Description: The integrative theme of this collection of essays is change and transformation explored in the context of diverse expressions within the context of Anglican Church history. It addresses some central themes--notably the sacraments, liturgy, biblical interpretation, theological education, the relationship of church and state, governance and authority, and Christian education. The volume traces Anglican Church history chronologically. It includes a comparative study of penance in the thought of John Wyclif and Thomas Cranmer. The book also treats the dispersal of authority evident in the development of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, consensus in eucharistic theology in the seventeenth century, and developments in biblical interpretation in the early eighteenth century. This book also discusses a vision for the Christian education of children, change in theological education in the 1830s, the metanarrative of continuity developed by High Church historians in the late nineteenth century, increasing self-government in the Church at the outset of the twentieth century, and models of governance at the outset of the twenty-first. While this collection highlights aspects of change and transformation as an integrative theme, it is not its premise that change was normative or pervasive, perpetual or constant, within Anglicanism. Nevertheless, these essays raise some new lines of inquiry, make some suggestive interpretations, or propose revision of accepted views.

The essays in this collection explore questions that are fundamental to Anglican identity. What do we mean by doctrine and its development? What does it mean to be Spirit led? What is holiness, in Scripture and in the church's reading of Scripture? How might we negotiate in a theologically coherent way the relationship between the church's cultural context and its inherited faith? These questions arise immediately from the debate about same-sex blessings in the Anglican Church of Canada and in particular the questions posed by the Primate at General Synod 2007. But the questions also stand on their own as deep-seated and far-reaching inquiries involving who we are as people of faith in this time and place.
The contributors to this volume are all Anglicans and scholars who are deeply engaged in the life of the church and committed to its well being. While all very different, their essays are nevertheless linked by two intriguing common emphases: first of all on Scripture, and secondly on the consensus fidelium-the mind of the whole church through history and throughout the world. In this they witness to the possibility of an emerging common mind in the church of Canada: a way of seeing that is both catholic and evangelical-reading both the tradition and the times and, in both, reading Scripture. They represent what it might mean to be the church "in spirit and in truth" in our time. These essays are offered as an articulation of the guiding principles by which the church may move forward in a time of serious disagreement, and in the belief that this approach-at once catholic and evangelical, rooted in Scripture and in the community of the faithful-captures the peculiar genius of Anglicanism and, more broadly, something of what it means to be the Church.
About the Editors:
Catherine Sider Hamilton is a doctoral student and Instructor in New Testament Greek at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, and Honorary Assistant at Grace Church on-the-Hill in Toronto.
Peter M. B. Robinson is the Priest at Emmanuel Church Richvale and Adjunct Professor of Theology at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.
George Sumner is the Principal of Wycliffe College, an honorary assistant at St. Paul's Anglican Church, and a Canon to the Dioceses of Toronto and Saskatchewan.

As Christians become more engaged with the reality of religious pluralism, many find themselves torn between two worthy goals - to be faithful to the lordship of Jesus Christ and to be open generously to possible truths found in other religions. In The First and the Last George Sumner offers a constructive way forward, showing how Christian theology can bring these two goals together. At stake in the current debate over religious pluralism is the issue not only of evangelism and mission but also of the Christian claim to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Sumner leads readers through the challenges and possibilities raised by this debate, and he outlines a distinctive new method for assessing from a Christian standpoint the claims and practices of neighboring faiths. The crux of Sumner's approach is what he calls "final primacy," a position that (1) sets non-Christian religions in relation to the unique mediating role of Jesus Christ and (2) relates the truth claims of other religions to the overall scheme of grace.Sumner goes on to demonstrate the effectiveness of this position in practical terms, using final primacy as a frame of reference for a number of twentieth-century theologies - namely, those of Barth, Rahner, and Pannenberg - and as a way of examining both Indian and African theologies against their respective backgrounds of Hinduism and tribal practices. Additionally, the book serves as an excellent introduction to the history of interfaith thought: Sumner both surveys how religious pluralism has been handled in the past and illustrates how the position of final primacy at once redefines and promotes its most pressing issue - interreligious dialogue. A provocative approach to religious pluralism sure to stir widespread discussion, The First and the Last provides valuable reading for anyone interested in theology, interfaith dialogue, and missions.