Recently in a short essay I sought to make clear distinctions between modern popular Evangelical Episcopalianism/Anglicanism and traditional Anglican Reformed Catholicism. In this time of “Anglican crisis” it is important, I think, that we discover our roots and ponder them!
This caused several people to ask me to give more details of Reformed Catholicism for they are not very familiar with the expression (which was more used by our grandparents then it is today).
Here we go! In brief….
The Church in the Roman Empire in the early centuries called itself “Catholikos”, the adopted family of God found in heaven and through space and time on earth, the cosmic and universal elect children of God the Father.
Thus Catholicism is the Christian Religion as practiced and taught in and by the Catholikos. It teaches the doctrine believed “everywhere, always and by all”; it is thus orthodox in contrast to heretical and schismatic.
With the separation of the Church into East and West by the eleventh century, the adjective “catholic” was retained by each side. Thus the Churches in communion with the patriarch of Constantinople refer to themselves as the “holy, orthodox, catholic, apostolic Eastern Church.”
In the West the bishop of Rome was not only seen as the Patriarch of the West but also the Vicar of Christ on earth. And the Catholicism of the West “developed” in terms of worship, doctrine and discipline, and did so in ways which were away from both scriptural and patristic norms. Thus medieval Catholicism was not identical with the Catholicism of say the fifth century. It may even be described as a corrupted Catholicism. Much of what had been added was judged by some at the time, and has been since by many, as unnecessary and unhelpful, even harmful, growth.
At the time of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the main-line reformers had no desire to create a new religion; rather their aim was to restore Catholicism as it had been in the period of the first five or so centuries. That is, they sought to strip away from medieval Catholicism what they saw as false accretions and to wash its dirty face, as it were. They appealed first to the Scriptures and then to the Catholicism of the early Church. While there was much consensus amongst the reformers, there was also a variety of judgment as to what needed to be reformed. So we get Lutheranism, Reformed [Presbyterianism] and Anglicanism as the three major forms of “Protestantism” (= protesting on behalf of the Gospel found in Scripture and taught by the Early Church of the Fathers).
In the Ecclesia Anglicana (Latin name for the national Church of England) the expression “Reformed Catholicism” came to be used of the form of the Christian religion adopted and taught by the reformed national Church, which was the most conservative of the three “Protestant” forms. It was “reformed” in that it was a renewed and simplified form of medieval Catholicism; and it was Catholicism in that it was the continuing Church of God from the patristic era to the present. It was not a new church or sect or religion but it was the renewed Catholic Church in and of England teaching doctrine that is received “everywhere, always and by all.”
One way of expressing the “Anglican” approach was through the use of the 1,2,3,4 & 5. That is, Catholicism which is based solidly on the ONE Canon of Scripture with its Two Testaments; that summarizes its Faith in the Three Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian); that is committed to the dogma of the Person of Christ and the Holy Trinity set forth by the FOUR Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea 325, Constantinople 381, Ephesus 425, Chalcedon 451); and that is guided by the developments in liturgy, canon law, polity and devotion of the first FIVE centuries. This “mindset” did not exclude learning from and receiving from later centuries of Church life, but it served as a firm foundation for the establishment and definition of “Reformed Catholicism” especially in the seventeenth century. Reformers have to start somewhere in order to be coherent!
Reformed Catholicism as the worship, doctrine, discipline, mission and polity of the national Church of England is expressed through Formularies – forms which act as doctrinal standards. Of these the supreme is the Holy Scriptures, and this is followed as secondary forms/standards by the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and The Ordinal. Without such Formularies, Anglican Catholicism has no clear form.
Reformed Catholicism may be called the Anglican Way & Jurisdiction of Christianity.
Reformed Catholicism may be called “Protestant”, but only in the sense of the original meaning of this word from the late 1520s –“protesting on behalf of the Gospel found in Scripture and proclaimed and explained by the Church of the early centuries.”
Reformed Catholicism can have within it “schools of thought and churchmanship” such as Evangelical (who emphasize personal conversion and evangelization) and High Church (who hold “high” views of the ordained Ministry, the efficacy of the Sacraments and of the Church as visible).
Reformed Catholicism remains distinct from Roman Catholicism primarily over the doctrines the Papacy and the Mass and their problematic relation to sacred Scripture and patristic teaching.
petertoon@msn.com December 5, 2005
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