I’ll do another post on other significant changes to the Prayer Book; but I’ll not keep you waiting any longer. Let us now consider the Abrogation of the 42nd article in context.
Cranmer’s 42nd Article stated that:
All men shall not be saved at length. They also are worthy of condemnation who endeavour at this time to restore the dangerous opinion that all men, be they never so ungodly, shall at length be saved, when they have suffered pain for their sins a certain time appointed by God’s justice.
The accepted view, which Farrar alludes with a degree of scepticism in ‘Eternal Hope’ (but remains agnostic on), is that this Article seems to be entirely consonant with the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg (1530), one of the documents on which Cranmer’s Articles of 1552 are based. The Confession states in Article 27—‘Of Christ’s Return to Judgment’ – that:
Also they (the Lutherans) teach that, in the consummation of the world (at the last day), Christ shall appear to judge, and shall raise up all the dead, and shall give unto the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys; but ungodly men and the devils shall he condemn unto endless torments. They condemn the Anabaptists who think that to condemned men and the devils shall be an end of torments.
The Article from the Augsburg Confession explicitly condemns the Anabaptists – it predates the Munster debacle by three years – but the Anabaptists were already associated, rightly or wrongly, with the Peasant Risings which had been put down ruthlessly by Lutheran Princes egged on by the explosive rhetoric of Martin Luther himself.
Cranmer’s Article, does not explicitly mention the Anabaptists but, the argument goes, it is placed in a sequence of other Articles – also deleted by Parker – which address the fears of Magisterial Protestants about Anabaptists and imply a fear of the repetition of the Munster debacle. These articles condemn the false teaching of –
Millennialism/Chiliasm – the utopian idea that men can set up the Kingdom of God here on earth (the condemnation is a clear swipe at the Messianic kingdom of Munster)
Soul sleep – the idea that the human soul is mortal, dies with the body, and that both await the general Resurrection on the Day of Judgement. Again this idea was anathema to Magisterial Protestants (although Luther had some sympathy with it). First because it might take away some of the deterrent effect of the imagined terrors of Hell by persuading people to think – in superstition- that the wait between death and Judgement could be a very long one, so a period of blessed oblivion could be anticipated before the torment begins. Second – and with this Luther would not have sympathised – it could become part and parcel of an annihilationist doctrine (the wicked are not raised from the dead, only the righteous are).
Perfectionism and Antinomianism – the idea that God’s elect are free from sin in this life and therefore can ‘let it all hang out’; again a condemnation that suggest the Munster debacle. Some of the stories that came out of Munster - of John of Leydon disporting himself with his concubines – are probably fictitious in my view. But the cruel imposition of polygamy by Leydon did give rise to the more lurid stories of unrestrained promiscuity and it is these that Cranmer addressed with his condemnation of antinomian perfectionism. (I note that these ideas – that the elect can do no wrong - have also been current in extreme/distorted manifestations of Calvinism throughout history, by the way).
As the accepted argument continues, Parker and friends felt that the danger of Munster had passed and the Church needed to address more pressing concerns (all conjecture since we have no minutes for the Convocation and no documents of personal reflection on the Convocation’s deliberations from its members). However we do note that articles condemning Anabpatists concerning their position on taking oaths, bearing arms , and on teaching that all goods be held in common were retained (and other articles on the relationship between Church and State all implicitly condemn the Anabaptists). We also note that it was actually the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed that were used as a pretext for continued persecution of Anabaptists eventually (for the teaching of at least some Anabaptist about the Incarnation was deemed heretical as I shall describe in a later post).
I’m sure the explanation about the receding threat /memory of the Munster debacle is a perfectly good explanation for the deleting of the Articles covering Soul Sleep, Chiliasm, and Perfectionism/Antinomianism. However – I may not be a Prince among experts – but I do have a wee problem with this as an explanation for the abrogation of the 42nd article. You see this article condemns Origen’s teaching that all will eventually be saved. As far as I know the Anabaptists at this time were annihilationist; and this teaching was implicitly condemned in Crammers article on Soul Sleep. (It is until the seventeenth century that Anabaptist sects appear – for example, the Dunkers, with explicitly Universalist teachings). I note that, quite properly, article 27 of the Augsburg Confession against the Anabaptists does not condemn Universal Salvation; rather it condemns the doctrine that the torments of men and devils shall have an end – which sounds very much like annihilationism to me. Curious eh?
All the best
Dick