Having a Little Dustup with a "Reformed Anglican" Priest ("Presbyter?") Tonight
Saturday, September 3, 2022 at 12:17AM
Embryo Parson in Anglo-Catholicism, Ascetical Theology, Atonement, Caroline Divines, Church of England, Continuing Anglicanism, English Reformation, Grace, Historical Theology, Holy Scripture, John Calvin, Liturgy, Oxford Movement, Predestination and Free Will, Tractarian Divines, Traditional Anglicanism

See the post here and the comments.

I was once a Calvinist (Presbyterian/Reformed).  Went through the whole "cage stage".  My journey from Protestantism to the Catholic Faith was a difficult one:  I was much like a drunk in a hallway bouncing back and forth off the walls and falling down but struggling to make my way to the light at the end of the hallway.

When I became an Anglican I was still somewhat under the sway of Reformed theology, but due to both my short experience in the Orthodox Church and my Anglican studies, over time I concluded that the Reformed theology of the 16th-century English Church was not the Catholic Faith, and I desired more than anything else to be a Catholic, because, among other things, that is what we proclaim ourselves to be in the Creed we've received as the standard of orthodoxy and which we recite at every Mass.  The correctives of Caroline and Tractarian divinity were necessary to remake orthodox Anglicanism into a true branch of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

These days I'm not even much of an Augustinian, though I still agree Augustine was the most powerful theological mind of the Western Church.  Over the years since my reception into the Anglican Church, I came to believe that his doctrines of original sin and predestination were amiss, something the Eastern Church has been arguing for over a millennium.   Yet, I still agree somewhat with Anglo-Catholic ascetic theologian Martin Thornton's assessment in his book English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetic Theology according to The English Pastoral Tradition

Experience insists on some kind of predestination: some are Christians, some are not, and no Christian can take credit for his own conversion.

As I commented here on Thornton's statement of the matter:

Now, that is in a nutshell the argument I've made here at OJC about the Pauline-Augustinian doctrine of grace:  man is dead in sin and accordingly has no ability to understand the Gospel or to say "yes" to God's grace in his own power.  Grace must "prevent" ("precede") faith (Eph. 2:8-10; the Pauline-Augustinian doctrine of "prevenient grace"). 

Thornton is quick to add, however, that he has "tried to explain that Augustine's great importance is to lay the foundation of Christian spirituality, not to complete its superstructure", a comment that reminds me of what J.B. Mozley said of such "superstructures", whether Pelagian or Augustinian:  "All that we build upon either of (the root presuppositions of each system) must partake of the imperfect nature of the premise which supports it, and be held under a reserve of consistency with a counter conclusion from the opposite truth."

Indeed, Thornton,  in good Arminian fashion, speculates here whether or not "we may think of being 'elected', not to inevitable salvation, but to the Christian struggle on behalf of others."  Whatever the answer to that question may be, he concludes in good Augustinian fashion that the "Pelagian emphasis on austerity and rigour makes creative ascetical progress quite impossible", while "Augustine's doctrine of prevenient grace permits it."  Indeed, our ultimate sanctification is all of grace.

So, in good Anglican fashion I regard this all as an inscrutable mystery, and I no longer accept the Augustinian/Calvinist endeavor to boil the thing down rationally, with its division of mankind into "elect" and "reprobate" camps, and, what's more,  I simply find it incomprehensible that any pastor would preach or teach such a doctrine to his flock.   The Scriptures are clear to me that God desires the salvation of all, and that Christ therefore died for all.  The Augustinian/Calvinist superstructure founders on that truth.

And yes, Anglican priests are sacrificing priests, not mere "presbyters."

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