A Meditation on the Articles of Faith: Introduction

Those of you who actually read this blog (which is about one person I think, being, namely, myself) will know that about a year ago I converted to Anglicanism, after a period of wandering around in the wilds of Biblical Unitarianism. This is not the place for a discussion of my conversion experience, but suffice it to say that the change was monumental. If you're interested to read one of the patterns of thought that lead me to Trinitarianism, look at my blog posts on The Past and Baruch Spinoza. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to slowly look at all 39 articles of religion as believed by the Anglican faith.

Now, these are standards of interpretation, not unyielding dogma, so differences on how to interpret these 39 articles are extensive between branches of Anglicanism, to individual churches, and finally to individual believers, so my interpretations are by no means universal. The one thing I do not wish to do is flatly reject any of these - with the respect of church history that I do have, I accept axiomatically all 39 of these as having a valid claim to my Christian faith. That said, what exact conclusions to draw them from and reconciling them to my biases is not the easiest thing in the world, so I want this to be a catalog of my thought process as I analyze, struggle with, break down and support each article. I would like to make a commitment to a time frame for doing this, but as busy as I am I really can't do that, so it will basically be as the spirit moves me and I get the time.

Here is the link to the articles:
http://rechurch.org/recus/?MIval=/recweb/foundations.html&display=39

I just want to set out a few of my principles of interpretation before we get started:

1. Scripture has final authority on all matters.

2. That said, interpreting Scripture is a difficult, complicated process, and some standard of interpretation is necessary to be sure that Scripture is being used in a healthy manner. Thus informing my perspective is the historical interpretation of the Church, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, especially the perspective of the Reformed Episcopal Church. Church history, and people with authority in the church, are thus valid authorities of doctrine that should be listened to carefully, and while sound reasoning on the Scriptures may give valid reasons to disagree with these authorities, such disagreement should be taken very, very seriously.

3. Within the parameters of Christianity as my position espouses (an Anglican who recognizes the first 3 ecumenical councils, all 3 creeds, the final authority of Scripture and the validity of the very articles being studied here), I operate from a Boethian principle of reconciliation, where I prefer to reconcile, within Christian perspectives, positions, rather than to reject doctrine wherever possible, provided that it remain within orthodoxy. It is more desirable to be able to perform this reconciliation among Christian thinkers than to assert disagreement, so every sincere effort in that respect will be made here - but only as is permissible in light of intellectual integrity and what is set forth in Scriptural and, secondarily, historical thought. So while reconciliation is the first strategy, it is not the last - it is an ideal, not a dogma.

Also, as a final comment, these will mostly just be meditative and analytical, not so much research-based, so please do not take them as scholarly findings as much as sharing private thoughts on the nature of these articles.

I am excited and hope to be posting soon!