Creeds & Confessions
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Also Known As Articles of Religion The title under which they are printed in the Book of Common Prayer. · Thirty-Nine Articles The usual short form, without the definite article.
Anglican
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Origin from 1571
The doctrinal articles of the Church of England, revised in 1563 from the Forty-Two Articles that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer had compiled a decade earlier, and settled in their final English form in 1571. They are short and occasional rather than systematic, answering the points actually in dispute between England and Rome and between England and the continental radicals, and passing over much else. Article six makes Scripture the measure of what may be required for salvation, article eight receives the three ancient creeds, and article thirty-seven denies the Bishop of Rome any jurisdiction in England. Printed at the back of the Book of Common Prayer, they were subscribed by clergy for four centuries and now function across most of the Anglican Communion as a historic formulary bearing witness to the faith rather than as a list assented to article by article.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account Attributed Author / CompilerRevised by the Convocation of Canterbury in 1563 under Archbishop Matthew Parker, from the Forty-Two Articles that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer compiled in 1553. 2 Form of the ConfessionSourced to the subject's own accountThirty-nine short articles, occasional rather than systematic, running from the Trinity and the three ancient creeds through Scripture, justification and predestination to the church, the sacraments, oaths and the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. 1 Disputed
Point in DisputeHow far article seventeen, on predestination and election, commits the Church of England to a Reformed doctrine of grace. 2 One reading takes the article as straightforwardly Reformed, written by men who had read Calvin and Bucer and meant what they said. Another takes its silence on reprobation as deliberate, framing the article so that those who rejected double predestination could still subscribe. The argument is about the intent of the drafters as much as the words, and it has never been settled. Status
Standing as a StandardSubscription was required of Church of England clergy from 1571, and the Articles are printed with the Book of Common Prayer; the American Episcopal church adopted them in 1801 with the article on General Councils omitted and the article on civil government rewritten. 2 Scholarship
How Its Legacy Is ContestedJohn Henry Newman argued in Tract 90 of 1841 that the Articles condemned particular abuses rather than Catholic doctrine as such, and so could be subscribed by a clergyman holding much that Rome held; the heads of Oxford houses censured the tract and the Tracts for the Times ended with it. 2 Learn More
From Forty-Two Articles to Thirty-Nine
The Church of England's articles began under Edward VI as the Forty-Two Articles of 1553, compiled by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and issued by royal mandate a few weeks before the young king died. The accession of Mary I swept them away with the rest of the Edwardian settlement, and Cranmer was burned at Oxford in 1556. When the Elizabethan church needed a doctrinal statement of its own, the Convocation of Canterbury took Cranmer's text up again in 1563 under Archbishop Matthew Parker, dropped several articles aimed at radicals no longer thought a live threat, added others, and brought the number down to thirty-nine. The Latin text agreed in 1563 and the English text finally settled in 1571 differ in one substantial respect: the article on the wicked who do not eat the body of Christ, left out of the earlier version, stands in the later one. Parliament required clerical subscription in 1571, and from then the Articles were printed at the back of the Book of Common Prayer, where they still appear.
They are not a systematic theology and were never meant to be. Each article answers a question that was genuinely in dispute in the middle of the sixteenth century, which is why the collection moves without much apparent plan from the Trinity and the ancient creeds to the sufficiency of Scripture, then to original sin, free will, justification, works before grace and predestination, then to the church, its councils, its ministers and its two sacraments, and finally to oaths, the goods of Christian men, the marriage of priests and the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. What nobody was arguing about is largely passed over in silence.
Subscription, Tract 90, and the Long Argument Over Meaning
Subscription turned the Articles into a test rather than a description, and the test was contested for as long as it was enforced. Clergy signed at ordination and again on institution to a benefice, and for a long stretch of English history those who could not sign were shut out of the universities as well as of the ministry. Anglicans of markedly different convictions each found the wording bearable, which is at once why the settlement held and why it was attacked from both flanks.
The sharpest test came in 1841, when John Henry Newman published Tract 90, arguing that the Articles condemned particular abuses rather than Catholic doctrine as such, and could therefore be signed in good conscience by a clergyman who held a great deal that Rome held. The heads of Oxford houses censured the tract, the Tracts for the Times ceased with it, and Newman was received into the Roman church four years later. The episode fixed a question that has not gone away: whether the Articles are a Reformed confession that later readers softened, or a document drafted from the start in terms several parties could sign.
The Articles also travelled. The American Episcopal church adopted them in 1801, omitting the article on the authority of General Councils and rewriting the article on civil government for a republic with no established religion, and the Episcopal Church now prints them among its historical documents rather than as a subscription standard. Several provinces of the Anglican Communion have never required subscription at all. The Church of England itself now asks its clergy for a general Declaration of Assent, affirming loyalty to the inheritance of faith to which the Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal bear witness, rather than assent to each article in turn.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Affirmation Of
Article eight receives the three ancient creeds as agreeable to Scripture, the Apostles' Creed among them.
Article eight receives the creed commonly called that of Athanasius, printed in the Book of Common Prayer for use on certain feasts.
Article 31 uses redemption, propitiation and satisfaction of one offering in a single sentence, which is one reason the English word carries weight in the argument.
Article eight receives the Nicene Creed, which in Anglican use is the fuller Niceno-Constantinopolitan text said at the eucharist.
Article 31 calls the offering of Christ once made the perfect redemption, propitiation and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world.
Belongs to Tradition
The doctrinal articles of the Church of England, and through it a historic formulary of the Anglican Communion.
Opposed By
Settled in the same decade and on the same list of questions, the two documents deny each other almost item for item: the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, the invocation of saints and the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome.
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