The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Brief history of universlaism in the C of E

Lovely - am busy now but will get back to you - and I have some more posts that spiral no the subject I can place here - including one on ‘Christ our Hen’ if you’d like that. And Kate is Yentil btw :smiley: Yes shame about Dr Mike - he was actually growing on me :smiley: One day I may write a proper book about this -that’s why I’m just spiralling on the subject here :slight_smile: I’m seeing a Professor for a chat soon (my ex manager and old friend) and hope for some final leads in my research about Erasmus and a few other bods; but will read your article :slight_smile: and do some further posts.

I’d love to hear more about “Christ our Hen”

Very bright button, a.k.a. ‘Yentil’ a.k.a. ‘our Kate’ said:

‘Who first said ‘In Christ our Hen?’

Dick said:

‘‘Christ our Hen’ - as we know - refers to Christ weeping over the fate of Jerusalem wishing he could cluck his children to himself like a Mother Hen and prevent the slide towards destruction.

Funnily enough one person who later made use of this image was St Anselm – the man who invented the first model of Penal Substitution (in which God’s honour is infinitely offended by our sin – because God and His hour infinite and we are not – rather than his abstract justice being infinitely offended as Calvin later taught). He had a rather confused view of the Trinity as if God was the furious, brutal and unforgiving ‘Pop’, with Christ as the ‘Mom’ Hen whose feathered skirts we could hide under from Pop’s raging. Anselm also wrote some very disturbing poetry in which Jesus is both male and female and the two aspects are in conflict. He was Archbishop of Canterbury to a brutal Norman king who oppressed his Saxon people and took infinite offence at any murmurings from them retaliating with terrible, draconian punishments.

Of course in Mother Julian Jesus is spoken of as both male and female in a symbolic way – but the two aspects are at peace and in gentle harmony because God is not ‘wroth’ with us in Julian’s reckoning. As far as I know she does not speak of ‘Christ as our Hen’.

But Erasmus does speak of the ‘Christ Hen’– he did not know Julian but he was well versed in Origen. In an exchange between he and Luther, Luther declares– ‘‘you and your peace loving Gospel – you don’t care about truth’’. But Erasmus protests in reply in ‘Complaint of Peace’- ‘’What happens to truth when men are embroiled in wars of religion…How can you say ‘Our Father’ if you plunge steel into the guts of your brother? Christ compared himself to a Hen: Christians behave like Hawks. Christ was a shepherd of sheep; Christians tear like wolves’’.

I cannot remember where, but I’ve also seen an early Quaker speak of ‘Christ our Hen’ too. The Quaker intellectuals – William Penn, Robert Barclay, and Isaac Pennington – used Erasmus to support their beliefs and practices just as the earlier Anglicans had done. And from the above quotation we can see why. Luther is fixated upon correct definitions of justification by faith alone and is prepared to go to war and kill over these. But for Erasmus the Way of Christ (which he also sometimes termed ‘The Philosophy of Christ’ – by which he meant a practical wisdom) is about living with faithful love rather than holding accurate definitions – and this is exactly what the Quakers argued and it also informs the idea of the middle way in Anglicanism.

In Christ our Hen’

Very bright button, a.k.a. ‘Yentil’ a.k.a. ‘our Kate’ said:

‘Ah, so the phrase is indirectly Quaker (very Quaker, but indirectly Quaker). That explains why I couldn’t find anything about its Quaker roots except for an article written by a certain Richard Whittington :wink:

Of course I’ve always loved the term. When I attended a Quaker Meeting, and a ‘Public Friend’ spoke about the saying, she emphasized that it pointed to a feminine nature of Christ. I think that is very true and wise, but I think there is more to the saying, pointing to a deeper truth. Christ is not just ‘motherly’, but he expects the same loving , nurturing, and caring attitude from his followers.

Speaking of hens, I must be going, because I’m supposed to make some chicken salad for supper tonight 

In Christ our Hen’

And here are some quotations from the lovely introduction to Erasmus article that Caleb has posted - which includes the Christ the Hen quotation from ‘Complaint of Peace’. All illustrate Erasmus point about Christ as or Hen - Thanks Caleb !!! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.”

“There is nothing more wicked, more disastrous, more widely destructive, more deeply tenacious, more loathsome [than war]…. Whoever heard of a hundred thousand animals rushing together to butcher each other, as men do everywhere?”

Erasmus excoriated theologians who tried to justify war on the ground that Christ said “Let him who has no sword sell his mantel and buy one.” “As if Christ, who taught nothing but patience and meekness, meant the sword used by bandits and murderers rather than the sword of the Spirit. Our exegete thinks that Christ equipped the apostles with lances, crossbows, slings, and muskets.” (btw in his Annotations he used Origen to counter the violent interpretation of this text)

“I would be glad to be a martyr for Christ, but I cannot be a martyr for Luther.”

“It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great achievement to persuade him.”

“How can you say Our Father if you plunge steel into the guts of your brother? Christ compared himself to a hen: Christians behave like hawks. Christ was a shepherd of sheep: Christians tear each other like wolves.”

“I see you, while the standard of salvation is in one hand, rushing on with a sword in the other, to the murder of your brother; and, under the banner of the cross, destroying the life of one who owes his salvation to the cross. Even from the Holy Sacrament itself, (for it is sometimes, at the same hour, administered in opposite camps) in which is signified the complete union of all Christians, the warriors, who have just received it, run instantly to arms, and endeavor to plunge the dreadful steel into each other’s vitals. Of a scene thus infernal, and fit only for the eyes of accursed spirits, who delight in mischief and misery, the pious warriors would make Christ the spectator.”

Erasmus was disgusted by the incivility and humourlessness of militant Protestants: “I have seen them return from hearing a sermon as if inspired by an evil spirit. Their faces all showed a curious wrath and ferocity.”

In The Complaint of Peace, Peace herself rises to complain about how much her name is praised by one and all yet how few live peaceful lives. “Without me there is no growth, no safety for life, nothing pure or holy, nothing agreeable, while war is a vast ocean of all the evils combined, harmful to everything in the universe.”

“We must look for peace by purging the very sources of war—false ambitions and evil desires. As long as individuals serve their own personal interests, the common good will suffer. Let them examine the self-evident fact that this world of ours is the fatherland of the entire human race.”

Yeah, I forgot that that Christ our Hen quote was in that article. But you helped provide the context of it in his engagement with Luther. What type of engagement was this? Letter’s or manuscripts back and forth, a public debate?

And do you have any idea of how Erasmus interpreted the violent OT texts, like the slaughter of the Canaanites, and the Levites killing their fellow Jews over the Golden Calf? I would guess that militant protestants (can we group Calvin and Luther there?) would point to the OT texts to justify their approval of violent means.

The correspondence with Luther was by letter. They didn’t like each other - they had completely different temperaments. The only Reformer as far as I know that Erasmus is on record as saying ‘I never disliked you’ was Martin Bucer - who was the most conciliatory of the Reformers and had a great influence on Cranmer’s second prayer book in the Reformed direction but not in a Calvinist one. but he didn’t approve of Bucer’s claim that he spoke with direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Erasmus only ever claimed to be a humble follower in the school of Christ who saw through a glass darkly. (

When this topic was first broached at EU there was some speculation that Bucer may have influenced the cancelling of the Anglican 42nd article about the necessity for believing in hell. But after much research I do not think this is so. Bucer was a moderate man in terms of the Reformers and was a tutor of Elizabeth’s first Archbishop the irenic Matthew Parker - but when he was Protestant magistrate Strasbourg he had had Hans Denck banished because of claims that Denck was a universalist (but he was charitable to Denck in saying that he thought him a fine man of good courage - and he didn’t have him killed). There was also speculation that Matthew Parker may have been behind the cancelation or abrogation of the 42nd article. However, although we do not have the minutes of Convocation, Parker’s annotations and deletions and proposed additions to Cranmer’s articles that he made beforehand as a basis for discussion and in his own hand do still exist. And the 42nd article is not crossed out in this. So whatever the reasons for its abrogation was, this happened in Convocation and/or was influenced by pressure from the Queen or her Ministers. There are lots of theories about this - but they can never be more than theories.

Regarding Erasmus and the OT - Erasmus believed that the OT was like a Platonic shadow of the New (using imagery from the Book of Hebrews’). And with the light of the New the clear day light of Christ has illumined and dispersed the shadows in the OT. So the OT must be interpreted in the light of the NT (as Origen also thought). I’m not sure what Erasmus made of the genocide texts but will find out for you some day soon I hope. Origen ceritainly consigned the genocide texts to allegory about spiritual struggle against vices - in his opinion they were not to be taken literally, Origen assigned four levels of meaning to scripture - literal/historical, moral, allegoric, and spiritual. Some assume that he thought all of scripture had all four levels of meaning - but this is not so (as his commentary on Joshua makes very clear). Some passages of stature, in his view, had all four levels of meaning but others had just one or two levels of meaning - especially those he found morally dubious in the daylight of Christ. Erasmus was enthusiastic about Origen’s fourfold level of interpretation - this much I do know.

Btw If anyone wants to check what I’ve said about Origen’s commentary on Joshua, Philip Jenkins looks at this in relevant detail on pages 193-5 of his book Laying Down the Sword. The chapter’s title is ‘Coming to Terms’ (with the OT genocide tests) and the section title is ‘Shadowing Mysteries’. I’ve no reason to doubt Jenkins here – thus far I’ve only read Origen’s commentaries on Genesis, Matthew and John and I will get round to cheeking what Jenkins says soon by reading Origen’s commentary on Joshua. But I’ve no reason to doubt him. He is an internationally recognised scholar and was advised by many other scholars of high repute and integrity while writing this book – and he makes good use of sourced quotations.
The stuff I’ve said about Erasmus – of him taking up the view of the OT as a ‘shadowing mystery’ and of him using Origen as his authority to counter the violet interpretation of Jesus’ saying about selling your cloak to buy a sword comes from M,A. Screech’s ‘Laughter at the Foot of the Cross’ – one of my favourite all time books; and Screech is a scholar who really known his onions concerning Erasmus. I won’t give further details here – if I write my book I’ll cover these points in more detail – but you can trust me on this (or PM me if you want to pin me down for more information because you want to read these secondary sources for yourself).

I’m not trying to push an agenda here for Non –violent theology – although I do hold to a no utopian version of non violent theology (and it is a nuanced position that I’ve gone into on other threads here). As those of you here who have read some of my posts about non violent theology will know I am not a utopian pacifist – neither were Erasmus or Elizabeth!!! – but i do think use of violence should be seen as a necessary evil and never as a positive good, and that force should always be used without triumph and with much thinking through. I am in favour of dialogue between Christian utopians and Christians following a Just War traction on this score – because Christian Just War tradition actually underpins the Geneva Convention. But on this thread the issues have only come up because they are relevant – and you can judge for yourself about Erasmus and Elizabeth 

I am happy to probe a little further into Erasmus de bates with Luther and – of you wish – into the theories around the cancellation/ suppression/ abrogation (what you will) of the 42nd Article, Not in great detail – but I am happy to give a little more detail.

In Christ our Hen :wink:

Dick

As an aside, I think I recall an early focus (e.g. from Justin Martyr?) on comparing Christ to the phoenix, though this was eventually dropped; but the legend of the phoenix must have been originally inspired by occasionally finding mother birds (like hens) who sacrificed themselves to protect their chicks during a fire. That’s certainly the concept that would have come to mind to those who heard Christ giving this lament.

Clement of Rome in the 25th chapter of his first epistle (certainly written in the 1st century, perhaps as early as the late 60s) wrote the following about the phoenix:

I think that in medieval bestiaries Christ was also compared to the Mother Pelican whom they wrongly believed would die to feed it’s children by pecking at its own breast and feeing the flesh to them. I know that King Lear in Shakespeare calls his ungrateful daughters who are breaking his heart with their cruelty his ‘Pelican Daughters’.

And that’s interesting about the Phoenix too Jason :slight_smile: because the alchemists of Erasmus day - the sort of people he thought fools and charlatans ( and was probably right about most of them) - had a sort of garbled memory of this. For them the Phoenix arising from ashes symbolised the successful transmutation of based metal into gold (and perhaps some actually did see this spiritual transformation as the true essence of Alchemy - but there were lots of ‘puffers’ motivated by pure greed). I think sacrificial love, nurturing ‘motherly’ qualities (in both women and men) and seeking the peace frits instead of reaching for war and violence for instant gratification are all related :slight_smile: And there is a very old saying - 'The fool finds gold in a ruin, while the alchemist dies in pain (of lead poisoning?). :slight_smile:

Some Pics: (If you click on the pics, you can see the whole image at once)


This one’s funny:


My favorite:


Cluck, cluck :smiley: Have you got any other questions - Caleb or anyone else?

I think I’m good for now Dick. One interesting thing about the last hen picture is that it was from a vegetarian Quaker website. The corresponding article had some interesting an interesting section:

vegetarianfriends.net/issue77.html

The Jeremiah passage was interesting. Sounds like Jesus may have had this passage in mind in Matthew 23:37. The Jews of Jesus’ day probably assumed that God would shield Jerusalem, and Jesus wants to say, “Yahweh wants to shield you through me, but you are not willing.”

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