Question about anglican faith (doctrinal developpment)

[oakraven65]

Yes,

Another concept I am really unconfortable with, "doctrine developpment".

I take my beliefs from my evangelical beliefs, and the faith and doctrine is entrusted "once for all". the content of the faith relate to the content of the doctrine. And in the Epistle of Jude, the faith is supposes to be "complete" (May be it is the last manuscript of the New Testament).

When exchanging with Eastern Orthodox believers I have had an input "the faith is entrusted once for all", and the doctrinal developpment is a "western innovation".

What is the relation between faith and doctrine ? Any Input?

Historical documents of Anglican church say things about "the relation to the individed church".

For me it relates to the contents of the faith and practice before 1054, the Eastern / Western Schism.

After the 8th Ecumenical Council the church was no more individed.

What is your opinion about this ?

[KristianJ]

This thread has been moved to the main forum area of STR from The Chapel :)

[pmcleanj]

Yes,

Another concept I am really unconfortable with, "doctrine developpment".

I take my beliefs from my evangelical beliefs, and the faith and doctrine is entrusted "once for all". the content of the faith relate to the content of the doctrine. And in the Epistle of Jude, the faith is supposes to be "complete" (May be it is the last manuscript of the New Testament).

When exchanging with Eastern Orthodox believers I have had an input "the faith is entrusted once for all", and the doctrinal developpment is a "western innovation".

What is the relation between faith and doctrine ? Any Input?

Historical documents of Anglican church say things about "the relation to the individed church".

For me it relates to the contents of the faith and practice before 1054, the Eastern / Western Schism.

After the 8th Ecumenical Council the church was no more individed.

What is your opinion about this ?

My first question would be, what do you mean by "doctrine"?

Doctrine is "right thought", and is a characteristic or posession of the Church -- by which we mean "The whole company of all faithful Christians". Unlike Roman Catholics, who have a central hierarchy with a publishing house capable of writing down detailed theological definitions of what they believe in language whose understanding demands intimate knowledge of classical philosophy, we have a broad-flung church where multiple not-always-agreeing individual bishops hold authority under Christ, and our understanding of doctrine is held as an equally broad-flung consensus. Those formalized definitions of how our faith should be defined and limited, we would call "dogma", and we quite intentionally don't have dogma.

'Right thought', of course, doesn't change. At least, the 'rightness' of it doesn't. The epistomological context in which we engage in the 'thought' part, however, is changing all the time. We no longer have an Aristotelian world-view, for example; our world-view is largely empirical. That inevitably must affect how we engage with our faith and draw out illustrations to communicate our faith, and principles by which to apply our faith.

The undivided church certainly refers to the church prior to the so-called "Great Schism" of 1054. But from an Anglo-centric perspective, we recognize one may have to go back even further to find a truly undivided church. The council of Whitby, for example, while technically a victory for the Romanizers in Britain, was not accepted by all of the British bishops. So there was division in the Church even in the seventh century. In keeping with a general Anglican sensibility that not everything needs to be nailed down in rigourous detail, the "undivided church" is a philosophical concept held as an ideal, the precise manifestation of which is left to the consensus of the believers.

This adaptive, consensus-forming lack of rigidity is usually expressed by Anglicans when answering questions about whether they believe something, as "Well, some Anglicans do, and some Anglicans don't." That typically drives non-Anglican questioners crazy. It even drives some Anglicans crazy. But it is the reality of the visible, functional, and quite real Anglican church. Think of it as a distinctive mindset flowering from our Celtic roots, which are neither "Western" as the term is classically defined from pre-Christian greco-roman culture, nor "Eastern".

[oakraven65]

Thanks

[oakraven65]

Thanks