"May agree in the truth of thy holy Word": Praying the Prayer for the Church Militant with Jewel and Hooker
Cranmer wrote these words in the very midst of the passionate disputes and bloody violence of the Reformation divisions. The significance of the petition is perhaps illustrated by Diarmaid MacCulloch's suggestion that "the Reformation might indeed be viewed simply as two centuries of warfare". Against this background, we might have a greater appreciation of the words of the author of this prayer, a man described elsewhere by MacCulloch as a "cautious, well-read humanist", with a warm commitment to "concord by discussion".
It is this which may have been a source for the deeply eirenic quality of the petition in the Prayer for the Church Militant. This deeply eirenic quality also had profound theological depth which would find expression in the thinking of later theologians of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana. At the heart of the petition for unity and concord in divided Christendom is "the truth of thy holy Word": not allegiance to one confessional document, not one ecclesiastical polity, not one magisterial authority, not one liturgical rite, not one theological system.
Something of the significance of this is indicated by Jewel's statement in the Apology regarding the Scriptures:
in them be abundantly and fully comprehended all things, whatsoever be needful for our salvation.
The Scriptures declare what is necessary for salvation, which therefore leaves many matters to be less than primary for the Church's life and witness. Jewel applied this to the Lutheran-Reformed debate, challenging those who claimed that the theological differences between the two emerging traditions addressed first order matters essential to communion:
Zwinglians and Lutherans, in very deed they of both sides be Christians, good friends and brethren. They vary not betwixt themselves upon the principles and foundations of our religion, nor as touching God, nor Christ, nor the Holy Ghost, nor of the means of justification, nor yet everlasting life, but upon one only question, which is neither weighty nor great.
Not only should the considerable differences in rites and ceremonies between Wittenberg and Zurich not impede concord and unity, but their differing eucharistic theologies and differences in wider theological emphasis should not be a barrier to a recognition of unity. Here, then, is an outworking of the eirenic vision underpinning the petition for unity and concord in the Prayer for the Church Militant.
It was Jewel's protege Richard Hooker who gave classical and enduring expression to this vision. Scripture, he stated, gives "a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary". This understanding of the authority of Scripture is undermined not only by those who "dangerously ... add to the word of God uncertain tradition" but also by those extend Scripture's authority beyond its salvific purposes:
Again the scope and purpose of God in delivering the holy scripture such as do take more largely than behoveth, they on the contrary side racking and stretching it further then by him was meant, are drawn into sundry and as great inconveniences (LEP II.8.5).
Against such "racking and stretching" Scripture further than that necessary unto salvation, Hooker emphasised the "number of things there are for which the scripture hath not provided by any law" (III.9.1). Thus, for example, Hooker denies that God has "delivered in scripture ... a complete particular immutable form of Church-polity" (III.11.21). Likewise, on the matter of ceremonies, these are "changeable according to the difference of times, places, persons, and other the like circumstances" (III.11.13).
It is because Scripture contains all that is necessary for salvation that Hooker therefore insists that the Christological centre - not any additional claims - defines the Church catholic. Crucially, he made this affirmation as he critiqued Puritan demands for Recusants to be refused the sacrament in the Church of England:
the only object which separateth ours from other religions is Jesus Christ, in whom none but the Church doth believe and whom none but the Church doth worship ... If we go lower, we shall but add unto this certain casual and variable accidents, which are not properly of the being, but make only for the happier and better being of the Church of God, either in deed, or in men's conceipts. This is the error of all popish definitions that hitherto have been brought. They define not the Church by that which the Church essentially is, but by that which they imagine their own more perfect than the rest are. Touching parts of eminence and perfection, parts like of imperfection and defect in the Church of God, they are infinite, their degrees and differences no way possible to be drawn unto any certain accompt [account] (V.68.6).
To be clear, this is not a minimalist statement for, as Hooker reminds us, "Christ hath commanded prayers to be made, sacraments to be ministred, his Church to be carefully taught and guided" (III.11.13). And this requires an ordered ministry:
The matters wherein Church-polity is conversant, are the public religious duties of the Church, as the administration of the word and sacraments, prayers, spiritual censures, and the like. To these the Church standeth always bound (III.11.20).
No "immutable form of Church-polity", then, but a shared understanding from the Scriptures that the churches need an ordered ministry to administer word and sacrament in service of the Christological centre.
Praying this petition from the Prayer for the Church Militant with Jewel and Hooker draws us to understand its powerful and beautiful eirenic character. To pray that the Church "may agree in the truth of thy holy Word" is necessarily to accept diversity amongst the churches: in rites and ceremonies, in polity, in theological emphasis and traditions. It is to pray that, amidst this diversity, the churches will be united by a common confession of the saving faith proclaimed by Scripture, the Christological centre, expressed in word and sacrament, public prayer, common creed, and ordered ministry. Here, therefore, the "spirit of truth" serves unity and concord, for it centres the churches on that "which the Church essentially is", the communion defined by the confession of Jesus Christ.
Next week, praying this petition with Cosin and Taylor.
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