I disagree that ”The Thirty-Nine Articles are not just Protestant but distinctly Reformed in their soteriology and sacramentology.” This suggests that when the continental Protestant traditions disagree, the Thirty-Nine Articles side with ”Calvinism”. A case could be made for that if the only alternative to Calvinism in continental Protestantism was Anabaptism. It is much harder to argue that point when Lutheranism is considered as the alternative to Calvinism. Article XVII. Of Predestination and Election seems obviously worded so as to not choose Calvinism over Lutheranism. There is no affirmation of Reprobabation, which can be taken as either a refusal to choose between the Lutheran and Calvinist views, or a choice of the Lutheran. The fact that the second paragraph of the Article describes the doctrine as a comfort for the godly, but cautions against excessive preaching of it because of the various ways it can harm the not-yet-converted mind rather suggests the second possibility. Indeed, while the Articles affirm the general Augustinianism shared by Lutherans and Calvinists in Articles IX and X, absent is any affirmation of the ideas that the Grace by which God draws His elect to salvation through Jesus Christ is ”irresistable” or that Jesus died only for the elect. Article XVI. Of Sin after Baptism also walks the fence between Lutheranism and Calvinism. Both Lutherans and Calvinists affirm a form of the idea of ”The Perseverence of the Elect”. Calvinists, however, also affirm perpetual justification, the idea that initial justification is never lost (Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, and sometimes fundamentalists of other denominatiosn who have been influenced by the weight Baptist and Brethren views have in general fundamentalism often affirm prepetual justification without affirming the perseverence of the elect) and Lutherans do not (they think that after initial justification one can fall from Grace but that the elect will show their election by repeenting and returning to Grace through faith). Article XVI affirms that for sins committed after baptism, repentance and forgiveness are available and condemns the extreme views that say either one cannot sin after baptism or that one who falls from Grace cannot be forgiven. In doing so, while it does not explicitly affirm the Lutheran position, the language used strongly suggets it. ”Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable.” While this doesn’t actually say that such sins cause one to lose initial justification until he repents and is forgiven, the language of ”deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism” suggests the Lutheran conception of Mortal Sin.

When it comes to the Sacraments, at least the Eucharist, you are on firmer ground in asserting the Articles to be Reformed. ”The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith” sounds closer to John Calvin’s understanding than either the Lutheran doctrine or Zwinglian memorialism. The language excludes the Zwinglian view, although not as overtly and bluntly as the Roman. One could make a case that rather than affirming Calvin against Luther, the intention was to affirm the Real Presence in as vague a manner as possible, so as not to commit to any particular interpretation of it. Given that the Articles took their final form in the Elizabethan Settlement this seems rather likely. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the Church of England deliberately walked back from the more radical direction in which the English Reformation had seemed to have been heading before it was interrupted by the reign of Mary. In the second Edwardian Prayer Book (1552), for example, the Black Rubric had been inserted into the Order for Holy Communion. It had been intended as a compromise between what Scottish Reformer John Knox was recommending (sitting to receive Communion rather than kneeling) and Archbishop Cranmer’s more conservative position, but oddly was worded in such a way as to affirm the most radical view of the Sacrament, not Luther’s, not Calvin’s, but Zwingli’s. Elizabeth I excised the Black Rubric from the 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and when it was re-inserted into the Restoration BCP (1662) it was with the Zwinglianism, no longer compatible with the teachings of the Church of England after the adoption of the Articles of Religion in 1571 and their includsion in the BCP from 1604, removed. The direction of the English Reformation from Elizabeth’s Accession, therefore, was in a more conservative direction, which in terms of the continental Magisterial Reformers meant away from Zwingli and towards Luther, and on this issue stopping in the general vicinity of Calvin. Those who wished to push it in the other direction became, of course, further radicalized as the Puritans.

– Gerry T Neal in Commenting on Carrington’s “Response to Wilgus”