The Church of England, Sources of Identity, and Theological Distinctives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay T. Collier
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

This chapter discusses the influence of the early church and the consensus of the Reformed churches upon the identity of the Church of England. It shows that these two sources of identity have been set against each other in modern scholarship rather than investigated to see how they interacted. This chapter first notes the perseverance of the saints as the most distinctive doctrine for the Reformed tradition and how Augustine was esteemed as the preeminent church father. Then the chapter proposes to survey several debates involving competing readings of Augustine on perseverance in order to see what contributions they make to the discussion on the identity of the Church of England.

Debating Perseverance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay T. Collier
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Failed Attempt ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church ◽  
Synod Of Dort

Scholars describe the Church of England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as forming either a Calvinist consensus or an Anglican middle way steeped in an ancient catholicity. Debating Perseverance sheds light on the influence of both the early church and the Reformed churches on the Church of England by surveying several debates on perseverance in which readings of Augustine were involved. The book begins with a reassessment of the Lambeth Articles and the heated Cambridge debates in which they were forged. It then investigates the failed attempt of the British delegation to the Synod of Dort to achieve solidarity with the international Reformed community on perseverance in a way that was also respectful of minority opinions. The study evaluates the supposedly Arminian Richard Montagu and the turmoil he caused by challenging the Reformed consensus and the Synod of Dort. The book then surveys a debate after England’s civil wars when the pro-Dort party had triumphed. It uncovers competing readings and receptions of Augustine on perseverance within the English church—one favoring the perseverance of the saints and the other denying it. It shows how both theological options were valid within the Reformed tradition before the Synod of Dort and how that synod’s rejection of one as an error created difficulties for England in retaining its Reformed identity. This study recognizes England’s struggles with perseverance as emblematic of its troubled pursuit of a Reformed and ancient catholicity.

A Further Dilemma for British Divines

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay T. Collier
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
International Trends ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

Chapter 5 continues to investigate the Montagu affair by surveying adjacent doctrines related to the perseverance debate. For instance, Dort’s more narrow definition of perseverance caused difficulties for those holding a more traditionalist view of baptism and regeneration. After looking at Montagu’s baptismal argument against perseverance of the saints, the chapter evaluates published responses to Montagu’s advocacy of baptismal regeneration as well as more private debates where John Davenant and Samuel Ward tried to reconcile a form of baptismal regeneration with Dort’s determination on perseverance. This survey shows division on the efficacy of baptism even within the pro-Dortian party, with readings and receptions of Augustine factoring in. It also reveals further evidence of how a broad-church approach to being Reformed set the Church of England at odds with the international trends of the Reformed churches.

Charles Francis Digby Moule 1908–2007

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Horbury
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Church ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
Regius Professor ◽  
And Training

Charles Francis Digby Moule (1908–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was probably the most influential British New Testament scholar of his time. The youngest of their three children, he was born in the same house as his father, and spent a happy if often solitary childhood in China. Moule spent three years studying theology and training for Holy Orders in the Church of England at Ridley Hall. He soon had to take on leadership of New Testament teaching at the University of Cambridge for the Regius Professor, A. M. Ramsey. Moule was also fascinated, without losing his head as a critic, by the associated question of interaction between liturgy and literature in the early church, posed by such cultic interpreters of the gospels as G. Bertram. He joined the Evangelical Fellowship for Theological Literature, founded in 1942, an impressive body of younger authors that came to include Henry Chadwick, G. W. H. Lampe, S. L. Greenslade, and F. W. Dillistone; the moving spirit was Max Warren.

scholarly journals The initial stage of ideological formation of Puritanism in the course of Reformation in England

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-59
Author(s):  
Vladimir N. Yerokhin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

The article deals with the origin of ideological prerequisites of Puritanism as a trend in the Church of England which appeared in the course of Reformation. The author traces penetration of Reformation ideas to England from European continent before the beginning of King’s Reformation by Henry VIII (1509–1547) in 1534 and shows the beginnings of English religious emigration on the Continent from 1520s which was formed by Englishmen who were adherents of continental Reformed churches. The author of the article supports the opinion that the decisive factor which contributed to the rise of Puritanism in England was connected with the influence of continental Reformed churches. The ideas of European Reformation were perceived, first of all, by the English emigrants, and later on part of English clergy also supported continuation of Reformation in England in accordance with continental examples.

The Nature and Sources of Ecclesiastical Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hill QC
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Ecclesiastical Law ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the nature and sources of ecclesiastical law, or the law of the Church of England. It begins with a discussion of the purpose of the law of and for the Church of England, which is to regulate the functioning of the Church and its individual members by a combination of commands, prohibitions, and permissions. It then traces the historical development of ecclesiastical law, from the early Church through the Reformation and post-Reformation. It also considers the nature and effect of establishment of the Church as well as Acts of Parliament, measures, canons, and secondary legislation that have become sources of ecclesiastical law. Finally, it looks at other sources of ecclesiastical law including case law and precedent, quasi-legislation and soft law, jus divinum, custom, jus liturgicum and dispensation.

The Scottish Effort to Presbyterianize the Church of England: During the Early Months of the Long Parliament

1939 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winthrop S. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

The Reformation in Scotland, as Professor John T. McNeill has shown, was never a purely nationalistic movement. John Knox, as well as Sir David Lyndsay, viewed the Scottish church as a part of the universal “kirk,” and directed their efforts toward securing a closer uniformity with the English church and with the Reformed churches on the Continent. But it must be admitted that, until 1638, the principal drive for unity between the English and Scottish churches came from the southern kingdom. In 1638, however, with the restoration of Presbyterianism in Scotland, the process was reversed and the Scots became vigorous in their effort to presbyterianize the Church of England.

Grace and Conformity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Theological Controversy ◽  
Theological Vision ◽  
The Church

The Reformed Conformity that flourished within the Early Stuart English Church was a rich and distinctive theological tradition that has never before been studied in its own right. While scholars have observed how Reformed Conformists clashed with Laudians and Puritans alike, no sustained study of their teaching on grace and their attitude to the Church has yet been undertaken, despite the acknowledged centrality of these topics to Early Stuart theological controversy. This ground-breaking monograph recovers this essential strand of Early Stuart Christian identity. It examines and analyses the teaching and writings of ten prominent theologians, all of whom made significant contributions to the debates that arose within the Church of England during the reigns of James I and Charles I and all of whom combined their loyalty to orthodox Reformed teaching on grace and salvation, with a commitment to the established polity of the English Church. The study makes the case for the coherence of their theological vision by underlining the connections that these Reformed Conformists made between their teaching on grace and their approach to Church order and liturgy. By engaging with a robust and influential theological tradition that was neither Puritan nor Laudian, this monograph significantly enriches our account of the Early Stuart Church, as well as contributing to the ongoing scholarly reappraisal of the wider Reformed tradition. It builds on the resurgence of academic interest in British soteriological discussion, and uses that discussion, as previous studies have not, to gain valuable new insights into Early Stuart ecclesiology.

Community Control And Puritan Politics In Elizabethan Suffolk

1977 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Seaver
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Community Control ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

We are apt to associate Puritanism, quite reasonably, with evangelical preaching, and to talk about the Puritan movement as the tail end of the English Reformation, as the last attempt to take Biblical Christianity into every parish pulpit and hence into the hearts of God's “Elect Nation.” As a consequence, it has seemed both proper and illuminating to view the history of Elizabethan Puritanism as a series of confrontations between Puritan ministers and the Queen's bishops, the bishops attempting to create unity by imposing uniformity of practice, the Puritan ministers attempting to follow what they believed Scripture and the example of the best reformed Churches dictated, with the inevitable consequence that they found themselves engaged in a kind of perpetual guerrilla war with the Queen's guardians of a prescribed uniform order.If such basic assumptions are accepted, then the history of Elizabethan Puritanism can be seen as a series of escalating encounters, beginning in 1564, when the Queen forced the issue of discipline and order on a reluctant Church by requiring that Archbishop Parker publish his Advertisements. The debating stage was over in the Spring of 1566, when Parker and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners summoned the defiant London clergy to conform to the prescribed clerical dress or face expulsion for refusing to wear what Robert Crowley called “the conjuring garments of popery.” The year 1570 saw an escalation of the controversy. Cartwright's lectures on the nature of the true church mounted a much more substantial attack than had been seen in the first decade of the reign, for it was one thing to attack the surplice as a popish garment, quite another to argue that episcopacy itself lacked a Scriptural basis and that by implication it was, therefore, the Queen's duty to impose “discipline out of the Word”—a Presbyterian order—on the Church of England. In 1572 two Londoners, John Field and Thomas Wilcox, tried to give political reality to these notions in theirAdmonition to the Parliament.

Laymen in synod: an aspect of the beginnings of synodical government in South Africa

1971 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 321-327
Author(s):  
Peter Hinchliff
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Ecclesiastical Courts ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Church

Even quite eminent Tractarians tended to think that, however impossible things might be in the Church of England, the colonies provided the sort of field where they could create the kind of Church in which they really believed. That Church would follow patristic patterns, of course, would be free from the nexus of establishment, and would be governed by synods. As regards South Africa they nourished particularly high hopes. Robert Gray, the first Bishop of Cape Town, was campaigning for synodical government, the creation of ecclesiastical courts to replace the Erastian Privy Council, and to check and outlaw the heresy of Bishop Colenso. It looked so very much as though this were a situation—heresiarchs and councils locked in battle—straight out of the pages of early church history. So when Gray lost his case against Colenso in the Privy Council in 1855, Dr Pusey wrote in a letter to the Churchman, ‘It is no loss to us that it is discovered that the Queen had no power to give the temporal powers which the former legal advisers of the Crown thought she could.. .The Church in South Africa, then, is free.’

Perseverance, Augustine, and England’s Struggling Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay T. Collier
Keyword(s):  
Historical Data ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

This chapter reflects on three major findings from the several debates surveyed. First, it considers the existence of a minority opinion on the doctrine of perseverance in the Reformed tradition and how its presence in England left an abiding uneasiness regarding the confessional reception of the perseverance of all saints. Second, it ponders how two different readings of Augustine on perseverance played a key role in the way English theologians approached confessional documents and made the formal reception of perseverance of the saints so difficult for the Church of England. Third, it contemplates the way polemical labels have obscured the historical data and made it difficult to see the diverse views of perseverance and Augustine in the Reformed tradition. The chapter shows it is better to abandon previous paradigms of understanding of the Church of England and instead view it as a broad-church approach to maintaining a Reformed and ancient catholicity.

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