The Forgotten 39 Articles

As an ordained Anglican minister, I am astonished and dismayed by the way that the biblical and historic theology of our denomination has been abandoned and disregarded by so many churches. When the Sixteenth Century Reformation came to England, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer worked tirelessly to bring the Church of England in line with the Scriptures. His Book of Common Prayer contains in it the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion that lays a theological foundation for keeping the Anglican Church faithful to the Word of God, as the theologian Chad Van Dixhoorn points out:

“The (Thirty-Nine) articles include significant discussion of Scripture, with high praise for its authority and sufficiency. The testimony of the church in the Scriptures is not dismissed, but the stress is on the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the believer and the self-attesting power of Scripture itself (Article 5).” [1]

The Anglican theologian J.I.Packer commenting on the Reformation ideal in England says:

“The Reformation in England sought to be as constructive theologically and spiritually as it was corrective — a real re-formation of the people of God corporately and individually. As a reformation, it was conservative, communal, confessional and comprehensive. It was conservative because that was the Anglican way, and the Reformers wanted to bring everyone along. It was communal because the Book of Common Prayer was meant to be a book of common worship. “Common” is the phrase “Common Prayer” means what it says. Everybody is to join in. There is to be Prayer Book uniformity all over the country, and that will keep us together as a church community worshipping God. The Reformation was confessional because the Thirty-Nine Articles are a Reformation confession. In the sixteenth century they were regarded as one of the many Reformation confessions being then produced. At the end of the sixteenth century a man named John Rogers produced a survey of the confessions of the Protestant world, and the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles are included. The Reformation was comprehensive in the sense that this theology and churchly set up were intended to bring the life of God and unity in Christ to all the English people without exception." [2]

This is key: “bringing the life of God and unity in Christ to the people” since the call to those leading the Church is never to change its doctrines to suit the culture, but to faithfully exercise the fundamentals of orthodoxy, to remain faithful to our historic faith “contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3) Bishop Colin Buchanan draws particular attention to Article 8 of the Thirty-Nine Articles which says:

“The Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’s Creed, and that which is commonly called the apostle’s Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.” [3]

Buchanan makes this vital observation:

“The Church of England does not receive the creeds simply as coming from General Councils; she does not receive them according to the ‘Vincentian Canon’ as having been believed everywhere, always and by all people; she does not receive them as a valuable ingredient in the inherited riches and the traditions of the Western Church. These attributes and buttressing of the creeds are no doubt of great interest, but the Church of England cuts through all those possible qualifications - the authority for receiving the creeds is to us that they encapsulate the teaching of holy Scripture." [4]

This is such an important point that Buchanan raises here since the reality is that week in and week out, Anglican congregations up and down the British Isles will say the words of the Nicene Creed, and often without giving any real consideration of the implications of what those words mean. So for argument’s sake, let us take just one line from the Nicene Creed and consider its meaning and implications:

“He (Christ) will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end.”

He will come again: Christ is going to return bodily, this is a sure and certain event that Christians should be living in an anticipation of.

In glory: Christ is not coming back as Saviour - let that sink in for a moment; He is going to return in glory as King and Judge over all the earth.

To judge the living and the dead: Returning as King and Judge, He is going to judge everybody who has ever lived! The wheat and tares, sheep and goats will be divided into two groups, one group to eternal life and the other group to the eternal lake of fire.

And His Kingdom will have no end: There will be the eternal state - the heaven and the new earth and eternal life dwelling with the Lord for the Saints. But for those whose names are not written in the Lambs Book of Life eternal judgement awaits for the condemned, who will be thrown into the Lake of Fire. His Kingdom will have no end, the question is: which side of God are you on? His love and grace or His wrath and punishment?

This is the truth that is contained within just one line of the Nicene Creed and the scary reality is that an unregenerate person who affirms this creed week in and week out in church is condemning themselves with their own mouth! They are saying in essence: “Christ is coming back to judge me and I’m indifferent about it.” And yet these kinds of truths are often too uncomfortable for ministers to openly preach in Anglican Churches, sadly many vicars today would run a mile from that kind of biblical revelation, and yet here it is in Scripture and our Creeds!

Returning to the Thirty-Nine articles and particularly considering how we now find ourselves in 2024 and on the brink of complete apostasy and throwing away everything that the established Church stood for and believed in, it is sadly the Anglican Church’s neglect of Scripture that is to blame for this. If the aim and purpose of Cramner’s Thirty-Nine articles were to keep the Anglican Church faithful to the Scriptures and in following Christ, then its neglect of them comes at such a great cost. As an ordained minister, over the years I have heard endless complaints and narratives about how the Church of England is headed towards extinction, but in discarded her theology and faithfulness to the Scriptures, all that the established church can now do now is look at the empty place where her lampstand once stood. It is a great tragedy and a travesty, and J.I. Packer also makes this humorous and yet deadly serious observation about the state of the Anglican Church:

“‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’ asks the capstan-pushers’ work-song. Is there not the need to ask a parallel question about the Church of England? Not that one could call so staid a body drunken, exactly; but there are aspects of churchly sobriety which Anglicans in England (to look no further) have largely neglected for a long time. One of these is the maintaining of a responsible relationship to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The work-song makes its picturesque proposals for getting the drunken sailor sober again, and I have some sobering suggestions to make about links with the Articles which we urgently need to set up.” [5]

In his continued assessment of the Anglican church’s plight, Packer continues to explain how the Thirty-Nine Articles are missing from Anglican Theological education and how they have no voice in Anglican liturgy or the Anglican community. He concludes by arguing that neglecting the Articles causes a problem of Anglican integrity and calls for them to be reinstated back at the heart of the Anglican communion:

“It is my firm conviction that the Articles are true enough, profound enough, biblical enough, evangelical enough, and magisterial enough to sustain such a role amid the babel and bustle of present-day theological work, and that we greatly need to have them fulfilling it among us. They have been silent too long.” [6]

I think that this conviction that Packer has echoes with what God says to His people Judah through the prophet Jeremiah:

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’” (Jeremiah 6:16 ESV)

If ever a Bible verse so succinctly summarised the plight of the Anglican church it is this one, the only way forward was to reform and return to the ancient paths that lead to life, but sadly they would not walk in it.

Footnotes:

[1] Chad Van Dixhoorn “Creeds, Confessions & Catechisms” (Crossway, 2022) p114

[2] J.I. Packer “The Heritage of Anglican Theology” (Crossway, 2021) p70

[3] Colin Buchanan “Is the Church of England Biblical?” (Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, 1998) p30

[4] Colin Buchanan “Is the Church of England Biblical?” (Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, 1998) p30

[5] J.I. Packer “The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today” (The Latimer Trust, 2006) p24

[6] J.I. Packer “The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today” (The Latimer Trust, 2006) p37