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The Anglican Spirit
Michael Ramsey
Seabury Press (2004)
xvii + 147 pp.
isbn: 1596280042

Shortly before his death in 1988, Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury (1961 – 1974), delivered a series of lectures on Anglican history and theology at Nashotah House seminary, which is located in the state of Wisconsin in the United States of America. Subsequently compiled from the notes of those in attendance and published as The Anglican Spirit, the present volume contains the most mature reflections of Archbishop Ramsey – or, as he preferred to be called throughout his episcopal career, Bishop Michael – upon Anglican history and theology from the Reformation through the archepiscopacy of William Temple (+1944). The Anglican Spirit also includes his thoughts upon the shape and direction of Anglican theology in the ecumenical period, dealing respectively with the revival of biblical theology through the influence of Karl Barth, and Anglican ecclesiology in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. It is ecclesiology that was Bishop Michael’s own great contribution to Anglicanism, and for those who have never read his foundational and influential book The Gospel and the Catholic Church (recently reprinted by Wipf & Stock), the present volume offers both an introduction to Anglicanism and an informative sketch of Bishop Michael’s own ecclesiological vision.

In The Anglican Spirit we have a coherent and synthetic vision of Anglicanism as a distinct form of catholic Christianity. The first three chapters of the book deal with the period between King Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534 up until the eve of the Oxford Movement, while the remaining chapters deal with Anglican history from the time of the Oxford Movement on, giving the reader a sense that the Oxford Movement is the real turning point of Anglican history. Such a perspective is not necessarily untrue; the world of the Reformation, with its enthronement of the English monarch as the “supreme head” of the Church of England, is indeed a far cry from Anglicanism in its current form as a conciliar episcopal body. There really are two distinct phases of Anglican history: the first, which was monarchical, and the second, which is episcopal. Fortunately, the lectures are punctuated by observations that reveal the significant points of theological continuity and depth that define Anglicanism.

These observations are central to two especially strong sections of the book. The first is found in the second chapter, entitled “Scripture, Antiquity, and Reason”, which is probably the finest consideration of Anglican theological method that one will find today. Bishop Michael begins with Scripture by citing the Articles of Religion and its statement that Scripture contains “all things necessary to salvation” (Article VI). However, he explains this article by noting that this is not all that the Articles have to say on point; because Article XX claims that the Church is the “keeper of Holy Writ”, the interpretation of Scripture cannot occur in a vacuum, but occurs within the Church. It is not just the Church at its present moment that interprets Scripture, however, but the Church across the ages: “the interpretation of Holy Scripture is to be found in what Christians, the members of the church, believe always, everywhere, and by all” (17). Thus, the Anglican preference for the primacy of Patristic interpretation was not a later aberration, but expected from the very beginning of Anglicanism’s development as a distinct socio-theological entity. He turns to the Canons of 1571, issued in the same year that the Articles of Religion were issued, as evidence for his point, and he uses the Anglican theology of Eucharistic sacrifice as an expression of the validity of this model, writing that it “is an instance of how the Anglican appeal to antiquity could be a creative source of synthesis” (19). Having discussed Scripture and Antiquity, Bishop Michael then discusses Reason. The place of Reason, he writes, is “a little difficult to define” (20), but is bound up with Anglican theological conviction about the created order: the divine Logos, present in all creation, is also the seat of human reason, and must be exercised in order to better apprehend revelation. The outcome of this is not a romantic view of the past, but a call for what Anglican theology must continue to do: “we in our study of the Anglican tradition must pursue the ways that the appeal to Scripture, tradition, and reason can still mutually enrich one another” (24). The Anglican Communion has been given a theologically creative calling that it “must pursue”. This is given particular form in the book’s second area of strength: ecclesiology.

The last three chapters first deal with ecclesiology rather broadly (chapter 9), but then turn to the more specific issues of Anglicanism’s relationship with Roman Catholicism (chapter 10) and Eastern Orthodoxy (chapter 11). Bishop Michael has a tough but realistic perspective that neither the Roman Catholic nor the Eastern Orthodox churches can ultimately accept, for he understands the Church as visibly fragmented. It is precisely here that Anglicanism can make its real contribution to the Church:

If the Anglican Communion disappeared because it was no longer fulfilling a mission, or abandoned its true mission, that would be sad indeed. But if the Anglican Communion were to disappear because of its good and great service in the reconciliation of all Christians, then its disappearance would be something in which we should rejoice. Why? Because in looking at the long term of God’s purposes, we have to face this: the very term ‘Anglicanism’ is one produced by the situation of sad Christian disunity, and the disappearance of Christian disunity might well mean the disappearance of the word ‘Anglicanism’ (125 – 6).

It is worth noting that Bishop Michael writes here of the “term” and “word” Anglicanism, but not the history and traditions that can and do sustain Anglican identity. A reintegration beyond terminology, which would retain Anglican memories without the descriptive label, is Bishop Michael’s view of “home reunion”. Anglicans lead the way in this perspective; other Christians follow.

Given the original context of these chapters as lectures, it is a credit to the book’s editor, Fr. Dale Coleman, that the present volume exudes Bishop Michael’s conversational warmth. Archbishop Williams contributes the Foreword to the present volume, and his words are worth considering: “This book is a treasure, a digest of some of [Bishop Michael’s] most significant academic work that can be read by anyone at all who is seeking to know and love God more. At a time of struggle and uncertainty for the Anglican Communion, his is a voice urgently needed” (vii). I can think of no finer introduction to Anglicanism than The Anglican Spirit, and I can think of few Anglican saints as worthy of reverence and emulation as Bishop Michael in matters of life and doctrine, knowledge and wisdom. The spirit he discerned as our own can indeed still inspire.