IntroductionFootnote 2
The Church of England’s bishops are getting in the way of Christian unity. Rather, to be fairer and more precise: one specific understanding of what bishops are in Anglicanism is impeding efforts toward healing long-standing rifts between Anglicans and other Protestant denominations.Footnote 3 The problem surfaces in current resistance to Church of England-Methodist proposals in the recent report, Mission and Ministry in Covenant (hereafter, MMC).Footnote 4 In particular, where MMC suggests temporarily dispensing with the requirement, some Anglicans insist that existing Methodist ministers must be ordained by a bishop before they serve in priestly roles in the Church of England. This paper argues that this insistence reflects only one – and not the only, certainly not the oldest – Anglican view of bishops. There is a legitimate and long-standing Anglican understanding of bishops which indicates that support for MMC’s recommendation is entirely consistent with the Church of England’s ecclesiology. This is demonstrated in particular by exploring and applying the theological method of Richard Hooker (1554–1600).
After setting the scene, MMC’s proposals are outlined, before presenting some objections, notably articulated by Andrew Davison. Then, Richard Hooker’s theological method is considered, examining in turn the role of three theological warrants: Scripture, tradition and reason. For Hooker, Scripture is the principal authority for doctrine; but in all other matters (including church order), reason is the decisive warrant – so the church can change its order to meet particular circumstances. This methodology is also traced in Anglican formularies and practices, showing the consistency of MMC’s proposals with Hooker’s theological method and the thrust of Anglican ecclesiology over many centuries. The consistency of MMC’s proposals with contemporary ecumenical dialogue and current practice in some Anglican Provinces is also drawn out. Overall, then, proposals like those in MMC can be accepted, even welcomed, without impairing Anglicanism’s self-understanding.
Identifying Stumbling Blocks
Moves towards Anglican-Methodist unity in England have faced a number of problems. For example, a 2005 report identified key questions around the nature and function of the presbyterate (often in Anglican contexts called the priesthood). In particular, in Anglican practice, a presbyter must preside at communion services. This reflects Anglicanism’s understanding of priesthood/presbyterate as a distinct order of ministry with specific sacramental functions. By contrast, while presbyteral celebration of communion is a requirement in Anglican contexts, it is a norm but not a requirement in Methodist churches where lay people can preside at communion in certain circumstances.Footnote 5 These different views on the presbyterate locate the difficulties in the broad area of the structure, nature and function of ordained ministry.
While there are questions to work through about the two churches’ understanding of the nature of the presbyterate, the most fundamental problem centres on how a person becomes a presbyter. In English Methodism a person becomes a presbyter by the laying-on of the hands of other presbyters. But, in the Church of England, since 24 August 1662 it has been an absolute requirement that all those who exercise presbyteral ministry must first be ordained by a bishop. Particularly (though not entirely) because of the interruption to church life during the Civil War and Interregnum, significant numbers of clergy were ministering in the Church of England without having been episcopally ordained. On that day, the Act of Uniformity and the revised Book of Common Prayer came into force, and all those Church of England clergy who had not been so ordained (estimated at around 1800 in England and Wales) were expelled from their offices.Footnote 6 The Act made it a mandatory requirement that ‘no person … shall thenceforth … be admitted to … any Ecclesiastical Promotion or Dignity … unless he shall formerly have been made Priest by Episcopal Ordination’.Footnote 7 Those who had not been so ordained and were not willing to be, were expelled from their offices in the ‘Great Ejection’ on what became known as ‘Black Bartholomew’s Day’. The circumstances of 1662 will need further exploration but the key point is that, since then, to minister as a priest in the Church of England a person must first have been ordained by a bishop.
The Mission and Ministry in Covenant Proposals
Recent Background
In 2003, the Anglican-Methodist Covenant admitted that both churches ‘have been impoverished through our separation and that our witness to the gospel has been weakened’.Footnote 8 Both churches committed:
to work to overcome the remaining obstacles to the organic unity of our two churches, on the way to the full visible unity of Christ’s Church. In particular, we look forward to the time when the fuller visible unity of our churches makes possible a united, interchangeable ministry.Footnote 9
In 2014, this aspirational language was given more concrete direction in The Challenge of the Covenant. This highlighted why greater Anglican-Methodist unity is desirable. There are theological imperatives. In that poignant prayer on the eve of his death, Christ prayed for the unity of the church, thus reflecting the unity of Father and Son: ‘May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you’ (Jn 17.21). Such unity, Christ continued, is a sign to the world – ‘Then the world will know you sent me, and that you loved them’ (Jn 17.23). It follows that visible disunity between Christ’s followers impedes the communication of God’s own unity and of his sending of the Son into the world for our salvation.Footnote 10
There are practical considerations, too. Bluntly, joint working is likely to be more effective than two separate organizations doing similar things in the same place. At a national level, for instance, aligning safeguarding procedures may mean more efficient sharing of best practice and developing of training resources.Footnote 11 At a local level, it would release the energy of ministers and congregations if, say, the complexities around joint worship were reduced and if joint decisions could be made on buildings and deployment of ministers.Footnote 12 In some cases, it wastes effort to sustain two buildings and organizations in the same community (each needing its own physical maintenance, compliance systems, and so on) particularly where either or both church family is feeling strain, stagnation or decline. The energy thus released could then be directed to the actual work of worshipping God and sharing the good news.
Mission and Ministry in Covenant
Nonetheless, as Challenge highlights,Footnote 13 since a Methodist presbyter has not been ordained by a bishop, they cannot currently serve as a presbyter in the Church of England. Because Anglican and Methodist ministers are not ‘interchangeable’, the possibility of joint working is much diminished. MMC proposes interchangeability of ministries – a substantial step towards unity between the two churches as well as the practical step necessary to release the missional benefits outlined above. Both churches would need to take steps ‘to share the ministry of the historic episcopate as a sign of the apostolicity of the Church of God; and to welcome all presbyters/priests serving in either church as eligible to serve in both’.Footnote 14 The Methodist Church would accept bishops as part of its order through the consecration of its Conference President as bishop, overseeing the Methodist churches in a somewhat analogous way to an Anglican bishop’s oversight of a geographical area.Footnote 15 In turn, all future presbyters in the Methodist Church would be ordained by a bishop – ‘the President-bishop (or a past President who is a bishop) would then be required without exception to preside at all subsequent ordination services in the Methodist Church’.Footnote 16 The Church of England would be maintaining the general principle that priests who serve in it must be ordained by bishops.
If adopted, then after an (unspecified) period the general principle of the Church of England – that all its presbyters must be ordained by bishops – would apply, regardless of whether those presbyters had been ordained in an Anglican, Methodist, or indeed joint context. But during this transition period/implementation phase, there would be Methodist presbyters who had not been ordained by bishops. Bluntly, the question is whether the Church of England insists that, before serving in Anglican roles, existing Methodist ministers must be ordained by a bishop. For this limited period, MMC proposes that it would not.Footnote 17
Imposing a requirement of episcopal ordination on current Methodist presbyters before they could serve in the Church of England would – for obvious reasons – make the proposed steps much less likely to succeed. The whole point of this process is to recognize that both the Church of England and the Methodist Church are joint and equal partners, making a shared but distinct decision to work more closely together. Imposing episcopal ordination on existing presbyters would suggest that the Methodist Church lacked something which it really needed, such that until the deficiency was remedied there could be no progress. However much it might be emphasized that this was simply a required step towards a new dispensation rather than a rejection of those Methodist colleagues’ previous ministry, it would certainly not feel or look like that. Such a one-sided approach would be a very unsatisfactory basis for progress, or for a joint and equal partnership subsequently. It would not be a joint step towards unity but an absorption of the Methodist Church by the Church of England – to use a slightly imperfect analogy, a hostile acquisition rather than a mutually agreed merger.
So the precise sticking-point is whether existing Methodist presbyters must be ordained by a bishop before they serve in Anglican contexts. We now turn to the emphatic ‘yes’ with which some Anglicans have answered that question.
Objections
MMC insists that its ‘proposals … are congruent with the teaching and polity of our two churches and that they can now be commended to the churches for acceptance’.Footnote 18 Andrew Davison has notably challenged these proposals as ‘an intolerable departure from order’ which ‘sell short the faith and practice of the Church of England’: ‘for the Church of England not to insist on episcopal ordination … would be to abandon our own ecclesiology’.Footnote 19 He draws a cogent contrast between different levels of issue. There are changes which make no essential difference to the nature of the church, so it would change ‘nothing of the Church of England’s continuity with the early church’ if it decided ‘vestments should be optional’. But there are changes which alter essentially the Church at its most fundamental – such that the Church of England would be ‘tak[ing] leave of its own heritage and identity’.
This critique breaks down into two arguments. First is the notion that the threefold structure of deacons and priests ordained by bishops is so intrinsic to the nature of the Church of England that even a temporary alteration of that order would alter the Anglicanism at its deepest level. As another response puts it: ‘For Anglicans, the ordering of the Church’s ministry is not simply some incidental matter of governance, but the means through which the sacramental life of the Church and its unity are guarded and expressed.’Footnote 20
The second argument is ‘we continue to follow the practice of the ancient Church’ – that this structure is traceable back, in continuous succession, to the earliest Christian communities. Davison is clear that this is an argument from tradition (i.e. long-standing and widespread practice) rather than an assertion that the form of church government is laid down by Scripture. Nonetheless the essential claim is that there is divine authority for the government of the church by bishops, which is at the very least hinted at in Scripture and had been solidified by the widespread institution of that model by the end of the second century ad.Footnote 21
Neither argument, however, can carry the weight Davison and others place on it: for as our analysis of Richard Hooker’s theological method, read alongside Anglican formularies and practice, will now show, the system of episcopal government has never been absolute for Anglicans theologically nor has the requirement of episcopal ordination always been absolute in practice.
Richard Hooker’s Theological Method
Drawing on Richard Hooker here is not to claim some uniquely authoritative status within his writings for Anglicanism at the time or since – after all, he never held high office and much of his work was unpublished in his lifetime – nor that his is the only legitimate Anglican perspective. But Hooker is often cited in debates about Anglican order,Footnote 22 and – as we will see – has a clear and cogent theological method which provides useful criteria for judging proposals like those in MMC. He also provides evidence of both the self-understanding and the practice of the Church of England in its first century of independence from Rome. And proposals about church order which could claim at least to be in line with Hooker’s principles would have thereby some credibility at least as one legitimately Anglican approach. Examining in turn Scripture, tradition and reason – in Anglican formularies and practice and in the thought of Hooker – demonstrates that MMC’s approach can be held consistently with at least one credibly Anglican account of the church.
Scripture and Bishops
Scripture and Bishops in Anglican Formularies
Davison argues that episcopacy is a vital component of Anglican understanding and identity. Scripture is sometimes cited as the basis of this claim, some Anglicans arguing that the Bible itself sets out the pattern of church government and that this pattern necessarily includes bishops. The Book of Common Prayer (in its sixteenth century as well as 1662 incarnations) suggests this: ‘It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.’Footnote 23 We return later to the appeal to tradition (‘ancient Authors’), but for now the question is whether Scripture says the Church must be episcopally led. Three centuries later, Michael Ramsey (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1961–74) built on that point about episcopacy’s scriptural provenance. ‘Church order,’ he writes, ‘is related to the gospel’, such that ‘baptism and episcopacy are part of the utterance of God’s redemptive love.’Footnote 24 The Church of England, Ramsey goes on, ‘did not always receive the meaning of its own order in its deepest relation to the gospel’ because it has not understood that ‘the episcopate is of the esse of the universal church’.Footnote 25 This relates to Davison’s claim that part of the need for bishops is to guarantee the church’s sacramental life – the ordination of bishops and the sacrament of baptism are to be considered equally necessary because they derive from the same source (i.e., direct scriptural injunction).
Parsed carefully, though, Ramsey seems to be insisting that Scripture indicates there must be a ministry of oversight in the church, not necessarily that it specifies one particular form it must take. And Ramsey came to adjust his earlier views to endorse proposals for Anglican-Methodist unity very similar to MMC’s.Footnote 26 Moreover, this argument of a scriptural provenance for the episcopate must be seen in light of both (1) other formulations in the Prayer Book itself and (2) the opaque picture of ministry in the New Testament.
First, the observation in the Preface must be read in the light of other statements in the Prayer Book which pull in a different direction. Notably, Article XXV states, ‘There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel … Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord … Those five commonly called Sacraments … Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel.’ Citing only one statement from the Ordinal without cross-reference to other Prayer Book formulations is misleading, and Davison’s (and Ramsey’s) apparent argument is weakened by the attempt to put baptism (a ‘sacrament ordained of Christ … in the gospel’) and the threefold order (‘not to be [so] counted’) on the same level.
Moreover, the Prayer Book itself is quite clear that Scripture is binding only matters pertaining to salvation – and, as we shall see, this does not include the ordering of the church. Article VI states, ‘Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.’ By contrast, the Prayer Book is clear that in a number of matters not related to salvation there is no such binding scriptural injunction. Hence Article XX says, ‘The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies’, expanded further in Article XXXIV: ‘It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and … manners.’ Thus, as Paul Avis (General Secretary of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity, 1998–2011) notes, ‘the Anglican formularies specifically refrain’ from making ‘the historic episcopate essential to the very existence … of the church’.Footnote 27
Secondly, the insistence that there are three distinct orders in the New Testament evidence is, in the wake of recent scholarship, rather undermined. It is certainly true that some Christians appeared to exercise a ministry of overseeing other ministries; James seems to exercise such a role as arbiter at the Council of Jerusalem, for example (Acts 15.13-21), and a ministry of oversight is explicitly identified in 1 Timothy 3.1-7. But Davison himself acknowledges the situation in the first centuries was not fixed.Footnote 28 For instance, the pattern in 1 Timothy 3 is two- rather than three-fold (there are overseers, vv. 1-7, and deacons, vv. 8-10). As Steven Croft (Bishop of Sheffield, 2008–16; Bishop of Oxford, 2016–) showed, while the New Testament shows us ‘traces of [an] emerging structure’,Footnote 29 there is no ‘particular form of the threefold ministry … found in the New Testament which can therefore validate a particular expression of ordained ministry’.Footnote 30 Indeed, Hooker himself says ‘what was used in the Apostles’ time, the scripture fully declares not’ (Pref. 4.3).Footnote 31 The New Testament indicates distinct aspects (‘dimensions’, as Croft puts it) of ministry, one of which is oversight, but to speak of a fully-fledged threefold order laid down in Scripture is to strain the biblical evidence too far.
At most, then, this one reference in the Preface to the scriptural origins of episcopacy is not clear-cut. But Hooker offers an even more cogent way – thoroughly consistent with the Anglican formularies – to apply Scripture to this debate.
Scripture and Bishops in Hooker
Like all its Reformed counterparts, the Church of England had made major changes to the religion it inherited from medieval Catholicism. It insisted on a robust doctrine of justification by faith; it rejected the overarching jurisdiction of the papacy; its Bible and its worshipping text had been translated into the vernacular; practices which were thought to undermine doctrinal clarity (such as adoration of the bread and wine in communion or praying for the departed) were forbidden. Unlike many of its continental counterparts, though, the Church of England retained some elements of pre-Reformation practice. The continental churches often abandoned clerical dress completely; in England, while the most elaborate vestments were forbidden clergy could, for instance, still wear surplices. While transubstantiation was rejected, and the continental churches often had very firm views on what happened at communion, the English formularies were rather more ambiguous. And while many (though not all) continental churches had abandoned bishops and priests in favour of a single order of presbyters, the Church of England retained the threefold pattern of bishops, priests and deacons.
The question of whether the church should be governed by bishops had become, by Hooker’s day, the touchstone of debate between ‘conformists’ (who argued that the Church of England was sufficiently reformed) and ‘presbyterians’ (who demanded further reforms of the church along continental lines).Footnote 32 Hooker’s opponents believed that Scripture set down a form of church government which had no bishops or dioceses but only presbyters of equal status chosen by individual congregations. Thus the 1572 Admonition to Parliament demanded that ‘Your wisdoms … remove … bishoppes authoritie’ and replace it with ‘an equalitie of ministers’.Footnote 33 Underlying this demand was a belief that Scripture should regulate all aspects of human life. So Thomas Cartwright says ‘the word of God contains whatsoever things can fall into any part of a man’s life’ so ‘the word of God directs man in all his actions (Laws II.1.3, II.2.1). Scripture, on this view, is the only source of theological authority and it regulates everything, including the order of the church. Presbyterians, believing that Scripture ruled all and that Scripture did not require bishops, concluded that presbyterian not episcopal government was scripturally demanded of the church.
One possible answer would be to disagree on the substance of the presbyterian argument – to say that Scripture required bishops as well as presbyters. Indeed, Hooker believed that episcopacy could claim a scriptural pedigree. Episcopal government ‘best agrees with the sacred scripture’ (Laws III.11.16), and ‘the first bishops of the Church of Christ were his blessed apostles’ who transmitted that office to their chosen successors (VII.4.1, VIII.4.3). Read with the Preface to the Ordinal this might suggest continuous succession of bishops was essential to the Church of England.
But this is not what Hooker is saying. Because it is precisely on this point that Hooker resists the presbyterians on their underlying methodological claim that Scripture mandates a form of church government which must be observed. One must start, for Hooker, by understanding what Scripture is for in the first place.Footnote 34 So, Hooker replies to the presbyterians, ‘ye suppose the laws for which ye strive are found in scripture … that scripture ought to be the only rule of all our actions, and consequently that church order which we observe not being commanded in scripture’ is ‘displeasant unto God’ (Pref. 7.3). The presbyterians, in short, are not making a claim about bishops so much as a claim about Scripture. They argue Scripture contains binding rules for all human life and activity. But this, says Hooker, is unrealistic, even on its own terms. Do the presbyterians really believe that Scripture rules everything we do, even down to the level of what food we should eat or whether or not we should pick up a particular straw (I.16.7, II.1.2)? What about all those aspects of life (such as the rules of commerce or the civil law) where Scripture is silent (Pref. 8.4)? Taken literally, the presbyterian position means that we would be sinning whenever we breathed or slept, since scripture does not command us explicitly when to do this (II.4.6-7). In short, there must be some areas of life where Scripture is not the binding rule.
For Hooker, Scripture’s purpose – its ‘principal intent’ – is ‘to deliver the laws of duties supernatural’ (I.14.1). Through Scripture, God reveals truths that humans by themselves would never be able to reach. So, for example, human reason might sense there is some higher goal in life above the material or sensual, and that we are somehow frustrated or impeded in our desire to attain it (I.11.3). But the concept that God became a human being in Jesus Christ to open to us the way of salvation ‘could never have entered into the heart of man as much as once to conceive … if God himself had not revealed it extraordinarily’ (I.11.5). The doctrines of the Incarnation, the Trinity, and so on, must similarly come by revelation (I.11.6). With beautiful cadence Hooker concludes, ‘The testimonies of God are true, the testimonies of God are perfect, the testimonies of God are all sufficient unto that end for which they were given’ (III.8.5, emphasis added). So doctrines – supernatural things, the things of faith, the distinctive things about God and humanity which Christians believe – come only from Scripture. Scripture is perfect and sufficient for its purpose, which is to reveal those things we need to know for our salvation. Such things ‘may not be invented of men … but must be received from God himself’ (I.15.2), and indeed they can come only from God, for ‘nature is no sufficient teacher what we should do that we may attain life everlasting’ (II.8.3). This, of course, is thoroughly consistent with the official formularies of Anglicanism – that Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation.
By contrast, there are many matters which are not essential to salvation, and which are not Scripture’s purpose to teach. These are sometimes called the adiaphora or ‘things indifferent’ or ‘things accessory’ (Hooker’s preferred term – III.3.3-4). This does not mean such matters are unimportant, merely that they are not vital to our salvation. The details of worship and church governance are in this category: the presbyterians believe ‘matters of discipline and church government are (as they say) matters necessary to salvation and of faith, whereas we put a difference between the one and the other’ (III.2.2). Again, ‘in such things discretion may teach the Church what is convenient [and] we hold not the Church further herein tied to scripture, than that against scripture nothing be admitted’ (III.3.3).
Doctrine and discipline differ not just in their sources, but in two other vital ways. First, doctrines are binding on all Christians everywhere; ‘things which supernaturally appertain to the very essence of Christianity … are necessarily required in every particular Christian’ (III.1.4). By contrast, ‘in things indifferent there is a choice’ (II.4.4) – ‘discretion may teach the Church what is convenient’, as we just saw (III.3.3). The source of authority in matters of discipline is, for Hooker, not the Scriptures.
Secondly, unlike doctrines, discipline may vary where time or circumstance dictate. Just as humans are drawn to speak but not necessarily in the same language, so all churches must have a polity but not necessarily the same specific one (III.2.1). Not every church need have the same polity nor need it always stay the same: ‘that which hath once been most sufficient, may wax otherwise by alteration of time or place’ (III.10.3). Specifically on the question of bishops, Hooker clearly believed they were a matter of discipline and therefore alterable. Because Scripture does not rule the church in matters which do not pertain to salvation, even the hints of an episcopal office in Scripture do not bind the church: ‘God’s … committing unto scripture’ some guidance about church government is not ‘any reason sufficient wherefore all churches should forever be bound to keep them without change’ (III.10.17).Footnote 35 Hooker agrees that given the problems with the episcopate in Geneva, Calvin’s decision to abolish bishops was justifiable (Pref. 2.1-7). He concludes it would not be feasible to re-impose bishops on those Scottish and French churches which had abandoned them (III.11.16). In other words, Hooker holds that Scripture binds the church only in matters of salvation; for other matters, including church government, the church has widespread power to decide its own order; and this freedom means it could decide to adapt or even dispense with bishops in certain circumstances.
If Hooker and the formularies are right, therefore, the first key question to ask of the MMC proposals is: are they matters pertaining to salvation (which must be regulated by Scripture) or not (in which case the church may decide)? And church order, for Hooker and for the formularies, is not a matter of salvation. The whole point of the controversy was precisely on just this question of whether Scripture should rule everything, including the order of the church. So if not Scripture, then on what basis should the church decide its ordering? We turn next to the appeal to tradition.
Tradition and Bishops
Davison contends that long-standing and continuous practice observed across many (though not all) churches binds the Church of England to maintain unwaveringly the order of bishops and the rule of episcopal ordination of presbyters. Hence the claim that ‘Our Church upholds ancient Catholic order’ and that unlike the Methodists, ‘we continue to follow the practice of the ancient Church’. Davison holds that the Anglican churches ‘pattern their orders of ministry after that of the patristic period’.Footnote 36 In short, Davison argues that tradition is the vital warrant here. But neither HookerFootnote 37 nor the formularies of the Church of England justify such weight being placed on an appeal to tradition – a tradition which is any case more varied than Davison admits.
Tradition and Bishops in Hooker
For Hooker, tradition carries considerable weight in matters of discipline. It is a good argument for doing something to say that it has been done for a long time, and/or across a variety of churches. ‘A thousand five hundred years and upward the Church of Christ has now continued under the sacred regiment of bishops’ (VII.1.13), he writes, and ‘some wicked thing has undoubtedly bewitched us, if we forsake that government, the use whereof universal experience has for so many years approved’ and replace it with a presbyterian polity ‘neither appointed of God himself nor till yesterday ever heard of’ (VII.1.3). That episcopal order can be traced back to Scripture, the earliest apostles, and the continued practice of the church are strong arguments.
But immediately after this invocation of tradition, the appeal is qualified. Episcopacy, even though ‘from ancient times … universally established,’ Hooker says, is ‘not absolutely necessary, but of a changeable nature’, which ‘stand[s] in force, rather by the custom of the church, choosing to continue in it’ (VII.5.8). While tradition is weighty, it cannot be decisive – for Scripture does not bind the church in matters of discipline, so has no binding rules on the specific form of church government. All Hooker is trying to say, through the appeal to tradition, is that episcopacy is a justifiable way of ordering the church, it commands widespread assent, and should not lightly be cast aside by the presbyterians. Hooker’s affirmation of a divine and apostolic origin for episcopacy ‘does not purport to show that episcopal government is divinely ordained as immutable’.Footnote 38 Thus, ‘the Church has power to alter with general consent and upon necessary occasion, even the positive laws of the apostles’ (VII.5.8). An argument from tradition, in Hooker, is never absolute or unalterable; in ‘matters accessory’ to salvation, even very long-standing practices can be changed.
Most tellingly Hooker insists that the requirement of episcopal ordination could be dispensed with temporarily without diminishing the general principle that only bishops can ordain presbyters. This, after all, is the nub of MMC’s proposals. And what Davison calls ‘an intolerable departure from order’ is something that Hooker explicitly argues is permissible. Thus, while the church ‘has not ordinarily allowed any other than Bishops alone to ordain’, ‘there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made without a Bishop’, and ‘we are not simply without exception, to urge a lineal descent of power … by continued succession of bishops in every effectual ordination’ (VII.14.11). So, in general, for Hooker, tradition carries great but not decisive weight, and specifically therefore (1) bishops cannot be said to be essential to the church and (2) the general requirement of episcopal ordination is not indispensable.
Tradition and Bishops in Formularies and Practice
In arguing that episcopal ordination should not be considered essential in all circumstances, Hooker was merely reflecting the actual practice of the Church of England in its first hundred years of independence. Indeed, the formularies and practice of the Church of England are historically much more nuanced and mixed than a simple assertion that all priests must have been episcopally ordained. After demonstrating that one key formulary, the ‘Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’, does not mandate episcopal ordination in the way it is often supposed, a survey of the actual thought and practice of Anglicanism, past and present, will provide ample precedent and rationale for the MMC proposals from within the Anglican tradition itself.
The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, a key statement of Anglican identity, was endorsed by the 1888 Lambeth Conference of bishops from across the Anglican Communion. It delineates as a key mark of Anglican identity ‘the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church’. Footnote 39 This is taken by some (notably the Anglican Catholic Future statement)Footnote 40 as grounds for insisting that episcopal ordination is a non-negotiable requirement for Anglicans. Two immediate problems, though, mean that the Quadrilateral is an insecure basis for resisting the MMC proposals. First, the resolutions of Lambeth Conferences are not binding – they have advisory weight rather than legal force.Footnote 41 Secondly, the Conference itself has recognized that this view cannot be considered absolute in all circumstances. In 1920, it envisaged a possible future united church where ‘many ministers … would remain after the union without episcopal ordination’.Footnote 42 In 1998, while affirming that ‘the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is … a statement of Anglican unity and identity’, nonetheless ‘the process of moving towards full, visible unity may entail temporary anomalies’.Footnote 43 In other words: the very formula which some rely on to insist on episcopal ordination as essential is considerably more nuanced both in its authority and its meaning.
This more nuanced picture is also evident from the actual history of ordination in the Church of England and from contemporary developments in both the Church of England and Anglicanism worldwide.
An obvious starting-point is that the requirement of mandatory episcopal ordination can be dated very specifically to 1662. It was enforced in a very particular context for political as much as theological or ecclesiological reasons. After the upheaval and catastrophe of the 1640s and 1650s, it was clear there was widespread desire for an orderly and settlement of religious and political differences. At first, it seemed that Charles II’s new administration might secure the ‘compromise’ of a ‘broad-based national church’, reconciling within it most of the shades of church opinion and practice which had grown up during the confusions and divisions of the Civil War and Interregnum.Footnote 44 But disputes among Church of England leaders made this harder, as did a Parliament occupied by other matters such as questions about land ownership and a fear that accepting diversity might lead to disagreement, once again, spilling over into violence.Footnote 45 Whatever the significance attached to each factor, it is clear that the 1662 requirement arose in particular historical circumstances and for largely political reasons. It is surely highly questionable whether those circumstances and reasons should be given such weight when there is good justification from Anglican theology and practice for taking a different view.
For, up to 1662, it is quite clear that episcopal ordination was considered normative but never mandatory. Throughout much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ministers who had not been ordained by a bishop were allowed, indeed welcomed, to serve as Church of England ministers – without having to be ordained by a bishop first. Padley usefully draws together a range of contemporary references to this practice, in statutes, theological writings, and a number of specific examples. These include clergy exiled under the reign of Mary, clergy ordained in non-episcopal continental churches, and clergy ordained during the crisis of the 1640s and 1650s when access to episcopal ordination was inevitably difficult.Footnote 46 The line of thought which insisted ordination by a bishop was always essential (as opposed to generally normative) probably begins with Jeremy Taylor,Footnote 47 although as Avis highlights it only really solidified in the thought of the Oxford Movement in the later nineteenth century.Footnote 48 So the claim that Anglicanism has always, unalterably, insisted on episcopal ordinations is simply wrong. And the historically correct argument that it is only since 1662 that episcopal ordination has been mandatory is a weak argument theologically – because it recognizes that the order of the church is open to alteration. If the Church of England in the late seventeenth century could decide to require episcopal ordination in all circumstances, why can it not in the early twenty-first decide to revert to its original practice?
One problem which must be acknowledged is that the first major attempt to achieve interchangeability of orders by dispensing with the requirement of episcopal ordination for a temporary period was far from smooth. The unification of denominations to form the Church of South IndiaFootnote 49 caused considerable dispute within the Communion.Footnote 50 The 1948 Lambeth Conference defeated a proposal to proceed ‘for an interim period’ with a ‘dual ministry’ where those who had not been episcopally ordained could minister in Anglican contexts,Footnote 51 and subsequent conferences had a ‘struggle to understand’ how to deal with such ministers of the Church of South India in the face of disagreement about their standing.Footnote 52 In the end the matter was only ‘resolved by time’.Footnote 53 And attempts to achieve something similar in England was lost because the Anglican-Methodist reunion scheme failed to secure sufficient support in the Church of England’s General Synod in 1972.Footnote 54
The examples of the Church of South India and the Anglican-Methodist proposals, though, are outweighed by other considerations. There is, as we have seen, clear theological and historical rationale for not considering episcopal ordination to be mandatory in all circumstances. But there is also substantial convergence in recent ecumenical dialogue and practice which suggests Anglicanism is moving towards accepting a more constructive approach in this area – and specifically of accepting temporary variations to the pattern of episcopal ordination.
Particularly in the last forty years, Anglicans have been involved in a series of ecumenical dialogues, bilateral and multilateral, which have demonstrated significant convergence on the question of what bishops are and what role they might play in united churches.Footnote 55 This includes accepting that a church does not need to have bishops for it to be a church – a recognition of the ‘accessory’ nature of church order. But it also has entailed growing understanding that what Croft labels the episcopal ‘dimension’ is present in quite a number of churches – in the form of a visible ministry of oversight – even if the specific understanding of this ministry as a distinct order of bishops in continuous succession is not. So, for example, the key ecumenical document Baptism Eucharist and Ministry resolved, ‘continuity in apostolic faith, worship, and mission has been preserved in churches which have not retained the form of historic episcopate’.Footnote 56 BEM went on to say that ‘those engaged in union negotiations, are expressing willingness to accept episcopal succession as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole Church’.Footnote 57
That mutual recognition – that there is episcopal ministry in churches without the historic succession, but that churches without the succession will find ways to incorporate it – has underpinned decades of ecumenical dialogue in which Anglicans have shared. In particular, it has been drawn on in dialogue not just with Methodist partners but with the Porvoo and Meissen churches on the continent.Footnote 58 As Avis notes, while the ‘historic episcopate is one form of episcopal ministry’, ‘episkope … takes diverse forms’.Footnote 59 This theological convergence suggests there is real common ground to take further steps to reunited divided churches which, in future, will fully share in the succession of bishops.
Thus, the 1992 Meissen Declaration between the Anglican Communion and a number of German churches concluded that the latter were willing to consider bishops in succession as part of their polity, but not to insist that they were essential or mandatory. There was therefore substantial convergence in recognizing the significance and potential of episcopacy, combined with an outstanding gap because the churches could not accept each other’s ministers in serving in either context:
Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches, though being increasingly prepared to appreciate episcopal succession “as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole Church,” hold that this particular form of episkope should not become a necessary condition for ‘full, visible unity.’ The Anglican understanding of full, visible unity includes the historic episcopate and full interchangeability of ministers. Because of this remaining difference our mutual recognition of one another’s ministries does not yet result in the full interchangeability of ministers.Footnote 60
But while, as John Arnold notes, the Meissen arrangements ‘had to leave the matter open’Footnote 61 of interchangeability because of this gap, the later Porvoo dialogue between Anglicans and Baltic and Nordic Lutherans made a vital further step. Arnold, an Anglican participant in both dialogues, points out that the Porvoo document was ‘twice as long as Meissen’ because ‘it was preparing the ground for a bigger step and a potentially controversial one … the recognition of each other’s ministries as they are’.Footnote 62 The key element was a more precise focus on what episcopal succession might mean and how it might be identified. The view that ‘Apostolic succession is restricted to a supposedly unbroken chain of the laying-on-of hands’Footnote 63 was nuanced to a ‘broader view of succession’.Footnote 64 The Porvoo churches had a historically mixed record in retaining episcopal succession. But the dialogue concluded that the laying-on of hands to ‘transmit ministerial office’ was only one of four factors which identified and expressed the ministry of oversight.Footnote 65 There is, in short, ‘more than one means’ of preserving continuity and order in the church.Footnote 66 Anglicans and Lutherans, crucially, decided that differences of theology and of historical record in their understanding and practice of episcope should not be allowed to hinder interchangeability of ministers: both communions ‘welcome persons episcopally ordained in any of our churches … to serve … in that ministry in [one another’s] churches without reordination’.Footnote 67
The Porvoo arrangements therefore concede the point that ecumenical partnership may sometimes mean taking a ‘broader view’ of episcopal succession. While the succession of bishops is a distinct issue from the question of whether priests must be ordained by bishops, Anglican progress on the former point may be a harbinger and foundation for progress on the second. The principle and practice that historic and theological differences in the exercise of episcopacy should not hinder interchangeable ministry without reordination has been established and accepted in the Anglican Communion. To the strong evidence in the Anglican tradition (that episcopal ordination is normative but not indispensable) can now be added Anglicanism’s willingness to take a ‘broader view’ of questions of order in the interests of ecumenical progress. Without compromising the basic elements of the tradition, then, theological convergence and ecumenical progress now makes plausible the possibility of not insisting on certain features of that tradition. The notion that this might be done, for a temporary period in a greater cause, now has not just historic (pre-1662) precedent but also contemporary parallels (Porvoo).
This ecumenical convergence has, in some cases, already entailed Anglicans in the present day dispensing temporarily with the requirement of episcopal ordination to facilitate greater unity. Thus, in the United States, the Episcopal Church has, in the case of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, allowed its ‘temporary suspension … to permit the full interchangeability and reciprocity of all its pastors as priests or presbyters within the Episcopal Church, without any further ordination or re-ordination or supplemental ordination whatsoever’.Footnote 68 A similar step is now proposed in the Episcopal Church’s relationship with the United Methodist Church.Footnote 69 This step has also been taken in the Anglican Church of Canada in its dialogue with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.Footnote 70 In the British Isles, this step has also been authorized in the Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland.Footnote 71 An Irish Anglican bishop involved in the dialogue points to the common history of both churches in their Church of England roots, as well as progress in identifying areas of agreement in doctrine, as key impetuses towards greater unity.Footnote 72 As with the MMC proposals, the Irish agreement holds that the president of the Methodist Church is already episcopal in character (even if the precise form of episcopacy differs).Footnote 73 So future presidents will be consecrated as bishops, while allowing full interchangeability of ministers without reordination with immediate effect. Within Anglicanism, therefore, there are not just reformation-era but contemporary precedents for temporarily dispensing with the requirement of episcopal ordination as a ‘bearable anomaly’.Footnote 74
The appeal to tradition, therefore, struggles to carry the weight that opponents of the MMC proposals wish. Tradition can only ever, on Hooker’s model, be illustrative and not determinative in matters of order. The tradition itself – within Anglicanism – is more varied than monochrome and continuous insistence on bishops and on episcopal ordination. There is theological underpinning in the thought and practice of Anglicanism before 1662 for a temporary dispensation of the requirement of episcopal ordination. Anglicanism has recognized elements of episcopacy in churches without a distinct order of bishops in continuous succession, just as those churches without such an order have recognized they will in future accept it. And, in the living tradition today, some Anglicans have already – on the basis of this theological convergence and historic precedent within Anglicanism – taken the kind of steps MMC now envisages. This suggests those proposals, far from being unfaithful to our tradition, are thoroughly consistent with it. So if Scripture does not bind the church in matters of order, and tradition can advise but not decide, how are we to resolve such questions?
Reason and Bishops
For Hooker, as we saw, neither Scripture nor tradition can settle matters of church order. It is reason which the church must rely on in such cases. ‘In things indifferent,’ says Hooker, ‘there is a choice’ (II.4.4). Those matters – matters of discipline (including church order) rather than doctrine – are ‘left … to the careful discretion of the churches’ and ‘must be by reason found out’ (III.9.1). So the basis for retaining bishops is ultimately not Scripture nor tradition but a reasoned assessment of their value. ‘Prelacy must needs be acknowledged exceedingly beneficial to the church’ (VII.18.4) because, for instance, having identifiably senior figures Christian better enables witness to political leaders (VII.18.9) and the clergy need someone to care for them (VII.18.11-12). But reason could pull the other way; tradition can be outweighed if a reasoned case against a practice can be advanced. ‘Companies of learned men, be they never so great and reverend, are to yield unto reason’ (II.7.6); even if there were universal agreement of ‘ten thousand general councils … yet one demonstrative reason alleged … [would] overweigh them all’ (II.7.5). In matters accessory there may be change where a reasoned case can be made: so, for example, the kiss of peace was a perfectly reasonable practice in the Graeco-Roman world, in polite Elizabethan society rather less so (Pref. 4.4). The ordering of the church is of course more fundamental than whether to kiss or shake hands during the communion service – but not so fundamental that it cannot be changed, as it is also a matter of discipline, not of doctrine.
If neither appeals to Scripture nor tradition can resolve the acceptability of the MMC proposals, then, Hooker’s methodology suggests that the key question Anglicans should ask of these proposals is – what is the reasonable case to accept or oppose them? The point of this argument is not to say that they must be accepted, merely that accepting them would be thoroughly consistent with the theological method of Richard Hooker which is, to a significant extent, mirrored in Anglican formularies and practice. The Church of England must weigh the arguments on the basis of the position now, not rely on scriptural warrant or appeals to tradition – neither of which is decisive for Hooker or for Anglicanism in matters of church government.
So, for instance, acceptance of a temporary variation in the requirement of episcopal ordination might undermine Anglicanism’s claim to share the historic episcopate with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. It would have to be judged, though, how those churches would view that claim anyway – not least because the Anglican episcopate now includes women as well as men, and does not recognize (say) the jurisdiction of the papacy in the way Roman Catholicism understands it. On the other hand, the Church of England must judge the effects of not proceeding. It must consider the damage and hurt which would be caused by our partner churches (not just the Methodists) taking a courageous step (incorporating the historic episcopate into their life) while Anglicans refused (again) to take a step towards them in return. It must evaluate the effects on our credibility in ecumenical dialogue if – despite the theological convergence in many agreed statements over recent decades – we were unwilling to consider one particular version of episcopal order, which is not even the official position in our own formularies, temporarily dispensable. We would also need to consider the effects of a retrograde step of not proceeding with interchangeability in England on all of our ecumenical dialogues where this step was either at least envisaged as a future possibility (Meissen), or practised (Porvoo and in a growing number of Anglican-Methodist partnerships worldwide). The point is not which reasoned arguments hold sway; it is that – as in any matter of church order – the MMC proposals must be judged not by appeals to Scripture or tradition, but by the church using its reason.
Conclusion
MMC’s proposals have caused controversy because they envisage a temporary (albeit not insignificant) period where clergy who have not been ordained by bishops would minister as presbyters in the Church of England. This proposal, though – not least because it is a temporary dispensation, not a permanent change – is not inconsistent with either the theology or the practice of the Church of England. The theological method of Richard Hooker – echoing the language of Anglicanism’s founding formularies – helps us see that, in ‘matters accessory’ (including church order) Scripture does not bind the church (its purpose being to deliver doctrine, not discipline). Nor does the tradition mean a practice must be preserved at all times and in all places – the church can, by reason, alter its practices provided a decision is made using reason and by due authority. Added to this theological rationale, the practice of the Church of England before 1662 and of other contemporary Anglican churches is a powerful precedent pointing in the same direction. So the Church of England could – consistent with this interpretation of its theological heritage – accept the MMC proposals without compromising its character or identity, and other Anglican Provinces could legitimately pursue similar proposals.
Of course, this does not mean there aren’t still questions to address. Davison is right that more work is needed to make sure that there is sufficient convergence between what Anglicans and Methodists believe a bishop is and does. The idea of a bishop with jurisdiction over a certain kind of minister rather than a certain geographical area needs some unpacking. But the basic consistency of the proposals with one long-standing and cogent account of the theology, history, and identity of the Church of England is clear. Richard Hooker would be far from turning in his grave at these plans. Anglicans today can accept them gladly, as a welcome step towards the greater unity for which the Lord prayed.
