Newman, Keble, Pusey: High Church Parsons on Trinity Sunday

It is in the same spirit that the most precise and systematic of all the Creeds, the Athanasian, is rather, as the form of it shows, a hymn of praise to the Eternal Trinity; it being meet and right at festive seasons to bring forth before our God every jewel of the Mysteries entrusted to us, to show that those of which He gave us we have lost none - John Henry Newman,'The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us', Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol.2.22.

God the Father, the First Person in the Trinity, is especially called the Maker and Creator of the world, because He is the First Person, the Root, the Fountain, the Beginning of all: as the holy Creed says "He is made of none, neither created, nor begotten" - John Keble, Sermon XL for Trinity Sunday, Sermons for the Christian Year.

Equally, or even more, I should think it fatal to relegate the Athanasian Creed into some corner, to be acknowledged by one knows not whom of the clergy, but to make no part of our devotions, to be banished out of the minds of the people. The Athanasian Creed has been the guide of my faith, ever since I began to think as a young man. What it has been to me it has been to all who have thought on those subjects of faith - Edward Bouvrie Pusey, to the Bishop of Winchester, 25th October 1871, in Liddon, Life of Edward Bouvrie Pusey.

It was a distinguishing mark of the High Church parson on Trinity Sunday, adhering to the rubric requiring the use of the Athanasian Creed. Newman (while an Anglican), Keble and Pusey would have sounded and looked like traditional High Church parsons on this Sunday: at Mattins, wearing surplice, hood and tippet, leading the saying of the Athanasian Creed.

Here was an expression of native Anglican piety which enriched the Church's confession and prayer by grounding it at major festivals in a historic Augustinian proclamation of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. By the end of the 19th century, however, the descendants of the Tractarians - now Ritualists and Anglo-papalists - had quite different concerns. The concern for the use of the Athanasian Creed at Mattins on Trinity Sunday seemed, at best, quaint. It was Mass not Mattins, and anyway, the 'proper' place for the Athanasian Creed was, according to the Breviarium Romanum, Prime.

Ritualists and Anglo-papalists, no less than Latitudinarians and Low-churchmen, must bare some responsibility for the disappearance of the Athanasian Creed for public worship, as they abandoned native Anglican piety for foreign forms.

And despite the laudable commitment of Newman, Keble, and Pusey to the use of the Athanasian Creed, they too carry some of the blame for its disappearance, with their attacks on the Old High Church ethos, the disparaging of pre-1833 Anglican piety, and the allegation that to be Protestant was incompatible with patristic and catholic tradition. One consequence of such stances was the disappearance of the Athanasian Creed from public worship.

For now, however, as Trinity Sunday approaches, let us turn back to Newman, Keble, and Pusey, sounding and looking like High Church parsons, joyfully affirming that it is "meet and right" to confess the Athanasian Creed at Mattins on this Sunday, and follow their example.

The robust, magisterial orthodoxy of this "holy Creed", its deeply Augustinian confession of the Trinity and the Incarnation, provides what Daniel Waterland - in the classical High Church defence of the Athanasian Creed - described as an "open and common" form so "that none may be led astray for want of proper caution and previous instruction in what so nearly concerns the whole structure and fabric of the Christian Faith". At a time when the teaching of that "whole structure and fabric" has been weakened in contemporary Anglicanism, we should receive afresh the Old High Church commitment to the Athanasian Creed and its "open and common use".

The general approbation it hath long met with in the Christian Churches, and the particular regard which hath been, early and late, paid to it in our own, (while it makes a part of our Liturgy, and stands recommended to us in our Articles,) will, I doubt not, be considerations sufficient to justify an undertaking of this kind - Daniel Waterland, A Critical History of the Athanasian Creed, 1724.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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