Solus Christus, George Herbert, and the sober minimalism of Anglican claims

Many thanks to The Anglican Way for publishing my essay 'George Herbert, Anglican Modesty, and the Season of Lent'. Below, an excerpt in which I offer something of a defence of the oft-misunderstood and misused words of Fisher: "We have no doctrine of our own. We only possess the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church enshrined in the Catholic Creeds, and these creeds we hold without addition or diminution". I understand Fisher's words as a "sober minimalism" regarding any distinctive Anglican claims, defining the church by a reliance upon the Christological centre, on solus Christus:

In ‘Love (III)’, as [Rowan] Williams states, "the point is that acceptance of the divine love simply requires the abandonment of all effort at assessing my own worth, negatively or positively". It is the action of the Triune God in Christ that is the Church's foundation, centre, and life: an over-active, loud, argumentative, zealous proclamation of some other basis - whether institutional or experiential - for understanding the Church can too easily obscure this. God in Christ is at work in prayer, Word, and Sacrament, sustaining and renewing the Church. This is sufficient. Here the Church is to rest.

In ‘Aaron’, the "poor priest" has no claim but "Christ is my only head, My alone-only heart and breast". Thus, "Aaron's drest": Anglican orders commend themselves by ministering Christ in Word and Sacrament, "who is not dead, But lives in me while I do rest". And so, at the Holy Communion, the priest in the temple is called "not only to receive God, but to break, and administer him"; the parson administers Baptism, "a blessing, that the world hath not the like"; and as for preaching, "the character of his Sermon is Holiness; he is not witty, or learned, or eloquent, but Holy". What more is required? "God cannot be wanting to them in Doctrine, to whom he is so gracious in Life."

If there is an Anglican modesty - indeed, a sober minimalism when it comes to any distinctive Anglican claims (Fisher's "we have no doctrine of our own") - it is because of this, the sufficiency of the Church's Christological centre. It is the word of Christ, in Scripture and Sacrament, which gives life to and sustains the Church, not exalted institutional or experiential claims. With a Lenten penitence, such too often haughty claims are to be abandoned for solus Christus. This is what we behold in the life, witness, and words of George Herbert. He is, as Malcolm Guite beautifully puts it, the "Gentle exemplar": such gentleness itself flows from and returns to the Christological centre

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