Ten Tedious Articles

I finished my second of five research papers yesterday; the one for English Reformation. The topic I chose was various interpretations of Henry VIII’s Ten Articles of 1536. After Henry’s break with Rome several years earlier, he penned this, the Church of England’s first written confession of faith. I entitled my paper “Ten Reasons Why I Talk about Henry with Tongue Partially in Cheek.”

The Ten Articles cover the subjects of baptism, communion, penance, prayer to saints, and justification, among others. Many scholars view what Henry writes on all these topics to be a compromise with Lutheranism, but I say “No way.” He says penance is necessary for salvation, which is a practice Lutherans did away with. He states that prayer to saints is commendable, which Lutherans rejected as well. And the real kicker is his fifth article on justification (how we are made right with God and declared righteous before him). In this article, Henry asserts that we are justified through faith and good works. A handful of scholars see the fact that Henry attributes our justification to faith, but fail to distinguish the difference between Henry’s position (which is also the Roman Catholic view) and the Lutheran doctrine of justification through faith alone.

Justification through faith alone was one of Luther’s declarations that Rome found the most repulsive. How can we be saved through faith alone? Aren’t we also saved through our good works? No. Even our good deeds are tainted with sin. They aren’t pure enough to save us. Only Jesus is. And justification is “the judicial act of God, consisting in the charging of our sin to Christ and the crediting of Christ’s righteousness to us” (Concord pg.670). And it’s received through faith alone, created by the Word of God, not by works so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:9). This is something Henry VIII never came to terms with, which is why I believe his Ten Articles of 1536 are doctrinally Catholic, not Lutheran.

Henry was never anything but a Catholic. He just wanted to be the supreme head of the church instead of the pope. I’ll never understand how 21^st-century Anglicans can justify their Reformation, having been started by such a corrupt monarch who was more concerned with political gain than in confessing the true faith. The Church of England wasn’t formed by great religious minds like Martin Luther or John Calvin, but by a power-crazed sex-maniac who broke with the Church in a desperate attempt to secure his own bloodline. Some reformer, eh?