Mostly. But some matters of church order are based on natural law, as in Article 23: if one is to consecrate a bishop, one first has to already be a bishop. In other words it would be invalid for a layman or priest to consecrate a bishop, and were it to happen then it would break the apostolic succession (the valid consecration) for that bishop. Any bishop that does not have apostolic succession is actually not a bishop. Episcopacy matters because without it, no ordinations can take place. Therefore once you break apostolic succession, you will start creating a church hierarchy full of laymen. And then the question arises, that if a so-called priest is actually a layman, then can he consecrate the Eucharist? If bishops are laymen then can there be any further Confirmations? Without priests or bishops can there ever be consecrated church buildings? Will anyone ever again receive the blessings and the benedictions of the Church? Will anyone be absolved by a chosen minister of God ever again? And that’s when it becomes clear that most of the sacred things of the Church depend on ordained ministry. And without a bishop being consecrated by an already-valid bishop (ie. without apostolic succession), there can’t be ordained ministry. Therefore without apostolic succession, there can’t exist almost any sacred things of the Church.
Depends what the bishop ordains you to do. I was ordained to preach, teach and lead Anglican congregations in worship. I can also conduct funerals. I am not ordained to celebrate the Eucharist or baptise though, because I am a Licenced Lay Minister, but I have been anointed and appointed by the Bishop of Bath and Wells to perform those duties, for which I was ordained in his diocese, but have transferred to another since. .
I think you are overlooking the fact that the performance of Baptism and the Eucharist are commands given to the Church. “Ought” implies “can”, i.e., where an obligation exists, the means for fulfilling it must be available. The performance of the sacraments cannot be dependent upon something contingent like the availability of bishops in a given locale. Bishops and an episcopal polity are to be preferred. But there is simply no Scriptural warrant for the assertion that ministers ordained by someone other than a bishop are no different from laymen. To that notion I am unwaveringly opposed, on what I believe to be solid ground within the Anglican tradition and official formularies.
I understand where you're coming from, but the challenge you presented would exist even in the NT. Applying what you've said to the NT, could I say this: "there is simply no Scriptural warrant for the assertion that ministers ordained by someone other than an Apostle are no different from laymen." Were the apostles themselves the guarantors of the Church's presence, such that absent of them the Church itself was absent? How does that square with your challenge of the sacraments being available everywhere and to all? This ties in with the corollary, the famous rule laid down by St. Ignatius, literally the disciple under John the Apostle. He said in his Epistles, over and over again: "Where is the Bishop, there is the Church". With one fell swoop he disenfranchised all the gnostics and other strands of Christians who didn't want bishops, and in their own way, with their own ministers, proclaimed what they thought was the gospel (mostly wrongly). Consider this. The way Anglicans frame ordination is that it makes one not "a priest within the Anglican communion", but The Priest of the One True Church. We can see this in how our ordinations are conducted ("you are ordained into Christ's One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church", etc). Thus for us, ordination inducts the minister into the One Church, and there is only One, of which we anglicans are a particular member. It follows that other denominations which ordain their ministers into the same One True Church, make their ministers and ours be effectively one and the same. Theirs may be a priest John Smith of Denomination X, and ours might be Rev. Robert Jones of the Anglican Diocese of ABC. And there may even be some friction between Denomination X and us. But our ecclesiology requires us to state that John Smith is a minister of the same exact Ultimate Church as our Robert Jones. And since the two men are really in the same one church, there should (in principle) be mobility, where we can take their John Smith into jurisdiction. So one of the ways you can determine the view of the Anglican tradition and the formularies on this question is: once a definitive rule was set down in the 1662 Ordinal, has there ever been a minister from a non-episcopal denomination whom we've accepted by transfer (without re-ordination) into ours? And the answer is no. Among all the various churches of the world, the only ones whose ministers we will accept transfers of into ours have been episcopally-ordained. It means they're the only ones whom we think were ordained into the same One True Church of which we're also members. In other words, it's not just that "our" narrow parochial rules "require" episcopal ordination, but it could be different for others. You have to add our understanding of the One True Church into the mix. We don't ordain ministers into being Anglican priests, but into being priests of the One True Church. Those who are already priests of the one True Church from other denominations, we can accept transfers of. Those needing to be re-ordained, means we consider them to never have been made ministers of the One True Church in the first place.
All of that makes good sense. I think part of the problem with conceptualizing these different scenarios is that we're imagining non-episcopal polities as those in which the top "layer" (which would consist of the episcopate) is simply missing. What if we cut out the "middle" instead, i.e., instead of saying "we're not going to have bishops any longer", saying "we're not going to have priests anymore". So, you would have an ecclesiastical polity that consisted of bishops (who did the work of ordinary priests - not all that different from what a bishop in the post-apostolic era was), and deacons. And those bishop/priests would nominate their successor bishop/priests, etc. They would meet in synods and make decisions collectively, having no superior office to whom to defer matters of great weight. It's easy to see how this might evolve over time into something like a presbyteral/proto-presbyterian polity over time, yet without ever losing the chain of succession stretching back to the apostles. Combine this thought experiment with the fact - which you and I have discussed on other threads here - that there was no hard-and-fast division between priests and bishops in the Middle Ages when it came to the power to ordain. Theoretically, priests did (do?) actually have that power, but they were (usually) deprived of any opportunities to exercise it because of the way medieval canon law worked. Some of the Continental Reformers were in fact ordained clergy (Zwingli, for example). Why could the succession not have continued under a different polity, according to the thought experiment I've outlined above?
You will presumably already have guessed that the only codicil I would want to add to all you have said is: replace 'men' with 'disiciples of Christ' throughout the whole piece. and perhaps John Smith with Jane Smith, but that's optional because John and Smith were only examples, not actual names. . .
This is not correct. The Queen is very specifically not the Supreme Governor of the Church of Scotland. Indeed, to be so would be contrary to that church's presbyterian polity. The sovereign promises to maintain the Church of Scotland. When its General Assembly meets each year the Queen appoints a Lord High Commissioner who attends solely as an observer. When the Queen is in Scotland she attends services in the Church of Scotland but does so as an ordinary member of said church.
I stand corrected. However, the only point I was attempting to make is that the Monarch is a member of both Churches. These distinctions are sometimes lost to those of us across the pond.
When I lived in Seattle there was a vibrant Old Catholic Church (OCC) parish ... if memory serves ... in the Wallingford neighborhood (I could be wrong; its been two decades since I've lived there). I believe both OCC priests were married with children, with an OCC Franciscan on staff with one paid secretary. Enormous congregation, weekly mass. I used to be on a list-serve of autocephalous churches run by an OCC priest who stated they had valid orders; do the OCC have succession through CofE or the breakaway RC bishops from the 1870’s?
The OCC parish that I went to in MN two decades ago spoke of the break-away Bishops they had that carried on their interpretation of Apostolic Order. The one Liberal Catholic parish in MN also claimed valid succession via break-away Bishops.
I think a lot of nonsense has been thought and said concerning the validity of Apostolic Succession. Concern that something might not have been 'Properly passed on' is nothing more than ignorant, literalist, legalist superstition. It matters not very much exactly what words were said by a consecrating Bishop in Ordination of Priests or Laypersons. What matters, and makes ordination 'valid' is the fact that the ordinand has been examined and found to be suitable by The Church and the evidence has been duly considered by the Bishop, and the Bishop has pronnunced upon the ordinand the desire of the church to have this person accepted by God to perform the duties of a Priest, in Spirit and in Truth. The only factor which disqualifies ANY believer in ANY congregation of the saints of Christ's Unversal Church, is the fact that they have not yet been examined and judged worthy to represent that congregation of the saints at The Eucharist. It is in fact God who supplies a valid priesthood for the benefit of Christ's Church. The Bishop confers nothing but the consent of the church. It is God that then confers valid Apostolic ordination because, throughout the process, the advice of the Apostles has been followed. There can be no physical 'link' between one bishop and the next, on the spiritual principal of the church having examined and the bishop having then decided to ask God and believe therefore that God has ordained. There therefore can be no actual 'break' in an Apostolic succession if the principles have been adhered to throughout the process of ANY ordination by ANY denomination of Christ's Church. .