The previous essay discussed the Evangelical Revival in the Church of England, associated on the one hand with the movement of John and Charles Wesley that led to the eventual formation of Methodism as a church body separate from the Church of England, and on the other with those like John Newton, William Wilberforce, and Charles Simeon associated with the Clapham Sect, who, while staying within the Church of England, shared with Methodism the characteristic of being a kind of ecclesiola in ecclesia, a reforming movement within the Church of England.

The Oxford Movement of the following generation lasted through the short period of 1833 to 1845. Despite existing for only a decade, the movement created the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England, and, in its own way, had as much influence on later Anglicanism as did the Evangelical Revival. Similarly to the earlier movement, it became a movement within the larger church (an ecclesiola in ecclesia), and, like the Evangelical Revival, was not only a movement of reform, but a criticism of perceived failings within the larger church.

The historical setting of this intended corrective included what could be designated the “worldly church.” At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a great deal of wealth inequality in the hierarchy of the Church of England, particularly between wealthy bishops and local clergy, who were often poor. Receiving the office of episcopacy was often a case of having the right social connections and being born into the right family. A bishop could have a very comfortable lifestyle if he happened to be the right bishop in the right location at the right time. On the other hand, a parish priest in an ordinary small country parish might be quite poor.

Connected with this disparity was the problem of absenteeism. If a priest was wealthy enough, he could receive the income from a particular parish and use it to pay someone else to do the actual pastoral work without ever being personally present. The novels of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope provide examples of clerical politics and the concern of some clergy to become wealthy by having the right patron. Mr. Collins in Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice is one of the more comical examples in English literature of such a priest.

Also important as cultural background was the Romantic Movement, largely a reaction against the Enlightenment of the previous century. Romanticism had its effect in the music of Beethoven, the literature of Goethe, and the poetry of Keats and Shelley. The Romantic Movement was also associated with an idealization of the Middle Ages, for example, in such novels as Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.

In architecture, Romanticism was associated with the Gothic Revival. Beginning in the nineteenth century, architects began once again to build churches that looked like the churches of the Middle Ages. Modern people often think of these Gothic revival churches when they imagine what an Anglican church looks like. Even in small town USA, one can find Presbyterian, Methodist, and even Baptist churches in the Gothic style.

Politically, the Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1803 to 1815, and came to an end when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. In England, Parliament passed several laws that resulted in the protests that marked the first stages of the Oxford Movement. The Sacramental Test Act of 1828 repealed the requirement that members of Parliament had to take communion in the Church of England. In 1829, the Roman Catholic Relief Act for the first time allowed Roman Catholics to become members of Parliament. In 1832, the Reform Act was an alliance of Whigs and Dissenters, which strengthened the House of Commons, thus reducing the power of the House of Lords, which included bishops of the Church of England who served in the House of Lords.

These three laws had the following effects. First, they gave more power to the middle class in England, many of whom were Dissenters and Roman Catholics.

Second, non-Anglicans were now members of Parliament. Since the Church of England was a state church, this meant that non-Anglicans could make decisions that affected the established church. In 1832, Parliament passed the Irish Church Measure, the practical purpose of which was to reduce the number of bishops in the Church of Ireland, which was a branch of the Church of England, but was also a minority church, since the Roman Catholic church was the church of most of the Irish people. Parliament’s goal was to save money by reducing the number of bishops from twenty-two to twelve.

The Tractarians

The Oxford Movement began when John Keble preached his famous Assize Sermon on National Apostasy on July 14, 1833. Keble believed that Parliament had overstepped its bounds. A secular Parliament including Roman Catholics and Dissenters who were not members of the Church of England had no business telling the Church of England, or the Church of Ireland in this case, how many bishops it could have.

After the sermon, Keble and some of his friends began publishing a series of essays titled Tracts for the Times.¹ Because of these Tracts, members of the Oxford Movement were referred to at the time as “Tractarians.” In 1836, the group began publishing a series of translations of patristic texts titled the Library of the Fathers. Some of these translations are still the only available English translations of some of these texts. The Tractarian Movement came to an end in 1841 with the publication of Tract 90 by John Henry Newman.

Figures associated with the Oxford Movement include first, William Palmer (1803-1855), who is of lesser significance. Palmer is important primarily for his book The Treatise on the Church of Christ (1838), a two-volume work in which Palmer advocated what has been called the “Three Branch Theory.” In 1843, Palmer wrote the first history of the Oxford Movement: The Narrative Events Connected with the Publication of Tracts for the Times.²

John Keble (1792-1866) was the first of the three major leaders of the Oxford Movement. In 1827, he published The Christian Year, a series of religious poems, devotional in nature and quite popular.³ Keble was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1831. Keble probably would have remained a poet if he had not preached his Apostasy Sermon in 1832. Keble was an author of several of the Tracts for the Times.

In 1836, Keble became Vicar of Hursley. After John Henry Newman left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic in 1845, Keble continued to work with Edward Pusey to keep the Oxford Movement in the Church of England. In 1857, Keble wrote the controversial On Eucharistical Adoration.⁴ After Keble’s death, Keble College, Oxford was named after him in 1870.

The second leader of the movement was Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882). Members of the Oxford movement were sometimes called “Puseyites” because of Pusey’s leadership. In 1825, Pusey studied at the University of Göttingen in Germany. In 1828, he published A Historical Inquiry into the Probable Cause of the Rationalist Character in the Theology of Germany.⁵ The book argued that German rationalism had been caused by dead Protestant orthodoxy, specifically the kind of Protestant Scholasticism mentioned in the essay on the Evangelical Revival.

In 1828, Pusey was ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England and became the Regius Professor of Hebrew and the Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Pusey wrote Tract 18 in the Tracts for the Times in 1831: Thoughts on the Benefit of Fasting. Pusey wrote Tracts 67 to 69, Scriptural Views on Holy Baptism, in 1836. Pusey translated Augustine’s Confessions for the Library of the Fathers in 1837, unfortunately a translation of Augustine’s Latin into something like sixteenth-century King James English rather than modern English. Pusey’s wife died in 1838.

In 1841, Pusey took over the leadership of the Oxford Movement. His sermon on “The Holy Eucharist, A Comfort to the Penitent” (1843), led to his pulpit suspension for two years.⁶ In 1845, Pusey established the first Anglican Sisterhood, the first case of religious orders in England since Henry VIII abolished the monasteries.

In 1846, Pusey preached a sermon “On the Entire Absolution of the Penitent,” which led to a revival of private confession.⁷ Cranmer’s Eucharistic rite contains the suggestion that people should come to a priest for private confession of sin if they find themselves burdened by conscience. However, private confession as a practice had died out in the Church of England after the Reformation. With Pusey’s sermon, private confession began again.

In 1865, Pusey wrote The Church of England, A Portion of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church and a Means of Restoring Visible Unity, an Eironicon, which encouraged reunion with the Roman Catholic church.⁸ In 1884, Pusey House, Oxford was established, two years after Pusey’s death.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) is the most well-known of the members of the Oxford Movement. Newman became Vicar of St. Mary’s, Oxford in 1827, where he was a popular preacher, with hundreds of students attending to hear him preach. In 1833, Newman wrote the scholarly The Arians of the Fourth Century.⁹ From 1833 to 1841, Newman wrote numerous Tracts for the Times.

From 1834 to 1842, a collection of Newman’s sermons was published as Parochial and Plain Sermons.¹⁰ In 1838, Newman wrote Lectures on Justification, an attempt to create an ecumenical agreement between Catholics and Protestants on the theology of justification by faith.¹¹

In 1841, Newman wrote Tract 90, which eventually led to the end of the Oxford Movement. In Tract 90, Newman argued for an interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles that would enable Anglo-Catholics like himself to remain within the Church of England. In the Tract, Newman analyzed the Thirty-Nine Articles, and argued that they did not actually condemn Catholic theology, or at least not the kind of Catholic theology that Newman held. Newman argued, for example, that the Thirty-Nine Articles do not condemn the doctrine of purgatory, but only what he called the “Roman” doctrine of purgatory. An Anglican was thus free to hold a doctrine of purgatory just as long as it was not the “Roman” version of the doctrine. Newman made similar arguments throughout the Tract.

The response to Tract 90 was contrary to what Newman had hoped. Critics accused Newman of imposing his own interpretation by reading whatever he wanted to into the Thirty-Nine Articles. To the contrary, they claimed that one could read the Articles and either accept them or reject them, but one could not legitimately read the Articles in the way that Newman read them – that Newman had attempted to make the Articles say what they do not actually say.

The negative response to Tract 90 convinced Newman that there was no more room in the Church of England for someone who held his views. He concluded that he could no longer continue to function as a priest in the Church of England, and, in 1843, Newman resigned his position at St. Mary’s. In 1845, Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church, at which point he published his Essay on the Development of Doctrine, his theological explanation of how someone with Newman’s understanding of history could became a Roman Catholic.¹²

In 1852, Newman wrote The Idea of a University, still considered one of the more important texts on education.¹³ Newman wrote his Apologia Pro Vita Sua in 1864, his autobiography, but primarily the story of how he moved from being an Anglican to becoming a Roman Catholic.¹⁴ In 1870, Newman published his Grammar of Assent, a philosophical work on epistemology that discusses how people come to believe what they believe.¹⁵

Characteristics of the Oxford Movement

What are some of the characteristics of the Oxford movement?

Spirituality

First, members of the Oxford Movement were descendants of the High Church Movement in the Church of England. They tended to look to Richard Hooker and to the Caroline Divines, but at the same time, they often tended to disparage the Reformers. Ironically, they agreed with some Evangelicals who saw a break between the first generation of Reformers such as Thomas Cranmer and later Anglicans such as Richard Hooker.

Paradoxically, the Oxford Movement was in continuity with the piety of the Evangelical Movement of the previous generation. Many of the members of the Oxford Movement had been raised as Evangelicals. Newman himself had a conversion experience at the age of fifteen. The members of the Oxford movement were thus “high,” but were not “dry.” They are characterized by a heartfelt piety.

Scripture and Tradition

Next was a recovery of tradition and of the corporate judgment of the ancient and undivided church. This is similar in some ways to what we have already seen in John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England. The Anglo-Catholics agreed with the historic Anglican position that Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation, but they also believed that Scripture needed to be understood from within the common faith of particularly the patristic church. As noted in the chapter on Jewel, the church father Vincent of Lerins claimed that Catholic faith was determined by what was believed always, everywhere, and by every one.

The Oxford Movement tended to agree with that statement. William Palmer, in his Treatise on the Church, wrote:

Scripture ought to be of itself sufficient for the overthrow of all errors against faith; but since men are liable to be misled, by the evil interpretations of others, to misunderstand the divine meaning of scripture, the doctrine or tradition of Christians in all ages, i.e., of the catholic church, is presented to us as confirmation of the true meaning of scripture . . . That doctrine which claims to be deduced from scripture, and which all Christians believed from the beginning, must be truly scriptural. That doctrine which claims to be deduced from scripture, and which all the church from the beginning reprobated and abhorred, must be founded on a perversion and misrepresentation of scripture.¹⁶

That is a re-statement of what has been called the “Vincentian canon.” Following this, Palmer addresses the question of the difference in understanding of Scripture between Roman Catholics and “Anglo-Catholics”:

The difference between the Anglo-catholic and the popular Romish doctrine of tradition is this: The former only admits tradition as confirmatory of the true meaning of scripture, the latter assert that it is also supplementary to scripture, conveying doctrines which scripture has omitted.¹⁷

At the least, Palmer is denying that tradition can include anything that materially adds to the content of Scripture.

Second, in addition to the tendency to value tradition, there was, at least among some like John Keble, an affirmation of a non-written tradition that is parallel to and accompanies Scripture. In Keble’s “Sermon on Primitive Tradition,” he states:

We are naturally, if not reasonably, jealous of the word Tradition, associated as it is in our minds with the undue claims and pernicious errors of Rome. Yet must it not be owned, on fair consideration, that Timothy’s deposit [2 Tim. 1:14] did comprise matter, independent of, and distinct from, the truths which are directly Scriptural? that it contained, besides the substance of Christian doctrine, a certain form, arrangement, selection, methodizing the whole, and distinguishing fundamentals; and also a certain system of Church practice, both in government, discipline, and worship; of which, whatever portion we can prove to be still remaining, ought to be religiously guarded by us, even for the same reason that we reverence and retain that which is more properly Scriptural, both being portions of the same divine treasure.¹⁸

Keble is making the claim that not only does the church have Scripture, but that there are unwritten traditions as well that can be traced back even to the time of the apostles. Keble mentions some of these unwritten traditions:

But in truth it may be proved to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind, that not a few fragments yet remain, very precious and sacred fragments, of the unwritten teaching of the first age of the Church. The paramount authority, for example, of the successors of the Apostles in Church government; the threefold Order established from the beginning; the virtue of the blessed Eucharist as a commemorative sacrifice; infant Baptism; and above all, the Catholic doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, as contained in the Nicene Creed. All these, however surely confirmed from Scripture, are yet ascertainable parts of the primitive, unwritten system, of which we yet enjoy the benefit. If any one ask, how we ascertain them; we answer, by application of the well-known rule, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus: Antiquity, Universality, Catholicity: tests similar to those which jurists are used to apply to the common or unwritten laws of any realm.¹⁹

Episcopacy and Apostolic Succession

Next, there is a high estimate of episcopacy as a divine ordinance, and particularly an insistence on the notion of apostolic succession. This is a genuine difference from the previous Anglican position. Concerning bishops, Richard Hooker had argued that episcopacy was of the bene esse (well-being) of the gospel. Hooker believed that the office of bishop has biblical and historic foundation. Episcopal polity could be traced back to the earliest church, and bishops are preferable as a matter of church polity. Yet Hooker did not believe that bishops ordained in apostolic succession were necessary in order for the church to be a true church.

The Anglo-Catholics tended to believe that bishops were not merely preferable, but necessary – that apostolic succession was of the very existence (or the esse) of the church. Keble states in Tract Four:

Why then should any man here in Britain, fear or hesitate boldly to assert the authority of the Bishops and Pastors of the Church, on grounds strictly evangelical and spiritual; as bringing men nearest to CHRIST our SAVIOUR, and confirming them most exactly to His mind, indicated both by His own conduct and by the words of His SPIRIT in the Apostolic writings? Why should we talk so much of an establishment, and so little of an APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION? Why should we not seriously endeavour to impress our people with this plain truth;-that by separating themselves from our communion, they separate themselves not only from a decent, orderly, useful society, but from THE ONLY CHURCH IN THIS REALM WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE THAT SHE HAS THE LORD’S BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEOPLE?²⁰

The capital letters are Keble’s own emphasis. Keble was claiming that if someone were to leave the Church of England to become a Baptist or a Presbyterian, they might well be leaving the only church in the country which actually could give them Christ’s body in the Eucharist.

Three Branch Theory

There is in the Oxford Movement also a high doctrine of the visible church (meaning the church with bishops in apostolic succession) as the body of Christ. As noted above, William Palmer advocated what has been called the “Three Branch Theory.” Before the Oxford Movement, Anglicans tended to think of themselves as having more in common with continental Protestants than they did with Roman Catholics. Anglicans certainly had retained many characteristics of the Pre-Reformation church, as is evident, for example, in Cranmer’s liturgy or the clergy’s wearing of vestments. Hooker’s understanding of law looks back to the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. At the same time, if one were to ask the average communicant in the Church of England in the nineteenth century whether they considered themselves to be Protestant or Catholic, they would have replied that they were Protestant. There was a great deal of distrust and fear of Roman Catholicism – which was dismissed as “popery.” It was a new thing for Roman Catholics to be admitted to serve in Parliament.

The Oxford Movement reversed this. Rather than looking to the Reformation, the Tractarians tended to look primarily to Rome, but also to the Eastern Orthodox churches. Palmer wrote:

The Oriental (sometimes called the Greek) church prevails more or less in Russia, Siberia, North America, Poland, European Turkey, Servia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Greece, the Archipelago, Crete, Cyprus, the Ionian Islands, Georgia, Circassia, Mingrelia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt. . . . I maintain that these various churches form a portion of the catholic church of Christ.²¹

The catholic and apostolical churches of England, Scotland, – and Ireland, are the parent stock from whence many nourishing churches of Christ have been derived in the United States, the Islands, and other parts of North America; in Hindostan, Ceylon, Australia, and other parts of the East; and even in Africa, congregations and pastors are to be found, who have derived their Christianity and their authority from our churches. I propose to show in this chapter, that the British churches form a portion of the catholic church of Christ; and that every individual within their district is bound to unite himself to them, as being exclusively and solely the way of salvation established by divine authority amongst us. This will be chiefly proved by applying all the notes of the true church to our part of it, and showing that in every particular they entirely accord with it.²²

Palmer’s argument up to this point is that there are two churches that can be identified as Catholic because they have received apostolic succession through a history of bishops. The first are the Eastern Orthodox churches; the second is the Church of England. Finally, he adds:

But to me it appears infinitely safer and more charitable, to prefer the opinion of the majority of theologians, who consider the Roman churches, though in several respects faulty and corrupted in doctrine and discipline, yet still to continue a portion of the catholic church of Christ.²³

I deny that the Roman church alone has not separated from any more ancient church; or that she alone has the efficacious principles of unity spoken of. These are attributes equally of the Oriental and British churches, as I have shown.²⁴

Palmer’s Three Branch Theory claims that there is one Catholic church that has existed since the time of the Apostles, and that it exists in three branches: the Eastern Orthodox, the Anglican, and, finally, the Roman Catholic. And, at least according to Palmer, the Roman branch of the Catholic church is the one of the three that has stayed least true to the historic faith of the patristic church. Nonetheless, these are the three branches (and the only three branches) of the one true Catholic church.

Concerning “Lutherans,” “Zwinglians,” and “Calvinists,” Palmer acknowledges that “they did not voluntarily separate themselves from the existing Church, but were ejected by an abuse of authority.” Nonetheless, he argues that they are “not properly churches of Christ” because (1) they do not have existence from apostolic times; (2) they cannot offer effective resistance to schism; (3) their understanding of justification tends toward antinomianism; (4) they lack apostolic succession.²⁵ As for those Protestant bodies that either were not part of the original Reformation or who separated from the Lutherans or Reformed, Palmer considers them “too insignificant to merit attention.”²⁶

Next, there is a reverence for and deference to the ancient patristic church rather than and instead of the Reformers. Richard H. Froude, one of the members of the Oxford Movement who died at a young age, wrote in a letter, “[R]eally, I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more.”²⁷ Whether Froude’s sentiment was representative of the Oxford Movement as a whole, it is true that the leaders seemed to have little knowledge of or respect for the English Reformers.

Sacraments

There is also in the Oxford Movement a high evaluation of the sacraments. Keble in his essay “On Eucharistical Devotion,” writes:

Now the gift in the Holy Eucharist is Christ Himself—all good gifts in one; and that in an immense, inconceivable degree. And how can we conceive even Power Almighty to bring it more closely and more directly home to each one of us, than when His Word commands and His Spirit enables us to receive Him as it were spiritual meat and drink?²⁸

The language is in line with traditional Anglican theology. Keble continues:

[T]he work of this heavenly nourishment is to transform our being into itself; to change us after His image, “from glory to glory,” from the fainter to the more perfect brightness; until “our sinful bodies be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood; and we dwell evermore in Him, and He in us:” “we in Him,” as members of “His mystical Body, which is the blessed company of all faithful people;” “He in us,” by a real and unspeakable union with His divine Person, vouchsafed to us through a real and entirely spiritual participation of that Flesh and Blood which He took of our Father Adam through the Blessed Virgin Mary; wherewith He suffered on the Cross, wherewith also He now appears day and night before His Father in heaven for us.²⁹

Keble quotes the Prayer Book. He does not explicitly refer to any transformation of the elements. He writes rather about the transformation of the members of the church as Christ’s “mystical body,” that Christ might change us after his image. Keble focuses on the union that we have with Christ’s divine person, which occurs through a “real and spiritual participation” in the body and blood of Christ that he assumed in the incarnation. This operation takes place “when His Word commands and His Spirit enables us to receive Him as it were spiritual meat and drink.”

The most controversial statement in the sermon that led to Pusey’s pulpit suspension was the following: “the Eternal Word so took our flesh into Himself, as to impart to it His own inherent life; so then we, partaking of It, that life is transmitted on to us also, and not to our souls only, but our bodies, since we become flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone, and He Who is wholly life is imparted to us wholly.”³⁰ Pusey’s opponents accused him of affirming a “corporal presence” of Christ in the Eucharist contrary to Article 28 of the Thirty-Nine Articles: “The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.” However, Pusey’s position is in agreement with the position taken by Richard Hooker in the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker is clear that in the Eucharist, we receive the “whole Christ,” humanity and deity.³¹ In a series of extracts from Anglican authors, Pusey cites Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne and others. The first citation is from the “Homily on the Sacrament” in the Book of Homilies and contains the following:

Thus much we be sure to hold, that in the Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent: But, as the Scripture saith, the Table of the Lord, the Bread and Cup of the Lord, the memory of Christ, the annunciation of his death, yea, the communion of the Body and Blood or the Lord, is a marvellous incorporation, which by the operation of the Holy Ghost (the very bond of our conjunction with Christ) is through faith wrought in the souls of the faithful, whereby not only their souls live to eternal life, but they surely trust to win their bodies a resurrection to immortality. The true understanding of this fruition and union . . . is betwixt the body and the Head, betwixt the true believers and Christ . . . .

Keble uses the language of “spiritual feeding”; Pusey’s Book of Homilies citation refers to a union between Christ as head of the church with “true believers,” the church as Christ’s body – that takes place “by the operation of the Holy Ghost” as the “very bond of our conjunction with Christ.” Neither Keble nor Pusey use the language of nor advocate the theology of transubstantiation, despite the accusations of their opponents. They did affirm a real participation in the humanity of the crucified and risen Christ – something affirmed not only by Richard Hooker, but also by Anglican Reformers like Thomas Cranmer.

Finally, there is in the Oxford Movement a regard for ordinances and devotions such as public prayers, fasts, feasts, visible devotions such as decoration of the church, and the additional practice of Eucharistic devotion. Keble in his essay “On Eucharistic Devotion,” writes:

It is as impossible for devout faith, contemplating Christ in this Sacrament, not to adore Him, as it is for a loving mother, looking earnestly at her child, not to love it. The mother’s consciousness of her love, and her outward manifestation of it, may vary; scruples, interruptions, bewilderments may occur; but there it is in her heart, you cannot suppress it. So must there be special adoration and worship in the heart of every one seriously believing a special, mysterious presence of Christ, God and man, expressed by the words, “This is My Body.”³²

This was the adoption by the Oxford Movement of a Western practice characteristic of medieval Catholic piety. The Orthodox insist, as do the Reformation churches, that the purpose of the Eucharist is the eating and drinking of the bread and wine. If we want to look at something, the Orthodox would suggest that the church has Icons. Western Eucharistic devotion would seem to be a direct consequence of the medieval practice of infrequent communion for the laity. Perhaps the leaders of the Oxford Movement would have made a better suggestion for the practice of frequent communion – to eat the bread and drink the wine rather than to adore them.

Development of Doctrine

The final issue raised by the Oxford Movement is that of John Henry Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine. Appeal to development of doctrine was not characteristic of the Oxford Movement or later Anglo-Catholicism, but was rather the theory that Newman gave as his justification for leaving the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic.

Newman’s theory of “development” is in actuality a reappearance of an issue that had been raised earlier by John Jewel in his Apology of the Church of England. Jewel was a good enough historian to recognize correctly that there were beliefs and practices that were part of official Roman Catholic dogma at the time of the Reformation that could not be found either in Scripture or in the early tradition of the patristic church. Jewel issued the challenge that if one could find evidence for the papacy or transubstantiation or various other Roman Catholic doctrines in the early centuries of church history, then Anglicans would concede that the Roman Catholic church was in the right.

After the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic church resisted this historical challenge for centuries. The Tridentine position was that what the Roman Catholic church believed at the time of the Reformation and in the nineteenth century was identical with what the Catholic church had always believed. What the popes believed in the sixteenth century was exactly what the apostles had believed in the first century. Over against Jewel, Thomas Harding had argued that the Roman dogmas were there from the very beginning.

What was novel about Newman’s approach was that he conceded Jewel’s main criticism. Newman acknowledged as correct that the Roman Catholic church of the Council of Trent affirmed dogmas that could not be found either in Scripture or in the early tradition of the patristic church.

There is a sense then in which Newman’s Essay on Development is a concession that people like Jewel were correct, that the Reformers were in the right. One cannot find the distinctively Roman Catholic doctrines in the Bible; neither can one find them in the early church. But Newman departs from the earlier Tridentine claim by embracing a new argument that a Roman Catholic can affirm later dogmas not found in Scripture or the early church based on what he calls “development.” Crucial to Newman’s theory of development are the following:

First, Newman acknowledges that Protestants accuse Roman Catholics of corruption by adding doctrines and practices such as devotion to the Virgin Mary or the Papacy or the doctrine of purgatory that are not found in Scripture. Newman brings up a counter argument of his own, however. Protestants, he claims, also hold to doctrines and practices not found in Scripture, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity or the practice of infant baptism.

As noted above, Keble had defended this practice by appealing to unwritten tradition, as had Newman in his earlier book on Arianism. Newman was a good enough historian, however, that he came to recognize that there could be no original unwritten tradition that could have survived long enough eventually to have been formulated as later dogma. Against the kind of claim made by Keble, Newman acknowledged that there is no unwritten tradition for these later dogmas and practices.

Newman also claimed, however, that Protestants believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, and they practice infant baptism. If we look in the Bible, we will not find a formulated doctrine of the Trinity, and we will not find the practice of infant baptism mentioned. Accordingly, Newman claims that Protestants are inconsistent in their criticism of Roman Catholics. Based on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, there is no more reason for Protestants to accept the doctrine of the Trinity than there is for Roman Catholics to accept the Marian doctrines, the papacy, or purgatory.

In both cases, according to Newman, it was the later church that decided the teaching, and insofar as Protestants accept this later teaching, they are inconsistent. If Protestants accept the Council of Nicaea’s affirmation that the Son is homoousios, a word that cannot be found in the Bible, then consistency demands that they accept the papacy as well. If Protestants reject the papacy, then to be consistent, they should reject Nicaea and the doctrine of the Trinity.³³

Second, against the Protestant claim that Roman Catholic teaching that is not found in Scripture is a corruption, Newman claims to the contrary that there is a difference between a development and a corruption. The Roman Catholic doctrines to which Protestants object are not corruptions, but developments. They are similar to a plant that has developed from a seed. While the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, the homoousios of Nicaea was a legitimate development. While what the Roman Catholic Church believes about Mary is not specifically mentioned in Scripture, what the Roman Catholic church affirms about Mary is a development. While transubstantiation is not mentioned in Scripture, transubstantiation is a development. The principle is the same with the doctrine of the papacy, and with purgatory. All of the various doctrines that separate or distinguish Roman Catholics from Protestants that are not found explicitly in Scripture or in the tradition of the early church are, according to Newman, developments.³⁴

Although there were several responses to Newman’s book, the definitive response was given by Newman’s brother-in-law James B. Mozley (1813-1878), who remained an Anglican, in Mozley’s book A Criticism of Dr. Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.³⁵ There is no evidence that Newman ever read his brother-in-law’s book.

Mozley’s argument can be summarized as follows. First, Newman’s essay does not distinguish adequately between corruption and development. Over-development or distorted development is just as much a problem as corruption: “A general view of things thus impresses strongly in form of corruption upon us, which is the corruption of exaggeration, and not that of failure; the perversion, and not destruction of the original type.”³⁶ Mozley provides a moral example by speaking of the need to use proper judgment in the balancing of love and fear, but one could also provide an example from Newman’s metaphor of development as like that from a seed to a plant. A plant can certainly fail through some kind of corruption, e.g., an attack by a fungus or a parasite. However, a plant can also over develop, as, for example, in an invasive species like kudzu. Mozley’s point is that although something may not be a corruption, it can still be an addition of disproportional growth, and that can be just as problematic.

Mozley does not deny the principle of development as such. He recognizes that there are legitimate developments beyond what is explicitly taught in Scripture in what the church believes. For example, one can read the entire New Testament and never find the words “Trinity” or homoousios. But Newman commits a logical fallacy of ambiguity because he does not distinguish between the two different kinds of development.

In order to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate developments, it helps to refer to Development A and Development B, although these are not Mozley’s terms. Development A is a development of the logical implications of an originally held idea.³⁷ Mozley refers to the doctrine of the Incarnation as an example, “the truth that God became man.” From the earliest councils to the more developed theology of the scholastics, the task is to “explain this truth” of what it means to be divine, of what it means to be human, and the “idea of the union of the two.” Mozley provides Thomas Aquinas’s De Modo Unionis Verbi Incarnati in the Summa Theologiae as an example: “Here, in short, is a field of explanatory theology, which takes the idea of the Incarnation, and brings out all the possible inferences and aspects which can be elicited from it . . . . But such manifold evolutions do not profess to add anything to the substantial idea of the Incarnation – the truth that God became man.”³⁸

The Council of Nicaea uses the word homoousios, a word which one cannot find in the New Testament, but in using the new terminology, the Nicaea does not actually say anything that is not already taught in Scripture. The affirmations of the Council of Nicaea and (we would add) the later Council of Chalcedon are simply the articulation that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, and that Jesus Christ is One using the technical language of homoousios, of persons and nature: Jesus Christ is a single divine person, of one substance with the Father, with a complete divine and human nature, and the natures are neither to be confused nor separated.³⁹ So Development A does not add anything of actual content to that which is already in Scripture. It rather clarifies what Scripture already affirms in more technical theological language.⁴⁰

Second is what can be called Development B. In contrast to Development A, Development B is not an articulation of what is already implicitly there. Development B is rather an actual addition of content.⁴¹ Mozley provides three specific examples of Roman Catholic dogmas as examples of Development B: purgatory, Marian devotion, and papal infallibility.

Concerning purgatory, Newman argues that purgatory follows from the notion that wrongdoing demands punishment. Purgatory developed as a “form of penance due for post-baptismal sin.”⁴² In response, Mozley points out that repentance is a “general Gospel principle,” but that purgatory is “a particular fact,” and a “general principle cannot involve, logically, a particular fact.” We believe in a final judgment as a matter of revelation, but there is no such revelation regarding purgatory. Newman presumes that equal sinners must receive equal punishment, but this is a mere assumption – we cannot know ahead of time how God’s mercy or judgment operates. Moreover, the Scripture teaches that the dead in Christ will “rest from their labors,” and presents a “peaceful and tranquil character” of the state of the Christian dead, which, is in direct contrast with Newman’s understanding of purgatory as “punishment.”⁴³

Concerning the Roman Catholic Marian dogmas, Mozley points out that the Council of Ephesus’s pronunciation that Mary is theotokos (God-bearer) is not actually a statement about the identity of Mary, but a statement about the identity of Jesus as the Son of God incarnate. It does not follow from Jesus’ personal identity as the Son incarnate that the Roman dogmas of Mary’s immaculate conception or her bodily assumption are true. These are historical affirmations that either took place or did not, and have no connection with the ontological identity of Jesus as both the Son of God and the son of Mary. These are real additions of content, which cannot be found in Scripture, and are not logical implications of what is taught in Scripture.⁴⁴

Finally, Mozley states that the doctrine of papal infallibility is the “keystone of Mr. Newman’s whole argument,” which “stands or falls” by it.⁴⁵ As Mozley argued that the doctrines of purgatory and the Marian dogmas do not follow from biblical revelation, we might expect Mozley to proceed in a similar manner regarding the papacy. There is no direct path from Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession in the Gospel of Matthew that “you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church” (16:18) to the Bishop of Rome being the successor of Peter and having infallible authority over all other churches.

Mozley rather challenges the argument for its epistemological overreach. Mozley first notes that given its significance for Newman’s case, the argument for the papacy occupies an “exceedingly small space.” Given its importance, it is a “kind of subordinate point.”⁴⁶

Newman’s key argument appears in a single sentence in the midst of a discussion of revelation. Given that Scripture contains divine revelation, it follows that there will be some kind of further guarantee of the implications of that revelation, and Newman eventually finds this in the papacy:

If then there are certain great truths, or duties, or observances, naturally and legitimately resulting from the doctrines originally professed, it is but reasonable to include these true results in the idea of the revelation itself, to consider them parts of it, and if the revelation be not only true but guaranteed to be true, to anticipate that they too will come under the privilege of that guarantee.⁴⁷

Mozley summarizes Newman’s essential argument as “If an original revelation is guaranteed, its resulting truths will be” as well. He labels this a bit of “logical magic,” getting something out of something else that has nothing to do with it. Newman is claiming “That because God guarantees some truth, he must necessarily guarantee more . . . that because an original act of revelation has taken place, it must be continued.” To which Mozley asks the reasonable question “Why?” “We cannot possibly know what the whole of God’s purpose was in making at a particular time a revelation: we cannot possibly therefore have the ground necessary for asserting that he must ‘surely’ make other revelations in continuous succession after it.” Given the actual course of providence, it would rather be natural to suppose that when God had given a revelation, God would leave human beings with the light of truth to sort it out to the best of their abilities. There is no reason to assume an ongoing revelation to provide an infallible interpretation of the original revelation.⁴⁸

Moreover, the logic of Newman’s argument does not necessarily lead to the Roman Catholic church and the papacy. The Orthodox church has as much right to claim historical continuity with the patristic church as does the Roman Catholic, but, in Mozley’s words: Newman’s “ordinary view [concerning the Orthodox church] supposes it not to exist.”⁴⁹

Next, Mozley claims, Newman’s theory leads to skepticism. The logical implication of Newman’s theory is that the doctrines of the Incarnation or the Trinity are not found in Scripture any more than the Roman Catholic doctrines. Newman admits that we can look in Scripture and we will not find the Pope. Newman admits that we will not find in the Bible what the Roman Catholic church believes about Mary. But based on Newman’s own argument, it seems that Newman is also saying we cannot find the doctrines of the Trinity or the Incarnation in Scripture, either.⁵⁰ If this is the case, we can rightly ask whether the church should continue to believe in the Incarnation or the Trinity. The Unitarians might be right.

Finally, Mozley points out correctly that Newman’s theory of development is contrary to historic Roman Catholic teaching. The church has always claimed to believe what has always been taught from the beginning. Athanasius did not claim when he was arguing with the Arians that he was introducing something new. Athanasius claimed rather that the Arians were innovators. The church has always believed that Jesus Christ is fully God. Moreover, historically the Roman Catholic Church itself has always taught that what it teaches is what the church has always taught. Accordingly, Newman’s theory actually contradicted the official teaching of the Roman Catholic church.⁵¹

Indeed, there were many Roman Catholics in Newman’s time who were not happy with his argument, and Newman’s development argument was not widely accepted until the middle of the 20th century, when, at Vatican II, Roman Catholics began to accept Newman’s theory as the official way in which they understand their own doctrinal position. The doctrine of development is itself a development.

Conclusion

The above is an overview of some of the central theological themes of the Oxford Movement. How should we evaluate it? First, the Oxford Movement made some positive contributions. It should not be seen as a disaster for Anglicanism.

For example, the Oxford Movement led to a recovery of the study of the church Fathers and even of the medieval Church. Earlier, John Jewel had appealed to the Fathers as did Thomas Cranmer. Beginning with the Oxford Movement, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Protestant scholars began to study the Fathers in depth. They produced translations and technical republications of the Fathers’ works. The Oxford Movement published the Library of the Fathers, after which Protestants followed in their steps. Reformed theologian Philip Schaff edited a series of translations by Protestants of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, still in use today, but it was the Oxford Movement that began this rediscovery of the Fathers.

The next generation saw the rise of what was called “Ritualism.” The Tractarians themselves were not much interested in ritual or the recovery of Catholic liturgical practice. They were more interested in doctrine. However, beginning with the Oxford Movement, Anglicans began recovering various Catholic practices. First was the practice of private confession, as well as the beginnings of Anglican monasticism. In the following generation, there was a recovery of clerical vestments (such as chasubles), church architecture, and ritual. Some of this was controversial. Anglican priests were imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to cease ritualist practices.

Since then, much of this practice has become commonplace. Today it is commonplace for Anglican or Episcopal churches to have liturgical processions, candles on the altar/table, and to have clergy wear more in the way of vestments than was common in the early nineteenth century.

Another fruit of the Oxford Movement was the Liturgical Renewal Movement of the mid-twentieth century. The study of liturgy as a discipline as well as many of the liturgical changes for not only Anglicans, but Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and even Methodists and Presbyterians, the creation of revised liturgies in new Prayer Books and other worship texts, have their ultimate roots in the Oxford Movement.

The Oxford Movement was also important for the rise of ecumenism in the sense that a Reformation church, the Church of England, was attempting to engage in theological conversation with the Roman Catholic church and even suggesting possible church reunion. Since then, the Ecumenical Movement has included discussion with and between Reformation Protestans and Orthodox churches as well, but this was almost the first time since the time of the Reformation that Reformation churches were suggesting positive theological engagement with the Roman Catholic church.

Finally, although Newman was arguably mistaken in his main claim for the development of doctrine, the very notion of development of doctrine led to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Scripture and tradition. It is naive to assume that one can find in the New Testament the fully formulated doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation as they were affirmed at the councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon and formulated by the Cappadocian Fathers. The New Testament does not use the terminology of persons and substance and homoousios. Newman’s theory raised questions about how the church moves from what the New Testament says about Jesus in passages like 1 Corinthians 8:6, Philippians 2:5-11, Colossians 1:15-20, 2:9, Hebrews 1, and John 1:1-14 to what the church later teaches about Jesus’ identity and the Trinity using the ontological language of the ecumenical councils. This is development, but it is, as Mozley would say, a spelling out of the logical (and ontological) implications of what the New Testament already contains.

The above are all positive consequences of the Oxford Movement.

At the same time, the Oxford Movement had some real weaknesses. First, the leaders of the Oxford Movement had little understanding of the Protestant Reformation, and they particularly did not understand or have sympathy for the Reformation as an example of reforming Catholicism. There was, for example, Thomas Cranmer’s appropriation of patristic and medieval Catholic liturgy. This did not take place everywhere for Protestants, and Puritans particularly opposed it.

Second, John Jewel in his Apology appealed to the Rule of Faith and to the practices of the early church. In Richard Hooker’s argument against the Puritans, Hooker relied on Augustinian and Thomist theological categories. There does not really seem to have been an appreciation by the Tractarians that the English Reformation itself was not simply repudiating Catholic tradition, but was indeed attempting to reform the church.

Next, there is the issue of the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone, which was one of the key affirmations of the Reformation. It is not clear in Newman’s in essay on justification that he actually understood what the Reformation doctrine was.

There was also a tendency for leaders of the Oxford Movement, particularly Newman, to caricature the Reformation, to portray Reformation understandings of doctrinal positions such as Sola Scriptura (reduced to “private judgment” by Newman) in a manner that earlier Anglicans from Cranmer to Hooker would not have recognized as their own views. Unfortunately, some Protestants did correspond to the caricatures that Newman addressed, but one should not defend one’s position by caricaturing or using the worst or extreme examples of a position one challenges.

Next, there was a tendency for the Oxford Movement to understand Catholicism in the light of the Council of Trent. There was little awareness of or appreciation for Eastern Orthodoxy, although Palmer noticed that the Orthodox existed. Newman’s argument for development portrayed the options as entirely between Protestantism on the one hand and Tridentine Roman Catholicism on the other. Ecumenically, that is unfortunate, but it also means that Newman was unable to appreciate how the Reformers could challenge certain aspects of Roman Catholicism without simply rejecting everything about the pre-Reformation church.

Finally, there is a tendency to understand unwritten tradition as a separate source from Scripture, rather than the history of the interpretation of Scripture. This was evident in Keble’s essay on “Primitive Tradition.” Even Newman, with his notion of development, understands tradition as something additional to or as a development in addition to what is taught in Scripture, rather than tradition as the understanding of the history of the interpretation of Scripture.

In conclusion, the understanding of tradition in earlier Anglicans like Thomas Cranmer, John Jewel, Richard Hooker or the Caroline Divines is not that we reject extra-biblical tradition, but that tradition is itself the history of faith seeking understanding. Tradition is the history of the church reading Scripture, understanding Scripture, and allowing Scripture to address a new situation in a new day that is not the same historical and cultural situation that prevailed at the time Scripture was written.