Another thoughtful post from Fr. Robert Hart on the Articles of Religion

Fr. Robert Hart has written an interesting post, Humility of an Un-Magisterium, that has some good thoughts on the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Anglican view of Scripture.  His conclusion, I think is very well said:

The whole idea of Anglicanism always was, and for us still is, to live by the teaching of the ancient catholic doctors and bishops. Out of respect for what we know to have been revealed, and for the authority that ancient revelation possesses, our own relatively new (as in 500 years or less) statements are not thundered at us from a self-proclaimed magisterium, but spoken from a humble and reasonable form of pastoral teaching and guidance. We need add no dogma, and need seek no additional revelation. It remains sufficient to say, “whatsoever is not read [in Scripture], nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” Truth does not come any more catholic than that.

Of course I agree with this, and I think it states the principle I have mentioned before of suprema Scriptura very well.  I’ll repost something I wrote in 2004 on suprema Scriptura:

As I have indicated in the past, I do not see “sola scriptura” as being something to be avoided, and it is my belief that the concept we sometimes see being denounced as “sola scriptura” is actually “solo scriptura”, where believers are expected to read the Bible and form their beliefs without really considering, perhaps, what their fellow believers in ages past had held as the Truth. The true expression of sola scriptura does consider the traditions of the Church in doctrinal formulations; Keith A. Mathison has explored the difference between solo and sola scriptura in his excellent work, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. An evaluation of solo scriptura can be read in this excerpt from his book, which is Chapter 8, A Critique of the Evangelical Doctrine of Solo Scriptura.
The above being said, I have to say that in reading Hooker, one does not find the concept of sola scriptura clearly stated. The Bishop of Woolwich, Colin Buchanan, in his Is the Church of England Biblical?, states that the Anglican view of Scripture might best be called “suprema scriptura.” I would say that this expression is one with which Hooker could well have agreed.  Bishop Buchanan writes:

In the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), Article VIII states: “The Three Creeds…ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” This is a crucial test-case, for the creeds have often come near to claiming an independent, indeed autonomous, life of their own (two of them, for example, form a side of the “Lambeth Quadrilateral,” i.e. as a second side quite apart from the side represented by Scripture; but here in the Articles all other distinctive claims of theirs are set aside–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 of the traditions of the Western Church. These attributes and buttressings 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 that to us they encapsulate the teaching of holy Scripture.

The Reformation formularies spell out this supremacy of Scripture in dozens of ways, but the ordination services are a key example. From 1550 on the intending deacons were asked, “Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament?” And the intending presbyters and bishops were asked: “Are you persuaded that the holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?” Instances could be multiplied, but these are sufficient for the moment to indicate that the secondary formularies of faith of the independent reformed Church of England in the sixteenth century pointed to a primary formulary in the text of Scripture and entrenched the actual life of the church within the reading of that Scripture…(emphasis in bold is mine–Will)

The greatest threat to Anglicanism today truly is the loss of confidence and trust in the authority of Scripture. I believe that if we strive to return to the view of Scripture as expressed by Bishop Buchanan and, much earlier, by Cranmer, Hooker and their contemporaries, Anglicanism can indeed be restored to health.

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