Charles Chapman Grafton

I have chosen these selections from the eight-volume collected works with an eye for the unity of Grafton's life and thought and, I must confess, with hopes that the same stories and theological formulations that have stoked the fire of my own faith will also enliven other flames as we continue the pilgrimage Godward. Grafton's descriptions of the history of Christianity in England, the life of E.B. Pusey, and his own testimony will be of interest to scholars of the Oxford Movement, Anglo-Catholicism, and the American Episcopal Church. His interpretation of God's providence moving in England and America shows Anglicans, Evangelical and Catholic, how to understand their place in the communion of saints, and demonstrates how to honor their fathers and mothers in the faith. As a theologian, Grafton draws on the Scriptures, Fathers, and Scholastics to contend for Anglican Orthodoxy, developing a theology which owes much to Richard Hooker, John Pearson, and E.B. Pusey in its articulation of classical theism, sacramental realism, Chalcedonian Christology, and a conciliar ecclesiology. As Anglo-Catholics receive refugees from the wastelands searching for the narrow path, I trust that Grafton's theology, an Anglicanism which participates in the consensual teaching of the saints and divines, will prove a useful guide.