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The Great Betrayal!
By Chuck Collins
www.virtueonline.org
May 22, 2024
So many of our Anglican bishops and leaders do not have confidence in Holy Scripture as it is understood, interpreted, and upheld by the Thirty-nine Articles and 1662 Book of Common Prayer (and the two books of Homilies), so they revert to an amorphous concept they call the "Great Tradition." By this they mean a variety of things - the first millennium teachings of the church and councils - the Vincentian Canon (Christian teaching believed everywhere, always, and by all) - really whatever they want it to mean!
There's nothing "Anglican" about this. Nothing! And it betrays everything Cranmer and the English reformers fought for. It betrays the sure foundation of God's inspired Word (sola Scriptura) what Alister McGrath calls "Christianity's Dangerous Idea." It categorically abandons the recognized formularies that have historically defined what it means to be Anglican.
It gives us creedal certainty about the divinity of Christ and the Trinity, but it opens the door to a smorgasbord of theologies and liturgies to choose from, including the wacky innovations of the 1830s Oxford Movement - and in the end, a church that stands for almost anything and everything. A "conciliar" view of Anglican identity drove the Episcopal Church into obscurity and its ugly nose is the most prominent nose in the tent of the ACNA.
It can be argued that the Anglican experiment has been tried and it failed (Scripture as it is understood, interpreted, and upheld by the historic formularies). Except in a few places and a few times in history, it has not been tried. The answer is not to invent new categories to assuage our personal preferences and appetites, but to reinvest in the distinctives of our Anglican heritage.
