We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Since the Anglican Church has neither a teaching Magisterium of the Roman model, nor a binding Confession of Faith as in some Lutheran and Reformed traditions, it has become commonplace to invoke the dictum Lex orandi, Lex credendi and claim that Anglican doctrine is enshrined in its liturgy. This of course may have made some sense when all Anglican Prayer Books had not wandered far from the 1662, or even 1637/1764 texts, but it becomes much more problematic today, when, even with ‘guidelines’ issued by the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation (which have only the authority a Province wishes to give them), Provincial liturgies grow further and further away from any common prayer texts. This is particularly pertinent in an ecumenical context with regard to the Anglican understanding of its threefold ministry. The Preface to the Ordinal (1550, 1552 and 1662) stated: ‘It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors that from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of Ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests and Deacons’.
1. See its use in the various contributions to Sykes, Stephen and Booty, John (eds), The Study of Anglicanism (London: SPCK/Fortress Press, 1988).Google Scholar
2. See Bradshaw, Paul, The Anglican Ordinal: Its History and Development from the Reformation to the Present Day (London: SPCK, 1971)Google Scholar; Milton, Anthony, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. At the time of writing the ASB rite is being revised for Common Worship 2000.
4. Foreword to Franklin, R. William (ed.), Anglican Orders: Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae 1896–1996 (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 1996), p. 2.Google Scholar
5. The Alternative Service Book 1980: A Commentary by the Liturgical Commission (London: Church Information Office, 1980), p. 143.Google Scholar
6. Bradshaw, Paul F., ‘The Liturgical Consequences of Apostolicae curae for Anglican Ordination Rites’, in Franklin (ed.), Anglican Orders, pp. 75–86 (75).Google Scholar
7. Bradshaw, , The Anglican Ordinal, chs. 11 and 12.Google Scholar
8. Buchanan, Colin (ed.), Modern Anglican Ordination Rites (Bramcote: Grove, 1987), chart of ordination prayers on p. 12.Google Scholar
9. Wainwright, Geoffrey, ‘Some Theological Aspects of Ordination’, Studia Liturgica 13 (1979), pp. 125–52 (125).Google Scholar
10. Metzger, Marcel, ‘Nouvelles perspectives pour le prétendue Tradition apostolique’, Ecclesia Orans 5 (1988), pp. 241–59Google Scholar; idem.‘Enquêtes autour de la prétendue Tradition apostolique’, Ecclesia Orans 9 (1992), pp. 7–36Google Scholar. Brent, Allen, Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century: Communities in Tension before the Emergence of a Monarch-Bishop (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bradshaw, Paul, Johnson, Maxwell E. and Phillips, L. Edward, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).Google Scholar
11. Stewart-Sykes, Alistair, Hippolytus: On the Apostolic Tradition (Crestwood: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001).Google Scholar
12. Bradshaw, et al. , The Apostolic Tradition, p. 34.Google Scholar
13. Bradshaw, et al. , The Apostolic Tradition, p. 34.Google Scholar
14. Together in Mission and Ministry: The Porvoo Common Statement with Essays on Church and Ministry in Northern Europe (London: Church House Publishing, 1993).Google Scholar
15. Moore, Peter (ed.), Bishops: But What Kind? (London: SPCK, 1982).Google Scholar
