Via media

[1] 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.

[2] French theologian and humanist Jean Gerson wrote in his On the Consolation of Theology (1418) about the via media et regia: the middle and royal way.

Divine providence and human free will each have a mediating relation on the other: God saves those who humbly condemn themselves as incapacitated but seek him.

[2] Erasmus of Rotterdam's irenic but anti-fanatic approach is often classed as a via media, however this can be weighed against his repeated denial of leading a movement or setting up a new church,[3] and may be described as extreme tolerance within Catholic borders.

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.

[10] Two centuries later, the phrase was used by John Henry Newman in setting out his influential views on Anglicanism, as part of the argument he brought forward with the Tractarian movement.

Newman, at that time, claimed that Anglican Church is, or could be, Catholic because it adopts Reformation theology without Roman accretions, but Apostolic because it kept the hierarchy, sacraments and liturgy.

(A hypothesis, a substitute for direct evidence and hard reasoning) is the Via Media, a possible road, lying between a mountain and a morass, to be driven through formidable obstacles, if it is to exist, by the boldness and skill of the engineers.

Newman's tracts in particular used the title to pay homage to the inception of the Thirty-Nine Articles and in so doing claim that the Tractarian movement was of the same vein as early Church of England scholars and theologians.