The Anglican Church is Not the Heir of the Historic English Catholic Church

The Anglican Church often claims to be the continuation of the historic Catholic Church in England, but this claim is clearly belied by history.  The Anglican Church is a break-off church, founded in the sixteenth century as a new body by breaking off from the Catholic Church.  Previous to this break, the English Church had been, since its beginning, a loyal province of the Catholic Church in submission to the pope, the Bishop of Rome.

By breaking off from submission to Rome (and appointing the monarch of England as the new head of the Church of England on earth), a new church came into being, because the Church of England after the break with Rome had a fundamentally new constitution.  Certainly, she continued to hold many of the teachings she held when in union with Rome, but she rejected an essential component of the fundamental basis of her authority as a church--communion with and submission to the Bishop of Rome, her superior.  To use an analogy, imagine that your local Walmart decided that it would no longer submit to Walmart headquarters.  It refused any longer to recognize any directives coming from any Walmart authority higher than its own manager, and it designated its own manager as the supreme head of the store.  Of course, Walmart would at this point repudiate the store as being a legitimate branch of itself any longer.  If the local store continued to try to use the name "Walmart," Walmart would probably sue (successfully), arguing that, by altering its fundamental constitution without authorization from the parent company, the store had lost the right to identify itself by the name "Walmart" since it had become, in fact, a separate, independent store.  Similarly, the Church of England, by repudiating her former allegiance to Rome, undercut the previously-accepted foundation of her own authority and changed herself into a new, independent body, no longer remaining what she had been previously--a branch of the Catholic Church in England.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND WAS FOUNDED BY AND UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME

That the Church of England fundamentally altered her previously-accepted constitution and basis of authority is easy to show from history.  I am not going to attempt to reiterate all the evidence for this here, but I will lay out some basic points in outline and refer the reader to other sources that provide more specific evidence.

The Church of England traces itself back to the mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury, who was commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great to plant a church among the Anglo-Saxons of the British Isles.  St. Augustine, and all the subsequent English bishops, saw themselves as subordinate to the authority of the Apostolic See of Rome.  This is an uncontroversial claim among any with any serious familiarity with English church history.  The basics of this history can be found in Wikipedia articles here and here, for example.

One of the main sources of our knowledge of the early English church is the writings of the Venerable St. Bede, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People around 731 AD.  If you are interested in early English or British church history, you should read Bede's work.  Bede is a very accessible writer, and I found the book a delight in terms of its basic historical narrative as well as its accounts of the lives of various Celtic and English saints and the stories of various churches and communities during the early days of the Church in the British Isles.  Reading Bede will also give you a clear picture of the nature of the early English church, including its subordination to the Bishop of Rome.

Here are a few short snippets from Bede on St. Augustine's mission to the English from Pope Gregory I:

      IN the year of our Lord 582, Maurice, the fifty-fourth from Augustus, ascended the throne, and reigned twenty one years. In the tenth year of his reign, Gregory, a man eminent in learning and the conduct of affairs, was promoted to the Apostolic see of Rome, and presided over it thirteen years, six months and ten days. He, being moved by Divine inspiration, in the fourteenth year of the same emperor, and about the one hundred and fiftieth after the coming of the English into Britain, sent the servant of God, Augustine,and with him divers other monks, who feared the Lord, to preach the Word of God to the English nation.  (Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book I, Chapter 23) 

      IN the meantime, Augustine, the man of God, went to Aries, and, according to the orders received from the holy Father Gregory, was ordained archbishop of the English nation, by Aetherius, archbishop of that city. Then returning into Britain, he sent Laurentius the priest and Peter the monk to Rome, to acquaint Pope Gregory, that the English nation had received the faith of Christ, and that he was himself made their bishop.  (Bede, Book I, Chapter 27--editorial note removed) 

      Moreover, the same Pope Gregory, hearing from Bishop Augustine, that the harvest which he had was great and the labourers but few, sent to him, together with his aforesaid envoys, certain fellow labourers and ministers of the Word, of whom the chief and foremost were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus, and by them all things in general that were necessary for the worship and service of the Church, to wit, sacred vessels and altar-cloths, also church-furniture, and vestments for the bishops and clerks, as likewise relics of the holy Apostles and martyrs; besides many manuscripts. He also sent a letter, wherein he signified that he had despatched the pall to him, and at the same time directed how he should constitute bishops in Britain. The letter was in these words:
      "To his most reverend and holy brother and fellow bishop, Augustine, Gregory, the servant of the servants of God. Though it be certain, that the unspeakable rewards of the eternal kingdom are reserved for those who labour for Almighty God, yet it is requisite that we bestow on them the benefit of honours, to the end that they may by this recompense be encouraged the more vigorously to apply themselves to the care of their spiritual work. And, seeing that the new Church of the English is, through the bounty of the Lord, and your labours, brought to the grace of God, we grant you the use of the pall in the same, only for the celebration of the solemn service of the Mass; that so you may ordain twelve bishops in different places, who shall be subject to your jurisdiction. But the bishop of London shall, for the future, be always consecrated by his own synod, and receive the pall, which is the token of his office, from this holy and Apostolic see, which I, by the grace of God, now serve. But we would have you send to the city of York such a bishop as you shall think fit to ordain; yet so, that if that city, with the places adjoining, shall receive the Word of God, that bishop shall also ordain twelve bishops, and enjoy the honour of a metropolitan; for we design, if we live, by the help of God, to bestow on him also the pall; and yet we would have him to be subject to your authority, my brother; but after your decease, he shall so preside over the bishops he shall have ordained, as to be in no way subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop of London. But for the future let there be this distinction as regards honour between the bishops of the cities of London and York, that he who has been first ordained have the precedence. But let them take counsel and act in concert and with one mind dispose whatsoever is to be done for zeal of Christ; let them judge rightly, and carry out their judgement without dissension.
      "But to you, my brother, shall, by the authority of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, be subject not only those bishops whom you shall ordain, and those that shall be ordained by the bishop of York, but also all the prelates in Britain; to the end that from the words and manner of life of your Holiness they may learn the rule of a right belief and a good life, and fulfilling their office in faith and righteousness, they may, when it shall please the Lord, attain to the kingdom of Heaven. God preserve you in safety, most reverend brother.
      "Given the 22nd of June, in the nineteenth year of the reign of our most religious lord, Mauritius Tiberius Augustus, the eighteenth year after the consulship of our said lord, and the fourth indiction."  (Bede, Book I, Chapter 29)

You may have noticed the mention of Pope Gregory giving St. Augustine the "pall" as a token of his authority.  The pall, or the pallium, is a vestment which has historically been given by the pope to newly appointed bishops to signify recognition of their authority by the pope and permission for them to exercise that authority.  It is a sign of the authority of the bishop to whom it is given, and it is a sign of the subordination of the bishop's authority to that of the Apostolic See of Rome.  The pallium was something required to be attained by all the Archbishops of Canterbury (St. Augustine's successors as leaders of the English church) throughout their history until the break at the time of Henry VIII.

I am tempted to quote the whole of Bede's work, but I will content myself with one more reference.  During the time of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, around the year 680 AD, there was a controversy in the Catholic world over the question of whether or not Christ has only one will, a divine will, or two wills, a divine and a human will.  The Catholic Church decided in favor of the two-will doctrine, in order to preserve Christ's full humanity (for what could it mean to have a human nature if that nature were bereft of a will?).  The English church was anxious to put forward her orthodoxy on this matter, and the pope was anxious to be sure of the orthodoxy of the English church.  The pope thus sent a representative, "the venerable John, archchanter of the church of the holy Apostle Peter, and abbot of the monastery of the blessed Martin," to check up on the English church:

      Besides his task of singing and reading, he had also received a commission from the Apostolic Pope, carefully to inform himself concerning the faith of the English Church, and to give an account thereof on his return to Rome. For he also brought with him the decision of the synod of the blessed Pope Martin, held not long before at Rome, with the consent of one hundred and five bishops, chiefly to refute those who taught that there is but one operation and will in Christ, and he gave it to be transcribed in the aforesaid monastery of the most religious Abbot Benedict. The men who followed such opinion greatly perplexed the faith of the Church of Constantinople at that time; but by the help of God they were then discovered and overcome. Wherefore, Pope Agatho, being desirous to be informed concerning the state of the Church in Britain, as well as in other provinces, and to what extent it was clear from the contagion of heretics, gave this matter in charge to the most reverend Abbot John, then appointed to go to Britain.  (Bede, Book 4, Chapter 18)

After Abbot John had arrived, Archbishop Theodore held a synod to state clearly the Catholic orthodoxy of the English church:

      ABOUT this time, Theodore being informed that the faith of the Church at Constantinople was much perplexed by the heresy of Eutyches, and desiring that the Churches of the English, over which he presided, should remain free from all such taint, convened an assembly of venerable bishops and many learned men, and diligently inquired into the faith of each. He found them all of one mind in the Catholic faith, and this he caused to be committed to writing by the authority of the synod as a memorial, and for the instruction of succeeding generations; (Bede, Book 4, Chapter 17)

The result of the check-up was as follows:

The synod we have spoken of having been called for this purpose in Britain, the Catholic faith was found untainted in all, and a report of the proceedings of the same was given him to carry to Rome.
      But in his return to his own country, soon after crossing the sea, he fell sick and died; and his body, for the sake of St. Martin, in whose monastery he presided, was by his friends carried to Tours, and honourably buried; for he had been kindly entertained by the Church there on his way to Britain, and earnestly entreated by the brethren, that in his return to Rome he would take that road, and visit their Church, and moreover he was there supplied with men to conduct him on his way, and assist him in the work enjoined upon him. Though he died by the way, yet the testimony of the Catholic faith of the English nation was carried to Rome, and received with great joy by the Apostolic Pope, and all those, that heard or read it.  (Bede, Book 4, Chapter 17)

For a more detailed account of the history of the English church's communion with and subordination to the See of Rome, I would recommend a couple of sources (besides St. Bede).  One of them is the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on "England (Before the Reformation)".  The other is chapter 9, "The Church of England," in The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, by Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick.

So the English church was founded, explicitly, as a branch of the Catholic Church under the authority of the Bishop of Rome.  All the English bishops acknowledged that their authority was subordinate to and subject to and in a sense derived from the Bishop of Rome.  When the church in England broke from Rome, then, at the time of Henry VIII, she ceased to be what she had been previously and became a new body with a new constitution--a new church, the "Anglican church."

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND WAS PART OF THE WESTERN CATHOLIC CHURCH, WHICH ACKNOWLEDGED THE SUPREMACY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME

The Church of England was directly founded by Rome and directly acknowledged her subordination to Rome's authority.  But even apart from these specific characteristics of the church in England, the English church was certainly a part of the broader western Catholic Church.  She never saw herself as an independent body, but always held communion with the other churches of the world and particularly of the western world.  The Eastern churches, I would argue (but now is not the time for it), also understood themselves to be under the authority of the pope, but their relationship with the pope was certainly more distant.  They had their own patriarchs--the Patriarch of Constantinople, of Antioch, of Alexandria.  The western churches, however, were more directly under the authority of Rome not only as the mother church of the whole world but also more specifically as the patriarch of the western churches.

Also, as a part of the western church, when the Eastern churches grew more and more estranged from Rome and eventually ended up in schism with Rome (the schism that has given us today the Eastern Orthodox churches as separate from the Catholic Church), the English church remained loyal to Rome.  She accepted the ecumenical councils of the Church as these were understood by Rome.  One of these councils, for example, was the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215.  Canon 5 of this council reads thus:

Renewing the ancient privileges of the patriarchal sees, we decree with the approval of the holy and ecumenical council, that after the Roman Church, which by the will of God holds over all others pre-eminence of ordinary power as the mother and mistress of all the faithful, that of Constantinople shall hold first place, that of Alexandria second, that of Antioch third, and that of Jerusalem fourth, the dignity proper to each to be observed; so that after their bishops have received from the Roman pontiff the pallium, which is the distinguishing mark of the plenitude of the pontifical office, and have taken the oath of fidelity and obedience to him, they may also lawfully bestow the pallium upon their suffragans, receiving from them the canonical profession of faith for themselves, and for the Roman Church the pledge of obedience. They may have the standard of the cross borne before them everywhere, except in the city of Rome and wherever the supreme pontiff or his legate wearing the insignia of Apostolic dignity is present. In all provinces subject to their jurisdiction appeals may be taken to them when necessary, saving the appeals directed to the Apostolic See, which must be humbly respected.

Another of these ecumenical councils accepted by the whole of the western Catholic Church was the Council of Florence, held around 1438-1445.  In its sixth session, the Council gave this definition:

We also define that the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff holds the primacy over the whole world and the Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter prince of the apostles, and that he is the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole church and the father and teacher of all Christians, and to him was committed in blessed Peter the full power of tending, ruling and governing the whole church, as is contained also in the acts of ecumenical councils and in the sacred canons.

The Apostolic See was regarded as having power, as possessor of the keys given to St. Peter, to teach the truth and to confute heresies.  Communion with the Apostolic See, therefore, was seen as the same as communion with the true fullness of Catholic faith.  It is the cure for schism, as St. Jerome articulated:

[T]he Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.  (St Jerome, AD 393, Against Jovinianus [Book I], section 26--New Advent website)

In the early 6th century, at the resolution of a schism between Rome and the Eastern churches (the Acasian schism), as a requirement for return to communion with Rome all the estranged Eastern churches had to sign this statement:

     The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way to deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers.  For it is impossible that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ who said, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church" (Matt. 16:18), should not be verified.  And their truth has been proved by the course of history, for in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been kept unsullied.  From this hope and faith we by no means desire to be separated and, following the doctrine of the Fathers, we declare anathema all heresies . . .
     Following, as we have said before, the Apostolic See in all things and proclaiming all its decisions, we endorse and approve all the letters which Pope St. Leo wrote concerning the Christian religion.  And so I hope I may deserve to be associated with you in the one communion which the Apostolic See proclaims, in which the whole, true, and perfect security of the Christian religion resides.  I promise that from now on those who are separated from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, who are not in agreement with the Apostolic See, will not have their names read during the sacred mysteries.  But if I attempt even the least deviation from my profession, I admit that, according to my own declaration, I am an accomplice to those whom I have condemned.  I have signed this my profession with my own hand and have directed it to you, Hormisdas, the holy and venerable pope of Rome.  (The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation, tr. John F. Clarkson, et al. [Tan, 2009])

In the 7th century, St. Maximus the Confessor, an Eastern theologian (well-respected and considered a saint today by both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches), expressed the same ideas:

All the ends of the inhabited world, and those who anywhere on earth confess the Lord with a pure and orthodox faith, look directly to the most holy Church of the Romans and her confession and faith as to a sun of eternal light, receiving from her the radiant beam of the patristic and holy doctrines, just as the holy six synods, inspired and sacred, purely and with all devotion set them forth, uttering most clearly the symbol of faith. For, from the time of the descent to us of the incarnate Word of God, all the Churches of the Christians everywhere have held and possess this most great Church as the sole base and foundation, since, according to the very promise of the Saviour, it will never be overpowered by the gates of hell, but rather has the keys of the orthodox faith and confession in him, and to those who approach it with reverence it opens the genuine and unique piety, but shuts and stops every heretical mouth that speaks utter wickedness.  (Footnotes removed--the quotation is from "The Ecclesiology of St. Maximos the Confessor," by Andrew Louth, published in the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2004, p. 116)

(For more on the recognition of papal authority in the early Church, East and West, see here and here.)

These ideas were fully accepted by the English church, and the whole western Catholic Church, before the split of Henry VIII.  Once again, we can see that in breaking with Rome and forming her own new Anglican theories of the foundations of her authority, the English church broke from her own acknowledged head and illegally (according to her own previously-accepted terms) revised her constitution fundamentally, and thus ceased to be the continuation of the same Catholic Church in England but instead became a new, hitherto non-existent entity, the Anglican Church.

RESPONSES TO A FEW OBJECTIONS

1. The Anglican Church was not a new church; it was the continuation of the ancient Celtic Church that was supplanted by the English Church with the coming of St. Augustine and his successors.  That earlier Celtic Church was independent from Rome and didn't acknowledge Rome's authority.  The Anglican Church simply returned the British church to its previous ancient condition.

The main problem with this argument is simply that it is blatantly false in its basic historical claims.  First of all, whatever we think the "Celtic Church" was like, it is a simple historical fact that the Church of England is not a descendant of the ancient Celtic churches but of the English church founded by St. Augustine (of Canterbury!) and ruled by his successors.  So the Celtic churches' testimony in this regard is irrelevant.

Secondly, there is no evidence that there ever existed an independent Celtic church or churches that were not part of the broader community of western Christianity and which did not acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Rome.  The evidence, instead, clearly suggests that the Celtic churches (British, Scottish, and Irish) that predated the English church acknowledged the basic authority structure of the western Catholic Church, including the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, just as much as English churches would.

I recommend this article, and also this Wikipedia article, to provide some basic historical evidence for my claim here.  Let me also refer to some testimony from one of the great Irish saints, St. Columban (not to be confused with another great Celtic saint, St. Columba).  St. Columban wrote a series of letters to a couple of popes of Rome about various issues, including the Celtic dating of the Feast of Easter (see below for more on this).  Around the year 612, as he was engaged in combatting Arianism, there were reported to him some suspicions that Pope Boniface might not be standing up for orthodoxy against Arianism as well as he ought, and St. Columban wrote to the pope, remonstrating with him to clear his name and stand up for the truth.  Here are some snippets (editorial additions to the text removed) from this letter (see the letter itself for full context) which reveal the relationship of the Irish church to the See of Rome:

To the most fair Head of all the Churches of the whole of Europe, estimable Pope, exalted Prelate, Shepherd of Shepherds, most reverend Bishop; the humblest to the highest, the least to the greatest, peasant to citizen, a prattler to one most eloquent, the last to the first, foreigner to native, a poor creature to a powerful lord, (strange to tell, a monstrosity, a rare bird) the Dove dares to write to Pope Boniface. . . . 

Watch, for water has now entered the vessel of the Church, and the vessel is in perilous straits. For all we Irish, inhabitants of the world's edge, are disciples of Saints Peter and Paul and of all the disciples who wrote the sacred canon by the Holy Ghost, and we accept nothing outside the evangelical and apostolic teaching; none has been a heretic, none a Judaizer, none a schismatic; but the Catholic Faith, as it was delivered by you first, who are the successors of the holy apostles, is maintained unbroken. Strengthened and almost goaded by this confidence, I have dared to arouse you against those who revile you and call you the partisans of heretics and describe you as schismatics, so that my boasting", in which I trusted when I spoke for you in answer to them, should not be in vain’’, and so that they, not us, might be dismayed. For I promised on your behalf (as the disciples should so feel for their master) that the Roman Church defends no heretic against the Catholic Faith. Therefore do you accept with willing mind and dutiful ears my necessarily presumptuous interference; for whatever I say that is useful or orthodox will redound to you; for the master's praise lies in the doctrine of his disciples; thus if a son [speaks] wisely his father will rejoice’’; and yours will be the credit, since, as I said, it was delivered by you; for purity is due, not to the river, but the spring. But if you find some thoughtless words of a zeal that seems excessive, either in this letter or in the other against Agrippinus, who provoked my pen, set it down to my tactlessness, not pride. . . . 

Watch therefore for the Church's peace, succour your sheep, who already tremble at what seem the terrors of the wolves, and who also fear yourselves with too much trembling as they are driven into various folds. Thus they are in doubt, partly coming, but partly going, and as they come so they return, and ever are in fear. Then use, dear Pope, the call and known voice of the true shepherd, and stand between sheep and wolves, so that, shedding their fear, they may then first fully acknowledge you as shepherd. . . . 

Therefore, that you may not lack apostolic honour, maintain the apostolic Faith, establish it by testimony, strengthen it by writing, defend it by a synod, that none may lawfully resist you. . . . 

Then, lest the old Enemy bind men with this very lengthy cord of error, let the cause of division, I beg, be cut off by you immediately, so to say with St. Peter's knife, that is, with a true and synodical confession of faith and with an abhorrence and utter condemnation of all heretics, so that you may cleanse the chair of Peter from every error, if any, as they say, has been introduced, and if not, so that its purity may be recognized by all. For it is a matter for grief and lamentation, if the Catholic Faith is not maintained in the Apostolic See. But, to speak my entire mind, lest I should seem to flatter even you beyond your due, it is also a matter for grief that you in zeal for the faith, as has long been your duty, have not first condemned outright or excommunicated the party withdrawing from you, after first demonstrating the purity of your own faith, seeing that you are the man who has the lawful power; and for this reason they even dare to defame the chief See of the orthodox faith. . . . 

For we, as I have said before, are bound to St. Peter's chair; for though Rome be great and famous, among us it is only on that chair that her greatness and her fame depend. . . 

Therefore, since these things are true and are accepted without any gainsaying by all who think truly, though it is known to all and there is none ignorant of how Our Saviour bestowed the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven upon St. Peter, and you perhaps on this account claim for yourself before all others some proud measure of greater authority and power in things divine; you ought to know that your power will be the less in the Lord's eyes, if you even think this in your heart, since the unity of faith has produced in the whole world a unity of power and privilege, in such wise that by all men everywhere freedom should be given to the truth, and the approach of error should be denied by all alike, since it was his right confession that privileged even the holy bearer of the keys, the common teacher of us all; it should be lawful even for your subordinates to entreat you for their zeal in the faith, for their love of peace, and for the unity of the Church our common mother, who is indeed torn asunder like Rebekah in her maternal womb, and grieves for the strife and civil warfare of her sons, and in sorrow bewails the discord of her dearest. . . 

But while I urge such considerations, like a man sluggish in action and speaking rather than doing (I am called Jonah in Hebrew, Peristera in Greek, Columba in Latin, yet so much is my birth-right in the idiom of your language, though I use the ancient Hebrew name of Jonah, whose shipwreck I have also almost undergone) I beg you, as I have often asked, to pardon me, since necessity rather than vainglory compels me to write, while a certain character in his letters, with which he greeted me almost on my arrival at the frontiers of this province, pointed you out to me as an object of suspicion, as if you were slipping into the sect of Nestorius. To this man in my astonishment I replied briefly, as I was able, not believing his charge; but lest I should in any way be an opponent of the truth, considering his letter and my own good opinion of you (for I believe that there is always a strong pillar of the Church at Rome) I have changed the tenor of my answer, and sent it you to read and controvert, if in any part it has attacked the truth; for I dare not claim to be amongst the faultless. . . .

We can see from St. Columban's letter that he considered the Irish churches to be under the authority of the Apostolic See of Rome just as much as the English churches were.  There is certainly no idea here, or in anything we have from the early Celtic church, of an independent church considering itself to be its own head and acknowledging no authority outside of itself or in the Bishop of Rome--which is what the modern Anglican Church is.  The Celtic churches, like the English church, considered themselves to be parts of the larger, worldwide Catholic Church and subject to the decisions of the larger church (such as in its ecumenical councils), and subject in particular to the Apostolic See of Rome.

It is true that the Celtic churches were intransigent for many years over the question of the date upon which Easter should be celebrated, and over a few other unique practices.  This controversy is discussed here and here.  St. Bede discusses it at length in his Ecclesiastical History.  The Celtic churches of Britain did not want to conform to the rest of the Catholic churches of the world over the dating of Easter and a few other customs, and this was a cause of great contention between the Celtic and the English churches for many years.  (You can tell from Bede's writing that it absolutely drove him nuts!)  Sometimes this controversy is alleged as evidence that the Celtic church was an independent church, rejecting submission to the broader church and to Rome.  In practice, at least on the matters controverted, the Celtic churches, for a time (for they all eventually gave in, various churches at various times, hundreds of years before Henry VIII), did resist what the broader Church was trying to get them to do.  But there is no indication, and every indication otherwise, that there was any kind of theory held by the Celtic churches that involved repudiation of the authority of Rome or of the broader Church.  It might be argued that their stance was inconsistent with how they ought to have acted if they truly accepted the authority of the broader Church.  That may be true, but only a person ignorant of human nature would argue that people's practices always match their own theories and ideals.  It is therefore very tenuous to argue from lack of practical perfect adherence to an ideal to the theoretical, conscious repudiation of that ideal.  More on this just below, however.

2. The English Church (and the Celtic Church) did not always obey the commands of the pope.  This shows that, at some points in her history, she rejected the authority of the papacy and held to something like the modern Anglican view of ecclesiastical authority.

It is true that various Catholics and Catholic leaders in England, as well as elsewhere in Europe and in all the world, refused to engage in proper (from a Catholic point of view) submission to the Apostolic See at various times during the past two thousand years.  Some of the most noteworthy examples of this have been political rulers who have tried to play the game of preserving their Catholic fidelity while also preserving their political ambitions, with varying degrees of success.  Some instances of this in England in particular are discussed here.  The Celtic churches' intransigence on the Easter question provides another example.

But what is the argument here?  That these instances prove that all of these people rejected the claims of the popes regarding their authority as the successors of St. Peter?  This is too great a leap.  For one thing, as I said earlier, it is all too painfully obvious from an observation of human history that people are quite capable of acting inconsistently with their own avowed ideals in certain circumstances.  Sometimes this is due to self-interested or political calculation; sometimes it may be owing to confusion; sometimes, as seems to have been the case with the Celtic churches, the inconsistency results from a desire to hold on to customs one has become used to and which one believes to be important.  To prove that any of these people or groups held to some Anglican-like theory involving rejection of the authority of Rome, it is therefore insufficient to simply point to examples of apparently inconsistent or incongruous behavior, especially when the persons or groups themselves strongly insist that they hold the very views they are alleged to reject.

Of course, one can find plenty of parallels of blatant inconsistency of practice in the modern Catholic world as well.  For an extreme example, take the SSPX (the Society of Saint Pius X).  Here is an organized society of substantial size whose entire raison d'être is an attempt to be faithful to the Catholic Church and Catholic tradition by refusing to follow the commands and teaching of that Church regarding the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, which the Catholic Church (of course) holds to be authoritative but a substantial portion of which the SSPX rejects.  The popes (at least since Vatican II) and the Church just haven't been Catholic enough for them.  (Here is a recent article on the SSPX website that will give you a taste of their ways of reasoning.)  The case of the SSPX reminds me of the earlier case of the Jansenists, who basically spent over a century refusing to admit that the Catholic Church had really rejected their theology despite the Church formally telling them so numerous times.  The SSPX is in serious error from an orthodox Catholic point of view, and yet they fully claim to accept the teaching of Vatican I regarding the authority and infallibility of the pope.  They do not reject that teaching and hold to some kind of Anglican-like theory instead.

Or one can look to more common examples in more mainstream portions of the Church today, such as Catholics who, while claiming to be faithful Catholics and to accept the teaching of the Church, in practice refuse to accept that teaching when it comes to certain counter-cultural positions such as the rejection of women's ordination or artificial contraception.

It must also be pointed out that the Catholic Church has never claimed that the pope is perfect.  He is held to be unable to err when defining doctrine for the entire Church, and his official teaching is authoritative, but he is not given a gift of moral infallibility.  He is a sinner like everyone else, and some popes have earned that label more dramatically than others!  The pope is capable of failing to stand up for the truth (consider the case of Pope Honorius, for example), or of scandalizing the Church by immoral living.  In these cases, Catholics may justly remonstrate with him.  Sometimes in Church history, various political rulers believed the pope to be overstepping his political authority, and resisted him in that capacity, even while they fully accepted his ecclesiastical authority as the successor of St. Peter.  There are Catholics at the time of my writing this who believe the current pope, Francis, needs to be formally corrected for aiding false teaching in the Church by his recent apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.  (Here is an example.)  I am not among their number.  But whether or not one agrees with them, it would be absurd to argue that they don't hold to the Catholic theory of the authority of the Apostolic See but instead advocate some Anglican-like position.

3. The Anglican Church was right to split from the pope and the rest of the Catholic world in the sixteenth century, since the Catholic world had gone astray from the purity of the faith of the primitive Church.  Since the Anglican split was justified, it was not schismatic, but a continuation of the English church's fidelity to the true Catholic faith.

Even if it were granted that the Anglican split was justified, it would be, to a great extent at least, beside the point.  My argument in this article has not been so much to show that the English church did wrong to separate itself from Rome in the sixteenth century, but to show that its separation from Rome was a reversal of its historic position and a repudiation of the previously-acknowledged foundation of its own authority.  Even if the English Reformation was justified, it would still be a fundamental change from the English church's previous constitution and identity.  What we would say in that case is that the previous, historic English church's constitution had been corrupt in some ways, and that it was necessary in the sixteenth century to change it to conform to what is truly right.  If a local branch of Walmart becomes convinced that some of Walmart's policies are inherently unethical, and on that ground decides to break with Walmart and become an independent store, its actions may be justified, but the rightness of its actions do not make the new, independent store to be rightly considered to be a continuation of its previous identity as a branch of Walmart.

On the other hand, assuming its break with Rome to be justified, the Anglican Church could argue that, although it had to break with the previous constitution of the English church, it was really only restoring the true constitution of the Catholic Church as that had been founded by Christ and reforming it from the corruptions added later.  This could be a way of arguing that the Anglican Church is a continuation of the Church founded by Christ, if not an unbroken continuation of all the fundamentals of what the English church had previously been.

But, of course, I would go further here and argue that the Anglican Church's break with Rome was, in fact, not justified.  It was schismatic, because there was not an adequate basis for it.  The English Church had been under the authority of Rome since its foundation.  She acknowledged the legitimacy of that authority from the beginning.  If she chose to rebel against that authority, the burden of proof was upon her to justify that rebellion.  Without such a positive justification, her act was schismatic.  The Anglican Church came into existence by breaking off from the existing Catholic Church and forming a new body.  The historic Catholic Church, the Church that evolved organically from the Church founded by Christ and from the Church of the apostles and the early Fathers, acknowledged the authority of the pope.  What justification did the Anglican Church have to cease to hold to that position and to embrace an opposite position?  Without such justification, this act of reversal was schismatic, for it broke the unity and rebelled against the authority of the Church founded by Christ without adequate cause.  (This is what I call the "default argument".  The default in on the side of not breaking the unity and obedience of the Church, and so some adequate justification must be presented to legitimize doing so.)  In this article, I provide a brief analysis of the arguments in support of the Anglican Church's separate existence, and I find them wanting.  If the Anglican Church's separation from Rome cannot be justified, and it cannot be proved by the Anglican Church that she is doing what Christ intended the Church to do, then she cannot claim to be restoring an original constitution, but must be considered as having broken off from the original, historic constitution of the Catholic Church founded by Christ in order to establish a new, independent body.  And, as I said before, even if the Anglican Church's separate existence could be justified, it would still remain the case that the Anglican Church is not following in unbroken continuity from the earlier English Catholic church, for she had to fundamentally revise the constitution of that church and repudiate its earlier allegiances in order to maintain her new, separate existence.

Published on the feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great

Dialogue Concerning the Claims of Anglicanism

Below is a dialogue in which I give some of my fundamental reasoning for going with the Catholic Church over Anglicanism.  Since some of the issues addressed in this dialogue come up in other dialogues as well, I have dealt with them a bit more briefly here and you can go here and here to see them dealt with in more detail in the other dialogues.  As I've said with regard to the other dialogues, this is, of course, a simplified conversation, not reflecting all the nuances or complexities a real conversation would no doubt have.  But I think that it does accurately bring out some of the key Anglican arguments and show why they are problematic.  I've used this article as my primary foundation for establishing the basic Anglican epistemology and key arguments.

"It would be wrong to say that Protestants universally do not turn to the Fathers, since many of them do, particularly those schooled in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, but most Protestants do not see the Fathers as an authority, certainly not as one that trumps what the Holy Spirit might be saying to the individual believer or even what the Spirit might be saying to an individual church. . . .  Still fewer would believe that the Church should have the last word in matters of controversy regarding the scripture."

"Roman Catholics see scripture as having a sort of parallel authority with tradition and with the teaching office of the Church, but not as being above those other sources of authority and certainly not as being over the Church herself. Eastern Orthodox, on the other hand, view scripture as a part of the tradition rather than above it or parallel to it, effectively making scripture subordinate to the Fathers and the Church. Anglicanism uniquely asserts the authority of all three sources of authority while maintaining that scripture holds the highest place, leaving open the possibility for error in the teaching of the Church or even errors in the interpretation of the Fathers, but not in the Bible."

--From "The Anglican Way: Scripture First But Not Alone," by Father Jonathan

AN:  The Anglican Church is nothing other than the continuation of the historic Christian Church, the Church founded by Christ, the Church of the Fathers of the patristic era.  We find ourselves in the middle of two extremes.  Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy have added their own opinions to the faith, while Protestants have subtracted from the patristic faith.  We've kept it pure, without deviating to the right or to the left.  We also keep the middle way, the via media, in another way:  Rome and Orthodoxy have exalted Tradition above Scripture or at least made it equal to Scripture, while Protestants have ignored the Tradition of the Church and have subjected everything to their own individual, private interpretations of the Bible (Sola Scriptura).  We keep the middle way, insisting that Scripture is the highest and only infallible authority, while at the same time insisting that Scripture must not be read in isolation from but in the context of the patristic Tradition of the Church.  We're also, by the way, less arrogant, since we do not claim ourselves to be the entirety of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, as Rome and the Eastern Orthodox do; we merely claim to be one branch of that Church, and we recognize that Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy are two other branches of the one true Church.

RC:  So how do you know that you've got all this right, and that you've kept the faith pure while others have distorted it in some ways?

AN:  We know that because we can see from examining Scripture and the Fathers of the Church that the Anglican way is the way that conforms to what they taught, while Rome, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism have deviated from it.  For example, the Bible teaches that Scripture is the highest authority, and that only it is infallible.  We can see this from Acts 17:11, where the Bereans are praised because they checked out what Paul was teaching them from the Scriptures, not just trusting him as if he were infallible.  They only regarded the Scriptures as infallible.  We can also see this from Jesus's conversation with the Pharisees in Mark 7:1-13, where Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for putting their own traditions above the Scriptures instead of checking their traditions by the Scriptures.  So Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy have deviated from pure faith by putting Tradition on the same level as Scripture.  Another example with regard to Roman Catholicism is the Immaculate Conception.  Nowhere is that doctrine taught in Scripture, nor was it taught by the Fathers.  Rome added it, and therefore has deviated from the purity of the faith.  On the other hand, the Protestants have deviated from the purity of the faith by, among other things, subjecting everything to their own private interpretations of Scripture instead of listening and deferring to the Tradition of the Church, as 2 Thessalonians 2:15 teaches us to do, and as the Fathers taught us (see, for example, St. Vincent of Lerins's Commonitory, Chapter 2).  Only we Anglicans have kept from deviating to the right hand or to the left in these and other matters.

RC:  But your arguments here are question-begging, because you are assuming that your methods of interpreting Scripture and the Fathers is correct, and that your particular interpretations of them are correct.  But Scripture and the Fathers are not so clear as prove your positions on the points you mentioned or on other points without further critical interpretation.  Consider the example of the Bereans and Jesus's conversation with the Pharisees.  Is there anything in these passages of Scripture that clearly puts forth the idea that Scripture is the only infallible authority?  The Bereans checked what Paul was saying with Scripture (that is, the Old Testament), because they needed to see whether he was truly a preacher from God, whether the Christian religion was truly from God.  So, naturally, they checked it against what they already knew was God's revelation.  But they nowhere claimed that written Scripture alone is infallible.  Once they established that Paul was a true preacher and that Christianity was true, they would then go on to trust the Apostles' teachings, whether oral or written, as St. Paul instructed the churches to do in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, as you just pointed out:  "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle."  The same kind of thing can be said regarding Mark 7.  Jesus does tell the Pharisees not to add their own human traditions to God's Word, but where in the passage does he clearly teach that only written Scripture is the Word of God, or that Scripture is not meant to be interpreted in light of the infallible Tradition of the Church?  Those points simply aren't addressed in that conversation.  Or take the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.  You say that the early Church did not know this doctrine.  But the early Church knew of the sinlessness of Mary, and her purity from all stains is acknowledged today in both the Catholic and the Orthodox liturgies.  It is true that it wasn't until the later Middle Ages that the Catholic Church as a whole came to the definitive conclusion that Mary's sinlessness implies her Immaculate Conception, but how does that prove that the Catholic Church was wrong in eventually drawing explicitly that conclusion?  You neglect the fact that the early Church knew of the idea that the Church's understanding and application of doctrine is subject to development over time through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  St. Vincent of Lerins discusses this in his Commonitory, Chapter 23.  Catholics and Orthodox (and even Protestants) have always understood this and understand it to this day.  This is why you don't find a clearly articulated, formal definition of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son in the early centuries before the First Council of Nicaea, though the ingredients that will produce that formal definition are there.  The same is true of the Immaculate Conception.

So here's the key issue:  None of your distinctive ideas, in which you disagree with Catholics, Orthodox, or Protestants, are so clearly taught in Scripture or the Fathers that you can appeal to them for proof of your positions without further interpretation.  But your method of interpretation--to trust your own private interpretations of Scripture and the Fathers over against the Catholic Church's or the Orthodox Church's interpretations--is in conflict with the method of interpretation of both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches, both of which teach that Scripture and the Fathers are to be interpreted, not by private individuals, but by the infallible, authoritative interpretations of the Catholic Church.  Therefore, by assuming your own methods and interpretations without argument, you are fundamentally begging the question.  You give us nothing but circular reasoning:  "Trust our interpretations of Scripture and the Fathers over your own.  Why?  Because Scripture and the Fathers, when interpreted by us, tell you to do so."  Well, of course they do--but this is hardly an objective argument.

AN:  OK, I see your point.  My argument does seem a little question-begging, doesn't it?  But there's one thing you've definitely got wrong:  You keep saying that we Anglicans use our own "private interpretations" of Scripture and the Fathers as our ultimate authority.  But you are confusing us with the Protestant point of view--the point of view advocated by Lutherans and Calvinists, etc.  We Anglicans disagree with this, and insist that Scripture, while the only infallible source of doctrine, must be interpreted in light of the Tradition of the Catholic Church through the ages, and particularly with reference to the Church Fathers.  We do not believe that private interpretation is the ultimate authority, but rather hold that it is the Church which should have the final say in interpretation.

RC:  You say that "the Church," rather than private individuals, has the final say in matters of Scriptural interpretation.  What "Church" would that be?

AN:  The Catholic Church of the ages, of which the Anglicans are a branch.

RC:  But Anglicanism came into existence by breaking from the established and previously-acknowledged Tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.  And when they broke from Rome, they didn't join the Eastern Orthodox.  Instead, they simply went off in their own distinctive direction.  So "trusting the Church's interpretations" really means "trusting the Anglican Church's interpretations."  Anglicans feel quite free to disagree with everyone else, including the other supposed "branches" of the true Catholic Church.  So, really, you just trust your own private interpretations, just like all other Protestants.

AN:  I see what you mean.  But even if we trust as final only Anglican Tradition, still we don't trust as final private, individual interpretations like the Protestants do.

RC:  As I mentioned, the Anglicans broke off from the Roman Catholics.  Before the unfortunate events involving Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, there were no Anglicans.  The English Church was a loyal province of the Roman Catholic Church.  So, in order to form the Anglican Church, a number of English people had to stop trusting the established Tradition of the Roman Catholic Church and instead trust their own private interpretations of Scripture and the Fathers as their ultimate authority.  If they hadn't done that, they could not have justified their break with Rome.  Before Anglicanism could be a separate church, some people had to decide it was right to make it one by trusting their own theological judgment.  Did they claim themselves to be infallible, or did they simply claim that they were right based on their own personal examination of the evidence from Scripture and the Fathers?  It was the latter, of course.  On what basis could a group of Englishmen breaking from the Roman Catholic Church and forming a new church claim to be infallible?  And even after the Anglican Church came into existence, Anglicans never claimed to be the one true Church but only a branch of it, as you have acknowledged.  So does the Anglican Church consider itself, by itself, to be infallible?  No, she doesn't.  So why trust the Scriptural and patristic interpretations of the Anglican Church?  After all, if the whole Church previous to Anglicanism's arrival could go off the rails, creating the need to form a new separate church in the first place, surely it is not a stretch to think that the Anglican branch of the Church might go off the rails too.  So why trust her?  The only answer is that individuals have to decide that she's got the pure faith by making that judgment based on their own personal interpretation of the evidence arising from Scripture and the Fathers.  Private, individual judgment.  This is no different at all from, say, the Lutherans, who don't claim the Lutheran Church to be infallible but say that people should agree with Lutherans simply because their own private interpretations of the evidence from Scripture lead them to agree with Lutheranism.  Neither Lutherans nor Anglicans claim their respective churches to be infallible, or worthy of implicit, uncritical trust.  Neither Lutherans nor Anglicans believe the Church Fathers to be infallible.  (They couldn't hold the historic Church to be infallible even if they wanted to, because the historic Church turned into the modern Catholic--or possibly Orthodox--Church, and both of them have broken from this Church and have come to conclusions in disagreement with it.  If they acknowledged the historic Church to be infallible, they would have to acknowledge themselves as schismatics and heretics.)  Both Lutherans and Anglicans believe that much respect and deference should be paid to the traditions of the Church and the Church Fathers, and that Scripture should be considered in light of what they have to say, but not to the extent that they should be trusted implicitly and therefore put on the same level as Scripture which is to be trusted implicitly.  So I really don't see any difference between the Lutheran--that is, what you call the Protestant--and the Anglican position on this point.  You are both adherents of the same doctrine of Sola Scriptura--the idea that Scripture alone is infallible and that only it is to be implicitly trusted.

AN:  But Protestants don't respect the Fathers and traditions of the historic Church, while we do!

RC:  Do they not?  They say they do, just as much as you do.  John Calvin, for example, had great reverence for the Fathers, and quotes them extensively.  So have all the other mainstream Lutheran, Calvinist, and other Protestant theologians through the centuries.  They trust the Fathers very much; they just don't trust them implicitly and they say they have to be tested by Scripture--which really means they have to be tested by one's own personal interpretation of Scripture.  Let me ask you a question:  What if you're trying to interpret the Scriptures, and you've done all your research?  You've read the Fathers, the early councils, the traditions, etc., you've paid great attention to them and given them lots of consideration, but in the end, it seems to you that the Bible disagrees with them, or that what they teach cannot be found to be taught in the Bible.  What do you do?  What is the Anglican thing to do?

AN:  Well, we would have to go with the Bible, because it alone is infallible, which means that all others could err.

RC:  Yes, and that's just what the "Protestants" say as well.  In the end, after considering all the merits of all the interpretations of the Fathers, councils, etc., if those interpretations conflict with what you yourself have found in Scripture--that is, with your own personal interpretation of Scripture, informed by everyone else but ultimately your own interpretation, the interpretation you personally find to be right and best whether others agree with you or not--you go with your own interpretation of Scripture.  Private, personal interpretation of Scripture is supreme.  Sola Scriptura.  What else can you, or any other Protestant, do?  Should you trust the consensus of the Fathers implicitly?  Well, they aren't infallible, so they could be wrong, right?  So how do you know they aren't wrong?  You have to test them by the Scriptural evidence as you see it; otherwise you'd be believing blindly.  Large groups of people can be wrong.  (One example comes to mind, just off the top of my head:  Just about everyone in the seventeenth century thought that the Bible taught that the earth doesn't move through space, so that Robert Bellarmine could call that view the "common consensus of the Holy Fathers"--and yet it turned out they were all wrong.)  Anglicans clearly believe that the whole Church could go wrong, for that is what they claim actually happened in order to justify their own coming into existence as a new, separate tradition with distinctive doctrines in the sixteenth century.  Even if you decided that you would trust implicitly--without checking it independently against Scripture--the opinions agreed upon by all "true" Christians, this wouldn't take you as far as you need to go, for "true" Christians disagree about all sorts of important things, including the question of which professing Christians are "true" Christians and which aren't.  Do we include Nestorians and Oriental Orthodox, or just Chacedonians?  Do we include Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants?  How do we know, then, what doctrines we should hold when there is disagreement?  How do we know whether or not we should baptize infants?  How do we know whether we should ask the Saints to intercede for us?  How do we know if adoration of the host is idolatrous or not?  And so on.  Most importantly for this conversation, how will we know why we should go with Anglicanism over against Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Presbyterianism, etc.?  There will be no way to know, other than relying on our private, personal interpretations of Scripture.

AN:  I don't know how to respond at this point.  But I do have one more thing to say:  At least we Anglicans do not claim to be the whole Church.  We only claim to be a branch of it, and we respect equally the other branches--the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.  We do not act on our own authority alone, but do things only in agreement with them.

RC:  Really?  But your entire existence belies that, as do all your distinctive Anglican doctrines!  The other two "branches" of the Church (as you describe them) do not agree that the Anglican Church should even exist!  They do not agree that they are mere "branches."  This way of looking at things is uniquely Anglican, disagreed with by the other churches.  And all the distinctive Anglican doctrines by which Anglicans differ from Catholics, Orthodox, and other Protestants have been arrived at by Anglicans, obviously, not in agreement and in communion with other churches, but solely by their own judgment, on their own authority, and in opposition to the contrary positions of all other churches.  Nor do you agree with the patristic Church in your distinctives.  Your "branch theory" of the Church was taught by no Church Father.  The idea that the true Church is made up of a number of independent churches that disagree in important matters of faith and practice is an idea absolutely unheard of in the patristic Church.  It is a pure Protestant distinctive which the patristic Church would have unanimously and vigorously opposed as heretical and schismatic.

In short, the problem with your claim that Anglicanism is uniquely the pure faith, the via media that preserves orthodoxy intact, boils down to this:  Your entire basis for this claim is built on nothing but question-begging and circular reasoning.  You make your claim based on your interpretations of Scripture and the Fathers, using your methods of interpreting, without giving any proof that your methods and your interpretations, over against those of other churches', have any validity.  Also, your position is really identical to the Protestant Sola Scriptura position, which has been discussed elsewhere.  You make out that your position is different, but only by distorting what other Protestants teach (trying to make them look less sophisticated in their methods of biblical interpretation than they actually are) and by trying to have your cake and eat it too.  You say you rely on "the Church" as the final arbiter of Scriptural interpretation, but you equivocate on what "the Church" is, saying you consider yourself just a branch of the Church but relying on your own authority as if you were the whole of it.  You neglect the fact that you are a break-off denomination that did not exist before the sixteenth century but which came into existence by reversing the English Church's previously held position and declaring independence from the Roman Catholic Church.  You say you trust "the Church" as final arbiter, but you were quite willing to depart from the established Tradition of the Church as it existed at the beginning of the sixteenth century based on your own admittedly fallible attempts to interpret Scripture and the Fathers for yourselves, nor do you claim to be infallible today, therefore sending everyone back to their own personal interpretations of Scripture and the Fathers in an attempt to check to see whether what you say is really true.  In the end, then, I think we have no choice but to come to the conclusion that Anglicanism, by breaking from the historic Church with no substantial justification, is a schismatic movement that should be abandoned for the Church that Christ founded, the Catholic Church.

For more, see here, here, and here.

Published on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

Some Concerns about Anglicanism

During our transition period (Summer of 2015) as we were deciding whether or not to become Catholic, I had some correspondence with some others who were considering Anglicanism, and those conversations helped me as I was trying to wade through the merits of the claims of the various Christian traditions--Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, etc.  In the context of that conversation, I wrote out some concerns I have regarding Anglicanism.  I've already posted these elsewhere on the blog, but I wanted to give them their own post as well.  There are two parts to what is laid out below, corresponding to two different emails I wrote.  The main problems with Anglicanism I deal with are how Anglicanism can justify itself as a "break-off" denomination--that is, as a new institution coming into being in the sixteenth century by means of breaking off from a previously-accepted Roman Catholic Church and tradition--and my observation that Anglicanism seems to take a "have your cake and eat it too" mentality when it comes to how to think about the authority of Scripture and tradition.  They like to see themselves, sometimes, as having a more sophisticated version of Sola Scriptura than other Protestants (like Presbyterians), but I question whether there is really anything there besides rhetorical fluff.

Since these were written as emails, they sometimes use the second person to address those to whom I was writing.

For more on similar issues and on criticisms of Anglicanism, see here and here.  Also, while I'm here, I should mention that another Protestant who has taken an approach to Sola Scriptura similar to Anglicanism is Keith Mathison.  He has written a number of things trying to show that one of the major Catholic objections to Sola Scriptura--that it makes us ultimately to rely on our own personal interpretations of Scripture over and against the rest of the Church--is a straw-man argument, and that Sola Scriptura doesn't in fact throw us back onto an ultimate reliance on personal interpretation.  Here is an example of his writing.  Here is an excellent response to it from the Catholic point of view, showing, I think very well, clearly, and conclusively, that Mathison's distinction between a more sophisticated "Sola Scriptura" and a sillier, more individualistic "Solo Scriptura" has no real substance to it, but that Mathison's position is really just a way of articulating Sola Scriptura that tries (not necessarily intentionally, of course) to mask the ultimate reliance on personal interpretation of the Bible that Sola Scriptura necessarily implies.

Part I

So here's my two main concerns with Anglicanism at this point:

1. The view of the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and what I take to be the pretty much unanimous view of the early church fathers, is that the church Christ founded was not just a loose, informal connection of Christians or individual churches, but was a unified visible body consisting of Christians in communion with their bishops and the bishops in communion with each other. One could be a part of this body, or one could break off from it (by, for example, rebelling against a legitimate ecumenical council). This view can be clearly seen throughout the fathers, such as in Cyprian's famous treatise and Augustine's treatise on the unity of the church. The fathers, and the Catholic and Orthodox churches, also held and hold that Christ gave the Holy Spirit to this church in such a way that it would never fall away such as to create a need for faithful men to break from it and form a new church, a new "denomination."

I think a good case for this position can be made from Scripture. Throughout the Old Testament, God's people often went astray, but there was never any time when the faithful were called to separate from the established denominational body of Israel and form a new body. God actually proposed this once to Moses as a test, and he rejected it. However, the coming of Christ did bring such a break. This is discussed clearly in Jesus's parable of the vinedressers (Matthew 21:33-46). The Jewish leaders failed to preserve, and so finally, after thousands of years, God authorized a break from the Jewish denomination. God would raise up a new nation, with new leaders, who would break from the old and do things right where the old nation had failed. (And even then, God promised that the cutting off of the Jews would be temporary, and they would be restored at the end.) This new nation--the Christian church--would not fail as Israel had failed, because they would have the Holy Spirit in a new way who would preserve them. They are the people of the New Covenant, which succeeds because it brings a power the Old Covenant did not possess. The gates of hell will never prevail against the church (as they did, at least temporarily, against Israel), for God has given the keys to Peter and to the apostles. Therefore, there will never need to be a denominational break with the original denomination of the church as there was a break with the Jewish denomination. All of this would be common fare for the church fathers.

My "default argument" in the original thing I sent to you all argued that because we are commanded to preserve the unity of the church and submit to the leaders of the church, we ought not to break that unity or rebel against those leaders unless we have good, conclusive reasons to do so. That is, we should not form a new denomination unless there is good, conclusive reason to do so. But the churches which have a plausible claim to be the original denomination (particularly the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches) hold the ideas I've just articulated above, so that to reject those ideas would require a break from these churches. (There are also the other earlier churches to consider, such as the Oriental Orthodox--but I need to do more research on these before saying too much about them.)

The Anglican church is clearly a new "denomination," started in the sixteenth century. I know they claim to be the recovery of the early church, but the fact remains that they are obviously not denominationally the same body as the early church. The Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches are organically descended denominationally from the early church--that is, if we stay with the early catholic church through ongoing history and don't break denominationally from it, we end up with the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. We don't end up with the Anglican church, because, as a distinct denominational body, it came into existence in the sixteenth century by breaking off of the Roman Catholic Church. So, if it is the case that we ought not to break denominationally with the early church, we will have to be either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox (though, again, we also need to think of the Oriental Orthodox, etc.). If Anglicanism can provide a conclusive reason justifying such a break, so be it. But if they can't, we shouldn't follow them out of Roman Catholicism. (It is helpful to avoid personal provincialism in thinking through these issues. Since Anglicanism came out of Roman Catholicism, if we are going to be Anglicans we should think of ourselves as breaking off from Roman Catholicism. We should ask ourselves if we would have followed the Anglicans out of the RC church or not at the time. If we wouldn't think it justified then, it cannot be more justified now, even though it might be easier to consider since we don't have to personally go through a break from a former church. I think it would alter the perceptions of a lot of Protestants if, instead of provincially taking their Protestantism as a given, they came to think of themselves as having broken off from a previous church and so had to justify to themselves their reasons for breaking off.) I don't think the Anglicans can provide a sufficient justification for breaking the unity of the church or renouncing obedience to the Roman Catholic Church. (Remember, the bishops of the Church of England became bishops partly by submitting to Rome--that was a part of their commitment. So when they broke off, they renounced something they had previous sworn to. Before the break, they acknowledged that their authority was conditional upon their remaining in communion with Rome--this was understood by all sides when they were ordained.  Thus, in continuing to claim authority after the break, they had to go back on what they had previously acknowledged and create an argument for themselves as to why they still had authority even though they had abandoned the previously acknowledged basis of their authority. In some ways, then, it is kind of like a manager of a local Walmart deciding to ignore headquarters, being stripped of his authority by headquarters, but instead of giving up the authority creating a new foundation for it in order to justify continuing to claim to be the manager. This doesn't in itself prove they were wrong--after all, if they were doing God's will, surely they were justified--but I think it helps to realize just how radical their break was and how much the default lay in staying with Rome and not breaking off. It does seem to me that Anglicans sometimes whitewash that too much--not necessarily intentionally, of course.)

So, in short, I don't think Anglicanism can adequately justify forming a new denomination in the sixteenth century.

2. I am concerned that Anglican epistemology is self-referentially inconsistent and self-refuting. I think it shares this problem with the Eastern Orthodox. Anglicanism seems to me to be a bit confused as to what its foundational system of authority is. Is Scripture alone infallible, or is the early catholic tradition infallible as well? If it is Scripture alone, that is the Sola Scriptura position, and my response to that then would be that I don't think they can justify their distinctive positions or existence adequately from Scripture alone (including justifying Sola Scriptura from Scripture alone). But sometimes Anglicans talk as if something like the "nearly unanimous consent of the early fathers" is also infallible, such that it could not be wrong and so cannot be disagreed with--you're definitely wrong if you go against it. When speaking in this vein, the Anglican claim seems (often) to be something like this: The tradition shared by the whole of the early church is infallible, but since the times of the early church the Catholic Church has broken into (at least) three main branches--the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Anglicans. All three of these together constitute the Catholic Church, and none of them alone constitute the Catholic Church. To illustrate this, the guy on the Anglican podcast I've been listening to talked about ordaining women as priests. He said that the Anglican church should not make that change because the Anglican church should not make decisions and changes like that unilaterally, but only with the agreement of the rest of the Catholic Church--the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox.

Now, here's the problem: The Anglican distinctives, including their "branch theory" of the church and their distinctive way of deciding theological truth, in short all the things that make them Anglicans and not Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox, were never a part of the unanimous consent of the early church and are not today agreed upon by the other two supposed branches of the Catholic Church. So, according to their own epistemology, these things should not be embraced and insisted upon. But Anglicans have obviously embraced and insisted upon them to such an extent as to form a new denomination in the sixteenth century and to have continued to exist in separation from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches down to the present day. In short, the Anglicans say, "As Anglicans, we believe we should only hold to and insist on those things that the whole early church held to and which are unanimously agreed upon by all three branches of the Catholic Church today," while Anglicanism itself is something neither the whole early church agreed upon nor do the other two alleged branches of the Catholic Church today (or ever in their history). (In fact, it seems evident to me that the Anglican branch theory of the church and their epistemology were embraced by virtually no one in the early church. The early church unanimously repudiated anything like the branch theory, all holding to the impossibility of the dissolution of the visible unity of the Catholic Church, and they all seemed to hold that the church was guided by God infallibly such that there would never need to be a "reform" of the church requiring a break from all presently-existing churches in order to "recover" the lost tradition of the orthodox church.)

In short, if Anglicans should not embrace and insist upon distinctives that cannot be proved to be biblical, or were not held by the whole of the early church, and they should not go beyond what the three current branches of the Catholic Church agree to today, then they should not be Anglicans and there should be no Anglican Church. That is what I mean by saying their epistemology is self-refuting. The Eastern Orthodox do something similar. They say that the infallible tradition of the church (which they hold, along with Roman Catholics, to be something that God continues beyond the days of the early church) is to be found in the opinions/teachings of the whole Catholic Church, and they complain against Rome for doing things without them. But the problem is that the distinctives of Eastern Orthodoxy (such as over against Roman Catholicism) have never been agreed upon by the whole Catholic Church, and so their own epistemology undermines itself. They cannot provide any reason from within their own system as to why we should believe in their system. (They're actually generally up-front about that in my experience, often admitting that they really don't have a clear worked-out way of telling how true doctrine is determined. When you complain about it, they accuse you of being "too rationalistic"--a good way of deflecting attention away from the problem. :-) ) My impression thus far--though I need to do more research on this--is that the Oriental Orthodox and other early groups (like the Nestorians) are in basically the same epistemological position. The only church that isn't is the Roman Catholic Church. They have a clearly worked-out way in their system of determining who to follow when not everyone agrees on something (while the other groups seem just to want to ignore the problem and pretend it isn't there)--you stick with the Bishop of Rome. They can make a plausible biblical case for this, or at least show a plausible biblical foundation for it in the keys being given to Peter in the gospels, etc. (I don't mean to say it can be proven conclusively only from Scripture, but only that there is at least a plausible foundation for it.) Their position goes back as far as we have records in the early church. It has apparently always been advocated for by Rome, and is often, throughout early church history, advocated for by many others as well, including many eastern bishops who are the ancestors of the modern Eastern Orthodox or other eastern churches. (See here for some examples.) There really was no other system of deciding disputes between bishops that was systematically or clearly worked out in the early church besides the Roman one, which many explicitly subscribed to and which is arguably often played out in the practice of the early churches. (There were certainly some who opposed the Roman view, but not as many as you might think--Fermillian being probably the earliest and one of the most vigorous opponents.)

Anyway, those are probably my two biggest concerns with Anglicans, and some of my central reasons for favoring Roman Catholicism. My default argument leads me to want to remain denominationally connected with the original denomination unless there is a good reason not to, and I don't think there is. The churches that can claim to be that denomination affirm a view of the church in which there are never to be breaks from it to form new denominations because it is ever guided by the Holy Spirit to not fail. Among these churches, only Rome has a self-consistent epistemology and a worked-out biblical and theological foundation for its own position.

Part II

This is a useful article for explaining the Anglican point of view. [The article referred to is here.] As such, it provides a nice foundation for some questions to be asked and some critique.

Here is the definition of Sola Scriptura given in the Westminster Confession:

"The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture."

The key idea is that Scripture alone is infallible, and so it is the supreme standard. We should listen to the theologians of the church, we should listen to the church fathers, we should listen to the councils, etc., but we should not trust them implicitly because they are not infallible but should ultimately rest in the judgment of the Scriptures.

It seems to me that your article agrees with this, but also says things that contradict it or call it into question. So I wonder if it is coherent. (I've noticed this coherence issue in lots of other Anglican stuff I have seen). The article says this: "Anglicanism uniquely asserts the authority of all three sources of authority while maintaining that scripture holds the highest place, leaving open the possibility for error in the teaching of the Church or even errors in the interpretation of the Fathers, but not in the Bible." But then it also says things like this: "It would be wrong to say that Protestants universally do not turn to the Fathers, since many of them do, particularly those schooled in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, but most Protestants do not see the Fathers as an authority, certainly not as one that trumps what the Holy Spirit might be saying to the individual believer or even what the Spirit might be saying to an individual church."

Let's think about this for a minute. If the Bible alone is infallible, then how much can I trust the church fathers? Can I take them very seriously? Yes. Should I be counseled by them? Yes. Should I be suspicious of my own Scriptural interpretations when they go against what many fathers have said? Yes. Should I trust the fathers implicitly when they say something I cannot see proved in Scripture? Wouldn't the answer here be no? If the fathers can be wrong, maybe they are wrong sometimes! Maybe they are wrong altogether sometimes. Fads can get established that can bring consensuses even when there is no good basis for them. For example, take the sign of the cross. All the fathers say we should do that. They all think it is a non-negotiable apostolic tradition (and they all think there are such things as non-negotiable apostolic traditions--see Basil's thoughts in Chapter 27 of his book here). But how do we know that this didn't originate in the second century or even as a custom in the first century but without any apostolic command, and so it should not be considered a divine requirement (contrary to the fathers' view)? It is not absurd to think that this might have happened. So what do we do? Do we command it (following the fathers) or not? It seems to me that, if the Bible alone is infallible, if we follow this custom and require it, we are adding to the commands of God on a flimsy basis (because we really don't have any good reason to think that the practice is apostolic, considering the other plausible possibilities--after all, Tertullian said that it was an apostolic tradition that people shouldn't take a bath for a week after being baptized and that everyone knew it, but nobody so far as I know believes that today). This is why I feel that Sola Scriptura leads much more naturally to something like Presbyterianism than to Anglicanism--to a minimalist approach to worship, etc. I didn't hold that view because I didn't care about tradition or the fathers, but because I didn't consider them infallible. The article says the authority of the fathers trumps the individual's interpretation of Scripture, but I don't see how that makes any sense on the assumption that the Bible is infallible but the fathers are not. I do see how it would make sense to defer to the fathers, in the sense of being suspicious of one's ideas when they are contrary to them; but if, in the end, after as much careful research, prayer, and thought as possible, it really seems that the Bible goes one way and the fathers another, wouldn't we go with the Bible if the Bible is infallible and the father's aren't? Wouldn't we have to go with our own interpretations, since the only alternative is to trust implicitly in those who are not to be implicitly trusted? To trust in the fathers implicitly is to treat them exactly the same as if they are infallible.

I really don't see how the Anglican position on the authority of Scripture in principle differs at all from that of the Westminster Confession. I think the idea of "Protestantism" the author describes is largely a myth invented by Anglicans who want to be distinct. Yes, sure, there are lots of uninformed Protestants who just go with "my Bible and me" in a superficial sense, but I am not aware of any Protestant tradition that would deny that great deference should be given to the fathers and church tradition. You've just read Jason Wallace's response to me. Did you notice that he told me I'd misunderstood Sola Scriptura because it doesn't mean to ignore church tradition, etc.? There's a Presbyterian telling me the same thing the Anglicans say. (And I already know it, despite everyone's insistence that I don't! That seems to be one of Sola Scriptura's main lines of defense--deny that anyone understands it so that it can escape all critique.) Everyone thinks we should defer to the fathers. Calvin was a great patristic scholar. You'll not find a more patristically-rooted book than Calvin's or Turretin's Institutes. Anglicans just aren't special here like they think they are. What seems to be special about Anglicans is that they want to have their cake and eat it too in this area. They want to affirm the Bible alone as infallible, but then to treat the fathers (or rather their own ideas of what "the fathers say" which disagrees with other people's ideas about what they say) as infallible anyway (when it suits them). The Reformed tradition is, I think, more consistent--they affirm that the Bible alone is infallible and then they actually act that way by not putting implicit trust in traditions that can't be proved from Scripture. Again, that's why they tend to be more minimalistic in worship. Or take another example: the role of bishop. It seems to me pretty indisputable that the Bible does not distinguish between bishops and elders. The terms are interchangeable (in terms of describing an office). That's why I held to presbyterian church government--episcopalian government separates bishops and elders (presbyters, priests) into two offices and puts one over the other without adequate biblical warrant. The episcopalians can claim a long tradition, going back to Ignatius of Antioch, but how do they know that their view has apostolic warrant? It may be that the apostles appointed only elders/bishops, but that soon afterwards it become customary to make a bishop above the elders. How do we know that was right? Just because the whole church quickly came to accept it in the second century doesn't prove they were right; people can go wrong in such ways easily enough.  The Catholic position, of course, is that God guided the church infallibly to develop its government, but I don't see how that option is open to Anglicans. It seems it is only an open option if we grant infallible guidance to the tradition of the church, but that would contradict the Anglican belief that only the Bible is infallible. Anglicans can't very well affirm an infallible guidance of the church and its tradition because that would obviously knock them out of having any right to exist, for they are a break-off that has to insist the whole church went astray to justify their existence. If God guided the Catholic Church infallibly, they would have to have remained Catholic. Again, it seems to me that wanting to have one's cake and eat it too is a good description of the Anglican ethos overall--they want to be Catholic and have the traditions, the sense of continuity, etc., but they don't want to submit to the Catholic Church and so are forced to adopt something like Sola Scriptura and be Protestant. So they end up trying to force the two together unnaturally and incoherently. (Of course, I'm talking as if there is any actual coherent thing called "Anglicanism." I'm skeptical that there actually is, since there seems to be no universal, official Anglican view of what Anglicanism actually is--the groups you guys like differ from other parts of the Anglican movement.)

ADDEMDUM 1/18/16:  I just wrote up another response to someone today asking my opinion of Keith Mathison's position on Sola Scriptura (which is basically the same as the Anglican desire to "have their cake and eat it too" in terms of the authority of Scripture and tradition).  I thought my main criticism came out pretty well, so I thought I'd paste it here:

What articulations like Keith Mathison's seem designed to avoid, however, is the recognition that when all is said and done, when we've done all our research, listened to the traditions, the Fathers, the councils, and the theologians, our ultimate reliance has to be on our own personal biblical interpretations.  Sola Scriptura must mean that if the whole church thinks the Bible says X, but, after extremely careful consideration I am convinced it says Y, I have to go with Y over X.  I have to go with my own interpretation over everyone else's.  The only alternative to this is to put implicit faith in the traditions of the church, to treat them as if they are infallible, which is to give up Scripture as the sole ultimate rule of faith.  People like Keith Mathison seem to want to have their cake and eat it too--affirm Sola Scriptura, while at the same time refusing to own up to the full implications of it.

In the end, I think that Sola Scriptura cannot end up doing anything different than its founder, Martin Luther, did, who was prepared to stake everything on his own personal interpretation of Scripture, no matter what popes or councils or Church Fathers or traditions or historic customs opposed him.

ADDENDUM 6/30/16:  See this dialogue concerning the claims of Anglicanism I have just written up.