrupted in the body or soul of man, or in his mental or bodily powers.”  Cynical views of reason were ubiquitous in the sixteenth century.  We will turn to Anglican-Puritan debates on reason in the next section.  In the mean time, we simply propose that it is unfair to condemn Puritans for being so deeply a part of their own historical context.

We now turn to our third and final point.  MCU/IC claims that among Puritans, “disagreements have often led each side to accuse the other of not being true Christians.”  We cannot help but wonder what the sides are that they refer to.  We would appreciate MCU/IC clarifying the matter, not least because the history of Puritanism reveals a remarkable level of theological coherence.  This was, admittedly, worked out within a Congregationalist polity – thus, arguments about schism need to be qualified by recognizing that a collection of like-minded congregations will express unity in ways that are fundamentally different than how an episcopal polity would express unity.  Puritan New England – perhaps best thought of as a culture, rather than as a singular church – was quite resilient to proselytization by other Christian groups throughout the seventeenth century.  Puritans did not devolve into a host of competing denominations; their eclipse in the eighteenth century was due principally to the rise of other religious groups, particularly revivalist movements, over which the remaining Puritans only later split.[5] Claiming a simple causal relationship between Puritanism and Protestant schism is wholly erroneous.

Part of the reason that Puritans shared a singular cultural imagination was because of their intense apocalypticism.[6] Quite obviously, you don’t have time for dividing over scholastic quiddities when you believe yourself waging war against the forces of antichrist.  We do well to pay attention to this particular point, as it draws attention to the fact that Puritans were not Biblical literalists – they were actually quite far from it.  Apocalypticism led Puritans to frequent tendency to allegorize the Bible through typology, a form of Biblical interpretation in which past, Biblical events are understood as playing out in the contemporary world.  In Puritan typology, Old Testament figures were seen as prefiguring Puritan leaders.  In American literature, the most famous example of this was made by Cotton Mather, for whom John Winthrop was “Nehemiah Americanus,” leading God’s people on an “errand into the wilderness” against the forces of antichrist.[7] Mather’s narrative is defined, however, not just by a use of Biblical typology, but by drawing upon pagan sources as well.  Mather also deploys a remarkable familiarity with a range of classical sources, including Cicero, Plato, Terrence, and Josephus, and claims that in Winthrop the pagan aspiration of “overcoming” oneself was finally fulfilled.[8] Puritans may have been skeptical of reason, but they were hardly allergic to studying pagan classics.  Within Puritanism’s apocalyptic worldview, the typological imagination was able to draw upon and utilize a host of sources in quite imaginative ways.[9]

To summarize all of the above, MCU/IC makes three claims about Puritans.  First, they claim that Puritans had a unique view of Scripture’s authority.  This has been shown to be wrong.  Rather, the supremacy of Scripture was a theological conviction that extended back to the medieval era and simply continued on in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Second, MCU/IC claims that Puritans had a problematic and erroneous view of reason.  This assertion, too, has been debunked; Puritan skepticism about reason was in fact a common feature among all religious groups in the sixteenth century, and in sharing such views Puritans were simply part of their own historical context.  Third, MCU/IC claims that Puritans have had a history of dividing against one another, claiming that each side was not in fact Christian.  This has been shown, in the American context, to be false.  The American context should take primacy over the English context as New England is where those who advocated a Calvinist reform of the Church of England lived.  We cannot deny that antinomianism grew out of the “left wing” of English Dissent, but we do deny that all English Dissenters were simply Puritans.  The death of Puritanism in the New World came about through revivalism, with its Dissent-like preference for subjective experience over the objective, received truths of Scripture and the Christian tradition.  Finally, in our penultimate paragraph, we briefly drew attention to the brightly apocalyptic strain within Puritanism, thereby showing that the claims of MCU/IC fail on every count.  Puritans were not literalists, but typologists; Puritans were not anti-intellectual, but widely read and deeply imaginative; Puritans were not divided into factions, but shared a broadly apocalyptic worldview.  In the second part of our essay, we will consider the ways that the anti-Covenant lobby also misrepresents Hooker and the structure of early Anglican orthodoxy.

The frontispiece of Hooker's Laws

Richard Hooker is oftentimes described as the founding figure of the Anglican tradition. This is, however well intentioned, a half-truth. It is certainly true that Hooker’s great, unfinished theological work, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (hereafter, Laws), was a key text in Anglican arguments against Puritanism. Indeed, the Laws remains the most thoughtful and detailed refutation of Puritanism ever written. It is also true that although Thomas Cranmer gave us The Book of Common Prayer, Richard Hooker is the one who most shaped our understanding of it. But it is unfair to see Hooker as the founder of Anglicanism. He was, instead, one of several key figures in the early history of our church, neither more nor less important than Cranmer, Lancelot Andrewes, and William Laud — not to mention Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, and King Charles the Martyr. Without Hooker, Anglicanism would not be what it is today, but this point also holds for each of these other foundational saints.

This essay introduces the theological vision of Richard Hooker by focusing on his highly influential Laws. The impetus behind this multi-volume treatise was twofold. First was Hooker’s opposition to the claim, made by Puritans, that they were free to disobey both civil and ecclesiastical law when these infringed upon the convictions of conscience. Second was Hooker’s rejection of the ardent Puritan belief that the Church of England’s retention of liturgical ceremonies made it a handmaiden of anti-Christ. Against the first argument Hooker offered a robust theology of law that was rooted in the work of Thomas Aquinas; against the second argument Hooker lovingly and painstakingly detailed the meaning and purpose of liturgy. As we will see, Hooker was a theologian of law and liturgy who first and foremost discerned the majesty of divine wisdom as the guiding principle of all theological orthodoxy.

Of Law and Grace

Law was among the flash points of hot ecclesiastical debate in the 16th century. All Christians, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, agreed that obedience to the law did not make a sinner righteous before God. Beyond this, however, consensus broke down. The Council of Trent claimed that obedience was necessary for righteousness, and that each and every spiritual debt created by sin would be paid for either in this world or in Purgatory. Lutherans and Calvinists, however, believed that law was, at best, a deterrent from wrongdoing which revealed human sinfulness. The earliest expression of the Protestant view was Martin Luther’s burning of Roman canon law in 1520. Believing himself justified by grace through faith alone, Luther denied that positive law — whether biblical, canonical, or civil — was necessary for Christian living.

The Church of England occupied a curious position in these debates, as the Anglican Reformation proceeded by way of canonical and legal reform, rather than the sharp protests of theologians. The contrast with Luther is instructive. Unlike the German reformer, Cranmer believed that canon law was worth reforming rather than discarding. He did not live to complete the project, but left behind his unfinished Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (the Reformation of Ecclesiastical Laws) as a testament to his belief that law should serve as a guide for the wellbeing of Church and State.

Hooker picked up precisely where Cranmer left off: “That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a Law” (Laws, I.2.1). Or, more succinctly, law “is a directive rule unto goodness of operation” (Laws, I.8.4). This view, borrowed from Aquinas and Aristotle, is sometimes called teleological (from the Greek word telos, which means end). Hooker believed that all of creation is teleological — that is, every created thing has a divinely appointed end or purpose. Law exists less to point out our sins, failures, and shortcomings, and more to direct us toward the end for which we were made.

This outlook is one of created order and divine providence. On the one hand, Hooker writes that God alone is “that law which giveth life unto all the rest” (Laws, I.1.3). On the other hand, Hooker follows Aquinas in dividing all created law into five distinct categories: natural law, celestial law, the law of reason, divine law, and positive law (Laws, I.3.1). With the exception of positive law, which is created by human beings, each of the other four laws claims God alone as its author. When civil societies or churches create laws for the wellbeing of their communities, they imitate God’s own act of creation. It is here that we glimpse Hooker’s theology of divine providence. God orders by way of law and we are never free of these laws. Similarly, we are never free of the positive laws that define our human communities. If we are citizens of England, we are not free of the civil law; if we are priests in the Church of England, we are not free of the canon law. Human existence is defined by a harmony of laws.

All laws, however, are not created equal. Hooker writes that the “school of nature” teaches things that “profit many ways for men’s instruction” (Laws, I.12.1). Yet, as he also makes clear, human use of the law of reason is “darkened” by sin, such that we cannot even discern the sinfulness of “gross iniquity” (Laws, I.12.2). In such a situation, the law of nature remains but the law of reason cannot apprehend it. In a poetic turn of phrase, Hooker writes that nature thus “calls for a more divine perfection” (Laws, I.11.4). This is the reason why God inspired prophets and apostles to compose the Scriptures: “the principal intent of Scripture is to deliver the laws of duties supernatural” (Laws, I.14.1). Holy writ is a gift of grace that offers both nature and humanity a “more divine perfection.” Through revelation, human reason is restored so that it can know what God requires for salvation. With Hooker, we behold the harmony of creation and providence, law and grace, and we are invited to contemplate the uncreated wisdom that has ordered these relationships.

“With Angels and Archangels”

The fifth book of Hooker’s Laws was published in 1597. Totaling nearly 500 pages in its current critical edition, it is longer than the sum total of the preface and first four books combined. Here we see the architecture of Hooker’s vision. Law is not just about the fabric of the universe, but about the fabric of every society, civil and ecclesiastical. And, although violating positive law entails violating the divine purpose for law as such, it also entails tearing into the heavy, historical tapestry of communal existence. Against those whom he described as “pretenders of reformation,” Hooker defended not just The Book of Common Prayer, but also a way of life (Laws, V.4.1). Hooker approached liturgy in fundamentally mystical terms. This was due, at least in part, to his deep reading in the Greek Fathers, but the real source of Hooker’s understanding was the Prayer Book itself. Before the Holy Communion, the priest prayed the Sanctus: “Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts; heaven and earth are full of thy glory; glory be to thee O Lord most high.” This made clear that the Communion was not just any meal, but a holy event, prefaced by human and angelic voices uniting in one ecstatic hymn.

In the liturgy, Hooker tells us, “Angels are intermingled as our associates.” Their presence comes about through doctrine no less than prayer (Laws, V. 25.2). Through doctrine we receive the “heavenly inspirations” of “Angels descended from above.” Through prayer we offer “holy desires” with “the sending of Angels upward” (Laws, V. 23.1). One suspects that although Hooker believed in angels as heavenly beings, his claim that doctrine and prayer are angels was based upon his knowledge of Hebrew: the word angel simply means messenger. Doctrine and prayer are each, in their own way, messengers of truth. In the liturgy, we not only join with heavenly song, but participate in the truth given by doctrine and prayer.

As one might expect, the fifth book had a deeply sacramental thrust; Hooker described even the Scriptures in sacramental terms: “the reading of scripture is effectual” (Laws, V.22.4). This language, which goes back to St. Augustine, is found in the Articles of Religion, where the sacraments are described as “effectual signs of grace.” Hooker claimed that the sacraments were “necessary,” and he envisioned the Eucharist as the primary means of sacramental grace (Laws, V.57.6). In the Eucharist, “a creature is exalted above the dignity of all creatures,” because in it we receive Christ and “by virtue of this grace man is really made God” (Laws, V.54.3). Here again we see Hooker’s debt to the Greek fathers, who taught that deification — becoming by grace what God is by nature — is the end result of faithful sacramental life. Already participating with angels in hymnody, doctrine, and prayer, the Christian is united with Christ. In the words of the Prayer Book, we are filled with “grace and heavenly benediction.”

Portrait of Izaak Walton

Hooker’s Legacy

As with all great works of the theology, Hooker’s Laws was not an immediate bestseller. It aroused a small controversy among a group of English Calvinists, but Hooker fell asleep in Christ before he was able to complete a response to their accusations that he taught heresy. In the early years of the 17th century, however, he was increasingly read and revered as one of the great defenders of the Church of England against both Roman Catholicism and Puritanism. It is noteworthy that shortly before he was executed by Puritan revolutionaries, King Charles I exhorted his daughter Elizabeth to read three works of Anglican theology: Hooker’s Laws, Lancelot Andrewes’s Sermons, and Archbishop William Laud’s Conference with Fisher the Jesuit. Together these books would, as the princess said, “ground” her “against popery.”

Not all Anglicans approached Hooker’s work as merely an antidote to popery. This is well evidenced by Izaak Walton’s influential account of Hooker’s life, which was published in 1665. Walton had already authored biographies of John Donne and George Herbert, and had also composed the Compleat Angler, which remains the most popular book on fishing ever published. In his research, Walton came across a commendation of Hooker by Pope Clement VIII, which he included in his biography. The pope said of Hooker’s Laws that “there is in them such seeds of Eternity, that if the rest be like this they shall last until Fire shall consume all Learning.” Walton had no especial interest in portraying Roman Catholicism favorably, but he knew important praise when he saw it, and his use of the pope’s words helped cement Hooker’s reputation as “the judicious Mr. Hooker.”

Walton’s Life of Hooker influenced the Anglican understanding of Hooker in a second way. As noted earlier, Hooker did not complete the Laws, but only the preface and the first five books. The last three books were published in the mid-17th century, but under much suspicion. For reasons that are not wholly clear, it was widely believed in the 17th century that Hooker’s study had been broken into by Puritan opponents after his death and that many of his papers had been destroyed and that others had been altered. The sixth, seventh, and eighth books of the Laws were thus presented by Walton as untrustworthy, and this remained the dominant view for centuries. Only in the late 20th century, with the publication of the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, was this view finally put to rest.

Hooker’s intellectual legacy was most concentrated in political theory and liturgical theology. On the one hand, even long after his death, Hooker was studied and cited approvingly by figures as diverse as John Locke and Edmund Burke, and still today he is recognized as one of the forerunners of modern constitutionalism. On the other hand, when Anglicans began composing stand-alone commentaries on The Book of Common Prayer in the 17th century, Hooker was one of the first authorities they turned to. The Oxford Movement of the mid-19th century saw Hooker as an important source for the intensification of Anglican liturgical life. This conviction continued on into the century that followed, particularly with Francis Paget’s Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker’s Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. First published in 1899, it has been reprinted many times since.

If we are to sum up Hooker’s theology, how might we do so? In the second book of the Laws, Hooker explains that wisdom should be our teacher: “Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature: with some things she inspireth from above by spiritual influence, in some things she leadeth and traineth only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so admire her in any one special way that we disgrace her in any other, but must let all her ways be adored according to their place and degree” (Laws, II.1.4). Richard Hooker was a theologian of law, liturgy, and above all wisdom. Despite his clear arguments and poetic prose, he did not believe that theological battles could be won with rhetorical violence. Rather, he trusted that “There will come a time when three words uttered with charity and meekness shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit” (Laws, Preface, 2.10). Such is the order of wisdom made manifest. It is the sound of “grace and heavenly benediction.”

Bibliography

The standard edition of Richard Hooker’s works is W. Speed Hill (ed.), The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, 7 vols. (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press/Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1977-98). An excellent introduction to Hooker’s Laws is the fine selection of key passages available in Raymond Chapman, Law and Revelation: Richard Hooker and His Writings (Canterbury Press, 2009). John Keble’s 19th-century edition of Hooker’s Laws is frequently reprinted and is available free from Project Canterbury (www.anglicanhistory.org/hooker). John Booty (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer, 1559 (University of Virginia Press, 2005), is an elegant edition of the liturgies that Hooker so cherished.

Those interested in further study should begin with Arthur Stephen McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997). There is no finer collection of essays on Hooker. A detailed study of Hooker’s relation to Calvinism is available in Nigel Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace (Oxford University Press, 2003). Perfectly complimenting this is Daniel Eppley, Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God’s Will in Tudor England (Ashgate, 2007), which convincingly places Hooker in the context of earlier English political theology. Two books by W.J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (E. J. Brill, 1990) and Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (Ashgate, 2005), study Hooker in the context of international Protestantism over and against Puritanism. The pervasive influence of Hooker on the development of early Anglicanism is discussed in Michael Brydon, The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600-1714 (Oxford University Press, 2006).

King Charles I in the National Portrait Gallery (Artist Unknown)

Do you know who the first Anglican saint was? Here’s a hint: it wasn’t Henry VIII. The title of this article says it all, but don’t feel embarrassed if you are unaware of King Charles the Martyr. Since the founding of the Episcopal Church (USA), Anglicanism’s first and longest-loved saint has been curiously absent from our province’s liturgical calendar — and this despite repeated and growing calls for his reinstatement.

Sadly, the American case is not unique. Anglicans today pay scandalously little attention to the saint whose cult fueled the Anglican imagination for centuries. Yet King Charles the Martyr witnesses to important facets of the Anglican heritage, especially the Anglican Counter-Reformation and the importance of martyrs, miracles, and relics. If it is true, as many now claim, that Anglicans are out of touch with their history and tradition, then the life and legacy of King Charles the Martyr are important for our reintegration.

Royalist Piety
When Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649, the large crowd that witnessed his execution rushed the scaffold. But they weren’t fueled by rage or hatred; their concerns were quite different, with roots reaching back to the medieval period. The onlookers wanted access to the king’s miraculous blood.

This undoubtedly sounds strange to us, but in the mid-17th century it was wholly normal. Beginning with King Edward the Confessor in the 11th century, English kings were known as miracle workers. This was popularly known as “the royal touch,” a gift bestowed by God through the anointing that English monarchs received in their consecration. And, as the influential French medievalist Marc Bloch noted decades ago, the royal touch remains the longest lasting and most widely attested miracle in human history.

The ritual itself was quite simple. The monarch made the sign of the cross over the sick, touched the infected part(s), and prayed for healing. Initially used to cure scrofula, a widespread disease consisting of painful bodily inflammation, the royal touch was later used more widely. Kings consecrated and distributed coins called “angels”; they also blessed “cramp rings,” which were used to heal those racked by bodily pain. By the 15th century, much of this was synced with the English liturgical calendar, and Good Friday was the most popular day for performing royal miracles.

The English Reformation did not diminish the importance of the royal touch, but amplified it, along with other medieval traditions. One of the fault lines that defined the Middle Ages was the constant tension between the papacy and European monarchies. The papacy claimed to possess “plenitude of power” in both the spiritual and the political realms, but the validity of this assertion was undermined by the continued presence of wonder-working kings and queens.

Thus, in the 16th century, Roman Catholicism became the major opponent of this popular and ancient pattern of royalist piety; the Church of England, however, was one of its defenders and preservers. From the Anglican perspective, the monarch—not the pope—was the defender of the English church, and the royal touch was a God-given, miraculous vindication of this conviction.

The Anglican Counter-Reformation
Why, then, was King Charles I beheaded? The answer is found not in controversies between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, but in those between Anglicans and Puritans. Most importantly, the reign of Charles I saw the full flowering of the Anglican Counter-Reformation, a movement that began under Elizabeth I (1558-1603), and steadily gained momentum under James I (1603-25), Charles’s father.

On the one hand, the Anglican Counter-Reformation was a literary renaissance. Poetry saw a breathtaking revival in the early- tomid-17th century—John Donne and George Herbert are, perhaps, its best known representatives. No less importantly, during these same years Anglicans began composing devotional prose.

Rooted in the liturgies of The Book of Common Prayer, this literature was nurtured by the vividly emotional language of the Psalms. Lancelot Andrewes’s Private Prayers remains the apex of such writing. Anglican literature of the early 17th century was defined by unflinching, personal introspection, and the intervening centuries have not eroded its inspirational power.

On the other hand, the Anglican Counter-Reformation was a liturgical movement. Its ideals can be summed up in the phrase “the beauty of holiness.” Today, every Anglican parish bears the marks of the Anglican Counter-Reformation. One such legacy is altar rails, a unique feature of distinctly Anglican architecture.

During the reign of Edward VI (1547-53), altars were destroyed and replaced with movable tables, thereby symbolizing the Eucharist as a communal meal, rather than a sacrifice. The Anglican Counter-Reformation sought to unite the imagery of “the Holy Table” with the example of the early Church, which used altars. Together with altar rails, altars became visible reminders that the parish was a sacred space and should be reverenced as such. This dignified, outward liturgical expression perfectly mirrored the introspective drive of the movement’s devotional literature.

The development of rich ceremonial in many English parishes outraged Puritans. They believed such ceremonies were blasphemous. Furthermore, as if adding insult to injury, Charles I maintained his father’s prohibition on public speculation about the doctrine of double predestination, a prohibition aimed directly at Puritan theology. These religious tensions, which were joined to political grievances of questionable integrity, ignited the English Civil War in 1642. It quickly became clear that this was a zero-sum affair; monarchy and episcopacy, traditional institutions of authority that many believed were divinely ordained, were under attack. Their enemies wanted nothing less than their complete obliteration.

Eikon Basilike

The Frontispiece to King Charles I's Eikon Basilike

The king’s capture in 1646 aroused sympathy and support for him. So too did his continued administration of the royal touch, which galvanized pious Anglicans, and also converted some of his opponents – including his own jailers — to the royalist-Anglican cause. Nonetheless, the king was executed on January 30, 1649. In his own words, he lived and died “according to the profession of the Church of England.” This was a clear affirmation, on the king’s part, of the necessity of episcopacy and monarchy, and the validity of the Anglican Counter-Reformation.

Two developments sustained Anglican identity in the dark decade that followed. First was the cult of the king’s relics. The royal touch continued to function through items such as handkerchiefs, which were dipped in the martyred king’s blood. These miraculous events were well known and widely reported, by word of mouth and in print. The location of such relics — usually private homes—became important sites of pilgrimage for Anglicans who refused to accept that the end had already come.

The second important development was the appearance of the king’s autobiographical Eikon Basilike, or The Royal Image. A collection of 28 meditations, each of which concluded with a prayer, Charles I used his book to defend himself, pray for his people, and meditate upon death. Like other writings of the Anglican Counter-Reformation, Eikon Basilike frequently drew upon the Psalms. Its first edition, printed on the day of the king’s death, was hugely popular; 39 editions were printed in 1649 alone. But the book was quickly proscribed, and became the target of a scathing, government-sponsored polemic written by John Milton. Nonetheless, Eikon Basilike was a force to be reckoned with, and its influence proved unmatchable.

Restoration
On May 29, 1660, Charles II returned to England after more than a decade of exile. With his return, the English monarchy and the Church of England were restored amidst a surging tide of popular support. One of the new king’s first acts was the commemoration of his father as King Charles the Martyr, the first Anglican saint. A number of other saints’ days were brought back into the Anglican calendar, several of which were dedicated to royal saints such as King Edward the Confessor. The date of the Restoration, which was also Charles II’s own birthday, became an Anglican feast day.

These developments were given their final form in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which included liturgies for King Charles the Martyr and the Restoration. According to the commemorative liturgy for the royal saint, he was murdered by “wicked men.” Such liturgical sentiment reveals that the Anglican Counter-Reformation emerged victorious in the Restoration, and that honoring martyrs, believing in miracles, and reverencing relics are part of being Anglican. King Charles the Martyr’s last words included the simple statement, “Remember.” Why don’t we?

Recommended Reading
Eikon Basilike is available in a fine, modern edition edited by Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson (Broadway Press, 2005). The liturgical commemoration of King Charles the Martyr is available in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (Everyman’s Library, 1999). The Anglican Counter-Reformation has received admirable treatment in Graham Parry’s Glory, Laud and Honour (Boydell Press, 2008). David Cressy’s classic Bonfires & Bells (Sutton, 2004) studies English piety before, during, and after the Reformation. The Cult of King Charles the Martyr by Andrew Lacey (Boydell Press, 2003) brilliantly surveys the entire history of Anglican approaches to the royal saint. Lamentably, Marc Bloch’s landmark study The Royal Touch is out of print.

Note: This article was originally published in the January 31, 2010 issue of The Living Church.

Introduction

The Shield of the Episcopal Church (USA), which features both the Cross of St. George and the Cross of St. Andrew (displayed below).

Reconciliation in Communion: A Word to the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church begins with a series of prescriptive theological points about matters of faith and order in the Episcopal Church, each of which is made by way of affirmation.  The bulk of the document, which comes after these, consists of points that are concerned with the actions of the forthcoming General Convention.  Between these two thematic sections, however, is a single historically-oriented point that, although both affirmative and prescriptive, also considers the future.

[We] Affirm that the self-understanding and mission of the Episcopal Church have become inextricably anchored to its relationship of full communion with the See of Canterbury, its active participation in the Instruments of Communion, and its formal and informal partnerships throughout the Anglican Communion.  This is reflected in our liturgical patterns, and the continued allocation of funds for the Anglican Communion.

The operative words in this statement are that “the self-understanding and mission of the Episcopal Church have become inextricably anchored to … the See of Canterbury.”  This statement is not for us, the authors, merely a question of ecclesiological theory.  It is also a question of the concrete, material realities within the Episcopal Church that are given symbolic expression.  In other words, we are especially concerned about how the Episcopal Church communicates itself to those who are within and outside of its walls.  Thus, this tract will begin with a brief discussion of the nature of symbols, and then move on to consider some of the symbols of the Episcopal Church that witness to its historically rich identity.  I will conclude with a proposal that focuses on what a separation between our church and the wider Anglican Communion could look like – specifically, as a tragic and horrific expression of iconoclasm.

I. On Symbols

In his classic De Doctrina Christiana, St. Augustine discusses natural and conventional signs.  The former, which Augustine isn’t interested in spending much time writing about, are found in nature; one such example is smoke, which signifies the presence of fire.  The latter sort of sign, which is the focus of his treatise, is defined as “those which living creatures give to one another in order to show , as far as they can, their moods and feelings, or to indicate whatever it may be they have sensed or understood.  Nor have we any purpose in signifying, that is in giving a sign, other than to bring out and transfer to someone else’s mind what we, the givers of the sign, have in mind ourselves” (II.2,3).  Clearly reflecting the fact that the ancient world was primarily an oral culture, Augustine writes that most signs – words – are directed to the ears.  But some, he notes, are communicated to the eyes.  “Military flags and banners signal the will of commanders to the eyes of their men; and all these things are rather like visible words” (II.3,4).  The material reality of the sign – its color, its shape, etc. – is, of course, arbitrary.  However, the shared meaning that it conveys is not, and it is this shared meaning that makes the sign more than just a mere thing.  Most simply put, signs are “those things which are used to signify something else” (I.2,2).  What Augustine here denotes as a sign will, due to the concern in this paper with visual apprehension, be referred to as a symbol.

One need only take a moment to recognize that we live in a world permeated with symbols. Some are conventional: company logos, brand name logos, political and ideological symbols, broad religious symbols and more particular denominational symbols are all widespread.  Others are natural: the light of sunrise, which signifies the beginning of day; the turning of the colors of leaves, which signifies the transition from summer to autumn; the unseasonable dying of plants, which signifies the presence of disease.  Such visible signs are essential to successful human existence in and as a part of Nature.  We can indeed push this point about visual sense impressions further, for sight is not the only sense through which we can be communicated with.  Our senses of smell and taste touch also aid with communication; one need only think of how these are involved in our ability to sense when food is ripe or rotten.  Similarly, through our sense of touch we can determine something as basic as temperature, and whether or not material, for instance, is soft or rough.  And, of course, our sense of hearing aids with receiving oral communication; we respond by using our own voices (although, not always – sign language points to the necessity of sight for interpersonal communication as well).  A world without natural symbols would be a world in which we could not discern crucial changes in the natural order; a world without natural or conventional symbols would be dismal to behold.  Part of the beauty of being human is the ability to participate in a world that is alive – indeed, ecstatic – with symbolic communication.

The reality of communication is at the heart of the Gospel; in the beginning was the uncreated Word that became human (John 1:1 – 18), and participation in the sacraments is itself a way of communicating and being communicated with by Christ.  In classical Augustinian theology – and, therefore, in the Anglican theology that developed out of it – a sacrament is itself a visible and effectual sign – a symbol – that signifies something else.  It is precisely this something else that makes the sign meaningful.  To borrow from a rather poetic and sensuous passage by Archbishop Cranmer, Christ has

[O]rdained one visible sacrament of spiritual regeneration in water, and another visible sacrament of spiritual nourishment in bread and wine, to the intent that, as much as is possible for man, we may see Christ with our eyes, smell him at our nose, taste him with our mouths, grope him with our hands, and perceive him with our senses.  For as the word of God preached putteth Christ into our ears; so likewise these elements of water, bread, and wine, joined to God’s word, do after a sacramental manner put Christ into our eyes, mouths, hands, and all our senses (Defence, I.12).

Symbols such as sacraments are not empty, but filled – indeed, overflowing – with meaning.  The bread and wine signify Christ’s body and blood, but it is Christ’s own body and blood that give to them their sacramental meaning.  Thus, there can be multiple reproductions – or, in the liturgical context of the Divine Service, multiple consecrations – of the same symbol.  The symbols of bread and wine do not exhaust the body and blood of Christ that they signify.  Furthermore, each piece of consecrated bread is not a new symbol; because they each signify the same body of Christ, each piece of bread is the same symbol.  The symbol is powerful because it participates in something larger than itself.

II. Our Symbols

Within the material context of the parish, however, the sacramental signs of the Eucharist or baptismal water are not the only signs present.  Within the Anglican tradition, as with all with other forms of catholic Christianity, there are other signs – other symbols – that are also visible.  Given the historical orientation of our present discussion, it may be helpful to consider an earlier and more extensive version of our central point.

[We] Affirm that the self-understanding and mission of the Episcopal Church have become inextricably anchored both to its relationship of full communion with the See of Canterbury and its active participation in the life and witness of the Anglican Communion.  This is reflected in our liturgical reforms, and the continued allocation of funds for the Anglican Communion.  It is also reflected in the architecture of many of our parishes, particularly in those places where distinctively Anglican symbols are present and visible to all, whether in stained glass, in woodwork, in the altar, or in the flooring.  Terminating our relationship with the See of Canterbury would fundamentally alter the coherence of the Episcopal Church, not only in terms of its self-understanding, its mission, and its symbolically laden aesthetics, but, we fear, in ways that are as yet unforeseen.

Clearly, there are some significant similarities between this and the final, published version.  At the heart of this longer version, however, some basic facts about many parishes in the Episcopal Church are stated.  These facts are, at their most concrete, architectural; they point to the shared symbols that express Anglican identity.  These include such things as the Canterbury Cross, the Anglican Compass Rose, and the Episcopal Shield, each of which is worth considering.

The Canterbury Cross

The Compass Rose of the Anglican Communion. The cross in the center is the Cross of St. George, and the Greek around it reads, "The truth shall set you free," a citation of John 8:32.

The Canterbury Cross dates to the mid-ninth century.  It is an unusual looking cross in that it is round, and features both Celtic and Byzantine iconography.  When a very old Canterbury Cross was unearthed in the mid-19th century, it quickly became a symbol for Anglicans around the world.  Far from being just another way of stylizing a cross, the Canterbury Cross is a distinctly Anglican symbol.  Like the Canterbury Cross, the Anglican Compass Rose quickly became another symbol for the Anglican Communion.  Although it dates to the mid-20th century – nearly a century after the Communion’s birth – it remains the official seal for the Anglican Communion.  Part of what is noteworthy about our Compass Rose is that it features a bishop’s mitre at the top.  This is entirely unlike the Church of England which, at the time of the Reformation, saw the monarch rather than any bishop as the spiritual head of the national church.  The Anglican Communion’s Compass Rose indicates episcopal conciliarity in a way that Henry VIII, for example, would have likely never imagined.

The Cross of St. George

The Cross of St. Andrew

For Episcopalians, the shield of our church (see image above) is our most recognizable symbol.  It is, in many ways, a combination of symbols; on the one hand, it is like the American flag, with a field of blue in the upper left hand corner.  Furthermore, there are nine white crosses on this same field, which represent the original nine dioceses of the Episcopal Church.  This design is intentional; the nine crosses are displayed in imitation of the Cross of St. Andrew (on right), thus witnessing to the Episcopal Church’s twofold indebtedness to the Scottish Episcopal Church, whose bishops ordained Samuel Seabury as our first bishop, and who also bequeathed to us the liturgical epiclesis.  The red and white that comprise the remainder of our provincial shield come from the Cross of St. George (on left), thus testifying to our heritage in the Church of England.  The red cross on a white background, which is central to the Episcopal Shield, is as visible a reminder as any that the Episcopal Church’s roots are, at bottom, in the Church of England and its rich heritage.  The Episcopal Shield is indeed a defense against the idea that our roots come from anywhere other than England’s own ecclesiastical history.

III. Symbolic Anarchy: Or, Life without Communio

James Davison Hunter, in his celebrated and controversial 1991 volume Culture Wars, began researching and theorizing into the best ways to understand cultural conflict.  In a 2006 volume debating the validity of his thesis, he offered a helpful summary of his reflections.  A culture war, he writes, involves “significant tension and conflict” over a community’s “public symbols, its myths, its discourse, and through the institutional structures that generate and sustain [its] public culture.”  Such a definition certainly describes our own national church at the moment, as well as the larger Anglican Communion.  If symbols, as Augustine writes, foster communication between people; and if, as Cranmer writes, symbols are sensuous realities involving our whole selves, our souls and our bodies, as well as the larger realities that they signify; and if, as I have written, our most widely recognized national symbol is bound up with other symbols such as St. George’s Cross, which represents the Church of England; then, what would it mean for our church’s primary symbol to no longer participate in the larger network of symbolic associations that it has always participated in and which, therefore, define it?  In other words, and most simply put, what is the Episcopal Shield without the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George?

The English words community, communication, and communion all come from the same Latin root, communis, which means “that which is shared or held in common.”  Communis also grounds the Latin word communio, which translates as communion.  Symbols, like languages, are shared and held in common; they are born by and nurtured in particular communities that share the same language – the same recognized sets of relations between shared symbols.  Yet, communities do not just sustain symbols; symbols also sustain communities.  Thus, to reinvent a symbol is to reinvent its meaning, and perhaps even to come up with an entirely new meaning.  Sometimes, new meanings fit into old patterns of communication with little difficulty but, at other times, new meanings are incompatible with those that are more traditional.  If the incompatibility proves to be too much, those with the new symbol or symbols may be forced, in the language of the Windsor Report, to “walk apart.”  Thus, they would have to go and create a new community, with a new network of interlocking symbols and their various points of reference.  This isn’t easy to do, however; it should be recalled that the Anglican Communion is less than 150 years old, and our own Communion-wide symbols have developed only over the course of many, many decades.  What is more, the amount of hostility between dividing groups can be vehement, and make the search for new symbols difficult and contentious.  I propose that this is some of what we are seeing today.  However, I also propose that our current contentions are indeed milder than what they could be.

Imagine the following scenario.  I worship and teach at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, Florida.  Immediately in front of the altar, but within the altar rail, is the Anglican Compass Rose.  Throughout the church, particularly on the rafters, one can find the Canterbury Cross.  If the Episcopal Church were to cease being a part of the Anglican Communion, what would these symbols within my parish church come to mean?  I imagine that our compass rose would simply be torn up.  But, consider the psychological and sociological impacts if the Anglican Compass Rose is there one week, but gone the next.  Would the children notice?  If so, what would the parents say?  Would there be other people in the church upset, outraged, or broken-hearted by this iconoclasm?  And, what is more, what would be put into the floor in its place?  Perhaps for several weeks there would be nothing to replace it, effectively leaving the floor as a sort of wound that had not yet been stitched up.  Something similar could be said about the Canterbury Crosses; would they be defaced, etched out, or sanded down if the Episcopal Church left the Anglican Communion?  Or, would they remain only to be explained away as a merely aesthetic expression of some sort of broader – and blander – Christian identity?  Anyone who asked about this particular cross would be informed that it was the Canterbury Cross, and a quick Google search online would reveal the Canterbury Cross to signify something far more thick than a rather barbaric mode of executing political criminals once used by the Romans.  I wager that this sort of knowledge about the divorce between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion – ironically symbolized by a new-found irrelevance for the thick meaning of the Canterbury Cross that remained in the parish architecture – would not make converts, although it might make for interesting but sad moments on church tours.

Such a scenario is not unlikely.  Anglicans have seen such iconoclasm before; we saw it in the period of the Reformation, which produced the backlash of the Laudian Counter-Reformation, and which has long since determined the shape of Anglican approaches to art; we saw it, too, in the period of the Revolutionary War, when almost half of the clergy fled to England or elsewhere amidst the vehement anti-English and anti-Anglican sentiment that seized nearly all colonists.  Such iconoclasm may happen again.  Perhaps this is some of what we are seeing with the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) and its various movements; they have their own symbols and websites, and they provide alternative modes of communication, and alternative news information networks.  It may be that periods of iconoclasm are necessary for the creation of new identities, but that is precisely the point: the possible iconoclasm that is sketched here and above would indeed be the creation of a new identity for the Episcopal Church.  Thus, one would still speak of the Episcopal Church, but it would not be the same as what had been spoken of previously; it would not be the same in terms of its historical self-understanding, and it would not be the same in its symbolic, material expressions, from the national symbol of the church, right down to parish architecture.

I am willing to wager that there are many parishes like St. John’s, who are so rich with shared Anglican symbols that removing and/or marginalizing these would amount to nothing other than a considerable makeover for the parishes in question.  Some will, in their zeal, call this “prophetic”; history reveals many times, however, that those filled with – or, perhaps better, seized by – a will to destruction were not prophets but zealots who had no vision beyond a present that was defined by a destruction of the past. Thus, the movements that they created had little real staying power, and even less theological depth; indeed, many of these radical movements quickly died out.  This, too, reflects something of the present, sadly enough.  One cannot assume that a fundamental change in identity for the Episcopal Church will cause it to retain the members it already has, just as one cannot assume that it will bring in a significant number of new members.  And, as noted in my earlier Tract 2, the rate at which the Episcopal Church is shrinking is something to be quite concerned about, because the aging population of the church is not likely to cease any time soon.  One may, of course, disagree with all of this.  If so, I suggest beginning one’s disagreement by trying to envision the Episcopal Shield without the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George.

Bibliography

Augustine, St.  De Doctrina Christiana.  Translated by E. Hill (1995).  New City Press.

Cranmer, Thomas (1553).  A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Body and Blood of Our Savior Christ.  Reprinted 2004 by Wipf & Stock.

Culler, Jonathan (2000).  Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.  Oxford University Press.

Jeanes, Gordon (2008).  Signs of God’s Promise: Thomas Cranmer’s Sacramental Theology and the Book of Common Prayer.  T & T Clark.

Hunter, James Davison (2006). The Enduring Culture War. In E. J. Dionne, Jr. and M. Cromartie (eds.), Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life.  Pew Research Center/Brookings Institution Press.

Markus, R. A. (1957).  St. Augustine on Signs.  Phronesis 2 (1): 60 – 83.

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Holy Week 2009

We, the undersigned laity and clergy of the Episcopal Church, offer the following as a testament to our concern for the life and witness of our church and its membership in the Anglican Communion.  The God-given bonds of affection that unite us to one another are based in the prior unity of love that is God’s own Trinitarian life; for this reason, our corporate life should continually strive to be an icon of this same love.  At the present moment, we are particularly mindful that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (II Cor. 5:19), and that because of this we have been given a “ministry of reconciliation” (II Cor. 5:18). It is our prayer that the Holy Spirit will give the Episcopal Church a renewed awareness that at the heart of our common mission lies the ministry of reconciliation, which endeavors “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP Catechism, p. 855).

To that end, we

- Affirm that evangelism lies at the heart of the Church’s mission, understanding evangelism to subsist in the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which calls all people to repent from sin, to be united in the Body of Christ through baptism, and to be continually discipled in the communion of the Church.

- Affirm that the vows and promises of Holy Baptism, articulated in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, are a call for all Christians to live lives that lead to holiness, justice, and peace for all.

- Affirm that the rite of Holy Baptism in our Prayer Book stands in continuity with the received faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church of the creeds, and articulates no theology that is unique to the Episcopal Church, but only makes explicit that which is common to all Christians for whom the catholic and apostolic faith as expressed in the creeds is normative.

- Affirm that in continuity with our Baptismal Covenant, all who desire to participate in the Lord’s Supper are called first to Baptism, which is the sacrament of new birth through which all are welcomed into the full sacramental life of the Church.

- Affirm that the self-understanding and mission of the Episcopal Church have become inextricably anchored to its relationship of full communion with the See of Canterbury, its active participation in the Instruments of Communion, and its formal and informal partnerships throughout the Anglican Communion.  This is reflected in our liturgical patterns, and the continued allocation of funds for the Anglican Communion.

- Affirm those actions already taken by General Convention that demonstrate the Episcopal Church’s good faith intention to remain in full communion with all provinces of the Anglican Communion.

- Reject the way of schism as undermining the very Gospel it seeks to uphold.  That which divides the Church cannot be said to be of Christ.

- Reject the way of unilateralism and self-sufficiency as undermining the very justice it seeks to establish.

- Support the emerging Anglican Covenant because it is, at present, the only available concrete means of maintaining the unity and witness of the Anglican Communion.  We encourage its adoption by the Episcopal Church, and further encourage that this adoption be understood by all Anglicans to be an outward and visible sign of our commitment to maintain and deepen the bonds of affection that we already have with our fellow Anglicans.

- Encourage the Bishops and Deputies to engage in the work of reconciliation by not making pronouncements on public policy and other issues where there is no theological or moral consensus among Episcopalians, and to focus instead on those things that bring us together, rather than those that drive us apart.

- Remind the Bishops and Deputies that a growing number of Episcopalians now live in situations where schism among Anglicans has become an unavoidable daily reality that damages the witness of all involved.  This makes the imperative of mutual respect, which is necessary for reconciliation, all the more urgent.

- Encourage the Bishops and Deputies to take with the utmost seriousness the recently released report by the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church.  In particular, we request that “youth and young adults” be returned to our list of top priorities for the next Triennium.  We fear that a church that places little emphasis on the young is a church that risks placing little emphasis upon its own future.

- Encourage the leadership of the church, particularly the Bishops, to pursue constructive and charitable relationships with those that are currently estranged from the Episcopal Church, remembering that our quarrels and divisions will become burdens borne principally by future generations.

- Affirm our commitment to remaining lovingly engaged, in worship and service, with all members of this church, even amid our conflicts.

In closing, we humbly and earnestly ask those within and beyond the provincial borders of the Episcopal Church to seek the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, as we seek to embody the unity we have been given by virtue of our baptism into the Body of Christ.

Very respectfully submitted,

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II. The Anglican reformation was not, as is commonly claimed, primarily political and only secondarily theological.  The enthronement of the monarch as the “supreme head” of the Church of England was as much a theological development as it was a political development.  Thus, Anglican history and theology cannot be understood without paying close attention to the history and theology of monarchy.

III. Anglicanism must re-conceive itself as a portion of the catholic Church that was once monarchical, but is now post-monarchical.  Anglicanism has yet to conceive of itself as post-monarchical, and it cannot do this until it understands what it meant for it to have once been monarchical.

IV. To ignore the theology of monarchy is to ignore the theology of law and the importance of both to Anglican history.  Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was a defense of both monarchy and law.  Because we have not yet conceived of ourselves as post-monarchical, we have not yet begun to consider the meaning of law for our post-monarchical church.

V. The Anglican conception of itself as a via media must be historicized, for it has had different connotations in different contexts.  It cannot be reified as an ahistorical type which asserts its own validity by always already assuming that the history of Anglican theology has been nothing but the outcome of an overriding desire to avoid theological extremes, regardless as to what these supposed extremes may or may not have been.

VI. Not all developments within Anglicanism have been the result of synthesizing extremes.  The Elizabethan settlement, in particular, was not a synthesis of “Puritan” and “Roman Catholic” into “Anglican,” but a refusal of both in favor of a monarchical and episcopal ecclesial body that was deeply grounded in humanist scholarship and concerns.

VII. There is nothing uniquely Anglican about avoiding theological extremes, for these extremes are contextual to the ecclesial community in question.  The perfect illustration of this is the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, which sought to avoid the extremes of ultramontanism, which saw the pope as God’s own mouthpiece, and conciliarism, which saw the pope as nothing more than the first bishop among other bishops of equal standing.  For Roman Catholics, papal infallibility is a via media doctrine.  On the one hand, papal infallibility rejects two radically different understandings of the papacy; on the other hand, papal infallibility synthesizes these two extremes beyond themselves into its own centrist position.  This is representative of how practically every sociologically identifiable group seeks to manage itself: avoiding, at particularly tense moments, potentially damaging extremes within the community and working out these differences through some sort of compromise.  For Anglicans to claim that they are the via media and that this locates the history of Anglican theology as the history of occasional compromises between extremes is to simply state that which is sociologically obvious for every other group as well.  Thus, via media – when conceived of merely as the avoidance of “extremes” – is not a uniquely Anglican definer.

VIII. The tendency to see Anglican history as a series of theological skirmishes between low church, high church, and broad church “parties” is inaccurate.  A 16th century Puritan has no direct historical relation to a 21st century evangelical; a 17th century Laudian is not the same as a 19th century Anglo-Catholic; an 18th century rationalist is hardly the same as a 20th century “progressive.”  Only when we abandon the tendency to read Anglicanism as the history of arguments between three historically and theologically static “parties” will we read Anglican history as the fascinating history which it is, not least because it is the history of a once-monarchical but now post-monarchical catholic Church.

IX. At the time of the Restoration, Puritanism ceased to be a movement within the Church of England.  The feast day for King Charles the Martyr was the historical and liturgical articulation of Anglicanism as always already non-Puritan at the very least, and anti-Puritan at the very most.  The marginalization of this holiday in the 19th century was the beginning of the loss of our coherence.

X. The choice made by Lambeth 1968 to give the Holy Eucharist to those who have not been confirmed was second major blow to our coherence as a tradition.  This has now become a third blow, for there are now those who wish to give the sacrament to the non-baptized.  Both of these have made the acceptance of Anglican distinctives unnecessary for full participation in Anglican worship.

XI. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are the most misunderstood document in Anglicanism today.  There is no opinion on the Articles that should be countenanced unless it has both studied and integrated the following key commentaries on the Articles: The Catholic Doctrine of Church of England by Thomas Rogers; An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles by Gilbert Burnet; Tract XC by John Henry Newman; Subscription and Assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles: A report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine (1968).  The Articles have a history of interpretation and application that is just as important as the actual text of the Articles.

XII. The Articles do not represent Calvinist doctrine, but classic Western Catholic (i.e., Augustinian) doctrine.  In the Articles, this theology is given a distinctly monarchical thrust.

XIII. Monarchical Western Catholicism is no longer fully coterminous with Anglican orthodoxy.

XIV. A theological discussion of Scripture must make its assumptions about Scripture explicit.  An unwillingness to do so reflects a lack of Christian charity; an inability to do so reflects theological immaturity.

XV. The Apostle writes that “all Scripture is inspired of God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2. Tim. 3:16 – 17).  When it comes to a theologically articulable understanding of Scripture today, what is needed more than anything is a theologically articulable understanding of inspiration.

XVI. A coherent and orthodox theology of inspiration necessitates a coherent and orthodox pneumatology.  Anglican pneumatology has always rejected the viability of enthusiasm, particularly in terms of its claim to private revelations.  Anglican pneumatology has always accepted the dynamic presence and activity of the Holy Spirit within the church’s liturgy, which is the Church’s public communication to all.  A coherent and orthodox theology of Scripture must therefore be set within the liturgical praxis of the church, as well.

XVII. It is unclear whether or not those who advocate the “authority” of Scripture in the Communion at present are intent on simply repeating the Apostle’s teaching about the “inspiration” of Scripture, and the Articles’ teaching on the “sufficiency” of Scripture in matters pertaining to salvation.  If they are wishing to merely restate the past, rather than add to it, they should use the language of the past, rather than new terms with unclear theological implications.

XVIII. To claim that the Scriptures are “God’s Word written” is dangerous at best, and heretical at worst.  It is dangerous because it goes beyond the Apostolic statement that the Scriptures are inspired.  It is also dangerous because it fails to note that humans err when they attempt to interpret and apply Holy Writ.  Beyond this, it is heretical because it claims that the uncreated Word (Logos) has become text, whereas the catholic Church claims that the uncreated Word (Logos) has become human.

XIX. One cannot claim that the uncreated Word (Logos) has been emptied twice without denying the all-sufficient kenosis of the Incarnation.  If the self-emptying of God into the Incarnation is insufficient, then the self-emptying of God into the Scriptures is also insufficient.  However, if the self-emptying of God into Jesus Christ as the Word-made-flesh is sufficient, then the Scriptures cannot be the Word-made-text.

XX. The cross is a signifier to which Christ willingly let himself be joined.  Thus, the sign of the cross is a sign that communicates in a revelatory – and, therefore, truthful – fashion (cf. Matt 27:51).  It is impossible to communicate effectively when we do not have such revelatory and truthful signs.

XXI. No theology can truly give reverence to the cross of Christ if it does not also reverence the cross as both a signifier and a sign.  All able-bodied Anglicans should therefore bow when the cross is processed, and make the sign of the cross at the appointed moments in the liturgy.

XXII. Bishops should see to it that the various political pressure groups who have members in their respective dioceses do not undermine the local bishop, national provinces, or the wider Communion.  Furthermore, bishops should discipline and even excommunicate those who persistently reject the demands of Christian charity.

XXIII. The Anglican Communion is an episcopal, provincial, and conciliar communion that is centered on the See of Canterbury.  This was implicit at its inception in 1867, and was made explicit in Lambeth 1930.49.

XXIV. Episcopal consecrations are only truly effective when the bishop’s apostolic ministry is translatable to every other diocese.  This is why the episcopate is said to be “universal”.

XXV. If the Lambeth Conference resolutions carry no weight, then the ACC has no valid existence (Lambeth 1968.69), and the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the central bishop of the Anglican Communion (Lambeth 1930.49).  As a conciliar meeting of bishops, the Lambeth Conference’s resolutions are precisely that – resolutions – rather than mere recommendations, mere suggestions, or episcopally articulated exercises in irrelevance and futility.  Those who refuse to recognize the Lambeth Conference’s pastoral primacy should recognize this.

XXVI. The implication of these two crucial points is that the power to create and determine – and, therefore, the power to reform or dissolve – the Communion’s administrative “machinery” lies only with the bishops when they are gathered together in conciliar consultation.

XXVII. Bishops alone are the successors of the apostles.  Because the episcopate exists and operates on the local (i.e., diocesan) level, no one can claim to uphold the various resolutions of the Lambeth Conferences if they have separated themselves from the local bishop and/or have also sought to undermine his or her ministry.  Those who rebel against the local bishop rebel against all bishops, for the episcopate is universal.

XXVIII. The bishops of the Communion have the responsibility for standardizing liturgical practices.  It is necessary that these be the same across the Communion, for sacraments are “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.”  Because those in holy orders are themselves “walking sacraments,” and because all signs by definition communicate, having an excessive diversity of liturgical practice within the Anglican Communion undermines the ability of Anglicans to communicate effectively with not just one another, but with everyone else as well.  Just as the episcopate must be universally translatable within the Communion, so too must liturgical practices.

XXIX. Anglicans have a particular understanding of law that is not shared with other Protestants.  It is most famously articulated in Richard Hooker’s great work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.  “That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a Law. […] All things therefore do work after a sort according to law” (Laws, I.2.1 – 2).  This particular understanding of law was once central to Anglican existence; it must become central again.

XXX. The Anglican Communion desperately needs Communion-wide canon law.  As Hooker writes, “The Church of Christ is a body mystical.  A body cannot stand unless the parts thereof be proportionable” (Laws, Preface, 4.3).  The parts can only be proportional if they adhere to the laws which have been set down for their guidance, so that they might work toward their appointed end.

XXXI. The inability to articulate a coherent ecclesial vision is a secession from the demands of Christian charity, especially when it comes to other Christians.

XXXII. Anglicanism lacks a recognizable pattern of piety.  It is necessary to have a Communion-wide pattern of piety, for shared devotional practices unite us to one another, just as they deepen our corporate memory and also give us something to pass on to our children.  Above all, a shared pattern of piety witnesses to those outside the Communion. It tells them who we are, where we locate our corporate memory, how we articulate our Christian vision, and why they themselves should participate in our way of life.

XXXIII. Patterns of piety are located in liturgical celebrations.  These happen on Sundays in the Divine Service, but must also continue on appointed days of feasting and fasting.  These days of feasting and fasting are located in the Church Calendar, and their celebration must be given greater emphasis by the bishops.  Otherwise, our heritage remains a thing of texts, historically occasional reception, and the hermeneutical imagination, rather than a thing of bodies, successive generations, and the liturgical imagination.

XXXIV. The bishops of the Communion, in consultation with one another, should create a Communion-wide Anglican calendar made up of distinctly pre-Reformation and post-Reformation Anglican saints.  This calendar should not be a pandering to political pressure groups, but the fruit of deep inquiry into the past, commemorating those who have had great influence by giving each particular collects, and other liturgical expressions of thanks.  This would aid with each Anglican province receiving and celebrating each other’s corporate memory, thereby producing a pan-provincial Anglican self-understanding.  This calendar should not be concerned with national holidays, but leave the celebration of these to the respective provinces of the Anglican Communion.

XXXV. The Anglican Communion needs a Communion-wide catechism.  It should be based on a deep reading of Anglican history and theology, and the theological and historical lines of continuity that reach back to the pre-Reformation church.  It should be based upon the Scriptures and other classical authorities: the Fathers and the four ecumenical councils, later Western doctors, the Reformers and the successive prayer books, and those authorities that have arisen since the time of the Reformation.  As with the calendar, this catechism must bow to no political pressure group, and instead be based upon deep study of the history and heritage of our Communion.

XXXVI. To define oneself as a particular kind of Anglican is to make the modifier of one’s identity – e.g., Anglo-Catholic, evangelical, liberal, etc. – more important than the base of one’s identity – i.e., Anglican.  Far from the Church needing three “streams” or “parties” in order to be catholic, each “stream” or “party” must lose itself as a unique identifier and also become what it is not: the Anglo-Catholic must become evangelical and liberal while retaining its catholic coherence and roots; the evangelical must become Anglo-Catholic and liberal, while retaining its sense of the primacy of Scripture; the liberal must become Anglo-Catholic and evangelical, while retaining its sense of the need for the engagement of contemporary culture.  It is Anglicanism that should modify our own particularities and peculiarities, rather than these modifying our Anglicanism.  Only in this way might it be said that we have died to ourselves and that we live for one another.

XXXVII. Theoria often follows praxis.  Anglicanism sans parties will only come into being after people let go of their identities as this or that kind of Anglican and begin to refer to themselves – and, therefore, to know themselves – simply as Anglicans.  This, however, involves a sacrifice of the will; it involves a submission to the larger Communion; it involves a willingness to step out into a new period of existence where old identities, which are so secure and entrenched, are seen as always already meaningless.  We must learn to sit at one another’s feet, as well as the feet of our spiritual forebears.  We must stop seizing identities for ourselves, and instead begin receiving an identity for ourselves from one another.  Bishops should lead the way in this, and see to it that their own do not fall or deviate to the left, the right, or any other direction.

XXXVIII. Christ is our great high priest not because he is male, but because he is fully united to God.  The priesthood is therefore embodied by both male and female, for the work of priesthood is neither male nor female, but the work of God.  Human priesthood is united to Divine priesthood by way of grace.

XXXIX. From time to time in history, there are periods of tremendous upset, which occur at the same time as periods of tremendous intellectual ferment.  These periods are also periods of synthesis.  Anglicanism is undergoing the birth pains of a new synthesis.

XL. The inability to synthesize historical and theological differences into a coherent eccesiological vision signifies both a lack of intellectual rigor and lack of theological imagination.  Anglicanism has historically lacked neither of these.

XLI. The only synthesis that matters over the long term is that which makes sense of the past; thus, the toil towards synthesis today must recognize the depth and breadth of its calling as an activity of anamnestic maximalism.  In this way, catechesis – teaching – is a descriptive activity: it must make sense of that which has been received (tradition).  It is the job of the bishops, as the teachers and guardians of the faith, to see to it that the past is sounded out truly and brought to bear upon the present, rather than letting the present drown out “so vast a cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1).

XLII. The Church has no control over the study of its own history: only the exclusive calling to bear witness to it.  However, if the bishops will not study, learn from, and then teach us our history, the historians shall do so for them – and the historians are beholden far less to special interest groups, and far more to the demands of critical inquiry and the republic of letters, than many bishops today seem to be.  The Church ignores such critical inquiry to its own spiritual peril, and therefore deserves the ridicule it receives for not cultivating but ignoring – or, what is worse, suppressing – its own intellectual life.

McGrath rightly notes that Laudian “sacramental and ecclesiological views can easily be accommodated within the spectrum of Protestant possibilities.” Such an observation is hardly the result of serious research, for anything can be accommodated within the Protestant spectrum, save the doctrine of the papacy. One can argue for nationalist conciliarism, humanist scholarship, not giving the Bible to the laity, and the near-deification of the monarch to being a “little GOD to sit on his Throne”[3] as all being compatible with Protestantism. In fact, all of these points were fundamental to the earliest phases of Anglican identity, as McGrath himself well knows (and, for that matter, has published on over the years, in excellent books such as The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible, and Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification). It is also the case that conformist English Protestantism was quite adamant that it had restored Catholic faith and maintained Catholic order in its turning Protestant – a concept that seems strangely foreign to us, and which McGrath, for reasons unknown, never brings up in his attack on Cameron’s brief remark. To take the history of Anglican identity seriously, one must not reduce Anglicanism to modern conceptions of either ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant’ but allow for the fascinating complexities of ecclesiastical history, especially the period from the mid-16th through mid-17th century in which the former (Catholicism) was seen as capable of being preserved only by way of the latter (Protestantism).

At this point in history, however, to make “Protestant heritage” a cause célèbre is strange. Like the Trojan horse, it may look grand when it is outside the castle, but a question must be asked before it is internalized: what assumptions are being brought to bear upon Anglican identity when a word as nebulous as ‘Protestant’ becomes the primary descriptor of our tradition? The frustration felt by many with this term has far less to do with a belief that Roman Catholicism has gotten things correct, and far more to do with the recognition that nearly 500 years after the fact of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, the word ‘Catholic’ signifies a particular level of Creedal, Sacramental and Liturgical consistency that the word ‘Protestant’ quite simply does not. Undoubtedly in Anglicanism this impression has something to do with the Ritualist movement of the late-19th century and the subsequent century of Anglo-Catholic dominance within the Communion, but to reduce this to some sort of anti-Protestant “revisionist school of thought” is too simplistic. All historiography is flawed, and some of it quite deeply. McGrath’s own historiography, as set forth in the article in question, is just as much an oversimplification of the facts as the anti-Protestant historiography he attacks.

We do well to recall Archbishop Williams’s statement that “the Reformation debate was not one between self-designated Catholics and Protestants; it was a debate about where the Catholic Church was to be found.”[4]The later stratification of Catholic vs. Protestant was not something that the earliest reformers – especially in the Church of England – would have envisioned. However curious it may seem to us, their own brand of Protestantism – complete with its affiliations with Swiss Protestantism – was believed by them to be fundamentally Catholic! Indeed, Anglicans are Protestant only insofar as they are Catholic – a strange perspective, perhaps, in light of the history of the words ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’, but one well worth keeping in mind. It is the creative tension generated by both these ideas that has produced, over several centuries, some of the finest theology, hymnody and poetry that the Christian world has seen.

Gregory Cameron’s statement about Anglican dialogue with [other] Protestants has been erroneously taken by McGrath to imply a series of assumptions on Cameron’s own part that are not spelled out by him at any point in the aforementioned article. Contra McGrath, the only thing “remarkable” about Cameron’s article pertaining to our contemporary ecumenical horizons is its brevity; a passing comment about “Protestant traditions” is nothing more than that, and to turn it into an opportunity for advocating a historically thin, lopsided view of Anglican self-understanding is both surprising and disappointing, especially when it comes from a scholar of McGrath’s stature. Anglicanism will be a transformer of cultures only if it stays true to its own heritage – a heritage which is not its own, but which belongs to the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” and which has been safeguarded not through historical oversimplifications, but through occasional and indeed necessary periods of protest against theological and historical errors of all kinds.