I am enjoying quite a bit the reading I’m doing as preparation for our spring/summer sermon series on the 39 Articles. Peter Moore dropped off his copy of +John Rodgers’ new book on the Articles. It’s next on my reading list having finished J.I. Packer’s nice little treatise: The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today.
In his essay, Packer writes of the dual role the Creeds and Articles play in the development of a coherent, robust and authentic Anglicanism.
The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds challenge every generation of the world church: do you still stand with us on the Trinity? on the Incarnation? on the second coming of our Lord, and the Christian hope? If not, why not? Are not our positions scriptural? Go to the Bible and see. And if you find they are, will you not labour to teach and stress and defend these things in your day, as we did in ours? And the Articles, supplementing the Creeds, ask each generation of Anglicans further questions. Do you stand where we stand with regard to the sufficiency and supremacy of Scripture? the gravity of sin? justification by faith alone in and through Christ alone? the nature of the sacraments as seals of the gospel promise, means of grace because they are means to faith? loyalty to the gospel in word and sacrament as the sole decisive mark of the church? the dangerous, anti-evangelical tendency of Roman doctrines and practices? If these things are not at the centre of your faith and testimony, why not? Test these contentions by Scripture: is it not the case that where we are positive, the Bible was positive before us? And if we were right then to treat these points as evangelical essentials, ought not you to be seeking ways and means of proclaiming and vindicating them now?
If there is any substance in what we have been saying, it is clear that we many not just casually cast off the Articles because they are old. Until they are decisively refuted from Scripture (which has not been done yet), we have no warrant for rejecting them, or for relaxing the requirement of clerical subscription.
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Here’s a great link for further short writings on the 39 articles from a reformed Protestant Anglican perspective
http://www.churchsociety.org/issues_new/doctrine/39a/iss_doctrine_39A_intro.asp
I was disappointed in John Rodger’s Essential Truths for Christians. First, I think that he tried to accomplish too much in one book, combining an introduction to theology with a commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles. Second, he made a number of assertions that do not hold true for all Anglicans but if you are to believe Rodgers, they do! He glozed over major differences between Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals rather than acknowledging these differences. If I were to classify his view of the Articles, it is certainly not that of a conservative evangelical Anglican in the Reformed tradition but shows the influence of Anglo-Catholicism and Convergence theology. I expected a more scholarly work from Rodgers.
Thank you, Robin, for the comment above. Having just received the book I’d only looked his organizational structure. Also, I had assumed that he used the 39 Articles as a means/framework to develop an Anglican systematic theology. I’ll still be curious to read his work.
I am not suggesting that people do not read the work but rather that they read it critically. In a number of places he should have taken a more historical approach. If you have read J. C. Ryle’s expositions of the Gospels, he will draw attention to the opinions of the different schools of thought on the meaning of a passage in a particular gospel, state his own position, and explain why. In some cases Rodgers does that. In other cases, he simply makes assertions like Anglicans (read all) cherish confirmation, marriage, penance, unction, and ordination as sacraments. This is historically inaccurate. If his work is used as an introduction to the theology of the 39 Articles in seminaries like TESM to instruct students in their theology, they will be offered a distorted view of the doctrinal positions of the 39 Articles and the English Reformers.
Hi Steve!
I just came across your blog through reformedanglican.blogspot.com. He noted that you were doing some grad work at RTS Charlotte. Are you working through the D.Min program? I’m just asking because I’m an M.Div. student there and one of a few Anglicans hanging out.
Also, will you be posting any of your sermon series on the articles? I’ve have been greatly interested in learning a great deal about them and enjoy reading about anything on them when I have time.
Thanks!