Theopedia

Articles of Religion Anglican

Definition

The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion are the doctrinal standard of the Church of England and the wider Anglican tradition, given their final form by the Church of England’s Convocation in 1571.1 They were not written as a complete statement of the Christian faith but as a statement of the Church of England’s own position against Rome on one side and some Continental Reformers, including the Anabaptists, on the other.12 Even a “high-church” reading of the Articles, one built on creeds, ceremony, and apostolic succession, still “makes clear that the Bible is the final source of all sovereignty in the church.”3

Historical Development

The Articles descend from Thomas Cranmer’s Forty-two Articles of 1552-53, written under Edward VI. Article 8 of that earlier document, “Of Original, or Birth Sin,” stated that original sin is “the fault and corruption of the nature of every man,” a corruption that “does remain” even in the baptized, so that indwelling concupiscence itself “has of itself the nature of sin.”45 After Mary I’s restoration of Roman Catholicism brought Cranmer’s execution in 1556, the Forty-two Articles were revived once her reign ended and became the basis for the Thirty-nine Articles adopted by Convocation in 1563 and settled in their present form in 1571, retaining the original-sin statement almost unchanged as the present Article 9.1

Subscription to the Articles later became a matter of civil as well as ecclesiastical law. The Test Act made such subscription a requirement for holding civil office in England from 1673 to 1828, and the 1689 Act of Toleration required Nonconformist ministers, Particular Baptists among them, to subscribe to thirty-six of the Thirty-nine Articles before their congregations could worship legally, with Baptist ministers excused from one further article over their rejection of infant baptism.6

Content of the Articles

The Trinity and the Person of Christ (Articles 1-5)

The first five articles state Nicene Trinitarian orthodoxy and the Chalcedonian two-natures union of Christ in terms close to the Apostles’ Creed: the one true God existing in three persons of one substance, the Son’s incarnation as true God and true Man, his descent into Hell, his bodily resurrection, and his full deity together with the Father and the Holy Ghost.7

Scripture and the Creeds (Articles 6-8)

Article 6, “Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation,” states the Church of England’s own doctrine of biblical sufficiency directly: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” On the Apocrypha, the article allows the church to read those books “for example of life and instruction of manners,” but not to use them to “establish any doctrine.”8 Article 7 affirms continuity between the Old and New Testaments against any reading that limits the Old Testament’s promises to earthly, transitory blessings, while Article 8 receives the Nicene, Athanasian, and Apostles’ Creeds as provable by Scripture.9

Sin, Free Will, and Justification (Articles 9-18)

Article 9 carries forward Cranmer’s original-sin statement. Article 10 states that fallen man “cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God” without preceding grace.10 Article 11, “Of the Justification of Man,” states the doctrine in terms McCormick’s dissertation calls genuinely “Protestant” in flavor: “We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings,” a doctrine the article itself calls “a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort.”11 Articles 12 through 16 qualify that doctrine against several errors: good works cannot put away sin but are the necessary fruit of a true faith, “works of supererogation” beyond God’s commandments cannot be taught without “arrogancy and impiety,” Christ alone among men lived wholly without sin, and sin committed after baptism does not by itself amount to the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost.12

Article 17, “Of Predestination and Election,” defines predestination as God’s eternal purpose to deliver from curse and damnation those he chose in Christ, calling them, justifying them, adopting them, and bringing them to everlasting salvation, but it also warns that “for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall.”13 Compared with the Reformed confessions, Bavinck judges the Anglican Articles’ predestination language markedly more restrained than the fuller, more detailed statements of the Consensus of Geneva, the Canons of Dort, the Lambeth Articles, and the Westminster Confession.14 Article 18 closes the group by denying that salvation can be obtained by any name or law besides the name of Christ.15

The Church and Ministry (Articles 19-26)

Article 19 defines the visible church as “a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered,” and adds that even historic churches, Rome among them, “have erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.”16 Article 21 similarly denies that General Councils are infallible, since they “may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God,” and Article 22 rejects “the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints” as “a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture.”17

Article 20, “Of the Authority of the Church,” states the same Scripture-over-church principle at the institutional level: “The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written… [it] ought not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.”3 Markos reads this as evidence that even “high-church” Anglican ecclesiology, for all its emphasis on ceremony, hierarchy, and apostolic succession, ultimately subordinates the church’s authority over rites and ceremonies to Scripture.3 That authority over rites and ceremonies marks one of the clearest institutional differences from Reformed Baptist worship, which grounds acceptable worship in what Scripture itself prescribes rather than in what the church may lawfully decree. Articles 23 through 26 address ministerial order: no one may minister the sacraments or preach publicly without lawful calling, public worship should be conducted in a language the people understand, and an unworthy minister’s own sin does not void the sacraments he administers.18

The Sacraments (Articles 27-31)

Article 25 recognizes only two sacraments “ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel,” Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, against the five additional rites Rome counts as sacraments.19 Article 27 retains infant baptism as “a sign of Regeneration or new Birth,” where the confessional Reformed Baptist position instead baptizes only professing believers by immersion.20

Article 28, “Of the Lord’s Supper,” states that the body of Christ is “given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly spiritual manner,” received by faith, and explicitly denies transubstantiation as unprovable by Scripture and destructive of “the nature of a Sacrament.”21 Bavinck reads later Anglican sacramental practice as having drifted, more than the Article’s own wording strictly requires, toward the altar-and-sacrifice framing shared by Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, a direction he judges the Anglican (Episcopal) Church “largely took… over” and “tends increasingly” toward, in contrast to the Reformed recovery of the Supper as a meal at a table.22 Article 29 states that the wicked, though they may press the sacramental bread and wine with their teeth, do not thereby partake of Christ,23 Article 30 requires that the cup as well as the bread be given to the laity,24 and Article 31 states that Christ’s one oblation on the cross is the complete and sufficient satisfaction for sin, so that the Mass’s claim to re-offer Christ for the living and the dead is “blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.”25

Civil and Moral Life (Articles 32-39)

The remaining articles address ministerial and civil matters: the marriage of priests is lawful,26 excommunicated persons are to be avoided until reconciled,27 and rites and ceremonies need not be identical everywhere, since a particular church may ordain, change, or abolish them for edification so long as nothing is decreed against Scripture, the same principle stated institutionally in Article 20.28 Article 35 commends Cranmer’s own Books of Homilies to be read in churches,29 and Article 36 affirms the validity of the Church of England’s own ordination rites for bishops and ministers.30

Article 37 states the royal supremacy directly: “The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England… unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm… doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction,” adding plainly that “the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.”31 Article 38 denies the Anabaptist teaching that Christians must hold goods in common, insisting only that “every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor,”2 and Article 39 permits a Christian to swear an oath when a lawful magistrate requires it, “in justice, judgment, and truth.”32

Related Doctrines

Further Reading

References

  1. Moore, Concupiscence, 97-98. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 38, “Of Christian Men’s Goods, which are not common.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Louis Markos, From Aristotle to Christ: How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), “Part 4. How to Get Along with Our Neighbors.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Jared Heath Moore, A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 96. ↩

  5. Thomas Cranmer, “Article 8, of Original, or Birth Sin,” quoted in Moore, Concupiscence, 96-97. ↩

  6. Steven Tshombe Godet, “Gill’s Context, Life, and Works,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 15. ↩

  7. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 1-5. ↩

  8. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 6, “Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation.” ↩

  9. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 7-8. ↩

  10. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 9-10, “Of Original or Birth-Sin” and “Of Free-Will.” ↩

  11. Micah John McCormick, “Historical Survey,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 83. ↩

  12. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 12-16. ↩

  13. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 17, “Of Predestination and Election.” ↩

  14. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩

  15. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 18, “Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ.” ↩

  16. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 19, “Of the Church.” ↩

  17. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 21-22, “Of the Authority of General Councils” and “Of Purgatory.” ↩

  18. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 23-26. ↩

  19. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 25, “Of the Sacraments.” ↩

  20. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 27, “Of Baptism.” ↩

  21. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 28, “Of the Lord’s Supper.” ↩

  22. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩

  23. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 29, “Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper.” ↩

  24. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 30, “Of both Kinds.” ↩

  25. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 31, “Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross.” ↩

  26. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 32, “Of the Marriage of Priests.” ↩

  27. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 33, “Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided.” ↩

  28. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 34, “Of the Traditions of the Church.” ↩

  29. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 35, “Of the Homilies.” ↩

  30. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 36, “Of Consecration of Bishops and Ministers.” ↩

  31. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 37, “Of the Civil Magistrates.” ↩

  32. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), art. 39, “Of a Christian Man’s Oath.” ↩