What the ACNA believes

Discussion in 'Faith, Devotion & Formation' started by bwallac2335, Nov 5, 2019.

  1. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    http://www.anglicanchurch.net/index.php/main/Theology/

    We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing the fundamental principles of authentic Anglican believe. This is point number 7.

    Tell me if I am taking this wrong but I read this to mean that they express a response to certain issues that were around at the time and they express the principles of Anglican belief but not are something that one has to give total assent to.
     
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  2. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    My view on this has two points.

    Firstly, ACNA is bound to accept the Articles as mandatory, because they were promulgated as mandatory by the Gafcon charter of 2008, and which produced ACNA in the first place. This view is expressed in the last sentence which affirms that the Articles do express Anglican doctrine.

    However the Articles have a different shape than the Reformation era confessions and counter-confessions, namely that they do not aim to teach a whole body of systematic doctrine, unlike the Augsburg Confession or the Council of Trent documents.

    If you look at the Augsburg Confession or the Trent documents today, you will find plenty of things that are wrong. No one takes any of those documents as entirely 100% true anymore. Whereas you can’t really find anything wrong in the Articles, that’s how carefully the divines limited themselves to the doctrines of unquestioned certitude, devoid of speculation.

    We believe that drafting a whole book of doctrine, while incredibly attractive on the surface, is ultimately self-defeating, doing more ill than good. There’s a reason why the Church Fathers never drafted a whole book of doctrine. Strangely enough, they limited themselves to extremely short affirmations.

    The Articles take the shape of the controversies of the Reformation era. Thus they often don’t speak to today’s challenges on gender, depression, LGBT issues, but are shaped by the specific points of anxiety in the 1500s. While I can affirm them as entirely true, I don’t think I’m supposed to see in them an exhaustive list of doctrines which would be essential to a Christian of every era, such as what the other confessions pretended (but failed) to deliver.

    See for example the catechism of Trent, and the 1992 Catechism. They will be divergent in key places; so which one is right?
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2019
  3. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    For a condemnation of homosexuality one need look no further than the penitential canons of the early church, including those promulgated by St. Basil the Great and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa in their dioceses. These canons are relatively uncommon in their specificity, which suggests Asia Minor had a major problem with sodomy, but it is also terribly funny that the very pro-homosexual wacko Episcopalian parish in San Francisco with icons of the Khangxi Emperor and John Coltrane on the ceiling and an Anaphora named for Cain the Proto-Murderer, did name itself after St. Gregory of Nyssa. Little do they know...
     
  4. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    It seems to me that the Articles would prohibit much of the Anglo Catholic wing of the church but has not. I am don't see how they justify themselves and the Articles.
     
  5. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    Anglo-Catholics tend to view the Articles as a product of their time (much as ELCA views the Book of Concord) with limited relevance to the present.
     
  6. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    Is this a view that fits in with what I posted? From how I read that I do see how that could be a valid view of point number 7
     
  7. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Right but not in the way I meant it. For me, I 100% affirm the teaching of the Articles, while acknowledging that they did not intend to formulate a complete system, but rather made emphases on subjects which were of most importance in their period. Today we would (while affirming the existing 39 articles) put more emphasis, and more text, on, say, an Article 40 on the divine nature of gender, an Article 41 on the nature of marriage, etc. In other words nothing we'd state today would repudiate the Articles, but rather we'd need additional text, to address the needs of today. That's how I intended my phrase on the Articles' historic context.

    However the Anglo-Catholic meaning, when speaking of the Articles' historic context, would limit validity to their time period, and would not stretch it to the present. The liberals copied that exact line of reasoning, to deny and dismiss the Articles in the present, which made them allies to the Anglo-Catholics, so that today you only have Liberals and Anglo-Catholics left in the Episcopal Church, and the Articles have no legal binding or function. However they do function as binding doctrine for the ACNA.
     
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  8. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Actually, there exist Anglo-Catholic interpretations of the 39 Articles, which I believe date back to the Tractarians. At any rate, I can see nothing in them that would interfere with a correct Anglo-Catholicism. For example, Article XXII is entirely in accord with correct use of iconography; worship and adoration are due to God alone. And Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem erred by embracing Arianism in the fourth century (or rather in Alexandria’s case, by having Pope St. Athanasius deposed and replaced by an Arian usurper; Arius was Alexandrian but was hated in his own city), and Rome erred in numerous ways. There is just nothing in the 39 articles that is offensive. It would not be an exaggeration I think to say the Eastern Orthodox Church could adopt them.
     
  9. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    The oldest and initially the largest Continuing Anglican church was the Anglican Catholic Church, and one of the most successful in terms of congregational growth is the Anglican Province of Christ the King. Most of the alleged Anglo Catholics in the Episcopal Church are actually Liberal Catholics, people who would be Roman Catholic except they are pro-sodomy, pro-abortion, anti-male priesthood. People who just can’t stand the lack of male priests or gay marriage in the Roman Catholic and indeed the Orthodox church in my experience become Episcopalian. Unfortunately the reverse is too often the case with regards to Rome, in some cases of necessity, because an Anglo Catholic alienated by their Episcopalian parish might be too far from the nearest traditional Anglican parish.
     
  10. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    How do are they binding and then still Anglo Catholics in the ACNA?
     
  11. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Anglo-Catholicism not a set of doctrines, as much as a mindset. It was fuzzy from its very first formulation in the 1800s. You can easily find someone who identifies as an Anglo-Catholic who is a staunch and firm observer of traditional Anglican doctrine and piety. Many laity and even some clergy I personally know in the APA are in that camp, and that's a continuing Church. The Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA are folks who by and large are just trying to be your traditional Anglicans, so they're very much brothers in the faith.
     
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  12. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Indeed so. I think I should fall into this category as well. Albeit Anglo-Oriental-Catholic.

    The Anglo Papalists by the way, who have mostly left for the Ordinariates, definitely ignored the 39 Articles.
     
  13. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    False. The Orthodox Anglican Church and American Episcopal Church (which later mostly became APA) both pre-dated the ACC. And, unfortunately, outside of it's California home-base (and the parish in Las Vegas), the APCK is mostly a raging dumpster fire these days. Also, the Ordinariate scene has cooled off and the trendy new thing to do is to join the ROCOR Western Rite Vicariate.
     
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  14. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    My mistake regarding the chronology. I am outside of California, but not by much, and the main traditional Anglican parish in these parts is an APCK one, but it is indeed close to their home base. (Correct me if I am wrong, but the ACC is larger in the Eastern US)

    Regarding the ROCOR Western Rite, I am not sure if it can be called a Vicarate since Bishop Jerome Shaw was retired for performing a mass ordination on Corpus Christie, and my impression has been that it is dying. Fr. Aidan Keller, who was their best liturgist, and wrote Orthodox Prayers of Old England, is now Byzantine Rite only. There was also a moratorium on new Western Rite ordinations in ROCOR after the incident with HG Jerome Shaw, which may have been lifted. I do know they recently issued a standardized liturgy to replace the plethora of texts which were in use. With regards to the WRO, I like them, but I don’t want to see them hoovering up disaffected Episcopalians. But they don’t care what I want to see; they will hoover up whoever they hoover up without regard to my protestations, or those of ElectroLux**, Eureka, or Dyson.* But I don’t think they are a major threat to traditional Anglicanism.

    Silly footnotes:

    *I could not resist this pun on the British use of the brand Hoover as a generic term for all vacuum cleaners.

    ** Dr. Axel Wenner Gren, the founder of ElectroLux, who it is alleged by some to have been a Nazi secret agent, but this point is disputed, financed the development of the ALWEG monorail in use in Disneyland, Seattle, Tokyo, and inspired the similiar system used at Walt Disney World and in Las Vegas. And I like monorails, but dislike Nazis.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2019
  15. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    The ACC is larger than any other Continuing Anglican jurisdiction. The ROCOR Western Rite has the reputation, at the present time, of actively recruiting Anglican clergy and accepting most all applicants. I had heard they are all using the St. Tikhon's mass.
     
  16. Fr. Brench

    Fr. Brench Well-Known Member Anglican

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    As others have indicated, there is a wide range, or spectrum of Anglo-Catholic beliefs. It is indeed more of a mentality - seeing the Articles more subservient to the ancient Councils, rather than functionally equal (as, say, an evangelical might do). And, just as the Calvinist will twist something like Article 17 into being a Calvinist statement (which it isn't), so too will an Anglo-Catholic twist something like Article 22 to re-import Catholic devotions into the liturgy that were previously banned in the early years of the Reformation. The primarily underlying debate is exactly how flexible the Articles are supposed to be, and different groups push those boundaries further than others. I'd say the Anglo-Papalists are about equally out of line as the hard-line Puritans, aptly demonstrated by their tendency to leave the Anglican Church the moment a juicy offer was made them elsewhere.
     
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  17. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    My understanding is that ROCOR WRV is not ordaining any clergy at present but is still under a moratorium concerning new priests, and thus the only option for an Anglican priest who wants to join ROCOR right now is to use the Russian form of the Byzantine Rite.