The tractarian understanding of the world as sacrament and symbol

Abstract

The Oxford Movement (1833 -45) may be seen as a reaction both to eighteenth century rationalism and to the excessive individualism of the Evangelicals. The Tractarians made the discovery that the universe is a symbol of the divine and that redemption is corporate. The Tractarians were romanticists who viewed nature as a parable and as an analogy of the spiritual world. As Francis Oakeley wrote in 1841, "Forms are the expression of the Mind of the Spirit." This essay has three functions some of which overlap. First, there will be an exposition of the Tractarian understanding of the world as symbol! sacrament. This will include, inter alia, a discussion of the famous sacramental principle. Second, an attempt will be made to trace the sources of the Tractarian view of the world in 1) Scripture; 2) the Alexandrian doctrine of the oikonomia; and 3) Bishop Butler's doctrine of analogy. It seems significant to me, for example, that Butler commences his famous work on analogy with a quotation from Origen, who saw the cosmos as pervaded by symbols and types of the invisible world. Third, the final section will contain a critical assessment of the Tractarian understanding of the world.