Some thoughts to initiate discussion from Dr Peter Toon—June 27, 2007.
Here I shall use the good name of Richard Hooker, the greatest perhaps of Anglican divines, to raise questions about how and when a church enters into apostasy.
Hooker, the Puritans and Rome
In his treatise, On Justification and the Foundation of Faith , Richard Hooker provides a clear and comprehensive statement of the classic Anglican and Reformed doctrines of justification and sanctification, and also explains how they differ from those set forth by the Council of Trent for Roman Catholicism.
Yet the major portion of the treatise is taken up with the question as to whether the Church of Rome of the 1580s is in any real sense a true Church, and whether its members can expect everlasting salvation when they die as believers in Christ.
The English Puritans (Presbyterians) within the National Church at that time took a "purist" line and maintained that, since the Roman Church was in serious and grave error and heresy, then all her members who shared in this error and partook of this heresy did so unto the peril of their souls and to eternal perdition. The Roman Church was a fully apostate Church and it was virtually impossible to be saved therein.
Richard Hooker expressed a different and more complicated judgment of the nature of the Roman Church, and of the possibility of eternal salvation for members of it. He maintained that the Roman Church clearly held to the basics of the Christian Faith—as expressed in the Creeds, for example, and thus should be counted as a visible Church of God. Yet, he also maintained, this same Church had built upon the foundation a superstructure of such materials that by them the foundation itself was imperiled and in danger.
Thus the Church of England as a National Church led by its Monarch had a duty to separate from the Roman Church in order to be based not only upon the sure foundation of Jesus Christ but also to build a superstructure on that foundation, a Household of Faith true to the composition of the foundation itself.
Returning to the Roman Church, Hooker held that one needs to differentiate on the one hand between the Popes and leaders who create, propagate and require the error and heresy, and, on the other, the ordinary members who simply believe what they are taught and seek to be faithful Christians. When the latter come to stand before God, it is highly probable that many will be more conscious of the foundational truths of the Creed and their relation to God, than by the extras built upon these truths and distorting them; and so they will truly trust in the Lord Jesus unto salvation, and be redeemed by the blood of Jesus.
Thus Hooker was a major critic of Rome for adding doctrines and dogmas that are neither within Scripture nor required by Scripture, but are in fact much against Scripture. Yet he allowed that God's grace is such that even those raised in this Church who, to use a phrase, but touch the hem of the garment of the Savior will be healed.
This position was the standard Anglican position before and during the rise of the Anglo-Catholic movement of the 19th century, which had a very positive evaluation of Rome. Today, it appears that Rome has changed a lot, because it has allowed the Bible to be freely available to laity, it engages in ecumenical talks and activities, and much of its worship and teaching at the local level in the West is simplified and involves laity in an increasing way. Yet the dogmas and doctrines that Hooker found unacceptable, erroneous and heretical are still on the books and still part of the living dogma of the Church.
Applying Hooker's approach to The Episcopal Church
At least since the 1970s. persons who care for the classic heritage of the Anglican Way have by an informed conscience decided to leave The Episcopal Church (originally called The Protestant Episcopal Church).
If we apply to The Episcopal Church (TEC) the principles that Hooker used to evaluate the Roman Church, what is the result? Is the exiting justified?
On the matter of a sure foundation, TEC has much less to offer than Rome which has always adhered to a very correct doctrine of the Person of Christ and the Holy Trinity. Why does TEC have less to offer? Because, though its official Prayer Book of 1979 recites the Creeds, it also contains a variety of expressions that cast doubt upon what may be called the orthodox or normal understanding of the Creeds. This is seen not only in the content of various liturgies but pre-eminently in the Catechism within the 1979 Book. And in the various liturgies produced since 1979 the questionable foundation is the more clearly revealed.
It is, however, on what has been placed on the foundation (which we may grant for the purpose of discussion to be possibly sound) that there has been the greatest criticism from those who have seen, and see nowTEC going into apostasy. Here the list of bad building materials and bad design is a long one—from the importation on a massive scale of human rights to the using of psychological and social theories to create new doctrine, revise canon law, and change the content and essence of public worship.
Therefore, those who do depart TEC in order to seek to re-create the Anglican Way of worship, doctrine and discipline in America, have to be sure that they first of all have a sound foundation with respect to basic doctrine and dogma—on who is God, who is Jesus and what is salvation? Then, secondly, they have to be sure that they place a sound building on the sure foundation and that the foundation and the structure on it are both truly together what may be called the household of God. It hardly needs to be said that—where there is no central authority to rule where there is difference of opinion amongst Anglicans—this task of making a foundation and then creating a structure on it is likely not to go smoothly. And it has not at all gone smoothly. TEC has been replaced by many attempts to create the Anglican Way all over again. These began with the Reformed Episcopal Church in the 1870s and have continued intensely in the twentieth century from the 1970s to the present time.
The foundation of TEC remains the 1979 Book and its Canon Law; the foundation of those who exited in the late 1970s remains the historic Formularies (certainly the BCP of 1662/1928 and Ordinal and sometimes also the 39 Articles); the foundation of those who exited more recently, primarily over the acceptance by TEC of an actively homosexual bishop is more difficult to state for it appears to be in transition from the 1979 Book as foundation to a set of Formularies not yet finally decided.
Those who exited in the late 1970s, together with those who joined and followed them, and called "Continuing Anglicans" often build upon the foundation certain structures—using material from the Tridentine Roman Missal and other R C devotional sources—which appear to be in contrast to, and not in accord with, the foundation. After all, the Reformed Catholicism of the classic Anglican Way has a different doctrine of the Sacraments and of Justification by Grace through Faith than does Rome.
Those, who more recently exited TEC and have not yet decided precisely on their foundation, are building tentatively, but in the main worshipping and teaching pretty well what they did in TEC with some minor alterations, often because they are taking into account the known teaching and wishes of overseas Primates.
While the traditional Anglicans who exited in the late 1970s now regard TEC as essentially apostate and thus not a true visible Church at all, and while some of the overseas bishops of the Anglican Communion also appear to think in these terms, it appears that, as Hooker accepted that Rome is a visible Church but corrupted, so most of those who have recently left TEC evaluate TEC in similar fashion. They believe it is corrupted but that there are within it many true baptized believers who will go to heaven by grace!
In conclusion
Of course, Hooker wrote in the sixteenth century within a National Church, working to preserve the unity of the same. We read Hooker in a country famed for the separation of "Church and State" and for its tolerance of a wide variety of Christian, Jewish and other denominations. This said, the way that Hooker examined the question of both the foundation of the Church of Rome and the building it had erected on it, provides for us a reasonable way to examine what we mean when we describe TEC as apostate, or in error, and how such a description has implications for the eternal salvation of its claimed 2 million members.
(see further Peter Toon, Episcopal Innovations 1960-2004, from www.anglicanmarketplace.com or from 1-800-727-1928)
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