ANGLICAN EVANGELICALISM (Generally Speaking)

Our saints and scholars of the 16th/17th C reform were schooled with considerable expertise in the comprehension and useful deployment of the discernible common voice spoken, and the accurate thought propounded, in the early church; these advocates of a more thorough and ever continuing reference to the biblical text, simply through the passage of time and refinement of the church’s confession, were even considered superior to their Romish antagonists in their controversies over the opinions of the successors of the apostolic age.

The Augustinian revival of the 16th and 17th centuries flourished in Europe and England. In that blessed era the founding theologians of Reformed Anglicanism grasped the thought of Augustine with enduring firmness until Laudian Arminianism invaded the scene and banished the Calvinists from their effective guidance of the Ecclesia Anglicana. In that same period resulting in the separation of the majority of the Puritan party from the national church many of our most gifted poets also celebrated free and pure grace elegantly in noble verse. The magnificent theme of the grace of God, sovereign and effectual, dominated the mind and mood of our spiritual and cultural leadership of that day.

There was a consensus in the comprehension of truth revealed by God and the tradition of holy and obedient reflection on that truth through the sanctified minds of godly and scholarly men, even faithful to the martyr’s stake. There has been no “golden age” of the church ever, but there were times when the glint of the precious “metal” was detected as visible to the encouragement of the people of God.

Over time much triviality and novelty has been imported into our life and witness (we have fed our folk with corn husks or sugared flakes far too long, we have made the commands of the Lord optional, we have made the worship of the triune God too subjectively and emotion driven). Our churlish deviation from the plain truth of God for something that will tickle the fancy of an unregenerate and hostile world, and our overeager friendship with this world and our fawning before its compromised morals and sinful mores in order to win its attention and approval, is outright folly and shameful infidelity committed against our Sovereign Lord. It is unworthy of his mercy and majesty.

Adherence to his word must stand at all times and in all circumstances, for that is the ordained function and loyal service of the congregation of the Lord: speaking for the Lord (Isaiah 6:8-9a) even if the message is unwelcome and callously rejected. We are not in the business of currying favor or improvising upon the script entrusted to us. Ambassadors do not edit the message of their master. They simply deliver it clearly and intact.

What makes us even to presume that we are at liberty to titillate our audience with adjustments to the word and wisdom of heaven. Mere pulpiteers and speechifiers reveal their sense of grandiosity and impertinence when they consciously meddle with word of God. “Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar” Proverbs 30:6 cf Revelation 22: 18 21 in its valid broader sense. Such audacity is disclosed in these quotes from the Book of God. Our attitude to the word is an index as to whether we are right with God. We can plan and establish our various affiliations to our heart’s content but it is in vain if the Lord is not the architect and builder; “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). How can there be unity among the builders when do not all esteem the word of God alike?

We are generally casual, ill-prepared and lacking in heart-felt reverence in our assembling before God. While Augustine in his ministry competed manfully with the circus for popular attention so successfully and deftly, we have in many ways become a circus before mankind, either ceremonially or disrespectfully, accommodating to the infantile mentality of our generation that has reduced discernment and retentiveness when it comes to solid Christian knowledge. A good proportion of students in our once reputable seminaries, so it is reported, are denied introduction to our stored wealth of intellectual knowledge and spiritual benefit, but dabble with the passing fads of our rapidly deteriorating culture.

The great necessity for contemporary Anglicanism, for those who have a smidgen of care, is to maintain and message the full orthodoxy of Classic Anglicanism, our honest and true inheritance from Augustinianism and Reformational thought and piety, steadfastly repudiating the plethora of sham and tainted varieties of counterfeit examples to be deservedly reckoned as deformed Anglicanism that imitates aspects of catholicism or the chaotic “freeness” and informality of some untidy, undisciplined faith communities and so-called seeker churches. There may be an element of sincerity in these phenomena but Scripture imparts rules for the fellowship and worship of Almighty God (what he has revealed about himself and our station before him, behaving in decency and good order, a condition inferred and derived from the whole tenor of Scripture).

Those words which Myles Coverdale used to describe the state of affairs in his time, which the Reformation was designed to correct, are equally descriptive of the quandary in which Anglicanism finds itself in today’s world: “As soon as the Bible was cast aside, and no more put into exercise, then began everyone of his own head to write whatsoever came into his brain, and that seemed to be good in his own eyes; and so grew the darkness of men’s traditions” (fForgotten Reformer, G.F. Main, Reformation Heritage Books, grand Rapids, 2023, page 52).

This ought not to be the case. Surely it is now overdue, given all the iterations of what is purported to be authentic Anglicanism, time and time again, in our wearying pursuit of forlorn and disappointing failure to reclaim the genuine article. Let us resolutely recover the integrity of our biblical and historical character and constitution. If any, in good conscience, disapprove of authentic and historic Anglicanism there are many other options. Let us be honest and depart to found or join a more congenial religious entity and environment. At last, let Anglicanism be Anglican even if it results in reduced congregations and less to boast about. But let the church of the English Reformation be itself and do not retard its desired obedience, untrammeled by alien influences, rendered to God in an honest adherence to a frank witness to the distinguishing Five Solas that define Reformed Christianity and the liturgy (or liturgies) carefully framed from Holy Scripture for corporate assemblies before his loftiness and splendor.

This from one who previously applauded the varieties of churchmanship in the “smorgasbord” nature (choose whatever you prefer) of the established church and its various derivatives around the globe, for global Anglicanism is in a parlous, divided, confusing and declining state inadequate for bringing Christ to the world in its existing and sad disarray.

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ANGLICAN EVANGELICALISM (Generally Speaking)

By Roger Salter
Special to VIRTUEONLINE
www.virtueonline.org
June 20, 2023

One seems to detect in current Anglican Evangelicalism (a diffuse and theologically vacillating movement) a distinct reluctance to own and confess the fullness of the interpretive tradition bequeathed to us by the English Reformers, indeed a tradition, in the first place, affirmative of the church fathers where these learned and brave men foreshadowed the great and central features of a sound testimony to the basic content of Scripture, though this primitive witness was much in need of a more extensive and comprehensive alignment with the divine word, especially soteriologically, along with other aspects of essential doctrine that the Reformers so ably provided to complement where the fathers were in approximate agreement in fundamental matters.

There was much inconsistency and difference of opinion among the fathers, deemed by Historical Theologian William Cunningham, as babes in a sense, living prior to the unfolding of more developed and mature Christian knowledge discovered and discussed by later generations, and we must not tilt too greatly toward their corporate authority as a court of appeal for flawless judgments, for some of their individual and pronounced views were not beneficially nuanced.