Sunday, August 20, 2006


ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, THOMAS CRANMER, ON HOLY
SCRIPTURE:

"If there were any word of God beside the Scripture, we could never be certain of God's Word; and if we be uncertain of God's Word, the devil might bring in among us a new word, a new doctrine, a new faith, a new church, a new god, yea himself to be a god. If the Church and the Christian faith did not stay itself upon the Word of God certain, as upon a sure and strong foundation, no man could know whether he had a right faith, and whether he were in the true Church of Christ, or a synagogue of Satan."

This is a bit of an "introduction" to the topic of the next Article of Religion, dealing with Holy Scripture. Hopefully I'll have that post ready sometime this week.

1 comment:

Rev. Dr. Hassert said...

I hadn't even thought of the anti-semitic interpretation when posting this. I only thought that Cranmer was using the term "synagogue" as an interchangeable word for "church" (esp in his manner of prose; "Church of Christ" having two words starting with "c" and the other phrase having two words starting with "s")--I've seen this quote posted on a couple of Anglican web sites (APA and REC), so I hope it is read in context.

No anti-semitism intended, given that "salvation is from the Jews."