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Chapter 4

T he Eliz abetha n C hu rc h
of Engl an d a nd t h e
Origins of Ang l i c a ni sm

Torrance Kirby

The identity of ‘ecclesia anglicana’ has, broadly speaking, three major phases of mean-
ing. The first phase, traceable back to the earliest years of Christianity in Britain, employs
the term in a neutral geographical sense; at the time of the Reformation a second phase
emerges with the sense of provincial autonomy; a third phase associated with the mid-​
nineteenth-​century expansion of the global Anglican communion identifies the term
‘Anglican’ with a distinctive ecclesiology.
Ecclesia Anglicana—​the ‘English Church’—​designates in the first instance a geo-
graphically specific area, namely two provinces of the Western Church with their two
respective sees of Canterbury and York, located in ‘Anglia’. In his correspondence early
in the seventh century with the missionary bishop Augustine of Canterbury, first metro-
politan of that see, Pope Gregory the Great refers to the Church of the Angles, Ecclesia
Anglorum. During this early phase of the expansion of Latin Christendom, as with the
term Ecclesia Gallicana, there are no specific or distinctive ecclesiological associations
attending this designation. Anselm of Laon, Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the
eleventh century, speaks similarly of ‘Ecclesia Angliæ’, while the precise term ‘Ecclesia
Anglicana’ as a geographical division of the Western Church is common usage from
the middle of the twelfth century onward. The Magna Carta (1215) commences with the
affirmation ‘quod Anglicana Ecclesia libera sit’ (Davis 1989; Magna Carta Libertatum
[the ‘great charter of freedoms’], article 1). Like his father Henry II before him, who
had clashed with Thomas à Becket on the matter of royal governance of the Church,
King John saw the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury as his prerogative.
Following Innocent III’s Interdict forbidding public worship in 1208 and his excommu-
nication of John in 1209, the king eventually backed down and accepted the Pope’s nom-
inee to Canterbury, Stephen Langton, who had been ‘freely elected’ by English monks
in exile. The independence of the Church from royal control is strongly affirmed in the

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56   Torrance Kirby

opening article of Magna Carta.1 The ‘Anglican Church’ of the thirteenth century looked
to the papacy as the ultimate source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and as the guarantor of
her corporate liberty and independence of royal interference.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the English Parliament moved to
impose limits on papal jurisdiction with the passage of the Statutes of Provisors (1350)
and Praemunire (1393). The former refers to ‘the holy Church of England’ (‘la seinte eglise
d’Engleterre’) as having been founded ‘by the sovereigns and the nobles to inform them
and the people of the law of God and also to make hospitalities, alms, and other works
of charity’. In this statutory account, an ecclesiological distinctiveness and national par-
ticularity of the English Church begins to acquire some purchase. Yet in the context
of the Great Schism and with the Conciliar movement making headway, the assertion
of the regional autonomy of churches against a centralized papal monarchy was not a
stance which in any way set England outside the mainstream of the Western Church.
The Act of Supremacy of 1534, reaffirmed by statute under Edward VI and Elizabeth
I, brought about a truly decisive ecclesiological shift in meaning. The Henrician legisla-
tion marks the legal and constitutional commencement of the Reformation in England
with its declaration that Henry VIII as sovereign was ‘the only supreme head on earth of
the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia’ (26 Henry VIII, cap. 1, Statutes of the
Realm, III.492).2 This was a decisive watershed in the history of the English Church, and
marks a radically new phase by attaching a significance of provincial autonomy to the
term: the Catholic Church in England no longer recognized the ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion of the papacy. In the previous year, 1533, Henry had been excommunicated by Pope
Clement VII for his divorce of Katherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Papal exercise of spiritual jurisdiction in such circumstances presupposed the concept of
the so-​called ‘plenitude of power’ (plenitudo potestatis), whereby spiritual and temporal
authority were bound together dispositively, that is, in a hierarchical relation. Clement’s
excommunication of Henry cut the thread of hierarchy which linked the king—​and
through him, his entire realm—​to the sacramentally interconnected framework that
was Christendom. Conversely, by virtue of his adamant defiance of papal jurisdiction,

1 
Magna Carta, article 1 (Davis 1989): ‘In the first place [I, John] have granted to God, and by this our
present charter confirmed for us and our heirs for ever that the English church (ecclesia anglicana) shall
be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired; and it is our will that it be
thus observed; which is evident from the fact that, before the quarrel between us and our barons began,
we willingly and spontaneously granted and by our charter confirmed the freedom of elections which
is reckoned most important and very essential to the English church (ecclesia anglicana), and obtained
confirmation of it from the lord Pope Innocent III; the which we will observe and we wish our heirs to
observe it in good faith forever.’
2  ‘Albeit, the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and oweth to be the supreme head of the Church

of England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realm in their Convocations; yet nevertheless for
corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ’s religion within this realm
of England, and to repress and extirp all errors, heresies and other enormities and abuses heretofore used
in the same, Be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament that the King our sovereign lord, his
heirs and successors kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted and reputed the only supreme head in
earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia.’

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The Elizabethan Church of England & the Origins of Anglicanism    57

Henry confirmed this momentous breaking of the bond between the temporal and spir-
itual orders. The excommunication of Henry may be viewed as an archetypical instance
of the dissolution of the received medieval sense of the cosmos as a coherent, unified,
and continuous order of spiritual/​eternal and external/​temporal realms and powers—​
a process Max Weber defined as the ‘disenchantment of the world’ (1946: 139, 155; see
Thomas 1997). It may also be viewed as signalling what could be described as an eccle-
siological revolution—​the meaning of the term ‘Anglicana Ecclesia’ would never be
quite the same again.
Through their respective actions, Clement and Henry together shattered the deep-
est assumptions—​the ontological horizon of Christendom, so to speak—​which had
defined the way in which Catholic Christians in England had, until then, lived out their
religious lives. Through a simple sacramental act and through a determined assertion
of political will to ignore that act, Clement and Henry together launched a sequence
of events—​the English Reformation—​which would result in the eventual annulment of
‘the sacramental’ itself as the governing hermeneutical framework of the English nation’s
religious identity and hence of the very definition of the nature of the Church which had
been assumed for almost a millennium. Ecclesia anglicana was now autocephalous—​an
autonomous province—​with the prince as head. By the end of the sixteenth century,
the full hermeneutical, ecclesiological, and sacramental significance of this newfound
political independence of the English Church would be worked out theologically by
Thomas Cranmer, Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, John Jewel, John Whitgift, and
Richard Hooker. The English Reformation thus defines the ‘second’ principal meaning
of ‘Anglicana ecclesia’, the sense of the national Church as an autonomous, autoceph-
alous province of the Western Church. At the same time, this ecclesiology of national
autonomy was shared by the other Protestant Churches of northern Europe—​by the
Lutherans in various principalities of the Empire and in Denmark, and by the Calvinists
in Geneva, Heidelberg, and the Netherlands—​and was not thought to be in any exclu-
sive way a peculiar characteristic of the English Church more than any other.
A third use of the term ‘Anglican’ refers to a theological, or more precisely to an eccle-
siological distinctiveness. The first usage of the term in this substantive theological
sense does not occur until well into the seventeenth century. The term ‘l’Anglicanisme’
is employed pejoratively in a Catholic pamphlet of 1616, but this is more a reflec-
tion of our second sense of the term, referring to provincial autonomy (see A. Milton
1995: 379). It is not until the nineteenth century, however, that Anglicanism comes to
be identified explicitly with a distinctive theological position, a confessional identity
neither completely Catholic nor Protestant, although whether the Church of England
actually has any truly ‘distinctive’ teachings continues to be a matter of heated dispute.
On the one hand, Henry McAdoo, Stephen Neil, and Michael Ramsey have argued
that the Church of England is ‘catholic’ and consequently has no properly ‘distinctive’
or confessional doctrine (Neill 1958; Ramsey 1945; and McAdoo 1965: 1, cited by Avis
2007: 39). On the other side, Rowan Williams (2004: 1), Stephen Sykes (1995: ch. 6), and
Paul Avis (2007: 39–​55) argue the contrary, that there are indeed distinctively ‘Anglican’
positions on doctrine, order, and worship. This question of doctrinal and institutional

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58   Torrance Kirby

distinctiveness marks the third principal usage of the term Ecclesia Anglicana, namely
as a label of distinctive confessional identity (or not, as the case may be!). It is chiefly the
second and third senses that we propose to address in the following discussion.

Doctrine, Order, and Worship

in the Reign of Elizabeth

The principal formularies of the doctrine, order, and worship of the Church of England
all attained their mature form during the early years of the reign of Elizabeth: the Articles
of Religion (1563/​7 1) commonly called the ‘Thirty-​Nine Articles’ (Kirby 2009), the Book
of Common Prayer (1549, revised 1552, 1559, and 1662),3 and the Ordinal (1549, revised
1552, 1662)—​that is, the ‘Form and Manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons’.4 In their respective fashion all three formularies empha-
size the commitment of the English Church to the ecclesiology confessed in the three
ancient creeds of Christendom—​viz. the Apostle’s, Constantinopolitan-​Nicene, and
Athanasian creeds. According to the ancient ecclesiology, the Church is ‘one, holy, cath-
olic, and apostolic’. Precisely how the ecclesiology of the creeds is to be interpreted is of
great moment to Anglican identity.
While confessing one and the same doctrinal matter with the Roman Catholic and
Orthodox Churches, since the Reformation the Church of England has parted com-
pany in its basic interpretation of what the unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity
of the visible church actually consist in. The Canons claim that the Church of England
‘belongs to the true and apostolic Church of Christ’ but they do not insist on equat-
ing ecclesia anglicana with the Christ’s universal ‘church militant here in earth’.5 From
the early Middle Ages, the Roman Church on the other hand had tended to identify
communion with the bishop of Rome as one and the same as membership of the uni-
versal church confessed in the creeds. Since the Second Vatican Council such abso-
lute claims have been tempered to a degree, although the recent doctrinal statement
Dominus Jesus (2000) authorized by John Paul II denies other communions the status
of full membership in the ‘church catholic’. Anglicans since Richard Hooker (1554–​1600)
have maintained that the Church of England ‘participates’ in the universal church of

3  Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer was first put into general liturgical use on Whitsunday,

1549 and subsequently went through three important later revisions in 1552, 1559, and 1662. The version of
1662 continues to have statutory authority under the Act of Uniformity as definitive of the faith and order
of the Church of England.
4  The first version of the Ordinal composed by Thomas Cranmer and published in 1549 under

the title The forme and maner of makyng and consecratyng of archebishoppes, bishoppes, priestes and
deacons ([London]: Richardus Grafton, 1549). The ordinal was revised in 1552 and again in 1662. It was
customarily published as an addendum to the Prayerbook.
5  This expression leads off the Prayer of Intercession in the 1662 Order of the Holy Communion.

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The Elizabethan Church of England & the Origins of Anglicanism    59

Christ as do others including the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, the Methodists,
Congregationalists, and the Old Catholics of the Union of Utrecht. According to Robert
Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking at the Lambeth Conference of 1988
(13), ‘Anglicanism has a radically provisional character’ (Anglican Consultative Council
1988: 13). What is the ecclesiological source of this provisionality? What is that renders
the Church partial, provisional, and incomplete but, at the same time, allows it to claim
that it is ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’? In Anglican ecclesiology (as compared with
both the Roman and the Orthodox Churches) there is a radically different account of
the relation between the empirical church and the universal church, a difference owing
entirely to the emergence of a new hermeneutics (in actuality, as we shall see, the restor-
ation of an ancient patristic hermeneutics) together with the rise of a radically altered
‘moral ontology’, what might be called the ontology of modernity. The English reform-
ers of the sixteenth century achieved an ecclesiological revolution based upon this new
hermeneutics. In order to appreciate fully the manner in which the empirical or phe-
nomenal church (the visible church militant) came to be understood as both standing
apart from and united with the eschatologically perfect or mystical church of the creed
(the invisible church triumphant), it is necessary to explore the hermeneutics which
made this revolution in ecclesiological thinking possible.

John Jewel and the Hermeneutics

of the Elizabethan Church

The first systematic theological exposition of the new ecclesiology of the reformed
Church of England was undertaken by John Jewel in his famous ‘Challenge Sermon’ of
1559 preached at Paul’s Cross shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I and later pub-
lished in expanded form under the title Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ (Jewel 1562). [An
English translation by Lady Anne Bacon, wife of Privy Councillor Sir Nicholas Bacon,
appeared not long afterwards: see Bacon 1564).] Jewel called into question the doctrine
and order of the Church of Rome and issued the challenge whether ‘any learned man
of our adversaries be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old doctor or
father, or out of any general council, or out of the holy Scripture, or any one example out
of the primitive Church for the space of six hundred years after Christ’ in their support.
Jewel identifies the authority of the early Church Fathers and of Augustine in particular
as the touchstone of doctrinal and ecclesiological orthodoxy. In subsequent polemical
exchanges with Thomas Harding, a leader among the community of English Catholic
exiles in Douai, and in the elaboration of his challenge both in the Apology and in his
later massive Defence of the Apology (1567), Jewel set out a detailed and systematic theo-
logical exposition of the principles underpinning the ‘reformed’ Church of England—​
the autonomous ecclesia anglicana. Jewel accounts for the faith of the English Church in
accordance with the principles of a distinctly Augustinian hermeneutics. The identity of

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60   Torrance Kirby

the newly ‘reformed’ English Church is essentially established on the foundation of this
self-​conscious return to patristic hermeneutics.
For Jewel, the key difference between the ecclesiologies of the Church of England
and the Church of Rome was one of hermeneutical method. Drawing upon
Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana, Jewel succinctly summarizes the key principle
which would be definitive of Anglican hermeneutics, ecclesiology, and sacramental
teaching for centuries to come: ‘we put a difference between the sign and the thing
itself that is signified’.6 Augustinian clarity of distinction between the visible sign and
the mystical reality signified constitutes the hallmark of Jewel’s reformed hermen-
eutics and is of altogether pivotal significance for the Anglican reformers’ thinking
on the Eucharist as well as on a multitude of other questions concerning the faith,
order, and worship of the Church (see Augustine, de bono Perseverantiae, 2.13). In the
Eucharist the preparation of the mind for the reception of Communion is all import-
ant, for the ‘figure’ (signum) of the thing is not to be confused with that which it rep-
resents, the referent or the ‘thing itself ’ (res significata). ‘ “How shall I hold him,” saith
Augustine, “which is absent? How shall I reach my hand up to heaven, to lay hold
upon him that sitteth there?” He answereth, “Reach thither thy faith, and then thou
hast laid hold on him. Faith had in the sacraments,” saith Augustine, “doth justify,
and not the sacraments” ’ (Jewel 1562: 64). Augustine’s dictum ‘In sacramentis vid-
endum est, non quid sint, sed quid significent’ is quoted by Jewel on numerous occa-
sions (1845:  I, 453, 759; II, 1122, qtd. Augustine, Contra Maximinum, III.22). Jewel
summarizes the Augustinian foundation of his reformed account of sacramental
Communion: ‘That we be thus in Christ, and Christ in us, requireth not any corporal
or local being, as in things natural. We are in Christ sitting in heaven, and Christ
sitting in heaven is here in us, not by a natural, but by a spiritual mean of being. St.
Augustine saith: “postquam ex mortuis resurrexit, et ascendit ad Patrem, est in nobis
per Spiritum” ’ (1845: I, 477; Augustine, De Trinitate, Bk IV).
The hermeneutics of the distinction between sign and thing takes on a deeper
Christological significance for Jewel when he cautions against so maintaining the div-
ine nature of Christ as to take away the truth of his bodily human nature. He quotes
Augustine’s proto-​Chalcedonian formulation:  ‘We confess there are in Christ two
substances or natures; the one of the godhead, the other of the manhood; the one of
the creator, the other of the creature; which substances notwithstanding are not con-
fused, but united, and in one selfsame person inseparable, and remaining evermore in
their own properties’ (Jewel 1845: I, 482; Augustine, De Verb. Dom. in Evang sec. Johan.,
lviii). To confuse sign and thing is tantamount to overthrowing this most crucial for-
mula of patristic orthodoxy. Jewel’s Augustinian hermeneutic of ‘sign and thing’, and
the classically ‘reformed’ account of sacramental presence built upon that hermeneutic,

6  Jewel quotes De doctrina Christiana 2.1.1: ‘A sign is a thing that, besides the sight itself which it

offereth unto the senses, causeth of itself some other certain thing to come into knowledge.’ In applying
this hermeneutic to the interpretion of sacramental presence, Jewel invokes Augustine’s treatment of the
‘sursum corda’ (‘Lift up your hearts’) as the archetype of the distinction between signs and things.

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The Elizabethan Church of England & the Origins of Anglicanism    61

reverberate throughout his critique of private masses, the adoration of images, and
prayers in a strange tongue, as well as in his affirmation of Communion under both
kinds, his definition of the jurisdiction of bishops, and finally in his defence of the eccle-
siastical supremacy of princes.
It is no exaggeration to state that Jewel launched the hermeneutics—​and thus by
consequence also the ecclesiology of the English Church—​on a revolutionary new
course. The great achievement of his Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ is to link together
all of the distinctive characteristics of the faith, order, and worship of the reformed
Church of England as they had emerged piece by piece during the previous three
decades under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and most recently under Elizabeth, and to
show their coherence in terms of a fully self-​conscious restoration of an Augustinian
hermeneutic of ‘signum et res’. The ecclesiological coherence of the reformed and
autonomous ecclesia anglicana under Elizabeth was, in effect, largely the achievement
of scriptural and sacramental hermeneutics—​a conservative achievement in one
important respect, namely that Jewel’s new approach was a ‘return’ to the authority of
the Fathers of the early Church.
The differing logics of Tridentine and Jewel’s reformed ecclesiology are perhaps
most plainly evident in their distinct accounts of sacramental theology. Whereas the
traditional doctrine of the Mass and transubstantiation tended to collapse the distinc-
tion between signifier and signified in their assertion of an objectified ‘real presence’,
the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer reasserts (in tune with an Augustinian
hermeneutic) a much sharper distinction between the two. According to Jewel’s cri-
tique of transubstantiation in his Apologia, this traditional hermeneutic of sacramen-
tal presence fails to distinguish sufficiently between signum and res. This distinction
between a literal and figurative interpretation of sacramental ‘presence’ is of crucial
ontological significance for the emergence of a distinctively reformed Anglican eccle-
siology, foremost that is for the reinterpretation of the relation between the empirical,
phenomenal reality of the visible church and the church universal. The new her-
meneutics, in short, gives rise to a redefinition of catholicity (as well as of the unity,
sanctity, and apostolicity) of the universal church. The hermeneutic of ‘presence’ asso-
ciated with the doctrine of transubstantiation, on the other hand, requires as its eccle-
siological corollary a close identification of the phenomenal church with the church
universal. Like the consecrated host, the visible, empirical, incarnational aspect of
the church is the outward showing in the world of the universal, divine reality of the
supernatural community.
The liturgy of the thoroughly reformed revision of the Book of Common Prayer
of 1552 shifts the focus of ‘presence’ very decisively away from the elements of the
sacrament in the words of distribution. Whereas the formula of the old Roman
rite (retained in the vernacular in Cranmer’s first version of the Prayerbook of
1549)  asserts an externalized real presence—​‘Accipite et comedite, Hoc est corpus
meum’ (Take, eat; this is my body)—​the revised words of 1552 transfer the locus of
presence to the inner, subjective experience of the worshipper—​‘Take and eat this
in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith,

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62   Torrance Kirby

with thanksgiving’ (for a full and most interesting discussion of Cranmer’s doc-
trine of presence, see Rosendale 2007). Consequently, ‘presence’ is interpreted in the
Anglican liturgy as a ‘figural’ or ‘conceptual’ synthesis of word and elements per-
formed in the subjective forum of the minds of worshippers, and thus inseparable
from reception of the host.
It is interesting in this connection to note that in the Book of Common Prayer of
1552, as well as in the subsequent revisions of 1559 and 1662, the administration of
the Communion occurs at precisely the stage in the liturgy at which the elevation
of the host had occurred in the old Mass—​i.e. the moment of transubstantiation—​
thus serving to underline most vividly the difference between the two divergent litur-
gical accounts of presence. The chasm between sign and signified is thus bridged not
through the external theurgical action of the priest, but rather in an inner, subject-
ive act of remembrance on the part of the worshippers (priest, of course, included).
As Timothy Rosendale points out, ‘the internalization of this figural sacrament is
thus a necessarily interpretative act; though it takes place in a communal context,
it ultimately requires a highly individual mode of understanding the elements as
metaphors whose effectuality is dependent on faithful personal reading’ (2007: 96).
The Elizabethan revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1559 altered the strictly
memorialist (i.e. sacramentarian) words of administration of the 1552 liturgy by com-
bining the words ‘This is my body …’ with ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ While it
is certainly the case that assertion of the ‘figural sense’ of the Eucharist, and hence
of the distinction between signifier and signified, is a key concern of the Protestant
reformers, in his distinctive and highly original reading, Rosendale argues that the
Elizabethan liturgy of 1559 emphasizes even more strongly the importance of the
role of the individual subject in interpreting the meaning of the sacrament. One
might well be tempted to regard the strict memorialism of 1552 as setting the bench-
mark of the high reformed position. Nonetheless, by defusing the clarity of 1552, the
Elizabethan compromise of combining realist and memorialist words of adminis-
tration serves, in effect, to extend even further the latitude of the worshipper’s her-
meneutical responsibility. Since this liturgical revision becomes the hermeneutical
touchstone of the entire subsequent history of anglicana ecclesia, its significance can
hardly be overestimated. For Rosendale:

the Book of Common Prayer in both form and content holds in tension two radic-
ally different discourses, out of which it endeavours to construct a productive text-
ual synthesis. It discursively constructs the Christian nation characterized centrally
by order even as it elevates individual discretion over that order. Its theology sim-
ultaneously legitimates and undermines its political discourse of autonomous
hierarchical authority … The BCP officially instituted the individual as a primary
component of religion, without abrogating the normative claims of the hierarchical
socio-​politico-​ecclesiastical order that had traditionally been the sole determinant
of religious affairs. (2007: 111)

Thus, in a nutshell, Rosendale draws out the link between worship and ecclesiology.

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The Elizabethan Church of England & the Origins of Anglicanism    63

The Articles of Religion (1571)

The faith of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion as defined in the
initial five titles of the Articles of Religion (1571) is grounded on the affirmation of trad-
itional Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy established by the first four General
Councils of the early Church—​Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and
Chalcedon (451). Belonging to the one true universal Church of Christ is thus a mat-
ter of doctrinal commitment to these essentials of patristic orthodoxy: adherence to
unity of the Godhead in three persons, the true divinity and complete humanity joined
together in the one person of Christ, and the procession of the Holy Ghost from both
the Father and the Son. Jewel’s definition of catholicity as a ‘return’ to patristic ortho-
doxy is shared by John Calvin who sought in his Institutio christianæ religionis (1559) to
‘restore the face of the ancient catholic church’. There is not much disagreement, if any at
all, between the magisterial reformers and the Council of Trent on the substantive doc-
trines of the Trinity and Chalcedonian Christology. However, the sixth article ‘Of the
sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation’, marks out a distinctive departure for the
reformed Church of England from the medieval and Tridentine positions. The orthodox
faith is said to be ‘uniquely revealed’ in Scripture which effectively establishes Scripture
alone (sola scriptura) as the regula fidei—​or, as the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888 states
the matter, ‘Holy Scripture is the rule and ultimate standard of the faith’ (Wright 1988).
Thus, the authority of the Church’s traditional doctrinal formulæ is clearly subordinated
to the ultimate authority of Scripture alone such that ‘whatsoever is not read therein, nor
may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an
article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation’ (Articles of Religion,
article VI).
Moreover, according to the Articles of Religion, the three ancient creeds derive
their magisterial authority from being demonstrably consistent with Scripture. The
Nicene, the Athanasian, and the Apostles’ Creeds ‘ought thoroughly to be received and
believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture’ (Articles
of Religion, article VIII). The persuasion that saving doctrine is ‘uniquely revealed’ in
the Holy Scriptures clearly distinguishes Scripture and tradition from each other, and
subordinates the authority of the latter with respect to the former in a manner closely
analogous to the clarity of the distinction and subordination of signum to res, and of
the distinction and subordination of the empirical and phenomenal church to the mys-
tical and universal church to which it points. In its formulation of the relation between
Scripture and tradition the Articles of Religion set out to distinguish between human and
divine authority. Just as signum must be neither confused with res nor separated from that
to which it points, so also tradition and Scripture must be kept distinct and yet united.
‘Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.’ At the same time, the Articles
do not allow that Scripture alone, independently of tradition, is the source of binding
rules and precedents which should determine the shape of Church polity and worship, a

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64   Torrance Kirby

position urged by the more radical, biblicizing Protestants for whom the assertion of the
sole authority of Scripture led to the annulment of tradition. At the end of the sixteenth
century Richard Hooker states this fundamental principle with utmost clarity:

Two opinions therefore there are concerning sufficiencie of holy scripture, each
extreamly opposite vnto the other, & bothe repugnant vnto truth. The schooles of
Rome teach scripture to be so vnsufficient, as if, except traditions were added, it did
not conteine all reuealed and supernaturall truth, which absolutely is necessary for the
children of men in this life to know that they may in the next be saued. Others iustly
condemning this opinion, growe likewise vnto a dangerous extremitie, as if scripture
did not only containe all thinges in that kinde necessary, but all thinges simply, and in
such sorte that to doe any thing according to any other lawe, were not onely vnneces-
sary, but euen opposite vnto saluation, vnlawfull and sinfull. (Hooker 1593: III.8)

The question of the relative authority of Scripture and tradition hinges on the ‘hypo-
static’ logic of the hermeneutical model, viz. to clearly distinguish (but not to separ-
ate) the natural, the human, and merely practical from the supernatural, mystical, and
the revealed. Articles IX through XIX address the critical matter of sixteenth-​century
soteriological debate: original sin, the freedom of the will, grace, faith and justification,
works, and predestination. Articles XX to XXV treat ecclesiology, XXVI to XXX the sac-
raments, XXXI to XXXVI discipline, worship, and ceremonies, and XXXVII through
the final article address the office of civil magistracy and the political duty of Christians.
Unlike the essential doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, matters of Church
order come closest to expressing a distinctively Anglican confessional identity. The
Ordinal of 1549 (revised in 1552) prescribes ‘The forme and maner of makyng and con-
secratyng of bishoppes, priestes and deacons’ and thus affirms the ancient structure of
a ‘three-​fold’ ministry. Other continental Churches of the Reformed and Lutheran
traditions saw fit to abolish such distinctions of order. Anglicans have traditionally
regarded the three-​fold ministry as a sign of catholicity and apostolicity. The Preface to
the Ordinal begins with the assertion that ‘it is evident unto all men diligently reading
holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these
Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons’. By retaining
these orders of ministry shared with the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and some of the
Lutheran and Reformed Churches—​for example, the Lutheran Church of Sweden and
the Reformed Church of Hungary—​the Elizabethan Church of England maintained an
outward institutional continuity at the time of the Reformation with the ancient Church.
At the same time, however, in its ecclesiological teaching it refused to insist that such a
form of ministerial polity belonged to the ‘esse’ of the Church. Article XIX defines the
essential marks of the visible church—​the so-​called ‘notæ ecclesiæ’—​as follows:

The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the
pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to
Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

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The Elizabethan Church of England & the Origins of Anglicanism    65

The three-​fold ministry was later urged by some to be a third ‘essential’ mark of cathol-
icity, apostolicity, and therefore of unity with the Catholic Church, but Anglican theory
has never been quite willing to pass critical judgement on the validity of the ministries
of non-​episcopally ordained clergy. The three-​fold ministry belongs to ecclesiastical
tradition and as such is affirmed as ‘not repugnant to the Word of God’. Yet traditions
‘may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so
that nothing be ordained against God’s Word’ (article XXXIV). The three-​fold orders of
ministry are conducive to the well-​being (bene esse) of the Church, but are intrinsically
adiaphora and therefore not definitive of the Church’s essence. Once again we can recog-
nize in this traditional account of order the hermeneutical paradigm. What is definitive
of the polity of the Church of England belongs to the Church in its external or phenom-
enal aspect, and therefore is not to be taken as an intrinsic mark of either catholicity
or apostolicity which expresses its doctrinal commitments. In the nineteenth century,
romantic Tractarians of the Oxford Movement preferred to portray Anglican polity as
having more in common with Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox, and were apt to
‘unchurch’ the non-​episcopal Protestant Churches.
Another key defining characteristic of the order of the Elizabethan Church of
England is the principle of provincial autonomy which derives in large part from the
Royal Supremacy. While the three-​fold hierarchy of ministers was retained at the
Reformation, these were nonetheless detached from their subordination to the papacy
from the time of Henry VIII’s appropriation of the title ‘Supreme Head of the Church’
in the Act of Supremacy of 1534, reaffirmed by Parliament in 1559 (1 Elizabeth I, cap. 1).
According to the statute, the supreme hierarch so far as external political jurisdiction
over the Church is concerned is none other than the civil sovereign. This doctrine con-
tinues to hold immense ecclesiological significance for Anglicanism. Article XXXVII
attributes to the king:

the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his dominions, unto whom the
chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil,
in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign juris-
diction … we give not to our Princes the ministering either of god’s Word, or of the
Sacraments … but that only prerogative, which we see to have been given always to
all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself; that is, that they should rule all
estates and degrees committed to their charge.

This is without doubt one of the more distinctive features of the reformed Church of
England, although shared in varying forms by quite a number of the other Churches of
the Reformation. When Anglicans insisted historically that they were not innovating in
faith or order, they did not mean that the English Church altogether lacked distinguish-
ing features vis-​à-​vis either Rome or the continental reformed Churches. Certainly
they did not they mean that Anglicanism was indistinguishable from the unreformed
Church of Rome or from the Anabaptists or other radical Protestants. As far as having
the sovereign as head of the Church is concerned, plainly there is a major distinctive

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66   Torrance Kirby

mark vis-​à-​vis other ecclesial bodies. The forty-​odd Churches of the contemporary
Anglican Communion share a mutual recognition of provincial autonomy, the inher-
itance of the ecclesiology of the autocephalous national Church. In this respect, the
Church of England can be said to have produced offspring in her own image. What,
then, is the ecclesiological significance of royal headship? Returning to the hermeneut-
ical framework, it is precisely owing to the Augustinian hypostatic model that a sharp
distinction is made between the Church as a mystical, supernatural, divine body, on the
one hand, and the Church as a phenomenal, historical, and human-​political body on
the other. Over against this hypostatic ecclesiological model of Protestant reform can be
placed the alternative model of the lex divinitatis which arranges the spiritual and tem-
poral powers in hierarchical relation. The hierarchical premise of medieval ecclesiology
was famously formulated in the bull Unam Sanctam promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII
at the Roman Council of October 1302 during his dispute with Philip the Fair, King of
France:

One sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority subjected
to spiritual power. For, since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God
and those that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13:1–​2], they would not be ordained
if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were,
were not led upwards by the other. For according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is the
law of divinity (lex divinitatis) that the lowest things are led to the highest by inter-
mediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back
equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the
superior … Therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual
power. (Reg. Vatic., L, fol. 387)7

According to the logic of the lex divinitatis—​traced back to the mystical theology
of Pseudo-​ Dionyius the Areopagite—​ there is commensurability between spirit-
ual and temporal power which allows for hierarchical mediation between them. The
Augustinian logic of the Protestant reformers, on the other, radically hypostasizes spirit-
ual and temporal powers in such a manner as to render hierarchical mediation between
them impossible. Just as the signum and res are to be kept clearly distinct in the the-
ology of sacramental presence, so in the sphere of political theology the Augustinian
hermeneutic requires that power be immediately derived from the divine source with-
out the mediation of a hierarch in the invisible realm of the civitas Dei. In the exter-
nal and phenomenal realm of the civitas terrena, on the other hand, the Church is an
empirical and therefore human political society such that jurisdiction over both it and
the commonwealth can be united in the person of the prince or civil magistrate. Closely
following Augustine’s hermeneutic, the ecclesiology of Royal Supremacy acknowledges

7  The Bull was formally issued on 18 November of the same year. See also Extravagantes Decretales

Communes, I.8.1, ‘De Maioritate et Obedientia’, Corpus Iuris Canonici, edited by Emil Friedberg
(Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879; repr. Graz: Akademische Druk-​u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955, 1959) vol. 2,
col. 1245–​6. An English translation of the Bull is available in Tierney 1988: 188–​9.

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The Elizabethan Church of England & the Origins of Anglicanism    67

Christocentric immediacy in the relation between soul and God in the internal spirit-
ual sphere, while in the external political sphere, the logic of hierarchical subordination
lends stability to the visible Church through the three-​fold ministry as well as to the
institutions of the Christian commonwealth, both in subordination to the godly Prince.
The ecclesiology of the Church of England’s institution of Royal Supremacy is a signifi-
cant species of political Augustinianism.
Provincial autonomy of the Churches in the modern Anglican Communion is an
extension of this Elizabethan ecclesiology, even though none of the provinces other than
the Church of England is formally established. The chief point is that each embodies
the principle of autocephalous autonomy. There is no universal or monarchical Primate,
and the relation among member Churches of the Communion is essentially conciliar.
Some historians have noted that the Anglican Communion exemplifies the ecclesiology
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This model of conciliarity is also reflected in
the internal constitutions of the ecclesiastical provinces where governance is vested
jointly in bishop and representatives of both the lower clergy and the laity. All three
‘estates’ of the Church have constitutional voices while the bishops remain guardians of
doctrine and worship. Another corollary of provincial autonomy is that the Archbishop
of Canterbury has no authority whatever to govern the Anglican Communion—​indeed
the ‘Communion’ properly speaking is not a Church, but rather a conciliar fellow-
ship of Churches. The bonds connecting one to another are not those of jurisdiction.
Councils, moreover, do not claim infallibility: ‘as the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria,
and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their liv-
ing and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of faith’ (article XIX). The phenom-
enal Church (the signum) is not to be conflated with the true Church universal (the res),
but nonetheless through preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments of the
Eucharist and Baptism the former enables the worshipper’s ‘participation’ of the latter.

Catholic and Reformed

From the time of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, ecclesia anglicana has under-
stood herself to be both ‘Catholic and Reformed’, although the actual interpretation of
this identity has undergone diverse and not always mutually consistent formulations. In
the sixteenth century, catholicity was associated foremost with the Church’s embrace of
the key tenets of Patristic Christological and Trinitarian orthodoxy. On this substance of
primary doctrine, as observed already, Hooker, Calvin, and the Council of Trent could
all agree. As we have also seen, the definition of ecclesiological catholicity was, however,
quite another matter. Catholicity according to the moral ontology embodied in the lex
divinitatis was not at all the same thing as catholicity according the reformed hermen-
eutic of signum and res nor, for that matter, were the sanctity, apostolicity, and unity of
the Church. In effect, the reformed Church of England, in company with other magis-
terial Protestant Churches, redefined the creedal ‘marks’ along distinctly Augustinian

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68   Torrance Kirby

lines. The continuation of adherence to the three ancient creeds, acceptance of the con-
sensus patrum within the limits set by the primacy of Scripture, the ancient three-​fold
ministry, the cathedral foundations, the outward splendour of worship—​all are taken to
be marks of catholicity, but a catholicity radically redefined in terms of this underlying
hermeneutical presupposition. The hermeneutic itself, as we have attempted to show,
was thoroughly reformed in scope. Thus, the retention of hierarchical orders of ministry
is framed within the Protestant assumption of a universal priesthood. Ministry of word
and sacraments in a congregation required ‘lawful calling’ by ‘publick authority’ (article
XXIII). Moreover, it was not the function of the priesthood to offer sacrifice—​Christ
himself who suffered death upon the cross ‘made there (by his one oblation of himself
once offered) a full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of
the whole world’.8 Until the mid-​nineteenth century there was broad consensus that the
Church of England was a reformed Church with her acknowledgement of the Scripture
as regula fidei (article VI), the doctrine of justification by faith alone (article XI), and
affirmation of the role of the laity in the governance of the Church, namely both sover-
eign as Head and Parliament, by whose authority the Articles of Religion, the Ordinal,
and the Book of Common Prayer were (and still are) promulgated. Lay participation in
church governance was also affirmed locally at the parish level in the canonically defined
office of the church wardens (see Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum 1571: Title XX).
The Elizabethan period was profoundly influential in defining the identity of the
reformed Church of England. With the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in
1559 the liturgy acquired the shape it would retain for the next four hundred years,
with some minor adjustments in 1662. The Thirty-​Nine Articles of Religion agreed by
the Convocation of Canterbury in 1563 and subsequently approved by Parliament and
ratified by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 established the parameters of doctrine. Although
attempts to bring about a reform of the Canon Law eventually foundered, the institu-
tional customs and practices of the later sixteenth century became normative for centu-
ries to come (see Kirby 2007). In the learned scholarship of such Elizabethan divines as
John Jewel, John Whitgift, Richard Bancroft, and Richard Hooker the theological char-
acter of the modern English Church was set on course. Sermon culture, as evidenced by
the institution of the outdoor pulpit at Paul’s Cross, contributed greatly to the shaping of
England’s early modern religious and political identity. In all of these respects the later
sixteenth century proved an altogether decisive period in the confessional and constitu-
tional formation of the Church of England.

8 
See the ‘Prayer of Consecration’ in the Order of the Holy Communion in the Book of Common
Prayer (1662).

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