Discipleship" is a buzzword with heavy-duty baggage. It’s heavy lifting! It has come to mean those things that we do (disciplines) to exercise our way towards holiness. It’s the 21st century equivalent of the Medieval monastic routines that leads to a ladder-climbing view of Christianity - with the top always ALWAYS two more steps away!

Reformation Anglicans are obviously “reformed.” Calvinism and Arminianism are not two views of a car accident that eventually meet up at some evangelistic crusade in Minneapolis. They are mutually exclusive teachings.

If you have ever wondered how Thomas Cranmer would seek to apply the biblical principles of “law and gospel,” and “grace and gratitude” to today’s generation, there’s no better place to begin than by listening to these four preachers explain how they prepare and deliver sermons. - Ashley Null

In the 1530s Cranmer came to fully embrace the evangelical movement sweeping England and the European continent, including the Protestant understanding of justification by faith alone apart from works. “The question that would occupy Cranmer for the remainder of his life,” according to theologian Ashley Null, “was how exactly the sacraments of the church fit into this new narrative.”

What would a one-stream Anglican Church look like - - the biblical, evangelical stream that’s front-and-center in the Articles of Religion, the Homilies, and in the Book of Common Prayer? We all know that three-streams sounds nice and agrees with our digestive sensitivities (Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal), but it’s a new idea - only from 1954 (Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God). We also know that there is not a hint or suggestion of more than one stream anywhere in the Formularies.

Seabury stood for strong ecclesiastical control (bishops), and for the diocese as the main unit of ministry rather than the local congregation. Like many who followed in the tracks of William Laud, Samuel Seabury was a flaming Arminian, happily opposed to the adoption of the historic Anglican formularies (the Articles of Religion). After he died, the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church adopted the Articles as our theological standard in 1801.

There is small comfort in Jesus as an example to follow, but what we really need is a Savior who brings us from death to life. We don’t need self-improvement tips from the pulpit; the word that saves and sanctifies is not a laundry list of things to do, but the “rest” that Jesus promises in the Comfortable Word. Moralism always leads to dull, defeated, judgmental Christians on a moral-improvement pilgrimage .

It is a common mistake to not distinguish Tractarianism from the preceding generation of High Churchmen. Newman considered himself more in line with the “old divines” (earlier followers of William Laud) than with the high churchmen of the early 1800s. In fact, the Tractarians made fun of the High Church Party just as they did the evangelicals, because of their opposition to the Tracts for the Times.

The last few months I have searched various Anglican and Episcopal Church websites to find out what is being taught in adult SS classes and new member classes. It is actually shocking how shallow (and factually wrong!) are many of the things that are being taught! Early in my ministry I received a very generous postcard with the famous portrait of Thomas Cranmer from Bishop Fitz Allison thanking me for something I wrote. He concluded his card with: “Please don’t stop teaching the Articles of Religion to your folks!” Fitz was right, and for 40 years I have tried to teach Reformation Anglicanism. Here are my notes for an introductory class on Reformation Anglicanism. Please feel free to use them, change them, or dump them as you find helpful.

There is no unbroken line of ordained bishops and priests traceable back to St. Peter by the automatic conferral of grace by the tactile laying-on-of-hands. The succession the Bible teaches is the succession of apostolic teaching from the Apostles to all subsequent generations to the end of time - the passing on of the catholic faith once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3; 2 Tim 2:2).

For Cranmer, assurance of salvation is essential for the Christian life. The medieval Church had no such notion of assurance. Catholics were to face the future with a sober uncertainty about their fate, striving to lead a godly life in a constant state of both hope and fear. For Cranmer, however, only assurance makes clear the true, unconditional love of God for humanity, and only this assurance begins to birth in believers the power to love God more than sin. How? Gratitude - the gratitude that can only come from the assurance of salvation.

There would be battles between those who anchor their identity in the formularies and those who don’t (the Thirty-nine Articles, the Homilies, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer). The 1830’s Oxford Movement and the Broad Church Movement and its various iterations of progressivism have taken a shotgun to the traditional Anglican formularies and tried their hardest to relegate them to the basement where Aunt Hazel was kept when she visited.

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!

If all this sounds formulaic, propositional and cold, it wasn’t so for Thomas Cranmer and the reformers, and neither is it for Christians today. It is a life-changer! Dane Ortland reminds us that “the gospel offers us not only legal exoneration - inviolably precious truth! - it also sweeps us into Christ’s very heart.” Saving faith is much more than a legal agreement for adoption signed in some far-away heavenly courtroom; it is adoption! It’s not just about having our sins forgiven; it’s union with the one who created us and loves us for such a relationship. Now that our salvation is “finished,” he is not sitting around waiting to see how we do with it - in heaven he lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). “Intercession is the constant hitting ‘refresh’ of our justification in the court of heaven (Ortland).”

Cranmer did not believe that the apostles passed down the Holy Spirit through an unbroken line of holy bishops like a pipeline. No, for Cranmer, the author of the founding formularies of Anglicanism, apostolic succession meant the passing down of apostolic teaching.

Dr. Peter Jensen succinctly (in 3 minutes!) explains why the 16th Century English Reformation still matters. Not only does it matter, but this is where Anglicans find their very identity!

Some 16th century Christians in England were willing to die for their belief in justification by faith alone, knowing that on this central teaching of Scripture were all the other convictions of the 16th century Reformation: worship/liturgy that is participatory and the means in which grace is communicated in word and sacrament, the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers (universal priesthood), and an understanding of real presence in which the grace of Holy Communion is offered to everyone who will receive God’s very spiritual presence into their heart by faith with thanksgiving.

The 16th century Protestants understood the Christian gospel to simply say that we do nothing; God does everything. We add nothing to the sufficiency of God’s saving work, not even our faith. “Just lift your sorry heads and look at the bronze serpent held high in the crowd of sick and dying people and you will be saved” (Nu 21:6-9)! Five hundred years ago, when they began to read the Bible, the original ad fontes source, they quickly discovered the Bible’s central teaching: justification by faith. What this means, of course, is justification by Grace received by faith.

Perkins passionately believed that Scripture can be best understood and preached from a reference of law & gospel: the law (the Bible’s commandments and imperatives) show us God’s standard for living and our failure to live up to it, and it then leads to our need for a righteousness beyond our own self-righteousness. The gospel is the word of Scripture about God’s solution for human sinfulness: Jesus who lived the life we failed to live in our good efforts, and who died the death that we deserve because of our sin.

I eavesdropped on a conversation once in which a very nice lady said, “I love being Episcopalian; you can believe anything and still be one!” She would agree with William James who said, “Anglicanism remains obese and round and comfortable and decent with this world’s decencies, without one acute note in its whole life or history.” Is this true? No!! This is why Reformation Anglicanism that is grounded in the authority of Holy Scripture and the historic Anglican formularies lives large to see another day!