Chris’ Considerations

We now move on to the big question having considered the following:

Part One: What is Reformed Theology?

1. Introduction: What Is Reformed Theology?
2. A Word on Words
3. Reformed Theology is Protestant
4. Reformed Theology is Evangelical
5. Reformed Theology is Reformed
6. You may be more Reformed than you thought?!
7. Part One: What Is Reformed Theology (Summary)

Part Two: Are the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles Reformed?

1. The Importance of good Confessions: Part I
2. The Importance of good Confessions: Part II
3. The Historical Foundations of the Church of England
4. The Thirty-Nine Articles Today

Earlier in this series ”Reformed Theology” was presented in three parts, as necesarily being (i) Protestant, (ii) Evangelical and (iii) Reformed, with significant help from a series of lectures by Archbishop Peter Jensen. Now, with some help from Tim Challies, I’ll weave these three strands back together, to answer the question: Are the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England Evangelical and Reformed?

So for the Church of England’s foundation documents to be classed as “Reformed” I would suggest they need to affirm the following things:

1. Ancient Creeds of the Church
2. Five Solas of the Reformation: that the Bible alone reveals that we’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, all to the glory of God alone.
3. God’s Sovereignty in Salvation, i.e. especially a Reformed or “Calvinist” understanding of predestination and salvation. (Sometimes referred to as TULIP).
4. Reformed view of the Church: The Church is: the people who believe in Jesus, a royal priesthood; where the Word of God is preached; the Sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which are signs and seals, outward signs of inward graces) are rightly adminsitered; and where discipline is used rightly.
5. A clear Evangelical Statement of Faith: I’ll be using the UCCF Doctrinal Basis as a good example of such a statement.

Other considerations might include:

1. Covenant Theology
2. Regulative Principle of worship

Many have commented on the Evangelical and Reformed nature of the Church of England. The 19th Century Bishop J.C. Ryle explained in 1877 that the Articles are ‘eminently Protestant and eminently Evangelical.’¹Gregory Dix argued in the 1940s that Cranmer’s order for the Lord’s Supper in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, (which is mostly what we have in the 1662 BCP), as the ‘only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.’²

The Presbyterian Arthur Cochrane wrote in the 1960s that ‘A Reformed Church would surely see in a Church of England professing the Thirty-Nine Articles a genuine Evangelical and Protestant Church…’³ In the same decade J. I. Packer contended that ‘there is no real room for doubt as the interpretation of the Articles. They are demonstrably Protestant …and Reformed.’⁴ A modern American Presbyterian Professor of Apologetics, William Edgar, described the Articles as ‘a balanced, biblical statement of Reformed Theology.’⁵

Finally, on 2nd June 1953, when Queen Elizabeth II made her coronation oath, one of the promises she made was:

…to the utmost of [her] power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law [i.e. in the Church of England]⁶

In the next post I’ll begin to think about why.

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¹J. C. Ryle, J.C. Ryle on the 39 Articles, (Church Society Website, 2006), available here, (Accessed 25/05/07)
²Gregory Dix, quoted in David Peterson, Holy Communion in Common Worship, (The Theologian Website, 2005), available here, (Accessed 21/02/07).
³Quoted in J.I. Packer and R.T. Beckwith, The Thirty-Nine Articles, Their Place and Use Today, (Latimer Trust, 2nd Edition, 2006), p. 32
⁴J. I. Packer, The Thirty-Nine Articles, (CPAS, 1961), p. 11
⁵William Edgar, Truth in All its Glory, Commending the Reformed Faith, (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2004), p. 49
⁶The Official Website of the British Monarchy, The Queen’s Coronation Oath, (1953) available here, (Acessed 25/05/07)

Thanks to Wikipedia.org for the picture of J.C. Ryle by Carlo Pellegrini, (1881)