On Calvinistic Anglicans

John Calvin, Jacob Arminius, John Wesley and Ludivica Molina, Western Thinkers Who Wrestled with the Reformed Ideas Proposed by Extreme Augustinians

By Bp. Joseph

Over the last few years, I have observed a growing movement of young men entering North American Anglicanism from fundamentalist Calvinists backgrounds, attempting to do what Oliver Cromwell failed to achieve within the Apostolic English Patrimony - the hostile transformation of the church catholic into a Puritanized Presbyterianism of dubious commitment to the Scriptures in their original context. John Calvin is the patron saint of this movement, and more and more young radicals are trying to cast Anglicanism as a “Reformed Movement.” Such a move is extremely concerning, especially when the fruits of Calvinism are observed in contrast to Christ’s life-giving and holy Gospel. 

An old philosophy professor taught me that there are always two sides to every idea - The first is the idea in its factual presentation, and the second are the attitudes that the idea inspires. In the real world of politics and relationships, the attitudes seem to be more important. 

Calvinism always struck me as an interesting attitudinal phenomenon, culturally and spiritually, requiring much study, inspiring great self confidence, and ending in theological conclusions and a Christian practice at odds with both Holy Tradition and the doctrinal diversity of the Early Church. While I find Calvin intellectually stimulating and his reasoning in the Institutes an obvious work of genius, I shudder at the attitudes that these ideas release on the world, attitudes that one can constantly see at work in Internet chat rooms and in the divisive and condescending tone of his apologists when they critique or visit other churches. The fact that Calvinists have a "cage stage" is also highly telling. Calvinism inspires a lifestyle claiming the authority of an ancient, living, salvific path, but then teaches in opposition to what has been universally received in the Latin, Greek and Syriac Traditions about the Image of God and Man's Free Will, all with startling self-assurance and consistent defensiveness. God's loving nature and Complete Goodness are, ultimately, questioned, and God's fairness and justice can never be reconciled with human experience. 

Even less attractive to me is a Church like Calvin started, that breaks with the local, Apostolic, Catholic, incarnational model, which again was universally received by all the right-believing, ancient Churches. It also must, of logical necessity, undermine the Greek Old Testament and the vast majority of Church Fathers, because of their "Semi-Pelagianism", thus dismissing the majority of Church History and Christian experience offhand as misled or ignorant. 

From the Calvinist Perspective, God Delights in Death and Destruction, which He has Ordained, Directly Contradicting the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church

Calvinist Anglicans, then, from my perspective, must have a great deal of cognitive dissonance trying to balance the realities of an "Arminian" Church and a Catholic Tradition that has not yielded to Calvin over the last 500 years, the obvious process-orientation and sanctification thrust of the Apostolic practices of Confession, Absolution, Eucharist, around which the Prayerbook was built, and their desire to change the Church to fit their theological paradigms. It seems to be a forceful commandeering for the sake of institutional and apostolic authority in much the same way that other groups have also tried to undermine the ancient faith with their own particular ideologies. It is also a mystery to me why so many Calvinists desire to be Anglican when Calvin himself was instrumental in founding a sect that faithfully applies his doctrines, and a simple denominational change would rectify the problem. If you want to be faithful to a heretic’s teachings, go join the sect that he started! 

As for Cranmer's personal theology, while personally favoring Calvinism in later life, his desire to follow the Continental Reformation was stymied corporately by the synodal and imperial mind of his peers and the authorities. Like all Church history, individual bishops can be wrong, and personal views often lead into heresy, but the "mean" of the Church is revealed in conciliarity, mutual submission and love. This is why, even with the individual struggles and misdirections of individual Reformers, we can see that the "essence" of the Anglican tradition was not fundamentally changed, until the last 40 years, when orders became a matter of human rights rather than divine mandate. Only then did it lose its apostolic orders or valid sacraments, and until then it can be argued that it was the local expression of the Church Catholic, even after its administrative separation from Rome.

It is a common argument amongst "Reformed Anglicans" to undermine the "Anglo-Catholics" by arguing that the "Popish movement" of Anglicans started in the 1840's and is associated primarily with Cardinal John Henry Newman. It is as if no one realizes the Prayerbook was completely re-written three times, or that the Articles had to be reinterpreted to conform them to ancient Christian beliefs in the first few decades after their ratification! This process of realigning with Tradition started with Jewel and Hooker, continued into complete fruition with the Caroline Divines and the Non-Jurors, was enfleshed by the amended Prayerbook of the Scottish Church and its "Wee Bookies", given theological underpinning in the Wesleyan Revival's theological focus on sanctification and the Greek Fathers - and then, only then, reflected in the Oxford Movement. 

No, our insistence that the Anglican Patrimony preserves an Orthodox witness in the West, and that it is worthwhile to re-incorporate it into the canonical communion of the Orthodox Church, is not an anachronistic rejection of the "real history of Anglicanism." It reflects the historical reality and the unfortunate secular politics which were used by Protestant-minded, anti-historical, compromised leaders to corrupt the Anglican Episcopacy with Calvinism, Presbyterianism, Liberalism and Latitudinarianism. 

This Secular Cartoon Displays All the Features of the Calvinist Heresy in One Icon