James Clark is the author of The Witness of Beauty and Other Essays, and the Book Review Editor at The North American Anglican. His writing has appeared in Cranmer Theological Journal, Journal of Classical Theology, and American Reformer, as well as other publications.
Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, and Greg Peters have expressed concern at First Things that, because the Kigali Commitment “repeatedly appeals to the authority of the Bible alone and fails to mention either the authority of the Church or the role of tradition,” GAFCON is committing itself to a “strict ‘Bible alone’ viewpoint” that is “a…
Original sin is defined by Article IX as “the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam.” One key element of this definition is that Adam brought sin into the world: Adam, we find from the second chapter of Genesis, received from God a nature…
Some Christians think that urging respect for the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds encourages uncritical reverence for merely human words and formulations, whereas it is the Bible alone that has authority to determine our beliefs. The assumption underlying this attitude seems to be that these creeds were formulated in a vacuum, with no regard for…
In saying “the old Testament is not contrary to the new,” Article VII focuses on two kinds of continuity: moral and eschatological. Concerning morality, “No Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called moral.” As for last things, “Both in the old and New Testament everlasting life is offered…
Article VI plainly states that “the Church doth read [the Apocryphal books] for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” This could be taken to mean simply that people ought to read the Apocrypha on their own. However, a cursory glance at any Prayer…
Baptism and the Anglican Reformers. By G. W. Bromiley. Cambridge, UK: James Clarke and Co., 2023. 258 pp. $97.50 (cloth), $33.75 (paper). G. W. Bromiley is perhaps best remembered as one of the translators and a co-editor (with T. F. Torrance) for the English edition of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. However, he was also an…
Reformation Anglicanism: Essays on Edwardian Evangelicalism. Edited by Mark Earngey and Stephen Tong. London, UK: The Latimer Trust, 2023. 260 pp. $11.50 (paper). In some ways, and for some people, the Edwardian period of the English Reformation is fertile ground for speculations about what could have been. Edward VI died in 1553 at the young…
When Protestants declare that the Bible is their highest authority, a typical rejoinder from Roman Catholics is, “And where did the Bible come from?” The implication is that the Bible was canonized by the (Roman) Catholic Church, thereby indicating that the Church’s authority is even higher than that of the Bible. This way of thinking…
Give Us This Day Devotionals, Volume 4: John. By Charles Erlandson. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2022. 266 pp. $37 (cloth), $27 (paper). As the Word of God, the Bible is an inexhaustible fount of life in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But we Christians, dull of mind and sleepy in…
Consult any pre-21st century English or American Prayer Book and you will find in the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son.”[1] The phrase “and the Son” is a translation of the Latin term Filioque, with the opening words of Article V—“The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and…