A challenge to Anglicans who believe this.

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Cam-masta

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There is an opinion out there among some Anglicans that the Church of England began not with King Henry VII but with St. Augustine of Canterbury when he brought the Faith to the British Isles. I would like to know why some Anglicans believe this when history records differently. After all, there wasn’t an official schism following a complete break from the Apostolic faith until the reign of King Henry and what pursued - no?
 
Cam-masta said:
There is an opinion out there among some Anglicans that the Church of England began not with King Henry VII but with St. Augustine of Canterbury when he brought the Faith to the British Isles. I would like to know why some Anglicans believe this when history records differently. After all, there wasn’t an official schism following a complete break from the Apostolic faith until the reign of King Henry and what pursued - no?
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Paging Contarini - call your office.

And the Faith was here when St. Augustine arrived.

GKC
 
I think everyone on the planet would agree that Henry VII had nothing to do with it, but Henry VIII did.

GKC is completely right. St. Augustine was sent to Canterbury to bring the Gospel to the “savages” in the British Isles, but was met by Christians when he got there. It wasn’t until about 100 years after Augustine came to the area that the existing Celtic Christians started being assimilated into the Roman way of doing things at the Synod of Whitby.
 
jesusluv said:
I think everyone on the planet would agree that Henry VII had nothing to do with it, but Henry VIII did.

GKC is completely right. St. Augustine was sent to Canterbury to bring the Gospel to the “savages” in the British Isles, but was met by Christians when he got there. It wasn’t until about 100 years after Augustine came to the area that the existing Celtic Christians started being assimilated into the Roman way of doing things at the Synod of Whitby.
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Oops. Missed the “VII”.

GKC
 
Henry VIII is a footnote. He didn’t change any dogma or doctrine. He no more created the Church of England than the Patriarch of Constantinople created the Orthodox Church.
 
jesusluv said:
GKC is completely right. St. Augustine was sent to Canterbury to bring the Gospel to the “savages” in the British Isles, but was met by Christians when he got there.
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St. Augustine was sent to Christianize the invading Germanic tribes, who were very much still pagan, rather than the Britons. Your wording above gives the impression that St. Augustine was surprised by the existence of Christians in Britain. Is that how it happened? I was pretty sure that Rome knew that Celtic Britain was Christian and had been so for a long time, and had a decent amount of influence with British Christians. In fact no less a luminary as the great St. Patrick was a Briton.
 
I never said Augustine was surprised or that Rome was. The facts are that Rome(the empire, not the church) had abandoned the whole area because they just couldn’t maintain it. There was a period with no roman rule at all there. Yes, the Germanic tribes were still pagan at the time, but from the way I understand it, they were left alone for a reason instead of forced to become Christian through power, which is how the Roman church tended to do things at the time. The empire conquers a people, the church converts them.

That gets away from the original topic though, which is basically when the Anglican church began. My opinion, which I should have stated clearly before is that it began way before Augustine stepped foot there.
 
ibkc said:
St. Augustine was sent to Christianize the invading Germanic tribes, who were very much still pagan, rather than the Britons. Your wording above gives the impression that St. Augustine was surprised by the existence of Christians in Britain. Is that how it happened? I was pretty sure that Rome knew that Celtic Britain was Christian and had been so for a long time, and had a decent amount of influence with British Christians. In fact no less a luminary as the great St. Patrick was a Briton.
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Yes. Augustine was a little surprised over his reception, and over the fact that the wife of Ethelbert of Kent, who greeted him, was a Christian. Augustine had feared he was entering the wilderness to be martyred. He had returned to Rome, before his final departure for the Isles, to ask Gregory if he really had to go.

Yep.

GKC
 
GKC said:
Yes. Augustine was a little surprised over his reception, and over the fact that the wife of Ethelbert of Kent, who greeted him, was a Christian. Augustine had feared he was entering the wilderness to be martyred. He had returned to Rome, before his final departure for the Isles, to ask Gregory if he really had to go.

Yep.
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Thanks, GKC. Had the invasions had cut off contact with Britain, making it so that no one knew what would be found when someone finally went there?
 
ibkc said:
Thanks, GKC. Had the invasions had cut off contact with Britain, making it so that no one knew what would be found when someone finally went there?
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Well, that’s what I meant to say, I just utterly failed, lol.

GKC always has a much more eloquent response than anything I can come up with.
 
Ahimsa said:
Henry VIII is a footnote. He didn’t change any dogma or doctrine. He no more created the Church of England than the Patriarch of Constantinople created the Orthodox Church.
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Uhhh…what? He rejected the authority given by Christ to Peter and his successors to bind or loose in Heaven and on Earth. He decided to reject the Chair of Peter’s authority to tell him his marriage was valid and binding.

He may have once been orthodox enough to earn that Defensor Fidei, and he may not have been theologically Protestant himself, but he is hardly a footnote!
 
Cam-masta said:
There is an opinion out there among some Anglicans that the Church of England began not with King Henry VII but with St. Augustine of Canterbury when he brought the Faith to the British Isles. I would like to know why some Anglicans believe this when history records differently. After all, there wasn’t an official schism following a complete break from the Apostolic faith until the reign of King Henry and what pursued - no?
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A further point: union with Rome does not in itself explain why there is union with Rome: UWR based on​

  • belief that it is necessary by Divine Law for a Church (e.g. that in England) to be in UWR,
    is not the same thing as
  • belief in such a necessity for purely human reasons.
What this means in practice is that
  • if UWR is of Divine institution, no part of the Church Universal can separate itself from Rome, no matter how pressing the reasons for such a course may be.
    whereas
  • UWR based on a lesser reason, such as the legislation of the Church, allows for the possibility that separation from Rome may be necessary
    The ecclesiology of the 1530s was more fluid in some ways than that of (say) the 1870s, or the 1990s. Issues no RC may freely dispute now, were not all settled then: knowledge of this is one reason some people stay, or become, “non-RC”.
As for the issue of perpetuity in unity of faith, the unity in faith between RCs in 2008 & our Catholic forefathers of the 1530s (or any other date) does not require that Catholics in 1530 should say & believe precisely what Catholics in 2008 say & believe - it does seem to require that we in 2008 should believe the same dogmas (however expressed) as they did in 1530, even if we also believe as dogmas things not dogmatised then. In that sense, we hold the very same Faith as they. What we can’t do, is say that because we hold the Immaculate Conception as dogma, so must they have: they did not, & that in no way injures unity of Faith. Had they done so, & were we to deny a dogma they held, then there would be a problem. 🙂

GKC is far better at explaining things - sorry :o
 
jesusluv said:
That gets away from the original topic though, which is basically when the Anglican church began. My opinion, which I should have stated clearly before is that it began way before Augustine stepped foot there.
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The Book of Common Prayer of Thomas Cranmer and the 39 Articles of Faith of Queen Elizabeth I change the Faith’s essence in it’s teaching, which the Church cannot do. The Sacred Deposit of the Faith is taught by our Lord through the Church’s teaching authority - the Holy Father in union with the Bishops. The Church of England called Purgatory a “Romish doctrine… vainly invented.”
 
Cam-masta said:
There is an opinion out there among some Anglicans that the Church of England began not with King Henry VII but with St. Augustine of Canterbury when he brought the Faith to the British Isles. I would like to know why some Anglicans believe this when history records differently. After all, there wasn’t an official schism following a complete break from the Apostolic faith until the reign of King Henry and what pursued - no?
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Hmm. There was much to do about the politics of the situation giving rise to King Henry VIII, but the creation of the Anglican church by Henry? I don’t think so. The Celtics were there long before Roman missionaries came. This should say something very prominent to the subject.
 
SIA said:
Hmm. There was much to do about the politics of the situation giving rise to King Henry VIII, but the creation of the Anglican church by Henry? I don’t think so. The Celtics were there long before Roman missionaries came. This should say something very prominent to the subject.
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How did the Celtics become Christian in the first place? …perhaps because of their earlier conversion by the Catholic Church?
 
SIA said:
nope. sorry. Catholicism was not the first mode of Christianity.
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SIA, I have been reading many of your posts. I write this without any sarcasm. I respect you. You are like a prize fighter who keeps getting knocked down and keeps getting up again.

You are in my prayers that you will realize that this is a fight that you don’t need to be in. (The fact that you stick around here gives me hope that the Holy Spirit is keeping you here)

Don’t you think that the missionaries came from Rome?
 
MagicKirk said:
SIA, I have been reading many of your posts. I write this without any sarcasm. I respect you. You are like a prize fighter who keeps getting knocked down and keeps getting up again.

You are in my prayers that you will realize that this is a fight that you don’t need to be in. (The fact that you stick around here gives me hope that the Holy Spirit is keeping you here)

Don’t you think that the missionaries came from Rome?
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No I don’t. History shows that the Celtics were in Great Britain long before Roman missionaries came. Rome does not encompass everything and everyone. History proves this.
 
SIA said:
The Celtics were there long before Roman missionaries came.
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(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

And they totally dominated basketball until those dang Romans started swarming all over the place with their newfangled Nike shoes!

(pssst. It’s Celts, pronounced with a hard ‘c’. It is not Celtics as in the Boston NBA team or the Scottish football team.)
 
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