Henry Jenkyns on the thirty-nine articles a study in nineteenth-century Anglican confessionalism

Abstract

This thesis studies the theological teaching of Henry Jenkyns (1795-1878), Canon Professor of Theology at Durham University, 1835-64. The analysis attempts to establish what kind of man Jenkyns was: his academic and social predispositions and his intellectual stance: the predominant characteristics of his theology, both in content and method: and the nature of his churchmanship. The study analyzes a collection of student manuscript notes of Jenkyns' lectures on the Thirty-nine Articles, with a view to elucidating the type and quality of his teaching as a doctrinal theologian of the Church of England. Jenkyns was one of the chief architects of the theological program at Durham University: an analysis of his teaching constitutes a good description of the character of the theological temper at Durham until the reformation of the University in 1862. His lectures, furthermore, represent the first attempt at a systematic exposition of Anglican doctrine within the context of academic theology in England since the Reformation. Jenkyns emerges as a pre-Tractarian, High-Church theologian with an Arminian bias. His method is essentially eighteenth-century, rationalistic, and nee-scholastic. He understood the scriptures to be the Word of God, plenarily inspired. He believed that at the Reformation the Church of England corrected some of the theological errors held by Rome while retaining the link with the ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church. Jenkyns. treats the Articles as a confessional document which sets out, in part, the limits of right doctrine as they are understood in the English national Church, a part of the Universal Church. He stresses in his teaching the human nature of the Church, her priesthood and traditions, and affirms a moderately high view of the dominical sacraments, recognizing them as vehicles of grace and understanding an actual, though spiritual, presence in the eucharist.