Via media is a Latin phrase meaning “the middle road” or the “way between (and avoiding or reconciling) two extremes”.[2]
Its use in English is highly associated with Anglican self-characterization, or as a philosophical maxim for life akin to the golden mean which advocates moderation in all thoughts and actions.
Originating from the Delphic maxim nothing to excess and subsequent Ancient Greek philosophy where Aristotle (384–322 BC) taught moderation, urging his students to follow the middle road between extremes, the via media was the dominant philosophical precept by which Ancient Roman civilisation and society was organised.
Augustine‘s The City of God (chapter 11) uses the phrase via media in the sense of a way connecting two opposing extremes, rather than in the sense of a golden mean or Goldilocks principle.
The term via media is frequently claimed by Anglican proponents, though not without debate, as a term of apologetics.
The idea of a middle way, was proposed first, early in the Protestant Reformation, as between the Protestant traditions of Lutheranism and Reformed Christianity;[1] subsequently by Richard Hooker as between Puritan and Roman Catholic practices; then by Bishop Hall as between the Calvinist and Arminianist beliefs; and finally by the Tractarians as between Roman Catholicism and the Magisterial Reformers. Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper has argued that the doctrinal history of the English Church is marked by discontinuities.[5]
The idea of the Anglican middle way may also be associated to the teachings of theologians such as Martin Bucer, Thomas Cranmer and Heinrich Bullinger who advocated a religious solution in which secular authority would hold the ring in the religious dispute, and ensure political stability.
Boethius has been associated with a variant of the term: Non est medium via (There is no middle way) discussing a life tending to the godly or tending to the bestial.
Anglicanism, which emerged out of the English Reformation, was originally seen as a via media between two forms of Protestantism—Lutheranism and Reformed Christianity.[1] Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who played a chief role in shaping Anglicanism, sought a middle way between Lutheranism and Calvinism, though he was closer to Calvinism.[1]
Historic Anglicanism is a part of the wider Reformed tradition, as “the founding documents of the Anglican church—the Book of Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion—expresses a theology in keeping with the Reformed theology of the Swiss and South German Reformation.”[7] The Most Rev. Peter Robinson, presiding bishop of the United Episcopal Church of North America, writes:[8]
Cranmer’s personal journey of faith left its mark on the Church of England in the form of a Liturgy that remains to this day more closely allied to Lutheran practice, but that liturgy is couple to a doctrinal stance that is broadly, but decidedly Reformed. … The 42 Articles of 1552 and the 39 Articles of 1563, both commit the Church of England to the fundamentals of the Reformed Faith. Both sets of Articles affirm the centrality of Scripture, and take a monergist position on Justification. Both sets of Articles affirm that the Church of England accepts the doctrine of predestination and election as a ‘comfort to the faithful’ but warn against over much speculation concerning that doctrine. Indeed a casual reading of the Wurttemburg Confession of 1551, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Scots Confession of 1560, and the XXXIX Articles of Religion reveal them to be cut from the same bolt of cloth.
Some of the Nordic Lutheran Churches, chiefly the national churches of Sweden, Finland and Norway, likewise consider themselves as via media churches. The latter professes its faith as “truly catholic, truly reformed, truly evangelical”,[14] a statement likewise echoed in the Canons of the Church of Sweden which states that the faith, confession and teachings of the Church are understood as an expression of the catholic Christian faith. It further states that this does not serve to create a new, confessionally peculiar interpretation, but concerns the apostolic faith as carried down through the traditions of the Church.[15] These sentiment of these churches as a via media are expressed outright in the Common Statement of the Porvoo Communion, a communion of European Anglican and Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches:
What made the Church of Sweden an evangelical-catholic church was to Archbishop Söderblom the fact that the Reformation in Sweden was a ‘church improvement’ and a ‘process of purification’ which did not create a new church. As a national church, the Church of Sweden succeeded in bringing together medieval Swedish tradition with the rediscovery of the gospel which the Reformation brought with it. Archbishop Söderblom included the historic episcopate in the tradition-transmitting elements. The Church of Sweden was, according to Söderblom, in an even higher degree than the Anglican Church a via media. —Together in Mission and Ministry: The Porvoo Common Statement
