Together with the prayer book itself, the Thirty-Nine Articles witness to what the Church of England believes. They were written in the mid-sixteenth century to set out the Anglican view on the major issues people were discussing at the Reformation. What were the sacraments? How was Christ present in the Eucharist? Did God choose some people to be saved and others to be damned? Could one earn extra merit by good deeds? What was the source of authority in the church? Should Christians serve in the army?
It was an age when people debated bitterly over what they believed. And disagreement between the followers of John Calvin, of Martin Luther and of Ulrich Zwingli was no less intense than their disagreement with the Roman Catholic church. The Anglican church had its own views, too, and the Articles reject, for instance, Zwingli's idea that the Eucharist was a purely symbolic celebration, and reject Calvin's belief that God only calls those of us who are "predestined to life".
Isn't it all in the Bible, you ask. Obviously the Reformers all said their teachings were biblical - so for that matter did the Roman Catholic church! The Anglican Articles claim to "contain the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's word", and Article 6 begins: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby ("proved" in those days meant "tested"), 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."
The problem is that the Bible tells the good news about Jesus Christ. It was not written as a recipe book to answer questions we might ask today. Is it a good thing to baptize young babies? Is nuclear war wrong? Can women serve as bishops? May divorced people remarry? People arguing for and against can all find texts to support their case!
Luther in his famous defence before the Diet at Worms in 1521 said he could only be condemned "by scripture, or by manifest reasoning." (Luther had his own views about what constituted scripture, though. He relegated the Book of Revelation, the Epistle of James and the Letter to the Hebrews to an appendix!) Calvin went further, and ascribed supreme authority to scripture. The Westminster Confession was drawn up in 1643 when parliament sought to replace the Anglican church with a Calvinist and Presbyterian one. It begins by claiming that "the authority of the Holy Scripture...dependeth not on the testimony of any man or Church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof."
The Anglican position did not go as far as this. The Bible derives its authority from the Church, who, Article 20 affirms, is "a witness and a keeper of holy Writ". This does not mean that the Church has more authority than the Bible, but merely that the two exist and work together.
Isn't this splitting hairs, you ask. The people who were burnt at the stake for their beliefs scarcely thought so. And in practice the different viewpoints have allowed the different churches to be enriched in different ways. The Anglican church has always looked back in its scholarship to the early church, and has become perhaps more active and more ecumenical because of it. Lutheran scholarship has concentrated on the Bible, and has given us the insights of textual criticism - seeing the purpose of each of the different parts and trying to get back to the original proclamation of the gospel.
The summer holidays are approaching, and with them the opportunity to do some holiday reading. When did you last read Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus? When did you last ask yourself what the people in Corinth wrote to Paul to elicit the responses he gave? Can you still remember how Israel escaped from Egypt? What "signs" does the Fourth Gospel record? But above all, use to Bible to learn of the love God has for us, and to hear the Good News of our salvation from sin in Jesus, our risen and glorified Lord. For that is what it is all about.
HD