Early Anglican Ecclesiology and Contemporary Ecumenism

Abstract

As indicated here, several recent articles have targeted ecclesiology as a source of the frustration felt by ecumenists at lack of progress towards fuller visible unity between the churches. One reason cited for this blockage is the fact that ecclesiology is driven by prior systematic theological concerns. This article examines one particular church's self-understanding in one particular period of time, namely the Church of England in the decades immediately after the Reformation, and relates it to recent Anglican dialogue with other churches. Reformed ecclesiology, which defined a true institutional Church as where the Word was rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly celebrated, and which understood the Apostolic Succession in doctrinal terms rather than in terms of a sacramental rite, has proved fruitful in Anglican discussions with other Protestant churches but has had to grapple with a different self-understanding in the Roman Catholic Church.