Tuesday 16 June 2015

Anglican Via Media

The Church of England’s peculiar history also shaped the tone and scope of the Articles. […] As an established Church, it was also important that she should be as comprehensive as possible, even given the need to exclude certain groups such as the Roman Catholics and the more radical Protestant sects. In this way, Reformation Anglicanism did indeed represent a via media, a middle way, but not in the sense for which Newman argued prior to moving Romeward. It was not a middle way between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism but rather between Roman Catholicism and Anabaptism. This is otherwise known as Reformation Protestantism.
  – pp. 112-113, The Creedal Imperative by Carl Trueman (italics original)