by CCW | 24 March 2023 06:00
The First Book of Homilies published in 1547 predates the Book of Common Prayer. Along with the Litany of 1545, it anticipates and establishes the essential features of English reformed catholicism. The Homilies are connected to the Articles of Religion as in Article XXXV[1] which mentions both Books of homilies and names the titles of those in the second Book and in Article XI[2] which names the Homily of Justification.
From the outset, the Homilies were intended to provide a programme of teaching on matters of doctrine and on matters of morality and practical concerns. The first five homilies of the First Book address matters of doctrine; Homilies 1, 3, 4, & 5 are from the pen of Cranmer. But the First Book of Homilies ends with a direction by Cranmer that other homilies were to follow dealing with such things as “Fasting, Prayer, Alms-Deeds; of the Nativity, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour Christ; of the due Receiving of his blessed Body and Blood, under the Form of Bread and Wine; against Idleness, against Gluttony and Drunkenness, against Covetousness, against Envy, Ire, and Malice; and with many other matters as fruitful as necessary to the edifying of Christian people, and the increase of godly living.” Some of these topics are taken up in the Second Book of Homilies along with other concerns, particularly against the Peril of Idolatry and against Rebellion.
The Books of Homilies undertake to position the English Reformed tradition as distinct from Popery, on the one hand, and Puritanism, on the other hand; the first is more a concern of the First Book and the second of the Second Book published during Elizabeth’s reign. Both concerns speak to the polemics of politics at the time but also serve to highlight certain defining features of the English Church.
Article X1[3] of the Thirty-nine Articles is “Of the Justification of Man” and goes to the heart of the reformation itself. That Article explicitly names the Homily of Justification. What is that? The third, fourth and fifth homilies probably authored by Cranmer all deal with the question of justifying righteousness. They are entitled as follows: “Of the Salvation of all Mankind”, “Of the true and lively Faith”, and “Of good Works.” It is probably the third homily, “Of the Salvation of all Mankind” that is referred to in the Article. In a way its content is summed up in Article XI.
We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.
Justification by faith alone was one of the rallying points for the reformation in general and in general opposed any kind of thinking that suggests a human power or work on our part that is essential to salvation independent of grace. At issue is the idea of “works righteousness” as distinct from “faith works.” At the heart of it all is a profound sense of the sovereignty of God that cannot be reduced to any kind of man-made morality. Instead, the idea is that our hearts and minds and actions need to be radically grounded in God. The restoration of our humanity cannot be accomplished by ourselves. It has to be the grace of God at work for us and in us through Christ.
In other words, the Homily and the Article concern the theological concept of atonement, our being at one with God. Both recognize in a clear and unambiguous way our separation or alienation from God and from the good order of creation. This is to speak of original sin and all forms of actual sin but in a theological and philosophical register to which human justice and all psychological and sociological concerns are subordinate. Problems arise when we forget that and as a result make God accountable to us, essentially putting God on trial. The Homily and the Article belong to a deeper tradition of theological and philosophical thinking about the human condition of suffering and death, on the one hand, and our relation to God, on the other hand. In this sense it upholds the distinction between the Creator and creation, between God and man without collapsing the one into the other.
The questions turn upon the distinction between “imputed righteousness” and “infused righteousness” and ultimately relate to different emphases with respect to the order of grace. The Homily in this sense anticipates Richard Hooker’s A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown, probably preached in 1586. There he distinguishes between imputed righteousness, or justifying righteousness and infused righteousness, or sanctifying righteousness. Imputed righteousness, following Luther, is how the righteousness of Christ in his sacrifice for us is imputed or placed upon us – God in looking at us sees Christ. In that sense, it is passive, imputed to us. Infused righteousness is about that grace then active and alive in us. As Hooker puts it: “There is a glorifying righteousness of men in the world to come” – this is our end in God.
And there is a justifying righteousness and a sanctifying righteousness here. The righteousness, wherewith we shall be clothed in the world to come, is both perfect and inherent. That whereby we are justified is perfect, but not inherent. That whereby we are sanctified, inherent but not perfect.
Hooker’s language and the language of the Homily and the Article are located within a larger discourse about the justitia dei, the justice of God as a principle of right order, that which God wills. The human condition is about the privation of that right order in us as borne out by human experience in the knowledge of our faults and failings in one way or another, whether as the effect of our own actions individually by “thought, word, and deed” and/or as a result of the actions of others in our fallen world.
The Homily begins with the same sort of clarity as the Article about the human condition in relation to God. “Because all men be sinners and offenders against God, and breakers of his Law and Commandments, therefore can no man, by his own acts, works, and deeds, seem they never so good, be justified and made righteous before God”.
We may find this hard to hear but it is really a powerful reality check about ourselves. The good that we do does not justify us with God. No matter how ‘good’ we think we are and by that, of course, separating ourselves from others whom we deem not so good, in effect bad or evil, we cannot overcome the separation of ourselves from God. The deeper point of acknowledging ourselves as sinners is recognising God as the prior principle of the goodness of all things. The confession of sin is really the confession of praise, the praise of God, as Augustine notes.
As the Homily puts it:
but every man, of necessity, is constrained to seek for another righteousness of justification, to be received at God’s own hands; that is to say, the forgiveness of sins and trespasses … and this justification or righteousness, which we so receive of God’s mercy and Christ’s merits, embraced by faith, is taken, accepted, and allowed of God, for our perfect and full justification.
The phrase “righteousness of justification” places the homily within the theology of the atonement as developed by Augustine and Anselm and as biblically grounded. This development holds together in creative tension three complementary theories: Christ’s victory over sin and death, the so-called classic view; Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice, the so-called juridical, forensic or legalistic view associated with Anselm; and Christ as the example of Godly life, as in Abelard and enlightenment viewpoints. The Collects for Easter and for the Second Sunday after Easter demonstrate this sense of the interrelation as grounded in Christ’s death and resurrection. “Almighty Father, who hast give thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification;” and “Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice of sin, and also an example of godly life.” The point is that these all interrelate and are inseparable from one another.
Problems arise when the justice of God is seen in a narrow juridical sense or in a modern psychological and therapeutic way. It becomes detached from the larger concern of the eternal justice of God and makes the eternal justice of God subject to human justice or human emotions.. As Fr. Crouse observes:
Those who disparage St. Anselm’s “legalism” tend to overlook what medieval theologians such as Anselm and Aquinas, and Reformed theologians such as Calvin and Hooker had always firmly in mind: that it is the eternal divine law – the eternal justitia – which is the fundament of all creation and all destiny, and that the divine justice is the only ground of any human justice which can claim to be anything but arbitrary. (Crouse, Atonement and Modern Anglicans)
The “righteousness of justification” indicates that deeper understanding. The Homily undertakes to ground the concept of justification within the Scriptures as well as upon the teaching of a number of Greek and Latin Fathers – Hilary, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine among others, for instance, and Medieval figures such as Bernard and Anselm. The Scriptural basis is largely Paul in Romans, Galatians and Ephesians where the emphasis is on grace and faith as distinct from works and the Law. As Lancelot Andrewes will observe, both creation and the Law are good but not perfect. Something else is needed, namely the grace of Christ. The Law as Paul comes to recognise convicts us of our failings; it highlights what we should be but are not. It shows us the righteousness which we do not have of ourselves but which is realized in Christ; not our merits but his.
There are three things that Paul “toucheth” upon, Cranmer says, “which must go together in our justification”:
Upon God’s part, his great mercy and grace: upon Christ’s part, justice; that is, the satisfaction of God’s justice, or the price of our redemption, by the offering of his body, and shedding of his blood, with the fulfilling of the Law perfectly and thoroughly: and upon our part true and lively faith in the merits of Jesus Christ, which yet is not our’s, but by God’s working in us.
He notes “that in our justification, there is not only God’s mercy and grace, but also his justice.” Mercy and justice go together in a complementary and interrelated manner.
His justice; which the Apostle calleth the justice of God; and it consisteth in paying our ransom and fulfilling of the Law. And so the grace of God doth not shut out the justice of God in our justification; but only shutteth out the justice of man; that is to say, the justice of our works, as to be merits of deserving our justification.
On our part, even true and lively faith alive in us cannot be simply a human work that merits some sort of reward from God. It is “the gift of God, and not man’s only work, without God.”
This does not negate or deny the activities of “repentance, hope, love, dread, and the fear of God” that are to be joined with faith in us, “but it shutteth them out from the office of justifying”. The same thing goes with the justice of good works which we are duty-bound to perform: they do not make us just by just the doing of them.
These are important theological and spiritual insights that belong to the centrality of the Passion and to the forms of our participation in Christ’s Passion.
The point is made by Cranmer in his discussion of the Lord’s Supper and which informs our liturgy.
The priest should declare the death and passion of Christ, and all the people should look upon the cross in the mount of Calvary, and see Christ there hanging…. And this is the priest’s and people’s sacrifice, not to be propitiators for sin … but to worship continually in mystery what was once offered for the price of sin…. We must think Christ crucified before our eyes, because the sacraments so represent him, and be his sacraments and not the priest’s.
This captures a certain reformed emphasis but within the larger theological tradition. The Homily and the Article call attention to the infinite goodness of God and to the deeper realities of human sin. Our good is found in Christ.
Fr. David Curry
Lenten Programme II, 2023
Thursday, March 23rd, 2023
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2023/03/24/lenten-programme-ii-the-books-of-homiles/
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