The Plurality of Anglican Theology

One theologian that explains the theological history of Anglican theology really well is Aidan Nichols who has written, "The theology of the English Reformers was built on both Lutheran and Calvinist foundations, yet it was never systematically either Lutheran or Calvinist. Partly from conviction but mostly from political necessity their theology was poured into an institutional mould which retained large elements of a Catholic structure. As a result, when, in the reign of Elizabeth, a reflective Anglican consciousness emerges, it sees itself not as a straightforward continuation of the Continental Reformation, but as a 'via media.' The history of Anglican pluralism derives from the intrinsic difficulty of defining such a via media, and from the resultant need to leave wide open a wide latitude in the construing of doctrine. Thus the via media idea, intended as a unifiying force for Anglicanism, tended to be disintegrating in practice. It could be used in a classically Protestant direction or in a Catholic direction; or yet again in a Latitudinarian direction—on the grounds that where so much is unclear, little should be insisted on. Again, Anglicans may despair of via media and take refuge either in Anglo-Catholicism [giving it a much larger keel of Tradition for a heaving ship- PMB] or in the idea of Western [Eastern?] Orthodoxy, in each case accepting that the supreme norm for Anglican faith and practice should be provided from outside Anglicanism—either from Rome or Constantinople. Finally, Anglicans may choose to regard the incoherences (yet riches) of their own Church as simply a microcosm of those of Christianity world-wide. In this case they will argue that Anglicanism has no distinctive contribution to make to the coming Great Church [an Anglican ecumenical and eschatological idea of the Church—PMB]: its destiny is to disappear, its triumph will be its dissolution."- From The Panther and the Hind by Aidan Nichols p. xix-xx.