A Reply
I appreciate Rev. Crosby for his well-written article in response to my critique of Reformation Anglicanism, “Elizabethan Anglicanism and the Reformed Tradition,” and I apologize for my delay in responding to it. In criticizing my “unhelpfully narrow picture of what it means to be Reformed,” he has provided me the opportunity to clarify and define more precisely the object of my own critique, and what exactly it is I take issue with when it comes to Reformation Anglicanism. In the context of my critique of Reformation Anglicanism, when I say that Reformation and post-Reformation Anglicanism cannot be neatly defined as “Reformed,” I mean Reformed in the sense understood by Reformation Anglicanism, at least as represented by those Reformation Anglicans who are active in publishing books, and on blogs, social media, and other online platforms. In this sense, the term “Reformed” means much more than siding with Geneva and/or Zurich over Wittenberg in matters of Christology and the Lord’s Supper (i.e., Crosby’s broader, more generous understanding of the term, which I by and large agree with). This is clear from their initial manifesto, Reformation Anglicanism: A Vision for Today’s Global Communion, in which not Christology or the Eucharist, but the five Protestant solae provide the framework for what Reformation Anglicanism stands for (although the Eucharist is mentioned). As we will see, Reformation Anglicans tend to include under the notion of “Reformed” either an idealized picture of Reformed theology that fails to appreciate intra-Reformed diversity, or later developments from the Presbyterian or Continental Reformed, which, in my article, is the only sense of “Reformed” I object to, and aim at critiquing.
To elucidate, let us look at some of the ways Reformation Anglicans sometimes misuse, or are confused about the term “Reformed.” One of the ways Reformation Anglicans evince a naive, idealized understanding of the Reformed tradition is in their view of justification. In the tradition of Bishop C. Fitzsimons Allison, Reformation Anglicans like Michael Jensen often present a solafidian, quasi-evangelical view of justification as the Reformed/Anglican view, which they contrast with moralistic humanism, and claim was abandoned in the Anglican Church by Taylor, Bull, and eventually by Newman.[1] While there were certainly advocates of this view of justification in the early Reformed and Anglican Churches, Reformed/Anglican positions on justification were more diverse than this narrative allows. As Alister McGrath points out, German Reformed theologian Martin Bucer (who was one of, if not the principal Continental influence on the English Reformation) was heavily influenced by the moralism of Erasmian humanism in his doctrine of justification, as were Melanchthon and Bullinger, two other important figures for defining the trajectory of early Anglican soteriology.[2] We see this humanistic/moralist impulse in early Reformed Anglicanism in the thought of figures like Richard Field, who gives a greater role to works and moral development in his soteriology by deploying the ostensibly Roman distinction between a first and second justification, as well as in Davenant, who talks about works as the “way” (via) to salvation, neither of which sits well with the Reformation Anglicans’ story of a golden age in which the pure, solafidian doctrine of justification was universally held and taught.[3] Put simply, in the early Reformed and Anglican traditions, sola fide and humanist moralism (amongst other influences) were intertwined, and inflected one another in various ways, rather than being antagonistic or opposed to one another.
Another way Reformation Anglicans show forth a confused, overly restrictive understanding of the Reformed tradition is in its wholesale rejection of the Eucharist as a sacrifice. On the Center for Reformation Anglicanism website, there are a number of articles and pages in which it is claimed that the Reformers and early Anglicanism utterly rejected any and all notions of the Eucharist as a sacrifice. But again, the Reformed and early Anglican traditions are more diverse and flexible than our Reformation Anglican friends allow. Though more reserved in their use of sacrificial language and categories, some of the Reformed, such as Vermigli and Zanchi, held to the Eucharist as in some sense a sacrifice (e.g., of praise and thanksgiving, of ourselves, commemorative, etc.). This is also true of the English Reformed, such as Davenant, who, while explicitly rejecting the Eucharist as propitiatory, maintained that the Eucharist is a spiritual and figurative sacrifice, and that it applies to the recipients the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice (what the Caroline divines would later refer to as an applicative sacrifice).[4] My colleague at Reformed Episcopal Seminary, Dr. Eric Parker has written an excellent article on this topic for The North American Anglican, so I will not belabor the point here.
One final point on which Reformation Anglicans frequently confuse and over-define what it means to be Reformed is the topic of predestination. Teaching at the flagship seminary of an historically Calvinist sub-tradition within the broader Anglican Church, I am often confronted with those who, on the pretense that the Anglican Church is a “Reformed” Church, insist that we are therefore bound as Anglicans to believe in absolute, unconditional predestination, and sometimes even in the canons of Dort. This is admittedly an anecdotal piece of evidence, but anyone following Reformation Anglican websites, blogs, and activity on social media will be able to confirm how prevalent this sentiment is in those circles. Now, as I said in my initial article, our Formularies are amenable to Calvinist views on absolute and unconditional predestination, but they are not the only, or even the straightforward interpretation of them, Article XVII, in its plain, natural sense, being Philippist and/or Rhenish-Reformed. There is, then, nothing in the Elizabethan Settlement or our Church’s Formularies that binds us to absolute, unconditional predestinarian doctrine, or that the avante-garde conformists and Laudians betrayed, as is often claimed by Reformation Anglicans. Instances of the Reformation Anglicans’ idealized, more restrictive understanding of the Reformed tradition could be multiplied, but these, I think, are sufficient to make my point.
To sum up, while Crosby’s understanding of the Reformed tradition is quite generous, and, I think, right historically speaking, this understanding of the Reformed tradition is not shared by all Reformation Anglicans. Under the term “Reformed,” itself unobjectionable in Crosby’s sense, Reformation Anglicans frequently try and smuggle into Anglicanism all sorts of doctrines and principles derived from either an idealized reading of the earlier Reformed tradition, or from developments coming from out of the later Presbyterian and Continental Reformed traditions. And it is this sense of Reformed I object to. For in applying this understanding of the Reformed tradition to the project of identifying and centering the Church, we would, it seems, have to exclude not only developed Anglo-Catholicism, but also moderate Tractarianism, Laudianism, and even avante-garde conformity. We are then talking about an Anglican Church without Cosin, Taylor, and Andrewes, a complete overhaul of the Church, or an ecclesial revolution, which, though enticing to some, is a frightening prospect from my point of view. If this is what is meant by “reestablishing” the Anglican Church as a Reformed Church, I, for one, want no part of it. However, my intuition is that Crosby has no interest in such a revolution either. In fact, from what I was able to gather from his article, my guess would be that we are very similar in theological and liturgical sensibilities: I think Calvin is right in the main on the Supper; I agree with Melanchthon and Andrewes’ minimalist sensibilities when it comes to predestination; I prefer Waterland on the Eucharistic sacrifice; I wear a cassock, surplice, tippet, academic hood and preaching bands for the vast majority of services, and have little taste for ritualism, and so on and so forth. That is to say, besides quibbling over words, I am confident Rev. Crosby and I have a more or less shared vision for an Anglican Center. I only wish his Reformation Anglican friends were of the same mind.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
[2] Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 3.5.
[3] Field, Of the Church, vol. II, pp. 268, 316-317; Davenant, Treatise on Justification, vol. I, p. 405.
[4] Davenant, Determinationes, qst. 13.
