Adelphoi,
If you want to know where the innovations of the ECUSA come from, read on...
ECUSA,1&2&3&4&5 - Welcome to Experience
In the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth I , there began the custom (first in the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, who became the major editor and translator of the King James Bible of 1611) of explaining the doctrinal foundation of the reformed Catholic & National Church of England (ecclesia anglicana) through the use of the numbers 1 through 5. This was a simple device and most helpful for memorization. I still use it when referring to the Church of England and the Anglican Way as a form of reformed Catholicism.
There is ONE CANON of Scripture, wherein are TWO TESTAMENTS, and to provide a summary of the Christian Faith based on these there are THREE CREEDS. Then there are the first FOUR ECUMENICAL COUNCILS, wherein the classic, foundational dogma of the Church is set forth, and there are FIVE CENTURIES of life of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church wherein the principles of canon law, liturgy, ordained ministry and other important matters were developed and established as principles or guides for all time.
Since the 1960s this foundation (reflected in the classic Formularies of the BCP, Ordinal and Articles of Religion) has been increasingly eroded and even abandoned by modern Anglican Commissions, Synods and Conventions, and thus locally by clergy and parishes.
The emerging foundation on which modern doctrine, morality, canon law and liturgy is unstable; but, it can be summarised in five parts as the classic foundation has been so described.
There is EXPERIENCE as the only foundation, and this comes in TWO PARTS (that recorded in the Bible and that in the life of the Church in the world for 20 centuries). The THIRD CENTURY is the most important period for providing models for Worship and Doctrine. The modern Church benefits from FOUR REVOLUTIONS in the history of the Church; and the same Church utilises FIVE (a plurality) of forms of worship, types of theology and morality.
EXPERIENCE is a very wide category and includes direct personal experience & the study of human beings as experiencing persons and is all about the observation of persons, facts and events as a source of knowledge. Thus it is never fixed but always changing and developing, revising and expanding.
In the Bible there is a special kind of record of human experience - experience in search of God and finding him. However and regrettably it is much more the experience of males than of females and so it is imbalanced, needing careful interpretation. Yet it is unique in that it is primary and irreplaceable. In the life of the church and her members over the centuries there has been a continuing experience of God, the world, themselves and each other. Christians today are most aware of their own experience and look into it for revelation from God. So EXPERIENCE COMES IN TWO PARTS (within the Bible and outside the Bible) and is fundamental in the modern Church.
In terms of providing guidance for the modern Church, the THIRD century has been regarded as the most important. The Church then found herself in a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-ethnic world, and she was not favoured by the Emperors and thus not corrupted by the world. She was free to be herself before she was trapped into conformity to alien principles from Greek culture and Roman law by her being adopted by Constantine the Great and his successors. So it is to this THIRD century that we must look for guidance as to the Shape and Content of Liturgy, for Doctrine that is not over defined, and for freedom to be her true self in a rich cultural environment.
Further, the Church of today has to recognize that she has been through FOUR major revolutions and all these have shaped her and what she can be. By the Reformation, she left behind medieval ways and superstition; by the Enlightenment she began to do theology "from below" rather than "from above" and she embraced the full use of modern reason & science; by Liberal Theology (of the 19th Century & early 20th) she learned to read the Bible in new and critical ways and see it as a human document; and by the tremendous changes after the 1960s and after the impact of Vatican II, she has felt wholly free to dislodge and abandon traditional doctrine, language, discipline, liturgy, morality and canon law and introduce innovations.
FIVE is not to taken literally but rather as meaning "many" or "multiple" - many options within prayer books for all services and to suit all tastes; many permissible forms of morality; & many types of theology and doctrine (except the classic & traditional). The result of all this is that relativism is part of this modern mindset.
In the ECUSA this type of Foundation is more apparent than anywhere else in the Anglican Communion (but other Provinces are catching up quickly) for though the Bible and Tradition are respected, it is generally as Bearers of Religious Experience to be evaluated for words from God, rather than God's Word to be heard and received. Further, much of the argument for modern innovations - in doctrine and morality - concerning sexual matters is from Experience with material from the Bible arrived at by new forms of interpretation being used to support this. (How often do we hear not "Scripture, Tradition & Reason" but "Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience" where the latter two are at least as important if not more important than the first two!) It was the claim of the primary architect of the American 1979 Prayer Book that it was modelled on the early Church - especially the 3rd century and St Hippolytus' writings. We know now that this model was used in a most selective way!
Where this type of Five Point Foundation is in place, or in the process of pushing out the old norms, there is no possibility of the genuine Renewal of the Church. The new foundations have to be shaken by a great earthquake from heaven for there to be real Reformation and Recovery of the inherited biblical and orthodox Faith!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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