376 - An Era In Anglican Theology

An Era In Anglican Theology
By Arthur Michael Ramsey
192 pp. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960. $3.50.

The new Archbishop of Canterbury has surveyed fifty years of Anglican theology beginning with the publication of Lux Mundi in 1889. Thus his two chief figures are Bishop Charles Gore and Archbishop William Temple whose death in 1944 is just beyond the end of this era. Ramsey finds this dynamic period to have an inner coherence which he brilliantly develops. He is no less aware that it had its deficiencies and indicates the new forces which are shaping it today.

"There was the emphasis upon the Incarnation, the striving after synthesis between theology and contemporary culture which the term 'liberal' broadly denotes, the frequent shift of interest from dogma to apologetics. But if these were the more dated characteristics, there were also the more permanent ones, seldom absent from Anglican divinity in any age: the appeal to Scripture, and the Fathers, the fondness for Nicene categories, the union of doctrine and liturgy, the isolation from continental influences" (p. viii).

This book ought to be compulsory reading for all who have used such clichés as the following: (1) Anglican Incarnational theology neglects the Atonement and is based on philosophical idealism; (2) Anglican insistence on the historic episcopate is either sheer pragmatism with its liberals

377 - An Era In Anglican Theology

or the idolatry of an historical contingency by its Anglo-Catholics; (3) Anglican treatments of the Trinity are broadly tritheistic.

Ramsey skillfully criticizes the weaknesses that have produced these caricatures, but clearly shows how superficial they are as responsible conclusions. There are excellent studies of kenotic Christologies, patripassianism, Trinitarianism, and the doctrines of the fall and of original sin. All (including most Anglicans) who have been confused by inconsistencies in Anglican defenses of episcopacy as a needful part of the Holy Catholic Church will find helpful Ramsey's clear exposition of it in Chapter VIII in terms of the now classic theology of episcopacy set forth by the Lambeth Conference in 1930.

Admitting that Biblical theology and the ecumenical movement have brought new and needed perspectives to Anglican divinity, Ramsey finds that Hoskyns partly is a precursor of the former. There is a curious attitude toward Barth perhaps typified by the following comment that Moberly explains the Trinity much as Barth does: ". . . it anticipates the treatment by Karl Barth, who writes in total unawareness that there is such a thing as Anglican theology." Ramsey is correct. He also seems to be saying that if Anglican theology in the era surveyed was provincial Barth today is still more so!

The general perspective of this most illuminating book is really recapitulated in the development of Temple's own theology. In Mens Creatrix and Christus Veritas Temple had developed a "Christo-centric metaphysic" with the Incarnation as the key to the unity and rationality of the world, but toward the end of his life he Criticized his earlier attitude and acknowledged the need for a theology of redemption rather than one primarily of explanation.

William J. Wolf
The Episcopal Theological School
Cambridge, Massachusetts