The Thirty Nine Articles of Religion
Our Vicar’s sermons are neither tedious nor bland. Consequently few of us have had the opportunity to examine The Book of Common Prayer, pp. 867 – 876. In my younger (and even more irresponsible) years I had many opportunities to peruse the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion, albeit more in a desultory than in a focused examination, during church services.
They are interesting and important — and 450 years old. They were largely written by that memorable man, Thomas Cranmer, who was Archbishop of Canterbury for 23 years, 1533 to 1556. What a man he was! Cranmer is conceded to have been a powerful author of the English Reformation and instrumental in founding the Church of England. Politics being far nastier then than now, his labors in reformation were followed by his arrest and trial for treason under the Roman Catholic Queen of England, respectfully known as “Bloody Mary”. He was tried, condemned, and forced to recant. Just before his execution, however, he retracted his forced recantation, thrust his hand — with which he wrote the recantation — into the fire, saying, “This hath offended.”
The Articles are the historical doctrinal standard for the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. Cranmer drew up the Articles as his last major accomplishment to the development of Anglicanism. The Articles were suppressed throughout the Roman Catholic rule of the Church in England, but under Queen Elizabeth the Great and her Parliament they were adopted.
They have been described as moderate, biblical, “winsome”, inclusive of the positions of Reformation theology. Their importance, their dictates, as it were, are viewed with differing reactions. The evangelical (we want to talk more about that word sometime) and the AngloCatholic wings of the Episcopal Church and its offshoots, though differing considerably among themselves, tend to portray them as written in stone — which indeed they are at the “Traditional Protestant Episcopal Church” in Point Clear, a schismatic Episcopal offshoot. The via media, the moderates in the Church, tend to consider them a venerated, invaluable, but dated historical document. We can learn much from them.
Several Articles pointedly deny various Roman Catholic doctrines, such as transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, and works of supererogation — works done for God that are more than those required and hence “money in the bank” for one’s future judgmental needs. The Articles specifically allow the administration of the Sacrament “in both kinds”, wine and bread, to laity and clergy alike, thus breaking with Roman tradition.
The Articles are firmly Protestant in affirming the final authority of government over the temporal aspects of the church — but not the spiritual. They defend and describe the necessity for ordination of the clergy, the legitimacy of official oaths, and the doctrine that Christ did indeed descend into Hell.
Winsome? See Article XXII: “The Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration as ell as Images as of Relics and also the Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”
Rereading of the 39 articles is an effectual reminder that the Church is historical, is alive, and is not anchored in time by fixated ideas and ancient winsome terminology.
