PART II
CHAPTER 43
THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION
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We have laid down the principle that the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Church,
the Bride of Christ, is a visible organic society prior to her members (like
a family or a nation), and that she may be known by these marks:
right faith, succession from the apostles, and jurisdiction.
I. Application of the Tests of the True Church
We have now to apply this principle.
There are many religious societies claiming the name of CHURCH.
Which of them is the true Church?
But it is not for us, like the builder of Tennyson's "Palace of Art",
to sit as God, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all.
We are not converts to Christianity seeking which of the different denominations
we should join.
If we were, we should not be in a position to decide,
for the decision requires knowledge and experience that the new convert cannot
possess.
Probably few converts deliberately make their choice between the different
Christians communions, as Vladimir of Russia is said to have done.
They join that denomination with which they have come into contact.
We have been placed by the providence of God in the Anglican Communion for
which we are profoundly thankful.
We do not approach the claims of the
Anglican Communion as outsiders but as members.
As we are responsible
for reciting the creeds, and therefore must be convinced of the truth of
the creeds, so we are responsible for our membership of the Anglican Communion,
and therefore must be convinced of the truth of the Anglican claims.
Otherwise
we shall not be able to defend our religion or to persuade others that it
is true.
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II. The Right Faith is the Teaching of the New Testament,
Interpreted by Tradition and Reason
When inquiring whether a particular church possesses the right faith, we
must judge by a test that is outside all the existing divisions.
The right faith is what the apostles preached.
The New Testament, therefore, must be our test.
But since all the existing denominations accept the authority of the New
Testament, we need some further test.
We take the interpretation,
which the ancient Church gave to the New Testament
before the divisions of Christendom began
(not that we are bound to accept all the interpretations given by the ancient
Church, but that any interpretation on which the ancient Church was agreed
has a strong claim upon us).
To this we add the conclusions of modern scholars because modern scholars
have many instruments of interpretation that the Fathers had not got, such
as the critical method and the study of Hebrew (most of the Fathers were
totally ignorant of Hebrew and of the Hebrew background of the New Testament).
Tradition and reason are necessary for the interpretation of Scripture.
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III. Belief of a Church Decided by its Official Formularies
What a church believes can only be decided by its official formularies
including its liturgy, which is of special importance,
especially if it is in the mother tongue, because it is in constant use while
other formularies may be relics of a past age known only to theologians.
Neither practical abuses,
nor popular superstitions,
nor the false teaching of particular theologians
(even if they are bishops)
necessarily destroy the belief of a church,
for these may be marks of weakness in discipline,
not of error in doctrine.
There is no church or communion in Christendom
that has not suffered from grave abuses.
Perhaps no Christian church was ever in such a corrupt state
as the Church of Rome in the tenth century
when it was too ignorant and too little interested in religion to fall into
heresy.
Yet no one says that it lost the right faith at that time.
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IV. Application of the Test to the Anglican Communion
1. Test of Faith
The Church of England and the other Anglican churches which with her form
the Anglican Communion possess no doctrine peculiar to themselves.
They profess to maintain the teaching of Holy Scripture
as interpreted by the Fathers and the Councils,
and the creeds and sacraments of the ancient Church.
They reject, it is true, most of the medieval developments of Latin Christendom.
[The chief exception is the "Filioque" Clause. See pp.
132-5.]
But these developments are not to be found in Scripture
or in the earliest centuries of the Church.
If it be said that we ought to accept the developed form of the Christian
religion rather than its undeveloped form, we reply that the Christian religion
has several developed forms of which the Anglican has at least as good a
claim to be accepted as any other.
(For this reason Rome is very shy
of using the argument from development, especially since the appearance of
Modernism.)
The Anglican Communion has been accused of rejecting the doctrine of the
Eucharistic sacrifice and of the priesthood.
In reality all that it has rejected is the medieval theory that the Sacrifice
of Christ availed only for original sin and had to be supplemented by the
Sacrifice of the Mass for the forgiveness of actual sin.
This is the true meaning of Article 31.
The Royal Supremacy and the other consequences of the peculiar relations
of Church and State in England are not found in any of the other Anglican
churches.
Though they played a great part in the controversies of the English Reformation,
they are only temporary and accidental in the life of the Anglican Communion
and in any case have little to do with faith.
The Anglican Communion cannot fairly be charged with rejecting any doctrine
regarded as necessary by the ancient Church or with asserting any doctrine
that the ancient Church rejected.
2. Test of Succession
The episcopal succession of the Anglican Communion
is derived from the medieval Church through three lines,
represented by Parker of Canterbury,
Curwen of Dublin,
and de Dominis of Spalato (now Split),
which met in Archbishop Laud (1621).
All the present Anglican bishops trace their succession to Laud (see p.
397).
The historical succession cannot be seriously questioned.
Those who deny that the succession is genuine
maintain that the English Church intended, at the accession of Queen Elizabeth,
to substitute a new ministry for the old one,
and that the changes made in the rite prove this.
These objections will be discussed later (pp. 399-401).
It is enough to say here that the rubric at the beginning of our ordination
services ever since the first English Prayer Book of 1549 has asserted that
it is evident unto all men ... that from the Apostles' time
there hath been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church,
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. ...
And therefore, to the intent these orders should be continued,
and reverently used and esteemed in this Church of England,
no man shall be taken to be a lawful bishop, priest, or deacon
without episcopal ordination.
It is the strictly observed rule of the Anglican Communion to accept Roman
Catholic priests without ordination, but to require members of the new ministries
set up in the Reformation period to be ordained before they may serve in
the Anglican ministry.
(There were perhaps a few exceptions to this
rule before 1660; but they were all illegal, and most of them are historically
doubtful.)
[A. J. Mason, The Church of England and Episcopacy, pp.
489-511.]
3. Test of Jurisdiction
As long as the Anglican churches maintain the right faith and the true succession,
their jurisdiction is beyond question, except on the theory that all jurisdiction
is derived from the Pope.
For the English bishops are appointed in the same way as they were before
the Reformation, and there were no rival diocesan bishops in Great Britain
until the nineteenth century.
(After the great immigration of Irish
Romanists which followed the potato famine of 1847, Pope Pius IX created
a number of new dioceses, first in England and Wales (1851), and then in
Scotland (1878).
In Ireland the bishops accepted the Reformation with
very few exceptions, and the present Romanist bishops in Ireland are not
the successors of the medieval bishops but of the "titulars" appointed
in opposition to them by the Pope in the reign of Henry VIII.)
The Anglican churches in other countries derive their jurisdiction from those
of the British Isles.
They do not interfere with other jurisdictions already existing (as in Canada
and India), but confine themselves to providing for their own people for
whom the churches (if any) already existing in those countries could have
done nothing,
and to preaching the Gospel to those outside the Christian fold.
We conclude that since the Anglican churches possess right faith, historical succession, and jurisdiction, they are true parts of the Catholic Church.
4. Test of Activity
But all such proofs would be in vain if the Anglican churches were failing
to perform the duties of the Christian Church.
During the last 160 years the Anglican churches have spread all over the
world,
not only in the English speaking countries
but also among many other races.
In 1780 there were about fifty bishoprics in the Anglican Communion.
There are now over 300.
There are Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Negro, and Maori bishops.
There are also many priests belonging to the Arab, Persian, Sinhalese, Malagasy,
Bantu, Corean, Melanesian, Polynesian, Australian Aboriginal, Red Indian,
and other races.
The Anglican Communion has produced its saints and martyrs in every part
of the world and of every race.
Its liturgy, in six or seven forms and in more than a hundred languages,
is recited in every continent and has won the enthusiastic devotion of worshipers
in many lands.
At the synod of the diocese of Madagascar, most of the members of which are
natives of the country and not even British subjects, an English priest once
remarked, "We would not die for the Prayer Book".
(meaning that the Prayer Book is not essential to the Christian religion)
He
was misunderstood, and interrupted by shouts from every part of the room, "Yes,
we would!"
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V. The Anglican Churches
The Anglican Communion now includes thirteen self-governing churches:
the Church of England, the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland, the Episcopal
Church of Scotland, the Episcopal Church of the United States of America,
the Church of England in Canada, the Church of the Province of the West
Indies, of the Province of South Africa, of India, Burma, and Ceylon, the
Church of England in Australia, the Church of the Province of New Zealand,
the Nippon Sei Ko Kwai (Holy Catholic Church in Japan), and the Chung Hua
Sheng Kung Hui (Chinese Church).
Of these the Church of England and the Church of Ireland are ancient.
The Welsh Church was from the twelfth century to 1920 part of the Church
of England.
The Scottish Church in its present form dated from 1660.
The other churches have all come into existence since 1784.
Besides these there are six dioceses in Asia,
eighteen in Africa,
four in America,
and one in Europe (twenty-nine in all),
which are immediately subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury until they
are ready to be organized in provinces.
The bishops of all these dioceses, with their suffragan and assistant bishops,
are members of the Lambeth Conference, which meets every ten years.
The total number of dioceses at this moment (1943) is 311.
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VI. The Old Catholic Churches in Communion with the Church of England
With these we must reckon the Old Catholic churches that came into full
communion with the Church of England in 1932.
The ancient bishopric of Utrecht, founded by St. Willibrord in 696, was made
an archbishopric and divided into six dioceses in 1560, but the other dioceses
were soon swept away by the Reformation.
In 1701 there was a breach with Rome due chiefly to the opposition of the
Jesuits to the Archbishop and Chapter of Utrecht.
The first archbishop independent of Rome was consecrated in 1724,
[Cornelius Steenhoven, consecrated by Dominique Varlet,
Bishop of Babylon.]
and two other bishoprics were soon afterwards restored.
In 1870 many Roman Catholics in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland refused
to accept the decrees of the Vatican Council and were excommunicated.
Bishops were consecrated for them, and in 1889 the Old Catholic churches
of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria formed the Union of
Utrecht, which was afterwards extended to other countries.
There are now five self-governing Old Catholic churches in Holland, Germany,
Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and the U.S.A., which include thirteen bishoprics.
These churches, though in full communion with the Anglican churches, are
not Anglican.
They have a different history, different customs, and
different liturgies.
But they hold the same faith.
The Agreement of Bonn (1931) is the basis on which intercommunion between
Canterbury and Utrecht was restored.
[Some of the smaller Anglican churches have not yet formally
accepted it.]
The terms of this agreement were as follows:
- Each communion recognizes the catholicity and independence of the other and maintains its own.
- Each communion agrees to admit members of the other communion to participate in the sacraments.
- Intercommunion does not require from either communion the acceptance of all doctrinal opinion, sacramental devotion, or liturgical practice characteristic of the other, but implies that each believes the other to hold all the essentials of the Christian Faith.