Christopher on Anglican Core

Christopher writes something which I find very well said:

Anglicans do not have a magisterium or a confession, but we do have a guiding set of minimums expressed in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral:

(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as "containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.

(b) The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself — Baptism and the Supper of the Lord — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's Words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.

(d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.

It’s a reserved set with a lot of nuance and room for divergence, disagreement, and diversity—all of which we have in abundance. For example, “standard of faith” in part (a) is directed toward understanding that in Scripture what we can glean from the word is who God is and who God is for us. The words of Scripture are not self-referential, but in study, prayer, and especially in public proclamation refer us to the Living God we know in Jesus Christ. This is distinct from a Puritan or Fundamentalist understanding that scripture is the ultimate standard of faith and morals, or faith and science. Rather, part (b) makes clear what is saving in the Scriptures, namely who God is and who God is for us uniquely and ultimately as revealed in Jesus Christ. These are “sufficient” statements, meaning that we recognize they cannot fully capture the Mystery of God, as no words could, but that they tell us adequately and savingly who God is and is for us as shown in Christ, and that God is consistent in character in God’s infinitude as with God’s self-communication in Christ. In other words, God in all of God’s mystery will not be at odds with the nature and character of God as revealed in Jesus. The Creeds do not overdefine, but rather mark out unacceptable options that the early Christian communities faced, such as thinking that creation and material existence are other than the gifts of a good and loving God, suggesting that the God of the Old Testament is other than the God of the New, determining that Jesus is other than fully human or fully God, or teaching that the Holy Spirit is less than God.

So, at the heart of the Creeds sit two core doctrines which Anglican Christian tradition will not cede: Incarnation and Trinity. We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human and that in the Second Person of the Trinity come among us, the invisible or unknown God is both visible and known, such that, for example, the three Persons of God and their sociality are shown forth in the full event of the Incarnation--birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection, ascension, coming of the Spirit, formation of the Church.

For Anglican Christians, these core doctrines have important and liberative dimensions for creation and the oppressed, as flesh and matter and history are the loci through which God is present and works—Archbishop William Temple once remarked that “Christianity is the most materialistic of religions.” And the sociality of the Triune God impacts how we are meant to relate to one another—Archbishop Desmond Tutu has remarked that “I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”