The Anglican Branch Theory Part 2

The branch theory is one Anglican attempt at explaining how the Anglican Church is Catholic. (There are other views but they would deny the office of Bishop as part of the essence of catholicity.) This theory kept me in the Anglican Church for years because it was important to me that I was linked to the Church of Jesus Christ and His apostles in a visible way. I also thought it was great that the Anglican definition included Rome and Orthodoxy even though Rome and Orthodoxy excluded all of the other branches. One problem that I encountered when trying to work out this theory was that it simply does not work. The Roman Catholic Church bases her catholicity on the papacy. If a church is in communion with the Pope of Rome then that church is considered Catholic. The Orthodox Church claims that the churches must hold to the fullness of the faith and must be in communion with the Patriarchs in order to be Catholic. According to Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism has added to the apostolic faith and has broken communion with the other patriarchs and is not catholic. A church can have a line of apostolic success from the apostles and still not be Catholic because she would lack apostolic fellowship and faith. So Rome and Orthodoxy claim to be the exclusive Catholic church and they have different criteria for determining who is and who is not Catholic. Rome and Orthodoxy hold that these criteria are essentials of the Catholic faith. The branch theory claims that the criterion for catholicity is simply a faithful apostolic line of succession. According to this theory, since Anglicanism, Orthodoxy and Rome all share apostolic succession then all three make up the one Catholic Church. The Anglican definition is just as exclusive as the Roman Catholic and Orthodox ones. The Anglican criteria exclude Rome’s and Orthodoxy’s essentials of catholicity for her own. When Anglicans, Orthodox, and Rome confess the Nicene Creed during the liturgy they are not confessing the same thing since they do not mean the same thing when they confess Catholic. The Universalist claims to include all religions but really excludes all religions by their denial of the essentials of all religions such as Christianity’s claim that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way of salvation. I came to see the Anglican claim of an inclusive catholicity to be similar to the Universalist claim to include all religions. The problem is that the Anglican Church excludes the Roman Catholic and Orthodox essentials in order to be able to include them. This fact hit me while confessing the Nicene Creed one Sunday morning. Part 3 to come next.