Doctrine in the Church of England

Interestingly enough late late last night since I couldn't get to sleep, I started reading a book that was published in New York by The MacMillan Company in 1938 entitled Doctrine in the Church of England - The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922. (Though there is a year published, there is no copyright notice of any sort.)

The "Chairman's Introduction" is by none other than +++William Temple who was Bishop of Manchester when the Commission began its work and Archbishop of York (ABY) by the time he wrote the Chairman's Introduction in October of 1937. (By late 1943 he would be the 98th Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) - this I know because +++WT's reply to Bishop Ronald Hall of Hong Kong telling him that ordaining a deaconess named Florence Li Tim-Oi to the priesthood would not be a good idea arrived after +RH had done just that in Hsinxing, Guandong, unoccupied China on the Feast Day of the Confession of St. Paul, 25 January 1944.)

Anyhoo, I'm almost done reading the introduction and I already have a list of 15 different terms/Latin phrases/rare words to look up. From what I have gathered so far the work of the Commission was not to come up with an "official" doctrine for the Church of England (CoE), but to find the points of agreement from the different theological schools within the CoE at that time. This would have been done at a time when "modernity" was springing up everywhere along with major social and political changes.

One thing that then ABY, later ABC, William Temple pointed out in his "Chairman's Introduction" was:

. . . we must recon among the special determinants of English theology the fact that our Reformation Fathers appealed so largely to the authority of Patristic, and especially of Greek Patristic, writings. They were at one with the Continental Reformers in their indebtedness to St. Augustine; but to a greater extent they paid regard also to the works of Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories. In these the distinctive doctrines of St. Augustine, which he developed in his controversy with Pelagianism, are (naturally) not to be found. The heirs of Luther's Augustinianism are apt to accuse English Christianity as a whole of Pelagianism; and it must be admitted that we have a perpetual tendency in that direction. As I regard Pelagianism as of all heresies spiritually the most pernicious, I share in some degree the Continenal anxiety concerning our habitual inclination towards it. Yet I am glad that we have not been lastingly subjected to the distinctively Augustinian doctrine of the Fall, but can balance this with the very different doctrine of some of the Greek Fathers (page 5).

In the result there is found to be a closer relationship in theology between the Orthodox Churches of the East and the Church of England that between the former and either Rome on the one hand or Wittenberg or Geneva on the other (page 6).

So for all our Protestant Episcopal and Anglo-Catholic labeling, it looks like we could be historically more Greek/Orthodox than we are Protestant or Roman. At least in the eyes of one former ABC.

According to the index Doctrine in the Church of England covers the following subjects:

Prolegomena - The Sources and Authority of Christian Doctrine
The Doctrines of God and of Redemption
The Church and Sacraments
Eschatology

The appendices are:

On the Psychological Aspects of Sin
On Finitude and Original Sin
On the Meaning of the Terms "Body" and "Blood" in Eucharistic Theology
On the Relation of the Sacraments to Grace

So it should be quite the educational read. I plan on blogging about it more here as I read through the book. Feel free to stop by, read the posts, and leave your comments.

Anyhoo, I shall close with two quotes of +++William Temple that stood out to me in the Chairman's Introduction. The first provides some good food for thought. The second is rather interesting as the piece was written early in the fall of 1937, just less than two years before what security of the nineteenth century that still lingered in England would be forever shattered by WWII.

It is a sad reflection upon the sincerity of Christian discipleship that so often in the history of the Church controversy had been conducted with bitterness and has been associated, as both cause and effect, with personal animosity. It is truly said that to become bitter in controversy is more heretical than to espouse with sincerity and charity the most devastating theological opinions; and by this standard the "orthodox" are condemned as grievously as their opponents. Progress in apprehension of the truths of the Gospel must chiefly come by the intercourse of minds united in friendship, so that they can do that most difficult thing to which St. Paul refers as though it ought to come naturally - "speaking the truth in love (page 1)."

If the security of the nineteenth century, already shattered in Europe, finally crumbles away in our country, we shall be pressed more and more towards a theology of Redemption. In this we shall be coming closer to the New Testament. We have been learning again how improtent man is to save himself, how deep and pervasive is that corruption which theologians call Original Sin. Man needs above all else to be saved from himself. This must be the work of Divine Grace (page 17).

23.5 pages read so far out of a total of 242.

Catagories: Anglican Communion, Anglican Doctrine, Books, Christian Doctrine, Christianity, Church of England, Doctrine, ECUSA, Episcopal Church, Episcopal Doctrine, Non-Fiction, Pelagianism, Reading, Religion , Saint Augustine, Theology, Theology of Redemption, & William Temple.