Good evening brethren! A question on apostolic succession. Is it traceable conclusively within our church? I believe it is but would like the framework on how to answer this question fully. I have read a very basic book on the matter written by George F Lewis called THE PAPACY AND ANGLICAN ORDERS. God bless and thanks in advance. David Yorkshire.
Yes of course, the ordination went on as before throughout the 16th century. Why would there be any question about apostolic succession?
I suppose the doubt only comes from catholic CCC...even our AS seems at least in the physical unbroken chain of laying on of hands to be indisputable.
Even is Apostolic Curiea, or however you spell it, was correct at the time it was issued times have moved past it now. We have incorporated Old Catholic, some Eastern Orthodox and other lines that the Romans deem valid with a form that they deem valid. But also they adopted a more Anglican Ordinal after Vatican II and we can lay the same claim upon them that they did us with consecration of Mathew Parker.
If my understanding is correct - and admittedly my memory on the subject is a bit fuzzy, as it has been a number of years since I studied the subject in any depth - the basis of the Roman objection to Anglican orders is our historic denial that the Eucharist is a propitiatory sacrifice. The obverse was not dogma in the RCC until Trent, and even then, there was no common understanding of which specific elements of the sacrament overlapped with the properly sacrificial aspects (form, matter, or both?). Of course, there was always the understanding that the Eucharist was a sacrifice in some sense but this has never been denied. KJV-style English translations of the current EO liturgy refer to the Eucharist at one point as “this rational and bloodless worship” which in plain modern English translates to “this spiritual and unbloody sacrifice”, which seems to imply a denial of the “mystical immolation” (which post-Trent Roman writers seem to hold as essential to the rite), though there is possibly some evidence to the contrary from late Byzantine writers.
The funny thing about Apostolicae Curae is, they added an arbitrary definition of Sacrifice as part of the priesthood, which wasn’t there before even in their own definitions. Anything they could do to find an excuse for how to disparage Anglican orders. But then after Vatican 2 they rewrote their Ordinal, and took out that definition of sacrifice from their own liturgy. So by their own definition as found in Apostolicae Curae, the Roman orders themselves are invalid after Vatican 2.
The honest answer is that we can't conclusively trace it, but we cover our bases by saying it technically doesn't matter. The historical low-water mark we have always agreed to is that, even if there hasn't been a strict unbroken chain of literal laying on of the hands from apostle to bishop to bishop, there has been a consistent unbroken chain of apostolic commitment, mission and belief. But, the Church has always avoided any official statements, because the implications of denying an unbroken literal chain is necessary is very challenging, and would probably cause a minor revolt within the Church. Most Anglo-Catholics, for example, would not tolerate the church admitting a literal chain is not necessary. The truth is that our document keeping has not been good enough to be certain, so we avoid making the claim that a literal chain of apostolic succession is strictly necessary for fear one day someone might show a major gap in a region where apostolic succession has been broken for centuries. The same could be said of the Catholic, Orthodox and high Lutheran churches as well of course, this problem is not unique to us, but the other churches tend to be more reluctant to admit doubt and so cover up their insecurities. One of the great things about the Anglican church is we're honest about our doubts on things like this.
Can you point me to where we say it technically does not matter because to orthodox Anglicans it technically does matter. That is what is so great about the mingling of our lines with other lines.
It is instructive in this regard to go back and read what (Anglican) bishops around the world had to say about apostolic succession, in the middle of the nineteenth century (see W S Bricknell, ed, The Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology, Oxford, 1845 - available on Google Books). There was by no means a consensus at that time that the bishops were successors of the apostles or that this mattered. I'm not saying they were necessarily right, but it's remarkable to me that Anglo-Catholicism has been able, apparently successfully, to rewrite history to the extent it has. http://justus.anglican.org/resources/misc/norman98.html
The good news is that we have a much higher level of certainty than that, at least the level of moral certainty (that refers to any historic fact). Obviously 2+2=4 has a higher certainty than that Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great had existed, but if you’re willing to admit that Caesar had existed then the Church has apostolic succession. It’s on the same level of certainty, using the same levels of documentation. Obviously we don’t have the literal manuscript where Caesar by his hand recorded his autobiography, but such high demands were never required by scholars in order to establish moral certainty about historic facts. We have dozens of Church Fathers, including church historians, who tell us that each of the major cities of the Roman Empire had records of each and every bishop, going back to the beginning. And we have complete records listing the successions behind Anglican orders, going to the 1st century AD. I mean you have divines being obsessed about apostolic succession from the 16th century onward. One of the biggest arguments for the Divine Right of Episcopacy in the 16th century was that a bishop is necessary for ordination to be valid (which raised stakes really high for apostolic succession to be valid, without it they argued CofE didn’t exist). Im aware of at least two mega-sized studies in the early 1600s, of the apostolic succession and a meticulous trace the line of Anglican consecrations to the very beginning.
What is the scriptural justification for insistence of proof of physical Apostolic succession as a means of guaranteeing an efficacious and valid ministry for bishops? Is there any? .
Not to mention that with Matthew Parker they got two people ordained under the Roman Rite and two people under the Edward Ordinal to cover all their basis. That is a lot of effort for something they did not see as important.
Apostolic succession is taught in article 23. What makes apostolic succession necessary is not something from Scriptures, but a natural law principle, as explained in article 23: something can be given only if you first already had it. Consequently only those can consecrate who previously have already been consecrated. This also applies to the one consecrating: they had to have been consecrated by one who was valid before them. And so on, all the way back the The Very First Consecrations.
I just don’t see it, even remotely. Art. 23 is standard boilerplate for a Reformed Confession. There’s no mention of bishops, or apostles, or succession, or even church polity generally; only Ministers, Sacraments, and Congregations. It could just as easily be read in a Puritan sense. The language in the Ordinal is more specific, but still not necessarily normative in the strict sense.
It’s a general natural law principle, not something specific to bishops or religious matters. One cannot become a prime minister without those making you one already having had the power. One cannot become a judge without first those making you one already having had the power. One cannot become a bishop without those making you one already having had the power. If other confessions also had bishops, the those similar statements would also teach apostolic succession in their case. We have to take apostolic succession out of that superstitious sense which Rome has invested into it, as if those who had it were better or closer to God. Apostolic succession is not a religious principle but a natural one, a mechanical one. The only way someone can give a thing to someone else, is if they themselves had it first. And how did they get it? All the way back to the beginning.
I get that, but the 39 Articles aren’t natural law; they are statute law. Their meaning must be determined according to what the Monarch, Lords Temporal and Spiritual, and the Commons assembled in Parliament, intended when the law was enacted. Blackstone covered the rules of construction at the beginning of his Commentaries, for example. I have found no better exposition of them. Unless we intend our interpretation to be arbitrary, the Articles must be interpreted according to their plain sense, and that sense includes no mention of bishops or succession. The Ordinal does (at least of the former), but the Articles do not.
It didn’t need to, because it enumerated the principle by which any transmission of any order happens in the realm. That article, although it has an ecclesiastical context, enumerates a principle by which we may judge whether any order of government is validly transmitted: the one transmitting has to first have it himself. So by the plain letter of the article we may derive the principle for how to know if we have a valid president, or prime minister, or judges, or governors. Or yes, bishops. Any estate, whether ecclesiastical or secular, falls under the domain of the article. The only way to say that it was never meant to apply to bishops, is to argue that the bishops were not a separate order in government, but an extension of some other order. But we already know from secular English law that the bishops occupied a distinct niche (eg in the House of Lords), and from ecclesiastical law as enumerated by Thomas Cranmer we know that the episcopacy is a separate order alongside priests and deacons. Therefore since to ordain a priest or deacon one must first have that capacity (article 23), also to consecrate a bishop the one doing it must first have the capacity. Article 23. Going back to the beginning, ergo apostolic succession. Anyway you also have a good half a dozen Elizabethan theologians establishing the necessity of apostolic succession.
I didn’t say that Art. 23 could never apply to bishops; I said it could apply to a category other than bishops. The Article uses the word “lawful” three times by my count, and in two of those instances it does so as part of the phrase “lawfully called”. The legislature of 16th cent. England - as today, at least formally - is the Monarch-in-Parliament. To be “lawfully called” means what Parliament says it means. At the time, that entailed ordination as bishops (or priests or deacons). The Article itself makes no statement about the essential necessity of bishops, or of apostolic succession. It is what Kant would have called a hypothetical imperative. The natural law principle at work is that “all authority must be legitimate”. At the risk of anachronism, if we follow Locke (who in turn was profoundly influenced by Hooker), legitimacy entails consent. And who was doing the consenting? Answer: the people, aristocracy, and monarch of England - the nation, as it were. Three of the four parts of Parliament - considering the Lords as consisting of two parts, following Blackstone - either represented, or acted in their own direct capacity as, laity. Without the laity, there could be no legitimate law governing what it meant to be “lawfully called” in the 39 Articles. The Church of England could have abolished the episcopate and that would not have altered the legislative force of the Article: those desiring to be Ministers would still have to be lawfully called, i.e., in accordance with the will of Parliament. Art. 23 as it stands is standard boilerplate language in line with the other Reformed Confessions, that gives concretization to the conviction that not just anybody could preach the Word or dispense the Sacraments. There still had to be good order in the Church. Beyond this, the Article in its strict construction does not go. I am personally glad that the Church of England retained episcopacy. It is by far the most traditional form of ecclesiastical polity. That continuity is, in my opinion, a source of strength. But the basis for this conviction is not the 39 Articles, and no Anglican formulary that I am aware of ever stated that the Church only existed where episcopacy did.
That would've of course dissolved the Church of England, according to the 1662 Ordinal. But obviously from a secular perspective you are correct: if they did abolish episcopacy, then the article would've applied to other kinds of ecclesiastical ministers. But that's not what I was talking about, so I don't think you understand my point: I'm not saying that Article 23 teaches that the episcopacy is necessary to the Church (we know that from other sources, but not from Article 23). All I'm saying as regards Article 23 is, that if you do happen to have bishops, then according to Article 23, the only way to have bishops is to have already-existing bishops make them. In other words, Article 23 forbids that an unqualified party could participate in the consecration of a bishop; that a member of parliament, a nobleman (as happened in Lutheran lands), or even the monarch could act as a consecrator of a bishop. If those consecrations were permitted in the CofE, then we could legitimately say that the apostolic succession in my definition: a consecration by one who had power to consecrate, would've been broken, and all further CofE bishops from then on would be laymen. So all article 23 establishes is the proper natural principle for every order of government, secular or ecclesiastical (although implicitly ecclesiastical by the nature of this document). Whatever the order of government happens to be, it must be created by the party which has the power to create it. If you don't have bishops, then Article 23 does not establish apostolic succession. But if you do happen to have bishops, then it mandates that only the bishops will consecrate them. Thus the essentiality of bishops is established elsewhere than in Article 23, but if the bishops are had, then Article 23 will establish that they must have episcopal consecration, ie. apostolic succession.
I can’t say that I disagree with any of that. Art. 23 is definitely saying that if you’re going to have bishops, then only those who are already bishops can ordain them. We just have to be careful how we frame that. That’s the main point I’ve been trying to make here. The Church of England never made any definitive statement that I’m aware of about the validity or lack thereof of other Churches’ orders. And for as much pride as we take in our Communion having retained the apostolic succession of bishops, a heck of a lot of good that’s done us. The other episcopally constituted Churches want nothing to do with us, and that predates the rise of modernism/liberalism by a long shot. They must be wondering, given our position ecumenically, why we bother. I have a suspicion that if, say, the Southern Baptist Convention were to collectively decide to submit to Rome, the Papacy would find some loophole or workaround to make it happen. It has nothing to do with valid succession, or doctrine, and everything to do with authority and submission to it.