The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology by Paul Avis (review)

In this volume, the venerable English parish priest and theologian Paul Avis has republished several of his previous writings on ecclesiological themes, a topic he rightly claims is of utmost importance for contemporary Anglican theology and polity.

His brief reference to Anglican ecclesiologies based on koinonia, or on Trinitarian patterns, is clear and ecumenically significant. He adds, as well, the more ecumenically tentative ecclesiology based on Eucharist and the unusual ecclesiology based on baptism, which he argues belongs with the others, and which has a particular Anglican appeal. Rejecting unduly modest accounts of Anglicanism as “provisional” and as holding nothing that is not held by other orthodox ecclesial bodies, he argues that there is a distinctive Anglican ecclesiology based on the recognition of four “levels” of church: (a) the church that is universal, simultaneously divided yet united but without a universal jurisdiction; (b) the church that is the provincial or national Anglican church; (c) the “local” church of the diocese, synodally governed and episcopally led; and (d) the church of the parish, with its congregation, “the most local level of the Church (though not ‘the local church’) and the smallest unit of the Church to have ecclesial significance for Anglicans.” This obvious four level pattern relating to the Church of England applies mutatis mutandis to the various churches of the Anglican communion and is a distinctive ecclesiological pattern of Anglicanism and its varied churches that could be held up to avoid a confusing and contradictory Anglican claim to hold nothing that is not held by others. There are, he argues, distinctive differences about Anglican ecclesiology.

Avis has distilled many wise and considered opinions about Anglican churches and especially their emerging ecclesiologies in this time of tension within the Anglican world. Not surprisingly, his central focus is on the Church of England, which he uses as an exemplar. The details will not fit with all the Anglican churches, several of which have dealt with the controversial ordinations of women and those in same-sex relations long before the Church of England, and some of which have not yet. Some churches, such as the important African churches, are not mentioned at all. The Anglican Church of Canada is largely ignored, even though, through one of its dioceses, it has been blamed for straining the morale of the Anglican Communion; it is mentioned as if it were an appendix of the Episcopal Church of the US, and its members referred to as “Episcopalians” (63). The Episcopal Church itself is given short shrift, represented in detail only by one polarized position and apparently characterized without criticism by the view that, with respect to the decisions of the TEC, “serious theological reflection is not a prerequisite” (77), thus ignoring a large body of American theological reflection of the highest caliber.

It should be surprising, even in the Church of England, to justify the important position of the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Anglican Communion as the occupant of “the most ancient see” in the Anglican Communion (9). As far as we can tell, the Irish see of Armagh was founded about a century and a half before Augustine’s mission arrived in Canterbury. If we ignore the previous history, Canterbury may indeed be the “first metropolitan see” of the Church of England (62), and because of the spread of Anglicanism from England to its colonies (including, apparently, Ireland and Scotland), the proper centre of universal authority within Anglicanism; but fact is one thing and the accepted claims of colonial power another.

Even more troublesome is Avis’s casualness about describing Anglican understandings of the unique authority of scripture in matters of core doctrine. The various words “sufficient,” “central,” “paramount,” and “supreme” are applied to Anglican understandings of the authority of “God’s word written,” even though only “sufficiency” and “primacy” would derive from the Articles of Religion and the writings of the judicious Richard Hooker, to whom Avis frequently refers...