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Doctrine in the Church of England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2024
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The fidelity and purity of the Anglican witness to the Gospel of Christ is a matter of utmost concern to all Christians. Least of all can an English Catholic, anxious for the temporal and eternal welfare of the people of his own race and nation, be indifferent to it. It is estimated that, at the present time, some 20,000,000 souls in Great Britain and some 11,000,000 in other parts of the world, are directly dependent upon the Anglican churches for whatever they know, or humanly speaking are likely to know, of the message of salvation. When it is further remembered that, in nearly all parts of the English-speaking world, the Anglican community enjoys a prestige as an authorised representative of organised Christianity far in excess of its numbers, and is to millions of non-Christians the most familiar spokesman of Christianity, the character of its doctrine is seen to be a matter of almost cosmic importance. Distortions of the purity of the Gospel message and of the integrity of the Catholic faith by Anglican divines are as unseemly material for the headlines of sensationalist journalism as they are for the jibes and gloatings of the nagging type of proseltyser. On the other hand, it should be to the apostolic-minded Catholic a subject for praise and thanksgiving when, notwithstanding four centuries of independence from the unity of the Catholica, the Anglican churches still bear witness in an apostate world to the elements of the faith once delivered to the saints.
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- Copyright © 1938 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
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1 Published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, price 2s. 6d.
2 Defending the Report from the criticisms of the Bishop of Durham, the Dean of St. Paul’s writes to The Sunday Times (20.2.38): “No doubt it is true that Protestant Fundamentalism was not represented on the Commission, but it was intended to consist of competent theologians, and I wonder if the Bishop would be able to name among Anglican Fundamentalists one who could be so described.” Such an admission seems to make still problematic the Commission’s competence to judge on “existing agreement and differences” within the Church of England, and also to prejudge the fundamental issue regarding the nature of theology and its relationship to faith. Notwithstanding all the errors and absurdities of Protestant Fundamentalism, we fancy it could still claim a pretty considerable following among Anglicans, and that its spokesman might have manifested at least as sound a conception of the nature and scope of theology as does the Commission.
3 Père Congar’s Chrétiens désunis may well be consulted in this connection.
4 The Commission appears to recognise that the sacraments confer grace ex opeve oparato, through the language of some among them is sometimes equivocal. It should be remembered that the Church has made no definitions regarding the manner of causality whereby the Sacraments confer grace. It is not universally agreed that St. Thomas implicitly retracted the view that their causality is dispositive and not perfective. The Council of Trent defined the institution of each of the seven Sacraments by Our Lord, but theologians are not agreed that this institution was in each case “specific,” i.e., by explicit determination of the sign (matter and/or form), some holding that this was in some cases left to the power of the Church. On direct historical evidence alone, the question is clearly incapable of proof either way. (cf., for instance, Diekamp, Theol. Dogm., Vol. IV, pp. 21 sqq.)
5 This is the more unexpected, since the essentiaI opposition between “magic” and the Christian sacraments had been excellently stated elsewhere.
6 Notably in the interpretation of Irenaeus.
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