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:

Pope Francis vs Pope Benedict XVI on the “Anglican Ordinariate”

Continuing Anglican Father Robert Hart

One item that’s been in the news off-and-on recently is the papal “Apostolic Constitution” called “Anglicanorum Coetibus”, “Providing For Personal Ordinariates For Anglicans Entering Into Full Communion With The Catholic Church”. What this means is that Rome is willing to allow Anglican Bishops have the ability to become Roman Catholic, kind of along the lines of the “Eastern Rite Catholic Churches” – those Eastern churches who independently have aligned themselves with Rome.

Father Robert Hart, an Anglican, has argued strenuously against this (most notably that the Anglicans would lose their particular identities and morph into Roman Catholics). I’ve cited his articles here once or twice. (Click on the “Anglicanorum Coetibus” link at the bottom of this article for more on this).

This week, Father Hart published a first-hand account of what “Pope Francis” has said about this “Ordinariate”. As it turns out, before he was Pope Francis, the Anglican Archbishop Gregory Venables, from Buenos Aires, relates what Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio said this about the Ordinariate:

“Many are asking me what Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) is really like. He is much more of a Christian, Christ centered and Spirit filled, than a mere churchman. He believes the Bible as it is written. I have been with him on many occasions and he always makes me sit next to him and invariably makes me take part and often do what he as Cardinal should have done. He is consistently humble and wise, outstandingly gifted yet a common man. He is no fool and speaks out very quietly yet clearly when necessary. He called me to have breakfast with him one morning and told me very clearly that the Ordinariate was quite unnecessary and that the Church needs us as Anglicans [emphasis in original]. I consider this to be an inspired appointment not because he is a close and personal friend but because of who he is In Christ. Pray for him.”

Maybe he should call a council.

HT: Embryo Parson

Rome is a dialog partner that is not to be trusted

In a post entitled “Of Catholicity and Confusion”, Scott Clark reports on a USCCB (US Catholic Conference of Bishops) agreement “with representatives from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ to accept as valid baptisms performed in those communions”, through the aid of what he calls “the mediating/hosting organization, Christian Churches Together.”

This is a non-event for a lot of reasons, and Clark nails it at the end:

So, this heralded breakthrough does not seem to be much of a breakthrough at all. It probably has the same status in Rome as Evangelicals and Catholics Together: none.

On the other side, news of the “agreement” prompted Bryan Cross to post the pithily-titled article, “Catholic Church and Four Reformed Denominations Agree to Recognize the Validity of Each Other’s Baptisms.”

And this he posted right at the top of his regular front-page feature, “Christian Unity in the News”. [Most of the artciles in this list refer to a Roman overture to wayward Anglican churches entitled Anglicanorum Coetibus, a program by which Anglicans are snookered into believing that they can find “unity” with Roman Catholicism, while still retaining their Anglican identity. More on this below]

But it is a non-event. Generally, Reformed denominations have not required Roman Catholics joining Reformed churches to be re-baptized [and Clark cites Berkhof to this effect], and nor has the Roman Catholic church required baptized Reformed individuals converting to Rome to be rebaptized. Citing CCC §1271:

Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians, including those who are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church: “For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Justified by faith in Baptism, [they] are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.”

It brings up the larger question, “why bother trying to do business with the Roman Catholic Church, in any event.

Again, Clark correctly identifies the useless nature of the USCCB: “it is not entirely clear what the status of the USCCB actually is in Rome. For American evangelicals, any organization that gathers and says something may have significance but in my ecclesiastical world, an informal gathering of pastors that produces a statement has the ecclesiastical weight of the pixels by which it appears.”

But further to that, if these [Reformed] folks did get a chance to negotiate with anyone significant in Rome, it’s pretty clear that they’d end up with the bitter taste of dust in their mouths.

In recent years, there have been a number of these “from-the-ground-up” types of agreements, such as the ECT series, the “Joint Declaration” with [some] Lutherans on Justification, and so on.

While some of these “breakthroughs” get reported, the real substance is that, negotiation with Rome will get you nowhere.

For example, one of the biggest proponents of our time, of trying to get “Evangelicals and Catholics Together”, wrote with genuine disappointment at Rome’s failure to endorse the “Joint Declaration”. He wrote in an article entitled Setback in Rome:

In June the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) formally approved a “Joint Declaration” (JD) on the doctrine of justification that had been worked out over many years of theological dialogue with the Catholic Church. Shortly after that, Rome made its official response in a joint statement issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity (CCU). These developments received considerable play in the general media with stories about an “historic agreement” on the chief doctrine that had separated Lutherans and Catholics for almost five hundred years. The reality is somewhat more complicated than that.

Rome did officially “receive” JD in the sense that it affirmed that very significant progress had been made in removing past misunderstandings, and in moving toward full agreement on what it means to say that the sinner is justified by faith. However, many of the Catholics and Lutherans involved in producing JD are saying—mainly off the record, for the present—that the Roman response is, in the most important respects, a rejection of the declaration. JD proposed that, with the new understandings achieved by the dialogue, the mutual condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply, and remaining differences over the doctrine of justification are not church-dividing. The Roman statement does not accept that proposal.

It would be an understatement to say that the theologians involved in the dialogue, both Lutheran and Catholic, were taken aback by the Roman response. During the process, Rome had indicated problems with aspects of the declaration and, almost up to the last minute, revisions were made to take those concerns into account. The participants in the dialogue thought they had been assured that JD would be approved by Rome. Certainly that was the understanding that informed the LWF's approval of the declaration. In the immediate aftermath of the statement by CDF and CCU, the mood among dialogue participants was bitter and despondent. One Lutheran pioneer of the dialogue declared that the theologians, both Lutheran and Catholic, had been “betrayed” by Rome. For decades to come, he predicted, it would be impossible to reestablish confidence in any theological dialogue with the Catholic Church.

I’ve bolded key sections from Neuhaus. Rome will smile and nod, and smile and nod, and just when you think that some agreement has been reached, they say “no, it’s our way or the highway”, and you get to experience the bitterness of “buyer’s remorse”.

Fr. Robert Hart, an writer for Touchstone Magazine and at the blog The Continuum (referring to a “continuum” of Anglicans whose efforts revolve around “continuing” to understand and hold the doctrines of the historical Church of England), wrote in a characteristically “uncharitable” blog post entitled Baiticum and Switchorum (That’s “Bait-and-Switch” for those who don’t understand Latin):

"What this means for the average small [Anglican] parish thinking of accepting the offer is that the entire parish will no longer have autonomy.

*[you] will begin Roman catechism for 2 years, [your] clergy will step down and become laymen and will have to complete their education if lacking before being able to serve anyone; your buildings, if any, will need to be disposed of.

*you will be directed to a local RC Diocese since ours are far flung and overlapping many RC dioceses in between.

*you will likely be directed to a local RC parish (100 families is the minimum standard for a RC parish) for worship in the early am.

* you will be somewhat segregated from the RC congregation.

* your priest if he can pass muster will be counted on to do Vatican II services as directed by the local Bishop (so don't count on the level of pastoral care you had before.)

*your children will learn Roman Catholicism, you will die, the Roman Church will go on as before and that will be the end of that….

Let us be clear. Unlike the "uniates" and "rites," former Anglicans will not have their own church within the Church. They will be absorbed, but with permission to use something different, but as of yet undefined.

Rome=”The Borg”. Lots of folks don’t yet know this, however.

Traditional Anglicanism on Predestination and Election

http://www.oldjamestownchurch.com/blog/2012/9/2/fr-roger-salter-on-article-xvii.html

XVII. Of Predestination and Election.

Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

And here begins the commentary on it:

PREDESTINATION AND PROMISE: ARTICLE XVII

By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
Sept. 1, 2012

Anglicanism's commitment to the doctrine of predestination is not merely something to be noted, acknowledged, and calmly filed away. Anglicans are often apologetic for their own personal convictions and tend to keep them private. Electing love is a truth to be rejoiced in, reinforced in our generation, and proclaimed for the comfort and reassurance of God's people, especially in times of testing, which we may be confronting sooner than we expect. Calvin's emphasis was due not only to his loyal exposition of Holy Scripture and his fidelity to the long standing Augustinian tradition. It was a pastoral response to the appeal of cart loads of saints being transported to prison and possible martyrdom.

Persecuted believers needed to know, in the face of death, that they were in the secure grip of their Saviour's love. Calvin knew the Biblical answer to their intense fear for themselves and their loved ones. Electing love is the recurrent theme through Scripture that persuades the Christian of the eternal, irreversible fondness of the Mediator for the folk he came to represent and rescue. Electing love, God's prior choice of his people, is the entrancing message of the Word of God. It is a rapturous, romantic refrain sung by prophets and apostles throughout the eras of divine revelation and it is a tune that bids all believers to sing with exuberant wonder and gratitude at the absolutely unmotivated mercy of God....

For anyone considering Eastern Orthodoxy

Here is a first person account by someone who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, and who remained one for 13 uncomfortable years. He finally left Eastern Orthodoxy in favor of a conservative [“Continuing”] Anglicanism. He cautions people considering Eastern Orthodoxy to consider other alternatives (what follows is completely his own testimony): 

A sizable number of Evangelicals … have opted to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy rather than to Roman Catholicism or Traditional Anglicanism.  One can read the convert literature of (the increasingly unhinged) Frank Schaeffer and the ex-Campus Crusade folks (Peter Gillquist, et al.) for the standard panegyric about how these Evangelicals ”came home” to “the ancient Christian church”.  Your blogger The Embryo Parson was one of them.  I spent approximately 13 years in the Orthodox Church, and I can assure you that Schaeffer and Gillquist were smitten with romantic notions about the Orthodox Church church that bear little relation to reality.  I could go into great detail about why I left, but I will confine myself here to four principal reasons. 

1.  Creeping liberalism.  Here is an account from a Lutheran blog that refers to an article written by Orthodox academic and priest Gregory Jensen, who frankly admits the problem … the Orthodox Church is slowly but surely beginning to look like its increasingly “Episcopalianized” sister, the Roman Catholic Church.  Both, to one degree or another, are aping the liberal Protestant “mainline.”  Though officially “orthodox” in their respective theologies, there is much turmoil beneath the surface that is associated with the activity of liberals, and the Evangelical convert can’t miss it.  I certainly didn’t.

2.  Virulent anti-Western mentality.  The Orthodox are openly hostile to just about everything Western.  Any Evangelical who hopes to retain something of the Western theological framework in which he learned about his faith will be quickly disappointed in that hope if he enters the Orthodox Church.  David B. Hart, an Orthodox theologian and brother of our own Anglican Catholic priest Fr. Robert Hart, says this about it:

The most damaging consequence . . .  of Orthodoxy’s twentieth-century pilgrimage ad fontes—and this is no small irony, given the ecumenical possibilities that opened up all along the way—has been an increase in the intensity of Eastern theology’s anti-Western polemic. Or, rather, an increase in the confidence with which such polemic is uttered. Nor is this only a problem for ecumenism: the anti-Western passion (or, frankly, paranoia) of Lossky and his followers has on occasion led to rather severe distortions of Eastern theology. More to the point here, though, it has made intelligent interpretations of Western Christian theology (which are so very necessary) apparently almost impossible for Orthodox thinkers. Neo-patristic Orthodox scholarship has usually gone hand in hand with some of the most excruciatingly inaccurate treatments of Western theologians that one could imagine—which, quite apart form the harm they do to the collective acuity of Orthodox Christians, can become a source of considerable embarrassment when they fall into the hands of Western scholars who actually know something of the figures that Orthodox scholars choose to caluminiate. When one repairs to modern Orthodox texts, one is almost certain to encounter some wild mischaracterization of one or another Western author; and four figures enjoy a special eminence in Orthodox polemics: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John of the Cross.

3.  Essentially Eastern European.  The Orthodox Churches tend to be Eastern European or Middle Eastern cultural outposts.  While they welcome converts from Western countries, the latter never really quite fit in.  One person commenting over at the Stumble Inn writes:

Eastern Orthodoxy is a gigantic Eastern culture club. They have a saying for a sort of mania new converts (of the generic Anglo/Celtic/German-American variety) get - Convertitis. Basically it’s marked by a) aggressive appropriation of your parish’s ethnic culture, b) rabid defense of your theology. The second one is just the excitement of finding something you believe to be true - it’s an altruistic sort of joy with unintended negative consequences that go away over time.

The first one is a survival/assimilation technique that is pretty much necessary when one finds himself surrounded by Russians, or Greeks, or Arabs... Bulgarians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Serbians, Georgians, Albanians and 20 different varieties of each. There’s nothing else. If you walk into an Orthodox church as an old stock American, you simply don’t belong there. You’re out of your league. You have to make yourself belong - and it’s difficult.

If not impossible.

4.  Compromised soteriology.  While we should certainly be grateful to the Greek Church Fathers for the triadology and christology that became the basis of the Creed, they were not so orthodox when it came to an issue that would come to bear upon the question of soteriology, or salvation:

Part of the fascination of the patristic era to the scholar lies in the efforts of its theologians to express an essentially Hebraic gospel in a Hellenistic milieu: the delights of patristic scholarship must not, however, be permitted to divert our attention from the suspicion voiced by the Liberal school in the last century - that Christ’s teaching was seriously compromised by the Hellenism of its earlier adherents. The history of the development of the Christian doctrine of justification lends support to such a suspicion. In particular, it can be shown that two major distortions were introduced into the corpus of traditional belief within the eastern church at a very early stage, and were subsequently transferred to the emerging western theological tradition. These are:

a. The introduction of the non-biblical, secular Stoic concept of autoexousia or liberum arbitrium in the articulation of the human response to the divine initiative in justification.

b. The implicit equation of tsedaqa, dikaiosune and iustitia, linked with the particular association of the Latin meritum noted earlier (p.15), inevitably suggested a correlation between human moral effort and justification within the western church. The subsequent development of the western theological tradition, particularly since the time of Augustine, has shown a reaction against both these earlier distortions, and may be regarded as an attempt to recover a more biblically orientated approach to the question of justification. . . .

The emerging patristic understanding of such matters as predestination, grace and free will is somewhat confused, and would remain so until controversy forced full discussion of the issue upon the church. Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil. . . . (Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Vol. I, pp.18-19)

This sub-biblical notion of free will would later inform the heresies of Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, and would also result in a soteriology in the East that would put a greater stress on theosis - sanctification - than on the atonement.  Accordingly, Orthodox theology is deficient in its understanding of just how the atonement relates to sanctification.  One need only listen to the narrative of this video to see an example of the man-centered nature of theosis.  Note the repeated use of “I”, “me” and “my”.  I call this the “Little-Christian-Who-Could” model.   There is nothing in this video about what God did to effect man’s salvation, aside from a brief and vague reference to the destruction of sin and death at the beginning of the narrative. 

Because the Orthodox reject the Augustinian view of original sin, and by implication the Pauline teaching on the inability of man to save himself, and because the Orthodox still labor under pagan notions about “free will”, their soteriology suffers.  Frs. Hart and Wells discuss this deficiency at the [Anglican] Continuum, here and here.

The Old Jamestown Church and “Continuing” Anglicans

Some folks are attracted to a “liturgical” style of worship, and for those who are, I’d recommend a look at “Continuing” Anglicans. These are mostly traditional folks, and some of them even adhere to a more Calvinist type of theology.

“The Old Jamestown Church” blog is by an old friend who has been around the block a few times. He remains anonymous (I think) here, so I’ll respect his privacy. But I wanted to give him a link and an opportunity to tell you what he’s all about:

The Old Jamestown Church is to be a blog about the hows, whos, whys, whats, whens and wheres of Traditional or "Continuing" Anglicanism. Much of what you will read here will be devoted to an "apology" of sorts, explaining to you why, if you are a conservative Christian in this day of ecclesial chaos, theological pluralism and liturgical insanity, you should seriously consider joining a Traditional Anglican Church. The blog is written by an "embryo parson" (see the movie Cold Comfort Farm) in theAnglican Catholic Church, which is to say someone who is possibly headed for at least the diaconate and maybe the priesthood. Your blogger is theologically educated, long in the tooth, has been through several schools of hard knocks, but is arguably none the wiser. That said, he does manage to hammer out a cogent argument every now and again, and hopes to posit a few of such here.