RETURNING TO CLASSICAL ANGLICANISM FROM ‘EASTERN’ ORTHODOXY
Michael Millard
Theologically I found it quite difficult to begin this explanation for my return to Anglicanism; but, as I wrote this down
over several months, the reasons became much clearer, especially in the weeks after I had been received back. I have now
returned home.
Much that I wrote on the way into Orthodoxy I still hold to. I have shared since my twenties Orthodoxy’s emphasis on
mystery and the unwillingness to go down the Western road of Systematic Theology, where the tendency is to define the
unfathomable, for, “God cannot be grasped by the mind. If He could be grasped, He would not be God”” (Evagrius of
Pontus). “The Church gives us not a system but a key; not a plan of God’s City, but the means of entering it” (Fr. George
Florovsky). Furthermore, in the words of Sir Thomas Browne in his ‘Religio Medici’, the “whole of Creation is a mystery,
and particularly that of man”.
In that respect, classical Anglicanism and Orthodoxy are one in affirming the reality of the Eucharistic Presence of Christ
but not seeking to define the manner of that Presence. Nicholas Cabasilas began his 'Commentary on the Divine Liturgy'
by asserting that the "essential act in the celebration of the holy mysteries is the transformation of the elements into the
Divine Body and Blood ". The Longer Catechism of the Russian Orthodox Church (1839) includes this quotation from St.
John of Damascus' 'On the Orthodox Faith': "If you enquire how this happens, it is enough for you to know that it is by
the Holy Spirit…we know nothing more than this, that the word of God is true, active and omnipotent, but in its manner
of operation unsearchable".
We find a similar tendency in classical Anglicanism, in its response to both the Continental and Catholic Reformations.
Richard Hooker asked: "shall I wish that men would give themselves more to meditate with silence what we have by the
sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how?”. In the same way Jeremy Taylor rejected all speculation: "Is it not
enough for me to believe the words of Christ, saying, This is my body? and cannot I take it thankfully, and believe it
heartily, and confess it joyfully; but must I pry into its secret”. Thomas Ken prayed: "Lord, what need I labour in vain to
search out the manner of thy mysterious presence in the sacrament, when my love assures me thou art there?" John Cosin,
in his ‘Historia Transubstantialis Papalis’, asserted that “we … do not search into the manner with perplexing enquiries;
but, after the examination of the Primitive and purest Church of CHRIST, we leave it to the power and wisdom of our
LORD, yielding a full and unfeigned assent to His words". Lancelot Andrewes replied to the Cardinal Robert Bellarmine:
'Christ said "This is My Body." He did not say, "This is My Body in this way." … We believe no less than you that the
presence is real. Concerning the method of the presence, we define nothing rashly, and I add, we do not anxiously inquire.'
Dean Stranks rightly concluded that “Anglican devotional writers on the Blessed Sacrament are more empirical than
speculative … they are not much inclined to discuss the manner of his presence, but to rest on its certainly” (‘Anglican
Devotion’: p. 281). In this they followed the example of Queen Elizabeth I in her poem ‘Hoc est corpus meum’:
"Twas God the Word that spake it,
The same took the bread and brake it;
And as the word did make it;
So I believe, and take it."
George Hugh Bourne’s words in his hymn of 1874, ‘Lord, enthroned in Heavenly Splendour’, express well this classic
Anglican approach:
“Here for faith's discernment pray we,
Lest we fail to know thee now.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thou art here, we ask not how.”
Anglicanism provides a spectrum within which the individual is at liberty to place his Eucharistic doctrine. Articles XXV
and XXVIII ruled out Transubstantiation and Zwinglianism. In reality the phrasing of the formularies made all
intermediate positions tenable. This was partly due to the ambiguity in the Elizabethan Articles. Furthermore, the 1559
Prayer Book conjoined the words of Administration in the two Edwardian Prayer Books.
John Keble stated that he took the words of institution literally as Christ ‘declaring His Eucharistic Body… to the same
Body which was sacrificed’ and therefore ‘to be adorable’. He saw only two alternatives. The first was the Zwinglian view:
“This is a figure of My Body” while the second was the ‘Calvinistic’: “This is (not my Body, but) something which in
energy and effect will be as it were My Body”. ‘Besides these two, I see no way of taking the words short of the literal one.
But neither of these will bear the weight of the 6th Chapter of St. John, or the sayings of the ancient Church, especially in
the Liturgies”.
The English Reformers sought consistently to return to the ancient faith of the early church in this as elsewhere. Thomas
Cranmer made this clear in his Appeal against Degredation:
“And touching my doctrine of the sacrament, and other my doctrine, of what kind soever it be, I protest that it was never
my mind to write, speak, or understand any thing contrary to the most holy word of God, or else against the holy catholic
church of Christ; but purely and simply to imitate and teach those things only, which I had learned of the sacred scripture,
and of the holy catholic church from the beginning, and also according to the exposition of the most holy and learned
fathers and martyrs of the church”. Our reformers and our formularies were one with the Orthodox in rejecting the
extravagant late mediaeval innovations of the Roman Church to Eucharistic devotion. Article XXII stated that the
“Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about”.
Thomas Cranmer had made that same point explicitly in the following rhetorical questions. “Is this the holy catholic faith,
that the sacrament should be hanged over the altar and worshipped? and be they heretics that will consent thereto? I pray
you, who made this faith? Any other but the bishops of Rome? and that more than a thousand years after the faith of
Christ was full and perfect.”
The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 contains the following unequivocal rubric: “And if any of the Bread and Wine
remain unconsecrated, the Curate shall have it to his own use: but if any remain of that which was consecrated, it shall not
be carried out of the Church, but the Priest, and such other of the Communicants as he shall then call unto him, shall,
immediately after the Blessing, reverently eat and drink the same”. Yet since the late nineteenth century such Roman
Catholic practices have become defiantly observed by Anglo-Catholic Ritualists.
In my keenness to enter into the Orthodox Church, I accepted changes in what I believed. I genuinely found that I could
now free myself from my Augustinian (at one time Calvinist) past and in doing so came to question much that Augustine
had contributed towards in the theology of the Western Church. At the heart of all this were the issues of ‘Original Sin’
and original guilt, stemming from the ‘non posse non peccare’ of Augustine and the ‘in quo’ of the Vulgate (Romans 5:12)
and leading to the more extreme ‘total depravity’ of Calvinism, which Metropolitan Anthony had once told me was
definitely not the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Through my reading of Orthodox writers I was introduced to the
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concepts of ‘Ancestral Sin’ and the ‘synergy’, the latter being a term coined by St. Clement of Alexandria. St. John
Chrysostom acknowledged antecedent grace, but also insisted that God “does not act antecedently to our will, so as not to
destroy our liberty”. I came to see that it was possible to accept Original or rather Ancestral Sin without the inherent guilt
that Augustine read into the Vulgate’s mistranslation of Romans 5:12. I was also willing to acquiesce in the Orthodox
doctrine of synergy (Phil. 2: 12-13), the “co-operation of two unequal, but equally necessary forces: divine will and human
will” (Lev Gillet). The term was derived from 1 Corinthians 3:19, where Paul affirms that we are fellow-workers (synergoi)
with God. “God works together with willing souls. … To save the unwilling is the act of one using compulsion; but to save
the willing, that of one showing grace” (St. Clement of Alexandria). “Grace never ceases to help us secretly; but to do
good, as far as lies in our power, depends on us" (St. Mark the Ascetic). “And so the grace of God co-operates with our will
for its advantage” (St. John Cassian). “The grace of God is not vouchsafed to those who make no effort, and without that
grace our efforts cannot collect the prize of virtue” (St. Theodoret). Archbishop Laud wrote that “grace was never given
but in a reasonable creature”. Lancelot Andrewes once explicitly affirmed: “Man, by his free will, can desire to turn away
from sin and, immediately helped by the Holy Spirit, enters on the way of repentance, of conversion of heart” (italics
mine).
The Augustinian doctrine of grace is not evident in the Greek fathers and I doubt one can find it in the Latin fathers,
prior to Augustine. That is why we refer to it and much else that is characteristic of Augustine as Augustinianism; because
Augustine stamped his individual mark on it took it further than any had done before and infused it with his philosophical
hypotheses. Augustine did not really know Greek and there lies much of the problem. Furthermore Augustinians and
Calvinists select certain passages and verses from Paul and then claim them as their own. We should beware of personal
‘isms’, being of Paul or Cephas or Apollo. They tie us to an individual's thoughts other than Christ's (1 Cor. 3:4-11). As
Anglicans (and therefore Catholics) we do not follow any one mentor, unlike Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, Arminianism or
Calvinism. Hooker and our 'divines' are clear on that.
The language of Theosis was strange to me and yet I came to see it as expressing an important truth that we are called to
be ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4). It was implicit in being ‘predestined to be conformed to the image of His
Son’ (Romans 8:29). Yet it is only to be found in a few verses of Scripture, however much the Greek fathers may have
emphasised it. I still, of course, see it as central to our Christian vocation. God calls us to ‘be holy, as I am holy” (Lev.
11:44, 1 Peter 1:16) – that comes about through ‘Theosis’. John Keble spoke of that ‘deifying discipline’ whereby we ‘are so
joined to Him, as to be verily and indeed "partakers of a Divine nature."’ He found such teaching in the writings of the
Greek fathers but also of Anglican divines, such as Lancelot Andrewes.
“But then, why recepistis Spiritum Sanctum, 'the Holy Ghost?' No receiving will serve, but of Him? The reason is, it is
nothing here below that we seek, but to heaven we aspire. Then, if to heaven we shall, something from heaven must
thither exalt us. If 'partakers of the Divine nature,' we hope to be, as great and precious promises we have that we shall be,
that can be no otherwise than by receiving One in whom the Divine nature is. He being received imparts it to us, and so
makes us Consortes Divinae naturae; and that is the Holy Ghost.
“For as an absolute necessity there is that we receive the Spirit, else can we not live the life of nature, so no less absolute
that we receive the Holy Spirit, else can we not live the life of grace, and so consequently never come to the life of glory”
Mary and the saints were a more difficult issue and still are. I have always held a high view of Mary, one that was often
unpalatable to evangelicals. Yet that view was grounded in the scriptural record. Mary was both ‘Blessed’ and a virgin. She
provided an example of humility, obedience, motherly love and faithfulness. In her wholehearted submission to her unique
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vocation, she actively consented to the conception of Christ. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has written, it is “"abundantly
clear that she acted with full freedom and in no way under constraint"; therefore if “we honour Mary, then it is not simply
because she was chosen by God, but because she herself chose aright". She was “a model and example for us all”.
The Conciliar title of ‘Theotokos’ is implicit in Scripture; yet its meaning is literally ‘God-bearer’ not ‘Mother of God’.
However Christ's two natures are inseparable in the Incarnation and thus to deny the truth behind the title is to be guilty
of Nestorianism. “The Virgin is Mother, not of a human person united to the divine person of the Logos, but of a single,
undivided person who is God and man at once” (Kallistos Ware). Hence Mary was the 'mother of my Lord' (Luke 1: 43).
In her womb was tabernacled the Word who became flesh (John 1:14). The Virgin conceived Emmanuel, God with us
(Matthew 1: 23). To call Mary the Mother of God affirms the hypostatic union, for Theotokos is a Christological assertion,
as the German Protestant theologian Karl Barth pointed out. The term is not strictly Biblical but neither is the term the
‘Trinity’ yet both affirm profound Scriptural truths. Her perpetual virginity I accepted, as Luther [“Christ . . . was the only
Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no children besides Him”] and Calvin had done, even though Scripture offers no
clear endorsement. The title ‘Aeiparthenos’ was conferred on her at Constantinople II (553), but the testimony of the
Fathers had endorsed it centuries before. “Mary, as those declare who with sound mind extol her, had no other son but
Jesus” (Origen), for “the Son … took true human flesh of Mary Ever-Virgin” (Athanasius), “born perfectly of the holy evervirgin Mary by the Holy Spirit” (Epiphanius). “The friends of Christ do not tolerate hearing that the Mother of God ever
ceased to be a virgin” (St. Basil). Mary “remained a virgin” (St. Jerome); “a Virgin she remained” (St. Leo the Great); “nor
did the Virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son” (St. Ambrose). “The ever-virgin One thus remains
even after the birth still virgin, having never at any time up till death consorted with a man” (St. John of Damascus). “Thus
Christ by being born of a virgin, who, before she knew Who was to be born of her, had determined to continue a virgin,
chose rather to approve, than to command, holy virginity. And thus, even in the female herself, in whom He took the form
of a servant, He willed that virginity should be free” (St. Augustine). However beyond that the problems arise. The
evidence for the Dormition, that after her death the ‘spotless’ and ‘all-holy’ Mother of God was assumed into Heaven, is
from very late ‘Patristic’ sources. Though it is not a dogma of the Orthodox Church, the feast of the Dormition is a great
one that requires a fast before it. Thus it is liturgically important. It is accepted as little less than a dogma and more than
a theologoumenon. Here I come to the core of the matter: ‘by what authority?’
I have long rejected the comprehensive doctrine of ‘sola scriptura’ but my Evangelical roots instilled in me a deep sense of
demanding Scriptural warranty. Thomas Cranmer contended that “the word of God, written and contained within the
canon of the bible, is a true, sound, perfect, and whole doctrine, containing in itself fully all things needful for our
salvation”. Article VI maintained the sufficiency of Scripture for salvation. Bishop Jewel defended this position against his
Roman Catholic antagonists: “Wherefore, if we be heretics, and they (as they would fain be called) be Catholics, why do
they not, as they see the fathers, which were Catholic men, have always done? Why do they not convince and master us
by the Divine Scriptures? Why do they not call us again to be tried by them? Why do they not lay before us how we have
gone away from Christ, from the Prophets, from the Apostles, and from the holy fathers? Why stick they to do it? Why
are they afraid of it? It is God’s cause. Why are they doubtful to commit it to the trial of God’s word? If we be heretics,
which refer all our controversies unto the Holy Scriptures, and report us to the self-same words which we know were
sealed by God Himself, and in comparison of them set little by all other things, whatsoever may be devised by men, how
shall we say to these folk, I pray you what manner of men be they, and how is it meet to call them, which fear the
judgment of the Holy Scriptures—that is to say, the judgment of God Himself—and do prefer before them their own
dreams and full cold inventions; and, to maintain their own traditions, have defaced and corrupted, now these many
hundred years, the ordinances of Christ and of the Apostles?”
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The same point was made more poetically by Richard Hooker, in language reminiscent of the Psalms: “The testimonies of
God are true, the testimonies of God are perfect, the testimonies of God are all sufficient unto that end for which they were
given. Therefore accordingly we do receive them, we do not think that in them God hath omitted any thing needful unto
his purpose, and left his intent to be accomplished by our divisinges. What the Scripture purposeth the same in all points it
doth performe.” George Herbert wrote that the Holy Scriptures “have not only an Elementary use, but a use to perfection,
neither can they ever be exhausted,” He also made clear that Reformation principle that we should look firstly to Scripture
to interpret Scripture.
“Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glory!
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,
But all their constellations of the story.
Each passage of Scripture illuminates some other.
This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth life.”
Article VI affirmed the supremacy of Scripture ‘so that whatsoever is not contained therein nor proved thereby is not to be
required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the Faith’. The sixth article of the Church of England, John
Keble pointed out in 1841: “might seem, at first sight, to dispense with the Church’s office, as a witness and keeper of Holy
Writ, an enunciator of the Rule of Faith... Our inquirer’s perplexity would begin with the Sixth Article: he might have
learned from some other quarter – from Field, perhaps, or Laud, or Tertullian, or St. Augustine, that Scripture alone is not
the Rule of Faith, and in what sense it is not so”. He wrote in guarded defence of his friend, John Henry Newman, who
had just created uproar by the publication of his Tract XC. Of that sixth article, Newman had written that “not a word is
said, in favour of Scripture, having no rule or method to fix interpretation by, or, as has been commonly expressed, being
the sole rule of faith; nor on the other, of the private judgment of the individual being the ultimate standard of
interpretation”.
Richard Hooker wrote of two extreme and opposite opinions, “both repugnant to the truth”. One was the Roman Catholic
teaching of its insufficiency, while the other upholds that it suffices not only for all that is necessary for salvation but “all
things simply”. In doing so he confirmed the sufficiency of Scripture, while confining it to that which is necessary for
salvation, rather than to adiaphora and matters outside its essential remit. “Two opinions therefore there are concerning
sufficiency of Holy Scripture, each extremely opposite unto the other, and both repugnant unto truth. The schools of Rome
teach Scripture to be so unsufficient, as if, except traditions were added, it did not contain all revealed and supernatural
truth, which absolutely is necessary for the children of men in this life to know that they may in the next be saved. Others
justly condemning this opinion grow likewise unto a dangerous extremity, as if Scripture did not only contain all things in
that kind necessary, but all things simply, and in such sort that to do any thing according to any other law were not only
unnecessary but even opposite unto salvation, unlawful and sinful”. Michael Ramsey commented on this passage that
Hooker “notes that Holy Scripture must not be used for the kinds of information and knowledge of information that it is
not concerned about, because that knowledge and information does not bear upon salvation”.
Nevertheless not even General Councils have authority to ordain anything as necessary to salvation which is not 'taken out
of holy Scripture' (Article XXI). The Church is 'a witness and a keeper of holy Writ' (Article XX). Scriptural primacy
demands that Tradition be accountable to its higher authority. Even the reason why the Catholic Creeds 'ought thoroughly
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to be received and believed' is that 'they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture' (Article VIII); thus, in
of Edward Stillingfeet’s phrase, “the creed must suppose the Scripture”. The old High Church axiom is thus applicable:
‘The Church to teach, the Bible to prove’. Archbishop Laud stated: “The Scripture where ’tis plaine, should guide the
Church: and the Church where there’s Doubt or Difficulty, should expound the Scriptures”. Francis White, Bishop of Ely,
affirmed: “We reject not all Traditions, but such as are ... not consonant to the prime rule of faith, to wit, the Holy
Scripture”. In ‘A Treatise of the Sabbath Day’ (1635), he made one of the clearest statements of what is meant by the
supremacy or primacy of Scripture: "The Holy Scripture is the fountain and lively spring, containing in all sufficiency and
abundance the pure water of life, and whatsoever is necessary to make God's people wise unto salvation. The consentient
and unanimous testimony of the true Church of Christ in the primitive ages is canalis, a conduit pipe, to derive and convey
to succeeding generations the celestial water contained in Holy Scripture. The first of these, namely the Scriptures, is the
sovereign authority, and for itself worthy of all acceptation. The latter, namely the voice and testimony of the Primitive
Church, is a ministerial and subordinate rule and guide to preserve and direct us in the right understanding of the
Scriptures".
With reference to the contemporary Evangelical-Orthodox dialogue, the Evangelical Alliance’s Commission commented
that evangelicals need to comprehend the Orthodox insistence on reading Scripture in the light of Tradition and the usage
of allegory in emphasising “the Christocentric nature of Scripture”., Father John Breck asserted that Jesus Christ Himself
as the Logos is the source of the Holy Scriptures. Christ is the fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures, who “provides the true
key to the Law and the Prophets”. He is the ‘hermeneutic principle’, who reveals the true sense of all inspired Scripture”
(2001: pp. 9-10). Allegory was used to confirm the unity of the two testaments.
In ‘De Principiis’, Origen emphasised the allegorical and Christocentric interpretation by use of the analogy of the human
person as being a composite of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. Citing inter alia Proverbs 22: 20-21, 1 Corinthians 2: 6-7
and Hebrews 10:1, Origen concluded: “For just as man consists of body, soul and spirit, so too does the Scripture which
God has provided for the salvation of men”. For him “the reason for all these false, impious and ignorant assertions about
God is simply that Scripture is not understood spiritually, but in accordance with the bare letter”. Spiritual interpretation
demonstrates that “what heavenly things the Jews after the flesh were serving as a copy and shadow [Heb. 8:5] and of what
good things to come the law has a shadow [Heb. 10:1]... The most important of these are of course teachings about God
and his only-begotten Son”. The use of “allegorization in the manner of Philo was carried to extreme lengths” by Origen
and the Alexandrian school (Bicknell). They ignored the historical location of the Old Testament prophecies, an excessive
oversight that demanded redress by the literalism of the Antiochene school. Theodore of Mopsuestia stressed that the these
passages should be seen both as relevant to those to whom they were actually addressed as well as being interpreted for a
much later specifically Christian readership, thus placing them initially within their immediate historical and literal
context. However, towards the end of the fourth century, when Origen’s allegorical method had become controversial, St.
Gregory of Nyssa wrote in its support: “In the Gospels all words and actions have a higher and more divine meaning, and
there is nothing which does not possess this character, and which does not reveal itself absolutely as a kind of mixture of
the Divine with the human level”. Origen had proposed four possible modes of scriptural exegesis: literal, tropological
/moral, allegorical / mystical) and analogical/revelatory. These became the standard medieval approaches as summarised in
this mnemonic attributed to Augustinus of Docia:
Littera gesta docet, Quid credas allegoria,
Moralia quod agas, Quo tendas anagogia.
The literal sense teaches what happened, the allegorical what you believe,
The moral what you should do, the anagogical where you are going. (translation: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu)
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A clear early example is provided by St. John Cassian, who demonstrates that there were four ways in which Scriptural
references to Jerusalem could be understood in these four ways:
‘And so these four previously mentioned figures coalesce, if we desire, in one subject, so that one and the same Jerusalem
can be taken in four senses: historically as the city of the Jews; allegorically as Church of Christ, anagogically as the
heavenly city of God "which is the mother of us all," tropologically, as the soul of man, which is frequently subject to
praise or blame from the Lord under this title. Of these four kinds of interpretation the blessed Apostle speaks as follows:
"But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by
revelation or by knowledge or by prophecy or by doctrine?"* For "revelation" belongs to allegory whereby what is
concealed under the historical narrative is revealed in its spiritual sense and interpretation...’
* 1 Cor. 14: 6
Origen and St. Clement of Alexandria were members of the Alexandrian school of theology and shared some common
ground with the Gnosticism they opposed. It made ambiguous the relationship between Gnosticism and their alternative of
‘Christian gnosis’. As Jaroslav Pelikan wrote: ‘This is not only because, especially in Clement, the term “Gnostic” was used
as a title for the Christian intellectual, but because these Alexandrian theologians shared many of the ideas they were
describing’. Balthasar maintained that they had “attempted to annex to Christian theology as much as they could of the
speculative property of Gnosticism, and behind that of Middle Platonism”.
One would have to be an avidly fundamentalist simpleton to deny that there are other ways of interpreting Scriptural
passages than literally; for in the Bible one can find, inter alia, metaphors, analogies, allegories, ‘types’, parables and, of
course, poetry. Apocalyptic literature in particular must be treated with extreme caution and in general it should certainly
not be interpreted literally. Wisely Calvin never wrote a commentary on Revelation (Apocalypse). There are “some things
that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16) not only in the Pauline epistles but throughout the whole canon of Scripture.
Nevertheless the Protestant Reformers were self-evidently right in their insistence that the attribute of ‘perspicuity’
(transparency) be applied to the essence of the biblical message, that which is necessary for salvation. Thomas Aquinas had
clearly seen the limitations of the allegorical hermeneutic. He cited Augustine to affirm that “there is nothing taught in a
hidden way in scripture in one place that is not taught openly in another. To avoid error the spiritual ‘expositio’ needs to
be supported always by a literal explanation. “Nothing necessary for faith is contained in the spiritual sense which the
scripture does not elsewhere express openly”. Martin Luther agreed: “In the Scriptures no allegory, tropology or anagogy is
valid, unless the same truth is explicitly stated literally somewhere else. Otherwise, Scripture would be a laughing matter”.
John Calvin insisted “that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning”, for in many places the
meaning is clear, plain and simple. Therefore the Bible itself could be read by the laity in the vernacular and its words
known well by “a boy that driveth the plough” (William Tyndale). Tyndale, who gave his life to that end, made his
position clear. “Thou shalt understand, therefore, that the scripture hath but one sense, which is but the literal sense. And
that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto if thou cleave, thou canst never
err or go out of the way. And if thou leave the literal sense, thou canst not but go out of the way. Nevertheless, the
scripture uses proverbs, similitudes, riddles, or allegories, as all other speeches do; but that which the proverb, similitude,
riddle or allegory signifieth, is ever the literal sense, which thou must seek out diligently.” Hooker, in arguing that in the
phrase ‘born of water and the spirit’ water refers to the physical element, affirmed: “I hold it for a most infallible rule in
expositions of sacred Scripture, that where a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the letter is commonly the
worst.”
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Robert Bellarmine argued against the Protestant position, stating that “Scripture is obscure and requires interpretation,… in
one visible, common judge,… the common judgment of the Church” However Erasmus, a Catholic humanist and
adversary of Luther, had written against the denial of the vernacular Bible to the laity, with the inference from doing so
that “Christ had imparted a teaching so obscure that it could be understood only by a handful of theologians”. Zwingli
affirmed: “The Word of God, as soon as it shines upon the individual’s understanding, illuminates it in such a way that he
understands it”. Thus, in the main, it was at “the Reformation, when the allegorical method of exposition was abandoned
in favour of the sounder principle that Scripture must be taken in its literal sense” (Jim Packer). The Greek philosopher
Heraclitus defined allegory as “saying one thing and meaning something other than what is said”. In the West the
allegorical explanation was generally regarded as just one of four hermeneutical ‘senses’ (the Quadriga) and it was reserved
for passages in which the meaning was either deemed obscure or unacceptable in a literal sense. By contrast, the
Alexandrian overemphasis on the allegorical approach to the Old Testament stripped away the material overlay, demoted
the historical context, subjecting much, even of minutest detail, to spiritualised interpretations and typological
foreshadowings. “The sacrifice and temple rituals of the Old Testament are recycled in the church by making elders
(presbyters) priests and reinterpreting the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice for the propitiation of sin in the way that the Old
Testament sacrifices were” (Gerald Bray).
Here we come upon another closely related issue for the Reformers: the Law. We are not bound by the Mosaic ceremonial
or civil law but we are by the moral. That moral law is “to be obeyed by Christians: but the Mosaic Law in the Torah
concerning ceremonial, ritual and civil matters is no longer in force for the people of the new covenant. These parts of the
Torah belonged to the old dispensation, which was fulfilled in Christ Jesus, no longer applies to Christian activity and
behaviour” (Peter Toon). That is clear from Article VII, which says exactly that: “Although the Law given from God by
Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to
be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the
Commandments which are called Moral.” The “moral aspects of the law remain valid for us, because they reflect the
character of God and what he expects of his people” (Gerald Bray).
In 1990, I started research for a book ‘reviewing various aspects of Dean Hook’s life, work, ministry, theology and causes’.
I am not quite sure why I discontinued this after about two years, but it was probably due in part to the combined impact
of the birth of my son and the decision of General Synod, five days later, to proceed with the ordination of women to the
priesthood (that issue profoundly disturbed me for several years so that I started looking seriously for the first time into
joining the Orthodox Church). I had managed however to produce a paper entitled ‘Dean W.F. Hook & High Church
Principles’ for an Oxford graduate seminar, given on 1st June 1992. Looking back I can see why I contented myself, as
indeed I do now, with the self-depiction of an ‘Evangelical High Churchman’, a term first coined by Henry Christmas in
1840. Such best described the subject of my research, Walter Farquhar Hook, Vicar of Leeds from 1837 to 1859 and
afterwards Dean of Chichester until his death in 1875, was an old High Churchman who was friends with some of the
Tractarians, in spite of differences that emerged between them. Dr. Hook made plain the issues of the sufficiency and
primacy of Holy Scripture. "Nothing can be plainer than the principle of the Church of England that there is an authority
above the Church; that the Scriptures only are the rule of faith; and that the teaching of the Church is to be repudiated
when it decrees, as necessary to salvation, anything contrary to, or, in addition to, what is revealed in Scripture … in the
Scriptures, are the fundamental truths are so plain, that he may run who reads”.
John Cosin reviewed Roman Catholic prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the excesses of Marian devotion, addressing her in
terms that Scripture reserved for God, “in direct and plain terms, so absolute that I know not what can be more; and sure I
am, that we have no more of God, and for Christ Himself”. John Pearson wrote about the reverend regard that we should
7
have of Mary: “Let us keep the language of the Primitive Church. Let her be honoured and esteemed, let Him (Christ) be
worshipped and adored”. George Hickes likewise cautioned a patristic moderation: “But we should keep our respects to her
person and memory within due bounds and limits, lest transgressing herein, we should fall into those unwarrantable
excesses and abuses which a great part of Christendom is too justly chargeable with”.
It follows therefore the intercession of the Saints is problematic for me. I concur with Tom Wright when he wrote that
“there is one particular aspect of the invocation of the saints which troubles me deeply. The practice seems to me to
undermine or actually to deny by implication, something which is promised again and again in the New Testament: the
immediacy of access to God through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit”. “For there is one God and one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Timothy 2:5-6); “Christ that
died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans
8:34). There is no such foundation for the intercessory role of the Saints, who have entered into their rest, and certainly it
“is no point of necessity of salvation” (Richard Montague). “How absurd is it to reason when the King of Heaven calls us
to Him, to run our petitions to the guard or the pages of the court! … Besides, how uncertain must be our devotions needs
be, when we can have no possible assurance of their audience! For who can who can know that a Saint hears us! That God
hears us, we are sure, as we are unsure to be heard by Saints. Nay, we are sure we cannot be all heard of them” (Joseph
Hall). Jeremy Taylor concurred: “We are commanded to call upon the Lord in time of trouble, and it is promised, that He
will deliver us and we shall glorify Him. We find no such command to call upon the saints, neither do we know who are
Saints, excepting a very few; and in what present state they are we cannot know, nor how our prayers come to their
knowledge”.
John Cosin listed among the differences between the Churches of England and Rome: “That all the old saints departed …
are and ought to be invocated by the religious prayers and devotions of all persons” and that “the relics of these true or
reputed saints are to be religiously worshipped” (‘A Letter to the Countess of Peterborough’, 1660; cf. Article XXII).
Lancelot Andrewes wrote to Cardinal Bellarmine: “When you thus invoke the saints, you give them Christ s place; if you
go to them, you put them in the place of Christ, for them to refresh you instead of Him. You take them as mediators with
God, to obtain His pardon for you by their prayers". Bishop Bull contended: "For the worship and invocation of saints
deceased there is no ground or foundation in the Holy Scripture, no precept, no example. Nay, it is by evident
consequence forbidden in the prohibition of the worship and invocation of angels (Col. ii. 1 8). Now if we must not pray
to angels, then much less may we pray to saints" (‘Corruptions of the Church of Rome’). The Book of Homilies (1562) was
clear on this issue: "It is plain by the infallible word of truth and life that in all our necessities we must flee unto God,
direct our prayers unto Him, call upon His holy Name, desire help at His hands, and at none others. . . . We must call
neither upon angel nor yet upon saint, but only and solely upon God." "That we should pray unto saints, neither have we
any commandment in all the Scripture, nor yet example which we may safely follow. . . . Let us not therefore put our trust
or confidence in the saints or martyrs that be dead. Let us not call upon them, nor desire help at their hands; but let us
always lift up our hearts to God, in the Name of His dear Son Christ, for Whose sake as God hath promised to hear our
prayer, so He will truly perform it”. Thus Article XXII stated: “The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons,
Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented,
and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God”. Thomas Cranmer's Collect for
All Saints' Day fulfils that requirement of scriptural warranty and sets the tone for classic Anglicans. We rejoice and share
in the Communion of Saints, professed in the Apostles' Creed. We seek to ‘follow their examples 'in all virtuous and godly
living' and to 'unfeignedly' (without pretence, genuinely) love God’. “What we do not find in the New Testament is any
suggestion that those at present in heaven/paradise are actively engaged in praying for us in the present life. Nor is there
any suggestion that we should ask them to do so” (Tom Wright).
8
Canon A 5 states plainly: “The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such
teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such
doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal”. On the
Articles, our Royal Martyr, King Charles I stated: “The Articles of the Church of England … do contain the true doctrine
of the Church of England agreeable to God’s Word”. In his Declaration which was prefixed to the Articles in the Book of
Common Prayer, His Sacred Majesty clearly and unambiguously stated: "no man hereafter shall either print or preach, to
draw the Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and Full meaning thereof: and shall not put his own
sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense." Article XX states
that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word written”. Article XXI asserted that
General (Ecumenical) Councils “may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things
ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be
taken out of holy Scripture”. Jeremy Taylor wrote: “That the Scripture is a full and sufficient rule for Christians in faith
and manners, a full and perfect declaration of the Will of God, is therefore certain, because we have no other. For if we
consider the grounds upon which all Christians believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God, the same grounds prove that
nothing else is”.
I still accept that for Anglicanism ecclesiology is its Achilles’ heel. In contrast, Orthodoxy, like Roman Catholicism, claims
that its Church is that visible, organic ‘Body of Christ’; which is coterminous with the ‘one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church’ professed in the Creed, founded by Christ and defined by St. Paul ‘the pillar and ground of truth’ (1 Tim. 3:16). It
is that exclusive claim which they both hold that I find I cannot acknowledge for either of them. I can no longer share the
belief that the Orthodox Church is the only, true and full repository of the Faith.
In Orthodoxy the Tradition of the Church encompasses all and Scripture is seen from within its orbit. The Bible comes to
us through the medium of the Church and the Church authenticates the canon. The Septuagint was the Scriptures of the
early church and therefore it may contain deuteron-canonical books but those are still canonical. Tradition, according to
Father Georges Florovsky, is ‘co-extensive’ with Scripture, as its ‘authentic interpretation’. “Tradition is the matrix in
which the Scriptures are conceived and from which they are brought forth” (Father John Breck). “Tradition is not a second
source alongside Scripture; clearly normative for us Orthodox is Scripture as interpreted by the seven ecumenical councils.
But tradition lives on” (Metropolitan Kallistos Ware). Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky maintained that the truth and
fullness of the ‘catholic faith’ are contained in Sacred Scripture and in Apostolic Sacred Tradition. ‘The truths of Scripture
and Tradition, harmoniously fused together into a single whole, define the “catholic consciousness” of the Church, a
consciousness that is guided by the Holy Spirit’.
Sergius Bulgakov defined Tradition as “the living memory of the Church, containing the true doctrine that manifests itself
in its history ... a living power inherent in a living organism”. In it “the past is contained in the present and is the present.
The unity and continuity of tradition follow from the fact that the Church is always identical with itself... Ecclesiastical
tradition is always being created: the process never stops; it is not only the past, but also the present”. “Scripture and
tradition belong to the one life of the Church moved by the Spirit, which operates in the Church, manifesting itself in
tradition and inspiring sacred writers... Scripture and tradition must be comprehended, not as opposed to each other, but
as united, although their real difference remains... Ecclesiastical tradition gives testimony to Scripture, and Scripture is itself
part of that tradition”. Whereas “the Word of God is above all other sources of faith” and has “absolute value” as the
“eternal revelation of divinity”, tradition “adapts itself to different needs and different epochs”. They thus have an “unequal
value” and “Tradition cannot be in disagreement with Scripture... Tradition always supports itself by Scripture; it is an
9
interpretation of Scripture. The germ found in Scripture is the seed; tradition is the harvest which pushes through the soil
of human history” (pp. 19-29).
It was my enormous privilege not only to have heard, on several occasions spanning three decades, but to have met and
spent an evening in the company of the late Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, who in his real humility preferred just to
be called ‘Father’. Never before or since have I met anyone who so radiated Christ. For him, Tradition should be spoken
of something with a past, a present and a future. It was not “something handed down to us from the very beginning, from
one generation to the other. But what was handed down to us is the substance and the meaning not the form”. Tradition is
therefore consistent with change or one becomes “its prisoner”. The Church does not forget its past but it does not fossilise
it for “Tradition is the living memory of almost two thousand years of Christianity”. It is “the living memory of the
Church”, which is “an eternal, unshakeable memory”. Tradition “does not force us backward with every step. It is an
experience rooted in God and inspired by the Holy Spirit”. The Church therefore constantly seeks ‘the mind of Christ’ in
the development of her Tradition. “To listen to the teachings of the Holy Spirit is to be always young, always modern. It
does not tell us to live as we lived in the twelfth century”. Metropolitan Anthony cited with concurrence Jaroslav Pelikan’s
description of Traditionalism as ‘the dead memory which is kept by the living’. Such traditionalism “is heresy” because it
“denies the fact that the Church is alive”. We are the Church and “we should have the youth of the newly born into
eternity” (pp. 204-6). St. Paul warned us against those who are “holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its
power” (2. Tim. 3: 4, N.R.S.V.).
In Orthodoxy, the Patristic period is loosely defined. “The age of the fathers didn't stop in the fifth century or the seventh
century. We could have holy fathers now in the 21st century equal to the ancient fathers” (Metropolitan Kallistos Ware).
In Anglicanism it has a more precise delineation reflecting that truth expressed by St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who wrote that
“in the truth alone and in the ancient Church is both the exactest knowledge, and the truly best set of principles”
(‘Stromata’ 7: XV). The criteria for such were plainly set forth in the canon of St. Vincent of Lerins, in his
‘Commonitorium’ of 434: “Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been
believed everywhere, always and by all” (“quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est”); in other words
before the schisms which have engulfed that Catholic Church since Chalcedon, though of course we accept, in common
with all the churches other than the ‘Oriental’, that council’s rejection of Monophysitism. Thus, unlike them we
acknowledge all the first four Oecumenical Councils, those of the Undivided Catholic Church, which defined the
Christological teaching of the Church, anathemising all heresies on the Person of Christ, and gave to the Church her
(Niceo-Constantinopolitan) Creed. In doing so the classical Anglican is “most careful to receive as tradition only what was
universally received as such, and then used it merely as elucidatory of Scripture … such are the principles of the catholic
Church of England (Dean Hook). Hook maintained that the first four councils are authoritative because they were
‘conservatories of tradition’, handing down “such as can be proved by Scripture, we hold them to be precisely what God
has revealed”.
Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) in a famous passage, summed up the classical Anglican position: "One canon reduced to
writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that
period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith". The same traditio
quinquesecularis was espoused by James I:
“I am such a CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN as believeth the three Creeds… And I believe them in that sense as the ancient
Fathers and Councils that made them did understand them… I reverence and admit the Four First General Councils as
10
Catholic and Orthodox. And the said Four General Councils are acknowledged by our Acts of Parliament, and received for
orthodox by our Church.
As for the Fathers, I reverence them as much and more than the Jesuits do, and as much as themselves ever craved. For
whatever the Fathers for the first five hundred years did with an unanime consent agree upon, to be believed as a necessary
point of salvation, I either will believe it also, or at least will be humbly silent, not taking upon me to condemn the same.
… As for the Scriptures, no man doubteth I will believe them. But even for the Apocrypha, I hold them in the same
accompt that the Ancients did.”
The Russian Slavophile and Orthodox theologian, Aleksei Khomiakov, wrote his Anglican friend, William Palmer in 1846.
“All Protestants are Crypto-Papists . . .To use the concise language of algebra, all the West knows but one datum a;
whether it be preceded by the positive sign +, as with the Romanists, or with the negative sign -, as with the Protestants,
the a remains the same.” For him Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were simply two sides of the same coin.
The popular Orthodox diagram of Church history sees the straight line as the Holy Orthodox Church, from which
schismatics and heretics have deviated at certain points. The Monophysite ‘Oriental’ churches left at Chalcedon and the
Roman Church at the Schism of 1054. At the Reformations that Roman diversion split, with the Protestant churches
leaving it, including the Anglicans. Thus it follows that before the Schism the whole Western Church was Orthodox.
Their simplified model enables them to lay claim to the Celtic (British) church and the English one. However, evidence of
external allegiance is historiographically problematic for the British Church. The conversion of the English had been
initiated by the Papal mission of Augustine, who was appointed by Pope Gregory the Great as the first Archbishop of
Canterbury, receiving, as was customary, the pallium of his office from the Pope. It was St. Gregory himself who had
wished to come but his elevation to the pontificate in 590 had prevented him from doing so. The Venerable Bede recorded
the series of questions sent by Augustine to the Pope for his direction on specific matters. These ranged across a wide
range of issues, ranging from liturgical practice to episcopal oversight, from the punishment of those who robbed the
church to the baptism of pregnant women, from the use to which financial offerings should be put to the consecration of
bishops and relations with the British and Gallic bishops. The Synod of Whitby in 663 synchronised the dating of Easter
and the monastic tonsure with the practice of the Roman Church. If England was Orthodox, it was only so because it was
part of the Catholic Church, which then encompassed East and West.
In mediaeval England, as in the Holy Roman Empire, successive monarchs assaulted, limited and eroded the ordo
jurisdictionis of the Roman See but the ordo pastoralis of the Papacy remained intact. The Investiture Controversy had
resulted in the deposition of the Emperor Henry IV by Pope Gregory VII. The Gregorian Reform had brought a
substantial increase to the centralising power of the See of Rome. While the Norman Conquest had tied England much
more closely to the Papacy, kings still stood on what they deemed to be within their jurisdictional prerogatives. They faced
the novelty of a centralised church seeking total papal control. William I’s archbishop, Lanfranc, wrote to Pope Gregory
VII that the king “could not assent to your wishes”. Lanfranc and William demanded that the pope should not interfere in
England’s internal affairs. The issue concerned lay investiture. Relations between the Papacy and William II reached such a
crisis point that the Pope excommunicated him. William II regarded lay investiture as his right because bishops held
temporalities from the king. The issue flared up again in the relationship of Anselm with Henry I. Another issue of
jurisdiction, that of ecclesiastical courts, lay at the heart of the feud between Henry II and Becket, which ended in the
murder of the latter. John was excommunicated for his refusal to allow a papally appointed primate into England. Only
when forced to do so, on the insistence of Archbishop Stephen Langton and sympathetic magnates, did John sign Magna
Carta that decreed “quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat jura sua integra, et libertates suas illesas …”. The three
11
Statutes of Praemunire of 1353, 1363 and 1393, which remained on the Statute Book until 1967, insisted that all legal cases
must be tried in English courts, prohibited appeals for trial in Rome, the last one seeking to put a stop to the effectiveness
of Papal attempts at circumvention, sometimes accompanied by threats of excommunication. It was to the Statutes of
Praemunire that Henry VIII appealed in his Reformation Settlement. Issues of ecclesiastical and royal jurisdictions were
matters of controversy in the mediaeval period. The jurisdictional aspects of the Henrican Reformation did not begin but
sought to finally resolve such issues.
There is no substantial disagreement between Orthodox and Anglicans over Papal claims. In the Schism of 1054 and the
Henrican Reformation both communions rejected them. Cranmer wrote bluntly “against the usurped power, pretended
authority and jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome”. Under examination for heresy, he declared on 12 September 1555: “This
I do profess as touching my faith, and make my protestation, which I desire you to note. I will never consent that the
bishop of Rome shall have any jurisdiction within this realm”. These are among his milder statements on the subject.
In writing my account of how and why I was becoming Orthodox, ‘Towards Orthodoxy’, I explained why Roman
Catholicism was ‘not an option’. “As an Anglican I had subscribed to the affirmation that ‘the Church of Rome’ hath
erred’. If the Petrine claims of the See of Rome and the Dogma of Papal Infallibility were true then there would be no
alternative than Roman Catholicism but if they were false then the entire edifice of the Roman Church would be without a
sure foundation. Rome was not an option if one furthermore came to the conclusion that the western medieval accretions
were not legitimate developments as Newman and others had claimed. For me as an Anglican that was a necessary
position”.
There may be a historical case for the martyrdoms of Ss. Peter and Paul at Rome but, if Peter’s presence at Rome suggests
his apostolic primacy there, he was previously at Antioch. Thus it could be argued that the Patriarchate of Antioch has a
prior claim. Furthermore, the Fathers were divided in their interpretation of “the rock” in Matthew 16, as a direct reference
to St. Peter himself or the faith in Christ which he had just expressed. On such unsure foundations the later edifice of
much more extravagant claims was erected. Historically the Roman primacy arose out of its metropolitan primacy within
the empire that bore its name, with the Pope’s adoption of such pagan and imperial titles as Pontifex Maximus; a Papal
title that can be traced back to the time of the fall of Rome. From ‘Tu es Petrus’ and as the true ‘Successor of Saint Peter,
Prince of the Apostles’ he assumed the Headship of the Church. The ‘Vicar of Peter’ became the ‘Vicar of Jesus Christ’ by
the sixth century. Pope Gregory VII claimed that the Bishop of Rome was alone entitled to the title of ‘Pope’. Pope
Innocent IV claimed the now defunct title of ‘Vicar of God’. Yet titles carried with them usurpations of power and
authority over the other ancient patriarchates and demands that they bow to the will of the ‘Patriarch of the West’ (a title
retained until 2006), as now upholding the right to a universal jurisdiction, far beyond any ‘primus inter pares’. If one
rejects those Papal claims, as one for whom ‘the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction’, then one cannot be a Roman
Catholic.
Lancelot Andrewes contended against Cardinal Bellarmine that the English Church was not some new sect but now more
truly re-formed to conform to the Primitive Church, freed from the mediaeval accretions of the Roman Church. "Our
religion, you miscall modern sectarian opinions. I tell you if they are modern, they are not ours; our appeal is to antiquity
yea, even to the most extreme antiquity. We do not innovate; it may be we renovate what was customary with those same
ancients, but with you has disappeared in novelties.”
Queen Elizabeth I had explained to the Emperor Ferdinand “For We and our people —thanks be to God—follow no novel
and strange religions, but that very religion which is ordained by Christ, sanctioned by the primitive and Catholic Church
and approved by the consentient mind and voice of the most early Fathers”. Bishop John Jewel, in defending her religious
12
settlement, had written in his ‘Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana’: “we do shew it plain that God’s holy Gospel, the ancient
bishops, and the primitive Church do make on our side, and that we have not without just cause left these men, and rather
have returned to the Apostles and old catholic fathers”. “As for our doctrine which we may rightly call Christ’s catholic
doctrine, it is so far off from new that God, who is above all most ancient, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hath
left the same unto us in the Gospel, in the Prophets’ and Apostles’ works, being monuments of greatest age. So that no
man can now think our doctrine to be new, unless the same think either the Prophets’ faith, or the Gospel, or else Christ
Himself to be new.” In an earlier sermon preached St. Paul’s Cross, Jewel recorded that he had laid down the gauntlet: “…
if any learned man of all our adversaries or if all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one sufficient sentence
out of any old catholic doctor or father, or out of any old general council, or out of the holy scriptures of God, or any one
example of the primitive church whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved that for the space of six hundred years after
Christ . . . the people was then taught to believe that Christ’s body is really or substantially in the sacrament ; or that His
body is, or it may be, in a thousand places, or more, at one time, ... I promised then that I would give over and subscribe
unto him”. In the Apologia, Jewel contrasted the achievement of the English Reformation with the past days of obedience
and submission to the Pope. “For the people of God are otherwise instructed now than they were in times past, when all
the bishops of Rome’s sayings were allowed for Gospel, and when all religion did depend only upon their authority.
Nowadays the Holy Scripture is abroad, the writings of the Apostles and Prophets are in print, whereby all truth and
Catholic doctrine may be proved, and all heresy may be disproved and confuted.”
Archbishop William Laud appealed to King Charles I for assistance when he saw the Church of England under attack from
both sides, from Roman Catholic and Puritan adversaries. “She professes the ancient Catholic faith, and yet the Romanist
condemns her of novelty in her doctrine; she practices Church government as it hath been in use in all ages and all places
where the Church of Christ hath taken any rooting, both in and ever since the Apostles times, and yet the Separatist
condemns her for Antichristianism in her discipline. The plain truth is, she is between two factions, as between two
millstones, and unless your Majesty look to it she will be ground to powder."
I have always seen icons of Christ as helpful aids to devotion, as is a crucifix. They focus the mind. However the veneration
of icons requires much more than that and that requirement is made of the Orthodox. St. John of Damascus, as an
advocate of the veneration of icons, presents his reader with a stark choice: “Either dispense with the honour and
veneration that these things deserve, or accept the tradition of the church and the veneration of icons”. Nicaea II (787), in
refutation of iconoclasm, laid down the grounds for such veneration as being an extension of the veneration offered to the
‘prototype’: "For the honour rendered to the image goes to its prototype, and the person who venerates an icon venerates
the person represented in it”. However it specified not only “icons of our Lord God and Saviour, Jesus Christ”, but also “of
our spotless Sovereign Lady, the holy Mother of God, or of the holy angels and of holy and venerable men”. “An Orthodox
prostrates himself before these icons, he kisses them and burns candles in front of them; they are censed by the priest and
carried in procession” (Kallistos Ware). Kissing an icon was explained to me as being similar to kissing a photograph of
someone you love. I can understand that and when it comes to icons of Christ then that was no more than a cultural
problem. However much I may honour the ‘Saints’ I am not in a relationship of love with them, although we share with
them that relationship with Christ in the ‘communion of saints’. I have long accepted the teachings of the first four
oecumenical councils as expressing the essential Christological teaching of the Undivided Church. Anglicans do concur
with those teachings found in the fifth and sixth councils but, as Michael Ramsey pointed out, “they have never been very
interested in Councils Five, Six and Seven. We believe, you see, that Chalcedon settled matters decisively with regard to the
doctrine of Incarnation. Council Five is no more than a sort of addendum discussing some of the implications of
Chalcedon; Council Six is about Monophysite issues that have become largely irrelevant in the West: while Council Seven
deals with the veneration of icons, which is not a religious practice that has interested western Christians very much”. The
13
Anglican-Orthodox Moscow Agreed Statement of 1976 simply stated that “the Anglican members, while accepting the
dogmatic degrees of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Councils, have long been accustomed to lay more emphasis on the first
four… They welcome the decisions of the Seventh Council in so far as they constitute a defence of the doctrine of the
Incarnation. They agree that the veneration of icons as practised in the East is not to be rejected, but do not believe that it
can be required of all Christians.” There is a difficulty for Anglicans expressed in the blunt admission of John Mason Neale
that if Nicaea II were truly oecumenical then "it would be difficult to clear our own Church from the charge of heresy." Sir
William Palmer referred to Nicaea II as a ‘pseudo-council’.
Richard Hooker summed up his treatment of the Christological heresies but stating that there were ‘four principal heresies’
and that against these ‘there were four most ancient councils’: “To gather therefore into one sum all that hitherto hath
been spoken touching this point, there are but four things which concur to make complete the whole state of our Lord
Jesus Christ: his Deity, his manhood, the conjunction of both, and the distinction of the one from the other being joined in
one. Four principal heresies there are which have in those things withstood the truth: Arians by bending themselves against
the Deity of Christ; Apollinarians by maiming and misinterpreting that which belongeth to his human nature; Nestorians
by rending Christ asunder, and dividing him into two persons; the followers of Eutyches by confounding in his person
those natures which they should distinguish. Against these there have been four most famous ancient general councils: the
council of Nice to define against Arians, against Apollinarians the council of Constantinople, the council of Ephesus
against Nestorians, against Eutychians the Chalcedon council. In four words, ἀληθω̑ς, τελέως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀσυγχύτως,
truly, perfectly, indivisibly, distinctly, the first applied to his being God, and the second to his being Man, the third to his
being of both One, and the fourth to his still continuing in that one Both, we may fully by way of abridgment comprise
whatsoever antiquity hath at large handled either in declaration of Christian belief, or in refutation of the foresaid heresies.
Within the compass of which four heads, I may truly affirm, that all heresies which touch but the person of Jesus Christ,
whether they have risen in these later days, or in any age heretofore, may be with great facility brought to confine
themselves. We conclude therefore that to save the world it was of necessity the Son of God should be thus incarnate, and
that God should so be in Christ as hath been declared.” (V: Ch. lv. 10).
Jeremy Taylor commented that ‘the Greeks received but seven councils, the Lutherans receive six”, the Eutychians three ,
the Nestorians two, it is “the church of Rome that receives sixteen” (now eighteen). “The Church of England receives the
four first Generals as of highest regard, not that they are infallible, but that they have determined wisely and holily.”
Gilbert Burnet wrote: “As for the four general councils, which the church declares it receives, they are received only
because we are persuaded from the scriptures that their decisions were made according to them”. Here he follows the
classical Anglican reason for doing so that they affirm essential teaching on the Person of Christ. He then commented:
“These truths we find in the scriptures, and therefore we believe them. We reverence those councils for the sake of the
doctrine; but do not believe the doctrine for the authority of the council” (italics mine). Simon Patrick wrote of “the first
four General Councils, whose Decrees are a great confirmation of our belief, because they deliver to us, the consent of the
Churches of Christ, in those great Truths, which assert out of the holy Scriptures”. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church puts the matter succinctly: “It appears, however, that such Councils are ultimately revered in the C of E on the
ground that their decisions are acceptable rather than vice versa”.
However Richard Field accepted the first six but denied the authority of the seventh (V: chapters xlviii-lii): “But concerning
the General Councils of this sort that have hitherto been holden, we confess that in respect of the matter about which they
were called, so nearly and essentially concerning the life of the Christian Faith, and in respect of the manner and form of
their proceeding, and the evidence of proof brought in them, they are and ever were expressly to be believed by all such as
perfectly understand the meaning of their determination. And therefore it is not to be marvelled at if Gregory [*the Great]
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profess that he honoureth the first four Councils as the Four Gospels; and that whosoever admitteth them not, though he
seem to be a stone elect and precious, yet he lieth beside the foundation and out of the building. Of this sort there are only
six; the First* (*Nicea I, 325) defining the Son of God to be coessential, coeternal and coequal with the Father. The Second*
(*Constantinople I, 391) defining that the Holy Ghost is truly God, coessential, coeternal and coequal with the Father and
the Son. The Third* (*Ephesus, 431), the unity of Christ’s person. The Fourth* (*Chalcedon, 451), the distinction and
diversity of His natures, in and after the personal union. The Fifth* (*Constantinople II, 553), condemning some remains
of Nestorianism, more fully explaining things stumbled at in the Council of Chalcedon…. And the Sixth* (*Constantinople
III, 680-1), defining and clearing the distinction of operations, actions, powers and wills in Christ, according to the
diversity of His natures. These were all the lawful General Councils (lawful I say both in their beginning, and proceeding,
and continuance) that ever were holden in the Christian Church touching matters of faith.”
“For the Seventh, which is Nicea II, was not called about any question of faith, but of manners; in which our adversaries
confess that there may be something inconveniently prescribed, and so as to be the occasion of great and grievous evils;
and surely that is our conceit of the Seventh General Council, Nicea II; for howsoever it condemn the religious adoration
and worshipping of pictures and seem to allow no other use of them but that which is historical, yet in permitting men by
outward signs of reverence and respect towards the pictures of saints to express their love towards them, and the desire
they have of enjoying their happy society, and in condemning so bitterly such as upon dislike of abuses wished there might
be no pictures in the Church at all, it may seem to have given some occasion and have opened up the way unto that grow
idolatry which afterwards entered into the Church.”
At a more personal level it is important that one worships where one can participate most fully. Anglican liturgical practice
enables and encourages congregational participation rather than merely individual contemplation and observance during a
liturgy conducted almost entirely by the priests. Hymn singing in the Anglican tradition is also congregational, whereas in
Orthodoxy it is all choral. I missed both the liturgical participation and the hymn singing accompanied by the organ. I
found standing difficult during the long duration of the Divine Liturgy. Kneeling is for me the meaningful posture for
prayer. The use of foreign languages was a further aggravation and distraction.
When I was a student at London Bible College, over forty years ago, the Anglican chaplain said to me: “you will always be
an evangelical because of your conversion”. At one level there was an irony in his timing, since I was already ceasing to be
one in any partisan sense of the word. Yet at a deeper and less easily perceptible level that has remained at least partially
true. I still cannot accept ‘Catholic’ doctrines such as baptismal regeneration (‘ex opere operato’) and apostolic succession
in their fullest sense. For the first it needs to be linked to faith. If I did acknowledge it for my baptism as an infant, then
what can I say about the work of the Holy Spirit in my personal conversion, which I can date precisely (Monday, 14th
October 1967)? However there is a clear scriptural foundation for linking baptism with the language of regeneration. One
pamphlet that helped to restore my belief in the scriptural warranty of infant baptism over forty years ago was Canon John
Stafford Wright’s ‘The Child’s Right to Baptism’. He maintained that the Prayer Book was scriptural in referring to the
baptised as ‘regenerate’ as it relates to “the blessings of the Gospel associated with baptism”. Scriptural references, Stafford
Wright insisted, must however be harmonised “with the rest of the New Testament which speaks of faith as the means of
our initiation into the blessings of the Gospel”. However he made little attempt to do so with the passages he cited from
the Authorised (King James) Version.
Acts 22:18 - “...arise, and be baptised, for the washing away of thy sins”
Romans 6:4 – “We are buried in baptism into death”
Gal. 3: 27 – “For as many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ”
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1 Peter 3: 21 – “The like figure whereunto baptism doth now save us”
Titus 3: 5 – “He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost”
The second reference should be looked at more fully. Those were “baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death”
(v. 3), as well as being “buried with him by baptism unto death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (v.4) [NRSV]. Baptism initiates us into Christ, into His
Church and in the Holy Spirit: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body,
though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks,
slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12: 12-13; cf. Eph. 4: 4-5). Stafford Wright intimated
that Titus 3:5 might be either an allusion or a reference to baptism. The same is true of 1 Cor. 6: 12, where the same
author, St. Paul, refers to Christians as having been washed, sanctified and justified “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and in the Spirit of our God”. If these relate to ‘believer’s baptism’ then there clearly a case for seeing conversion and
baptism as so closely occurring in time, as in the Acts of the Apostles, that they can be treated as one soteriological event.
However for infant baptism there is no possibility of personal repentance and faith in the recipient at the time of its
administration, and also if one rejects literal baptismal regeneration, by virtue of the sacrament alone, one is thrown back
on the covenant theology which is used in the Old Testament for circumcision and finds echoes in the New Testament
when applied to baptism. When my son was baptised, I produced an order of service and placed two brief extracts on the
cover, from poems by Keble and the other by Herbert. The lines of George Herbert came from his poem, ‘Holy Baptism
II’:
“Since, Lord, to thee
A narrow way and little gate
Is all the passage, on my infancy
Thou didst lay hold, and antedate
My faith in me.”
While I acknowledge the historic episcopate, the doctrine of a lineal Apostolic Succession lacks scriptural foundations and,
in any case, monarchical episcopacy, as clearly distinguishable from the presbyterate, cannot be traced any further back
than Ignatius of Antioch. I found it also impossible to move away from belief in justification by faith and the substitutional
atonement of Christ, though both are profoundly problematic for the Orthodox.
The Orthodox Church requires auricular confession before the reception of a Christian from another denomination.
Confession is expected thereafter, though there is “no strict rule how often one should go to Confession” (Kallistos Ware).
It is however sometimes regarded as prerequisite to Holy Communion if the latter is infrequent. For many Anglicans the
practice is not even accepted and its sacramental status denied. Among Anglo-Catholics it is usually encouraged and in
their churches facilities for it may often been found. Nevertheless it can never be insisted upon. “All may; none must; some
should”. Francis White maintained that “the practice and strict law of Confession, imposed upon all Christians as a
necessary means of remission of sins, is neither commanded in the New Testament nor hath warrant from the Primitive
Church”. Personally I ‘made my confession’ for the first time when I was twenty-eight and did so occasionally over the
next decade. I found no need for it after that, since specific and personal confession is part of private prayer and ‘general
confession’ is to be found within the liturgy of the Church, which gives it a corporate dimension, bringing all together as
sinners in constant need of repentance and the forgiveness of God. Only when I was to be received into the Orthodox
Church did I do so, as such was required, and, of course, afterwards. Like fasting, I do not deny that it is a valuable
practice that can bring spiritual benefit. On fasting, I cannot accept the demands made by the Orthodox Church which, at
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the very least, verge on compulsion. It requires of the faithful that they fast not only before Communion but for two days
each week, as well as throughout both Advent and Lent (the Great Fast), and on other times during the Church’s year;
including, strangely, for several days prior to the Feast of ‘the Dormition of the Mother of God’.
In the rite of reception, I was required to affirm my belief in many things that, upon reflection and with greater clarity, I
cannot in conscience affirm now (except of course the Eucharistic Presence): all “the Apostolic and Ecclesiastical Canons,
established at the Seven Oecumenical and Provincial Councils, and other traditions of Fathers, and which the Holy
Orthodox Church, our Mother, hath always held and still doth hold”: seven sacraments; the Eucharistic Presence of Christ;
the reverence, prayers and invocation of the Saints; the honouring and contemplation (veneration) of their images; that
prayers for the faithful departed are favourably received; the power of loosing and binding as given to the Orthodox
Church by Christ. I was required to “believe and confess that this Church is the Bride of Christ and that therein is true
salvation, which was in the Ark of Noah at the flood”. In doing so I did “promise true obedience unto they life’s end…
with heart unfeigned’” to all in authority over me: “the Most Holy Synod, the Most Holy Patriarch, the Equal-of theApostles, the Bishop of this Diocese, as the true Pastors appointed by the Holy Spirit; and to the Priests ordained by
them”.
I now see that I rushed in and then found myself in a strange land where I increasingly realised that I did not really
belong. A dear friend and minister once told me that God leads us from A to B not necessarily to take us to C but to
somewhere else (D). I received much from Orthodoxy that I carry back with me into the Church of my fathers. The
decision was a hard one and not taken lightly. It had taken a year. Now that I have made it, I know it was the right one.
As if by way of confirmation, within days of making that decision, I was sent a rota for intercessions and epistle readings.
Five months later I attended the Orthodox Liturgy for Easter morning with my wife and, to use that frightful
contemporary phrase, the experience gave me a final 'sense of closure'. As we sat at the back, I found myself as most
definitely a visitor observing rather than a member participating. However I was able, as a fellow Christian, to rejoice in
the risen Lord and to recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer with them.
As I prepared to be received into Orthodoxy I wrote of ‘my love of the Church of England and my longstanding desire to
echo those words that King Charles I uttered in the presence of my ancestor, his Gentleman-at-Arms: “I die a Christian,
according to the profession of the Church of England”. Here there is the awful pain of parting, leaving the nest of my
spiritual mother’. I continued: “I grew up on the Book of Common Prayer with Matins in the Parish Church in
Wimbledon and Matins at school. At prep school the Headmaster catechised us with the BCP Catechism. By the time I
was confirmed in 1965, the new Alternative Services of Series 1 and 2 were coming into usage. Nevertheless it was for the
Prayer Book that I came to hold an affection that was second only to the Bible itself. Mine was that last generation to be
brought up on the two historic books of Anglicanism: the Authorised Version of the Bible and the Book of Common
Prayer”. The Book of Common Prayer was described by Hook as “a glass in which are collected the scattered rays of
primitive tradition… the Prayer Book is ex professo, both Scriptural and primitive”.
I recently posted online to two Anglican groups the simple question: ‘Why are you Anglicans?’ One American clergyman
answered it very succinctly. “Anglican -When it is at its best - because it is truly catholic, orthodox; converses East, Rome,
and evangelical; welcomes all branches of Christ's church to Holy Communion and feeds its children the Body and Blood
of Christ. It wraps up in one bundle the best of the ancient faith and the essential correctives of the Reformation. The
traditional Book of Common Prayer brilliantly, concisely, and beautifully captures the pith of biblical worship and makes it
accessible to all. It weaves most splendidly the Scriptures into the warp and woof of worship and parish life. The via media.
For starters."
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Michael Ramsey wrote of the Anglican Church’s ‘greater vindication’ as “pointing through its own history to something of
which it is a fragment. Its credentials are its incompleteness, with the tension and travail in its soul. It is clumsy and
untidy, it baffles neatness and logic. For it is sent not to commend itself as ‘the best type of Christianity’, but by its very
brokenness to point to the universal Church wherein all have died”. I submit myself, in the words of one of his martyred
predecessors, William Laud, “to my mother, the Church of England, and to the mother of us all, the Universal Catholic
Church of Christ”. I have now been received back into that branch of the Christian Church that was and is again my
spiritual home and, in George Herbert’s phrase, ‘dearest Mother’. Many may have turned their back on her historic faith
but it was and is again mine. Like Keble I am willing to “accept it and make the best of it, in humble confidence that
according to our faith it will be to us”. “There is no Church whose every part so squares unto my Conscience; whose
Articles, Constitutions, and Customs seem so consonant unto reason, and as it were framed to my particular Devotion, as
this whereof I hold my Belief, the Church of England; to whose Faith I am a sworn Subject, and therefore in a double
Obligation subscribe unto her Articles, and endeavour to observe her Constitutions” (Sir Thomas Browne: ‘Religio
Medici’). So, like Thomas Ken, I do indeed now hope to “die in the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith professed by the
whole Church before the disunion of East and West; more particularly, in the Communion of the Church of England, as it
stands distinguished from both papal and puritan innovations and adheres to the doctrine of the Cross."
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