To write about the Thirty-Nine Articles is to immediately implicate oneself in an anxious debate about the nature of Anglican identity. Is Anglicanism Catholic or Protestant, or is this a false dichotomy to begin with? To what extent ought the formularies produced by the Church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – the 1571 Articles of Religion and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Ordinal – govern the theological and liturgical life of contemporary Anglicanism? And how should one’s answers to these questions affect the various sorts of people who claim Anglican identity today? Now, I am not one to suggest that this debate is without merit or to inveigh against attempts to articulate the essentials of Anglicanism. Indeed, such statements, despite their claims to be above the debate, stake out a very clear position in it for ‘comprehensiveness’ of one sort or another. However, I worry that these conversations tend to reduce the Articles to the badge of a particular theological party, meaning that they are more commonly defended or attacked as a means of establishing an ecclesial identity rather than engaged with seriously in their own right. Thus I’m thrilled to inaugurate an occasional series here at Earth & Altar called The Articles Reconsidered, in which I will suspend for a moment the question of the Articles in Anglican identity and focus on doing constructive theological work with them. The goal is neither to assert nor deny that the Articles are normatively Anglican, but instead to show their strengths (and pitfalls) simply as Christian theology.

Given Earth & Altar’s commitment to a generous credal orthodoxy, it is worth beginning with the authority of the church in matters of Christian faith and practice. After all, the deployment of the term ‘orthodoxy’ does not simply entail a commitment to true speech about God but also includes a belief in the capacity of the body of Christian believers to authoritatively determine the limits of theological speech. Indeed, contemporary suspicion about the Creeds generally flows not from an abandonment of a commitment to speaking truly about God, but rather from skepticism about the ability of any ecclesial body (especially an all-male, all-bishop one!) to set out doctrinal positions which command assent. It seems at least plausible that a similar skepticism underlies much of the liturgical chaos in portions of the Episcopal Church today: not a rejection of the importance of liturgy, but rather a rejection of the principle that a national church body has the authority to determine the liturgical practices of a particular worshipping community, especially when the authorized liturgies are deemed theologically faulty. These positions, I hasten to add, are not at first blush unreasonable. In fact, they cohere nicely with some cherished American Christian intuitions about the primacy of the individual and her conscience. So, for those like myself committed to both content of Christian orthodoxy and orthodoxy as a category, both the content of our established liturgies and the right of national churches to determine liturgical practice, articulating the authority of the church is a significant problem. I hope to show that the Articles can be a genuine help here, giving us a realistic account of the church’s fallibility and ultimate responsibility to something beyond itself while nonetheless safeguarding its authority to decide in liturgical questions and doctrinal disputes. This is, I will argue, exactly the sort of account we will need to confidently and carefully defend the church’s authority in the mainline today.

The skeptic of ecclesial authority will find much to agree with in the Articles which treat questions of the nature of the church and its authority, primarily Articles 19-21. After a fairly standard Reformation account of the nature of the church, drawn largely from the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, Article 19 suggests that any church can, in fact, err – and not only in “living and manner of Ceremonies” but “in matters of Faith” as well. Moreover, not only can any given local church err, but – perhaps more significantly – the church gathered together in council can err as well: Article 21 declares that “general councils…may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.” Indeed, Article 8, Of the Three Creeds, defends the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds not on the ground of antiquity or ubiquity, nor on the conciliar endorsement of the Nicene, but solely because “they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.” The modern interpreter, to be sure, might blanch at the language of “most certain warrants,” but the fundamental point is significant: there is no final ecclesial authority in the central matters of faith other than reference to holy Scripture. Pronouncements on issues “necessary to salvation” are, as Article 21 declares, only binding if “it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.” Indeed, Article 20 notes that the church is powerless to decree anything contrary to Scripture, or to declare something necessary to salvation which Scripture does not so understand. This applies to the Council of Nicaea; it applies to the Thirty-Nine Articles themselves as well. The verdict of the Articles is clear: as a fallible human institution, the church in all its instantiations, from the individual parish to the whole church catholic assembled in council, is capable of error. The church is protected from it only by an adherence to the Word of God as a fixed norm of which the church is only “witness and keeper” – an adherence made possible, Article 21 suggests, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

But this is not all that the Articles have to say about the authority of the church. The first sentence of Article 20, a sentence apparently added at Queen Elizabeth’s express behest, declares that “the Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith.” It is on this sentence that the Articles’ explicit positive articulation of ecclesial authority rests; indeed, the very legitimacy of the Articles themselves depends on the church’s “authority in Controversies of Faith.” It is worth noting here what the Articles do not say. They avoid declaring any that particular liturgical practice beyond that “the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered” or any given church order beyond an ordered ministry with clergy “lawfully called and sent” is of the essence of the church. But this sentence does declare that the church is the sort of body that has the ability to order its common life of worship and faith. The decision to use one prayer book rather than the other may itself be entirely indifferent with regards to salvation, but the church can authoritatively declare that one be used and forbid the other. Similarly, the Article holds that while the church cannot set forth doctrine purely on its own authority, it can intervene in doctrinal controversies, even ones touching salvation, in a manner which demands assent from its members – but must, of course, settle that controversy in accord with Scripture.

Unsurprisingly, defenders of this sentence and its conception of ecclesial authority (one which Edward Browne’s commentary on the Articles helpfully refers to as “ministerial and declaratory” rather than “absolute and supreme”) refer most prominently to Scripture. They point to Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian church to worship “decently and in good order,” an instruction which presumes the church’s ability to authoritatively establish its common worship. They use the example of the Jerusalem Council in Acts, which describes the apostles gathering as leaders of the church and deciding, with the church’s assent, about the grounds on which Gentiles might be included in the nascent church of Christ. These, to be frank, I find sufficiently compelling, but they rest on a use of Scripture in theological argument that is rather out of vogue in contemporary discourse. Early commentaries on the Articles offer other justification for it as well, however. William Beveridge, for example, notes that because controversies of faith are concerned with questions of the interpretation of Scripture, the bare texts of Scripture themselves will not settle them. Thus, some authorized body is needed to settle disputes, and just as an individual’s decisions are binding on herself, so are the church’s decisions binding on itself as a corporate body. The issue is truth – truth, indeed, on issues pertaining to salvation – but peace within the church as well; the declaration of Charles I concerning the Articles, which is still printed with them in the current Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, emphasizes not only the truth of the Articles but their value in preventing the sort of intra-Christian strife which inhibits the work of our collective sanctification.

Now, it must be admitted that the Articles dealing with church authority do have some significant lacunae. Most significantly, the Articles of Religion do not address the question of which expression of the church is competent to make decisions about liturgy, church order, and doctrinal disputes. While it presumes that such decisions are made at the level of the Church of England, there is no ecclesiological discussion of why the national church, rather than the diocese, the congregation, or the church universal, is particularly appropriate here. Of the Reformation and post-Reformation divines, it is of course Richard Hooker who gives the fullest justification of the national church ideal, albeit on the grounds of a union between the polity and the church which most today would find unpalatable and as a matter of fact simply no longer exists (if it ever did). However, what the Articles do show us is that a commitment to binding church authority need not – indeed, ought not – rest upon any attempt to identify the formal features of certain church structures which render their decisions infallible. That is, we need not argue for the inerrancy of the Pope speaking ex cathedra or of general councils to hold that the church is authoritative. It is rather that the church, standing always under the authority and facing the judgment of the Word of God, is authorized by that same Word to order its common life and worship and to decide, by recourse to Scripture with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, on theological controversies for the salvation of our souls and the peace of Christian communities. This chastened but firm construal of orthodoxy – one which does not arrogate to itself claims of perfection but does insist upon a “ministerial and declaratory authority” – is precisely what I believe our churches need today as we seek to proclaim the good news of forgiveness of sins and new life in Christ’s name to a world in desperate need.