Various Questions

1. Anglican is a tradition and a way of walking the Christian Journey. I actually see the Anglican Church as a Catholic Church many of whose members are Protestant. It is structurally a Catholic Church, holding to the ancient creeds, the ancient sacraments, the historic order if ministry including the Historic Episcopate, and hold firm to the teaching of Holy Scripture.
   
2. Tradition is an important part of the Anglican Legacy, and Tradition informs our understanding of Scripture. I am happy enough with th term Prima Scriptura, which is effectively what Sola Scriptura meant until it was hijacked by those who want to make it Only Scripture, and indeed the idea of Me and my Bible which has gripped much of the Protestant world is not an Anglican perspective.
   
3. It is a good thing. There is more that unites us than tears us apart.
   
4. I prefer to talking about praying with the saints, indeed with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven in the unending song.
   
5. Anamnesis and Eucharistos
   
   
6. The Anglican Church does not hold to a specific theory of the atonement, given that it is so great a mystery, we may only simply probe the glorious grace of atonement.
   
7. Clearly this is a divisive issue in the Anglican World. Traditional Sites and Churches remain firmly opposed to the Ordination of Women. This forum describes it in the rules that it is a 'Modern Error'. None the less the are a goodly number of Anglican Churches worldwide that do ordain women to all three orders of ministry. Beyond that passing observation, it is not a matter to be openly evaluated in this forum the the position of the site is already clear. I respect that.

 

[QUOTE="Botolph, post: 51887, member: 1665" I am happy enough with th term Prima Scriptura, which is effectively what Sola Scriptura meant until it was hijacked by those who want to make it Only Scripture, and indeed the idea of Me and my Bible which has gripped much of the Protestant world is not an Anglican perspective.[/QUOTE]I think it was the RCs who hijacked the term so they could bludgeon all Protestants on their heads and shoulders with the concept.

 

I am really only speaking from my experience, and I may have been over-exposed to the Sydney/Jensenite expression of the Anglican position, and perhaps too many fundamentalists. I have never really heard RCC's taking that sort of a position, but my experience of RCC's may have been a bit kinder than yours.

 

Yeah, I have been on the receiving end of the bludgeoning on a couple of RC sites. That colors my perception, and although I must admit that it's not statistical evidence, I figure they have to be reading or hearing it from other RCs somewhere; they didn't seem like the types who could come up with original thinking and preferred to regurgitate stuff they'd picked up in their own circles.

However, experiences are bound to vary; I'm sure there are still plenty of other RCs who don't even have the first notion about the sola scriptura issue! And plenty of Anglicans as well, more's the pity. This forum tends to attract folks who actually have a decent level of understanding about their religion!

 

So as you've just agreed, the term 'via media' wasn't seen in 1662 (and would continue to remain unknown to the church for two more centuries). The question then is, did the idea of it, the idea of compromise exist (in doctrine, not liturgy). Here is how our divines talked:

“These be cases not of wit, but of faith ;  not of eloquence, but of truth ; not invented or devised by us, but from the Apostles and the holy Fathers and founders of the Church by long succession brought unto us.  We are not the devisers thereof, but only the keepers ;  not the masters, but the scholars.  Touching the substance of religion, we believe what the ancient Catholike learned Fathers believed :  we do what they did :  we say what they said.  And marvel not, in what side soever ye see them, if ye see us join unto the same.  It is our great comfort that we see their faith and our faith to agree in one.”
—John Jewel


Do you see any spirit of compromise here, a strategy of "a little bit from here, and a little bit from there"?

 

I don't think I would have looked to John Jewel for a spirit of compromise. I don't think we should forget that England's position was fairly unique. It was one of the more top-down rather bottom-up movements in the movement for reform. The impetus for change came not so much from a groundswell of opinion, but rather from what we might call the affairs (I use the word cautiously) of state. The significant impact of the Pilgrimage of Grace made it quite clear that not all the faithful were onside with all that was happening. The Elizabethan Settlement was not a compromise, bt it does represent a determination to accommodation. The intent was that every English person could(should) be loyal to Christ, Church and Sovereign (not necessarily in that order).

The notion of via media is more properly expressed in Newman, Keble and the Oxford Movement, when is reaction of a growing Erastianism, they sought to recover something of the Catholic truth of the Church which was never intended to be washed away.

 

Again, I think you're talking about a different via media than is used by the church. The actual usage of via media, from Lambeth says "In the mind of an Anglican, [via media] is not compromise. Nor is it to bargain one truth for another.". Walking the middle of Catholicism and Protestantism doesn't mean compromising with either of them. Being internally broad does not mean trading off one doctrine for one faction to get another doctrine accepted by a different faction. It means being open to all possible experiences of Christian faith, and through that we will eventually, over time, discern the truth.

As you originally said in your earlier comment, to walk the middle way is not "a little bit from here, a little bit from there", it's to exist between two extremes. That is precisely the wording of the 1662 prayer book. My point was that although the term "via media" wasn't present in 1662, the phrase "mean between two extremes" was. What is the mean between two extremes if not the middle way? They are exactly the same thing, one is Latin, one is English. So to answer your question: "did the idea of it...exist" - yes.

 

Wrong contrast btw. Anglicanism is Catholic. Perhaps you meant, Walking between Romanism and the Reformation. Or walking between medievalism and the church fathers. It’s not clear what you mean.

I don’t know if you realize this, but conceptualizing your theological stance as “between extremes” is inherently a compromise between them. That’s the definition of the word compromise.

Once again you are conflating comprehension with compromise (or via media). To state my point once again: Anglican doctrine is comprehensive, but it is not a via media compromise. I hope you can keep the two terms as distinct.

Once again; the phrase in the BCP refers to the liturgy. And yes the BCP liturgy is a compromise, because combines the medieval liturgy, the scripture, and the church fathers. The Divines explicitly said that it came from multiple sources. So I am consistent: the liturgy is a compromise, it’s not “too much of one thing”.

But Anglican doctrine is not a compromise, because the Divines did not formulate doctrine by taking a bit from here and a bit from there. Anglican doctrine was understood with an extreme angle towards being exclusively the Church of the first 5 centuries. Everything which didn’t fit that was ruthlessly pushed out.

So Anglican liturgy is a medium between extremes, but Anglican doctrine is an extreme of its own kind. I hope I’m making the distinction clear.

I.e. it’s not a narrow extreme (comprehension), but in its method it is extreme. It is not piecemeal; it doesn’t have multiple sources. The divines didn’t see themselves as expressing a mean between some extremes. They were the extremes. Comprehensive, but extreme. Extreme towards the first 5 centuries. Whatever that comprehended, they comprehended.

 

Yes Anglicanism is Catholic. It's also Protestant.

It's not the wrong contrast. That's literally the wording used at Lambeth, I don't think the bishops were confused by the terms. It's the middle way of Catholic faith and Protestant faith, not Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism/Calvinism. This is why we can comfortably say we are both a catholic church, and a protestant church, much to the confusion of outsiders. It would be silly to position ourselves between two flexible and constantly shifting denominations. If Roman Catholicism reformed into something new entirely that's not a reason for the Anglican church to recalibrate itself in relation to it (and indeed the Roman church did reform meaningfully in Vatican 2). Catholicism and Protestantism are immutable, they're fixed ideas, and so its possible to describe ourselves in relation to them. Again, we aren't compromising into something new, a mutant that is neither catholic nor protestant. We are both fully Catholic and fully Protestant, we have made no compromises with either.

It's not. Compromise implies a settlement between parties, where both parties concede some ground to each other to reach an agreement. Anglican bishops on opposite sides of the religious spectrum did not compromise with each other. Via media is an apt observation after the fact, a term devised once the dust had settled, not a preconceived idea we aimed for, so no compromise was possible. The Anglican Church didn't go out of its way to seek to be between extremes, it just is between extremes. There was no compromising, there was an authentic realisation of true faith based on the principles of scripture, tradition and reason. The end product of that uncompromising process can best be described as the mean between two extremes, the middle way, the via media, and no compromising has needed to occur at all to do so. This isn't my opinion, this is actual Anglican doctrine, at least as much as Anglicanism has any formally agreed doctrine, as it is a formally defined and agreed statement by the majority of all bishops in the Anglican Communion, reaffirmed multiple times over the course of a century (and predates the ACNA split, so your bishops predecessors agreed to it as well).

With respect, you are conflating via media with compromise. The Anglican church has always used 'comprehensive' and 'via media' as synonyms, along with perhaps a dozen other terms. I've quoted excerpts in this thread where they use the word "comprehensive". If you look up those source documents you'll find they jump between a handful of terms in those documents with little care for keeping the terms distinct, including "middle way", which is the English translation of via media. Comprehensive and middle way are the same thing and have historically been used as synonyms in the same documents or in different documents by the same author. Look up the Lambeth conferences I cited above, and Archbishop William Temple if you want to fact check me. Whatever modern criticism of via media you've read that tries to separate the two is trying to divorce the term via media from its original meaning.

 

Absolutely not. "Middle way" implies a quasi-geometrical Middle between Opposites. Whereas "Comprehensive" literally has no connection to an existence of opposites or to locating itself between them. The two terms are in no way commensurable.

The very fact that you stated that Anglicanism is a "middle way" between Catholicism and Protestantism shows it can lead to careless and sloppy formulations, thereby declaring the bankruptcy of the term. Many people use this trope in this sloppy way. I don't blame you for it, as this confusion is ripe in some modern circles, and that some churchmen use it today. I merely deny their right to employ this concept, because it has no antiquity or orthodoxy. Simply put, you will not be able to find an ancient Anglican document stating that our doctrine is a middle way. But you will find documents stating that our doctrine is comprehensive. (And you will also find Anglican statements that our doctrine is extreme.)

Therefore, the equation between 'Comprehensive' and 'Middle Way' is unwarranted. It leads people to careless and sloppy tropes (between "Catholicism" and "Protestantism", whatever any of that means). The concept of Middle Way is newly-minted, and leads to grave, egregious mischaracterizations of the essence of the Anglican tradition.

To summarize the Anglican doctrinal position: it is an extreme version of Catholicism, from a branch of the Catholic Church that existed in England, and which is devoted to upkeeping the Deposit of Faith as seen in the first 5 centuries. In the 16th century we had the opportunity to re-embrace those doctrines, which is why we have a strong fondness for the Reformation. But we don't share almost anything with modern evangelicals, pentecostalists, revivalists. And yes we are Catholic, although we don't share much doctrine with the Roman church.

To summarize the Anglican liturgical position: it is a middle way, taking its root from several distinct sources or extremes. The Presbyterians have an extreme liturgical position, claiming they can derive all it from the scriptures. The Romans have an extreme liturgical position, claiming they can do pretty much anything they want. In the matter of the liturgy, it is correct to say that our position is a middle way, with some parts authorized by Scripture, others taken from the church fathers, and yet others made merely by the authority of the Church.

 

The "Middle Way" represents Anglicanism's moderate approach to being Christian. It values the rich heritage of our Catholic Tradition without being distracted by superstitious ritualism. It honors the authority of Holy Scripture without becoming iconoclastic and puritanical. It is marked by a broad orthodoxy with a balanced view of both word and sacrament as the means of grace and avoids the theological extremes of Romanism and radical protestantism.

 

I see value in what ZachT has said, and value in what Stalwart has said.

In my view, the RCC is in a ditch along one side of the 'straight and narrow way.' There are some Protestant denominations in the opposite ditch, although I think most of those denoms are just 'over on the shoulder' but still on the road (part of the church universal). Anglicanism is largely near the center line, closest to the crown of the road, although the Anglo-Catholics are shifted off-center somewhat toward the Romans' ditch and the Episcopalians are off-center on the opposite side. Nonetheless, the main thing is that nearly all of the above are still on the road even if some are swerving somewhat erratically.

The Romans, the LDS, the JWs, and a couple of others are in need of a tow truck. But we dare not get haughty; as the saying goes: there, but for the grace of God, go we.

 

Thanks Rexlion. Yeah the idea of middle between Protestantism and Catholicism is exactly the seedbed of liberalism that wracked our Churches over the last 70-80 years. It is the classic liberal churchman view. Believe nothing in extremes (doctrine is just a middle way, after all). Don't be like those other Christians with their extreme beliefs. Compromise, conciliate, speak mildly, condemn nothing. That is the liberal brew, concocted by the "via media" error.

 

I think it is more correct to describe Anglicanism as both catholic and reformed.

To suggest it's both catholic and protestant would suggest that it a house divided.

I have always thought it was catholic enough to include protestants.

 

You left out a couple of questions, which changed the numbering but I agree with what you have posted, especially number 3: if there was a union between Anglican and RCC. I just converted from RCC to Anglican, so if they merged, I would probably move over to the Uniting Church, but I would hate to be forced into that. One of the reasons I am Anglican is because of female ordination. I am on the track to being ordained, and my diocese is very supportive. Anglicans who disagree with female ordination are free to live in a diocese that doesn't support this, or to join up with the RCC, if they feel so inclined, but not me.

As for number 4 in the OP: What does the Anglican Church have to say about prayer to saints, Marian devotion, etc.? What do you think?

I am in support of anyone who wants to do this, but I don't personally do it myself anymore. I respect and admire saints and Mary, but I felt the RCC came close to worshiping them.

And for number 6 in the OP: What is the official doctrine regarding atonement? I.e., which theory does the CofE hold to.

I personally prefer the Anglican approach, which is basically that individual confession and absolution is possible, but not required as it is covered in the Mass. I knew so many Roman Catholics with scruples because they were always worried about whether their sins were venial sins or mortal sins - they became a little obsessed with sin.

The diversity of the beliefs of the Anglican Communion is what attracted me in the first place. Anglicans can agree to disagree on many areas.

 

I agree @Botolph

I recently read this article and it makes a similar point:

https://northamanglican.com/anglica...qsKtp9WYbEEIVuJgPXuBnwwjmdmzjch0jHW6IRpVyxLUg

 

I basically agree with the author's assessment that, essentially, Anglicans are members of a protestant catholic church. But I think the descriptor can be improved by the addition of one more word: we are protestant catholic Christians.

The author makes an interesting point, that the word "catholic" has come to be most heavily associated with Romanism. Thus many protestant denominations totally shy away from usage of the word in describing themselves, even though they are parts of the universal church, Christ's body on earth. He talks about trying to give people the older, more traditional meaning of "catholic," although personally I think the language has 'moved on' and we might be past the point of ever recovering that traditional meaning in the minds of most people. I really prefer the word "universal" over "catholic" because the former lacks the baggage of the latter and because there is just no mistaking one's meaning when one speaks of "the universal church." (Sometimes, when reciting the Nicene Creed, I will quietly substitute "universal" while everyone else is saying "catholic;" it just makes more sense to my brain in light of my RC upbringing.)

It is also interesting that the author of the article centered the idea of catholicity around "practices and traditions (such as the observance of Christmas Day or the use of special dress by the clergy) which have a long continuous history and are universally accepted, even though they do not go back to apostolic times." Think about it. First, this is an admission that some of these "practices and traditions...do not go back to apostolic times;" second, it seems to wrongly imply that denominations which do not include some of these practices and traditions (for the very reason that they don't see them practiced or required in apostolic times) should be excluded from the Church Universal (the true meaning of "Catholic") for not engaging in those practices & traditions.

If reasonable Christians can differ on such questions as the need for vestments and candles, observance of saints' days, frequency of communion, etc.) because they have different views about the church's practices in apostolic times, then IMO such questions are not proper delineations or markers of catholicity (in the true sense of the universality of Jesus' body on earth, the church). Proper markers of non-catholicity would be heresies, such as holding to non-Trinitarianism, teaching a false gospel of faith+something else (be it works, trust in clergy, faith in some latter-day prophet, or whatever), teaching Arianism, etc. I think we, as Anglican Christians, can enjoy and embrace our "practices and traditions" without letting it go to our heads or causing us to look down our noses at some other Christians just because do not utilize all of our practices and traditions.

In other words, we are protestant catholic Christians, and the members of a number of other denominations (such as Methodists, Wesleyans, Nazarenes, Baptists, etc.) are protestant catholic Christians also. Emphasis on the word "Christian," of course.

 

I don't find this especially helpful. Are we protesting? What are we protesting? Is there no room for thos who are not protesting?

If you were to tell me that we are members of the Pilgrimage of Grace, I might be happer.

The word catholic has an important theogical heritage. It is primarily the third note of the Church, not as so often descibed by what I would call a modern error the name of a particular denomination.

I find it much more helpful and accurate to understand ourselves as a Reformed Catholic Church. Our inception is not as some do wrongly suggest in the 16th century, but in the 1st.

If I may quotye fr0m the work of Matthew Parker:

Having carefully examined and re-examined this, we shall find that it (the Brittish Church) was not only very ancient, but also that the Gospel was first propagated throughout the world by the Apostles, and not by the Roman See, as the Roman Pontiffs contend; For Gildas, the most ancient writer of British affairs among those who are worthy of faith, reports that the Britons had already received the Christian faith from the beginning of the Gospel.​

 

I think @Botolph is correct in calling Anglicanism "Reformed Catholicism". It harkens back to Bishop Cosin, who called the Anglican Church "Protestant and Reformed according to the principles of the ancient Catholic Church". Unlike other churches born or reformed in the Reformation, the Anglican Church held onto the ancient truths rather than seeking new fangled ideas to fight medieval errors. @highchurchman, a forum member who sadly passed away several years ago and a priest in the British ACC, would often follow after Bishop Bramhall in refering to the Anglican Reformation as merely weeding a garden (see the final paragraph quoted below)... I miss highchurchman's learned insights, especially on topics like this...