THE

Anglican

Volume 44, No. 1 A Journal of Anglican Identity Epiphany 2018

Portrait of Thomas Cromwell. Oil and tempera on oak panel,

Hans Holbein - The Frick Collection
Image from Wikipedia under Creative Commons Share Alike License 3.0
The mission of The Anglican Society is to promote and maintain the
Catholic doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church in
accordance with the principles and contents of
The Book of Common Prayer.

In This Issue

INTRODUCTORY MATTER
From the Editor 2
The Rev. William D. Loring

The President’s Column 3

The Rev. Dr. Paul B. Clayton, Jr.

HISTORY
Thomas Cromwell and the English 4
Universities
The Rev. Lawrence N. Crumb

REVIEW ARTICLES

Faith Under Fire 19

The Rev. Richard L. Jeske

Prayer Book Revision and the Modern 29

Revival of Trinitarian Doctrine
The Rev. Dr. Paul B. Clayton, Jr.

ADDITIONAL MATTER
The Anglican Archivist 40
The late Rev. Canon Peter Chase

All contents, unless otherwise noted, are copyright ©

by the respective authors.

1
From the Editor
Nos morituri te salutamus
WILLIAM D. LORING
It is with considerable sadness
that I must announce that this is
the final issue of The Anglican. This
reflects, as does so much in the
church today, a decline in funds
and in warm bodies. For many
years we received a generous
subsidy from General Seminary
which ended as a result of their own
fiscal problems, and at the same
time our own membership has also
fallen – largely as the result of an
erratic publishing schedule which
has become even worse under my
care. I fear that I overestimated my
abilities and bit off rather more than
I could actually chew. I offer my
apologies to the members for my
share in this end.
That being said,
the American Branch
of the Society was
formed in 1945, and I
joined about 1960,
and began attending
meetings, writing
occasional articles, and then joining
the Executive Committee just as the
process of Prayer Book Revision was
getting started. I believe the
Society’s publications and
conferences made important
contributions to that effort.
Now that steps are being taken
towards a new revision my regret is
that we shall not be able as a
Society to participate – I do hope
that many of our members will take
2
an active role, offering comments on
and contributing to any proposals.
My real hope, however, is that at
this point the Convention will
content itself with the option (which
will, I am told, be presented by the
Standing Committee on Liturgy and
Music (SCLM): to create a relatively
short list of amendments and
additions that can be incorporated
into the present Book.
I can think of several such
changes, but at this time will
advocate for just one of them:
replacing the banal “And also with
you,” with “And with your spirit,” in
Rite II. We adopted the former
phrase in the Trial Use forms of
1970 and following, and then in the
BCP, as part of Texts We Have in
Common with the RC (and some
other) churches. Since then the
Roman Church has adopted the
more traditional (and Biblical – cf.
Gal. 6:18) form vitiating a large part
of the ecumenical reason for the
previous change.
Finally, I remember with joy and
affection the many friends I have
made through the Society, both here
and in the English Branch, over the
fifty some years that I have been
active in it. May God bless us all.
The Rev. William D. Loring is a
retired priest who is now in the
process of entering fuller retirement
and moving to warmer climes.
 President’s Column
PAUL B. CLAYTON, JR.

It is with great continue any form of publication

sadness that we
announce the
death of the
treasurer of The
Anglican Society,
Ms. Linda
Bridges, after a
year-long battle
with esophageal
cancer on March 25, 2017. She was
buried from St. Mary the Virgin,
Times Square, New York City, her
home congregation of many, many
years, on April 10th. She served
The Anglican Society on our board
for many years as well, and as
treasurer for the last several years.
Linda will be greatly missed. May
she rest in God’s peace and rise in
God’s glory in the last day.
It is also with great sadness that we
must announce that this will be the
last issue of The Anglican. A few
years ago, we lost the financial
support we had enjoyed for many
years from our partner The General
Theological Seminary, when the
Seminary experienced its own severe
financial difficulties. This led the
board of the Anglican Society to
switch from hard copy issues of The
Anglican to publishing it in
electronic form via the Internet.
Unfortunately, annual renewals
have not proved numerous enough
to provide sufficient income to
I have been a member of The
Anglican Society since my time at
General Seminary, class of 1964.
The Society existed for many
decades before then. It has been a
steadfast witness to what our motto
has described as “Prayer Book
Catholicism” all these years. All our
board members have been part of
The Society during all this time,
making the decision to suspend
publication a tragic one for us. We
will mourn The Society and The
Anglican because of the witness they
have been for us personally. It was
with the greatest difficulty that this
past March the board made this
unhappy decision, and determined
that the remaining funds in our
treasury should be expended on the
standard stipends for Fr. Loring, our
editor, for the issues he has
overseen, and our web site manager,
Ms. Hannah Wilder, for her work
both maintaining the web site and
assisting Fr. Loring in laying out
recent issues for electronic
publication. The board voted to
send any remaining funds after
covering those expenses to the
library of The General Theological
Seminary for purchasing new books
in Anglican liturgical studies.
The Reverend Paul B. Clayton, Jr.,
Ph. D., President

3
 Thomas Cromwell and the English
Universities
LAWRENCE N. CRUMB
Introduction
The original
inspiration for
this article
came from the
vague
recollection of
an assertion
that Henry VIII, having abolished
the monasteries and seized their
endowments, considered doing
the same with the universities;
and that he was dissuaded from
doing so only by the intercession
of his last queen, Catherine Parr.
Although there is some truth to
this notion,1 the greatest threat
to the English universities came
not at this time (1545-46) but
during the course of the previous
decade – the decade of the 1530s,
which corresponded almost
exactly to the ascendancy of
Thomas Cromwell.
The Medieval Background
The universities of Oxford and
Cambridge were founded in the
High Middle Ages and developed
during the pre-modern centuries
which followed; looking back on
their role in English life on the
eve of the Reformation, one
scholar has gone so far as to say
that “no institution was more
medieval than they.”2 This
means that, “above all,” [they] …
owed their first allegiance to the
4
medieval church.”3 The
chancellors were originally
representatives of the local
bishops (Lincoln, for Oxford; and
Ely, for Cambridge), since only
bishops could grant licenses to
teach; as ecclesiastical
administration became more
centralized in the late Middle
Ages, they came to be seen as
representatives of the Archbishop
of Canterbury and, eventually, of
the pope. However, as papal
power grew, so did royal power;
and the church-state conflicts of
the late Middle Ages were not
without their reflections in the
English universities, which
derived certain privileges and
liberties from the Crown and
thus acknowledged its authority
in some areas. A classic example
came in 1411, when Henry IV
forced Oxford to renounce direct
papal control and accept a
visitation by the Archbishop of
Canterbury – a precedent for
Archbishop Laud’s controversial
claim to metropolitical rights of
visitation over 200 years later.
The fifteenth century also saw
the emergence of a new type of
university chancellor: a non-
resident official with tenure for
life, chosen from the influential
members of the royal court; such
a person was not only a guardian
of university interests, but also
an agent of royal power. Thus,
the ultimate breach with Rome
completed an existing process of
changing university relations
with church and state.4
The universities were also
typically medieval in the
prominent role played by the
religious orders. Rather than
consisting primarily of colleges
for undergraduates, as in modern
times, the universities were
essentially collections of halls
and inns for graduate students;
and most of these graduate
students were monks and friars,
proceeding toward graduate
degrees in theology and canon
law.5 Of the 65 Benedictine
abbeys and priories in England,
38 sent monks to Gloucester
College, the Benedictine hall at
Oxford, as well as some to
Cambridge; a total of 213
Benedictines attended Oxford
alone in the years 1449-1538.
During the same period, there
were 67 Franciscans, 53
Dominicans, 52 Cistercians, 32
“Austin” (i.e., Augustinian) friars,
and 12 Carmelites.6 In a sense,
the degree of monastic
involvement in the universities
represented an adaptation to
changing financial
circumstances, for in the late
Middle Ages, “both universities
attracted gifts and endowment in
a profusion which could be
matched only by the benefactions
bestowed on the monasteries of
an earlier age ….”7
The Immediate Background
The immediate background to
Cromwell’s ascendancy was that
5
of his patron, employer, and
mentor, Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey
had begun to receive royal
appointments in both church
and state in the last years of
Henry VII, and the favors
multiplied rapidly in the early
years of Henry VIII. In 1514,
Wolsey was named Archbishop of
York, the second-ranking
position in the English hierarchy,
and the following year he was
created cardinal. Although he
was frustrated by Archbishop
Warham’s longevity in his desire
to succeed him at Canterbury as
Primate of All England, he did
succeed him as Lord Chancellor
in 1515; three years later, he
managed to outrank Warham by
obtaining appointment as papal
legate de latere.8 From 1518 until
his fall in 1529, Wolsey thus
combined in his person the
authority to rule both church
and state. Although Cromwell
never inherited his master’s
titles, he managed to exercise the
same two-fold authority while
holding lesser titles and
maneuvering skillfully behind the
scenes.
Wolsey’s first significant
contact with the universities after
attaining high office – he had
been successively junior and
senior bursar of Magdalen
College, Oxford, in his early
career – came in 1518, when
Oxford surrendered its statutes
to him to be altered at his
pleasure; Cambridge followed
suit in 1524. Meanwhile, in
1520, Wolsey paid a visit to
Cambridge, where he had just
declined the proffered
chancellorship – an office that
Cromwell would eventually hold.
A high point among the
ceremonies attending Wolsey’s
visit came when he and the new
chancellor, Bishop Fisher,
presided over the burning of
Luther’s books. (A similar book-
burning was conducted by others
at Oxford about the same time.)
Whether Cromwell was among
the large train of attendants
Wolsey took with him wherever
he went is not recorded, at least
by the historians of the
university; however, the event
would surely have become known
to him, whether or not it later
served him as a conscious
precedent for the parallel
treatment by his agents of the
books of Duns Scotus. On the
other hand, the example of how
to deal with the universities
which Wolsey bequeathed to
Cromwell was not all harsh, for
the cardinal (in his legatine
capacity) declined a request to
appoint a commission of enquiry
into the meetings of Cambridge’s
“Little Germany” (i.e., Lutheran-
minded) group at the White
Horse tavern.9
But Wolsey’s most important
contact with higher education
was his grand design for his
namesake Cardinal College at
Oxford. The building of what was
intended to be by far the largest
college of the university began in
1524 on the site of St.
Frideswide’s Priory, whose
endowment (together with those
of several other small religious
6
houses that had been
suppressed for the cause) were
transferred to the new college.
The act was not exactly
unprecedented – Jesus and St.
John’s colleges at Cambridge had
been founded in 1497 and 1511,
respectively, with endowments of
a convent and two hospitals –
but nothing before had been
done on such a large scale;
perhaps only a Wolsey could
have procured a papal bull
permitting the suppression of an
unspecified number of religious
houses. In all the suppressions
and transfers of endowment
connected with the founding of
Cardinal College, Cromwell was
Wolsey’s agent; surely in this
case, Cromwell filed away the
precedent for future reference.10
The Ascendancy of Cromwell
The major events of the 1530s
– the royal divorce, the royal
supremacy in the Church, and
the complete break with Rome –
all involved Oxford and
Cambridge, and thus represented
a tightening in the existing
interrelationships between
church, state, and university.
What has been said of the 1500s
in general is thus especially true
of the decade of Cromwell’s
ascendancy:
Westminster and Canterbury
kept a close eye on the
universities and had many
methods, direct and indirect,
of making their power felt.
This influence was natural,
inevitable, in a society in
 which Church and State were
so intimately connected.11
Cromwell’s first concern in
regard to the universities, on the
eve of this eventful decade, had
been the saving of his former
master’s pet project, Cardinal
College; and it may have been
through his intercession that the
king assured its continued
existence (although not on so
grand a scale as the cardinal had
intended).12 But as Cromwell’s
importance grew as agent (and,
to a great extent, as shaper) of
the royal will, his attention
turned to more significant
matters.
The burning issue at the time
of Wolsey’s fall – indeed, the
cause of Wolsey’s fall – was “the
king’s matter,” his desire for a
divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
In the spring of 1530, the
University Senate at Cambridge
pronounced against the validity
of the marriage while remaining
silent on the related question of
the pope’s dispensing power;
after some pressure, the latter
was also denied on an ad hoc
basis, but without removing the
proviso that Catherine’s prior
marriage to Prince Arthur
(Henry’s older brother) had been
consummated.13 Also at
Cambridge in 1530, the statutes
of St. John’s College were revised
to include Greek lectures, a
legacy of Chancellor Fisher which
Cromwell would not only retain
but extend to other colleges,
including those of Oxford, as
well.14
7
The real turning-point for the
universities came in 1533 with
the passing of the Act in
Restraint of Appeals, which had
been drafted by Cromwell. Far
from being a tentative testing of
the waters, the Act
proclaimed a doctrine whose
consequences, primary and
secondary, bore as heavily on
the universities as on any
institution in the realm.
Formerly Oxford and
Cambridge had acknowledged
the joint authority of pope and
king but owed their chief
allegiance to the Pope, now
they passed under the sole
jurisdiction of the king ….
This transference of power
meant a profound change in
the nature of the controls and
influences which would foster,
guide, and condition the
development of the
universities. For one thing
supreme power, being now
vested in only one authority,
was unimpeded by conflicting
policies at the top …. For
another thing, the new
controlling authority differed
from the old in the purposes
and interests it served. It
owed much, for instance, to
the awakening of national
feeling and to the heightening
of anti-clerical impulses and
emotions. Such differences
portended fundamental
changes in the relations of the
universities with the other
institutions of English
society.15
From this point, it was but a
short step to the Act of
Supremacy, also emanating from
Cromwell’s pen, which was
passed in the following year and
cut the last thread connecting
the English church (including its
universities) to the papacy. Both
Oxford and Cambridge
subscribed to the Act, although
some individuals at Oxford were
deprived of their fellowships for
not doing so, and at Cambridge
the prior of the “Black Friars”
(Dominicans) was removed from
his post when Archbishop
Cranmer complained to Cromwell
about the prior’s objections. 16
The year 1534 also saw the
establishment of the Cambridge
University Press, in the sense
that a royal license was granted
“to appoint three stationers and
printers or booksellers … to print
and sell such books as shall be
approved by the said chancellor
or his vicegerent and three
doctors,”17 although it was
several years before the terms of
the license were actually
implemented. It was also in 1534
that Alexander Alane, a Scots
reformer and disciple of
Melanchthon, visited Cambridge
at the joint invitation of Cromwell
and Cranmer – a foretaste of the
several foreign reformers who
would visit the universities
during the next reign.18
By the time of Cranmer’s
complaint about the Dominican
prior at Cambridge, Cromwell
had become chancellor of the
university.19 This election, which
took place early in 1535, was
8
possible because of the
deprivation and imprisonment of
the former chancellor, Bishop
Fisher, who had refused to
accept the Act of Supremacy.
Although Fisher had not yet been
executed for treason, we now
know that his doom was already
sealed in Cromwell’s mind when
he assumed the office.20 A double
irony lies in the fact that in 1534
Cambridge had given Cromwell
the post of high steward, an
office in which his immediate
predecessor was that other great
Henrician martyr, Thomas More.
With its two brightest lights not
only deprived and in prison, but
likely candidates for the block,
“the university made Cromwell
chancellor to save itself.”21
But it was not in his role of
chancellor of Cambridge that
Cromwell was destined to leave
his mark on higher education in
England. The Act of Supremacy
gave Henry complete control over
the English church, and he
delegated this authority to
Cromwell as his “vicegerent, vicar
general and special
commissary.” 22 It was in the
exercise of this office that
Cromwell appointed agents to
make a visitation of the
universities (as he also did for
the monasteries, cathedrals, and
parish churches) and issued
injunctions to the universities,
whose compliance the visitors
were charged with enforcing. The
“Royal Injunctions of 1535”
required
1. subscription to “the king’s
succession” (i.e., Princess
 Elizabeth), obedience to
any statutes “for the
extirpation of the papal
usurpation and for the
assertion and confirmation
of the king’s jurisdiction,
prerogative, and
preeminence”;
2. that each college and hall
establish daily lectures in
Greek and Latin;
3. that lectures should not be
given on the Sentences of
Peter Lombard, and that
“all divinity lectures should
be upon the Scriptures …
according to the true sense
thereof, and not after the
manner of Scotus, etc.”;
4. that students be permitted
to read the Bible and
attend lectures on it;
5. that there be no more
study or degrees in canon
law;
6. that ceremonies and
observances that “hindered
polite learning” be
abolished;
7. that students be instructed
in “logic, rhetoric,
arithmetic, geography,
music, and philosophy,
and should read Aristotle
… Melanchthon … etc.,
and not the frivolous
questions and obscure
glosses of Scotus … etc.”;
8. that any existing statutes
contrary to the above be
void;
9
9. that “all deans, presidents,
wardens, heads, masters,
rectors, and officers … be
sworn to the due and
faithful observance of these
articles.”23
Perhaps the wording of these
injunctions was the inspiration
for Archbishop Laud’s
controversial “Etcetera Oath” a
century later!
The emphasis on the Bible –
both in private reading and
public lectures – comes in the
very year that Cromwell
persuaded the king to permit
publication of Coverdale’s
translation, and a year before the
first draft of injunctions
(implemented in 1538) requiring
that a copy be set up in every
parish church.24 The favorable
mention of the Lutheran
Melanchthon suggests
Cromwell’s desire for England’s
alliance with the Lutheran states
of Germany – a scheme which led
to the unsatisfactory royal
marriage to Anne of Cleves, the
occasion for Cromwell’s downfall.
The unfavorable mention of
Scotus, on the other hand, led to
the famous destruction of his
books by Cromwell’s visitors to
Cambridge, the leaves strewn
through the quadrangle of New
College and “the wind blowing
them into every corner”25 -- an
ironic sequel to the burning of
Luther’s books at Cambridge by
Wolsey, fifteen years earlier. The
downfall of Scotus was not only
“the downfall of scholasticism in
England” but also “the line that
in university history divides the
mediaeval from the modern
age.”26
The most significant of the
injunctions, however, was the
one abolishing the study of
canon law. For Henry, in whose
name the injunctions were
issued, this act may well have
constituted a royal revenge on
the profession that had failed
him when he needed it most; for
Cromwell, who actually wrote the
injunctions, there was a wider
significance. Cromwell was very
much a man who would prefer to
cut a Gordian knot rather than
waste time trying to untie it.
Whereas Wolsey had been
content to let the royal divorce
wend its serpentine way through
the slow-paced courts of canon
law, Cromwell must have sensed
that a satisfactory solution lay
not in more sophisticated
arguments and larger bribes, but
in the abolition of the entire
system. The church of the late
Middle Ages was a church of
canon law: its rules dominated
the daily lives of both clergy and
laity; its study was the principal
avenue to preferment, including
the episcopate; and its
administration was the chief
bulwark of the papacy, which –
apart from its judicial importance
– was perched somewhat
ambiguously at the head of a
quasi-feudal network of semi-
autonomous provinces. There
was no more obvious or more
effective way of reacting against
the immediate past than by
abolishing the profession of
canon law. In this, as in their
10
promotion of Biblical knowledge,
“Henry VIII and Cromwell … used
the injunctive power that
properly belonged to visitors to
secure compliance with their
religious policies within Oxford
and Cambridge.”27 The immediate
effect on the daily life of the
universities can be imagined only
when we remember that “the
majority of those engaged in
higher studies at Oxford and
Cambridge spent their time in
the study of canon law.”28
Subsequent injunctions of 1536
and 1538 aided the universities
by providing that “beneficed
persons with sufficient income
must support a scholar at a
university or grammar school …”
and in 1539, when Cromwell was
planning new bishoprics, he was
“concerned that the new
deaneries and colleges of
prebends should have Readers of
Divinity, Greek, and Hebrew….”29
An even greater disruption
was yet to come: dissolution of
the monasteries. In a three-year
period beginning in 1538, over a
dozen religious houses were
closed at the two universities.
One modern observer, however,
asserts that “monks and friars
had for long played only a minor
part in university life, and their
departure was no irreparable
loss. Indeed, in the long run, the
Dissolution may be supposed an
advantage.”30 The advantage, of
course, was the creation of
Trinity College, Cambridge and
Christ Church, Oxford, out of the
suppressed houses’ endowments.
In addition, there were several
more direct transfers: at residence of
Cambridge, Buckingham College undergraduates.32
became Magdalene, the Carmelite Like any good administrator,
friary was acquired by Queens’ Cromwell was concerned with
College, and the Franciscan, by
small matters as well as great,
Sidney Sussex. At Oxford, and the universities were no
Canterbury College was absorbed exception to this rule. He was
into Christ Church, Durham
frequently involved in
College became Trinity (under correspondence regarding
Mary), St. Bernard’s (Cistercian) disputes between town and
became St. John’s, Gloucester
gown,33 transfers of college
(Benedictine) eventually became properties,34 and the
Worcester, and the remains of St.
appointment of minor officials.35
Mary’s (Augustinian) were He also received many letters
ultimately transferred to
simply requesting money. In
Brasenose (under Elizabeth). 1532, the canons of Christ
However, the same author who Church (as Cardinal College was
cites these transfers of monastic
now called) claimed that “without
endowments as an advantage is [your] help [we] will not be able to
also quick to point out “the harm keep off hunger this Christmas”;
inflicted on scholarship … by the two years later, a representative
wholesale dispersal or of the same college, citing
destruction of books and “extreme need,” hinted at a
manuscripts in monastic speedy reply with the Latin
libraries.”31 epigram “qui cito dat bis dat” (he
Disappearing along with the who gives quickly gives twice). At
monastic houses were the inns about the same time, the king’s
and halls, so much a part of scholars at Oxford sugared their
medieval university life. There request for money by flattering
had been over fifty at Oxford in Cromwell that “you must have
the fifteenth century, but only angels’ wit and knowledge to
eight remained by 1558, and only prosecute and finish all such
one (St. Edmund’s) still exists things as you take in hand ….”36
today. Although we are not faced Of course, such bread cast upon
here with a change in the academic waters was bound
curriculum, the change in to return to Cromwell on
student life was great: occasion, as when his
commissioner Dr. John Landon,
If one change more than
acting as intermediary, writes, “I
another characterized the
send you a pair of gloves, and £5
passing of the medieval order
in gold in them.”37 The reason for
in the University of Oxford, it
Cromwell’s being “always
was the supersession of the
exercised over the state of both
Halls by the Colleges as the
Universities” is obvious: “he
predominant type of
needed sound seminaries to
academical society for the

11
supply the clergy for his reformed
Church and the intellectuals
whom he meant to employ in the
state.”38
In 1535, Cromwell had
intervened on behalf of the
University of Cambridge in a
town-gown controversy in order
to win favor with both Catholic
and Reformed elements before
going ahead with his planned
injunctions and visitation.39 By
1539, the spirit of reform which
Cromwell had fostered had gone
too far for the growing
apprehension of conservative
churchmen, just as many in the
political arena felt he had gone
too far in matters of state. In
Lent of the latter year, a rash of
conspicuous fast-breaking at
Oxford gave further ammunition
to Cromwell’s conservative
opponents, and similar offences
at Cambridge led to indictments
for Lollardy and public
penances.40 Although the
controversy over fasting did not
precipitate a crisis, it contributed
to the undermining of Cromwell’s
position and was symptomatic of
the rising tide of conservative
reaction. In the following year
(1540), Cromwell fell from power,
just as his mentor had done
exactly a decade earlier. Unlike
Wolsey, however, Cromwell did
not have the good fortune to die
of natural causes en route to
judgment, and in possession of
at least some rank of distinction.
Insult was added to injury, as the
man who had, in effect, ruled
England for a decade was not
only relieved of all offices in
12
church, state, and university, but
also stripped of his recently
acquired earldom (and his
slightly older barony). This might
have led to the commoner’s fate
of hanging, but he was granted
the nobleman’s luxury of
beheading – one final crumb of
comfort to fall from the royal
master’s table.41
Epilogue
In the year of Cromwell’s
death, several Regius
professorships, including Greek,
Hebrew, and Divinity, were
established at both Oxford and
Cambridge. By this time, the
conservative Stephen Gardiner,
bishop of Winchester, had
succeeded Cromwell in the
Cambridge chancellorship; the
new chairs, however, clearly
represent a culmination of forces
set in motion by Cromwell rather
than a reaction against his
regime.42 Moreover, the funds
with which the king so
generously endowed his
namesake professorships came
from the endowments which
Cromwell had been instrumental
in seizing from the monasteries –
one of the few cases in which a
portion of that vast spoliation
was put to an appropriate use. It
is significant that no attempt was
made to revive the professorships
of canon law, even in Mary’s
reign, although there was a total
of five applications for the degree
in the years 1555-1556.43
Another legacy of Cromwell’s
monastic suppressions was the
Chantries Act of 1545, which
included mention of the
universities and their colleges,
thus inspiring the alarmed
appeal to Queen Catherine Parr
mentioned above. However, the
king repeated his assurances,
first given when the monastic
suppressions had caused
academic apprehension, and his
death shortly afterward
precluded any betrayal of the
promise.44 The universities, as re-
shaped by Cromwell, were safe,
but the spirit of reform which he
had fostered there passed from
the scene, however briefly, with
his fall; we are told of Cambridge
that “until Henry’s death in
1547, [it] was quiescent … the
Six Articles drove ‘Lutheranizing’
dons to cover … heresy burrowed
underground….” 45
The reign of Edward VI (1547-
53) saw the passage of a second
Chantries Act (1547), in which
the university colleges and
hostels were specifically
exempted.46 It also saw a return
of the reforming spirit to the
universities, and the arrival of
foreign reformers as visiting
lecturers, following the precedent
of the Scottish Alane in the
previous decade. These included
the German Martin Bucer, made
Regius Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge, and the Italian Pietro
Martire Vermigli (commonly
called Peter Martyr), who held the
corresponding post at Oxford.47
The former is now remembered
as an influence on Cranmer’s
Book of Common Prayer; the
latter’s legacy lies with the
remains of his wife, which
displaced those of St. Frideswide
13
in the tomb of Oxford’s patron
saint during the heyday of
Edwardian Protestantism, were
displaced by the saint under the
Marian reaction, and finally
mixed with the latter as a grisly
but now amusing embodiment of
the Elizabethan compromise.
The equally brief reign of Mary
I (1553-58) saw reaction,
confusion, and the self-imposed
exile of former leaders in the
universities as well as in the
parish churches. Her Lord
Chancellor and right-hand man,
Bishop Gardiner, had already
(1542) used his chancellorship of
Cambridge to insist on a return
to the old pronunciation of
Greek, an attempted set-back to
the advance of humanistic
studies begun there by Erasmus
under Fisher’s patronage.48 More
significantly, three Cambridge
dons who had become reforming
bishops – Latimer, Ridley, and
Archbishop Cranmer himself –
were burned for heresy at Oxford;
of these, Latimer had been
Cromwell’s agent at Cambridge,49
and Cranmer, of course, his
colleague in promoting a
moderate reformation patterned
after Lutheran Germany.50 The
burning of a lesser figure, John
Hullier, at Cambridge provided
an equally chilling example of the
new regime’s policy for the
scholars of that university. We
should, however, take with some
allowance for exaggeration the
statement of the Elizabethan
courtier, Roger Ascham, that
under Mary the “two fair groves
of learning … were either cut up,
by the root, or trodden down to
the ground and wholly went to
wrack.”51
The much longer reign of
Elizabeth I (1558-1603) provided
a return of equilibrium to the
universities (as to other aspects
of church and state) and saw
their growth in both scholarship
and practical usefulness to the
nation. An Act of Parliament in
1571 incorporated the two
universities and gave them new
charters. Although the Act
confirmed existing privileges and
liberties, it did so only in
reference to previous royal
charters, indicating that the “very
corporate existence of the two
universities depended solely on
royal grants and an Act of
Parliament [and that they] had
assumed the character of royal
institutions of a sort significantly
different from those brought
under royal control only by Acts
asserting the supremacy of the
Crown in ecclesiastical affairs.”52
Whether Cromwell had ever
contemplated this pushing of his
principles to the logical
conclusion we cannot say, but
the result would certainly have
pleased him. Moreover, the
unusual precedent of Cromwell
as lay chancellor of Cambridge
was followed by Elizabeth when
she appointed Sir William Cecil
to the same position and Sir
John Mason to the
chancellorship of Oxford – a bold
break with tradition reflecting
“an almost jealous concern that
in this sphere no ecclesiastical
14
official should be in a position to
rival her authority.”53
Conclusion
The changes in the
universities which were
accomplished, or at least begun,
during the ascendancy of
Thomas Cromwell touched every
aspect of academic life and left
them – like the English church
itself – a very different
phenomenon in spite of an
obvious and highly prized
institutional continuity. In the
area of instruction, there was the
abolition of an entire faculty
(canon law) and endowment of
the Regius professorships. Greek
was added to the arts curriculum
– “the only significant addition”
to that area54 – and the scholastic
textbooks of Duns (now “Dunce”)
Scotus and Peter Lombard were
replaced by the works of classical
authors and their more recent
humanistic commentators. An
unfortunate corollary to the
change of texts was the
destruction of many books and
manuscripts, especially in
monastic libraries, the reduction
of the Cambridge University
Library to 175 volumes by 1556,
and the complete extinction of its
Oxford counterpart until the
refounding under Bodley in
1602.55
During this period, the
student body changed from one
composed mainly of graduate
students living in halls and inns
to one composed mainly of
undergraduates living in colleges.
Gone was the “tonsured clerk
destined for service of Church
and state,” who had been the
typical student until ca. 1540,56
and in his place appeared
candidates for the ministry or
secular careers. This novel idea
that a university education was
appropriate for the ordinary
parish clergy led to a rise in their
status, but also to a loss of
identification with most of their
parishioners.57 Indeed, the new
concept of a “gentleman” as a
university graduate led to the
replacement of a graduated
system of many social ranks,
that had obtained in the Middle
Ages, by a more rigid system of
two basic classes. Thus, the
sixteenth century saw the
universities “transformed from
being institutions geared to
training for a particular
profession into institutions which
ENDNOTES
1Charles Fenno Hoffman, “Catherine
Parr as a Woman of Letters,” Huntington
Library Quarterly 23 (1960): 360-61;
Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge
in Transition, 1550-1642 (Oxford, 1959),
5. See also James Kelsey McConica,
English Humanists and Reformation
Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI
(Oxford, 1965), 8; Joan Simon, “The
Reformation and English Education,”
Past and Present, no. 11 (1957): 57;
Damian Riehl Leader, The University to
1546, A History of the University of
Cambridge, v. 1 (Cambridge, 1988),
344.
2Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 2.
3Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 19;
Hugh Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen
(Ithaca, NY, 1970), 15: “Essentially the
universities were the educational organs
of a vast ecclesiastical corporation,
15
acted as instruments of social
control.”58
In spite of all these changes,
there was an essential continuity
to university life. The individual
colleges retained their religious
character, since their statutes
(unlike the new statutes for each
university as a whole) still
prescribed clergy as members
and visitors, as they would
continue to do until the late
nineteenth century.59 But even
where things remained the same,
they took on a new flavor, the
flavor of nationalism. The
ultimate legacy of the
ascendancy of Thomas Cromwell
was the “Englishing’ of Oxford
and Cambridge: he had turned
the universities in England into
the universities of England, just
as he had turned the Church in
England into the Church of
England.60
looking to the Papacy as its head.” See
also C. H. Lawrence, “The University in
State and Church,” in The Early Oxford
Schools, ed. J. I. Catto, The History of
the University of Oxford, v. 1 (Oxford,
1984), 97-150.
4Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 20-23.
5Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, 16,
20; S. C. Roberts, British Universities
(London, 1947), 13. See also James A.
Brundage, “The Cambridge Faculty of
Canon Law and the Ecclesiastical
Courts of Ely,” in Medieval Cambridge:
Essays on the Pre-Reformation
University, ed. Patrick Zutshi, The
History of the University of Cambridge:
Texts and Studies, v. 2 (Woodbridge,
Eng., 1993), 21-45.
6SirDavid Oswald Hunter-Blair, “The
Black Monks at Oxford University,”
Dublin Review 192 (1933): 19, 25; John
Lawson, Mediaeval Education and the
Reformation (London and New York,
1967), 59.
7Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 3. See
also M. W. Sheehen, “The Religious
Orders, 1370-1540,” in Late Medieval
Oxford, ed. J. I. Catto and Ralph Evans,
The History of the University of Oxford,
v. 2 (Oxford, 1992), 539-80.
8Dates are from Dictionary of National
Biography; see also James Gairdner,
The English Church in the Sixteenth
Century (London, 1912), 65-66: Wolsey
actually became Lord Chancellor on
Christmas Eve, 1514 (if December 24
O.S., then same as January 3, 1515
N.S.).
9James Bass Mullinger, The University
of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1873-1911),
1:542, 549, 571.
10Simon, “The Reformation and English
Education,” 55; Charles Edward Mallet,
A History of the University of Oxford
(New York and London, 1968), 2:35
11Craig R. Thompson, Universities in
Tudor England (Washington, DC, 1959),
6. The concept of Cromwell’s initiative
and Henry’s acquiescence was stated by
G. R. Elton in his The Tudor Revolution
in Government (Cambridge, 1953) and
defended, with modifications, in his
Thomas Cromwell (Bangor, 1991), 21-
22, 31-32; for contrary opinions, see G.
W. Bernard, “Elton’s Cromwell,” History
83 (1998): 587-607 and Revolution
Reassessed: Revisions in the History of
Tudor Government and Administration,
ed. Christopher Coleman and David
Starkey (Oxford and New York, 1986).
12H. C. Maxwell Lyte, A History of the
University of Oxford (London and New
York, 1886), 48. For Cromwell’s
appointment as “receiver-general and
supervisor of the lands lately belonging
to the Cardinal’s colleges at Oxford and
Ipswich” (1532), see Letters and Papers,
Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of
Henry VIII (London, 1880-83), 5:337
(item 701).
16
13Lawrence K. Patterson, “The
Reformation at Cambridge,” Catholic
Historical Review, n.s. 10 (1931): 52;
Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
1:617ff.; see also H. C. Porter,
Reformation and Reaction in Tudor
Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), 49:
implies a single act of the Senate.
14M. L. Clarke, Classical Education in
Britain, 1500-1900 (Cambridge, 1959),
32.
15Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 17.
16Mallet, History of the University of
Oxford, 2:60; Patterson, “Reformation at
Cambridge,” 53; G. R. Elton, Policy and
Police (Cambridge, 1972), 228; Letters
and Papers, 7:238 (item 602), for
Cambridge; 241 (item 617), for Oxford.
For the stimulation of subscription by
specially appointed proctors, see Letters
and Papers, 7:224 (item 565).
17Letters and Papers, 7:400 (items 1026-
27).
18Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
2:14-15.
19Patterson, “Reformation at
Cambridge,” 53.
20Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
2:1.
21Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
2:2 (quoting David Lloyd, State
Worthies, London, 1766, 61).
22A. G. Dickens, The English
Reformation (New York, 1964), 120.
23Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
1:630; Mallet, History of the University
of Oxford, 2:62, implying parallel
injunctions for Oxford; but see
Thompson, Universities in Tudor
England, 23: “This scheme [lectures in
Greek] does not seem to have been
carried out at the time in more than a
few colleges.” See also F. Donald Logan,
“The First Royal Visitations of the
English Universities, 1535,” English
Historical Review 106 (1991): 861-88.
24Dickens, English Reformation, 131-32.
 University of Cambridge,
25Mullinger,
1:629; Lawson, Mediaeval Education,
97.
26Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
1:631. Another parallel to Wolsey’s
regime was the demand of Cromwell’s
heavy-handed deputy visitor, Dr.
Thomas Leigh, that the universities
hand over their charters to Cromwell,
plus an inventory of moveable and
immoveable property (2:9-10).
27Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 51.
28Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen,
154-56.
29McConica, English Humanists, 160,
213-14.
30Lawson, Mediaeval Education, 96.
31Lawson, Mediaeval Education, 97.
32A.B. Emden, An Oxford Hall, 1;
quoted by Curtis, Oxford and
Cambridge, 36. See also J. N. D. Kelly,
St Edmund Hall: Almost Seven Hundred
Years (Oxford, 1989).
33For Oxford, see (e.g.), Letters and
Papers, 5:575 (items 133-32; 6:10, 84,
119, 121, 162, 434, 673 (items 21, 183,
266, 274, 344, 1016, 1670); 7:241 (item
617). Cromwell seems to have used the
town-gown conflicts as a means of
increasing his authority over both; see
Carl I. Hammer, Jr., “Oxford Town and
Oxford University,” in The Collegiate
University, ed. James McConica, The
History of the University of Oxford, v. 3
(Oxford, 1986), 91.
34Lettersand Papers, 5:337, 568, 603
(items 701, 1309, 1423); 6:183 (item
399).
35Letters
and Papers, 6:162, 379 (items
344, 868).
36Letters and Papers, 5:684 (item 1647);
7:9, 37 (items 16, 98).
37Letters and Papers, 6:126 (item 290).
38Elton, Policy and Police, 98.
39Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
2:5.
40Elton, Policy and Police, 99.
17
41Susan Brigden, “Popular Disturbance
and the Fall of Thomas Cromwell and
the Reformers,” Historical Journal 24
(1981): 257-78; Robert Hutchinson,
Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of
Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister
(New York, 2007), 258. A lengthy but
readable account of the period is Derek
Wilson’s In the Lion’s Court: Power,
Ambition and Sudden Death in the Court
of Henry VIII (London, 2001).
42Porter,Reformation and Reaction, 50;
Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, 21.
43Mallet,History of the University of
Oxford, 2:63, f. 4.
44Mallet, History of the University of
Oxford, 2:77-79. For a detailed study,
see Alan Kreider, English Chantries: The
Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, MA,
1979).
45Patterson, “Reformation at
Cambridge,” 53.
46Simon,“Reformation and English
Education,” 58.
47F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary
of the Christian Church (New York,
1957), 204, 1055.
48Clarke, Classical Education, 25;
Mallet, History of the University of
Oxford, 2:80: “Gardiner’s authority
failed to suppress [the new method].” An
interesting study in contrasts is
provided by Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Two
Dons in Politics: Thomas Cranmer and
Stephen Gardiner, 1503-1533,”
Historical Journal 37 (1994): 1-22.
49Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
2:21.
50See,e.g., Thompson, Universities in
Tudor England, 6; Mullinger, University
of Cambridge, 2:14-15; Patterson,
“Reformation at Cambridge,” 53.
51Roger Ascham, English Works (ed. W.
A. Wright), 280-81; quoted by Simon,
“Reformation and English Education,”
60; Mullinger, University of Cambridge,
2:152. See also Claire Cross, “Oxford
and the Tudor State from the Accession
of Henry VIII to the Death of Mary,” in
McConica, Collegiate University, 117-50
52Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 25-26.
53Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 25. See
also Penry Williams, “Elizabethan
Oxford: State, Church and University,”
in McConica, Collegiate University, 397-
440; also C. M. Dent, Protestant
Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford
(Oxford, 1983). For a brief survey of the
period, see Elisabeth Leedham-Green,
“Cambridge under the Tudors, 1485-
1603,” in her A Concise History of the
University of Cambridge (Cambridge,
1996), 29-65.
54Thompson, Universities in Tudor
England, 10.
55Lawson, Mediaeval Education, 97-98.
56Lawson, Mediaeval Education, 104.
57Kearney,Scholars and Gentlemen, 28-
29; Rosemary O’Day, “Room at the Top:
Oxford
18
and Cambridge in the Tudor and Stuart
Age,” History Today 34, no. 2 (February
1984): 31-38.
58Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, 33.
59Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 30-32.
60Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 49-50.
For the general context of the period,
see Claire Cross, “Oxford and the Tudor
State from the Accession of Henry VIII
to the Death of Mary” and Jennifer
Loach, “Reformation Controversies,”
both in McConica, Collegiate University,
117-50 and 363-96, respectively.
The Rev. Lawrence N Crumb is a
retired Priest who serves as Vicar
of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church,
Cottage Grove, OR.
 Faith under Fire
A Review Article
RICHARD L. JESKE
Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, ed. by
Dean Stroud. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. 215. $20.00 (paper).
Paul Schneider (1897–1939) was
the first Protestant pastor to die in a
concentration camp. We should at
least know his name. He died
because he preached a sermon.
People cared about what he
preached, especially the Nazis, who
had already forced his exit from his
first church, which led to his
reassignment to a two-point country
parish more amenable to his
preaching. Arrested several times
during his first call, the harassment
continued in his second: twice
detained by the Gestapo. In late
1937, after leading the earlier
service of his two-point parish, he
didn’t show up at his second parish:
he had been intercepted on his way
there by the Gestapo, arrested,
imprisoned, and finally taken to
Buchenwald, where he was severely
tortured and eventually murdered.
Again, we should at least remember
his name, if not those of many
others who shared the same fate.
In this important book, Dean
Stroud has compiled a collection of
sermons indicating that not all
voices were silent in Germany
during the time of the Third Reich.
In addition to two sermons by Paul
Schneider, there are others by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth,
Martin Niemöller, Julius von Jan,
Helmut Gollwitzer, Gerhard Ebeling,
Rudolf Bultmann, Wilhelm Busch,
19
and the Roman Catholic Bishop
Clemens August von Galen. Stroud,
a former Presbyterian pastor, is
professor emeritus of German
studies at the University of
Wisconsin, La Crosse.
Hitler’s “Christianity”
Stroud provides a helpful
introductory overview of the
historical and ideological context of
these sermons. In a radio speech
shortly after becoming chancellor,
Hitler proclaimed his regard for
Christianity as “the foundation of
our national morality” and professed
that “I would never ally myself with
the parties which destroy
Christianity.” Statements of
propaganda designed to alleviate
alarm, they initially calmed most of
the populace, which in the 1930s
still largely belonged to their
Christian churches. But what was
to come was a thorough invasion of
Christian theology by language,
regulations, and practices foreign to
it. The self-aggrandizing term
“positive Christianity” was being
promoted by National Socialism in
order to camouflage Nazi ideology,
and anything critical of the latter
was deemed “negative.”1
To begin with, Hitler became the
object of faith, the new savior of the
people, whom people greeted with
the term Heil (salvation). The new
faith had its own Bible, Mein Kampf,
and crucifixes were to be removed
from all altars and replaced by the
only unconquerable symbol, the
swastika.2 The kingdom of God was
superseded by another Reich
(kingdom), the Third Reich. In
exams students were asked “What
comes after the Third Reich?” The
correct answer was “nothing,”
because the Third Reich would last
forever. There was a new version of
the Holy Trinity, it was Soil, Blood,
and Race, and faithful, absolute
adherence was mandatory. At rallies
there were music, song, uniforms,
and banners, as well as
impassioned speeches. In film Hitler
was portrayed as a god coming out
of the heavens, bringing light into
the darkness that had fallen over
the land. Christmas celebrated less
the birth of Jesus than an ancient
Germanic festival of light in which
the Germanic forebears anticipated
the coming of Nazi light. The old
beloved carol was reworded:
Silent Night! Holy Night! All is
calm, all is bright,
Only the Chancellor steadfast in
fight,
Watches o’er Germany by day
and by night,
Always caring for us.3
Hitler had replaced Bethlehem’s
child, coming in the fullness of time,
as the true light of the world.
So there was a lot to deal with in
sermons that proposed to remain
faithful to the Christian gospel—
especially the fact that Jesus was a
Jew, a rather awkward item for anti-
Semitic fanatics. So the latter made
an Aryan of him, banned the Old
Testament as an inauthentic part of
20
the canon, and published a New
Testament free of Jewish influence,
selling some 200,000 copies.
Unfortunately, 1933 marked the
450th anniversary of the birth of
Martin Luther, who was now hailed
as a German national hero whose
Reformation accorded with National
Socialist views of race and “national
character.” Certainly, his anti-
Semitic writings lent themselves to
the propaganda, even while things
like his position as a professor of
Old Testament, his translation of it,
his ordering its canon according to
the Hebrew canon, and his 1523
essay “That Jesus Christ was Born a
Jew”4 were ignored. The Rengsdorf
Theses (October, 1933), drawn up
by pro-Nazi Christians, stated that
the Reformation marked the renewal
of the national spirit and made the
gospel accessible to the German
national character. Responses
immediately emerged: “Whoever
treats the Reformation as a
specifically German affair today
interprets it as propaganda and
places himself outside the
evangelical church” (Barth, October,
1933).5 “To understand (Luther’s)
actions as a breakthrough of the
Germanic spirit, or as the origin of
the modern feeling for freedom, or
as the establishment of a new
religion is to completely
misunderstand his mission”6
(Bonhoeffer, H. Sasse, and others, in
the Bethel Confession, rev.
November, 1933).
The German Christian
movement, which began a few years
before the Nazis came to power, was
the result, Stroud says, of the
trauma of defeat in World War I and
the malaise that infected the
churches afterward. It was ripe for
self-serving heroic talk supplied by a
National Socialism that railed
against weakness, timidity, and
defeatism. Influenced by post-
Enlightenment “liberal theology”7
and finding examples in other
churches in the world that defined
themselves by national heritage, the
German Christians were ripe for
Nazi infestation. Demoralized by the
losses of the war, disaffected by
Weimar and its attempt at
democracy, and swept up by Hitler’s
offer of a “strong” Germany, the
German Christians acceded to
governmental manipulation both
ideologically and administratively,
which was seen by others, both
clergy and laypersons, as a denial of
the gospel.
The Kirchenkampf
In April 1933, the Nazi
parliament had adopted the “Aryan
Paragraph,” which mandated that
all public servants who were not
“racially pure” could no longer work
in the public sector. Pastors,
organists, sextons who were Jewish
could no longer be employed by the
church, nor Jewish professors in the
universities. “
Thus Nazi racial laws, not the
Christian gospel, would dictate who
could or who could not preach the
gospel in Germany.”8 A month
before that the Nazi Parliament
passed a law ending constitutional
government and a month later Hitler
rejected the duly elected churchwide
bishop Friedrich von
Bodelschwingh 9 and worked to
engineer his resignation.
21
These events provided the sparks
that ignited the “church struggle”
(Kirchenkampf) and brought it into
the open. Regarding the “Aryan
Paragraph,” a group of pastors and
theologians, including Rudolf
Bultmann, reacted with a statement
to counter this new law. “The New
Testament and the Race Question”
stated that the New Testament could
not support such a law because the
construct of “race” was foreign to it.
As an exclusionary concept it could
not reflect any Christian reality. Full
equality among all believers in the
faith community was assumed in
Christian baptism, and the church
could not depart from its New
Testament identity.10
In September 1933, Martin
Niemöller founded the Pastors’
Emergency League, which virtually
overnight counted two thousand
pastors among its membership,
protesting the Aryan Paragraph.
Bonhoeffer was among them, and
the League’s membership soon grew
to seven thousand pastors, despite
their harassment and persecution.
Karl Barth, teaching at Bonn, called
for radical opposition to the
“German Christians.” His
commentary on Romans (1918, rev.
1921) had already earned
widespread influence, in which he
asserted that theology does not
begin with the human being but
with God, who is the subject and
predicate of Christian theology. The
reader is not in charge of the biblical
text; it is the biblical text that
judges the reader. Barth’s writings
were, according to Stroud, “a call to
arms against the German Christian
movement and against any marriage
between Christianity and Nazism.”11
Bonhoeffer argued that a state’s
legitimacy depends on its ensuring
the safety of all its citizens, and, in
the case of the persecution of the
Jews, the church must raise the
question of the Nazi state’s
legitimacy. Stroud notes that
Bonhoeffer was the first Lutheran to
posit, even hypothetically, that a
lawfully elected state government
could become illegitimate.12
The Confessing Church
In May 1934, the first Confessing
Synod met in Barmen, with over
three hundred clergy and laity
present, and unanimously adopted
the Barmen Declaration. Its target
was primarily the German Christian
movement, asserting that it had
endangered the church by going
outside historical confessional
bounds. It listed five confessional
teachings that were counter to five
heretical teachings held by the
German Christians. Highly
influenced by Barth’s theology and
leadership, the Declaration declared
that Jesus Christ is the one Lord of
the church and no human authority
trumps his. The Barmen Declaration
was seen as the basic statement of
the whole Confessing Church.
The use of the word “Confessing”
to describe the movement was
meant to convey that its purpose
was not a political but a theological
one, in contrast to the political
accommodation that had beset the
“German Christians.” The gospel
was at stake, and to proclaim it
faithfully meant clearly articulated
theology and, as the times called for,
provocative preaching. “To speak of
22
Christ as the authentic Führer and,
by implication, not Hitler, was
subversive speech.”13 To uphold the
Old Testament as word of God and
Jesus as a Jew was inflammatory
rhetoric. To advocate the cause of
the weak and helpless, especially
the mentally ill and disabled whom
the Nazis regarded as socially
worthless, was subversive. To place
God’s kingdom above all earthly
kingdoms (like the Reich) subjected
the preacher to immediate physical
and professional danger.
The Confessing Church placed
great trust in the local parish, and it
was in the parishes that the church
struggle took its course. Niemöller
notes that attendance in the
parishes grew, often beyond
capacity, and cites a document in
his own parish, which carried the
names of over three thousand
parishioners who “joyfully” placed
themselves under the authority of
the Confessing Church. The times
meant that preaching became the
central mission of the church, and
personal safety could not excuse
timidity in the pulpit. From his jail
cell in 1937 Paul Schneider wrote to
his wife: “It is not that I and all the
rest of us have said too much in our
sermons, but rather that we have
said far too little.”14
Provocative Preaching
So examples of provocative
preaching, along with brief
biographies of each preacher,
complete the book. It is biblical
preaching at its best, on both Old
and New Testament texts. It is
Christocentric preaching, insisting
on the one lordship of Christ and no
other. It is proclamation, in that the
reader cannot escape the call to
discipleship and the demands and
promise it carries.
Paul Schneider to his parish in
Hochelheim in 1934: “What is now
coming together in the German
Christian Faith Movement under the
leadership of influential Nazis is
nothing less than naked
paganism.”15 And preaching on a
text from the Old Testament Psalms
to his last church in Dickenshied in
1937: “Today we should be aware of
the fact that confessing Jesus will
carry a price and that for his sake
we will come into much distress and
danger, much shame and
persecution. Happy the man who
does not turn aside from these
consequences.”16
Martin Niemöller in 1936, from
his pulpit in Berlin-Dahlem: “The
more unbridled the public attacks
against Christianity become, they
show that it is not simply against
the Old Testament and the apostle
Paul—as they want us to believe —
but rather it is against the one Lord
in whom we believe, even Jesus of
Nazareth.”17 After repeated arrests,
in 1938, Niemöller was imprisoned
in the concentration camp in
Sachsenhausen and in 1941 was
transferred to Dachau, where he did
survive the war.
Karl Barth, in 1933, in the Castle
Church in Bonn: “Christ belongs to
the people of Israel. This people’s
blood was in his veins, the very
blood of God’s Son.…Jesus was a
Jew in order to confirm and to fulfill
this free and merciful promise of
God ‘given to the fathers.’” Barth
23
was forced to leave Germany in
1934 after refusing to swear the
loyalty oath to Hitler that was
required of university professors as
civil servants. From Basel,
Switzerland, he continued to be of
immense influence in Germany by
providing a theological foundation
for opposition against Nazi inroads
into the German churches.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a 1933
sermon in Berlin based on the Old
Testament story of Gideon:
In the church we have only one
altar—the altar of the Most High,
the One and only, the Almighty,
the Lord, to whom alone be
honor and praise, the Creator
before whom all creation bows
down, before whom even the
most powerful are but dust. We
don’t have any side altars at
which to worship human beings.
The worship of God and not of
humankind is what takes place
at the altar of our church.
Anyone who wants to do
otherwise should stay away and
cannot come with us into God’s
house. Anyone who wants to
build an altar to himself or to any
other human is mocking God,
and God will not allow such
mockery. To be in the church
means to have the courage to be
alone with God as Lord, to
worship God and not any human
person. And it does take courage.
The thing that most hinders us
from letting God be Lord, that is,
from believing in God, is our
cowardice. That is why we have
Gideon, because he comes with
us to the one altar of the Most
 High, the Almighty, and falls on
his knees to this God alone.18
The only Roman Catholic voice in
this collection is that of Clemens
August von Galen, Bishop of
Münster, who was horrified by the
Nazis’ program of raiding health
care institutions for people with
mental and physical disabilities,
carting them off to concentration
camps, and murdering them as
people “worthless” to society. Von
Galen in a 1941 sermon:
Now we come to the Fifth
Commandment: “Thou shalt not
kill”—that is set aside and
violated right in front of the very
people obligated to protect civil
order and human life. And this is
due to an exception made for the
legal killing of innocent people,
albeit sick, fellow human beings,
simply because they are
“unproductive” and can no longer
produce goods.19
Already von Galen in his sermons
had made the Nazis back down from
their decision to remove all
crucifixes from Catholic schools,
and eventually he was placed under
house arrest, the Nazis fearing
anything more drastic for the bishop
would result in an outright revolt in
Münster.
Helmut Gollwitzer succeeded
Martin Niemöller as pastor of the
Berlin-Dahlem church after the
latter’s arrest in 1937. He eventually
came to be known as one of the
most powerful preachers in
Germany. Three days after
Germany’s invasion of Poland in
1939, an act that thrust Germany
into war again, Gollwitzer based a
24
Sunday sermon on dual texts from
Isaiah and Matthew:
To be sure, in these days many
pagan prayers are being lifted up
to God in many countries and in
many churches, weak winged
prayers that barely reach the
church ceiling. To pray rightly
means not only to pray for God’s
protection and power.…To pray
like pagans is to pray full of self-
confidence and without
repentance.…The only person
who may make the fourth
petition of the Lord’s Prayer—the
request for daily bread that
includes peace as well—is the
person who acknowledges at the
same time: We have each and
everyone of us brought all this
upon ourselves and we richly,
richly deserve the consequences.
Only that person may make the
fourth petition who in the same
breath makes the fifth: “And
forgive us our guilt!” If I may
name but one sin, we have
become very hard-hearted. We all
must accuse ourselves of having
brought so much misery upon
ourselves by allowing so much
evil to happen while we watched
unmoved, and now this evil
threatens us.…We have been
cowardly and have only wanted
to save our own lives.…We were
all too ready to answer injustice
with injustice and only looked to
secure our own right and our
own advantages while being
indifferent to the rights and
honor of the other person. Now
the fruit that had to grow from
that is visible. Woe to us if we are
terrified by the fruit and not its
 cause—which is us.…To pray
rightly is to pray with a repentant
heart.20
Of course, it was not long before the
Gestapo expelled Gollwitzer from
Berlin and forbade him to speak
anywhere in the Reich. He
volunteered to serve as an army
medic, was captured by the
Russians and imprisoned for four
years. Eventually he returned both
to academia in Bonn and Berlin, as
well as to preaching in his Berlin-
Dahlem congregation.
Julius von Jan publicly protested
the interference of the state in
church affairs, especially the arrest
and persecution of pastors. When
the pogrom against Jewish citizens
known as “Kristallnacht” (“Night of
Broken Glass”) occurred in
November of 1938, he was
convinced that in the face of such
evil silence was no option. The next
Sunday, a day of National
Atonement, he spoke from the pulpit
of his church in Oberlenningen:
We as Christians see how this
injustice burdens our people
before God and has to draw his
punishment upon
Germany.…Yes, it is a horrifying
seed of hatred that has been
scattered upon the soil once
more. What a horrible harvest
will grow from this if God does
not send our people and us grace
for sincere repentance.21
A few days later, about five hundred
Nazi supporters attacked von Jan,
beat him, accused him of treason,
and he was jailed and eventually
exiled from his parish. Hewas
drafted and sent to the Russian
25
front, survived the war, but in ill
health, returned for a time to his
home church, where he was greeted
warmly, and lived out his final years
in a Moravian community of the
Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde.
Several of the homilists in this
collection have had their own
respective collections of sermons
published: Barth, Bonhoeffer,
Bultmann, Ebeling, and Gollwitzer.
Directly related to the subject of this
book is Ebeling’s Predigten eines
“Illegalen” aus den Jahren 1939–
1945, yet to be translated into
English.22 These “Sermons of
Someone ‘Illegal’” refer to Ebeling’s
ordination in the Confessing
Church, an “illegal” entity; they were
preached to a group of laypeople
who set themselves apart from their
parish in Thuringia that was led by
a German Christian pastor. Stroud
includes Ebeling’s sermon at the
funeral of one of those incapacitated
patients whom the Nazis had judged
useless and had marked for
extermination.
Significance
Why is a book like this so
important? First of all, it contributes
to the debate on whether or to what
lengths Germans, especially clergy,
spoke out against the atrocities of
the Nazi regime. Removed from it all
by time and distance, we are
generally aware of only one main
voice of resistance, namely that of
Bonhoeffer, but seldom aware and
less often reminded of others.
Stroud’s book is an adventure into
history, that is, in its real definition,
the word deriving from the Greek
word historein, which means “to
inquire” or “to visit” with a view
toward engagement that may
produce introspection and, if
needed, change. And that is when
things get into theology and the
items that faithful evangelical
preaching needs to address.
So reimaging the Trinity,
deemphasizing biblical preaching
(especially on the Old Testament),
seeing the church’s role as echoing
social and political trends of the
moment, or as either rife with
nationalist exceptionalism or
pressured into complete silence on
matters political, disregarding and
holding suspect any kind of
traditional Christian systematic
theology, and holding as archaic the
concept of the Lordship of Christ
marked Nazi Christianity. Those
were the days: featured rallies at
sports stadia with liturgies including
national songs, processions of
uniformed acolytes carrying
emblems of national devotion, and
triumphant displays of national
power with the latest weaponry
flying overhead. That’s why history,
in the sense of “to visit,” is
important. Because, as old
Santayanan wisdom reminds us, if
we don’t learn from the mistakes of
the past we are doomed to repeat
them.
When Bonhoeffer came to New
York to study at Union Seminary in
1930–1931, he was struck by the
lack of rigorous theological thinking.
He complained: “There is no
theology here.…[The students] talk a
blue streak without the slightest
substantive foundation and with no
evidence of any criteria. [They] are
completely clueless with respect to
26
what dogmatics is really about. They
are unfamiliar with even the most
basic questions. They become
intoxicated with liberal and
humanitarian phrases, laugh at the
fundamentalists, and yet basically
are not even up to their level.”23 It
was not the prowess of the Union
faculty that Bonhoeffer was referring
to, but rather what the students
thought important in their studies
and brought with them from their
churches. The sermons that he had
heard, he said, “were reduced to
parenthetical church remarks about
newspaper events,” and added that
he had heard only one sermon in
which one could hear something like
a “genuine proclamation,” a sermon
delivered by an African-American
preacher.24
Hopeful Signs
Perhaps the churches have
learned something since then.
Perhaps not. Certainly, the sermons
of Martin Luther King Jr., filled with
biblical, especially Old Testament,
allusions, were proclamations that
moved both society and church to a
better place. Among others, the
sermons of Fred Craddock, Walter
Brueggemann, and William Willimon
have been influential in leading
preaching to focus on the demand
and the promise of the biblical text.
But there is still the preaching of
the prosperity gospel, of vapid
nationalistic devotion, of a false
masculinity that deemphasizes the
cross of Christ as a sign of
weakness that draw people by the
thousands into the great
megachurches of our time. The
demands of the audiences pressure
modern preaching away from the
very reasons for pulpits in the first faced under the Third Reich or in
place, seeking entertainment in more modern totalitarian and less
place of the real proclamation of the pluralistic venues today. It is always
gospel. It is tough to stand up to good to re- view those who have
those pressures. risen to the challenge and to ask
whether we would be up to it
Stroud’s book holds before us
ourselves. If preaching has become
courageous examples of preaching
under pressures far more dangerous too easy, we need to ask why.
than we experience in this country.
His book accents the power that
resides in biblical preaching, an
indispensable ingredient of church
life. It calls us to examine our own
preaching, to consider how seriously
the biblical text is studied,
explained, and applied, and how the
gospel in its unveiled veracity is
clearly articulated. Present
experiences of internal and external
pressures faced by American
churches pale in comparison to
those
ENDNOTES
1Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler’s Christian hymns were revised to eliminate
Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third all references to “Israelite elements.” Even
Reich (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013) 7: “cedars of Leba- non,” it was proposed,
“Negativity in Nazi Germany was anything should be changed to “firs of the German
that suggested that Jews were human forest” (173).
beings created by God and loved by him.” In
3Stroud, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow, 12.
1937 the Nazi lawyer appointed to be
Minister for Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl, 4Luther’s Works 45, 199–229. “While we
defined positive Christianity: “Positive are inclined to boast of our position we
Christianity is National Socialism… should remember that we are but
National Socialism is the doing of God’s Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage
will… God’s will reveals itself in German of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they
blood… Christianity is not dependent upon are blood relatives, cous- ins, and
the Apostle’s Creed… True Chris- tianity is brothers of our Lord” (201).
represented by the party, and the German 5Stroud, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow, 24.
people are now called by the party and
especially by the Fuehrer to a real 6Ibid., 25.
Christianity… The Fuehrer is the herald of
7In his path-breaking article of 1924,
a new revelation”—quoted from Steward W.
Herman, Jr., It’s Your Souls We Want “Liberal Theology and the Latest
(Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1943), by W. L. Theological Movement,” in Faith and
Understanding, ed. Robert Funk (New
Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich York: Harper & Row, 1966) 28–52,
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960) 239. Rudolf Bultmann outlines the inadequa-
2See E. Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, cies of post-Enlightenment “liberal
Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas theology,” such as that of Herrmann,
Troeltsch, and Harnack, and acknowl-
Nelson, 2010) 171. Metaxas mentions that

27
 edges the new alternatives initiated by people in modern times could only regard
Karl Barth and the new “dialectical such language as grotesque. What theology
theology.” was for him was almost unknown to his
8Stroud, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow, 29. American fellow students” (67).

9Bodelschwingh, a highly respected The Rev. Richard Jeske, an ELCA

churchman, was director of the Bethel pastor, is presently serving as Vicar
Institute, a large community for people of St. John’s in the Wilderness, an
with epilepsy and other disabilities. Episcopal parish in the hikers’
10See Erich Dinkler, “Neues Testament country of Harriman State Park,
und Rassenfrage: Zum Gutachten der Stony Point, New York. He is also
Neutestamentler im Jahre 1933,” in Im
Zeichen des Kreuzes: Aufsätze von Erich Dean of the Rockland County
Dinkler (Berlin and New York: Walter de Episcopal ministerium.
Gruyter, 1992) 409–420.
Copyright © 2016 by Word & World, Luther
11Stroud, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow, 33. Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights
reserved. Used by permission.
12Ibid., 37.
13Ibid., 42.
14Ibid., 47.
15Ibid., 81.
16Ibid., 94–105.
17Ibid., 89.
18Ibid., 55.
19Ibid., 166.
20Ibid., 115–126.
21Ibid., 112–113.
22Predigten eines “Illegalen” aus den
Jahren 1939–1945 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr
[Paul Siebeck], 1995).
23Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 101; Ferdinand
Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–
1945 (London: T & T Clark, 2010), notes:
“(Bonhoeffer) was very offended when,
during a seminar, students laughed loudly
at theologi- cal terms, such as a quotation
from Luther about sin and grace, as if

28
 Prayer Book Revision and the Modern
Revival of Trinitarian Doctrine
A Review Article
Holmes, Stephen R. The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture,
History, and Modernity. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, an imprint of
InterVarsity Press, 2012. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-8308-3986-5. Pp. xix and
231.
PAUL B. CLAYTON, JR

Some years revision of the 1662 Book of

ago, I took my
youth group at
St. Andrew’s,
Poughkeepsie,
NY, on a weekend
trip to Boston.
We stayed with
former
parishioners
recently retired who had returned to
the Boston area where they had
been brought up. On Saturday we
walked the “Freedom Trail” of the
18th century historic sites. Among
them was King’s Chapel, a Episcopalians wanted to have the
magnificent stone church of
Georgian design. This parish was
the first Church of England
congregation founded in Boston in
1688, more or less under the guns
of a British fleet. Christ Church,
Philadelphia, was founded in 1694;
Trinity, New York, in 1697; and
Trinity, Newport, Rhode Island (one
of my favorite church buildings in
the country), in 1698.
When Episcopal congregations in
the former colonies met to organize
a national General Convention in
Philadelphia in 1785 and 1786, one
of its accomplishments was a
Common Prayer. The proposed
American Prayer Book was approved
by the Convention in 1785 and
published in 1786. Among its
several alterations from the 1662
BCP was the omission of the Nicene
and Athanasian Creeds, retaining
only a form of the Apostles Creed
that omitted the clause about
Christ’s descent into hell. As we
remember from our seminary course
in American Church history, the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York
responded that if the American
three candidates they had elected
for an American episcopate
consecrated in apostolic succession
by the bishops of the Church of
England, the descent clause would
have to be restored to the Apostles
Creed and the Nicene Creed restored
to the Eucharistic rite. The General
Convention of 1786 thereupon
abandoned the proposed 1785
American Prayer Book, and the
1789 Book of Common Prayer in
fact retained the Apostles and
Nicene Creeds in full, omitting the
Athanasian Creed until it was
restored - sort of, in the Historical

29
Documents section - in the 1979
Book of Common Prayer. And the
American Prayer Books ever since
have been solidly Nicene.
This proved too conservative for
Charles Miller, a parishioner at
King’s Chapel, Boston. He wanted
to remove all references to the
Trinity from the Prayer Book, and
when the General Conventions of
the 1780’s refused to do so, the
congregation published its own
version of the 1662 Book of
Common Prayer. Since there was
not yet any bishop in
Massachusetts, every congregation
did whatever it wanted to do, rather
like the average Israelite in the time
of the Judges. And so the original
stronghold of Prayer Book
Anglicanism in the hotbed of radical
American Puritanism moved in its
late 18th century American Deist
fashion into the Unitarian fold,
where it remains firmly rooted to
this day.
So when my bunch of larking
teenagers went into King’s Chapel
on their expedition to be Bostonized,
the book I found in the pews of
King’s Chapel was the 1662 Book of
Common Prayer with all references
to the Triune God or the divinity of
Jesus Christ very carefully and
thoroughly excised as with a sharp
knife! No Gloria Patri in the Daily
Offices; no Triune doxology at the
conclusion of the collects; and
certainly no Nicene Creed.
I have since that trip in the early
1980’s seen notices that King’s
Chapel has issued a “modern” form
of worship. Not having visited
King’s Chapel on any of our
30
numerous visits to Boston since
then, I haven’t seen this “modern”
form of worship, but knowing that
King’s Chapel remains firmly
adherent to the Unitarian-
Universalist connection, I am
modestly certain that there is in it
nothing of the Trinity.
Of course, Boston was not the
only American Community which
tended toward Deism or
Unitarianism in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries. I recall from
research I did for a term paper for
Dr. Robert Bosher, professor of
American Church history at the
General Theological Seminary, only
one person could be found in 1797
in Newburgh, New York, who would
confess Trinitarian Christianity.
Deism was all the rage among
forward looking founders of
American democracy. Not even
Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia,
vestryman George Washington,
Sunday Morning Prayer regular at
St. Paul’s, Chapel, New York, while
President of the United States and
New York was its temporary capital,
would receive Holy Communion.
Ben Franklin may have attended
Christ Church, Philadelphia, and
raised funds to build St. Peter’s,
Philadelphia, by a lottery (what fun
the priest police in the Diocese of
New York would have with that one),
but I cannot but wonder whether he
could ever be heard reciting the
Nicene Creed at Holy Communion
with a loud, affirming voice.
However firmly planted in Nicene
Anglican Christianity, with its
persistent claims to represent
Patristic Christianity more fully than
any other form of Christian practice,
be, the American Prayer Books of
1789, 1892, 1928, and 1979, the
times may be changing – to judge
from reports from the Prayer Book
revision committee established by
the 2015 General Convention. But
more on that later.
For the moment I would ask the
question of what is the place of the
dogma of the Trinity in recent
Western theological writing. For the
purposes of this paper, I turn to
reviewing a 2010 quite serious study
of the Trinity in modern theology.
Stephen Holmes is a Ph. D. of King’s
College, London, and senior lecturer
in systematic theology at the
University of St. Andrew’s, in
Scotland. Among his other books is
Christian Doctrine: A Reader, edited
with Lindsey Hall and Murray Rae,
and published by the Society for
Christian Mission in 2010. In her
review of Holmes’ The Quest for the
Trinity (published in 2012) in the
Fall 2014 issue of The Anglican
Theological Review, a leading
Episcopal theologian Ellen Wondra,
until recently editor of the ATR,
describes it as “a challenging book .
. . [that] calls into question . . . a
major claim of contemporary
accounts of the Trinity: that the
doctrine of the Trinity can and in
itself ground egalitarian and
liberating ethics and ecclesiology.
This is a book for those who have
read widely and thought deeply
about the doctrine of the Trinity” (p
768).
Of course, there have always
been and continue to be those who
would dismiss the Trinity as an
outmoded ancient Greek
philosophical metaphysic that is of
31
no use to contemporary
Episcopalians as we desperately try
to reverse our parochial numerical
decline manifested by an increasing
area of naked pews in our
congregations and, most significant,
falling budgets. At least these are
the concerns I hear voiced in
endless ecclesiastical talk sessions,
almost never, in our tradition,
concerns of whether or not the
Gospel of victory over alienation
from one another and God and the
death resulting from that alienation
is actually found in believing with
the heart and participating in the
sacramental union of ourselves with
the incarnate, dying, and risen God
the Word, whom Jurgen Multmann
called in his famous study The
Crucified God.
Holmes summarizes his findings
this way:
In brief, I argue that the
explosion of theological work
claiming to recapture the
doctrine of the Trinity that we
have witnessed in recent decades
in fact misunderstands and
distorts the traditional doctrine
so badly it is unrecognizable. A
statement of the doctrine was
settled in the fourth century, and
was then maintained, with only
very minor disagreement or
development, by all strands of
the church – West and East,
Protestant and Catholic – until
the modern period. In the
twentieth century, there arose a
sense that the doctrine had been
neglected or lost, and stood in
need of recovery. Many brilliant
works have been published in the
name of that recovery, but I
argue here that . . . they are
thoroughgoing departures from
the older tradition, rather than
revivals of it.
Thus stated, the argument is
merely historical: I do not, here,
attempt to prove that the older
tradition was right. . . . It may be
that our recent writers are
correct, and the doctrine
developed and defended by
Athanasius, Basil, Gregory
Nazianzen and Augustine, the
doctrine which was shared by
John of Damascus, Patriarch
Photius, and Alcuin of York in
the eighth century, the doctrine
affirmed by with (almost) one
voice by Thomas Aquinas,
Gregory of Cyprus, and Gregory
Palamas around 1399, the
doctrine affirmed by Bellarmine,
Calvin, and Luther in the
sixteenth century – that this
doctrine was always wrong. . . . I
do, however, attempt to show
just how strongly exegetical the
traditional presentations of the
doctrine were.
In order to tell this story, the
book is rather oddly shaped for a
history. I begin with analysis of
the recent Trinitarian revival,
tracing its roots in Barth,
Rahner, and Zizioulas, and its
various flowerings seeking to
show what is generally shared
amonst all contributors and
strands. I then turn to the
biblical material, with one eye on
the way the texts have been read,
and one on the way they should
be read, acknowledging that
patristic exegesis worked by
rather different rules from our
32
own. The patristic period is
treated in disproportionate detail
(chapters 3-6) simply because
this development is so crucial for
the doctrine. A brief interlude
sums up my reconstruction of
the Trinitarian doctrine
bequeathed by the church
fathers. I move quite quickly
from Augustine to the rise of
serious anti-Trinitarianism
around 1700, because as I read
the history, and notwithstanding
one important argument (the
filioque debate, examined in
chapter 7) and several
idiosyncratic but marginal
figures, the story is one of
acceptance, re-presentation, and
faithful transmission of the
patristic doctrine. . . . The
nineteenth century roots of the
broad themes of the twentieth
century Trinitarian revival are
examined, and the book ends
with a brief return to the recent
writers, reconsidered in the light
of all that has come before (pages
xiv-xv).
I shall have to refer the reader to the
book itself for the details of Holme’s
argumentation. A few of his
conclusions will have to suffice here.
Holmes argues that by the end of
the 19th century, the doctrine of the
Trinity was considered as wrong or a
“useless orthodoxy. . . no more than
one of six impossible things to be
believed before breakfast each
morning: abstruse; obscure; and of
no practical import” (pp. 2-3). But
the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl
Barth (1886-1968), though educated
in the liberal theology of Harnack,
under the influence of the horrors of
World War I repudiated liberal
theology. His Church Dogmatics
took a completely different direction
in which the Trinity “plays two
crucial roles: it identifies God; and
it grounds revelation” (p. 3).
Holmes argues that whereas
Patristic authors were concerned
about God as the eternal ground of
all being, as I AM, over against the
temporal reality of finite creation,
which is to say, they were concerned
with the origins of the three
hypostaseis as unbegotten, begotten
from before all time, and proceeding,
20th century theologians have been
interested in grounding ethical
principles within the nature of the
immanent Trinity. That is to say,
that the idea of perichoresis as the
way God is within God’s nature, the
inner relations of God as giving and
receiving love between the three
Persons, hypostaseis, personae.
Because the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit love one another with
perfect agapaic love, the
fundamental basis of Christian
personal and social ethics becomes
self-spending love: “As the Father
has loved me, so have I loved you;
abide in my love” (John 15:9). It is
the eternal relations of love within
the nature of the immanent Trinity
that orders God’s being.
The second changed emphasis in
modern theologians’ Trinitarian
doctrine, according to Holmes, is the
tendency to use the term “person”
as “univocal, or at least, as very
closely analogical, when applied to
divine persons and human people”
(p. 29). Barth, however, following
the hesitations of Augustine,
Anselm, and Calvin about using the
33
term persona to describe the
threeness of God, insisted that
persona/hypostasis in the Patristic
authors does NOT indicate the
modern person or personality.
Barth’s preferred term to distinguish
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not
person but “mode of being” (p. 8).
Holmes quotes Barth in Church
Dogmatics, 1, 1, pp. 350-351, “the
personality of God belongs to the
one unique essence of God. . . . The
meaning of the doctrine is not, then,
that there are three personalities in
God. That would be the worst and
most extreme expression of
tritheism.” Since “person” had
become in 19th century theology
equated with “personality,” both
Roman Catholic and Protestant
theologians had fallen “into the trap
of `ascribing a separate I-centre with
a separate consciousness and will
and content to Creator, Son, and
Spirit respectively’” (p. 8). Barth
insisted that his terminology
actually represented more
adequately the Patristic, conciliar
dogma of the Trinity: God is one
personality in three eternal modes of
being.
Holmes then turns to a very
thorough investigation of the roots
of the Patristic doctrine of the
Trinity in New Testament and
Patristic authors’ exegesis of Old
Testament passages, but above all
in the conviction of those who had
personally known Jesus of Nazareth
that in him they had met the God of
Israel face to face. The classical
Greek terms – if I may use the
definitions uncovered in my own
work in fifth century Christology at
the Councils of Ephesus (431) and
Chalcedon (451) and beyond – were
always used in the service of the
Gospel, not as rigid Platonic
metaphysical constructs. In the
fifth century the conception was
that there are two distinct kinds of
ousia or being: the One who is from
before all time, uncreated,
unbegotten, infinite without end
above time or space, self-caused;
and created being, which depends
for its being upon the Ground of all
being, God, so finite, mortal, limited
in time and space, subject to the
threat and reality of non-being. In
the terms of created being, ousia is
actualized into existence through a
physis/natura or nature, which
finds its concrete existence in
individual examples of a given
nature, or hypostaseis. Each
hypostasis has its own outward
expression by which it is perceived
by others, namely, its countenance
or face, its prosopon/persona.
Human beings distinguish
themselves by their prosopa. This is
a function of their nature. However,
all we can say about God’s being is
God transcends any human mind’s
ability to understand God. God is
the one ground of all being and
existence; not three grounds of
being. Uncreated, unbegotten,
uncaused, God creates all time and
space, all the cosmos through time
and space, and then wills to enter
into relationship with creation and
creatures caught in the
consequences of the human freedom
necessitated by the realities of love
and the failure to love in order to
reveal God’s very nature as agapaic
love and call human beings back
into reconciled relationship with the
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One Jesus persistently called his
Father. But if the Gospel is that
God, from no compulsion other than
God’s own love for us, enters into
real human historical existence to
reconcile us to himself by God’s
Word, spoken in creation itself,
becoming enfleshed or en-natured
among us, if those who in history
actually knew Jesus of Nazareth,
knew him as the very God of Israel
himself, then the problem arises of
how God can be confessed as one,
and as Father and as incarnate or
humanized God the Word. The
familiar story of the evolution of the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is
the outcome of this question.
The Nicene Creed thus certainly
utilized Greek philosophical
terminology, but it did so solely in
the service of proclaiming the
fulness of the Gospel. Those words
“one Being,” three hypostaseis are
not some obtuse metaphysics, but
express the Gospel itself. There is
nothing obtuse about the dogma at
all.
This is all developed by Holmes
at some length in chapters 3-6,
which he summarizes in seven
points:
1. The divine nature is simple,
incomposite, and ineffable. It
is also unrepeatable, and so,
in crude and inexact terms,
‘one.’
2. Language referring to the
divine nature is always
inexact and trophic;
nonetheless, if formulated
with much care and more
prayer, it might adequately, if
not fully, refer.
 3. There are three divine
hypostases, that are
instantiations of the divine
nature: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.
4. The three divine hypostases
exist really, eternally, and
necessarily, and there is
nothing divine that exists
beyond or outside their
existence.
5. The three divine hypostases
are distinguished by eternal
relations of origin – begetting
and proceeding – and not
otherwise.
6. All that is spoken of God, with
the single and very limited
exception of that language
which refers to the relations of
origin of the three hypostases,
is spoken of the one life the
three share, and so is
indivisibly spoken of all three.
7. The relationships of origin
express/establish relational
distinctions between the three
existent hypostases; no other
distinctions are permissible
(p. 146).
Then, having insisted in chapter 6
that the Latin Trinitarian theology of
Augustine exactly represents that of
the Greek theologians and the first
three ecumenical councils, an
assertion that makes a great deal of
sense to me, but will likely be
contested by more than a few,
Holmes goes on to trace the use of
the fourth and fifth century
Trinitarian and Christological
dogmas through the Middle Ages,
the Reformation, and the
35
Enlightenment with its resulting
materialism and Deism. Among
other insights, he argues
convincingly that the endless debate
over the filioque clause in the late
Latin version of the Nicene Creed
represents really a difference
between East and West over the
claims of papal primacy and the
authority of the ecumenical
councils, offering an interesting
history of the debate on page 148,
note 2.
Holmes’ has given us a brilliant
treatment both of the development
of the conciliar dogma of the
incarnation, expressed in the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
and the Chalcedonian formula of
451, as a genuine, rational, and
faithful exegesis of the whole of holy
scripture, and then its use through
Christian history to the present day.
I found his overall conclusions (p.
200) to be very useful indeed. I give
them here, with the observation that
the “we” to whom he refers are 19th
to 21st century theologians.
In our account of a Trinitarian
revival, we wanted little or
nothing to do with strictures [his
seven points summary of
Patristic Trinitarian doctrine]. As
a result, we set out on our own to
offer a different, and we believed
better, doctrine. We returned to
the Scriptures, but we chose
(with Tertullian’s Praxeas, Noetus
of Smyrna, and Samuel Clarke)
to focus exclusively on the New
Testament texts, instead of
listening to the whole of
Scripture with Tertullian,
Hippolytus, and Daniel
Waterland. We thought about
 God’s relationship with the
creation in the economy, but we
chose (with the Valentinians,
Arius, and Hegel) to believe that
the Son must be the mode of
mediation of the Father’s
presence to creation, instead of
following Irenaeus and
Athanasius in proposing God’s
ability to mediate his own
presence. We tried to
understand the divine unity, but
we chose (with Eunomius and
Socinus) to believe that we could
reason adequately about the
divine essence, instead of
following Basil, Gregory of Nyssa,
Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and
John Calvin in asserting divine
unknowability. We addressed
divine simplicity, and chose (with
Socinus and John Biddle) to
discard it, rather than following
Basil and the rest in affirming it
as the heart of Trinitarian
doctrine. We thought about
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but
chose (with Sabellius, Arius, and
Eunomius) to affirm true
personality of each, rather than
following Augustine and John of
Damascus in believing in one
divine personality. We called
what we were doing a “Trinitarian
revival;” future historians might
want to ask us why.
In 1562, John Jewel, Bishop of
Salisbury, responding to a request
from William Cecil, Lord Burghley,
first minister to Queen Elizabeth I,
for an apology for the new religious
settlement in England against
Roman Catholic attacks, published
his Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, or
An Apology of the Church of England.
36
Following Melancthon, Jewel took
his stand on scripture as interpreted
by the Fathers of the first six
Christian centuries and the first
four ecumenical councils. His work
instantly became the classic
Anglican apologetic against the
claims of Rome, and remains such
to this day. Incidentally, one of
Jewel’s “poor scholars” whose
education he underwrote and sent
on to university studies was Richard
Hooker, whose own work was
considerably indebted to his
mentor’s.
Jewel’s basic position had been
foreshadowed in Elizabeth I’s Act of
Supremacy, passed into law by
Parliament shortly before Easter in
1559. Not only does this act define
the monarch as “the only supreme
governor of this realm as well in all
spiritual and ecclesiastical causes
as temporal . . . ,” but it also solves
the political problem of making
impossible from a practical point of
view any additional burnings for
heresy, following the disaster of her
sister Mary I’s policy, by defining
heresy as that “so adjudged by the
authority of canonical scriptures or
the first four General Councils, or
any of them . . . .” In his article
“The Official Position of the
Episcopal Church on the Authority
of Scripture, Part I: Present
Teaching and Historical
Development,” The Anglican
Theological Review, LXXIV (Summer
1992), pp 348-361, J. Robert
Wright insists that this Act of
Supremacy declares that scripture
has final authority for Anglicans and
that heresy is that which is contrary
to scripture as interpreted by the
ecumenical councils of the Patristic
period. Hooker explicitly approved
this interpretation in Ecclesiastical
Polity, VII, 2, 17. We will also recall
the way the Preface to the American
Book of Common Prayer is emphatic
in its statement that the American
Church does not intend to depart
from the Church of England in any
essential of faith. And we will also
recall that the Chicago-Lambeth
Quadrilateral includes the use of the
Nicene Creed as an essential
element in any ecumenical reunion.
We may conclude, therefore, that
there is a renewal of theological
interest in Trinitarian doctrine
throughout the world of serious
theology, that Anglicanism in its
historical and classic form has
universally steadfastly embraced
both Patristic theology, liturgical
practice, and polity, and the Nicene-
Constantinopolitan Creed and the
Chalcedonian Formula (from the
fourth ecumenical council) as THE
statements for us of that
doctrine/dogma of the Trinity, and
that these texts are for us our
standards of Catholic orthodoxy. In
short, no matter the positive value
of all the works of Church Fathers,
Reformers, and subsequent
theologians, the Nicene Creed, as
interpreted by the Chalcedonian
Formula is, simply put, by itself the
dogma of the Trinity. And,
furthermore, I would point out that
for the ecumenical councils, the
texts of that Creed and
Chalcedonian Formula are the
Greek texts in the minutes of those
four ecumenical councils.
So can we then put paid once
and for all to Charles Miller and his
37
eighteenth century Deist-Unitarian
Book of Common Prayer? Maybe
not. In the November 1, 2015, issue
of The Living Church, there appears
(pp. 6-7) an article entitled “A
Greener Prayer Book.” It relates the
comments of the Rev’d Ruth Meyers,
professor of liturgics at the Church
Divinity School of the Pacific since
2009 and chair of the Standing
Commission on Liturgy and Music
from 2009 to 2015, on the revision
of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer
put in motion by the June 2015
General Convention. She was
addressing a forum at CDSP
October 8 on this topic. Among
many other changes she favors, she
urged “more concrete images of the
Bible and the liturgy . . . in place of
the arcane philosophical language of
the fourth-century creeds . . .
[which] are overwhelmingly
masculine in language and imagery.
She described the Nicene Creed as
`a stumbling block of many,’ and
wondered if a creed is necessary
during the Eucharist, given the
Great Thanksgiving’s robust
affirmation of God’s work in Christ.”
The shade of Charles Miller has
risen like Samuel’s ghost, and I
shudder like Saul! I admit that the
current mid-20th century
ecumenically agreed English
translation of the Nicene Creed
could have several more relative
pronouns used, “who” instead of
“he.” Indeed, this usage
characterizes Cranmer’s rather
Latinized translation of the Creed,
and would actually be a closer
translation into English of the
authoritative conciliar Greek text.
 But I suspect that Professor
Meyers has more in mind. Does she
want to remove the noun “Father”
from the confession of faith, the
name our Lord consistently used for
God, actually giving God a new
name? Does she want removed the
basic New Testament Christological
title for Jesus, ho Kyrios, the Lord, a
title used in the New Testament
world for emperors and absolute
monarchs, a title used to indicate
Yahweh in both the Hebrew
scriptures’ text and in substitution
in reading the text publicly for the
divine Name Yahweh. It is this
term, more perhaps than any other
in the New Testament, that indicates
a confession on the part of the first
generation of Jesus’ followers that
he is identified with Yahweh, save
perhaps for the Fourth Gospel’s
Logos. There simply are no other
terms that can be substituted and
maintain the conciliar faith, as the
stupendously insipid, dull, and
lifeless weakness of what Professor
Meyers calls the “modern creedal
texts” which she suggests in
substitution for the Nicene Creed.
Altering the Creed in any way
beyond a more careful translation of
the original Greek into English not
only is completely contradictory to
classic Anglican doctrinal standards
established above and the Chicago-
Lambeth Quadrilateral, but would
have tremendously negative
ecumenical impact. If there are to
be alterations in the English
translation of the Greek text for a
new Book of Common Prayer, I pray
the translators will retain the
expression in the Rite II form of the
Creed “. . . of one Being with the
Father.” Cranmer’s “. . . being of
38
one substance with the Father” is
an Englishing of the Latin version’s
una substantia, but utterly fails to
translate the one ousia of the Greek
original. An Augustine could
perceive substantia as the
equivalent of ousia, but using the
English word and concept
“substance” is surely an exercise in
arcane language. “One Substance”
does not imply one being in modern
English, but rather three distinct
beings sharing a common
substance, such as three human
beings sharing a common human
nature. I regret its reappearance in
the recent new English translation
of the Roman rite as their
translators intentionally tried to
make a universal English
translation as close as possible to
the Latin rite. “One substance” just
does not do the job as English for
“one ousia.”
Professor Meyers repeats a rather
frequent claim: that the Nicene
Creed is unnecessary in the
Eucharistic rite, given “the Great
Thanksgiving’s robust affirmation of
God’s work in Christ.” There is, of
course, nothing in that affirmation
as she states it that Arius would
disagree with, or Eutyches or
Charles Miller for that matter. One
can perfectly well affirm that God
did some sort of reconciling,
redeeming work in Christ without at
all believing that Jesus of Nazareth
is God the Word incarnate, made
human, living a full human life in
every sense of being human without
in any way ceasing to be fully God’s
being. If indeed the Great
Thanksgiving in itself establishes
the Nicene-Chalcedonian faith
without hedging any bets, there
would never have been any reason
for the Church East and West to
insert the Nicene Creed into their
classic Eucharistic rites in order to
confront the emptiness of Arianism
or Nestorianism. The Unitarianized
1662 Book of Common Prayer used
for two centuries in King’s Chapel,
Boston, is living evidence of that!
Frankly, I must further confess
that I find tiresome, almost silly, the
claim that the Nicene confession is
characterized by “arcane
philosophical language of the fourth
century . . . a stumbling block for
many.” As we have seen above,
there is nothing arcane about the
Nicene dogma of the Triune God. It
only takes a bit of serious historical
study to understand what the fourth
to eighth century theologians were
working out and expressing.
Certainly they used the
philosophical terms of their day.
They breathed them in with their
mother’s milk, just as we absorb the
evolutionary scientific assumptions
about reality in our day,
philosophical assumptions that may
seem irrelevant and arcane fifteen
centuries from now as well. Any
decently educated priest should be
able to teach the doctrines of the
Trinity and Incarnation and explain
the terms of the Creed in ways that
are clear to current people: that God
is completely, totally, and forever
One Being, who is in three modes of
being that One Being; that God
loves creatures and lives to bring
human beings and all the creation
into the closest possible union with
God; that that love meant God the
Word, by whom, and in whom, and
39
for whom all that is exists, entered
fully into living a specific historic
human life to bring about that
reconciliation and union with God;
that God the Word died on the cross
for love of you and me; that God the
Word defeated death and invites us
into living into ever deeper union
with him, with the One God, for all
eternity through baptism and faith,
a union constantly deepened by
faith acting in love, constant prayer,
and participation in his resurrection
in the Eucharist.
I confess that I have a deep
suspicion that the desire to re-write
or replace or remove the Nicene
Creed from the Eucharistic liturgy is
simply a not so subtle way of
clearing the way for Deism or
Unitarianism. Such an action,
completely in disregard for Anglican
doctrinal and liturgical tradition, is
not necessary unless that is one’s
aim. If that is what one desires, one
could always attend King’s Chapel.
In 1970, Robert Terwilliger, then
director of Trinity Institute in New
York City, before he was elected
Suffragan Bishop of Dallas, told me
about an experience he had when
he visited the Russian Orthodox
Church in Leningrad. This was
before the disintegration of the
Soviet Union, and the threat of
persecution of Christians was still a
living reality. One Sunday he
attended the celebration of the Holy
Eucharist in the chapel of the
Orthodox Theological Academy. At
one point in the liturgy, the
students began to sing, at first in a
slow, low tone; after a few moments
the pace and tone went up; this
happened again, until the pace and
volume of the singing shook the
rafters before arriving at a crashing
silence. Stunned, Terwilliger, who
most of us who knew him personally
will remember was rarely without
words, whispered to his translator,
“What were they singing?” He said
The Anglican Archivist
I have tried to promote the
primary concern of the Anglican
Society for decency and order in our
worship, both visual and aural, ...
while being eager to preserve an
awareness of the Holy in new rites
and their liturgical environment as
they come along. It remains true
that whatever may be the mission of
the Church in the world, it is our
time of worship that requires our
best efforts and finds our most
40
the translator replied, “It was their
Christian defiance. It was the
Nicene Creed.”
The Rev’d Paul B. Clayton, Jr., Ph.D. is
President of the Anglican Society and a
retired priest of the Diocese of New
York.
severe critics. The beauty of
holiness remains our high goal:
obedience to the Book of Common
Prayer our best way of achieving it.
Operi Dei nihil præponatur, wrote St.
Benedict —“Let nothing come before
the work of God.”
From The Anglican Vol. 21, No. 1,
Spring 1991. This was the final
editorial written by the late Canon
Peter Chase before hanging up his
blue pencil to become editor emeritus
 THE ANGLICAN:
A Journal of Anglican Identity
Advent A.D. 2017
A Publication of The Anglican Society
http://anglicansociety.org

Episcopal Patron
The Rt. Rev. Andrew St. John
Rector, Church of the Transfiguration
New York, NY

President
The Rev. Dr. Paul B. Clayton, Jr.
pbclayton@aol.com

Vice President
The Rev. Canon Johnathan L. King
jlking340@aol.com

Treasurer
Vacant

Recording Secretary & Poetry Editor

Dr. Nicholas Birns
205 East 10th Street
New York, NY 10003
birnsn@newschool.edu

Editor of The Anglican

The Rev. William D. Loring
editor@anglicansociety.org

Members of the Board-at-Large

The Rev. Canon J. Robert Wright, president
The Very Rev. Lloyd G. Chattin, president
Mr. David L. James, editor
The Rev. Victor L. Austin, editor
The Rev. Dirk C. Reinken, editor

Production Editor
Ms. Hannah Wilder
hannah.wilder1@gmail.com

5 THE ANGLICAN | Michaelmas 2015

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