by CCW | 29 November 2025 05:00
I: The Ordinal
At our first Quiet Day on October 25th at Christ Church, the Rev’d Dr. Ross Hebb reminded us of things which we have to “unlearn” in considering the history of the English Church such as thinking in terms of ‘denominations’. I reminded us that classical Anglicanism is robustly non-sectarian. The whole emphasis of understanding is on the idea of being “an integral portion of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church,” as articulated in the Solemn Declaration 1893 and as further elucidated in Fr. Crouse’s paper ‘The Essence of Anglicanism’.
It is worth noting how this emphasis is expressed in the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer, and especially with respect to ordination. The phrase “The Anglican Church of Canada” appears nowhere in the public liturgies of the Offices and Communion and other sundry services. It appears in the Preface to the Ordinal (BCP, p. 637), but only once in the oath of obedience of bishops to the Metropolitan (BCP, p. 661). It does not appear in the ordination oaths for Deacons and Priests. Even with respect to Bishops, it is there only in the context of subordination: the profession and promise of the bishop elect “to hold and maintain the Doctrine, Sacraments, and Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded in his holy Word, and as the Anglican Church of Canada hath received and set forth the same” (BCP, p. 661, my italics). This reflects the same sensibility as the Solemn Declaration where there is also no mention of the Anglican Church of Canada; only “the Church of England in the Dominion of Canada” (BCP, p, viii) and again emphasizing what has been received and the setting forth of the same by way of the Book of Common Prayer.
The point for the postulants is simply this. Those who are ordained are ordained as deacons, priests, and bishops in “Christ’s Church”(BCP, p. 637),“the Church of Christ” (BCP, p. 662), or “the Church of God,” (BCP, p. 643, p. 655, p. 666) of which “the Anglican Church of Canada” or “the Church of England in Canada” understands itself to be an integral or whole portion through the magisterium of the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer. This is a necessary and important subordination without which one moves in a sectarian direction.
The Ordinal in the BAS is, for the most part, conservative, or, at least, can be read in that way, but in the ordination rites themselves there is a tendency to collapse “the Church of God” or “Christ’s Church” to “the Anglican Church of Canada”; in short, to the institution itself. For instance, in the BCP Ordination of Bishops, the profession and promise “to hold and maintain the Doctrine, Sacraments, and Discipline of Christ” is defined unambiguously “as the Lord hath commanded in his holy Word, and as the Anglican Church of Canada hath received and set forth the same” (BCP, p. 661, my italics). By way of contrast, in the BAS, the ordination of bishops, priests, deacons requires the solemn “promise to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Anglican Church of Canada” (BAS, p. 635, p. 645, p. 654). The Preface in the BAS may act as a corrective to this tendency and, of course, in principle, the BAS is subject to the Book of Common Prayer; it is not an equal or substitute authority. Thus BAS ordination rites are strictly speaking to be understood in terms of the doctrine of the Prayer Book and the Ordinal which is included in it (Cdn. BCP.)
The BAS ‘Ordinal’ directs for each of the rites the use of the Nicene Creed as provided on page 188. This form of the Creed omits the filioque, which is an undeniable feature of the consensus fidelium of the Western Churches. Classical Anglican divinity as represented by Hooker, Andrewes, Bramhall and Pearson, for instance, knew the history of this question and the problem. Pearson in his ‘On the Creed’ is very critical of the history of how the filioque came into the western Nicene Creed. But he recognizes that regardless it is (a) liturgically, an indelible feature of the services, hymns and prayers as received in the Western churches and (b) doctrinally, both East and West are in complete agreement about the essential question of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The problem with the BAS is in making unilaterally a change to the received doctrines of the Faith for which there is no consensus in the Communion and beyond.
In my view, for what it is worth, the question of the filioque represents a powerful feature of the theological concept of the consensus fidelium which is capable of admitting legitimately different emphasis of expression while retaining essential doctrines of faith; in this case, the divinity of the Holy Spirit. This is another way of saying that the consensus fidelium cannot be reduced simply to regulatory conformity and is capable of dealing with important linguistic differences of expression, such as between the East and West in the working out of the understanding of the Trinity; for instance, by way of the respective Greek and Latin terms and meaning about ousia and hypostasis.
The same problem appears in the BAS ordination of priests which assumes the ordination of women to the priesthood with the language of ‘his/her’ and ‘he/ she’. There is no theological consensus either within or between the Churches on this point. It is part of the fragmentation or brokenness of the Communion through decisions made in certain provinces of the ‘Anglican Communion’ unilaterally. Regardless of one’s personal opinion or opinions – since there are a range of such things – these issues belong to our current confusions and distresses and cannot be denied. Yet we all have to negotiate a way between the ever-increasing and at times aggressive pressures of diocesan regulatory conformity and the actual principles that belong to the magisterium of the Church. In some cases, it means waiting upon the emergence of the consensus fidelium.
II: Consensus Fidelium
Fr. Crouse’s article ‘The Essence of Anglicanism’ offers a profound theological understanding of consensus fidelium. Yet his considered approach and understanding of the common mind of the Church Universal and of Classical Anglicanism is subject to denial and dismissal in the tendency to collapse the whole mind of Christ and his Church into the particular decisions of one part acting on its own and, more importantly, to thinking about the common Faith of Christians in terms of various historical, sociological, and political assumptions. This is the opposite of thinking theologically. The consensus fidelium, as Crouse argues, is not about a process, a system or mechanism of decision making. It is profoundly the movement of the Holy Spirit in the understanding of the witness of the Scriptures to Christ and his Church and to God as Trinity. It is not about who was or was not asked, whether this includes or excludes laity in the early Church, for instance, or, more tellingly, whether it is a matter of synodical decision making by any given body at any given time; in other words, treating the consensus fidelium in terms of polity or political process, or, more commonly now, about one’s own personal opinion or opinions which demand recognition. This negates the theological meaning of the consensus fidelium which takes seriously the Faith of the Church Universal as something real and alive.
The question is rightly asked about the history of this concept. Let me try to give something of an answer by way of some concrete references that I hope will contribute to our thinking theologically about the consensus fidelium. I will conclude with suggesting an alternative metaphor to the three-legged or four-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason and/or Experience which Fr. Crouse rightly criticizes as utterly mistaken in treating as equal matters which are quite distinct and not equal in terms of authority. This goes to the task of thinking theologically in relation to the philosophical sciences, especially in the pre-modern period, but also in terms of the emergence of new domains or disciplines in the 19th and 20th centuries.
An influential paper by Benjamin J. King, written in 2012 and subsequently published in Journal of Anglican Studies in 2014, entitled ‘The Consent of the Faithful: From 1 Clement to the Anglican Covenant’ is the complete antithesis of Fr. Crouse on the consensus fidelium. The title of the paper itself adverts to the process of consent rather than the content of consent, the sensus fidei. Nonetheless, the paper usefully canvasses something of the history and development of language about consensus at the same time as highlighting the contemporary tendency and problem that reduces consensus to the mechanics of power and control.
King’s argument is that consensus fidelium is a rhetorical trope which has “a long history as a phrase used to claim unity where in fact unity was lacking” (King, p. 2). Rhetoric here is largely viewed as a means of power. He argues that it originates from pagan rhetorical tropes used to promote “unity between friends and between cities in antiquity to support the hierarchy of imperial elites” (King, Abstract, p. 1). He seems to be oblivious to the friendship theme as belonging to philosophy and theology in terms of the friendship with the Good (Plato) and with Christ (John). In his view, consensus fidelium is a linguistic device that serves the status quo, a matter of maintaining power and control.
In other words, it is an example of ‘the hermeneutic of suspicion’: not so much about what is said but who said it. As such it is more about the mechanics of power at the expense of the commitment to truth. He sums up this approach to the ‘political history’ of the Anglican churches as follows.
The earliest Christians adapted this language for the same purpose within churches: to speak of unity and lay involvement in support of Church hierarchy. After the Reformation, Church of England writers used this rhetoric to enforce conformity to church polity and morality. The Tractarians and their successors employed a rhetorical ‘voice of the laity’ as a bolster for episcopal power. While the early twentieth century saw some in the Church of England and Anglican Communion use this same rhetoric to bring the laity into actual decision-making processes, the rhetoric of recent statements by the Communion has left power firmly with bishops. (King, Abstract, p. 1)
‘Recent statements’ refer to the Anglican Covenant process initiated by Rowan Williams in an attempt to hold the communion together (2005-2011). One may note that the theme of the over-elevation of the episcopate concurs with Fr. Crouse’s observation of the same phenomenon in ‘The Essence of Anglicanism.’ This complements the Vatican II Council’s over-emphasis on the episcopate to the detriment of the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.
There is a range of terms that coalesce to shape the idea of the consensus fidelium which has really to do with what belongs to the essential teaching of the Christian Faith. The ‘consent of the whole church’ is a phrase used in 1 Clement at the end of the first century AD which informs a later concept (c. 230 AD) of ‘the mind of the church’. Both phrases look back to the New Testament, especially Paul’s Letter to the Philippians about being of “one mind” or of “the same mind” and “one spirit,” implying a sense of concord and friendship in the Gospel. Perhaps even more important theologically (though overlooked by King) is John 17, the high priestly prayer of Christ about his relation to the Father and our relation to God: “that they may be one, even as we are one” (Jn 17.11) and “that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us” (Jn 17. 21) and again, “that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one” (Jn 17. 22.23). All of this is about what is made known through Revelation: “I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17. 25, 26). This suggests the deeper sense of the consensus fidelium as grounded in the dynamic of the Trinity.
By the 4th century, King notes that “the mind of the Church” had become “shorthand for the apostolic teaching” (King, p. 6). This looks back to the regula fidei – the rule of faith – in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus which in turn echoes Paul’s phrase about following “that pattern of sound words or teaching which you have heard from me” (2 Tim. 1.13) and as well to John 1.18 that “no one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” In all of these passages there is an emphasis on what is made known through revelation and our thinking upon it and honouring it as such.
King notes that Athanasius in the early 4th century refers to “the apostolic mind” of those at Niceae (De Synodis 5, 325), and, at Antioch (De Synodis 26, 345), to those with the “ecclesiastical mind in the Lord, to which the divinely inspired Scriptures bear witness without violence, where men are not perverse” (NPNF, series ii, Vol. IV). Augustine writing against the Donatists claims that he asserts only “what has been confirmed by the consent of the universal Church under the direction of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (De Baptismo 7.53.102, NPNF series i, Vol. IV). Writing against the Manichees, he notes the testimony of the Catholic Church “as supported by a succession of bishops from the original seats of the apostles up to the present time, and by the consent of so many nations [or peoples]” (Contra Faustum 11.2, NPNF, series i. Vol. IV, cf. King, p. 6, footnote 12). These passages contribute to the idea of the consensus fidelium used throughout the subsequent history of the churches not just politically as a rhetorical trope of power but as a theological expression of what the Christian Faith is which has been received over centuries in the mind of the Church as guided and directed by the Holy Spirit. Thus Yves Congar, as noted by King, regards Augustine as enunciating in these two theological disputes “a general principle of the reception of doctrine by the consensus fidelium” (King, p. 9).
This is the main point. The consensus fidelium is not a human or social construct but the mind of the Church Universal about what has been received through Revelation and understood as essential doctrine. But no sooner is this acknowledged by King then it is negated by relegating the concept of the consensus fidelium to the rhetorical tropes of power and control “used first by pagan and then Christian elites” (King, p. 9).
Make no mistake. Both the idea of the consensus fidelium and Classical Anglicanism itself are hotly disputed and denied by some, if not many. And why? In every case because of a sociological, historical and political approach that supplants and subordinates theology to the ideological assumptions belonging to those domains. Peter Lake’s book on Laudianism, for instance, counsels against “falling victim to the Anglican fallacy” or “the myth of Anglican essentialism” (Lake, p. 19). That is, he says, “implicitly to assert or assume that there exists, or ought to exist, a unitary position which epitomises the value system, the religious style or spiritual identity of the national church: a position either inherent in that church’s foundation documents and early history, or palpably emergent thereafter. But what if no such position ever existed? What if ‘Anglicanism’ is not a position at all, but a condition, even a pathology – one endemic in a national church, comprehensive in its claims on the spiritual and moral lives of the English, self-consciously, indeed aggressively, ‘moderate’ in its self-image, but which yet contains within itself multiple, at times all but mutually exclusive, versions of that church’s origins, essence and mission” (Lake, p. 19). A remarkable cluster of loaded assumptions.
Yet, as Fr. Crouse’s paper on ‘The Essence of Anglicanism’ shows, Anglicanism is not a racial, ethnic, linguistic, national or organisational entity at all but rather has its meaning theologically in terms of the faithfulness of a common tradition of faith and worship centered on the essential elements of “the Scriptures as the Word of God written which is the fundament, the ancient ecumenical Creeds and Councils, the ministry and Apostolic succession, and the divinely ordained sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,” elements which are “held together in the life of the worshipping community.” This does not negate nor deny the insights and contributions of other disciplines; it only insists on the integrity of thinking theologically, first and foremost, and thus resists being measured by other approaches that, at best, offer only limited and partial perspectives on the wonder and mystery of the Faith.
A better image for the consensus fidelium rather than the three or four-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience is Giovanni Pisano’s baptismal font in the Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, Italy. The pedestal which holds up the baptismal bowl is engraved with the images of the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity – in short, it is grace which upholds the natural virtues of Temperance, Courage, Prudence, and Justice engraven on the bowl itself. This puts things in their proper perspective and order and envisions the idea of grace not destroying nature but perfecting our human nature. That in a way captures the purpose of thinking theologically. It is not a negation of nature and the different forms of human reasoning but their being gathered into unity with God. Nature in all of its forms is upheld and perfected by grace.
As Fr. Crouse remarks about the font:
It’s a very humanistic statement, in that the new life at baptism is seen as a renewal of the natural human virtues; but at the same time, it’s a powerful affirmation that the restoration of authentic humanity depends upon and is sustained by, the supernatural virtues of faith, hope and charity.
Fr. David Curry,
November 18th, 2025
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