Please Don’t Make Nonsense the Thirty-nine Articles

Just when you think that words matter, they don’t! As “we receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense” (the ACNA Constitution and Canons, and affirm that “we uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today” (The Jerusalem Declaration), someone on social media recommends Harold Browne’s An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, or worse, E. J. Bicknell’s The Thirty-nine Articles - as if these pretend to be contextualist approaches to Anglican’s confession! Gillis Harp, Professor of History at Grove City College, unmasks the three ways the Articles have been interpreted over time in his invitation to consider what Edwardian and Elizabethan reformers considered primary. The historic Anglican formularies do not constitute a wax nose to be shaped in any manner that suits us. Words matter!