The Anglican Via Media — Scripture, Tradition, Reason
As taught in the Anglican / Episcopal tradition
Why Anglicans hold Scripture supreme yet listen to tradition and reason as guides.
The Anglican theological tradition is frequently described as the Via Media, or the "middle way." However, taught from within the Anglican Christian tradition, this middle way is not a lukewarm compromise between Roman Catholicism and radical Protestantism. Rather, it is a principled, positive theological framework that seeks to recover the pure faith of the primitive Church. Grounded in the English Reformation, this tradition orders its ecclesiology and identity upon a three-legged stool: the supreme authority of Scripture, the witness of ancient Tradition, and the application of Right Reason.
By the end of this lesson
- Articulate Hooker's "three-legged" approach without flattening Scripture's primacy
- Read 2 Thessalonians 2:15 alongside 2 Timothy 3:16 to see how Scripture and tradition relate
- Explain how the Thirty-Nine Articles function compared with a continental confession
- Identify how the Book of Common Prayer embodies Anglican theology in liturgical form
- Articulate why Anglicans are sometimes called "the Catholic-Reformed church"
Scripture
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