Reformation and Tradition

Texts, Authority, and Development

Readers of The North American Anglican tend by and large to be keenly aware of our communion’s identity as a church of the Reformation. Because of that, we share a great deal of theological history with our Puritan brothers. Church of England ministers, after all, were a major bloc of the Westminster divines. And because the great family tree of English historians who studied with Patrick Collinson have established as a historiographical consensus that there was in fact a Calvinist consensus in England during the last third of the sixteenth and the first third of the seventeenth centuries, there is a strong argument to be made that the only thing practically which need divide Anglicans and Presbyterians, for instance, is a perhaps merely prudential disagreement about church government. The fact that worship at your average Anglican church will tend to look and feel closer to a Lutheran or Roman Catholic service than to confessional Presbyterian or Southern Baptist service is an unfortunate byproduct of nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism, and what we need to restore Anglicanism to the basic unity of the “Reformed” churches is simply a return to our own Reformation-era confessional documents, and, crucially, to read them through the lens of that Elizabethan/Jacobean Calvinist consensus. The most powerful argument which the self-identified “Reformation Anglicans,” similarly to a Constitutional originalist, for instance, is that the worship and doctrine of the Church of England, contained in the Prayerbook and the 39 Articles, is authoritatively glossed by the Book of Homilies according to the main formularies’ own testimony. After all, the Articles are printed at the back of the Prayerbook, and Article 35 says:

“The second Book of Homilies, the several titles whereof we have joined under this Article, doth contain a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and necessary for these times, as doth the former Book of Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth; and therefore we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people.”[1]

A good Calvinist, born and bred in the PCA, who’s given a Prayerbook, uses it in devotions, is surprised to find that the 39 Articles articulate what he believes himself about the Reformation solas, and from there picks up Gerald Bray’s or Lee Gatiss’s recent editions of the Book of Homilies—Make the Homilies Great Again being the battle cry of Reformation Anglicanism—will find there a Homily Against the Peril of Idolatry, which he may also find himself nodding along with in agreement. He’ll find there the extra calvinisticum, and the argument that the 2^nd Commandment makes any image of Jesus Christ blasphemous. And then he’ll visit an average ACNA and see icons or a crucifix in the sanctuary! Don’t we know the teaching of our own church? (This actual question was asked of the Bishop George Carleton, the leader of the English delegation to the Synod of Dort, by their Dutch Reformed colleagues.) Listen to what the Homily Against the Peril of Idolatry—the longest homily in the book—has to say on this:

“But lest any should take occasion by the way, of doubting by words or names, it is thought good here to note first of all, that although in common speech we use to call the likeness or similitude of men or other things images, and not idols: yet the Scriptures use the said two words (idols and images) indifferently for one thing always. They be words of divers tongues and sounds, but one in sense and signification in the Scriptures. … Wherefore our Images in Temples and Churches, be indeed none other but Idols, as unto the which Idolatry hath been, is, and ever will be committed. … First, that they be made but of small pieces of wood, stone, or metal, and therefore they cannot be any similitudes of the great Majesty of God, whose seat is heaven, and the earth his footstool. … But of Gregory’s opinion, thinking that images might be suffered in Churches, so it were taught that they should not be worshipped: what ruin of religion, and what mischief ensued afterward to all Christendom, experience hath to our great hurt and sorrow proved.”[2]

That is, I think, as pointed a statement of the case against religious imagery as any Puritan could desire. Which leaves us with two alternatives, I think. Either most Anglicans today are not confessional, or, despite the reference to the homilies in the articles, those homilies do not carry confessional weight. There is, after all, some wiggle room in Article 35’s teaching that the Book of Homilies “doth contain a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and necessary for these times.” Does that mean that every time will find them necessary, or that every doctrine stated there is correct?

Practically, speaking, the pressing necessity of the Books of Homilies for that time, regardless of content, was that the newly Protestant Church of England suddenly expected her clergy to preach sermons in the vernacular instructing the laity in right doctrine. It would take about a generation for Oxford and Cambridge to churn out a learned ministerium, but a Restoration writer recalled that, whereas at Elizabeth’s coronation only the best educated (and paid) among priests could read Greek or even Latin, “in the long reign of Queen Elizabeth and King James, the Clergy of the Reformed Church of England grew the most learned of the world.”[3] The Council of Trent of course established similar standards for clergy training through the foundation of new seminaries, but the English exceptionalism aside, the point is that by the 17^th century the majority of clergy were not dependent on reading someone else’s homily, but were writing their own exegetical sermons as a sine qua non of their ministry. In fact, campaigning against the continued use of pre-packaged homilies by a minority of less-able ministers became a major focus of evangelical clergy late in Elizabeth’s reign, who saw mere “readers” as unprofitable ministers insufficiently trained in the Scriptures, not to be compared with proper preachers and shepherds. The Homilies, in short, were intended to (and succeeded in) working themselves out of a job.

More interestingly, and this is where I move from reviewing the state of the question and make an actual textual argument, I want to suggest that while we find the Homilies being quoted as a theological auctoritas in the 16^th/17^th centuries, rather as a writer or preacher might cite Chrysostom or Calvin, we also find a willingness to re-engage and relitigate questions touched on in the homilies—say, whether the use of religious images is idolatrous—even if that meant coming to a different conclusion.

Take, for instance, William Crashawe’s 1607 Paul’s Cross sermon Against the papist and brownist. In the spirit of John Jewel’s famous Challenge Sermon of 1559, Crashawe seeks to articulate the Church of England’s position in contradistinction to the anabaptist “Brownists” on his left and the Council of Trent on his right. Crashawe’s invitation to preach at England’s premier pulpit speaks to his prominence in the English church—his ‘establishment’ credentials, as it were. This sermon will be a public pronouncement of the cathedral of London. And he was very much one of the ‘hotter sort of Protestants’, a leading evangelical divine who edited several works by that ‘prince of English Puritans’, the high Calvinist William Perkins. He was prominent enough to be complained of in a remarkable letter written by an anonymous continental Roman Catholic to his English Protestant cousin in May 1625 (the last year of James I’s reign), which defends the Second Council of Nicaea’s promulgation of the careful use of icons as consistent with the teachings of the Roman Catholic mainstream, and of the council of Trent. This letter reads:

And if you take but pains to peruse and ponder the words which St. Ambrose uses to and of the cross you may easily perceive that the seeming praises and prosopopeias now used to the cross by the present Roman Church are no such profane novelties or palpable idolatries as Crashaw and others of your preachers have made you believe. … And shall now think you, the prating of your new preachers prevail so much with prudent men, as to persuade them, quite contrary to the confessed practice of those primitive times to become so profane as to allow this sacred sign no kind of reverence or honor at all? What kind of reverence, estimation, or honor is to be given to a cross representing Christ, or to his holy image is not so clearly defined by any decree, or canon of our Catholic Church, but that learned men are free to dispute the question. Neither do all Catholic doctors approve St. Thomas [Aquinas] his doctrine, or manner of speaking in this matter, as you must needs know, if you be so conversant in our schoolmen and controversial writers, as you pretend; yea, speaking absolutely and properly, most of them say with the seventh synod that vera latria is not to be given to the cross or image of Christ. … [4]

What we firmly believe (as decided already) of honoring the image of Christ (and the like is to be understood of a cross that represents him). Bellarmine does thusly briefly deliver Nos cum ecclesia asserimus imagines Christi et sancto[rum] honorandas esse, modo tamen (ut in concilio Tridentino sess. 25 declaratur) in imaginibus non collecetur fiducia, nec ab eis aliquid petatur (Then is it no point of the Roman profession to pray unto them) nec in eis in esse credatur illa divinitas, sed solum honorentur propter eos quos nobis representant.[5]

The passage of the Council with the letter-writer has in mind does in fact declare, to English that Latin:

“the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and that due honour and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshipped; or that anything is to be asked of them; or, that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because the honour which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; … And if any abuses have crept in amongst these holy and salutary observances, the holy Synod ardently desires that they be utterly abolished; in such wise that no images, (suggestive) of false doctrine, and furnishing occasion of dangerous error to the uneducated, be set up. And if at times, when expedient for the unlettered people; it happen that the facts and narratives of sacred Scripture are portrayed and represented; the people shall be taught, that not thereby is the Divinity represented, as though it could be seen by the eyes of the body, or be portrayed by colours or figures.”[6]

Trent, in short, positions itself as reaffirming the teaching of the second council of Nicaea, which both condemns those unwilling to offer “veneration” to the images of Christ and the saints, but also that we only offer “latria” or “adoration” directly to God himself. By implication, our letter writer suggests, the council has quietly sidelined Thomas’s teaching in favor of the more traditional teaching of scholars like Bellarmine:

“Supposing with solid doctrine of Bellarmine’s with his own declaration thereof (in that 21st chapter which you refer me unto) in these words, Ad primam dico imagines sive honorentur proprie sine per se, sine per accidens, semper honorari propter prototypon, et semper honore earum transire ad exemplar. And in the 19th chapter of the same second book acknowledging imaginem non esse capacem honoris propter se et ideo imagines non honorari absolute sed relative ad prototypum.”

In other words, we do not honor images per se, on account of their accidents, the paint and the wood or even the formal composition, but simply as a sign of some signified or prototype, the real recipient of that honor. According to this letter writer, popular new preachers like Crashawe who continue to suppose that Rome offers use religious images as idols are churlishly refusing to acknowledge the reforms of Trent, and pretend that nothing has happened in Catholic theology since the death of Aquinas in 1274.

The reason that I find the letter’s reference to Crashawe so striking is that, in his 1607 sermon, Crashawe makes the exact same move as the letter, comparing Aquinas’ teaching unfavorably with Bellarmine’s. Crashawe begins, apocalyptically:

In former ages, as superstition grew, and religion decayed, so Images began to be worshipped more & more; & ceased not til at the last they came to this, that every Image was to bee worshipped with the same worship that was due to him whose Image it is• so that some three hundred years ago, or somewhat more, it seemed by Aquinas to be their general and received doctrine, “that An Image of Christ, and the crosse whereon Christ died, and a Crucifix; are all to bee worshipped with the same worship due to God and Christ Jesus, that is with latria.” A fearful doctrine, maintaining horrible Idolatry; for nothing, but GOD, may be worshipped with divine worship…[7]

Now, because neither Pope nor the Council of Trent explicitly anathematized Thomas’ teaching, or listed his Summa among the “abuses” and “errors” to be corrected by the bishops, Crashawe chooses to take Aquinas’ treatment of the subject as still the quasi-official teaching of papists everywhere. “Yet if any will stand upon it, that this wound is healed, then let him shew vs what Pope hath condemned this doctrine.” Crashawe will believe that Trent means what it says about “abuses” when he sees some book burnings of the Summa. But he grudgingly concedes that Bellarmine is an exception:

…I will in this case spare Bellarmine, seeing he (as having some grace in him) seems somewhat ashamed of the matter, and therefore playeth fast and loose: and betwixt God and his conscience on the one side, and the Pope and his allegiance to him on the other, he cannot tell what to say: and therefore winding himself into a labyrinth of general and confused distinctions of per se & per accidens, primariò & secundariò, propriè & impropriè, and such other which may serve for all purposes; at last he leaves the matter as doubtful as he finds it: yet must it bee confessed, if he incline either way, it is to the worse: which (by conference of his other writings) I think he doth rather for fear, or to please the Pope, then out of his own judgment and conscience.

In other words, Crashawe is, in general, inclined to read Bellarmine as the anonymous letter writer does, defending the respectful use icons and crucifixes but condemning the idea that an object of wood and paint can properly be the recipient of adoration. But he also complains that Bellarmine, with his sine per se’s and sine per accidens, confuses his own point with a muddle of prepositional phrases, adverbs, and other qualifiers because his own judgement and conscience, acting in accordance with divine grace, wants to affirm the orthodox position without offending his superiors by overtly correcting St. Thomas.

Now, whether Crashaw is right that “most” Catholic theologians agreed with Thomas, and thus the “wound” of idolatry continued to bleed, or the letter writer is correct that most quietly reject Thomas’ treatment and agree with Bellarmine, is beyond my ability to adjudicate. But what strikes me as so fascinating is that Crashawe is willing to call Bellarmine’s position, which self-consciously echoes Trent and thus Nicaea II, as having some “grace,” and flowing from a conscience at least somewhat open to God, even if distracted by fear of man. “Bellarmine,” he concedes at the end of his treatment of the question, “would gladly heal this wound.” Not, to be clear, by stripping all the images from the churches, but simply by reminding us that they cannot be used as idols. Which brings us back to our question—how well does Crashawe’s sermon align with the Homily on the Peril of Idolatry, which, remember, teaches that “our Images in Temples and Churches, be indeed none other but Idols, as unto the which Idolatry hath been, is, and ever will be committed.” While no less polemical than that Homily (Crashawe ends up concluding that popery, taken by and large, is worse in his day than it had ever been), Crashawe quietly begins from the same point of his more anti-Thomas Catholic interlocutors: that the teaching of the second Council of Nicaea, whether mentioned explicitly or not, defines the basic terms of “gracious” theological discourse on the issue, conducted in good conscience before God and theoretically capable of healing the church’s wounds. In other words, the poster boy for the Calvinist consensus, preaching from England’s premier public pulpit, engages the question of the peril of idolatry and ignores the Book of Homilies while implicitly incorporating the teaching of the 7^th ecumenical council.

Now, the typical “Reformation Anglican” position is that, as good reformed Protestants, we must acknowledge the magisterial authority of the first four ecumenical councils, and of the “godly and wholesome” doctrine contained in the complete Books of Homilies. The fundamental declarations of my particular Anglican province, the Anglican Church in North America, state that “we affirm the teaching of the first four Councils and the Christological clarifications of the fifth, sixth and seventh Councils, insofar as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures,” and that We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.”

So, is the second council of Nicaea affirmation of religious art authoritative for Anglicans? Well, insofar as that teaching on images of Christ is a “Christological clarification agreeable to holy Scripture.” Should the book of Homilies have teaching authority in the present? Well, if the Articles express the fundamental principles of an Anglican response to certain issues controverted at that time, and Article 35 says that the Homily on the Peril of Idolatry was wholesome to be read for its time (1571), and yet by 1607 Crashawe clearly thinks that there’s more to be said in his time, then…

In short, I’d suggest that an authentically Reformational and confessional Anglicanism can and should relativize certain passages of the Book of Homilies in comparison to the Prayerbook, the Articles, the creeds of the first four councils, and the doctrinal clarifications of the next three. And I’d suggest that we can and should do so knowing that this is not merely a statement of a “development of doctrine,” a victory of Newman’s Oxford Movement, but is in fact consistent with the theological practice of leading evangelical lights of the early Reformed Church of England.

Notes

[1] The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 1571 (North American Anglican)

[2] The Homily Against the Peril of Idolatry (North American Anglican)

[3] Quoted in Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559-1625, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 95. For a useful summary of the shifts in university education from the Tudor to the early Stuart period, see Jefferson Looney, “Undergraduate education at early Stuart Cambridge,” History of Education 10.1 (1981), 9-19.

[4] Anonymous, “Controversii et compendium Becari,” in, David Davis, From Icons to Idols: Documents on the Image Debate in Reformation England (Wipf & Stock, 2016), 191-192.

[5] Bellarmine, Disputationes, II.12. Translation: “We assert with the church that images of Christ and the saints should be honored, but in such a way (as is stated in the Tridentine Council Session 25) that reliance should not be placed in the images, nor should anything be sought from them, nor should divinity be supposed to reside in them, but that they should be honored solely on account of those whom they represent to us.”

[6] The Council of Trent, The Twenty-Fifth Session.

[7] The sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. xiiii. 1607. By W. Crashawe, Batchelour of Diuinitie, and preacher at the temple; iustified by the authour, both against Papist, and Brownist, to be the truth: wherein, this point is principally intended; that the religion of Rome, as now it stands established, is still as bad as euer it was (London, 1609).