This ‘Guide to Recognizing the Contemporary Church’ by distinguished Anglican theological twins ranges more widely than its title suggests. It includes chapters on orthodoxy and doctrinal development, as well as treating ecclesiology expansively, with special reference to ecumenical issues. A number of central concerns will occasion no surprise to readers familiar with earlier books by the Hansons. The stance adopted is robustly Anglican, capable of declaring a plague on both Protestant and Roman alike—but equally of recognizing extensive kinship and common ground with both. Hansonian Anglicanism unambiguously rejects the conventional doctrine of apostolic succession—sunk without trace by historical scholarship, but no more will it allow other, for example presbyterian, claims to possess a uniquely ‘scriptural’ ministry. It insists on a rigorously critical handling of both Scripture (with no time for its infallibility or inerrancy) and tradition. Indeed, the discussion is characterized throughout by a certain hard-nosed, no-nonsense realism. In church union schemes it is a waste of effort to try to prevent the intransigent ‘rump’ remaining outside. However attractive and beneficial a reformed papacy might be, the chances of a reform thorough enough to satisfy the Hansons are scarcely worth entertaining. Their criticism of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church pulls no punches; its very limited ‘concessions and modifications of the old-fashioned rigorist view’ are welcome, but only as ‘the starting point for the working out of a drastically altered doctrine of the church’.

But perhaps the authors should have been more rigorously critical of their own stance. ‘The two crucial points for the Anglican form of ministry, which Anglicans cannot forgo’ are ‘episcopal government and the principle of priesthood, whereby the bishop, the priest par excellence, can delegate priesthood in a limited form to other priests, presbyters or ministers’. It is disconcerting to find ‘the principle of priesthood’ in effect added to the Lambeth Quadrilateral (which mentions only the historic episcopate)—and at a time when ecumenical discussion seems at last to be taking seriously its absence from NT accounts of ministry (cf. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry). Furthermore, when episcopacy is commended on the sole ground of being ‘surely the traditional, universal form of ministry’, a mild demurrer is called for. As our authors well know, the bishop of a village in Roman Africa in the third century has very little beyond the name in common with, say, the Bishop of London today; his counterpart is to be found in the leading minister of a local church community.

The chief interest of this work consists in its being a contribution to contemporary discussion, both Anglican and ecumenical. It does not break new scholarly ground, although it draws upon wide learning as well as varied experience of the church in different parts of the world. Its ecclesiology is an inclusive one: the Society of Friends and the Salvation Army may not practise baptism, which is virtually the Hansons’ sole boundary to the church, but even so they are not excluded. Most evangelical Anglicans will want a firmer doctrine of the church with a more extended biblical basis, but many will be willing to go some part of the way with this exposition.

The work is enlivened throughout by crisp expression of opinion. ‘The Book of Common Prayer will sooner or later become a significant historical relic and nothing more.’ ‘It is likely that the charismatic movement will blow itself out in the next few years, having served its purpose.’ ‘One must not condemn the leaders of the African Independent churches, but one cannot refrain from deploring them.’ The Hanson brothers are not reluctant to provoke. They will probably be disappointed, but perhaps not surprised (if they are realistic), if they provoke as much dissent as assent.

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