By Darwell Stone

A Review by The Rev. Ben Jeffries, ’14

All Nashotah alumni leave the House with a profound sense of the great weight — the great gift — of the Great Tradition. The substance of the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints, hammered out in clarity in battles with the heretics in the early centuries, defended by good Bishops, and carried forward by the living Church into our own day. Most Sons and Daughters of the House would agree that Anglicans should hold the Faith that has been believed in all places, at all times, by all people. 

But what is the content of that Faith? It is, alas, not always that easy to discern. This difficulty sometimes suggests a creedal minimalism, but the Creeds are the skeleton on which the body of catholic doctrine rests; they are not the fullness of the substance. To rely only on the creeds is to miss out on a great many treasures that reside in the storehouse of catholic dogmatics. Many of the available "text books" of the catholic faith suffer in one way or another from a core weakness. Hall's dogmatics from a century are good, but many of the footnotes are dated and not useful, and he indulges in various fashionable theories (evolution, kenoticism, etc.) that are a distraction. Roman works (e.g., Dupuis) too often depart from Anglican commitments. Others of the "Canterbury Trail" type (e.g., Oden) in places lack the proportion or gravity of the catholic mind. I imagine many priests have done as I do — attempted to gather a collage of ideas from various reference books, roughly approximating what I think is the dogmatic content of the Faith. But with this there is a lingering sense of inadequacy: "Is this just my construction?"

Enter, Stone's Outlines of Christian Dogma. Here, in one medium-sized book, is an outline of all of the substance of catholic dogmatics, with none of the peccadillos that plague similar works. Being a librarian, Stone is careful to be fair on all sides and to speak in moderate terms. He often gives in-line quotations from the Church Fathers and the Anglican Formularies and anchors all claims to citations from Holy Scripture. He covers all the doctrinal bases, and then includes an additional hundred pages or so of specific not-fully-resolved questions that sit within the tradition, along with how various "schools" have attended to them in the past (e.g., the Franciscan/Dominican divide on the cause of the Incarnation). Stone's Outlines is an excellent reference book for tricky parishioner-questions, or for brushing up before Adult Education classes. It is the only book of dogmatics that I recommend to others without any caveats. A must-have for all students of the catholic Faith.

Darwell Stone (1859-1941) was the third principal of Pusey House, Oxford. He was an ardent devotee of the Tractarian movement and sought to return the Anglo-Catholic movement back to the foundational commitments of Keble and Pusey, back-pedalling from the more liberal accommodations of Charles Gore who was his predecessor at Pusey. He was a scholar's scholar, and provided excellent resources to the Church on many of the controversial theological questions of his day.

The Rev. Ben Jefferies, '14, is the first rector of The Good Shepherd Anglican Church, Opelika, Alabama, co-founder of the Cellar of St. Gambrinus and an honorary member of the Society of St. Moses the Jacked. He is married to Carrie and they have three adorable daughters. His heroes are E.B. Pusey and The Rev. Lars Skoglund, ‘14.