June 10, 2026

The Caroline Divines

Filed under: Anglicanism,Sacraments,Spiritualty,Theology — William Witt @ 12:31 pm

James I (1566-1625)

1603 Death of Elizabeth; Accession of James
1605 Gunpowder Plot (More restrictions against Roman Catholics)
1611 Authorized Version of the Bible (KJV)

Charles I (1600-1649)
1625 Death of James; Accession of Charles, who marries Henrietta Maria of of France, a Roman Catholic.
1633 William Laud becomes Archbishop of Canterbury.
1642 English Civil War
1645 Execution of Laud
1646 Triumph of Presbyterianism
1649 Execution of Charles
1658 Death of Cromwell

Charles II (1660-1685)
1660 Charles II – Monarchy restored.
1662 Revised BCP
1685 Converts to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed.

James II (1685-1688)
A Roman Catholic and upholder of Divine Right of Kings
1688 James flees (The Glorious Revolution)

William III (of Orange) and Mary II (1689-1702)

1689 With flight of James, Parliament declared the throne vacant. Parliament invited William of Orange and his wife Mary (daughter of James) to take the throne.

Thomas Cranmer

The Caroline Divines were a group of spiritual writers who followed the Elizabethan settlement, and lived in a period when Anglicanism was now well established. They were far enough removed from the Reformation that Anglicanism was now “normal,” just the way things are. The period when England was Roman Catholic was now a distant memory.

The political background to the period of the Caroline Divines is a history of four terrible kings. The Caroline Divines receive their name from the Latin version of “Charles,” based on the names of two of those kings. It might seem that during a time of political unrest and crisis, not much in the way of good quality theology would be written. Paradoxically, the era of the Caroline Divines is considered to be one of the high points of Anglican history.

The Caroline Divines have two interesting characteristics as theologians. First, they were not theologians in the traditional sense, but were primarily preachers or poets, and their theology is found in their sermons and their poetry. Second is the contrast between the political turmoil taking place in the country as a whole and the profound theological reflection that we find in their writings. Paradoxically, the Caroline Divines say virtually nothing about the political conflicts of the time.

There is a similar parallel in the writings of the 19th century British novelist Jane Austen. Austen wrote her novels during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Although soldiers play important roles in her plots, the ordinary reader would not know that a major war between England and France provided the historical setting in which Jane Austen’s novels were written. Something similar occurs when we read the writings of the Caroline Divines.

Historical Background

Because Queen Elizabeth never married, she had no children, and her death created the problem of a legitimate succession to the throne. It was decided that James VI, King of Scotland, would be king Elizabeth’s successor. In 1603, James entered England from Scotland to become King James I of England. The Puritans were at first enthusiastic about having a Scottish King, and immediately presented James with some requests. They wanted to be rid of the surplice while leading worship and of the sign of the cross in baptism.

James responded by rejecting all of their requests. He had dealt with Presbyterians in Scotland, and had no patience for them now that he was king of England. James not only upheld apostolic succession, he defended in addition a political theory of the Divine Right of Kings. One was king because God intended it, and the authority of the king could not be questioned. James is known for the statement, “No Bishop, no King.”

In 1605, a group of Roman Catholics who attempted to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot were punished severely. In consequence, Roman Catholicism was placed under even more restrictions than had existed previously. After the Gunpowder Plot, Roman Catholics were no longer a political threat in England.

King James’s most significant historical contribution is likely the Authorized Version of the Bible, which he had translated under the leadership of Lancelot Andrews. Known popularly as the King James Version, it was certainly not known by either name when it was translated. A new translation of the Bible into English after the Great Bible is perhaps the one good thing that James accomplished during his reign. Overall, James was a terrible King. He was not devout or religious. Stephen Neill writes of him in his book Anglicanism: “James> I loved the English church, yet he did greater harm than perhaps any other English monarch.”1

James was succeeded by Charles I, born in 1600. Charles became King in 1625, and married Henrietta Maria of France, a Roman Catholic. If James I’s response had made him unpopular with the Puritans, Charles’s marriage to a Roman Catholic only compounded the problem. Charles proceeded to make the situation even worse in 1633, when he appointed William Laud (1573-1645) as Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud is known for the vicious suppression of his opponents, doing such things as cutting off their ears, branding them, or slitting their noses.

In 1642, Puritans from inside of the Church of England joined with independent groups like Congregationalists and Baptists in the revolutionary English Civil War, leading to the eventual removal of the King by beheading. In 1645, Archbishop Laud was executed. In 1646, Presbyterianism triumphed in the war and became the official church in England, replacing the Thirty-Nine Articles with the Westminster Confession of Faith along with a Larger and Shorter Catechism. In 1649, King Charles was executed.

The Puritan regime lasted approximately ten years. Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Puritan cause, died in 1658. In 1660, the monarchy was restored, and Charles II reigned from 1660 to 1685. Charles’s main contribution to the long term future of Anglicanism was to revise the Prayer Book in 1662. Several centuries later, Parliament would reject a revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1928, leaving the 1662 Prayer Book in place. The Alternative Service Book appeared in 1980, which was replaced in 2000 by Common Worship, which is not a single text, but a series of books used in many churches. While these revised rites are used in most contemporary parishes, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is still the official Prayer Book of the Church of England.

In 1685, Charles II converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed. He was succeeded by James II, who reigned a short three years from 1685 to 1688. James II was a Roman Catholic, and also an upholder of the Divine Rite of Kings. James was so unpopular that he had to flee the country in 1688. With the flight of James, Parliament declared the throne vacant and invited William of Orange (a Protestant from the continent) and his wife Mary (daughter of James) to take the throne. William and Mary reigned from 1689 to1702. This replacement by William and Mary of an entire dynasty of bad kings is referred to as the Glorious Revolution.

Several changes followed. Parliament passed the Toleration Act, which guaranteed religious freedom to Non-conformist Protestants, but not yet Roman Catholics or Unitarians. A Bill of Rights restricted the King’s authority over Parliament. A small group of Anglicans who remained faithful to King James were known as the non-Jurors.

The Caroline Divines

An examination of the writings of the Caroline Divines will be preceded by some biographical material. (more…)

June 1, 2026

Richard Hooker On Law and Gospel Part Two: Grace, Sacraments, Worship and Polity

Filed under: Anglicanism,Justification,Methodology,Sacraments,Theology — William Witt @ 8:18 pm

Grace as Participation: Justification and Sanctification

Richard Hooker

The means by which Richard Hooker understands Christians to participate in the incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Jesus Christ would seem to be a “real mission” of the Holy Spirit (as opposed to an “appropriation” in which the common work of all three divine persons is ascribed to the Spirit). The anointing by Jesus by the Holy Spirit (at his baptism?) was not for himself only but so that we ourselves through the Spirit might share in that anointing:

Thus much no Christian man will deny, that when Christ sanctified his own flesh, giving as God and taking as man the Holy Ghost, he did not this for himself only but for our sakes, that the grace of sanctification and life which was first received in him might pass from him to his whole race as malediction came from Adam unto all mankind. Howbeit, because the work of his Spirit to those effects is in us prevented by sin and death possessing us before, it is of necessity that as well our present sanctification unto newness of life, as the future restoration of our bodies should presuppose a participation of the grace, efficacy, merit or virtue of his body and blood, without which foundation first laid there is no place for those other operations of the Spirit of Christ to ensue. So that Christ imparteth plainly himself by degrees. (Laws V.56.10)

The “whole church” is united to the “whole Christ” (in his humanity and divinity). The risen Christ is in every part of the church, which lives by his life through “participation.” Hooker writes:

And because the divine substance of Christ is equally in all, his human substance equally distant from all, it appeareth that the participation of Christ wherein there are many degrees and differences, must needs consist in such effects as being derived from both natures of Christ really into us, are made our own, and we by having them in us are truly said to have him from whom they come, Christ also more or less to inhabit and impart himself as the graces are fewer or more, greater or smaller, which really flow into us from Christ.

Christ is whole with the whole Church, and whole with every part of the Church, as touching his Person, which can no way divide itself, or be possessed by degrees and portions. But the participation of Christ importeth, besides the presence of Christ’s Person, and besides the mystical copulation thereof with the parts and members of his whole Church, a true actual influence of grace whereby the life which we live according to godliness is his, and from him we receive those perfections wherein our eternal happiness consisteth. (Laws V.56.10)

There are two ways in which we participate in Christ, partly by imputation (justification), but also partly by infusion (sanctification). We are not only justified or accounted righteous by faith, we also share in the risen Christ’s resurrection life. “Thus we participate Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth, and afterwards more fully both our souls and bodies made like unto his in glory.” Hooker states that the first thing “infused” into our hearts is the “Spirit of Christ,” from which everything else follows. The Spirit unites us to Christ our head thus enabling the church to become Christ’s body:

From hence it is that they which belong to the mystical body of our Saviour Christ, and be in number as the stars of heaven, divided successively by reason of their mortal condition into many generations, are notwithstanding coupled every one to Christ their Head, and all unto every particular person amongst themselves, inasmuch as the same Spirit, which anointed the blessed soul of our Saviour Christ, doth so formalize, unite and actuate his whole race, as if both he and they were so many limbs compacted into one body, by being quickened all with one and the same soul. (Laws V.56.11)

Hooker makes a clear distinction between justification and sanctification that had not yet appeared in Thomas Cranmer’s theology. Cranmer instead distinguished between “lively faith” and a “dead faith.”1 Hooker more helpfully uses the terminology that he found in John Calvin. He writes:

There is a glorifying righteousness of men in the world to come; and there is a justifying and a sanctifying righteousness here. The righteousness wherewith we shall be clothed in the world to come is both perfect and inherent. That whereby we are justified is perfect, but not inherent. That whereby we are sanctified, inherent, but not perfect. (Learned Discourse on Justification)

Hooker thus distinguishes between three kinds of righteousness. Eschatological righteousness, the righteousness of the world to come, will be perfect and inherent. When Jesus Christ returns and there is a new heaven and a new earth, we will be made inherently and completely righteous.

Concerning our present righteousness, Hooker distinguishes between justification and sanctification. The righteousness whereby we are justified by faith is perfect, but it is not an inherent righteousness because we continue to sin. The righteousness whereby we are sanctified is inherent, but it is not yet perfect. Sanctification thus involves a real ontological change, which is a progression in righteousness. We move forward, we fall back, we sin, we repent.

Concerning justification, Hooker writes:

Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man who in himself is impious, full of iniquity, full of sin, him being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in hatred through repentance, him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto, by pardoning it, and accepteth him in Jesus Christ as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law: shall I say more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law? I must take heed what I say; but the Apostle saith, “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” [2 Cor. 5:21]. (Learned Discourse on Justification)

This is a Reformation understanding of justification as imputation. Hooker is saying that in God’s sight, when we exercise faith in Christ, God accepts us and considers us as righteous even though we are not (inherently) righteous in ourselves.

Such we are in the sight of God the Father as is the very Son of God himself. Let it be counted folly, or phrensy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this: that man hath sinned and God hath suffered; that God hath made himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God. (Learned Discourse on Justification)

This is Hooker’s way of saying that justification by faith is really about justification by Christ (alien righteousness).

But then Hooker adds concerning sanctification, which is a real and inherent infused righteousness:

Now concerning the righteousness of sanctification, we deny it not to be inherent; we grant that, unless we work, we have it not; only we distinguish it as a thing in nature different from the righteousness of justification: we are righteous the one way by the faith of Abraham, the other way, except we do the works of Abraham, we are not righteous. (Learned Discourse on Justification)

Martin Luther made a distinction between two kinds of righteousness, which is similar to the point Hooker makes here.2 If justification is forensic alien righteousness, there nonetheless is also an inherent transforming righteousness in sanctification. (more…)

Richard Hooker on Law and Gospel Part One: God, Creation, Christology and Participation

Filed under: Anglicanism,Metaphysics,Methodology,The Trinity,Theology — William Witt @ 7:49 pm

1554 Born at Heavitree near Exeter
1577 Becomes fellow at Corpus Christi, Oxford (with Jewel’s help)
1579 Appointed Deputy Professor of Hebrew
1578 Ordained
1584 Appointed Rector of Drayton Beauchamp
1585 Appointed Master of the Temple (conflicts with Walter Travers, the Reader, and a Puritan)
1585/86 A Learned Discourse on Justification (sermon)
1588 Marries Jean Churchman
1591 Rector of Boscombe, Wilts
1593-1595 Publication of Books 1-4 of Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
1595 Rector of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury
1597 Publication of Book 5 of Laws
1648 Publication of Books 6 & 8
1662 Publication of Book 7

Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker is perhaps the most important theologian in the history of Anglicanism. His Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity provided the theological justification for the Prayer Book worship and polity of the Church of England during the Elizabethan settlement. At the same time, Hooker’s contribution is controversial. Partisan divisions within Anglicanism have contributed to his mixed assessment. Anglo-Catholics have tried to claim Hooker as one of their own, while Evangelical Anglicans who look to Thomas Cranmer as their source of inspiration have at the least neglected Hooker, perhaps fearing that he prepared the way for what they perceive as a falling away from Reformation principles in the following generation of the Caroline Divines. Paradoxically, a renewal of interest in Hooker’s theology over the last several decades has been led by Reformed scholars who have claimed Hooker as a Reformed theologian. What follows will recognize Hooker’s unique contributions to Anglican identity. At the same time, I think it mistaken to view Hooker as in discontinuity with the English Reformation that preceded him. On my reading, Hooker is in continuity with but also the logical conclusion of an Evangelical Catholic approach to Anglican theology that originated with Thomas Cranmer, was succeeded by John Jewel, and then passed on and developed in Hooker.

Hooker lived from approximately 1554 to 1600. It is believed that he was born in 1554 at Heavitree near Exeter. In 1577, Hooker became a fellow at Corpus Christi, Oxford, with the assistance of John Jewel. While Jewel was a protege of Cranmer, Richard Hooker was a protege of Jewel. In 1579, Hooker was appointed Deputy Professor of Hebrew. Hooker was ordained August 14, 1579 by Edwin Sandys, Bishop of London. In 1584, Hooker was appointed Rector at Drayton Beauchamp. In 1585, Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in London, where he began having conflicts with Walter Travers, a Reader and a Puritan. Hooker would preach in the morning and Travers would preach in the afternoon, contradicting what Hooker had just preached. The controversy ended when Travers was silenced by Archbishop Whitgift in 1586.

Hooker’s Learned Discourse on Justification (published either in 1585 or 1586) was a sermon challenging the Roman Catholic position, but was nonetheless controversial among the Puritans for suggesting that Roman Catholics could still be saved. In 1588, Hooker married Jean Churchman. Hooker became the Rector of Boscombe, Wilts in 1591, and began writing the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Books One to Four were published from 1593 to 1594. In 1595, Hooker became the rector of Bishopsbourne near Canterbury. In 1597, Book Five of the Laws was published. Hooker died in 1600. In 1648, Books Six and Eight were published, long after Hooker’s death. The publication of Book Seven did not take place until 1662.

The influences on Richard Hooker were primarily Thomas Aquinas, from whom he derived his understanding of law, the church fathers Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria, whom he cites in his discussion of Christology, and John Jewel, when he discusses Anglican identity. Finally, Hooker was influenced by John Calvin for his understanding of the relationship between justification and sanctification as well as his Eucharistic theology.

As already noted, there has recently been a renewed interest in Hooker’s theology, primarily among Reformed theologians. This is ironic, as historically Hooker has been more admired by Anglo-Catholics, but the new interpreters are correct that although Hooker rejected Puritanism, he was nonetheless at least in conversation with a more moderate Reformed theology. I would suggest however that a better parallel would be provided by the conversation Jewel had with the Roman Catholic church. Although Jewel disagreed with Rome, he still wanted to argue that the Church of England was Catholic. Although Hooker disagreed with the Puritans, he did not simply reject the Reformation. As was the case with Jewel, I would suggest that Hooker’s own approach is Evangelical Catholic, a Reformed (in the sense of Reformation) or Evangelical (but not Calvinist) Catholicism. In particular, Hooker was in conversation with an earlier pre-Reformation Catholic tradition. Hooker especially engaged with the church fathers and the Christology and Trinitarian theology of the ecumenical councils. Hooker was also influenced significantly by the theology of the medieval Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas. (more…)

April 9, 2026

John Jewel and the Catholicity of Anglicanism

Filed under: Anglicanism,Development of Doctrine,History,Sacraments,Theology — William Witt @ 1:40 pm

Dates (1522-1572)

1522 Born at Buden, Devonshire
1535 Enters Merton College, Oxford
1539 Transfers to Corpus Christi, Oxford
1540 Receives Bachelor of Arts
1545 Receives Master’s Degree
1548 Elected as Reader of Humanity and Rhetoric
1551 Receives license to preach at Sunningwell
1552 Accession of Mary Tudor; Jewel deprived of his fellowship at Corpus Christi
1554 Jewel signs articles agreeing with Roman Doctrine
1555 Jewel flees to Frankfurt, Strasbourg and later Zurich (with a letter from Cranmer); is deeply affected by disagreements among English exiles at Frankfurt
1558 Death of Mary and accession of Elizabeth; Jewel returns to England
1559 Jewel participates in disputation at Oxford against Roman clergy; Paul’s Cross “Challenge Sermon”

“If any learned man of all our adversaries . . . be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old catholic doctor, or father, or out of any old general council or out of the holy scriptures of God, or any one example of the primitive church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved . . .”

1560 Consecrated Bishop of Salisbury
1562 Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Apology of the Church of England)
1565 Reply to Harding
1566 Defense of the Apology

“What mystical catholic ears M. Harding hath, that cannot abide the phrases and speeches of the ancient fathers.”

1570 Paul’s Cross Sermon against the Puritans (not published)

John Jewel

John Jewel (1522-1571) was a second-generation Anglican Reformer. He was a protege of Thomas Cranmer, and thus knew Cranmer personally. Later the great Anglican Divine Richard Hooker was a protege of Jewel’s. There is then something like a three-generation passing of the torch from Cranmer to Jewel to Hooker.

For a number of reasons, Jewel is unfortunately less well known than either Cranmer or Hooker. Cranmer is best known for his role in the creation of the Book of Common Prayer, which has provided the structure for Anglican worship for four hundred years. Richard Hooker is known for his writing of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which is probably the closest thing that Anglicans have to a systematic theology at the time of the Reformation. While his contribution is less, Jewel is nonetheless a significant figure, particularly for the development of Anglican ecclesiology – how Anglicans understand what it means to be a church, and, in that regard, how they address the question of the relationship between Anglicanism (or the Church of England) and the pre-Reformation western Catholic church.

In apologetic discussions, many Protestants and Roman Catholics agree in viewing the relationship between the medieval Catholic church and the post-Reformation Protestant churches as a simple break. This can be seen in such questions as “Did Henry VIII found the Church of England?” or “Where was your church before the Reformation?” or “Did the Church of England break with the Catholic church in order for Henry VIII to get a divorce?” Jewel’s approach to ecclesiology rejects this dichotomy. He refused to understand the Reformation as a simple break with the Roman Catholic church or to interpret the Reformation as a new beginning that leapt over sixteen hundred years of history to go straight back to Scripture, forgetting everything that had happened between the time of the death of the last apostle and Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

At the heart of Jewel’s argument is the claim that Anglicanism was not the beginning of a new church; rather, the English Reformation was indeed a reformation, the reforming of the late medieval western Catholic church that Jewel claimed had in many ways departed from the historic church of the Patristic era and of the church of the New Testament Apostles before that. (more…)

March 21, 2026

Thomas Cranmer on the Sacraments and the Prayer Book

Filed under: Anglicanism,Ecumenism,Sacraments,Theology — William Witt @ 12:43 pm

Today is the Feast Day of Thomas Cranmer, who placed his hand in the fire when he died at the stake on this day 470 years ago. I thought it a fitting day to post this essay on his sacramental theology.

Thomas Cranmer

A previous essay focused on Thomas Cranmer’s Reformation theology, specifically the way in which Cranmer embraced but also gave his own interpretation to the three Reformation principles of Sola Scriptura (the normative authority of Scripture alone), Sola Gratia (justification by grace alone), and Sola Fide (through faith alone). Cranmer affirmed the primacy and sufficiency of Scripture over all church tradition, while nonetheless also affirming the significance of tradition as the proper context for the interpretation of Scripture. He also affirmed both the reading of Scripture translated into the common language along with a focus on the reading of Scripture as a means of edification (the “priesthood of all believers”). Cranmer interpreted justification by faith alone to mean justification by Christ alone, with faith understood as the “lively faith” that embraced the crucified and risen Christ’s righteousness in contrast to what he called “dead faith.”

This essay will address the two other areas where Cranmer contributed most to the history of Anglican theology: his doctrine of the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, and his contribution as author of the 1549 and 1552 versions of The Book of Common Prayer, focusing specifically on the eucharistic rites in the two books.

Reformation Eucharistic Theologies

If there was a general consensus among Reformation churches concerning the primacy and normativity of Scripture as well as justification by grace alone through faith alone, no such agreement existed for sacramental theology, style of worship, or church polity. The Reformers disagreed as much among themselves as they did with the Roman Catholic church concerning their theology of the sacraments, liturgical worship, and church orders (ordination). Concerning the sacraments, areas of disagreement concerned whether sacraments are means of grace, whether the risen Christ is present in the Eucharist, and, if so, in what manner, whether infants should be baptized, and whether baptism regenerates. Concerning worship, whether the church should retain or discard the historic liturgical worship of the church (the Catholic “mass”), and if retained, to what extent should the liturgy be preserved or modified. Concerning orders, whether the church should retain episcopacy, and, if not, whether the church should be governed by elders (presbyterian) or democratically (congregational).

Concerning the sacraments, there has been a history of disagreements in the Western church about the Eucharist – of how it is that the consecrated elements become the body and blood of Christ or how they unite the believer to Christ – that precedes the split between the Eastern and Western church. This has not been so much a concern in Eastern theology, and it may well have something to do with the Western understanding of how Christ makes himself immediately present in the Eucharist rather than the Eastern understanding that Christ is mediately present through the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the epiclesis.1 This fundamental difference between West and East concerning what can be designated as two separate “models” of Eucharistic presence has not been sufficiently recognized in discussions of Eucharistic theology, but is arguably as fundamental for understanding the Reformation-era disagreements as the disagreements themselves.2

The standard Western model of the Eucharist has a Christocentric emphasis. In the Western understanding, Jesus Christ as the risen and ascended Son of God acts directly and immediately to make himself present in the sacraments. During the Eucharistic prayer, the celebrant (or priest) represents the risen Jesus Christ. In Latin, the expression in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) means that the celebrant acts as a visible representation of the invisible risen Christ. When the celebrant pronounces the “Words of Institution” – “This is my body” and “This is my blood” – the physical elements of bread and wine are transformed to “become” (or make present) the body and blood of Christ.

The role of the Holy Spirit tends to be minimized. Insofar as the Spirit is present, the Spirit is present in either of two ways. First, by “appropriation.” That is, the Holy Spirit is present along with the risen Christ in the same manner in which the one God as the undivided divine nature acts throughout creation but specific divine acts are “appropriated” to a particular person because of a special fittingness. The phrase “all acts of the Trinity ad extra are one” (Opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt) means that all acts of the triune God outside God’s own nature (ad extra) are common to all three persons as to a single principle of action with the exception of acts specific to the mission of a specific person.

(more…)

January 8, 2026

Just War Theory and the Venezuela Invasion

Filed under: Christianity and Politics,Ethics — William Witt @ 2:27 am

I posted the following on Facebook. As I noted, I was reluctant because I I have learned that such posts “seldom changes any minds,” and I was not surprised to find that responses made that clear. At the same time, because of the number of responses and the length required for a response, I decided to put everything in a blog post. My lengthy response to comments can be found at the end.

I try to avoid commenting on political or ecclesial issues on Facebook because I know that it seldom changes any minds. I have definite opinions on the current “bishop” troubles in the ACNA but I have sat on my hands.

Nonetheless, I taught Christian Ethics for eighteen years and one of the topics I covered every time I taught the course was the Christian understanding of the use of force by the state. Historically, there have only been two morally permissible stances for Christians concerning war: pacifism and “Just War” theory.

Just War (actually justified war) is not a permission for Christians to endorse the use of force in international relations. Rather, just war lays out certain restrictions (all of which must be met) before countries can go to war. Just War shares with pacifism a common assumption: Force is never permissible unless and only permissible if certain requirements are first met – and every single one of them must be (jus ad bellum).

The requirements are: Just Cause, Right Authority, Right Intention, Last Resort, Proportionality, and Probability of Success.

Second, there are certain restrictions on what actions are permissible within war (jus in bello):

Discrimination (no targeting of civilians)

Proportionality (military advantage must outweigh harm done – including long term harm)

Necessity (only use the force necessary to achieve legitimate military objectives)

No intrinsically evil means (weapons of mass destruction, rape, etc.)

No reprisals (no violations of just war principles just because the enemy has done so).

From a Christian perspective, the invasion of another sovereign nation (with which we are not even in a previously declared war) and the kidnapping of its leader is a violation of the principles of both pacifism (obviously) but also Just War.

From any possible Christian perspective, the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president is immoral and must be condemned. It does not matter if Maduro was a “bad guy.”

 

A second post responded to a request for a bibliography:

(more…)

January 3, 2026

I Get Mail: An Egalitarian Ontology of Women and Men

Filed under: Theodicy,Women's Ordination — William Witt @ 2:15 am

Christ in the House of Martha and MaryI received an email recently that asked for clarification in light of a concern that regularly appears in complementarian criticisms of egalitarian theology — that egalitarianism presumes that there simply are no differences whatsoever between men and women. Behind this also lurks another unspoken (but sometimes spoken) criticism — that egalitarian theology inevitably leads to various kinds of sexual anarchy and licentiousness. (I don’t suggest that the writer harbors this assumption.)

The email’s title was: 

“Looking for ontological exploration of men and woman from an egalitarian worldview”

“Most of the books I have read state that Egalitarians do not believe that men and women are exactly the same, but I haven’t found a book yet that offers any theories or descriptions of the categories of men and women from a mutualist/egalitarian perspective. I haven’t yet found an egalitarian that explores the difference (traits, purposes within those traits distinct between the two) in light of equality.”

“I was wondering if you had any writing on the subject or any guidance on where I might find such an exploration.”

Mxxxxx,

I have not been able to spend much time on these issues for the last year or so as I have been working on other things. I need to get back to addressing some of these questions.

Since your subject title concerns ontology, I would refer you to chapter 14 and the conclusion of Icons of Christ (Baylor University Press, 2020) where I lean on Roman Catholic philosopher Norris Clarke’s trinitarian ontology, Karl Barth’s relational understanding of sexuality, and on Dorothy L. Sayers’s essay “Are Women Human?”

Crucial to Clarke’s position is (as he titles an essay) “To Be Is To Be Substance-in-Relation,” in Explorations in Metaphysics (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). Also see his Person and Being (Marquette University Press, 1998), which I cite in ch. 14.

According to Clarke, every being has both an itself dimension (substance) and a toward other dimension (relation). For human beings, substance is tied both to rationality and embodiment – Aristotle: “the human being is a rational animal” – and it is this element of rationality on which Boethius focused in his definition of personhood – “an individual substance of a rational nature.” However, one of the great contributions of patristic christology and trinitarian theology is that it is crucial to distinguish person and nature – something lacking in Boethius’s definition.

Drawing on Trinitarian theology, all persons have a rational nature (Boethius) but to be a person simply is to be in relational orientation to other persons. In the Trinity, the Father simply is the one who generates the Son and who with the Son brings forth the Spirit through procession. The Son simply is the person who is generated by the Father and who with the Father gives being to the Spirit, and the Spirit simply is the person who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Applied to humanity, in the realm of substance or essence, there can be no ontological difference whatsoever between men and women as it is the common essence of rational embodiment that makes human beings human. If there were any ontological difference of essence/nature/substance as far as humanity, men and women would each be a distinct species, and the Word would have to have become incarnate twice (once as a male and once as a female) in order to redeem humanity. The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation is not that the Word assumed a male human nature but that the Word assumed a human nature common to men and women; however the manner in which the incarnate Word exists as human is as the male Jesus of Nazareth.

As with the Trinity, I would suggest that the fundamental ontological distinction between men and women exists at the level of relation, not substance (or essence). To be a human being means to share in the common rational equality that is essential to human nature, but to be a male human being is to exist as relationally oriented to the female, and to be a female human being is to exist as relationally oriented toward the male. To be a human being means to exist either as a male or as  a female and to exist in equal partnership in relation to the other.

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December 24, 2025

Can We Trust the Bible?

Filed under: Scripture,Theology — William Witt @ 9:43 pm

Systematic Theology: Chapter Three (Appendix)

The Road to Emmaus

Perhaps the most heated point of controversy concerning the Bible in contemporary culture concerns whether we can trust the Bible. In previous generations, even those who never read the Bible commonly referred to it as the “Good Book.” In contemporary culture, more and more people view the Bible as an “evil book” because they view the God of the Bible as an oppressive threat – a bully who is fundamentally opposed to human flourishing. The crucial disagreement concerns the divide between a hermeneutic of continuity and a hermeneutic of discontinuity, and a divide between a hermeneutic of trust and a hermeneutic of suspicion.

The trustworthiness of Scripture has been challenged at all three levels of knowing and being. The Christian story and symbols have been challenged as either incoherent or as hostile to human flourishing. The historical witness of Scripture has been challenged as fundamentally unreliable, as not giving an accurate account of either the history of Israel or of the “historical Jesus.” At the level of ontology, it has been claimed either that the God of the Bible does not exist, or that if some kind of spiritual reality exists, it bears little or no resemblance to the God described in the Old and New Testament Scriptures.

The crucial issue of continuity over against discontinuity concerns whether God is in himself who he has revealed himself to be in the history of revelation. As noted in the previous paragraph, this is often posed in terms of either the historical reliability of the Scripture or their incompatibility with the findings of modern science, or the God whose story is told in the Bible is rejected as a morally repugnant character. I would suggest that two more pressing concerns lie behind the current challenges; first, the loss of transcendence and, second, distinct from, but connected with this, a moral challenge. Third, and related to both of the above is the more recent issue of the loss of faith among a younger generation of primarily “Exvangelicals” labeled “deconstruction.”

Loss of Transcendence

Key to the loss of transcendence in contemporary culture is what Charles Taylor in his book The Secular Age has designated as the “immanent frame,” a constructed social space that frames the lives of contemporary Western people within a natural (rather than supernatural) order. Taylor refers to this social space as a secular “social imaginary” that excludes transcendence. A “social imaginary” is different from an intellectual system in that it is the way that people unreflectively “imagine” or “feel” about their social surroundings. Social imaginaries are expressed more in terms of “stories,” images, and legends rather than in articulated intellectual beliefs. The secular “social imaginary” is thus similar to Thomas Kuhn’s notion of “paradigms,” but in contrast to the theoretical and reflective nature of paradigms, the secular “social imaginary” is rather a “take,” a way of construing the world as without transcendence that the contemporary person brings to experience rather than derives from it.54

Given the assumptions of an a priori secular social imaginary, interpretation of the Bible becomes problematic insofar as the subject matter of the biblical story is from beginning to end an account of the transcendent God who has created and redeemed the world, a God who speaks and acts. (more…)

Revelation and Scripture

Filed under: Scripture,Theology — William Witt @ 9:38 pm

Systematic Theology: Chapter Three

FourApostles

The two previous chapters dealt with the subject matter of theology (what theology is) and the task of theology (what theologians do). This chapter and the next deal with the sources of theology. Traditionally, these are Scripture (sola scriptura; Reformation Protestant), Scripture and tradition (Council of Trent; Roman Catholic), Scripture, tradition, and reason (Anglican; Richard Hooker), Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (Methodism; the Wesleyan Quadrilateral; liberal Protestantism).

In terms of the three levels of knowing and being (ordo cognoscendi and ordo essendi), these sources of theology belong to the first level, the order of knowledge. Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience provide the sources and context within which Christians come to know what Christian faith is, and what it means to live as Christians. At the same time, it is important to distinguish between the first source – Scripture – and the other three sources in that historically Scripture has provided the primary source of the knowledge of Christian faith while reason, tradition, and experience are not in themselves independent sources of knowledge of Christian faith, but rather provide the ecclesial context in which Christians come to know and interpret Scripture.

Historically, tradition is not a separate and distinct source of knowledge of God, but the context in which Christian faith takes place. Patristic theologians like Irenaeus were expositors of Scripture, and the second century Rule of Faith is both a summary of the content of Scripture and a hermeneutical guide for interpreting Scripture. For theologians like Anglican Richard Hooker, reason was not a separate source for knowledge of God, but a hermeneutical tool to use in interpreting Scripture. For founder of Methodism John Wesley, experience did not provide additional knowledge about God, but was rather an ecclesial context in which the church appropriates the truth of Scripture.

At the same time, Reformation Protestants did not understood sola scriptura to mean that the church reads Scripture in an interpretive vacuum (nuda scriptura, “biblicism”). Protestants continued to recite the Creeds and to endorse the theological teaching of the ecumenical councils because they understood them to be summaries of and interpretive guides to the clear meaning of Scripture. Affirming sola scriptura did not prevent historic Protestants from endorsing confessional statements such as the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, the Reformed Westminster Confession, the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles or reading Scripture through interpretive guides such as the Lutheran Book of Concord or confessional catechisms.

In terms of the threefold level of knowing and being, Scripture has a unique role because of its place in the threefold structure. Although contemporary Christians read Scripture as the primary source of Christian knowledge and spiritual and moral formation (level 1), Scripture’s origins lie in the second level of the order of knowing and being – the level of history (level 2). The Bible is not a single “book,” but the collected writings of prophets and apostles who bear witness to the economy of salvation – the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the history of Israel, the incarnate Jesus Christ, and the New Testament church. As noted in the two previous chapters, this history of the economic Trinity (level 2) points beyond itself to the ontological reality of God’s nature in itself (the immanent Trinity, level 3). Our knowledge of God as Trinity thus follows from our knowledge of God in the history of salvation, and our contemporary appropriation of this knowledge in prayer, worship, and Christian ethics is dependent on this historical source of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

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December 13, 2025

The Discipline of Theology: What Theologians Do

Filed under: Methodology,Theology — William Witt @ 12:38 am

Systematic Theology: Chapter Two

Durer Jerome in his Study

The previous chapter discussed the subject matter of theology: what theology is. This chapter deals with the discipline of theology: the work that theologians do. The study of theology has a number of names: “Christian doctrine” is the most general term. Doctrine can reflect the position of a particular theologian, church, or denominational group, or an account of one particular aspect of theology, for example, Thomas Aquinas’s or Karl Barth’s “doctrine of the Trinity” or the Reformed doctrine of Presbyterian polity or the Roman Catholic doctrine of the papacy.

“Dogmatics” refers to “authorized church teaching,” and is usually distinguished from doctrine by its universality and normativity. For example, while the universal church has never officially endorsed a specific interpretation of the atonement – there is no universally agreed doctrine of the atonement, but rather there are numerous theologians’ doctrines of the atonement – there is a universally acknowledged understanding of the doctrines of the Trinity and Christology, approved at the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. We thus refer to the “dogmas” of the Trinity and Christology. Thus, all dogmas are doctrines, but not all doctrines are dogmas.

Finally, systematic theology is concerned generally with Christian claims about reality, especially the scope, unity and coherence of Christian teaching: “Systematic theology attempts a conceptual articulation of Christian claims about God and everything else in relation to God, characterized by comprehensiveness and coherence.”1 On the one hand, systematic theology is more comprehensive than “doctrine” because of the universality of its scope. On the other hand, systematic theology does not claim the definitiveness of dogma because it deals with every aspect of theology, not simply those central theological doctrines over which there is substantial agreement among the majority of Christians. Systematic theology is also the work of individual theologians, or reflects the theological commitments of specific ecclesial traditions.

Historical Development of Theology

John Webster points out that “Conceptual reconstruction of Christian teaching is a post-apostolic enterprise. . .” Early Christian writers did not distinguish between exegetical, doctrinal, moral, and pastoral theology.2 For example, Irenaeus’s Against Heresies is an apologetic work written against Gnostic heretics that also includes as part of the discussion throughout the five books fairly comprehensive discussion of Christian doctrines of the triune God, of creation, fall, and redemption. Augustine’s Confessions is a spiritual autobiography that also addresses numerous theological topics, for example, the doctrine of creation and the nature of evil. Much patristic theology is found in the form of sermons, whose primary purpose is the exposition of Scripture within the context of Christian worship.

The following factors led to the development of Christian theology:

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