Catholic and Protestant

 

The Anglican Church is both Catholic and Protestant, although the liberalism that has become far too prevalent in the Church in both England and North America is neither Catholic nor Protestant nor, for that matter, Christian, but is rather a revisionist theology that borrows Christian terms and redefines them to fit the ideas of the post-Christian secularism that “Western Civilization” adapted after ceasing to be Christendom.  While orthodox Anglicans of both high and low varieties are usually okay with the expression “Reformed Catholic” some Anglo-Catholics are as allergic to the term Protestant as some evangelical Anglicans, those who share some traits of what I call Hyper-Protestantism, are of the term Catholic.

 

I maintain that we ought to embrace both words, albeit with the caveat that they are properly defined.

 

“Protestant” requires the most definition. It has become a rather vague term, designating any ecclesiastical group not in fellowship with the Roman See except those who parted ways with Rome prior to the sixteenth century like the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox or whose breech with Rome was based on new innovations Rome introduced after the Council of Trent like the Old Catholics.  Used this way, it conveys little to nothing in the way of positive information about what these groups believe.  For the term to be meaningful rather than useless it needs to be defined in a way that identifies beliefs that all Protestant groups hold in common.  This requires that it be less inclusive than is the current norm.

 

The words that we would most naturally use as substitutes for “Protestant” come with their own sets of difficulties, however.  “Reformed,” while it sounds better to the ear than “Protestant” and taken literally is a precise statement of what we mean when we say the Anglican Church is Protestant, that is, that is has undergone a “Reformation”, comes with a problem that is the opposite of that attached to “Protestant.”  It is too precise.  Especially when it is spelled with a capital R, it identifies a specific ecclesiastical tradition, that which emerged from the Reformation in Switzerland and as a theological term it indicates the system associated with the Reformed Church, and in particular the interpretation of predestination adapted at the Synod of Dort.  While a sort of Calvinism was probably the predominant theology among Anglican clergy of the last half of the sixteenth century and there was an attempt to enshrine this in the official theology of the Church by appending the Lambeth Articles to the Articles of Religion this attempt ultimately failed because it went against the overall spirit of the first Elizabethan era which was to avoid committing the Church to either side in the disputes between the mainstream traditions of the continental Reformation.  This meant that the slight slant towards the Swiss Reformed tradition that had been introduced late in the reforms under Edward VI was removed by the reforms under Elizabeth I. Examples of this can be seen in the revision of the Articles of Religion into the current Thirty-Nine from the Edwardian Forty-Two and the dropping of the black rubric from the Elizabethan editions of the Book of Common Prayer.

 

In the sixteenth century “Protestant” was largely a term of abuse used by the Roman See and its adherents for the Reformers and their followers.  Their own preferred self-designation was “evangelical” but as with the term “Reformed” little would be gained by substituting this for “Protestant.”  By the twentieth century, especially in North America, this term had come to have a rather different set of connotations than in the sixteenth century.  It has connotations of pietism, puritanism, revivalism and an approach to religion centred on personal experience of the type that the sixteenth century Magisterial Reformers would most likely have denounced as the enthusiasm and extremism associated with those they dubbed Schwärmerei.  Alternately it can suggest a revised version of fundamentalism that is less separatist (good) but also far more willing to compromise on the infallible authority of Scripture (bad). 

 

There is also the problem that the self-application of this term by the sixteenth century Reformers and their followers was based on the mistaken idea that they had recovered a Gospel that the Church had lost.  The Gospel is clearly identified in the New Testament as the message that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and the testimony of eyewitnesses.  It is at the heart of the faith confessed in both the Apostles’ and Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creeds as well as the Athanasian Symbol, along with the basic truths that identify the Christ proclaimed in the Gospel (that there is one God, Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the Son, while remaining fully God, became truly Man, by taking unto Himself a whole human nature through His miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost and birth of the Virgin Mary).  It was never lost by the Church.  If the Reformers recovered anything it was the Pauline doctrine of justification, but this is not the Gospel.  The Pauline doctrine of justification – that it is by faith and not by works, or as the Reformers put it, by faith alone – is a doctrine about the Gospel, but it is not the Gospel itself.  The Gospel is Christocentric – it is about Jesus Christ. Justification by faith and not works is anthropocentric – it is about us, and how we receive the benefit of what the Gospel proclaims.  To claim that justification by faith alone is itself the Gospel is to place us rather than Jesus Christ at the centre of the Gospel.

 

Rather than abandon it for these alternatives, it makes more sense to retain “Protestant” with a proper definition.  The definition need include no more than two positive affirmations of belief.  The first is that the Bible as God’s written Word is the authoritative standard of truth to which the Church’s doctrine and tradition must conform.  The second is that the salvation which Jesus Christ accomplished for us in the events proclaimed in the Gospel is in all of its aspects given to us freely as a gift which we receive by faith rather than by our works.  

 

“Catholic”, as stated, requires less definition.  This is the ancient term – the first recorded use of it is in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch who was martyred early in the second century – that designated the whole Church as distinguished from the Church in a specific location (the Church in Rome, the Church in Galatia, and so forth).  It is the Greek word for whole – which is also the root from which the English word whole is derived – with the prefix kata attached as an intensifier.  In addition to designating the whole Church, the early Christians used it to distinguish the true faith from heresy.  This is how the term is used in the Athanasian Symbol, in, for example, its first statement “Whosoever would be saved needeth before all things to hold fast the Catholic Faith.”  Used this way, it is basically synonymous with orthodox, but note that the usage of Catholic as orthodox is derived from the meaning of Catholic as whole.  The Catholic faith, the orthodox faith, does not include doctrines that are particular to one place or one time, but is the faith confessed by the whole Church of Christ.  As. St. Vincent of Lerins famously put it is the faith confessed “everywhere, in all times, and by all.”

 

“Protestant” and “Catholic”, so defined, should not be thought to be at odds with each other.  A Catholicism that is defined by what is believed and practiced by the whole Church, in all times and places, rather than what may be particular in one place and time, will not include such things as mandatory celibacy for clergy, restricting Communion to one kind for the laity, an intermediate state for the faithful prior to the Final Judgement that resembles hell except in that it is temporary, supererogatory works and a treasury of merit, indulgences and dispensations, that are innovations of the Roman Church from after when she and the Churches of the four ancient Patriarchs of the East broke fellowship with each other at the end of the first Christian millennium.  These things have never been part of the faith and practice of the Eastern Churches.  The Protestantism that rejects these on the grounds of their being unscriptural is not rejecting anything that can truly be said to be Catholic.  That having been said, there are ideas commonly thought to be “Protestant” that are at odds with Catholicism properly defined.  Examples of these include a) the idea that the true “Church” is not an organized community/society but an aggregate term for speaking of all people who considered as individuals are Christian believers, b) the idea that ecclesiastical government (episcopal, Presbyterian, congregational) is adiopha rather than of Apostolic provenance, c) the idea that when Holy Communion is said to be an anamnesis or memorial of the Lord’s death this means a depiction in the present of an event in the past rather than the means given to us by grace whereby we partake in time of the Lord’s sacrifice which has been taken out of time and into eternity by His offering of Himself in the Tabernacle built not with hands in Heaven, d) the idea that baptism, the sacrament of entry under the New Covenant corresponding with circumcision under the Old, unlike the New Covenant itself is less inclusive rather than more and should therefore be withheld from the infants of Christian parents, and e) that when the Son of God “was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father)” so that He could say to St. Philip “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” this did not effect a fundamental change from when God said to Israel through Moses under the Old Covenant “ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.”  Just as none of the beliefs and practices that Rome introduced after the Schism and which Protestantism rejected is truly Catholic, so none of these ideas that conflict with what is truly Catholic should be considered essential to what is truly Protestant.  That all of them are wrong is demonstrable from the Scriptures.[1]

 

Rather than picking “Protestant” or “Catholic” to describe our Church, orthodox Anglicans should embrace both terms, defining “Protestant” so as to include the supreme authority of Scripture and the freeness of the gift of Christ’s salvation received by faith[2] but to exclude ideas that conflict with what is truly Catholic in that it belongs to the faith and practice of the whole Church since the earliest times and defining “Catholic” so as to include what belongs to the faith and practice of the whole Church from the earliest times but to exclude those distinctly Roman errors rightly excised from our English Church in the Reformation.

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[1] That a) is wrong is evident from both the Greek word for Church, ekklesia, which denotes a group that has met or assembled, and from how the New Testament uses the word – it is always a visible community of Christian believers, never just a convenient way of speaking of X, Y, and Z Christians, regardless of whether they have ever met.   With regards to b), the episcopal polity is clearly of Apostolic provenance in the New Testament – the Apostles themselves, along with those invited to share in their governance such as SS Timothy and Titus, are the bishops in the sense of the governors of the Church, presiding as the top tier of a ministry which like that of the Old Testament Church has three tiers, the middle being that of the presbyters and the lower tier the deacons.  That the Apostles were the governors and the New Testament was written while they were still alive is the reason the word bishop had not yet become the official designation of the governors and is sometimes used of presbyters.  This is a seer/prophet matter and does not negate the New Testament’s clear testimony to the Apostolic provenance of the ecclesiastical government found in all ancient Churches prior to the sixteenth century.  With regards to c), look up every occurrence of anamnesis in the Bible, LXX Old Testament and New Testament.   In none of these does it mean something intended to call something from the past to our mental recollection.  That Christ died in time, but took His sacrifice out of time and into eternity by offering it in the Heavenly Tabernacle is a key theme of the epistle to the Hebrews.  With regards to d), that baptism takes the place of circumcision can be demonstrated from Colossians 2:11-13 and that the New Covenant is more inclusive than the Old is rather the point of Christ’s commission to take His Gospel and baptize all nations, as well as of St. Paul’s frequent comments about the Old Testament Law, which distinguished Israel from other nations, being removed as a “wall of partition” between them.  That infants, circumcised on the eight day under the Old Covenant, would not be excluded from baptism under the New, is the only reasonable inference from this and is basically explicitly stated by the Lord when He rebuked His disciples from not allowing the infants to be brought to Him.  The words quoted from St. John’s Gospel in e) ought to be sufficient to rebut it.  Obviously the Incarnation changed everything.  The arguments that St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore the Studite advanced against the iconoclasts and which won out in the seventh ecumenical council were built firmly upon the foundation of the Incarnation.  While Christians who adopt iconoclasm like to think they are walking in the footsteps of King Josiah and that Christians who reject their iconoclasm are tainted with pagan idolatry, in reality the iconoclasts have adopted a position typical of monotheistic religions that reject the Incarnation.

[2] When Dr. Luther said that justification is by “faith alone”, by “alone” he excluded only what St. Paul had already excluded in Romans and Galatians, our own works, and for the very reason St. Paul gives for excluding these in Romans 4, that if it were by works it would be a wage paid to us rather than a gift freely given.  Faith is the hand by which we receives the freely given grace of God and in this function it is indeed alone in that nothing else we do can either do this instead of faith or alongside faith.  This does not exclude the sacraments as means of grace, as ought to be evident from what Dr. Luther, Calvin, and our own Anglican formularies have to say about them.  In the giving of a gift, two hands are always involved, the hand of the recipient and the hand of the giver.  The sacraments are the hand of the Giver working through the means of His Church.  Nor does it say anything about any other function of faith, such as its being one of the three elements of basic Christian character alongside hope and Christian love.  Nor is it some sort of ontological statement.  This adequately answers any reasonable objection someone might try to make to it on the grounds of theology that is actually Catholic.  When Rome anathematized it in the Council of Trent, and the Eastern Church rejected it as found in the Confession of Cyril I Lucaris, what they rejected was the idea that someone can gain acceptance before God by getting all of his intellectual ducks lined up properly while living however he pleases. This, however, is not what Dr. Luther meant but is rather a form of salvation by works in which visible outward works have been replaced by invisible inner works.  The Protestant doctrine can only be properly understood as speaking of faith as the hand that receives the gift of salvation.  That salvation is a gift we receive rather than something we earn or achieve for ourselves is a Catholic truth that both the Roman and Eastern Churches traditionally affirm, a fact one needs only look at the early history of the struggles against the rigorist schismatics the Donatists and Novatians and against the heresy of Pelagius to discover, but it had become badly obscured, especially at the popular level, in the Roman Church by the end of the fifteenth century.