By Phillip Anderas

1. What is the Church, at the level of its deepest meaning?

A catholic might respond by speaking of the institution of the episcopate as established by divine law, iure divino, and thus of the church as an institutional reality whose sine qua non is apostolic succession. Because this institution alone guarantees possession of valid sacraments, the visible church which boasts apostolic descent equates itself with the means of grace. Without valid succession, no valid sacraments; without valid sacraments, no true grace; without grace, no salvation. Hence, by virtue of ruthless logical consistency, outside this church there is no salvation.

An evangelical, on the other hand, might speak of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. And because it is grace freely given, it cannot be linked with human works – including sacraments – in an exclusive or necessary sense. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. To be sure, the believer normally joins a visible congregation. But what really counts is that every believer is a member of the great company of the elect. And this invisible, mystical body is the true catholic church, outside of which there is no salvation. In comparison, the visible church is a shadow dangerously confused with the reality of the kingdom of heaven. Its historically characteristic marks – the sacraments and catholic order – are at best auxiliary instruments to the proclamation of the Word, strictly unnecessary (though at times useful) tools extrinsically related to the essence of the Gospel.

Excluding Erastian theologians, who argued that the church should be subordinated to the state, or liberal ecclesiological theory, most western theologians writing between 1517 and 1936 – and, alas, many since – felt compelled to pick between these two options. It is Michael Ramsey’s enduring contribution that in his The Gospel and the Catholic Church he trenchantly rejected the dichotomy altogether, seeing in both positions fragmented, and thus depleted, parts of an evangelical catholic ecclesiological whole.

The catholic response is partly right. The gospel is never fully heard apart from the witness of the catholic body. Likewise, the gospel is never fully effectual save when lost souls are sacramentally incorporated into the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. But a catholic is wrong whenever he separates catholicism from the gospel of the free grace of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The evangelical response, too, is right in part. The mystery of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself is the true sacrament of our redemption. And because salvation’s cause is through Christ alone (”solus Christus”), its essence is by grace alone (”sola gratia”), a gift freely received only by faith (”sola fide”). But an evangelical is wrong whenever he separates the gospel of Jesus from his catholic body. Whenever the great scriptural truths of the Reformation become weapons aimed against holy Church, they fail to attain the fullness of their meaning.

Catholicism without the Gospel is not catholic. Evangelicalism without the catholic Church cuts short the Gospel’s saving power. To the great surprise of polemical churchmen and the great relief all ecumenists of good will, the “two truths – Evangelical and Catholic – are utterly one” (pg. 208). The Gospel necessarily and naturally gives birth to catholicism, and the catholic Church expresses in itself the Gospel of the new humanity brought into existence through the death and resurrection of Jesus. “The meaning and ground of the Church are seen in the death and resurrection of Jesus and in the mysterious sharing of the disciples in these happenings” (pg. 6).

View the original post

Bishop Michael’s great work remains one of the most important works of Anglican theology to have been written in the area of ecclesiology.  I am glad to see a reflection on it, and this first installment has given rise to several considerations on my end.  First, I wonder whether or not it is helpful to keep in mind that he was writing GCC after the rise of the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical movements in the mid-late 19th century. It is important to remember that this divide did not exist in earlier centuries; I do not mean that Anglican theology was a unified whole or golden age, but the radical divergence that these two movements aimed for did much to burst asunder the politically bounded nature of pre-Oxford Movement Anglican theological difference.  Thus, it is good to see Bishop Michael as an ecumenist, trying not so much to bridge divides - which I would prefer to denote as “weak ecumenism” - but to reunify them into a coheret whole - which I prefer to denote as “strong ecumenism”.  Within his theological vision, Anglicanism was not an umbrella for those with *either* “catholic” *or* “evangelical” sympathies; rather, it was the place where those divides, which made so much sense for Roman Catholics and certain Protestants, were always already nonsensical for Anglicans themselves.  Thus, if a RC said, “I am a catholic and not an evangelical”, or if a Lutheran or Calvinist said “I am an evangelical, not a catholic”, for Bishop Michael, the Anglican was supposed to look at those who spoke thus in a very, very confused fashion, because the divide was not supposed to register.  The idea of being one without the other is fundamentally nonsensical for Bishop Michael - and, he hoped, would become fundamentally non-sensical for other Anglicans as well.

This leads me, then, to my second consideration.  I confess that I find it sometimes frustrating and clumsy to speak of Anglicanism as “evangelical and catholic”, because this usually translates to “evangelical *or* catholic”.  The root of this problem, I think, has to do with the fact that we lack a coherent way of defining and describing ourselves.  Theology is, at least in some sense, descriptive, and the more it can describe and render intelligible - not least in historical matters - then the better it (theology) can and should be said to be.  But, how does one come up with a concise and clear definition of Anglicanism?  I do think that it is possible, but if definitions are syntheses, then at some point one must recognize that the population at hand will have outliers.  As every statistician will say, outliers must be explained, but they cannot be used to help us understand the general trend amidst the variables and population sample/s in question.  I’m not going to point fingers at various movements or groups, either today or in the past, although the sad truth is that such groups do exist as historically-bound, theological outliers.  The proliferation of such groups and the lack of an articulable, coherent synthesis only fosters such proliferation.  Yet, the task of synthesis remains.  If I were to tell someone, “I am an Anglican Anglican, not a catholic Anglican and not an evangelical Anglican”, would that make sense?  If so, at some point will I simply be able to collapse “Anglican Anglican” into “Anglican”?  I think that was something of Bishop Michael’s vision.  I think, too, that it ought to be part of ours, as well.

We have enough data - 2,000 years worth - to attempt to synthesize into such a definition.  Thus, for the immediate future, we need a coherent definition that can, quite literally, be repeated to others.  From the definition, we move on to the task of explanation, both historical and theological.  The key, however, is to craft that definition…

Phil, thanks for this opening reflection on Ramsey.  I haven’t read GCC yet… I’m just starting another Ramsey classic (“The Christian Priest Today”) with my spiritual father. 

I appreciate what you’ve outlined as Ramsey’s attention to both “evangelical” and “catholic” understandings of the Church—and surely Benjamin is right that these were not always so distinct.  But it seems to me that it is a distinction that one has to deal with coming from the Reformation, whether or not it is in these terms.  For the way you’ve described it one might also put the question as a dilemma between the “visible” and “invisible” Church.

When was The Gospel and the Catholic Church written?  The 60’s or so?  I wonder if Ramsey had read any de Lubac.  One of my favorite images from de Lubac (I think it’s in Catholicism) is his warning against ecclesial versions of monophysitism:  the Church is always both visible and invisible and she can never be merely one or the other.

GCC was first published in 1936; the second edition was published in 1955, and a reprint was issued by Cowley in 1990.  Wipf and Stock reprinted it late last year: http://wipfandstock.com/store/The_Gospel_and_the_Catholic_Church.  It really ought to be read by every serious Anglican.

Ah, earlier than I would have imagined.

All that goes to show, of course, is that Anglican theology was once decades ahead of its time…

Sam, I believe you’re right about de Lubac and Catholicism, which if I remember correctly was first published in 1937. There are real convergences between the two books. GCC, by the way, costs $27 at the Mission Bookstore at Nashotah House.

Benjamin, good to ‘meet’ you. I’ve been thinking about your thoughts on a definition, in fact I’ve been thinking about the question you pose for some time now. I imagine many of us have. Sounds like you have some tentative conclusions, which I’d like to hear. I share the concern about using the language ‘evangelical catholic’ - which I first came across, I believe, in some essay by Hauerwas (who used it self-descriptively, back when he was a Methodist who attended a Methodist church). I think Albert Outler, a major American methodist, said more or less the same thing (Craig, wish to confirm or correct that?). I believe it has not been uncommon for Lutherans to speak of ‘evangelical catholicism’ rather than ‘Lutheranism’ (I know G. Aulen does this in the Christus Victor book). And I know of some Roman Catholics who embrace the phrase. So it is probably both unhelpful as a specific way of speaking about what Anglicans qua Anglicans think they are, and a useful way of digging down to the common tradition that many different kinds of Christians are trying to reach. Of course, the latter half of that statement might well represent what Anglicans are.

I’m trying to give up finding a good label for myself, partly because of exhaustion. So many qualifying statements are necessary, and by the end of a long discussion if nothing else it has become very clear that ‘liberal evangelical catholic’ or whatever isn’t really all that helpful. But more than this, I think that this discussion itself is really what needs to happen anyway. Simply saying ‘I’m an Anglican’ has two clear virtues to commend it. First, it will probably lead straightaway to the conversation that would arise anyway if I tried a more complex, to some more satisfying description. Second, I know for a fact that it’s true. It may be that all my talk of this or that kind of catholicism is just that - talk. But whatever else I might be, I am certainly an Anglican.

I think Ramsey would say that being Anglican is only a provisional way of being Catholic - in fact, a way of being on the way to being Catholic. I think that’s right. And I think it’s not unlike the line from Newman, “She was nothing, unless she was this.” The difference for Ramsey being, that true catholicity is ‘possessed’ only in dispossession; that no part of the body can claim sufficiency in itself, but stands in need of all the others; that there is no part of the broken body to which we may flee, and escape the judgment under which we stand. In other words, saying ‘being Anglican is only a provisional way of being Catholic’ is more a confession of sin than anything else. And no cause for boasting!

Thoughts? Don’t forget, I want to hear your definition - and anyone else’s for that matter.

See this by Fr. Will Brown from our first month of operation. Surely a Covenant classic.  Unfortunately it seems to have lost its formatting when or before we imported it from WordPress.  But worth the read.  Maybe someone has time to edit and re-post?