Reformed vs. Re-formed: A Synopsis–North American Anglican

Reformed vs. Re-formed: A Synopsis

I did my best to follow this back and forth, but it wasn’t easy. For me, however, the key point finally came here:

The crux of this dispute is the nature and substance of the English Reformation. The basic facts of what occurred during the English Reformation are generally agreed upon, but its larger significance and bearing on Anglican identity remain contested. To mention a few concrete examples of such disagreements, on Sutton’s understanding, Reformed Continental influence was minimal; the “specific Protestant Evangelical and Reformed” character of the English Reformation was confined to the short reign of Edward VI;^[1] and “the Homilies such as the one ‘On Peril of Idolatry,’ were never fully enforced nor considered to be doctrinally binding in the Church of England.” Historical judgments inform both normative and factual judgments about contemporary Anglican theological identity, and if agreement on the import of the relevant history cannot be reached, then the resulting divide over the character of Anglicanism will be difficult to overcome indeed.

With that in hand:

1. A big part of the problem is that “Reformed” these days is equated with TULIP Calvinism or one of its variations. I think that was a serious weakness in Iain Murray’s Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950-2000; he is evidently of the conviction that, outside of Calvinism, there is no Reformed religion. But, as I’ve pointed out before, the BCP doesn’t support that for the English Reformation, neither does Article XVI. The earliest Continental influences on the English Reformation were Lutheran, not Calvinist. Cranmer definitely wanted a “Reformed” type of Christianity but not in the sense we say that today. Behind much of the struggle for the “soul of England” in the subsequent century and a half was that very issue.
2. Tied to the whole topic of whether a church is Protestant or not is whether we accept the Roman Catholic Church’s basic view of itself as an active mediator between God and people. I think that many in the Anglo-Catholic community implicitly accept this without thinking through the implications. Again the BCP accepts the power of “binding and loosing” but severely restricts the church’s choices in implementing that power. Roman Catholicism goes much further than that, at least these days.
3. I think fights over how many councils a church accepts is an exercise in futility. We’ve had churches reject ecumenical councils since Chalcedon, and although I don’t agree with them they’ve certainly written their history vis a vis the Muslims (who themselves can be seen as the logical conclusion of Nestorianism) in blood, especially of late. The Roman Catholics keep going on ecumenical councils since Nicea II, and of course since Vatican I the “infallible” Pope has really taken centre stage. As I said in my Book Review: Iain Murray’s Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950-2000, “…the Catholic position on unity was the same as U.S. Grant’s to Simon Bolivar Buckner—no terms but unconditional surrender.”

As long as Anglicans continually try to harmonise their Christianity to anyone else other than the Scriptures and the Fathers, they will remain a waystation to other expressionions of the faith rather than the sui generis expression that it is.