The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism

by Aidan Nichols

A clear summary and analysis of the history of the Church of England that also explains the context of the common issues currently under discussion by Anglicans and Catholics.

Genres: History, Theology, Christianity

186 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

About the author

John Christopher "Aidan" Nichols O.P., S.T.M. (born 17 September 1948) is an English academic and Catholic priest.

Nichols served as the first John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford for 2006 to 2008, the first lectureship of Catholic theology at that university since the Reformation. He is a member of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and is the Prior of St Michael the Archangel in Cambridge.

Reviews

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent, observant history of Anglicanism by one of England's most prolific Roman Catholic scholars, charting the path of the Church of England from its break with Rome during the Reformation up until the 1980s. Aidan Nichols cleverly builds his book upon the poet and Catholic convert John Dryden's 1687 allegorical poem The Hind and the Panther not only for his own book's title but as a way of framing various aspects of Anglicanism. Below are some of the interesting points that stand out to me.

One of the common charges against Anglicanism is that it was conveniently birthed out of King Henry VIII's desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon so that he could secure a male heir with another woman. Though this accusation will likely never be put to bed, Nichols notes that the early Anglicans looked for precedent in the Crown's unity with the Church in the person of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Byzantium who bound both political and religious authority ultimately upon his throne (p. 22-23).

The 39 Articles, the basis of Anglicanism, have historically had four distinctive types of interpretative commentary: "Evangelical-Reformed; Broad Church - Latitudinarian; High Church - Arminian; Anglo-Catholic" (p. 33). Nichols also speaks of three major factions within Anglicanism - Low Church, High Church, and Broad Church.

Richard Hooker may be widely viewed as one of the key architects of Anglican theology, particularly its ecclesiology. Nichols points out that Hooker's theology is deeply informed by Aristotle, much to the chagrin of some Puritans, though other Puritans were "Anglican Calvinistic Aristoteleans" (p. 44).

There has long been interest among Anglicans in Eastern Orthodoxy who see in the East a model for the Church that links it back to the apostolic tradition and historic episcopate without going as far as to claim the overbold power of the Roman papacy. Nichols finds the first figure linking the East with Anglicanism in the person of the High Churchman Herbert Thorndike (1598 - 1672).

Writing of the Cambridge Platonists, Nichols describes their creative version of the so-called "via media":

However, this via media was not to be defined as with the Laudians in terms of a re-creation of primitive Catholicism. Instead it was to be a via media defined negatively by Adiaphorism, and positively by an exaltation of human reason both for its own sake and on the grounds of its compatibility with revelation. In this way, a Church re-formed in the image of the Cambridge Platonists would escape the irrational appeal to the impulse of the Holy Spirit in Puritanism, and the equally non-rational appeal to the authority of the teaching Church in Roman Catholicism. It would be a via media of a new kind, an epistemological kind, rejecting the two extremes of internal un-reason, appeal to the Spirit, and external un-reason, appeal to Church authority (p. 86).

Nichols assets that the Tractarian movement was the "ecclesial form of the Romantic Movement in England" (p. 118). The Tractarians were also the first Anglican theologians to deeply read the Greek Church fathers for their predecessors had focused more on the Latin Church fathers (p. 122).

This is a short but stimulating history of Anglican theology.

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a particular work, an early 1990s Roman Catholic examination of Anglicanism in view of ecumenical relations and potential reunion with Rome. So, it is essentially partisan and polemical whilst also perspicacious.

[Shawn Enright]

I can't review this book in good conscious because I was so unengaged and so thoroughly bored that I often skimmed paragraphs and dismissed insights. Sorry, Aidan. I was a bad student.