The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Brief history of universlaism in the C of E

How wonderful Caleb and hey - I’ve just found an email from my friend Yentil from June of this year - and I’m sure Yentil won’t mind me sharing (this was before Yentil’s trip to the Anglican community):slight_smile: It sort of complements your post :slight_smile:

That’s a fun story. Thanks for sharing!

One other note about Jesus as a mother hen. I have heard NT Wright share an anecdote when teaching on this passage. (I don’t recall the original source, but it was a while back when I was listening to a lot of audio by him). He talks about a mother hen’s who, after a barnyard fire, was found dead with live chicks under her wings. I thought it was a cool story at the time, but I have doubts about the veracity of the story (whether it actually happens in real life). Apparently it may actually be a bit of urban legend, as seen here:
truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/motherbird.htm#.U_iT5PldWSo

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

Well Nick Wright is a bullish man - I’ve seen him live in a debate and he goes in punching and snarling - so I hope he was suitably chastened (although I really admire Nick and once met a primary school headmistress from up North at a summer party. Nick had visited when he was Bishop of Durham - and she went all bashful when he was mentioned and would just say - ‘Oh that Nick - he’s a bonny lad, a bonny lad - and he was a darling with my kids’ :slight_smile:)

Anyway those urban myths remind of the medieval bestiaries - that were all base on hearsay too - travellers tales passed on by word of mouth. And so my contribution to the continuation foo this very pleasant conversation must be a medieval bestiary description Christ our Pelican (makes sense :confused:)

I bet I first heard the fire-chicken story from NT Wright, too. :wink:

I WANT TO SEE THE PELICAN THAT ATTACKS AND EATS POISONOUS CROCODILES!! :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :laughing:

Ask and you shall recieve:



I’m thinking that’s a real crock :laughing:

One of my fav flix - “AVP”: youtu.be/WAVv3s6uW1k

What fun :smiley: And now here comes the party pooper post :smiley:

Hi All 

I was thinking about the original thread here –which was started perhaps three years ago? – as a way of rounding this one off. It was started by Rev Drew - and I wonder if someone could tag my dear friend Drew and Luke (who I’ve never actually dialogued with) into this thread; I don’t know how to tag people here. The OP for this thread is a brief summary of my settled views about Universalism and the C of E and the cancelation of the 42nd Article (and it really is an easy read). There is a lot more that I can say – but I’m not giving everything away because I hope to write a book about this – or at least a series of essay – and if I don’t get these published I think I’ll still copywrite them before posting online (or something like that - whatever it is you have to do to retain a little bit of ownership).

But I do remember that on the original thread – in the brainstorming stages – that a couple of good suggestions were made by both Drew and Luke – ones that I wasn’t quite sure what to say about then; but in the light of plenty of research I’ve found them to be good pointers but pointers that need to now be discarded (well that’s my view and you are free to disagree and to dialogue about my view :slight_smile:.

Notes for Rev. Drew ([tag]revdrew61[/tag])

Hi Drew :slight_smile: – I remember that you speculated that Matthew Parker via Martin Bucer may have been behind the abrogation of the 42nd article along with Elizabeth. So here is my take on this now (I’ve dealt with Liz in the OP) -
Regarding Matthew Parker; well he was a moderate man and an irenic one certainly – which was why Elizabeth chose him as her first Archbishop of Canterbury – a post that he really did not want to take. But there is nothing in his private correspondence to suggest that he was a universalist and, as I’ve said above, in his initial proposals of amendments to Cranmer’s Articles from the Edwardian Second prayer book the 24nd article still remains – it has not been crossed out. So there’s a mystery for us. It seems very unlikely that a consensus of bishops and clergy at the Convocation decided to back a measure to cancel the 42nd article – since some of these were strict Calvinists returned hot from Geneva where they’d sought refuge from the persecutions of Bloody Mary (they were not as powerful a block as they later became in Elizabeth’s reign (but they still had weight).

Regarding Martin Bucer -he was a moderate among the Continental Reformers (like Philip Melanchthon and other names less well know) and he had some of the hallmarks of a Christina Humanist ( and Erasmus never disliked’ him). Also Bucer was involved in attempts to build new bridges between Catholics and Protestants at a time when the old bridges were well and truly ablaze. He was also a colleague and friend of Matthew Parker’s when he at the University of Oxford for a time - but the poor man died completely worn out after only a few years of safety). He wasn’t around at/ alive for the Elizabethan Settlement the Convocation – but was his spiritual presence ( as it were ) behind the cancelation of the 42nd Article)? I think almost certainly not and here are my reasons:

Yes, Bucer was moderate Reformer but ‘moderate Reformer ‘does not necessarily mean he was universalist – and he showed no sympathy for the Origenist traditions of his day in his writings.

In addition, he had Hans Denck the Anabaptist spiritual – who was certainly influenced by Erasmus – banished from Strasbourg for suspected universalism and suspected Unitarianism. The two charges went together but the charge of universalism was as serious as the one of Unitarianism. In the end Bucer himself was banished from Strasbourg and fled to England (I have also read that the young John Calvin was arraigned before Bucer on a charge of Unitarianism – but Bucer let him leave unmolested which compares very favourably with Calvin’s treatment of Servetus arraigned later in Geneva on the same charge when Calvin had come into his time of influence (but I only have one secondary source for this information currently– and anyway it’s not important to the current story).

Bucer and his refugee colleagues at Oxford who were invited to England by Cranmer – Peter Martyr (the Italian Reformer) and Jan Laski ( the Polish Reformer)– advised England’s chief Archbishop about the shortcoming of his First Prayer Book – which Elizabeth secretly favoured – that did not include the 42nd article and did include prayers for the dead and a high Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist. The high doctrine of the Eucharist disappeared from the Second Prayer book along with prayers for the dead because of the advice given by Bucer and his companions. Indeed the 42nd article – based partly on a similar article in the Continental Protestant Augsburg confession – may have been formulated with the collaboration of Bucer (an hypothesis I’d like to run past another scholar in the field)

Notes for Luke

Hi Luke :slight_smile: I remember you arguing or a t least strongly implying that Cranmer’s Anglicanism was a very Calvinist Anglicanism and that Cranmer’s teachings about hell in a couple of his Homilies show that Universalism and Anglicanism don’t mix.

Calvin did vie for influence in England when the boy king Edward was on the throne – dedicating some of his biblical commentaries to Edward and writing to Cranmer advising him to hunt down and kill Anabaptists without mercy for example – but Cranmer was canny about Calvin and kept him at arms length. The Reformers he asked to help him were moderates. We can see this in the seventeenth article on predestination which they advised on – retained with only a few modifications by Parker. This affirms predestination to life but says nothing about predestination to damnation. Towards the and of Elizabeth’s; reign when the Calvinists were growing strong in power in England a group of Calvinist hotheads did formulate six articles which they hoped to have imposed on the Church of England one of which affirmed double predestination. Elizabeth’s Archbishop at this time – John Whitgift was a moderate Calvinist and probably agreed with the hotheads in principle. However he also abided by the idea of comprehensiveness within the Church and was loyal to Elizabeth. So he quickly dealt with the hotheads– and the appointment of Whitgift, a loyal Calvinist, to deal with the disloyal Calvinist when they were growing in power is another example of Elizabeth’s political acumen. Certainly she was very fond of Whitgift and called him ‘ my little black husband’ affectionately.

I also remember you citing passages from the Book of Homilies concerning teaching about hell in defence of his argument that universalism is not consonant with Anglicanism – either today or in the past. The Homilies were standard sermons written by Cranmer and later added to mainly by Bishop John Jewell for the clergy to preach in Churches. Well the article in the Thirty Nine Articles about these specifically refers to the relevance of these sermons to ‘these times’ and not to all times. Also an Elizabethan Origenist could easily accommodate these as referring to age long purifying fire in the light of their knowledge of New Testament Greek

Any questions gratefully received :slight_smile:

In Christ our Hen

Dick

I’m not sure Luke is still around or even wants to correspond here anymore; I think he left the CoE, too, for… well a more purely Calv denomination, not sure which. I’ll tag [tag]Alex Smith[/tag] and see if he knows; Luke was his friend.

I’ll upgrade your post to tag RevDrew, though. Basically all you do is type someone’s forum name (but it has to be exactly correct, so revdrew61 in Drew’s case); then select their name (easy to do with revdrew61, but for someone like Alex whose forum name is two ‘words’ be sure to drag-select); and click the Tag button at the far right immediately above the composition window where you’re typing or editing your post. (Font colour is to the left, then font size usually Normal, then URL etc.)

That will drop the proper Tag code around the selected forum name; or you can manually type it yourself if you like.

It’ll look like this, using {Tag}Alex Smith{/Tag} for an example, except with square brackets instead of fancy ones.

Thanks Jason :slight_smile:

You are a pal. I just wanted to have a chat with Luke and Drew if possible because I was researching the issue anyway following up my interest in Erasmus - and that’s how I saw the original thread in a search. And once I joined it was so wonderful to have people interested in what I was turning up - even if i was going all around the houses - as you have to at first - and I used to so much look forward to Drew’s encouraging replies and was inspired because the issue was not just of historical relevance to him. Oh and knowing that dear Allan was enjoying it and young Matt popped in to say he was enjoying it too, and Corpselight was becoming passionately interested in the thread - and arranged to see me for a drink because of it; and I became the friend of a heavy rock guitarist and snake fancier via Erasmus, Liz the Virgin Queen, and the Family of Love;-D.
Oh and then there was Paul Corinthians who wanted to make a PDF document of it and distribute it - but it wasn’t anywhere near cooked enough for that. And when you gave me the thumbs up first - Jason the Administrator - I was in seventh heaven; seriously, I was :slight_smile:

But I did read the discussion on the thread before I turned up closely, and what was said did take me on interesting journey’s of investigation. I think what I’ve said on this thread is as sober as I can get - and it is a careful attempt to summarise the relevant things I’ve found out from the leads that were given (and to show I didn’t; just ignore the earlier discussion and dismiss it - I would never do that; not at all because it was passionate and people were grappling with real issues - both historical and current :slight_smile:)

I think that Erasmus and Elizabeth are ‘sexy’ enough to give an interesting narrative for a book about this story – and the issues of religious tolerance broached are also hot ones today. But perhaps some more focussed essays are what might actually happen (at least for starters). But if I ever do get a book published on this I will of course make a proper acknowledgement of the inspiration and support from the people of this site, and if, say, Rev Drew wants to write an introduction to it saying about that original thread and placing the subject in the perspective of what it means to him as a representative non sectarian Christian universalist and an Anglican today I’d be delighted for that too. But that’ all in the future and is only possible – not yet probable.

But I will run with this one – even if I have to get it vanity published one day :_D (very likely :smiley:). And I’m happy to do some more stuff talking round the topic here in the future without disclosing shed loads of precise details

At the moment I’m still hoping that I can finally have a chat with Rev. Professor Screech the Erasmus scholar – and hope this happens before Christmas 

Dick 

And of course I will have to mention ‘Yentil’ too who actually facilitated the coming together of my thoughts above beautifully :slight_smile:; and Caleb and Dave and CHris etc here now. And if it seems worth the craik it would be good to have a another rite introduction by an American universalist giving a different perspective from an English Anglican one about what the story means to them today. Hmmmmm - now who am I thinking of here? Well someone who has been more than kind to me about this project has been our very own Mr Jason Pratt. Yes I think he could find 1000 word without too much trouble. Oh an I’ll have to give Cindy a thank you - when I was wiring this stuff we used to have very pleasant bonding chats over at her Intro thread - which were a welcome break for me - and the reason I’ve always loved Cindy (one of them) is that at some stage she told me that my stuff was too long and that it didn’t particularly interest her anyway :smiley: Well I don’t think any attention I was getting was going too much to my head - but inasmuch that we are all human and prone to get above ourselves - that sure put me in my place (Cindy is very intelligent and I respect her opinion - so I felt ‘ouch’) :smiley:

This is no masterpiece I am writing and I’m too old to care about fame or fortune anyway - so you don’t have to wake me up from such fantasies. I have enough to live on, the thought of unwarranted public attention gives me the creep. The audience for this story will be limited anyway, and I’m not a great historian or a great writer. But this has been a lot of research - and many of you here have been my colleagues in it without realising it. Thank you. I hope whatever I write/am writing helps some Christian universalist with a sense of confident identity in the realisation that Universalism is not a new things and the problems faced by universalists are not new things - so we can be of good courage in good company. I’m seeing my sister tomorrow and I’ll let her know that if for some reason I shuffle off my mortal coil before finishing this - and it’s not the only project that I have to complete - that she must send my copy to you to put on site here. But I don’t; intend shuffling off my mortal coil any time soon - but you never know and we must have good courage about this and be seem doing our duty :laughing:

OK [tag]Jason Pratt[/tag]- I’ve looked at those who have shown an interest here, in no particular order (including Cindy who was actually quite right about the length of my posts and I started doing shorter ones because of her - at least most of the time, and she showed a lot of interest in me as an Anglican today which is the other side of this one :smiley:). So I’ll tag those that I can think of at the moment - and then go away and think of others (well I think Andrew All Brothers, Sass, Pog, Alistair, Steve, Catherine and Jeremy have also asked questions - again in no particular order - about this story other threads and other sites so I’ll do then after I’ve done this lot)

[tag]corpselight[/tag] [tag]revdrew61[/tag] [tag]DaveB[/tag] [tag]ChrisB[/tag] [tag]Kate[/tag] [tag]Caleb Fogg[/tag] [tag]Matt Wiley[/tag] [tag]AllanS[/tag] [tag]1Cor1522[/tag] [tag]TGB[/tag] [tag]Sherman[/tag] [tag]Cindy Skillman[/tag]

This thread may also be of interest to -

[tag]WE ARE ALL BROTHERS[/tag] [tag]TRMII[/tag] [tag]Alex Smith[/tag] [tag]AlSmith[/tag]
[tag]Catherine[/tag] [tag]amy[/tag] [tag]alecforbes[/tag] [tag]redhotmagma[/tag] [tag]Ravi Holy[/tag] [tag]pog[/tag] [tag]Sass[/tag]

Present! And interested!! :smiley:
(As long as a Trin, but non-ortho, is still within the Pale of orthodoxy and can break cyber-bread with ya’ll. :laughing:

Of course so Dave :smiley: - ‘We would not make windows into men’s souls’ :laughing: (because it is difficult enough having windows into our won souls - only God knows the heart)

Oh yes there is a gal with a rather spiky user name who in real life has one of the loveliest and cuddliest old fashioned name’s I’ve ever heard - that’s both parts of it. And she’s lovely too. And she is marrying a lovely and rather cuddly Anglican very soon I believe. So I call upon [tag]JaelSister[/tag]

You get that material compiled and the book written, and I will gladly contribute an intro for it!

Though Robin Parry, as editor at Wipf and Stock (who would seem a good publisher opportunity), might serve better. :slight_smile:

I’ve let Luke know :slight_smile:

Thanks lads :smiley:

Well [tag]Jason Pratt[/tag] – it’s nice of you to suggest Robin as the Intro writer. I don’t know whether any of my rude and slightly unfair comments about him in early summer ever reached him – probably not. Well I hope not. Och I’ve always been good at offending anyone in positions of influence – all of my life; so knowing my luck. I’m not holding my breath …:smiley: But the comments were unfair and just a bit of old fashioned hectoring. I’m an old school Universalist – it’s not a problem with the people I mix with - and I don’t have to be diplomatic at all. Robin as an evangelical universalist reminds me quite a lot of Erasmus in his being All things to All men (and actually I have very much enjoyed Robin’s books and his blogs too :smiley:).
OK this is in its early stages of writing – I’ve got to do some schmoozing with academics between now and Christmas and check and double check my sources and take a close look at some of Origen’s commentaries, Erasmus’s Paraphrases and his Annotations. After I’ve done this – if all goes well – I reckon the book should take me say six months to write (because the research will be complete).

I want the book to include something of substance about the early fourteen century flowering of universalism and ‘wide hoperism’ in England and how this was passed on.

Plenty of stuff about Erasmus and Elizabeth and the Elizabethan Settlement etc as outlined above (that will be the main portion of the book)
And then to finish off something of substance about the alter history of universalism in England and America – not in the same detail as the main body but something of substance.

I want this manuscript – even if it just remains a manuscript - to be accessible and useful, and I rather like the idea of being guided by Yentil questions from a Kate person who is very curious about Anglicanism and the history of universalism. I don’t know what anyone else would think of that but I feel very comfortable with it, and it lightens the subject up too.

And then perhaps at the end I could have some reflections on how the story chimes with universalists today (and any background about how the book grew out discussion at EU)

Drew on an English view?
Jason – on an American view?
Alex on an Australian view?

And as well as scholarly apparatus – well I think I must have about 100 books for the bibliography at least – it might be an idea to have some appendices –

14 instances of Universalists citing the abrogation of the 42nd article as their charter from George Rust onwards (not all Anglican btw)
A time line?
Key terms?
Key people?

It could work nicely – and I really don’t; want to write a stodgy academic book that is going to be of no interest and no use to anyone. I’m not in the academic career path anyway.

Ooh yes and another person I’d have to thank would be [tag]Dr Mike[/tag] – because I’ve had to know about the whole scope of universalist history to get the confidence to finally think of writing this book. Much as I didn’t feel like revisiting the Bohemenists and the Florentine Neo-Platonists in the dark months of this year – Dr Mike focussed my attention. And although these schools are only tangential to my story – it’s great to have really got to know about them. I hope Dr Mike wishes me well with my project – whatever happens to it – as I wish him well with his. I grew very fond of him 

Oh and [tag]pog[/tag] too – working with him on that list was vital to enable me to see the big picture.
So wish me well. Have a think. And my first step now is to have a chat with Prof Bob my old boss in the first part of September.
Any advice on a snappy title gratefully received– The Abrogation of the 42nd Article sounds a bit flatulent to me :smiley:

Thanks Dick, How about “The Edges of Truth”? This popped into my mind as it reflects your search around a topic which probably was not central to the historical hot pot of the Reformation period but was persistently there. Like (and not wishing to sound irreverent) the Holy Spirit in the form of a little boy on the edge of the pack trying to get the big kids attention in a rowdy game in the school playground. :unamused: encouragement for the project! Chris
Ps yes it would need a descriptive subtitle too. I checked for other books of this title on net but found similar but not the same.

Hi, Dick

I’m not ignoring you – It’s just that I didn’t have much to input on this topic. I can’t help myself though; I’ve never been able to make myself read history, so it’s not just you at all. And the silly thing is, I enjoy knowing the bits I do know. Makes me feel all superior and everything. :laughing: Bottom line: I would like to just KNOW. Could you maybe do an info upload to the collective consciousness or something? :wink: If I could figure out how to link up to said consciousness then, I’d be delighted to bypass the actual work of acquiring knowledge. :wink: Maybe at some future time (or not time) that will happen. Still, I hope you know I always love you, dear brother. And I do much admire and appreciate your vast understanding of this topic. It always amazes me, and it’s nice to know that you’re there with a safety net to correct me if I say something dumb regarding historical (or many other) things.

Love & Blessings, Cindy

Dear [tag]Cindy Skillman[/tag]–

My dear friend – oh no you are not remotely dumb; you are a very smart cookie indeed (and I mean that with all my heart) The posts above which mention you are actually not remotely ironic. They are a genuine tribute to you. Inasmuch as I’ve put things together reasonably well here you also played a big part by being a good mate who kept me down to earth (especially when people started to give me the very dignified title ‘Prof’ which in no way belongs to me :smiley:) and a delightful interlocutor at you (Into thread you joined shortly before I did I remember and all the chaps were dying to have a word with you :smiley:).

I have to say that the biggest joke is that I didn’t; even do a history degree – not at all. I did a degree in English Literature with practical drama and a minor option in History of Ideas (and an even tinier option in History of Art). But when I was a young boy I loved History to bits. I was so horrible that I could recite all of the Kings of England from Egbert the Bretwalda (High King) up to her present, dread and gracious majesty :smiley: Can you just imagine me being wheeled out occasionally at family parties with my first party trick ‘ Egbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelbert, Hel Bald, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Athelstan…’!!! what a ghastly little monster :smiley: And then one day I met a child who could go back even further than Egbert the High King and knew all of the kings of Wessex (where Egbert ruled as an ordinary King) back to a Saxon chieftain called Scaef’, and all of the Presidents of the USA in order – the bustard :smiley: And that was an early trauma for me :smiley: I’d quite forgotten that I loved history but had to teach it when at a university as part of an introductory course – and it was only by teaching this course that i learnt the proper skills of a historian in using sources, applying theory etc… And I’d almost forgotten about all of this again until I dropped in here at EU.

Och well – I can’t give you a brain transfusion with the historical knowledge that I have :smiley: although if I could I would. But I will try to think of you and people like you when i write this stuff up properly. Historians have to try and get the right balance between narrative (sort telling) description and analysis in their work. There will have to be plenty of analysis in my little screed, but I’ll try not to neglect story.

As an amateur historian I have had you in mind and my other more conservative Christian universalist friends in mind very much this year at one point – not because I wanted you to read what I was writing (it reads like thick treacle anyway :smiley:) but because I was writing it with your well being in mind. When Dr Mike did his lecture that was posted on YouTube by Prince town - fired up by whoever and whatever and having honestly , I now believe. reached false conclusions through too narrow research, the bit that worried me about his lecture most was that he was suggesting that all Christian Universalists draw their inspiration from a tradition based in -

Gnostic occultism and ritual magic
Duplicitous and violent social anarchism
Narcissism and self obsession

And the lecture was most defamatory when dealing with the early modern period up until the twentieth century. And the lecture was out there like a virus on the internet and the people I believed were most vulnerable of being disfellowshipped via a persecution myth were my dear conservative American Universalist friends. I wasn’t at all vulnerable on this score but others here might have been. So call me a ‘brick’ for wading through all of those tomes on Occultism, Hegel, and Florentine Magic etc. Man they were so boring – this stuff is so nerdish:-D
Love

In Christ our Hen

Dick