The Age of Athanasius

The publication of the Fourth Report of the Ritual Commission in 1870 occasioned intense debate over the position of the Athanasian Creed in the liturgy of the Church of England. This article reconstructs the course of that controversy, focusing particularly on the centrality of historical argument...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Church history and religious culture
Main Author: Bennett, Joshua (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Church history and religious culture
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Great Britain / Church of England / Symbolum Athanasianum / Patristics / History 1830-1900
IxTheo Classification:KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity
KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history
KBF British Isles
KDE Anglican Church
Further subjects:B Victorian England Church of England church fathers historiography Book of Common Prayer nineteenth century church parties Oxford Movement
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:The publication of the Fourth Report of the Ritual Commission in 1870 occasioned intense debate over the position of the Athanasian Creed in the liturgy of the Church of England. This article reconstructs the course of that controversy, focusing particularly on the centrality of historical argument to the speeches, letters, and pamphlets in which critics and defenders of the formulary sought to stabilise Christian orthodoxy and define Anglican identity in a progressive environment. The episode draws attention, first, to the continuing and underestimated centrality of patristic scholarship to questions of church reform in Victorian England, whilst also pointing towards the eventual decline of the textual and antiquarian approach to apologetics that had characterised Anglicanism since the Reformation. Post-Reformation Anglican history, secondly, was itself integral to participants’ articulation of religious division, suggesting that conventional understandings of “church parties” in the Victorian Church of England should accordingly be revised.
ISSN:1871-2428
Contains:In: Church history and religious culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18712428-09702018