My Take on the Reformation in England: Owen, Packer, Hooker, Puritans, Anglicans, and Worship

Over on Facebook, in response to my recent blog article on John Owen, “Political Defeat was the Condition of Cultural Achievement”, an old [conservative Anglican] friend of mine commented:

the reformed Anglican judgment is that Puritanism (especially its more radical expression) constituted a perversion of the English Reformation, not its teleos. There were Calvinists among the supporters of High Church Anglicanism (e.g., Whitgift). They were the heirs of Cranmer et al., not the Puritans, whose radicalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.

I responded:

I don’t know that “seeds of its own destruction” was an entirely fair characterization. I’ve been looking at this period a bit (the theological aspects which were called “Reformed Orthodoxy”). This period was characterized by “precise theological formulations”, among other things.

While it’s true that “Reformed Orthodoxy” seemingly came to an abrupt halt at one point, there were a lot of things that went into it:

* Reformed churches faced political opposition -- they tended to do well in areas where they had political support, and less well where they had opposition. (And true, in some instances they instigated their own opposition).

* The changing grounds of philosophy: the thinking of many of the early “Reformed Orthodox” rested on Aristotelian formulations (logic and methods, but not his actual characterizations of metaphysics, etc.). The Reformed Orthodox did not respond “in unison” to the enlightenment philosophies.

* There were theological challenges from without -- Arminians, Amyraldians, Socinians.

* Even from within, there seems to have been an “antinomianism vs moralism” axis.

* The early rumblings of “critical scholarship”

The American colonies and the US were kind of a “release valve” for the situation in Europe. There is a tendency to blame “revivalism” here in the US. It’s true, there were other things to focus on than “precise theological formulations”.

And I posted this link:

How the Regulative Principle of Worship Affirms, Supports, and Ensures a Meaningful World.

He responded:

Suffice it to say that as an Anglican I don’t follow the RPW, and frankly I don’t know of any advocate of the RPW who follows it consistently. On the question of worship, Anglicans are instead guided by Hooker’s formula: Scripture augmented by tradition and reason.

The only point I wanted to make in my comment above is that, while I am a **huge** devotee of Jim Packer, I don’t share his sanguine assessment of the Puritans. As you probably know, Hooker’s apologetical works were directed to what he believed was the error of Rome on the one hand and those of the Puritans on the other. In his book, Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, Nigel Atkinson demonstrates pretty convincingly that it is Hooker’s divinity, and not that of the Puritans, which constitutes the completion of what the English Reformation began.

I understand the notion of the Anglican form of worship as having very old roots, and of “the Church of England” as having moved through history in parallel to, and not in a derivation of, the church of Rome. (Having said that, I will mention Rome’s formidable influence on the “Western Church”.)

Based on my reading of some of the works on ancient church polity (Roger Beckwith’s “Elders in Every City” for example, and Paul Bradshaw on the development of the liturgy), I’m of the understanding that “the liturgy” (or “liturgies”) that we see coming out of the fourth century (east, west, England) had their origins in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, not the first century. And so, while there is very much that we can learn from them, we cannot say they are “normative”.

On the other hand, at the time of the Reformation, we find “Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609” -- and yes, it it true the RPW is not followed consistently.

On the other hand, it is an attempt at a consistent line of thought -- if Sola Scriptura is the formal principle of the Reformation, then the RPW is a consistent application of that principle. My own church doesn’t follow the RPW -- while practicing something of a regular order of worship.

I’ve ordered the Atkinson book on Hooker -- noting that in the Amazon reviews, this work is seen as “contrarian” (and yet it has a good endorsement from [the Anglican] Gerald Bray.)

I don’t know that there is a “teleos” to worship this side of heaven.

My point in the OP was just simply to provide encouragement in the face of political defeat -- that even if good folks don’t win elections, Christians still have opportunities to be salt and light in the world in other ways.