Common Cause and Effect

[angli_fan]

(from In A Godward Direction)

by +Tobias Haller

"Folks from the conservative wing have been issuing confessional statements for a while now; and it comes as no surprise to me that when these confessions are examined in detail, they sometimes veer from real catholic orthodoxy onto the soft-shoulder of sectariansim while protesting that they are still very much on the road.
The recent Common Cause draft statement is a case in point. Others have noted the odd fondness for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and its predecessors. But I was more struck by this clause of the Common Cause confession:

We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.
The latter half of this is very far and away out of the Anglican mainstream, and represents almost lapidary Calvinism."

(You really should read the whole thing, including the vaulable comments.)

jintoku.blogspot.com/2006/08/common-cause-and-effect.html

[anglicansablaze]

The recent Common Cause draft statement is a case in point. Others have noted the odd fondness for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and its predecessors. But I was more struck by this clause of the Common Cause confession:

We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.

The latter half of this is very far and away out of the Anglican mainstream, and represents almost lapidary Calvinism."[/i]

The author of this piece appears intent on redefining what constitutes the "Anglican mainstream", substituting the radical liberal theological stream. From mainstream Anglican perspective the latter half of this statement is well within the Anglican mainstream. It echoes a major formulary of classical Anglicanism and the Tudor Settlement, the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion. The Tudor Settlement has shaped the Anglicanism of successive centuries and the abandonment of the place it gives to the Holy Scriptures as "the word of God written" is an abandonment of mainstream Anglicanism.

The Church of England recognizes the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty Nine Articles as Standards of Faith of that church. So do the bulk of the other Anglican provinces. It is not surprizing that a mainstream Anglican document like Common Cause's draft statement would adopt the same standard.