Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love

Excellent read on faith journey to understand how important Thomas Cranmer was to the reformation and his legacy

While at first blush you may not be particularly interested in the difference between the late medieval and early Protestant understanding of repentance this book is much more than that. It deals with Cranmer's understanding of salvation and thoroughly outlines his theological development as it progressed over several decades. Cranmer stands squarely within the early Protestant tradition with regards to his doctrine of salvation and was as influenced by the Lutheran Philip Melanchthon as he was by such Reformed theologians as Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr and early editions of Calvin's Institutes. Null demonstrates the commonalities between Cranmer and Melanchthon but concludes that he ultimately veered towards Reformed soteriology. Null demonstrates time and time again how Cranmer returned to patristic sources, Augustine in particular, to justify his Protestant understanding of repentance and justifying faith. Cranmer's personl notes, the "Great Common Places" are filled with quotations and annotations of Augustine's works. Often Cranmer, like Calvin, will prefer Augustine to Luther, but not always. Other times he will read Augustine in light of Luther and Melanchthon. Null describes Cranmer's theology as Protestant Augustinianism.In order to produce this work Null had to learn how to read Cranmer's hand writing - no simple task since much of it looks like chicken scratch at first blush - and thus Null read what the reformer actually thought, rather than offer pure speculation regarding the reformer's ideas as they developed over time.Another hot issue is what Cranmer actually thought occurred when infants were baptized. Did he believe in universal baptismal regeneration? After all, the Prayer Book and Catechism indicate that the child is born again in baptism, but Null's extensive research into Cranmer's heretofore untranslated and barely read "Great Common Places" demonstrates that Cranmer's theology of the sacraments was guided by predestination. Thus Cranmer assumed that infants predestined to be saved were made regenerate in baptism, but not the non-elect. Cranmer tends to give everyone the benefit of the doubt in his liturgy and in his Homilies, but his private notes indicate that he was quite the predestinarian. The sacraments were efficacious only for the elect, but Cranmer never made his private beliefs public. Thus tremendous confusion ensued within the Church of England, for Cranmer's baptismal liturgy declared the infant regenerate, i.e., saved, while no stating, "Yet this only applies to the elect." Why was Cranmer not more forthright? Because he, nor anyone else, could possibly discern who the elect were at their baptisma and thus the benefit of the doubt was given to everyone. This is also the root cause of the accusation that Anglicans have a catholic Prayer Book, but Protestant Articles of Religion. In this sense alone Null has provided a great service in helping us to understand how the Articles and Prayer Book go hand in hand.Also, neither should one think Cranmer an Arminian, for he believed that the justified and the elect were synonymous. Contra Augustine there was no possibility of someone justified could later fall from grace. In this case Cranmer followed other Reformed theologians while rejecting Augustine and the Lutheran position on perseverance.Ashley Null has provided an invaluable service by making Cranmer's heretofore obscure personal writings clear and see the light of day. This book is an excellent complement to Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography of Cranmer.

I enjoyed this book. But a word of warning: the £26.60 version is not exactly an OUP edition. When I first received the book I was a little dismayed - the quality is not what I expected from OUP. The cover is thin and prone to warp and spells Cranmer as "Cramer", and the book is glued, not stitch-bound. I couldn't work this out until eventually, on the very last page, I found this: "Printed in Great Britain by Amazon.co.uk, Ltd, Marston Gate." I presume this is licensed to Amazon as a 'print-on-demand' book which would explain the cheap price (for an academic book). After initially feeling cheated it dawned on me that I wouldn't have bought the book at all if it was the normal OUP price, so on reflection I now am happy to recommend what I initially wanted to condemn.In this book Null makes extensive use of three unpublished or unnoticed Cranmer sources in order to probe deeply into Cranmer's personal theological development. The three sources are his "Great Commonplaces", "De Sacramentis" and his "Croydon Commentary" on Matthew. Null's book is basically a defence of Cranmer the careful and deliberate fully-protestant Reformer. Cranmer emerges as a figure full of integrity who worked with great diligence (and mostly behind the scenes during Henry's reign) on his reformed project to turn the mediaeval poenitentia system into a simple and fully Biblical theology of repentance. Null's argument is that this theology of repentance (when Cranmer had refined and matured it) at a stroke kept all the initiative in God's hands, to his glory, preserved justification by faith only on the basis of Christ's extrinsic righteousness as the start of the Christian life, brought assurance (partly through a clear view of predestination) to the doubting and struggling believer, carried along with it an intrinsic renovation through the Spirit, and pressed home the repentant sinner's response of love to God and love to fellow human beings through active good works.I have not given the book five stars because I found it in places repetitive and I did not always find the organisation clear. For example, in the early chapters there are separately-titled sections which help a novice like me find a way through Mediaeval penitential theology, yet in the last main chapter Null seems to piece together slightly arbitrarily an exposition of Cranmer's three homilies in the "Book of Homilies", a stimulating discussion of Cranmer's view of baptism and justification before touching briefly on the Forty-Two Articles. Null spends only two pages on the Forty-Two Articles yet speaks of them as "the fullest public exposition of Cranmer's soteriology" (p236). I think I'm missing something in Null's overall strategy because I cannot quite see why something he flags up as so central can be disposed of so easily when he seems to expand again and again in every possible context on Cranmer's solifidianism without it seems to me always adding something to his argument. However, it is heart-warming and encouraging to see how clearly Cranmer grasped God's gracious unmerited love for sinful human beings and how he worked very hard to make that the driving force in the nation's life. Null has, I think, brilliantly brought that aspect of Cranmer to the fore.In spite of much latin (mostly translated except when being cited in footnotes) this is a stimulating and readable book. And what a treat to see the author of an academic book have as his last word on Cranmer: "his faith still offers much from which [Anglicans] can learn" (p253)!