Episcopal Three Legged Stool

The classic anglican theologian to whom later anglicans have looked in speaking of sources of authority in the church is richard hooker.

Episcopal three legged stool.

The oft cited three legged stool is a bit of episcopal folklore based on a distillation and reinterpretation of hooker. Ethan describes one of the hallmarks of the episcopal church and the rest of the anglican tradition what is known colloquially as the 3 legged stool. Yet nowhere does hooker explicitly lay out this hermeneutic. Several often conservative sources will tell us that hooker was a lot closer to sola scriptura than today s liberal episcopalians.

The one thing almost always attributed to him illustrates this point. This video is the first in a series. These principles are that of reason ancient practices of the church ecclesiastical authority and equity. The opinions expressed here are those of the owner and not of the episcopal church as a church any diocese parish or mission thereof unless specifically stated otherwise.

Charming as the image of a stool may be it is not his. It is a commonplace to argue that hooker introduces a three fold hermeneutic of scripture tradition and reason into anglicanism commonly referred to as a three legged stool. Namely the image of anglicanism s three legged stool whereby anglicanism is deemed to rest upon scripture tradition and reason. In anglicanism and in the episcopal church the cornerstones of our faith and sources of authority are scripture tradition and reason the balance between each of these three sources is often characterized as a three legged stool a concept attributed to anglican theologian richard hooker 1554 1600.

I know that the three legged stool of anglicanism idea gets to be somewhat hackneyed and overused. A three legged stool suggests equal reliance on scripture tradition and reason. The three legged stool is a personal blog. The principle of lex orandi lex credendi functions according to the so called three legged stool of scripture tradition and reason attributed to richard hooker.

A stool with three legs will collapse if any one of the legs is not equal with the others. It may be distinguished from a tendency in roman catholicism to overemphasize tradition relative to scripture and reason and in certain protestant churches to overemphasize scripture relative to tradition and reason. Hooker listed the sources of authority as scripture tradition and reason. Three legged stool of anglicanism a stool or a tower you decide.

Still i am hopeful that the future of the episcopal church will be filled with all sorts of christians with a tendency to lean back on two or even one leg of the stool and still settle back down to the stability of all three together. The contents of this blog are covered under the international intellectual copyright laws including any and all comments by readers.