Month: July 2019

XXIV. Of speakyng in the congregation, in such a tongue as the people understandeth.

It is a thing playnely repugnaunt to the worde of God, and the custome of the primitive Churche, to have publique prayer in the Churche, or to minister the Sacramentes in a tongue not understanded of the people.[1]

by the Rev. Canon Giuseppe Gagliano

It is a testament to the influence of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion that their theological agenda occasionally seems redundant. After almost five hundred years, a number of these statements of faith have become so commonplace that they have lost the chutzpa with which they were initially penned and proliferated. Article XXIV is no exception. After all, who in our own age would protest the use of an understood language in services of worship? Yet, the simplicity of this Article belies its profound character.

The Roots of Article XXIV

In sum, Article XXIV proposes that public worship ought to take place in the vernacular language rather than a lingua franca. The vernacular is the common tongue of the people—one understood simply and effectively—whereas a lingua franca is a language adopted for its universality. A major difference between the two is that, in practical terms, a lingua franca is often used as a mediating language between non-native speakers. Before the English Reformation, the religious lingua franca was Latin, which was used not only in worship, but scholarship and Biblical translation. Latin was the language of Rome—not only its ancient empire but also the Catholic Church.

The Reformers of sixteenth Century England would be shocked to learn that English has become a prominent lingua franca of our own day. During their era of religious and cultural upheaval, the use of English in ecclesiastical settings was so rare that a consistent vocabulary was still being formed. For instance, Thomas More criticized William Tyndale’s New Testament translation as “mischcheyvous” because he went against the typical ecclesiastical translations in favour of more commonplace coinage. For instance, Tyndale used “senior” instead of “priest,” “love” instead of “charity,” and “favour” instead of “grace”.[2] One might argue that the upheaval, and later levelling, of English religiosity coincided with the fluctuation of the vernacular itself.

The transition from Latin to English was not simply a church matter either, but overlapped with national political concerns. The 1549 Act of Uniformity declared the English Book of Common Prayer as the sole text for use in public worship. The last Latin service in England was set for Whitsunday of that year. In Devon, a Latin mass was held the next day in protest by Cornish speakers, which incited the Prayer Book Rebellion in the southwest of England. The shift from the lingua franca to a vernacular was no joke, but a deeply contentious and even unpopular reform.

Politics aside, the preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer spells out Archbishop Cranmer’s and his compatriot’s spiritual concerns regarding language in the Church. The Reformers wrote that, while Saint Paul used a language spoken by the people,

[t]he service in this Churche of England (these many yeares) hath been read in Latin to the people, whiche they understoode not; so that they have heard with theyr eares onely; and their hartes, spirite, and minde, have not been edified thereby.[3]

In other words, the liturgy went in one ear and out the other, but did not nurture the people at their core—in heart, spirit, and mind. The Preface’s reference to the Apostle Paul parallels the statement of Article XXIV regarding the “Primitive Church”—the first congregations of faithful Christians.[4] If worshipping in the common tongue was sufficient for Jesus’ Apostles, it is certainly good enough for us.

A Surprising Legacy

The theological rationale behind Article XXIV has been an enduring legacy of the English Reformation in the Anglican Communion. While Anglican piety has fluctuated through various moods and flavours, the injunction to worship in a language understood by the people remains constant. Notably, even the most catholic traditions of Anglicanism maintain this Reformation practice. While surveying the development of Anglican missals from the 19^th Century onward, one is struck by a consistent incorporation of the Sarum or Western Roman rites into English, or, with Latin written alongside English. Even the venerable Society of SS. Peter and Paul, which controversially advocated for Roman rites in the Church of England, declared their devotion to the vernacular five years before publishing The Anglican Missal (1921): “The goal we shall set before us will be, not a return to the Roman Mass in Latin, but the restoration of that magnificent English version of the Roman Mass which is contained in King Edward VI’s First Prayer Book.”[5] In harmony with the Thirty-Nine Articles’ theological desire for congregational comprehension, The Anglican Missal was published in versions for both clerics and laity in an attempt to aid liturgical understanding.[6] Even while the broad tent of Anglicanism encloses those who adore Latin and Rome, one would be hard pressed to find a regular Latin liturgy in a contemporary Anglican church.[7]

One of the ironies of Article XXIV, as mentioned, is that English itself has become a worldwide lingua franca. Yet, the influence of this Article is apparent in the global expression of Anglicanism beyond the English tongue. Anglican liturgy has been transposed into numerous cultures, and thus translated into a plethora of parlances. These range from widespread vernaculars like French, Thai, and Swahili to localized dialects such as Aoba, Bislama, Merelava, Maewo, Mota, Mwotlap, Raga, and Tikopia—distinct languages of Vanuatu.[8] People around the world share in this Reformed and Catholic expression of Christianity far beyond its original linguistic restructuring. In this sense, Article XXIV might be seen as a correlative of Article XXXIV (“On the traditions of the Church”), which advocates for a principle of subsidiarity with regards to local expressions of the faith rather than a monolithic, universalized system.

Understanding as a Virtue

At its heart, Article XXIV emphasizes the notion that a worshipper should understand what is being done, and what is being proclaimed by and to Almighty God. Again, this may seem like a moot point in our own day, but it is a radical shift from what came before. This Article is not simply practical, but underlies a particular theology of worship, which many of us take for granted.

All worship requires mediation between humanity and God, to greater or lesser degrees, and language is a prime means of that mediation. When a lingua franca is used, it involves the translation of intent into a particular linguistic form of mediation, which is then offered to the divine. The language takes what is common, translates it, and thus sanctifies it. To worship in a lingua franca, apart from understanding, may also imply that those particular word-forms are efficacious—that the sound, order, and cadence of a unique tongue has a precise effect on the worship of God. As the lingua franca is universal, this sanctification is accomplished apart from cultural or personal particularity.

Using the vernacular, however, the mediation looks different. No translation is required, but the hopes, joys, fears, and praises of the people are expressed in an immediate way. The intentions behind the divine mysteries are not simply articulated through the mouth of a knowing priest, but by all present. The veil of the liturgical temple is ripped in two. And, as the vernacular varies from place to place, the worship of God inhabits a particular cultural expression.

Vernacular liturgy upholds the understanding of the congregation as essential to reverent worship. The intentions of the congregation need not be translated into a distinct form, but are intrinsically divine however they are translated. Understanding, therefore, becomes another way to worship God—another means of offering a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice. We do not simply carry out rites to the letter of the law, but our hearts are opened to the wider spirit of what we are doing. Or, as the 1549 Preface would put it, we listen not simply with our ears, but with our “hartes, spirite, and minde”.

The theological reasoning regarding understanding in worship extends beyond the Anglican churches and even—with historic irony—to the Church of Rome. In 1963, the Second Vatican Council released Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document that (despite its Latin title) advocated for the increasing use of worshippers’ “mother tongue” throughout the rites of Roman Catholic Church. Most interestingly, this document uses the same rationale as the 1549 Preface, claiming that there is more to worship than “the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration,” but that the faithful must “take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects.”[9] In other words, the liturgy must not simply be heard, but inwardly digested by all participants for their edification. One might imagine Archbishop Cranmer, while a serious man, slightly bemused and gingerly tipping his Canterbury cap in Rome’s direction.

The Limits of the Vernacular

Article XXIV brings up some curious points to consider regarding the vernacular in worship. It is one thing to worship in the language of the people, but at what point does the vernacular become too ordinary? In other words, it is one thing to use the formal tongue that the people speak; it is another thing to use that language for prayer in the same way that people speak it.

For example, in the Canadian context, Anglicans worship using either the Book of Common Prayer (1962) or the Book of Alternative Services (1985). The former is written in Elizabethan English, far from the way any Canadian would naturally speak. The latter is a more contemporized English, but still formalized. An advocate for the vernacular could argue that the Elizabethan style of the Book of Common Prayer counteracts Article XXIV because of its more archaic style. Overall, however, one ought to interpret this Article broadly. The difference between Elizabethan and contemporary English is minute compared to the gap between English and Latin. Even if the congregation’s understanding is incomplete, it is approximate, and can be improved without the need to learn another tongue. The more stylized forms of English also set aside a unique linguistic space for worship, just as a church is a distinctive place for prayer in relation to a house.

A more fervent proponent for the vernacular could argue that even the contemporary Book of Alternative Services is not sufficient to fulfill the intent of Article XXIV. After all, even while of a more contemporary diction, you would be hard pressed to find a Canadian who speaks in the format of a collect. If one were to take this Article to its most extreme limit, however, prayer books would need to be written with the slang and colloquialism of modern speech. This might even warrant a prayer book for each worshipping community—let alone each Vanuatuan island. This extreme approach is not only impractical and damaging to church catholicity, but does not reflect the Article’s intent. The Reformers were responding to what they considered a dead language with a living one. They simultaneously understood the value of language—even a stylized vernacular—in mediating accessible, ordered, and reverent worship.

As modern philosophers and theologians are apt to remind us, language is not simply a way for humans to describe the world, like projecting a flashlight onto a darkened object. Instead, language is reflexive; it shapes the way we understand what we are talking about. We shine it outwards, but it also shines back on us. The way we speak to God informs what we believe about God: lingua orandi, lingua credendi. If we are to worship God, who is both holy and imminent, Lord and Friend, beyond us and within us, then we ought to adopt language that is both universal and particular, mysterious and comprehensible, esoteric and exoteric. I humbly suggest that a formalized vernacular—as found in the sundry, revered prayer books of the Anglican churches—strikes a fine balance as we seek to praise the One who spoke the worlds into being.

The Rev’d Canon Giuseppe Gagliano is a Priest of the St. Francis Regional Ministry in the rural Eastern Towships of Quebec and Canon for Lay Ministries in the Anglican Diocese of Quebec.

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[1] From the 1571 edition of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Oliver O’Donovan, On the Thirty-Nine Articles: Conversations with Tudor Christianty, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2011), 147.

[2] Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 192.

[3] The Book of Common Prayer (1549), http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/front_matter_1549.htm, (accessed 23 May 2019).

[4] The equivalent article in Cranmer’s Forty-Two Articles of 1553 echoes the Preface’s reference to “the whiche thing S. Paule didde forbidde”. O’Donovan, 147.

[5] Mark Dalby, Anglican Missals and their Canons: 1549, Interim Rite and Roman (Cambridge: Grove Books Limited, 1998), 22.

[6] Dalby, 23.

[7] While the author has heard of such Latin masses taking place, it would seem more akin to liturgical LARPing than a consistent expression of a congregation’s piety.

[8] See http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/world.htm for these sundry liturgies, and more.

[9] Paul VI, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December, 1963, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/

ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html (accessed 23 May 2019).

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

by Ian Caveny

Of all the Articles of Religion, Article XXIV seems the most uncontroversial in our late modern context. To update its terms a bit, the Article simply states that it is perverse to lead worship and minister in a language the congregation cannot understand. There are two ends to which this Article aims: the first is to oppose a mode of worship that creates an intellectual hierarchy between priest and people, most specifically the Latin Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, today the oppositional aspect of this article has (mainly) dissolved, as the liturgical revisions of Vatican II shifted Catholicism away from a Latin-heavy to a vernacularized liturgy. In this sense, the Article as it was initially intended is no longer as ecclesially-identifying as it would have been in the time of the Reformation; maybe it has even been come to be taken-for-granted?

And, yet, I think there is a second aim toward which the Article proposes, along the same lines as its initial intent. One of the crises of the Catholicism of the late Renaissance – and one of the tensions in the Christianity throughout history – was the tension between a literate clergy and an illiterate congregation. If the Reformation-era purpose of this Article was to break down a barrier of comprehension between Latinate priests and vernacular laypersons, it ought to be remembered that that barrier was not just one of language, but one of status and access. Even if official doctrine declares that God has made Himself known to the people through Jesus Christ as the sole mediator and that His Grace has been made available to them, what kind of theological comprehension of that God comes across if His ministers make His Word inaccessible? If Latin bestows a kind of “high”-ness upon the clergy and, thus, by logic, a “low”-ness upon the laypersons? In short, there is a very real question on the theological formation of a congregation’s understanding of God at stake in this simple Article. Thus, the second aim of Article XXIV is not just to set an appropriate liturgical boundary around non-vernacular worship; it is to attest to the implied theology that is carried by those liturgical forms. How we worship affects how we understand who we worship. Is the God of the Christian religion someone who is far removed, who speaks another language, or who cannot be understood except by the literate elite? Or is He the kind of God who manifests Himself as one of us, who takes on human flesh, who identifies with the lowly?

With this second aim of the Article in mind, it is important to note, then, that success in following this Article in the life of the Church is far more difficult than rooting out inappropriate expostulations in Latin. That would be the letter of the law. Its spirit would be to root out any instances in our liturgy where we reify the standard of spiritual hierarchy[1] through piety that so often besets religious life. As anyone who has ever attended to the troubles of spiritualized hierarchies could tell you, this is more easily said than done.

Take, as an example, another language-based distinction that often occurs in the Pentecostal circles in which I first came to faith: speaking in tongues. If you’ve never been in a Pentecostal (or certain Charismatic) circles, then you might not be aware that there is a behind-the-scenes power dynamic that can unfold between those who have special gifts (like speaking in tongues, but also could include gifts of healing, gifts of prophecy, etc.) and those who do not. Sometimes a gifted leader will end up exalted above the “lay” in the congregation, and that gifted leader – who sees visions or dreams dreams – will be seen as someone who has “access” to God in a way that the average believer simply does not. Even in the best of situations, and I will freely note that my own experience was overall positive, even when a church’s leadership officially repudiates a theology of spiritual hierarchies, a sense can grow within the congregation that those who have the more spectacular spiritual giftings, those who speak in more tongues or have more prophesies or hear from the Lord more clearly, are somehow “set aside,” a different order of Christian than the rest of the church. And, of course, this becomes one of Pentecostalism’s stickiest ecumenical problems: a sense of higher-standing amid the charismatic elite opposed to the “spirit-less” non-charismatic churches.

I wish to be clear here, I am not raking Pentecostalism through the dirt (as the Apostle Paul once said, in a southern Illinois paraphrase, ‘I speak in more tongues than all y’all’)! What is at play in the case of charismatic gifts in, say, a Pentecostal or Charismatic church, is the same dynamic that is at play in a wide variety of other situations. In fundamentalist contexts, we hear of churches where a hierarchy of dogma is constructed, on the basis of a powerful leader’s puritanical excesses; but in the mainline the same appears under a different head, where new hierarchies of who follows the current political or theological trend. Are we inclusive enough? And are those who are not as inclusive as us really welcome here?

The truth is that the danger of spiritual hierarchy that Article XXIV targets has been a challenge for church-leadership since the dawn of the Church. In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle observed this very same dynamic. Here, the “spiritual” leaders – the pneumatikoi – were boasting of their greatness whilst downgrading the lowliness of the more “common” believer. The especially “gifted” pneumatikoi felt they had the wisdom and knowledge and spiritual stature to be able to do things the common believer could not – including some issues Paul addresses in the first chunk of the letter, like eating at idol-worshipping festivals and sexual excesses. Beyond this, they felt entitled to some level of authority based on their tongue-speaking and prophecy-proclaiming. Paul’s famous dictum on spiritual gifts, where he asserts that we are all a part of Jesus’ Body together, bound by the Spirit and given unique roles in that Body, is actually a radical “leveling” of the spiritual playing-field: every gift of the Spirit, whether dramatic like tongues and prophesy or “mundane” like service or wisdom, are to be seen as gifted “by one and the same Spirit.”[2] Ernst Käsemann, who also once observed this dynamic, put the problem in this way: “Christianity is drowning, as the church in Corinth did in the past, in religious riches which are really a chaos.”[3]

The danger presented by these spiritual hierarchies is far more serious when they are hidden than when they are flushed into the open. A hierarchy of a Latinate clergy and vernacular congregation is, historically speaking, a thing of the past. But spiritual hierarchies of “intellectual vs. unlearned” or “prophecy vs. service” or even “justice vs. status-quo” still rear their ugly heads in congregations all the time.

Here I return to Article XXIV and its wisdom. As I mentioned before, this Article handles the matter of how the congregation receives theology through its worship practice. We are discussing, after all, not the language of the confessional or pastoral meeting, nor of the Bible study, nor the church potluck, but the language of “publick prayer” and “minister[ing] the Sacraments.” What the people receive in a Latinate Mass, no matter the official doctrine of the Church, is a theology of spiritual hierarchies. But if the Church of God is to represent Him, His character, His nature in an accurate way, then it must represent the Incarnational God, not the ineffable, untouchable, one. The God of the Scriptures, who fully manifests Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ, is the God who comes down to earth, takes upon flesh, and, in a very corporeal way, speaks our language. So, too, then, those who minister must speak the language of their congregations. If church leadership and congregation are to participate in the life of God together without spiritual hierarchies separating them, then it is critical for them to develop a common, shared language.

This goes far beyond speaking the same vernacular, in its most basic sense. For a few years I was a part of a well-educated, urban congregation that was full of graduate students, mainly Ph.D. candidates. It was in this context that I first learned how to preach. and while my sermons were not necessarily “academic lectures” (thank the Lord!) they used terms and ideas that were complex, nuanced, sometimes even multilayered. In that church, we talked about income inequality, homelessness, urban violence; about the Trinity, the Two Natures of Christ, Christian ethics. But later, when I preached regularly at a small, rural church, I found that I needed to adopt new language to communicate. The issue was not one of intelligence, nor capability, nor faithfulness; it was simply one of different languages. My urban friends lived where the word “gentrification” meant something quite concrete: a Target and a Whole Foods were colonizing the neighborhood! Our rural congregation, on the other hand, had other pressing issues in front of them that needed a different kind of language: an opioid and suicide crisis spurred by lack of opportunity and hopelessness. They had been trained in a different set of church-vernacular as well, and that required some “interpretation of tongues,” so to speak.

So far I’ve centered on Article XXIV in its sense of the preached ministry of the Word, but for Anglicans worship is more than singing songs and hearing a sermon, as it is in other worship settings. Worship involves the reading of prayers, the reciting of Creeds, the confession of sins, and, most importantly, the celebration of the Eucharist. And if there is any angle of Article XXIV’s “second purpose,” as I’ve called it, that strikes with a knife edge at the heart of Anglicanism, it is in its demand that prayers and the ministering of the sacraments be in the vernacular: sure, our services may be in English (or whatever the vernacular is in that particular location), and maybe our priest’s homilies manifest that incarnational sense of sharing a language with the congregation. But is our service comprehensible to the common person?

As an outsider to Anglicanism who is finding himself drawn along the “Canterbury trail,”[4] this is something that I often wonder when I visit a church: will I ‘get’ what’s happening? Will those leading the service use their voice to help those who are wandering in to understand the motions and the movements? Or is what I’m about to enter a club, dedicated to its own group of pneumatikoi? Will I find myself lost in a sea of “insider” language? (And what difference is “insider club” Christianity to a Latinate Mass, anyways?)

Historic Reformation resonances aside, Article XXIV is a standard by which a church’s leadership are to weigh themselves. First, do we see in our congregations spiritual hierarchies that parallel the Latinate and the non-Latinate? Do we see “Higher” and “Lower” Christians forming their ranks in our communities? Are there ways we can lean in to the way of Christ and remind each other of our co-participation in His Body, equal to one another? But, second, and this more difficult, do we see in our own leadership “inside” and “outside” language? Are our homilies and sermons and prayers written and said in a way that exalts Christ by reaching to the people sitting in our pews? To be clear, the challenge is not to denude our language for the lowest common denominator; it is, quite the opposite!, to enrich our language so that the whole community can participate in worship together. And, following this homiletical challenge, do we see worship as a language that only the initiated can know, or do we take our liturgical practice so seriously that we use whatever opportunities we can to teach those who feel “outside” how to join in and participate with us? This radical common language of the Church is, in my sense, the true heart of Article XXIV, and it does so by representing a true theology of the God we serve: incarnational, invitational, and missional.

Ian Caveny is a student at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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[1] To be very clear, I will be using “spiritual hierarchy” in a very specific way in this essay. This is not to say that all hierarchies of any kind are necessarily problematic. That would, after all, be a very strange thing to post in a series of essays celebrating the Articles of the Anglican Church, a church body ordered and organized by bishops!

[2] I Corinthians 12:11.

[3] Ernst Käsemann, “The Saving Significance of the Death of Jesus in Paul,” in Perspectives on Paul, trans. Margaret Kohl (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler Press, 1996), 53.

[4] In the words of Robert E. Webber.

It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.

by the Rev. Jordan Trumble

Someone once confided in me that they’d served on their diocesan Commission on Ministry for a brief period of time but resigned before the end of their term because they never quite felt comfortable taking part in a decision about who should or should not be ordained. As they explained their unease at the task of aiding others’ discernment, they wondered aloud, “Shouldn’t people just be allowed to follow whatever they think God is calling them to do?” This question is at the heart of Article XXIII and, for the writers of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the answer is a resounding “no.”

For Anglican Christians in the 16th Century, the immediate impetus for answering this question was a rising tide of radical Protestant reformers who believed their own sense of call was the only necessary qualification for ministry and that God’s call need not be discerned or regulated by anyone outside of themselves. Of course, the question of who may minister in the Church was not original to the writers of the Thirty-Nine Articles. It is a question that has been debated throughout the Church for centuries and is one that is still debated in the present day by people ranging from church professionals to my nonagenarian former parishioner who once observed to me, “I’m not so sure I like these churches that let anyone just stand up and be a pastor.”

Of those debating the subject in the 16th Century, Lutherans were the first to take a stand against the notion that one need only to sense God’s call in order to be qualified for ministry.  Article XIV of the Augsburg Confession, written in 1530, reads, “…no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he be regularly called,” with the phrase “regularly called” referring to a call that comes from those in positions of authority in the Church. In 1538, Cranmer drafted his own set of articles, the Thirteen Articles, which was modeled on the Augsburg Confession; this document was ostensibly written in preparation for talks with German Lutherans but was never officially adopted by the Church of England. In the Thirteen Articles, Cranmer not only echoed the sentiments expressing in the Augsburg Confession, but expanded upon its ideas; in Article X of the Thirteen Articles Cranmer wrote:  

Concerning the ministers of the Church we teach that no-one ought to teach publicly or administer the sacraments unless lawfully called by those in the Church’s ministry. According to the word of God and the laws and customs of every region, they have the right to call and ordain. No-one called to the ministry, including the Roman or any other bishop, can claim for himself as by divine right, the power to teach publicly, to administer the sacraments, or exercise any ecclesiastical function in another diocese or parish. This applies to a bishop in another diocese and to a parish priest in another parish.

Cranmer agreed with the idea that those in ministry must be called  “by those in the Church’s ministry” and he also contended that such a calling was not unqualified permission to minister whenever or wherever one chose but that the exercise of ministry was always subject to permission. Although this version of the Article was never officially adopted, we see this principle in practice in the Church to the present day: clergy must have permission to minister in a parish or diocese other than their own. Despite the fact that this principle continues to be applied to the exercise of ministry, though, the sentiments expressed in the second half of Cranmer’s Article had been excised by the time the Forty-Two Articles were written in 1553 and the current form of the Article was completed; it appeared as Article XXIV in the Forty-Two Articles before becoming Article XXIII in the Thirty-Nine Articles. 

The Latin text of Article XXIII is particularly helpful in understanding what reformers were trying to accomplish in this article. The word translated in English as “congregation” is “ecclesia” in Latin, the same word used in Article XIX for the visible Church. The article is not speaking of ministry in a particular congregation but in the whole of the Church; anyone engaging in ministry anywhere in the Church must be called by those in authority. Furthermore, while the English version of the article uses the words “lawful” and “lawfully,” the Latin version uses the words “licet” which is more accurately translated as “permitted” and “legitime” which is more accurately translated as “legitimately.” Perhaps a more faithful wording would be, “It is not permitted for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Church, before he be legitimately called…” Article XXIII wasn’t attempting to appeal to the law of the land but rather sought to do what would be proper in the eyes of God. Of course, this line of thinking leads one directly back to the very question radical reformers were asking: scripture gives countless examples God directly calling people into various forms of ministry or service; why must the Church regulate God’s call? 

Although Article XXIII can be very simply summarized by saying that a calling to ministry must come from those in positions of authority in the Church, the article also reiterates what ministry entails and explains how authority is defined. Article XXIII must be read in light of Article XIX, “Of the Church,” which begins, “The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance…” If Article XIX tells us what the visible Church is and what constitutes ministry in it, Article XXIII tells us who gets to exercise that ministry: those who are lawfully called and sent by those with public authority, a category defined by ordination.  Article XIII does not deny that God has directly called people before and is still capable of doing so, but instead emphasizes the structures for ministry and ordination that God instituted in the Church, asserting that those called to ministry must have their calling recognized and affirmed by those whose calling has already been recognized and affirmed, a pattern that stretches back to the earliest days of Christianity. This pattern binds ministers to the Church through apostolic succession but also ensures some degree of accountability to minister within the accepted beliefs and practices of the Anglican tradition.  

If Article XXIII is about the issue of authority in the Church, the issue of accountability to the Church and Her teachings is the other side of the same coin.  Although it isn’t explicitly stated in the article, the pattern set forth in Article XXIII ensures, in some measure, that those being ordained actually believe the very things the Church teaches or are, at the very least, willing to subscribe to them. The Thirty-Nine Articles themselves are even the means by which people are held accountable to the doctrine of the Church: to this day, ordinands in the Church of England and some dioceses in other provinces take oaths of subscription to the articles. For several centuries, subscription to the articles was also a requirement for those holding office in England, where the Church of England is the established church. Yet even in parts of the Anglican tradition in which subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles isn’t mandatory, accountability to Anglican doctrine isn’t forgotten but simply takes a different form, such as in the Episcopal Church where bishops, priests, and deacons, all promise these words during their ordinations: “I do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church.”  In this way, accountability to authority and doctrine are woven into the very fabric of the Anglican tradition and cannot be divorced from our liturgical life.  Yet the issue of accountability is also political: for those in the Church of England, especially at the time this article was written, the issue of accountability to the authorities of the church is paramount to keeping order in the realm.  

Article XXIII is likely one of the least controversial articles, at least insofar as it establishes a pattern of calling ministers for the “Lord’s vineyard,” but it is impossible to read it in the context of the 21st Century Episcopal Church (USA) without noting that modern readers might perceive it as being saturated with clericalism. Episcopalians enjoy few things more than pointing out that the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer 1979 defines the ministers of the Church as “lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons” (855). Yet this idea that the laity are ministers is not reflected in Article XXIII; while the article does not specify orders of ministry, the underlying assumption of the text is that a calling to ministry goes hand in hand with ordination. That isn’t to say that the laity are not or cannot be ministers, but rather that our understanding of ministry has outgrown the 16th Century reformers’ conception of ministry. Even the ministries specifically mentioned in Article XXIII are no longer executed only by clergy; the ministry of the Table is reserved for those who are ordained but we have processes by which lay people may become licensed preachers and serve in congregations.  

Although the Church, generally, and the Anglican tradition, specifically, have certainly evolved in many ways since Article XXIII was first written, including in the ways we define ministry, the original intent behind Article XXIII is as important as ever. Those in positions of ministry must be accountable to someone or something greater than one’s own internal sense of call.  The practice of calling and ordaining ministers by those with authority in the Church, therefore, continually binds us to one another and to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us, not only by the laying on of hands but through the beliefs we preach and teach and the Bread we break together. The practice of calling and ordaining ministers by those in authority reminds us that the Church is greater than any individual’s ideas and whims and that ministry in the Church is a relationship based on trust and accountability, to God, to Tradition, and to the community.

The Rev. Jordan Trumble is Priest-in-Charge of Christ Church, Fairmont, in the Diocese of West Virginia where she is also active in summer camp ministry. In her free time, she evangelizes for Appalachia and serves as a contributing editor at Episcopal Café. 

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.

by Michael Fitzpatrick

That the Articles of Religion were written as responses to a specific context is almost cliche, but it is never more true than in Article XXII. My hunch is that many Anglicans ignore this text, or at least don’t worry very much about it. After all, we’ve long since ceased to be embroiled in debates about Purgatory as a supernatural destination in the afterlife, or pardons being given in exchange for offerings to the Church treasury. Few of us practice the adoration of sacred relics, such as the crown of thorns that was almost lost in the Paris fire at Notre Dame Cathedral recently. 

That said, we do name many of our parishes after a patron saint, and we do follow a Church calendar that are full of days in honor of the saints. Some parishes even model their calendar to reflect observances unique to the Roman church, making the distinction between Anglican and “Romish Doctrine” harder to discern.

Moreover, one need only to reflect on C. S. Lewis’ most Anglican book, his Letters to Malcolm, to discover in his “mere Christianity” a practice of prayers for the deceased and prayers with the saints, and his encouragement for others to do so. He also believed in a notion of Purgatory, and suggested that “Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they?” For if we have not been completely transformed into the image of Christ in this life, must there not be a process of “purgation” in the life to come? 

Lewis himself prefaced all of this with a caveat: “Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the ‘Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory’ as that Romish doctrine had then become.” Thus attitudes towards Article XXII cannot be all or nothing. The article is neither a blanket condemnation of the listed practices, nor so qualified that it is little more than a historical curiosity.

I want to suggest that Article XXII expresses some of the most central concerns that animated the Reformation, concerns instructive for us still today. In what follows I will give a brief history of the motivations behind the article, which show a moderation that would become distinctive of Anglican identity in later centuries, and then suggest ways this article can still speak to us Christians 500 years after the Reformation.

Article XXII may seem to combine a heterogeneous class of theological topics, but they unite under a common, though not obvious, theme. Purgatory, pardons, the adoration of the consecrated bread and wine or of sacred relics, and finally prayers made to saints, were all different expressions of extra-biblical superstition arising out of late medieval Christianity. In particular, all of these acts can be seen as attempts to secure God’s grace or favor through means other than the sufficient atonement of Christ at the Cross. And these means come, it was thought, not by drawing on the apostolic faith as expressed through our received scriptures, but through invention by human inspiration alone. Not only that, the reformers believed that these inventions are in fact opposed to the very teachings of God, since they contradict Christ’s “once for all” sacrifice for sins.

But in the English Reformation, the Thirty-Nine Articles, of which Article XXII is a part, did not appear in their final form until 1571, while the first attempt at an English statement on these matters appeared in 1536, during King Henry VIII’s reign. These “Ten Articles,” as they came to be known, offered comments on purgatory, adoration and the invocation of saints that sound remarkably consistent with modern Anglican attitudes. Purgatory was given an agnostic status, with the assurance that the state of departed souls could not be known to a certainty, but that we can rest “trusting that God accepteth our prayers for them, referring the rest wholly to God, to whom is known their estate and condition.” The Pope’s pardons were soundly condemned, but not the prayers for the dead themselves. Similarly, after a stern remonstration that “remission of sin … cannot be obtained but of God only,” the articles nonetheless proclaimed that “it is very laudable to pray to saints in heaven everlastingly living, whose charity is ever permanent to be intercessors.” Here a distinction is made between praying for grace from the saints, and praying to the saints to ask for their intercession with God, for it is the duty of all Christians to intercede for each other.

These articles did not last as a definitive statement as the Church of England continued to be transformed by reformers of various degrees of temperament and radicality. In 1543 King Henry approved the publication of the text The Necessary Doctrine for Any Christian Man (also known as “The King’s Book”) as a revision to an earlier book (“The Bishop’s Book”) to serve as a statement of and test for true Christian belief. Containing analyses of the creeds and the Lord’s prayer, it concluded with a series of articles on contentious doctrine. Under “Of Prayers for the Souls Departed,” the article observes that Christians are commanded to pray for each other, both “the quick and the dead,” and as such prayers for the dead should be offered insofar as we also remember to pray for the living. The article even welcomes the giving of alms for the sake of the dead, for “yet remain they still members of the same mystical body of Christ whereunto we pertain.” Yet, the article cautions, we cannot say what specific goods these prayers and offerings obtain for them; such knowledge belongs to God alone. Thus the practice is permitted, but any abuse of it through pardons or dispensations promising release from Purgatory early is thoroughly foreclosed.

Because of our uncertainty about the afterlife, we cannot even so much as use the name ‘Purgatory,’ but must instead trust God with the just fate of these departed souls, “trusting that God accepteth our prayers for them; reserving the rest wholly to God, unto whom is known their estate and condition. . . .” Again, prayers for the departed, potentially in Purgatory, is not condemned, nor is Purgatory declared to be a false doctrine. What is important is the condition and posture of ourselves in obediently praying and interceding for our Christian siblings, even those who have passed from this life.

The final part of the article is of note: “[I]t is much necessary that all such abuses as heretofore have been brought in by supporters and maintainers of the papacy of Rome . . . be clearly put away; and that we therefore abstain from the name of Purgatory, and no more dispute or reason thereof. Under colour of which have been advanced many fond and great abuses, to make men believe that through the bishop of Rome’s pardons souls might clearly be delivered out of it, and released out of the bondage of sin. . . . All these, and such like abuses, be necessary utterly to be abolished and extinguished.” Here is the “Romish Doctrine” that is being so completely rejected;  it is the substitution of earthly, human authorities for God’s role in arbitrating the fate of souls. God alone holds the prerogative for the dispensation of grace and salvation. 

In 1559, after the Forty-Two Articles had been proposed but left unenforced by Queen Mary’s reign, Queen Elizabeth commissioned a new revision for which I will follow the convention of calling the Eleven Articles. While never formally adopted in Convocation, the final Article of the Eleven reflects the develop of the Reformation mind at the time. 

Each Christian person would commit to “utterly disallow the extolling of images, relics, and feigned miracles, and also all kind of expressing God invisible in the form of an old man, or the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, and all other vain worshipping of God, devised by man’s fantasies, besides or contrary to the scriptures, as wandering on pilgrimages, setting up of candles, praying upon beads, and such like superstition; which kind of works have no promise of reward in scripture, but contrarywise threatenings and maledictions. . . .”

No mention of Purgatory or the invocation of saints appears in this formulation, but we do get a stronger sense of the influence that continental iconoclasts were having on Protestant thought in England at this time. The English reformers had begun to worry that not only superstitious rituals but even the very act of representing God in a corporeal form was in violation of the second commandment from the Torah, “Make no graven images.” The practices are rejected on the basis of being a development of human fantasy, not divine inspiration, and this is tested by the relationship the practices had to scripture. While I share the Reformation concern for superstition and vain ritual, I don’t particularly see that, for instance, the use of candles or prayer beads are subject to “threatenings and maledictions” in scripture. What is rejected throughout scripture is the thought that God can be made subject to us through incantations or magical manipulations. To the degree that the medieval practices had developed this character, they were contrary to scripture. The use of candles or prayer beads, or even images and relics, by contrast, only as sacramental media to expose one’s self to the grace of God, seems to me to fall outside of the purview of suspicion here.

The value of these forerunners to the Articles of Religion lies in part in what the Articles lack; namely, exposition. We can see much more the character and motivations behind the assertions. Article XXII is a brilliant instance of concision, quite appropriate for a document demanding assent, but is less helpful for future generations who lack a direct acquaintance with the historical context alluded to by “Romish Doctrines.” Hopefully this historical survey shows some of the ways that good uses of prayers to saints or prayers for the dead were contrasted from the theological abuses prevalent in the 16^th century Western Church.

What does this all mean for us today? Article XXII strikes me as having at least two useful lessons to edify the Body of Christ. First, we must always take care that we do not institute liturgical or devotional practices that are acts of extortion on other people. A central problem in the late medieval Church was the way its doctrine of shortening the duration departed souls would spend in Purgatory was used to extort and manipulate poor people out of their meager income. Given the lack of theological warrant behind such practices actually having any spiritual benefit at all, this was an almost total betrayal of the Gospel of God’s free grace for all. Christian life and devotion must never have this predatory character. The Christian life is about giving away, not taking away.

Second, we must be mindful of ways in which our devotional lives can become superstitious. Superstition appears when the grace of God becomes something we can control through our good works or through our spiritual devotions. If we think that God will bless us more than God already is disposed to do, simply because we have touched relics said to be Christ’s own nails from the Cross, or because we have given supplications to St. Teresa as well as worship to God, or if we think we can save our loved ones who died rejecting Christ simply by seeking the intercession of a priest, then we have transformed God into a simple mafia boss open to bribery. The Living God cannot be bought, only loved and trusted. We follow the liturgical practices and devotions of the Church for the ways God sacramentally transforms us through them, drawing us more fully into the Christ-like life. If there is a Purgatory, we can be rest assured that it serves the purpose of a loving God who is making all things new. If we pray for the departed, as intercessors or for their salvation, it is because we trust in the soteriological power of God to hear our prayer, not because our prayer carries any special magic or guarantees.

I personally follow C. S. Lewis in commending to all Christians the value of exploring a devotional use of icons, prayers requesting intercession from the saints, prayers for the dead (both those known to Christ and those not yet known), and even a doctrine of Purgatory. While none of these are explicitly set forth in scripture, I also don’t find them contradicted by scripture, provided we adhere the admonishments just given. The Church has a long history of rich devotional practice that allows for different temperaments to find each person’s language for connecting with God. This history in many ways reflects the liturgical and devotional life of the Jewish people in the Old Testament. We would do well to not lose this history in a fit of iconoclasm, but we would also do well to let Article XXII, and others, live on as witnesses that the Church can lose its way, and we must be vigilant against such abuses arising again.

Michael Fitzpatrick is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at Stanford University and a lay teacher at his parish of St. Mark’s in Palo Alto, CA. He currently serves as the student president for the Episcopal-Lutheran Campus Ministry at Stanford. Michael has long-standing interests in Anglican history, especially 20th century Anglican theology. He recently has written ‘Is “Distinctive Co-Existence” The Anglican Future?”

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.

by Liza Anderson

Article XXII is arguably one of the most challenging parts of the 39 Articles for many 21^st century Anglicans. After all, nearly 450 years after the Articles were written, Anglicans still profess the Holy Trinity, the Scriptures, and the Creeds. But in the last several decades, sanctoral calendars around the Anglican Communion have suddenly exploded with a proliferation of new saints, and even versions of the once-maligned doctrine of Purgatory have become thoroughly mainstream and respectable again, thanks in large part to the writings of Anglicans like C.S. Lewis, and also through the restoration of liturgical practices such as All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2 in many corners of the Anglican Communion as a counterpart to All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1. 

So reading Article XXII can feel a bit like confronting a relic of that awkward adolescent Calvinist phase that our church went through in its rebellious youth, before we grew up and realized that maybe our parent church wasn’t entirely wrong about everything.  You might instinctively cringe a little bit at some of the phrasing here, rather as you might when stumbling upon an old photograph of yourself as a teenager in a style of clothing, hair, and makeup that you now regard as a deeply questionable life choice, even if (perhaps especially if!) such a style was all the rage back in the day. 

Does Article XXII have any continuing usefulness for Anglican theology today? Or is it best relegated to the respectable obscurity of a historical documents section, where it can be preserved with all of the tender devotion that one gives to one’s old middle school photographs…and consulted roughly as often?    

Punishment or Pedagogy? The Varieties of Purgatory 

Anglican supporters of the doctrine of Purgatory have often noted triumphantly that the Articles do not, in fact, condemn every understanding of Purgatory, but merely the “Romish” doctrine concerning it. There have, in fact, been many different conceptions of Purgatory in the history of Christian theology, and the Articles are aimed squarely at one of those in particular.

While any notion of Purgatory is often regarded as an innovation of the high middle ages, a belief in some form of post-death purgation was very common among Christians in late antiquity, although it is true that they do not seem to have conceived of it as a third place existing somewhere between heaven and hell.  The ongoing purgation of our sins and imperfections was seen more as a process that one undergoes rather than as a destination to which one is temporarily sent. 

Augustine seemed to approve of this belief in his work The City of God (Book XX.25 and XXI.16) and the idea of eternal growth in holiness after death (arguably a kind of “purgatory for everyone”!) was widespread among theologians influenced by Origen, including the Cappadocians. Very often, although certainly not always, this possibility of continued growth and progress after death was joined to the hope of some kind of universal salvation. This was a kind of universalism that still attached serious consequences to human choices here on earth, but which nevertheless held that God’s punishments were always ultimately pedagogical in nature rather than merely punitive.

Indeed, if the dominant image of medieval Western Purgatory is one of burning fires and bodily torture, the imagery most favored in the Christian East tended to be the image of eternal school! Now, I will confess that I am probably far too keen on the idea of eternal school for my own good. (This fall I will be starting my 8^th academic degree and I already know what I want #9 to be…)  And I have likewise been known to express an enthusiasm for Purgatory that makes some of my clergy sigh over me nearly as loudly as my parents sigh over my status as a perpetual graduate student.  

But if the extent of my enthusiasm for continued growth and learning, both in this world and in the world to come, may admittedly be a tad eccentric, this patristic notion of eternal growth in holiness for the departed, and its corollary of continued purification from all that is not holy, is also not condemned by the Articles. Indeed, such an understanding is even hinted at in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (and, for that matter, in the 1928—hardly an example of some kind of raging Anglo-Catholicism!) (And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear [especially __________], beseeching thee to grant them continual growth in thy love and service.)  While hardly being one of the core tenets of the faith, a belief in some kind of Purgatory is thus certainly not incompatible with the classical Anglican tradition.

Purgatory and the Economics of Grace

But if not every doctrine of purgatory is condemned in Article XXII, what precisely is that “Romish doctrine” that most definitely is? The adjective “Romish” here may be misleading, for what is condemned is certainly not the doctrine of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church. (Indeed, 20^th century Catholic theologians like Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger have articulated views on Purgatory that are much closer to the patristic and Orthodox vision than they are to the medieval Catholic understanding.) Neither is it even the opinion of the Council of Trent, which had not yet been formulated when this Article was first drafted. Rather, what is condemned is a collection of late medieval beliefs and practices surrounding both Purgatory and indulgences, some of which the Roman Catholic Church itself would also condemn soon afterwards.

In fact, I would like to suggest that what is actually condemned in Article XXII is the belief that human sin, guilt, and repentance can ever be quantified or monetized. The economics of sin and grace work differently. 

Attempts to precisely quantify the amount of guilt incurred by different sins stubbornly crop up at various points in Christian history. The canonical penances of the early church specified precisely how long a Christian would be excommunicated for different kinds of offenses.  The early medieval Celtic penitentials and tariff books offered a (comparatively) more merciful system, allowing for repeated confession and penance throughout one’s life, but they also affixed very precise penalties that corresponded to different sins. This trend towards quantification reached something of an apex in the high middle ages, when it became common to speak of “days” or “weeks” or “years” that would be spent in Purgatory in proportion to different offenses. 

Once sin had thus been quantified, it was only a small step from there to monetizing it. Once penance had been numerically circumscribed, people began to ask: how much it might cost to “buy” a week off from Purgatory, or a year, or even a plenary indulgence? If I can buy an indulgence to remit the penalty of my own sins, why can I not by one for the sins of my beloved relatives, even if they may have died unrepentant?

The idea that “time off” from Purgatory was something that could be bought and sold caused offense to a great many Catholics as well as to Protestant reformers, and even the Council of Trent would ultimately condemn the sale of indulgences, even while affirming that indulgences could nevertheless be obtained by pious actions that affected one’s interior disposition in a way that a mere economic transaction presumably did not.

Those medieval abuses are easy enough for us to condemn now.  But it strikes me as not terribly surprising that the church needed a few centuries to grapple with its theology of money as society shifted towards more of a monetary economy. If I can pay someone to wash my dishes or clean my house, why can I not simply pay someone to say my prayers? As long as the dishes get washed or the prayers get said, does it actually matter who does the labor? If almsgiving is a pious act that the clergy enjoin, and if my priest can assign me to say a certain number of prayers as penance, or to fast for a particular number of days, then why can’t my priest charge me a set amount of money as penance? If many Christians, both then and now, did instinctively recoil at the selling of indulgences, the theological work of explaining why it was wrong, and just what Christian grace looked like in an economy that was increasingly more monetary and transactional than it was relational, is work that is a good deal harder, and which is arguably still very much ongoing. 

If all of this talk of Purgatory and the selling of indulgences seems very far removed from the challenges confronting the church in the 21^st century, I would submit that we actually live in a world that thrives on quantifying and monetizing human guilt, which is exemplified in much of our legal system and particularly in the modern prison system. The belief that any given human sin can be quantified and thus “paid for”, either with some kind of cash fine or by “serving time” as a form of paying one’s debt, should actually be deeply problematic from the point of view of Article XXII.

It is, I think, no coincidence that much of the modern prison system developed in early modern Europe precisely among Protestants who deplored the doctrine of purgatory.  Indeed, Dr. Laurie Throness in his book A Protestant Purgatory: Theological Origins of the Penitentiary Act, has noted the fact that it was not just any Protestants who developed our modern system of mass incarceration, this rather curious idea of paying for wrongs done with units of time spent. The modern prison system was born in England, and its primary enthusiasts were Anglicans. Anglicans may have righteously evicted Purgatory from its place as a destination for spiritual correction after death, but instead of following our instinct that the economics of sin and grace are perhaps less easily quantifiable than that, we actually merely transposed Purgatory into this present life, and insisted that human beings should make quantifiable recompense for their sins, either with particular amounts of money or by serving particular amounts of time, in a kind of newly-invented earthly Purgatory.  

It is really almost as if the Anglican reaction to the doctrine of Purgatory was to say: “That’s not real! You made that up!” <pause> “Maybe…maybe it should be real. Let’s make a real version!” 

In many ways, in spite of my concerns, I generally think that Anglicanism still has good theological instincts here. For example, with regards to sacramental confession, I have heard from many of my Roman Catholic friends that they generally do still receive rather quantitative penances like the classic “say X number of Our Fathers and Y number of Hail Marys.” Whereas I can honestly say that in 15 years of going to confession as an Anglican, I have only ever received penances that relate meaningfully to some kind of transformation of life rather than those that would suggest that guilt and grace can somehow be mathematically computed and transacted. 

But I also think that we are far too easy on ourselves here, lulled into complacency because we no longer speak about “time served” in Purgatory or of paying for our sins by giving money to the church, while we nevertheless still either actively or tacitly support a legal system that works precisely according to those same late medieval assumptions about sin and penance that we supposedly deplore. 

The Communion of Saints

If Article XXII’s commentary about Purgatory is perhaps more immediately relevant to contemporary concerns than it might seem, what, then, of the role of saints within Anglicanism?

From 2015-2018, I was sentenced to my own personal purgatory as secretary of the Episcopal Church’s Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music and chair of the calendar committee. From that vantage point, I must say that I am genuinely fascinated by how contentious the issue of the calendar has become over the past decade. In a triennium in which we were discussing prayer book revision and hymnal revision, and in which we were revising the Book of Occasional Services, I would nevertheless estimate that at least three quarters of the correspondence that I received related to the calendar. I can certainly understand why people care, but (although I have some theories) I am less certain of why it is that so many people seem to care so disproportionately much.   

The state of the Episcopal Church’s calendar confusion has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, and so I will not belabor it here. But, it has become rather commonplace to dismiss the whole debacle by lamenting with a sigh that the real problem is that we lack a coherent theology of sainthood in the church today, and that we really need to fix that.

After three years of being asked by the church to do multiple completely contradictory things, I certainly cannot disagree with the diagnosis that we lack a coherent theology of sainthood.  (After the 9^th email I received angrily demanding to know WHY we had not yet put Presiding Bishop Michael Curry on the sanctoral calendar, I almost started to genuinely worry that maybe he had secretly died and we were actually just using a hologram or a body double!  On the other hand, for people who see the calendar merely as a collection of exemplary biographies rather than as a list of figures whose intercession one might ask in prayer, I will concede that it is arguably not completely beyond reason to also include biographies of the living.) 

The problem with suggesting that we need to come up with a coherent theology of sainthood, though, is that Anglicanism has very arguably never had a coherent theology of sainthood. 

For all of Article XXII’s critique of the cult of saints as it existed in Catholic practice, the fact is that saints certainly never disappeared from Anglicanism. Most obviously, churches continued to be named after them. While many of the named saints were quickly removed from the Litany of 1544, all of the traditional categories of saints were still named in it, and the Litany continued to entreat each category of saints with the traditional phrase of “pray for us”. 

While many popular medieval saints were purged from the Anglican calendar, by no means all of them were, and it is difficult to intuit a clear rationale behind those who were kept. (For example, the twelve remaining female saints included Saint Anne, known only from non-canonical writings, and several virgin martyrs whose historicity was questioned even in the early modern period.) Books such as the wildly popular Foxe’s Book of Martyrs lifted many early Christian saints to new prominence, and placed them alongside more recent Protestants who had also died for their faith, functioning as a kind of Protestant sanctoral calendar far broader in scope than the more limited range of official liturgical commemorations.

At a time when even the bonds that used to unite Anglicans (like the creeds or a shared liturgy) are fraying in some places, is it particularly realistic to imagine that we will now be able to achieve consensus on a point of doctrine about which we really never had a single coherent theology to begin with? 

It does seem, however, that those Anglicans who first adopted Article XXII would be mystified and undoubtedly dismayed by the fact that the Episcopal Church’s calendar of commemorations is now vastly more crowded with saints than the General Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. (Indeed, a proposal to General Convention to create something rather like the Roman General Calendar—a core list of common commemorations and a much wider list of optional ones—was quickly squashed by fervent protests, while even more names for inclusion were proposed.) This sudden proliferation of commemorations is not a uniquely American problem. Recent calendar efforts in other Anglican provinces, such as the Church of England’s Exciting Holiness (a book title that I have never successfully pronounced with a straight face…) show a similar trend.

I am enough of an Anglo-Catholic that I am more or less content for us to continue wantonly adding people to the calendar every three years, so long as they were all actually Christians and are all definitely dead. But I do nevertheless think that Article XXII should, at the very least, challenge us to ask why this sudden proliferation of saints has flourished over the last couple of decades.  What work is it doing for us? Does this ever-growing list of intercessors and exemplars enhance our worship of God, or does it detract from it? 

Article XXII was written in a context in which it seemed clear to many Anglicans that devotion to the saints had far exceeded its proper bounds, even though they were generally not willing to go as far as some other Christian traditions in expunging the saints altogether from their theology and worship. As our own theology and practice around the saints continues to develop, it will be important for us to keep a sense of appropriate perspective, remembering that God is to be the only recipient of our worship, and that the saints are ultimately our partners and companions in that worship, never its object. That is one part of Article XXII’s critique that remains very timely. 

Liza Anderson received her PhD in historical theology from Yale University in 2016. She is an assistant professor of theology at the College of Saint Scholastica in Duluth, MN and a lay member of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council. 

by Benjamin Barondeau

When reading through the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in the current, 2016, Book of Common Prayer, we eventually come to Article 21, part of the articles on Corporate Religion, which is prefaced by a bracketed note letting us know that this Article was omitted in 1801 when the Articles were accepted by the American Episcopal Church “because it is partly of a local and civil nature, and is provided for, as to the remaining parts of it, in other Articles.” In fact, in the 1789 and 1892 American prayer books, the Article wasn’t even included. The current Episcopal prayer book notes that this Article goes back to the Articles ratified by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 and the Articles from the revised prayer book issued in 1662 after the Restoration (the latter is still the official prayer book for the Church of England). 

In a modernized spelling of the original Elizabethan English, Article 21 reads as follows: “Of the Authority of General Councils. General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they 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.” [1]

A contemporary adaptation of this Article replaces “Princes” with “rulers,” refers to “the Holy Spirit” instead of to “the Spirit,” and uses the clause “unless it can be shown to be taught by Scripture” instead of “unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.” Moreover, the online resource English History concisely summarizes Article 21 as declaring “that the General Councils can only be called by the monarch, and also [that] they cannot make rules that go against the Bible.” [2]

“General counsels” and “the commandment and will of Princes.” This Article takes us back not only to the Reformation but also to the beginnings of the Roman legalization of Christianity in the 4th century. Most of us have probably read Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, and perhaps many of us still remember the moment at the beginning of the play when Escalus, the Prince of Verona, frustrated with the Capulets and the Montagues continually fighting in the streets, declares, “If ever you disturb our streets again / Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace” (Romeo and Juliet 1.1.89-90: see also Article 37 for the authority of “godly Princes” to “punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offenses”). [3] Many of us have probably also heard something about the 21 Ecumenical Councils (beginning with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and ending with the Second Vatican Council in 1962-1965), including the seven great ecumenical councils involving both the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches in Late Antiquity: the First Council of Nicaea (325), the First Council of Constantinople (381), the Council of Ephesus (431), the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Second Council of Constantinople (553), the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681), and the Second Council of Nicaea (787).

In his voluminous and engaging The Reformation: A History, Diarmaid MacCulloch explains the importance of the prince during the Reformation: “With the trend in late medieval central Europe for local secular rulers to take more and more power and responsibility away from leading churchmen, it was not surprising that the first reformers in the 1520s looked to princes rather than bishops and abbots to undertake a new round of reforms in the Church, or that much of the Reformation continued to develop with the assumption that a godly prince was the natural agent of religious revolution. Yet it must be remembered that this takeover was in no way a conscious act of defiance against the Pope. Not all such public-spirited rulers turned away from Roman obedience in the Reformation, even when their concern for the Church had previously led them to clash with members of its hierarchy” (Chapter 1; electronic edition). MacCulloch also points out some of the vexing questions involving princes at that time, such as: 1) Should every Christian be expected to practice the ascetical self-restraint of monks and nuns, with the commonwealth as a monastery and the prince as an abbot? And 2) Should Protestants still accept Canon Law and church courts, or secularized law in the hands of a prince or other ruler? [4]

The councils, meanwhile, are historically important events for creating the formation of the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches and for defining and affirming important doctrinal, theological, liturgical, devotional, and disciplinary issues that still impact us today. The First Council of Nicaea, convened by Emperor Constantine in 325, for instance, addressed the nature of the Son in relation to the Father, codifying the original Nicene Creed that ends with a denunciation of ideas concerning Jesus officially considered heretical. This council also addressed a wide variety of issues besides what was codified in the creed, including that people must stand for prayers on Sundays and during the Easter season; a cleric can only live with a woman who is his sister, mother, or aunt; and a cleric cannot lend money with interest. 

Nearly 60 years later in 381, the First Council of Constantinople was held by order of Emperor Theodosius, which clarified and revised the Nicene Creed. Whereas the original Nicene Creed reads “And in the Holy Spirit,” the revised Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed reads, “And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets.” Whereas the First Council of Nicaea was concerned with defining the nature of the Son in relation to the Father, the First Council of Constantinople was concerned with defining the nature of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father (the Western Latin reading of this passage that includes the so-called “Filioque Clause” — “who proceeds from the Father and the Son” — wasn’t accepted by Rome until the High Middle Ages in 1014). 

The Council of Carthage in 419, meanwhile, assembled in opposition to Pope Zosimus’s interference in Africa, declared that bishops, presbyters, deacons, and anyone else who served at the altar and who performed the sacraments must abstain from sexual relations with their wives; readers might either marry or remain celibate; clergy must not marry heretics; only canonical scriptures can be publicly read in church, though the Passions of the martyrs can be read on their respective feast days; theatrical spectacles must not be performed on Sundays and Saints’ feast days; all relics of pagan idolatry, including images, groves of trees, and individual trees, must be destroyed; babies must be baptized as soon as they are born; and no bishop can be referred to as the “Prince of the Priests or High Priest or any other name of this kind” (Canon 39). [5] 

As we can see from the above three examples, the councils addressed a number of different issues. They focused on everything from how a bishop should be addressed to when a baby should be baptized; from when theatrical spectacles should not be performed to what could be publically read from the pulpit to whether or not the readers of those lessons had to be celibate. With this in mind, I think we can better appreciate the stipulation in Article 21 that “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.” Councils make lots of decisions, but according to Article 21, if a decision is deemed “necessary to salvation,” it has to be backed up with the accepted scriptures of the Bible (Article 5 lists which books are canonical and which ones — that is, the Deuterocanonicals or the Apocrypha — are to be “read for example for life and instruction of manners” but cannot be used “to establish any doctrine”). Basing decisions about issues “necessary to salvation” on the Bible is important because, as the article points out, people have erred, and continue to err, “even in things pertaining unto God.” 

So, what are we to make of Article 21 now, in the 21st century, since it has been over 200 years since it was first omitted from the list of the Thirty-Nine Articles? This is a question frequently raised by commentators on the Thirty-Nine Articles. Back in 1999, near the end of the last Christian Millenium, British Anglican Bishop Donald Allister noted, “General councils are gatherings of the leaders of all churches in the world. These were possible in the early centuries but since the massive growth and the great splits of church history they are unimaginable today. Certainly a body like the World Council of Churches is far from being a general council, not least because so many Bible-believing churches will have nothing to do with its radical theology and politics.” [6]

In spite of the impracticality of ever holding another general council, Bishop Allister notes that “Article 21 still has two important lessons for us.” The first lesson is “that churches must not come together to talk or plan in any way that looks politically subversive. In the late Middle Ages this was important: it is equally today. The stipulation that rulers (that is political leaders) must agree on any such gathering is not to force the church into submission to the state. This is so it can be seen by all that the church is above board and has no political ambitions. Even though civil leaders may have no Christian beliefs, the church is not to threaten but to support their role. In many ways the church is to be thoroughly revolutionary — but it is never to be political.” The second lesson is one that we have already looked at — that in order to counter the errors of human beings, all decisions concerning things “necessary to salvation” must ultimately be based on the Bible. Bishop Allister explains that “even a general council (like its smaller national version, a general synod) is a mixed bag consisting of some who submit to God’s word and others who do not.” 

In 1715, Thomas Bennett, Rector of St. James in Colchester, England, addressed the problematic issue of whether clergy should subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles as “Articles of Belief, or as Articles of Peace” (An Essay on the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Agreed on in 1562, And Revised in 1571, page 411). [7] Bennett referred to the opinion of the Bishop of Sarum, who argued that the Articles “are a standard of doctrine not to be contradicted or disputed; that the sons of the church are only bound to acquiesce silently to them; and that the subscription binds only to a general compromise upon those Articles, that so there may be no disputing nor wrangling about them” (page 411; spelling modernized). Even though Bennett argued that the clergy during the English Reformation “believed the Articles to be true” because they “engage[d] themselves to defend and maintain the doctrine of the Articles as most agreeable to God’s Word” (page 416; spelling modernized), the Bishop of Sarum, much like Bishop Allister, understood that not everyone was going to believe the same way. 

Robert G. W. Langmaid, a Canadian Episcopal priest from the Yukon Territory, also begins his devotion on Article 21 by stating, “On the surface, this article may seem to have no bearing on today’s world. After all, general councils are no longer called, and there are no princes today with governing power over much of the world” (Forty Days with the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion: A Devotional Guide, “Day 21”; electronic edition). However, Langmaid, like Allister, sees Article 21 as still being relevant. He explains that “Anglicans recognize the authority” of the first four of the seven great ecumenical councils of the Early Church. He therefore rightly points out that “the early general councils still shape our understanding of the Christian faith” because they “help us understand who Jesus is” as well as “help us understand some confusing ideas contained in scripture.” [8]

In addition to the continual importance of the early councils in contemporary Anglican (and thus also Episcopal) life, Langmaid sees Article 21 as having two other areas of relevance: 1) “the church must still take civil law into account when making decisions, as long as civil law does not require believers to violate divine law”; and 2) “Scripture is still the ultimate authority,” since even the “collective will of many believers gathered together cannot override the Word of God.” For Allister, “the church is to be thoroughly revolutionary — but it is never to be political.” For Langmaid, since the church must follow the law of the land, this “affects the manner in which we deal with injustice; we are called to speak out about it, but we must do so in a way that does not break any civil laws.” 

So even though we no longer have Princes or other rulers who can call general councils (as well as perhaps interfere with the proceedings, as Emperor Constantius II did at the Milan Synod in 355, when he forced the synod at swordpoint to make the decisions he wanted it to make, and either imprisoned or exiled those clerics who refused to comply), and even though Article 21 has been omitted for over 200 years and Episcopalians do not have to subscribe to the Articles as either Articles of Belief or as Articles of Peace, Article 21 still holds relevance for churches and Christians today. It can still be used as a guide for churches to be “thoroughly revolutionary,” as well as a guide for individual Christians who want to “deal with injustice” in ways that do not break any just laws (though the breaking of unjust laws for the purposes of civil disobedience, social justice, and faithful resistance to Empire, as Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is another matter that is also scripturally-based). General councils may now be part of Christian history, but they and the way in which Article 21 specifies they are to be called and conducted still influence us today. 

Notes

[1] The Elizabethan spelling of this Article varies greatly, depending on the source. One variation is the following: “Of the Auƈthoritie of Generall Counſelles. Generall councels may not be gathered together without the Comaundement and wyll of princes. And when they be gathered together (foraſmuche as they be an aſſemblie of men, whereof all be not governed with the ſpirite and word of God) they may erre, and ſometyme have erred, even in thinges parteynyng unto God. Wherfore, thinges ordayned by them as neceſſary to ſalvation, have neyther ſtrength nor auƈthoritie, unleſſe it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.” See https://archive.org/details/essayonthirtynin00benn/page/n6

[2] https://englishhistory.net/tudor/39-articles-religion/

[3] William Shakespeare. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton, 1997. 

[4] Diarmaid MacCulloch. The Reformation: A History, Penguin, 2003, https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Reformation/dikJzCnL7eUC?hl=en&gbpv=1

[5] http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3816.htm

[6] http://archive.churchsociety.org/crossway/documents/Cway_072_Allister7.pdf

[7] https://archive.org/details/essayonthirtynin00benn/page/n6

[8] Robert G. W. Langmaid. Forty Days with the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion: A Devotional Guide, BPS Books, 2013, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forty_Days_with_the_Thirty_Nine_Articles/KiSll7xVpLoC?hl=en&gbpv=1 

General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and 
will of Princes. And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they 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.

by Maple Anglican

The Reformation was, at its very core, a paradigm shift. It began largely due to issues related to salvation theology (soteriology), before moving onto matters of Church authority (magisterium). The Western Church, quite literally, fractured itself trying to settle the roles of Scripture and Tradition in the Church, as well as who has the ultimate authority to interpret them.

Now, as in the 16 Century, the Roman Catholic Church holds that “God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety”^[1], and that this revelation is consists of Scripture, which is “the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”^[2], and Tradition, which is a “living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit…”.^[3] Roman Catholics believe that Scripture and Tradition are “bound closely together, and communicate one with the other.”^[4] At the same time, the arbiter of the complete revelation is “entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.”^[5] The decisions of the so-called Ecumenical Councils, in which Magisterium is exercised through the Pope and the college of Bishops who operate under his authority,^[6] is part of what Roman Catholics consider Tradition.

This is in stark contrast to the Anglican viewpoint that Scripture contains “all things necessary to salvation” that we saw earlier in Article VI. We have also seen it invoked to:

• Support the concepts of Predestination and Election in Article XVII,
• Support the concept of obtaining salvation only through Christ in Article XVIII, and
• Declare that the Church cannot invoke anything contrary to Scripture as per Article XX.

Now, in Article XXI, we see the primacy of Scripture brought up again. In this case, it is used to further repudiate the Roman Catholic view of Tradition, specifically with regards to Ecumenical Councils and Papal Authority. Article XXI declares:

General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes.

Why does it say that Ecumenical Councils have to be called together by civil officials (i.e. Princes) and not Church officials? We have to remember that the English Reformers were supportive of Royal Supremacy, that is, that the reigning Monarch had ultimate control of both Church and State—subject, of course, to God’s will. The English Reformers could also point to the historical precedent that it was Emperor Constantine, and not any specific Bishop, who called for the Council of Nicea in 325.

Article XXI goes on by saying:

And when they be gathered together … they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.

Here, the English Reformers establish that it is possible for an Ecumenical Council to be called together legitimately and make a judgement in error. What the Article goes on to say is:

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.

We see the main ethos of Anglicanism repeated: What is necessary for salvation must be derived from Scripture.

At this point, it is very fair to as ourselves which Ecumenical Councils, or at least which decisions at said Councils, are therefore negated by this proclamation. That depends largely on which group of Christians you are asking. If you ask Chaldean Christians in the Church of the East the answer is two. The Oriental Orthodox Christians, such as the Copts and Armenians, say there were three. Eastern Orthodox Christians will say there were at least seven. However, Article XXI was drafted with Roman Catholics in mind, and they hold that there have been 21 Ecumenical Councils:

1. First Council of Nicaea (325 AD)
2. First Council of Constantinople (381 AD)
3. First Council of Ephesus (431 AD)
4. Council of Chalcedon (451 AD)
5. Second Council of Constantinople (553 AD)
6. Third Council of Constantinople (680-681 AD)
7. Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD)
8. Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870 AD)
9. First Council of the Lateran (1123 AD)
10. Second Council of the Lateran (1139 AD)
11. Third Council of the Lateran (1179)
12. Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215)
13. First Council of Lyon (1245)
14. Second Council of Lyon (1274)
15. Council of Vienne (1311–1312)
16. Council of Constance (1414–1418)
17. Council of Basel, Ferrara and Florence (1431–1445)
18. Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512–1517)
19. Council of Trent (1545–1563)
20. First Council of the Vatican (1870)
21. Second Vatican Council (1962–1965)

With regards to this list of what Roman Catholics have declared to be Ecumenical Councils, the decisions of the first four can be entirely accepted:

• The Council of Nicea dealt primarily with the teachings of Arius, and established an early form of what we would call the Nicene Creed,
• The Council of Constantinople dealt with variations in Arianism, declared the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, and amended the Nicene Creed into the one we are more familiar with,
• The Council of Ephesus repudiated the teachings of Nestorius who stated that Christ’s human and divine natures we separated to the point it was arguable he was two persons, and
• The Council of Chalcedon declared that Christ had two equal natures, one human and one divine. This was in contrast to those saying Christ had a single, mixed nature.

It is the fifth Council, the Second Council of Constantinople, which Article XXI would seem to first be invoking. This council, like the earlier four, made a number of doctrinal declarations stating that those who denied said doctrines were anathema. While most of this council’s decisions are acceptable in the eyes of Article XXI, this Council pronounced that a Christian must believe in the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.^[7] Since there is not a strong scriptural case for her perpetual virginity, let alone that its belief is required of Christians, this declaration is the first example where Article XXI says that an Ecumenical Council has made an error.

The Second Council of Nicaea also seems to be partially repudiated due to Article XXI. This council was called to deal with the issue of icons, which Article XXII will speak to later. This council declared a number of anathemas, which includes those who refused to venerate icons, see value in the invocation of saints, or seek the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary are anathema.^[8] Once again, as there is no scriptural backing for these anathemas, Article XXI would state this council had made errors.

However, the English Reformers were not just trying to repudiate the use of icons, or invocations of saints. They also wished to repudiate Roman Catholic doctrine with respect to Purgatory, indulgences and the sacraments. The first time that a Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council speaks on Purgatory was Session 6 of the Council of Florence held in 1439.^[9] The validity of indulgences was pronounced at Session 8 of the Council of Constance in 1415, when said Council condemned the teachings of John Wycliffe with respect to indulgences being a ridiculous thing to believe.^[10] While the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 did not use the word transubstantiation, it most certainly states that a change of substance is happening in the Eucharist,^[11] and the Council of Constance used the word when defining eucharistic presence.^[12] As well, the Council of Constance declared that the Church held there were seven sacraments.^[13] Article XXI could thus be used to repudiate these Medieval Councils.

However, the Articles of Religion were originally proclaimed in 1562 during the Council of Trent. Article XXI can thus be viewed as a contemporary statement against the decrees of the Council of Trent, which re-iterated Roman Catholic doctrines surrounding Purgatory, indulgences, and the sacraments. One could even go further and say that Article XXI can be cited as a repudiation of the First and Second Vatican Councils, although these were held hundreds of years after the Articles of Religion were proclaimed.

Maple Anglican is the pen name of a Vlogger and Social Media creator based in Edmonton, Alberta. He is a part-time MDiv student through Trinity College, Toronto, and an intern Theological Student at an undisclosed parish in Edmonton.

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^[1] DV 7, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

^[2] DV 9, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

^[3] DV 8, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

^[4] DV 9, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

^[5] CCC 100, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PN.HTM

^[6] CCC 100, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PN.HTM

^[7] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum05.htm

^[8] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum07.htm

^[9] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum17.htm

^[10] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum16.htm

^[11] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm

^[12] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum16.htm

^[13] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum16.htm

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The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.  Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

by the Rev. Canon David Ketter

When I was in my first year in seminary, I was attending a church plant that was committed to worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. They used a modern language 1662 for worship. I loved it. I also wasn’t confirmed, and I had no intentions of asking to join the Anglican Communion. My goal was strictly pragmatic—figure out the strong points of their church planting strategy, the ways they introduced people to worship, and brought people from first-time in attendance to participating in the life of the congregation. I went to seminary on the priest’s recommendation to further that same pursuit. And while there, I started crafting my own liturgy. I enjoyed most of the service from the BCP, but I wanted some adjustments: a liturgical calendar that recognized its Jewish roots, a lectionary that was whole-Bible, and some more obviously Celtic content (I will fully admit that I was one weird seminarian—at least that first year).

The project was abandoned by the end of that year, not for lack of interest, but because I did get confirmed. The rhythms of the Anglican way—the cadence that Dr. Packer has described as sin-grace-faith, where we confess our sin, receive God’s grace, and faith is born and expressed in words announcing Christ—had begun rerouting my spirituality. Confirmation meant, among other things, that I was submitting myself to the authority of the Church. Rather than being a rogue church planter with a unique liturgical agenda, I surrendered to the wisdom and counsel of many others seeking to live under the Word of God over many centuries. 

Article XX, in full, reads:

The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

Like many of the Articles of Religion, Article XX was transferred almost unchanged from the Forty-Two Articles authored by the Anglican reformer, Thomas Cranmer. In its original form, published together with the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and catechism, the focus of Cranmer’s concern in writing is clear. “It is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written.” The basis for Reformation in England, both in its limited degrees with Henry VIII and the much more aggressive reforms under Edward VI, was that the corruption of Christian worship and leadership in the Church had departed from obedience to Scripture. The many “superstitions” castigated by the Books of Homilies suggest that the worship of the Church in England did little to nothing to communicate the Scriptures to the people, and provided confusion and condemnation, when they ought to have received guidance and comfort from the Word of Christ.

In fact, Cranmer is addressing one of the fundamental questions of the Reformation—who has final authority over the Christian, the Church or the Scriptures? Along with the other Protestant formularies, the Articles of Religion firmly assert that this Divine appointment resides in the Scriptures upheld by the Apostles and the testimonies written by them (the Old and the New Testaments), rather than the Church led by the successors of the Apostles, the bishops. Cranmer is at pains to be clear on this: the Church may not ordain anything contrary to Scripture, nor turn one part of Scripture on another to overthrow its plain sense (since Cranmer, too, affirmed the perspicuity of Scripture). Finally, since the Church is the custodian of Scripture, it should not distort the Gospel of salvation by requiring things contrary to it, nor by adding requirements beyond those plainly expressed in Scripture. 

What is fascinating about Article XX’s claims for the Church is that it crafts an ecclesiology (doctrine about the nature and activity of the Church) that is centered around the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. The Church as a body exists in submission to God’s Word written, but it is also charged with the responsibility to bear witness to the truthfulness of the Word, by faithfully declaring the means of salvation expressed there. In effect, the Church becomes the steward of the Divine, royal decrees. It is by no means a low view of the Church, even if it is perspective which has been chastened in the wake of Reformation protests to the late medieval corruptions.

For all these reasons, it is almost intuitive to read Article XX as being concerned with worship and doctrine. Bishop Matthew Parker’s addition to the Cranmerian original in 1571, “The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith,” has strongly shaped the interpretation of this article in that direction. We would do well to consider, however, that the English Reformation was not simply a question of praying in English rather than Latin, but for the sake of clear proclamation of the Gospel and the instruction of all English people in the Scriptures. If we consider the opening lines of first sermon from the Book of Homilies, “A Fruitful Exhortation to the reading and knowledge of holy Scripture,” we find a familiar pattern:

“To a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable, than the knowledge of holy Scripture, forasmuch as in it is contained God’s true word, setting forth his glory, and also man’s duty…And there is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is (or may be) drawn out of that fountain and Well of truth…Therefore as many as be desirous to enter into the right and perfect way unto God, must apply their minds to know holy Scripture, without the which, they can neither sufficiently know God and his will, neither their office and duty.”

This is the importance of neither contradicting, nor adding to, the revealed necessities in Scripture: it sets forth God’s glory and man’s duty, and without it we could not understand what is “necessary for our justification” (Article XI), and thus “know God and his will,” as well as our own “office and duty” (our human life and responsibilities). So, the Church is put in a custodial role in relationship to Scripture, not only for the sake of Christian worship, but for the sake of human life lived with faithfulness to the duties God has entrusted to us in the world. The Scriptures have something to say about our responsibilities in work, in friendship, in creation stewardship, in politics, in the arts, in marriage and family and life together. In other words, to quote the Rev. Tish Harrison Warren from a recent presentation at the Intersection 2019 conference (May 16-18, 2019), “The Church has a call to teach people to be more fully human.”

How does Article XX in its final form in the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion envision this? The Scriptural stewardship of the Church as a body is principally demonstrated in its authority to “decree Rites or Ceremonies” and decide “Controversies of Faith.” In submission to God’s Word written, the Church is called to teach people how to be human by teaching us how to know God—to be baptized, to hear the Scriptures, to receive the Sacraments, and to pray for our needs, for the suffering of those around us, and for those in authority. The Church, in the language of the Scriptures, teaches us to mark the seasons of life—thanksgiving after childbirth, the affirmation of faith and call to active ministry through confirmation, the blessing of marriage, the call to leadership in ordination, the grace of forgiveness in confession, the mercy of compassion and healing in sickness, and the bold confidence in Christ in the face of death itself. The Church bids us follow Christ in remembering his promise to return, by welcoming his birth and hailing the revelation of his light to the nations, by feeling the burden of our sins and the dust of our mortality, and setting our faces to Jerusalem with him as he walks to path to the Cross, Resurrection, Ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as we seek to follow Jesus now, clothed with power from on high. The Church does these things, and by proper authority under the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the “norming norm.”

As heirs of the tradition of Cranmer and Parker, what does faithful Anglican affirmation of Article XX look like? Certainly, we ought to reinforce that the Church has authority under God’s Word written. But we must also acknowledge that the stewardship given the Church is often understated in the West. In a cultural milieu where liturgies and worship are so frequently adjusted on the basis of personal preferences and convictions, we would do well to remember that liturgy which is not conveying the Scriptures, and those things necessary to salvation, to all people is poor liturgy in need of reform. Finally, the Church’s work in worship and doctrine will impact our day to day life as Christians, commending the Scriptures to us to shape not only our character, but responsibilities and relationships within the world. In this submission, to the Scriptures, in the fellowship of the Church, we can make our prayer with sincerity and humility: “And we humbly ask you, heavenly Father, to assist us with your grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all the good works that you have prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.”

The Rev. Canon David Ketter is a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and associate campus minister with the Coalition for Christian Outreach. He has presented and written for the Anglican Multi-ethnic Network (AMEN) and Pneuma: the Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. He also hosts a weekly podcast, Fighting with God, connecting God’s radical grace to everyday challenges.