Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1991
Publisher
Historical Society of the Episcopal Church
Abstract
Stephen W. Sykes has written that theological "views are neither right nor wrong by being liberal in character. Only a church," he argues, "which has despaired of the possibility of rational argument about theology altogether could adopt such a stance."1 Yet Paul Avis has gone so far as to suggest that "Anglicanism enshrines a principle of reverent agnosticism. It takes seriously the limitations of our knowledge and readily confesses that our grasp of the truth is circumscribed by mystery, a light shining in the darkness."2 From the Cambridge Platonists and Jeremy Taylor, to Bishop Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (1736), "the Anglican tradition [has accepted] that probability is the highest degree of certainty that we may hope to enjoy in this world. It regards the rule of faith (regula fidei) as a set of practical guidelines" (54). And, thus, the role of any human authority as a reliable determinant of truth must be always tentative-and, it would seem, any Anglican theology must today be seen as inevitably "liberal."
Recommended Citation
Hawley, J. C. (1991). Charles Kingsley and the Book of Nature. Anglican and Episcopal History 61(4), 453-71.
Comments
Copyright © 1991 Historical Society of the Episcopal Church. Reprinted with permission.