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Cyprian of Carthage and the Australian Anglican Episcopate

by

The Reverend Luke Hopkins BTh (Hons Div. I)

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

University of Divinity

2020 2

Abstract

Can the ancient past be of value to the modern ? This thesis brings the theological weight and pragmatism of third century and martyr of Carthage to bear on the problems facing the contemporary Anglican episcopate in . In doing so, it examines the vision of episcopacy within the Cyprianic corpus and as well as the development of the Anglican episcopate over the last five hundred years. How episcopacy developed and was conceived of during the English and how the Anglican Church of Australia was formed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will both be explored. Laying this essential historical groundwork enables contemporary episcopal challenges to be understood within their appropriate historical-cultural context. That groundwork having been established, the concluding chapters consider the role Cyprian’s theology can play in the facing the challenges Australian Anglicans face in the twenty-first century. This thesis will argue that just as Anglican theologians have looked to Cyprian in the past so contemporary adherents can feel confident in appealing to his writings in the present. It is argued that Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy provides an adaptive approach to episcopacy that retains certain core episcopal principals. This thesis concludes that a better examination of Cyprian is of value for in the twenty-first century.

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Statement of Originality

I affirm that this thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other institution. To the best of my knowledge, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis.

The Reverend Luke Hopkins 9 December 2020

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Acknowledgements Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro. Dignum et iustum est. Firstly, my sincere thanks go to my supervisors, Don Saines and Peter Sherlock. I am forever indebted for their brilliant insight and care throughout this process, as well as their abundant patience. Without your help, Don and Peter, this thesis could never have come to pass. I also wish to thank their partners Pene and Craig for their support as well. I must also thank Andrew McGowan who encouraged me to take on this project and guided its first steps in 2013. I would also like to thank Bishop Keith Joseph, Bishop , Fergus King and Roger Sharr who encouraged me to pursue post-graduate research at that time. My thanks go to the staff and students of College , Merton College Oxford and who allowed me to stay with them during the course of this research. During my sojourn in the U.K., I am particularly grateful to , Mark Chapman, Simon Jones, Bishop Colin Fletcher, Felicity Scroggie, Martin Gorick, Sue Johns, Martin Freeman, Mark Young, David Houlding, Rebecca Feeney, Tristan Franklinos, Mary and Anthony Boyle, Anne Miles, Emma Bardsley, Jutta Toscano, Lee and Eileen Clarke, and Tom Plant. In Australia, my thanks also go to Aidan Norrie, Dorothy Lee, Mark Lindsay, Peter Campbell, Scott Kirkland, Colin Reilly, Charles Sherlock, Gary Bouma, Stephen Ames, Cecilia Francis, Peter French, Robyn Whitaker, and Katherine Firth. I would also like to thank the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library in London and the Dalton McCaughey Library in Melbourne. Thank you to Austin Cooper, Ross Fishburne and John McDowell who offered their own insight and support during the confirmation stage. I also wish to thank Chris and Sarah Orczy for their support no matter where in the world we happened to be at the time. I wish to express my appreciation to the bishops, clergy and people of the of Newcastle, Australia, who consented to let a newly ordained pursue this research. Specific thanks are also extended to Bishop and the trustees of the Rorke-Hunter Trust who offered much needed financial aid at the beginning of this journey. I am also grateful for the scholarship I received from the University of Divinity as a doctoral candidate. There are so many others who I am grateful to whose names are not written here. I wish to thank my family and friends for their support over the last few years and to my darling Alice to whom I dedicate this work. For the two of us, the duration of this doctoral thesis has seen multiple international moves, new degrees, new jobs, a cancer diagnosis and a wedding. 5

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 7 i. Crisis in the Contemporary Australian Anglican Episcopate ...... 8 ii. Reading the Church Fathers Today...... 14 iii. The Bishop of Carthage ...... 21 iv. Thesis Overview ...... 27 v. A Personal Note ...... 28

Chapter One – Cyprian of Carthage’s Theology of the Episcopate ...... 30 1.1. Introduction ...... 30 1.2. Cyprian’s Ecclesiology ...... 31 1.2.1. The Community of Christ ...... 31 1.2.2. The ...... 36 1.2.3. The Cathedra Petri ...... 41 1.2.4. The Equality of the Episcopal College ...... 45 1.2.5. The Unity of the Church ...... 50 1.3. The Role and Responsibilities of Bishops ...... 56 1.3.1. Bishop as Pastor – ‘Shepherd’ ...... 56 1.3.2. Bishop as Doctor – ‘Teacher’ ...... 61 1.3.3. Bishop as Iudex – ‘Judge’ ...... 61 1.3.4. Bishop as Sacerdos – ‘Priest’ ...... 66 1.4. Conclusion ...... 71

Chapter Two – The Appeal to Cyprian during the Anglican Reformation ...... 78 2.1. Introduction ...... 78 2.2. Trends in English Episcopacy – 1533 to 1662 ...... 79 2.3. The Reception of Cyprian ...... 83 2.4. Appropriating Cyprian’s Ecclesiology – Jewell, Hooker and Laud ...... 85 2.4.1. John Jewell (1522-1571) ...... 85 2.4.2. (1554-1600) ...... 94 2.4.3. (1573-1645) ...... 105 2.5. Conclusion ...... 115

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Chapter Three – The development of the Anglican Episcopate in Australia ...... 119 3.1. Introduction ...... 119 3.2. Ministry under the Diocese of Calcutta ...... 119 3.3. William Grant Broughton – the first and last Bishop of Australia ...... 121 3.4. Multiple Bishops for the Pacific ...... 129 3.5. The Rise of Synodical Governance ...... 134 3.6. The Withdrawal of the Crown ...... 137 3.7. The First Lambeth Conferences ...... 143 3.8. Legal Problems Continue ...... 147 3.9. A National Church ...... 151 3.10. The Contemporary Structure of the Anglican Church of Australia ...... 153 3.11. Conclusion ...... 156

Chapter Four – Reconceiving Episcopacy for Australian Anglicans ...... 158 4.1. Introduction ...... 158 4.2. The Ordinal – An Australian Theology of the Episcopate ...... 158 4.3. The Lived Experience of Episcopacy ...... 162 4.4. A Distant Episcopate ...... 165 4.5. Cyprian’s Response – The Relational Bishop ...... 176 4.6. Managing ...... 183 4.7. Cyprian’s Response – The Discerning Bishop ...... 189 4.8. A Changing Episcopate in Response to Abuse Scandals ...... 192 4.9. Cyprian’s Response – The Accountable Bishop ...... 199 4.10. Episcopacy in the Light of Difference of Unity ...... 204 4.11. Cyprian’s Response – The Loving Bishop ...... 216 4.12. Conclusion ...... 222

Conclusion ...... 224 5.1. A Cyprianic Theology of Episcopacy for Australians and Beyond ...... 224 5.2. Future Avenues for Research ...... 226 5.2. Ancient Bishops for a Modern Church ...... 227

Bibliography ...... 231

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Introduction

Sarah Coakley once compared the Church of to the main sewer system in the .1 Most of the time, people take for granted that the system exists and has a general, albeit invisible, purpose. Like the main sewer system ‘it continues to attend to what often cannot be mentioned’, that is the church often deals with subjects that wider society might prefer not to discuss in polite conversation.2 However, Coakley writes, when the system breaks down and there is a terrible stink in the air everybody is suddenly vocal.3 Perhaps the same can be said for the episcopate. When everything appears to be running smoothly few people outside the Anglican community, or even within it, pay much attention to the church’s polity or the theology that underpins that polity. Unfortunately, when conflict and debate arise, there is a wave of popular and media interest.

The church is often depicted as being torn apart by theological debates over sexuality, gender and authority. These debates have resulted in a large amount of introspection on the nature of Anglican identity. But they have also resulted in an inward turn by Anglicans, Colin Fletcher writes, ‘divorcing [themselves] from society and becoming largely ineffectual’.4 Bruce Kaye comments that ‘conflict and hostility make for good television’ as ‘such conflict feeds our voyeuristic interest in power’.5 Though often cynical in their reports, both media and political bodies have correctly discerned that an identity crisis has enveloped the .

The focus of this thesis is the office and authority of bishops within the Anglican tradition in Australia. Sarah Rowland Jones states that questions around episcopacy are ‘perennially pertinent, especially for Anglicans’ because of their ‘long-standing commitment to contextual adaptation of both episcopacy and episcopé, while remaining

1 Sarah Coakley, "Prayer, Place and the Poor", in Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture, ed. Samuel Wells and Sarah Coakley (London, New York: Continuum, 2008), 4. 2 Coakley, "Prayer, Place and the Poor", 4. 3 Coakley, "Prayer, Place and the Poor", 5. 4 Brian Fletcher, The Place of in Australia: Church, Society and Nation (Mulgave: Broughton Publishing, 2008), iii. 5 Bruce Kaye, Reinventing Anglicanism: A vision of Confidence, Community and Engagement in Anglican Christianity (Adelaide: Openbook, 2003), 1. 8 rooted to scripture example and earliest church tradition’.6 In the early twenty-first century, Jones’ statement is certainly true in the Australian context. The episcopate is under pressure both externally and internally. Doctrinal divisions and lack of shared recognition between all bishops within the Anglican Church of Australia are straining the bonds of affection and unity. The lived experience of bishops is also often far from the ideals of episcopacy present within Anglican authorities such as the Ordinal. Historic misuse of spiritual authority has been uncovered in the abuse scandals over the last few decades. These have highlighted the need for existing church structures to be reshaped. Contemporary challenges also face the Australian episcopate in relation to the size and viability of dioceses. Furthermore, not all bishops have the same vision as to how episcopacy should be performed. Due to the lack of a shared sense of episcopacy and often a lack of formation specific to the episcopal office, Gary Bouma writes that it has largely been individual preference as to how a bishop will choose to exercise their ministry. He argues: It is not easy being a bishop. Everyone has a different view of how the role should be played. The cross-pressures are enormous, the responsibilities among the most onerous in any leader and the guidelines never adequate to specify satisfactorily the course of action or the way to pursue it. The decisions a bishop makes both as to how to be bishop in general and how to be bishop in each situation are lonely decisions, there being few with whom to share these issues. Being bishop – being prophet, priest, servant king and shepherd – requires wisdom, courage, willingness to listen, to learn and to change. What a tall order! No wonder we are called to pray daily for them.7 i. Crisis in the Contemporary Australian Anglican Episcopate

A large number of scholars have written on the subject of Anglican identity over the last thirty years. Many of these focus on the challenges facing episcopacy. Amongst them, from an Australian perspective the research of Bruce Kaye, Tom Frame, Jeffrey Drive and Stephen Pickard stand out. There are also many others who have reflected on the backdrop on which this thesis builds.

6 Sarah Rowland Jones, "Episcopé and Leadership", in The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies, ed. Mark Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke, and Martyn Percy (Oxford: , 2015), 451. 7 Gary Bouma, "On Being Bishop", in Episcopacy: Views from the Antipodes, ed. Alan Cadwallader (Adelaide: Anglican Board of Christian Education, 1994), 61. 9

Many of these focus on the ongoing doctrinal and ethical debates within Anglicanism over sexuality, gender and the interpretation of scripture. Avis, Platten, Sykes and White have all written on the subject of authority within Anglicanism.8 Radner, Jensen and Green provide alternative approaches from an evangelical perspective.9 Jones, Percy, Sachs, Shanks and Slocum offer more liberal commentary on these debates.10 Alternatively, Podmore presents issues of Anglican identity from a conservative Anglo- perspective.11 Hassett has provided a detailed analysis of the lead up to the 1998 and the impact of new methods of communication, globalisation and unifying conservative pressure groups.12

Two collections of essays within the last thirty years are significant for offering Australian reflections on ministry in Australia from leading Anglican scholars and leaders. Episcopacy: Views from the Antipodes (1994) contains a collection of articles and reflections on the theme of episcopal ministry.13 The collection contains 24 chapters each of which looks at episcopal ministry in Australian with a different lens. Though a festschrift dedicated to Keith Rayner, it is a significant literary contribution to world

8 Paul Avis, Authority, Leadership and Conflict in the Church (London: Mowbray, 1992); Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology (London: T&T Clark, 2007); Paul Avis, In Search of Authority: Anglican Theological Method from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Paul Avis, "Anglican Ecclesiology", in The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology, ed. Paul Avis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Stephen Platten, Augustine's Legacy: Authority and Leadership in the Anglican Communion (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997); , ed., Authority in the Anglican Communion: Essays presented to Bishop John Howe (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1987); Stephen Sykes, Unashamed Anglicanism (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1995); Stephen Sykes, Power and (London, New York: Continuum, 2006); Stephen Ross White, Authority and Anglicanism (London: SCM Press, 1996). 9 Ephraim Radner, The End of the Church: a Pneumatology of Christian division in the West (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans 1998); Ephraim Radner, A Brutal Unity: the Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012); Ephraim Radner and Philip Turner, The Fate of Communion: The Agony of Anglicanism and the Future of a Global Church (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2006); Michael Jensen, Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2012); Sidney Green, Beating the Bounds: A Symphonic Approach to Orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013). 10 Martyn Percy, Anglicanism: Confidence, Commitment and Communion (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Martyn Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism: Currents, Contours, Charts (London: Routledge, 2017). Alan Jones, Common Prayer on Common Ground: a Vision of Anglican Orthodoxy (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 2006); Martyn Percy and Robert Boak Slocum, eds., A Point of Balance: the Weight and Measure of Anglicanism (London: Canterbury Press, 2013); Muriel Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); William Sachs, Homosexuality and the crisis of Anglicanism (: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Andrew Shanks, Anglicanism Reimagined: An Honest Church? (London: SPCK, 2010). 11 Colin Podmore, Aspects of Anglican Identity (London: Church House, 2005). 12 Miranda K. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and their African Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 2007). 13 Alan Cadwallader and David Richardson, eds., Episcopacy: views from the Antipodes (Adelaide: Anglican Board of Christian Education, 1994 ). 10

Anglicanism that reflects some of what Australian Anglicans understand of the office and role of episcopacy both in theory and practice. There is no collective proposal or conclusion about episcopacy that ties this book together. Neither do any of the chapters contain a systematic essay on episcopal theology that is necessarily unique to Australia. In 2009, the next generation of Anglican leaders from around Australia published Facing the Future: Bishops imagine a Different Church.14 Like Episcopacy: Views from the Antipodes, this book comprises of 24 chapters written by bishops (both diocesans and assistants). While not directly focusing on different aspects of episcopacy, the reflections are by the Australian bishops for the Australian church about the Australian church. The chapters are a mix of different perspectives from the Australian episcopate at that time that broadly casts a vision for the future of the Australian church. Compared to Episcopacy: Views from the Antipodes, this collection contains less theology and more pragmatism. Andrew Curnow’s contribution conveys the changing patterns of leadership within the Australian context. The timing of the book was significant given the controversy around the 2008 Lambeth Conference and the formation of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which had divided the Australian Church. What might be noted is that while 1990s and the 2000s both had at least one significant Australian literary collection broadly reflecting on episcopacy, the last decade has not. A new collection would certainly give an opportunity for current bishops to reflect theologically and practically on their roles. Until such a collection is created, this thesis is offered to contemporary bishops for their own theological reflections.

Within the last decade, two particular works from the United Kingdom on Anglican episcopacy stand out. Paul Avis’ Becoming a Bishop (2015) was commissioned by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion to provide a theological account of episcopacy ministry in the twenty-first century.15 Avis adopts a thematic approach to exploring different aspects of Anglican notions of episcopacy. This is a well rounded volume that does not devolve into partisanship.16 A different approach is taken by

14 Stephen Hale and Andrew Curnow, eds., Facing the Future: Bishops imagine a different Church (Brunswick East: Acorn Press, 2009). 15 Paul Avis, Becoming a Bishop: A Theological Handbook of Episcopal Ministry (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). 16 This can be compared to the more partisanship approach offered by Michael Keulemans’ research published in 2012. See Michael Keulemans, Bishops: the Changing Nature of the Anglican Episcopate in Mainland Britain (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2012). 11

Dustin Tustin in A Bishop’s Ministry (2013).17 Whereas Avis teases out a series of theological reflections on episcopacy, Tustin provides a practical guide to episcopal ministry (particularly aimed at bishops in the ). Both books build on a perceived need for thoughtful accounts on episcopacy that can be accessible to Anglican bishops in the Church of England and more broadly. Combined they offer a comprehensive introduction to episcopal ministry for both Anglican bishops, as well as clergy and laity.

Bruce Kaye’s work sheds light into the current dynamics of Anglicanism in Australia and how current tensions have been manifested historically.18 Kaye writes that the way the Australian church is currently structured, both at a national and diocesan level, creates real challenges for those in episcopal ministry. Kaye identifies that challenges concerning the office and authority of bishops impact upon all within an .19 As such, to work towards the flourishing of those within the episcopate is, hopefully, also to seek the flourishing of all who are under their authority and served by that office. Kaye’s Conflict and the Practice of the Christian Church (2009) fits with similar literature published in that period following the 2008 Lambeth Conference that explored how the Anglican Communion was to cohere despite internal differences. Kaye argues that Anglicanism is a theologically unique tradition within Christianity and has been so since its beginnings in the earliest centuries of church history. Kaye compares ‘Anglicanism’ with ‘Gallicanism’ and argues that it has always contained a tension between unity and difference. In this way, Kaye argues that Anglicanism can be a model for ecumenical dialogue and offers its polity as a starting ground for future ecumenical development.

Tom Frame also identifies systemic challenges facing episcopacy in Australia and critiques the partisan forces that have been embedded within the Australian church for the last century.20 He proposes a ‘reimagining’ of episcopacy within the Australian

17 David Tustin, A Bishop's Ministry: Reflections & Resources for Church Leadership (Rothersthorpe: Paragon, 2013). 18 For examples of Kaye’s works see: Bruce Kaye, A Church without Walls: Being Anglican in Australia (North Blackburn: Dove, 1995); Kaye, Reinventing Anglicanism; Bruce Kaye, Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith: the Anglican Experiment (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2009); Bruce Kaye, The Rise and Fall of English Christendom: Theocracy, Christology, Order and Power (London: Routledge, 2019). 19 Kaye, Reinventing Anglicanism, 259. 20 For examples of Frame’s works see: Tom Frame, On Being Anglican: Consensus in Diversity (Goulburn: Hypercet, 2006); Tom Frame, Anglicans in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007); Tom Frame, A House Divided?: The Quest for Unity within Anglicanism (Brunswick East: Acorn Press, 2010); Tom Frame and 12 context along with diocesan and synodical structures.21 Frame expresses his desire that the Australian church move away from ‘diocesan despotism’ and institutional abuse by bishops with ‘narcissistic personality traits… susceptible to viewing episcopacy as a personal entitlement rather than the Church’s gift’.22 Frame laments that a model of episcopacy in which a bishop is viewed as principally a chief executive officer has become endemic in the Australian church. He writes that ‘Bishops are more like CEOs than facilitators of mission not because they necessarily want to be but because they have little alternative’.23 Frame’s reimagining of episcopacy includes: 1) bishops being able to relinquish their episcopal order without relinquish altogether; 2) bishops no longer being able to veto synodical decisions; 3) allowing laity and clergy to be involved in the rituals of bishops; 4) bishops solely being responsible for presiding at and management of diocesan assets; and 5) limiting the tenure of bishops in office.24 Frame’s suggestions are imaginative but break with traditional Christian tradition not just in Anglicanism but beyond it.

In A Polity of Persuasion: The Gift and Grief of Anglicanism (2014), focuses on the nature of episcopacy in the Anglican Communion through a sustained reflection on the Windsor Process following the 1998 Lambeth Conference. In his research, Driver builds on work undertaken by Paul Avis25 on clarifying Anglican notions of dispersed authority. Driver indicates a belief that, despite recent attempts to strengthen the Instruments of Communion, ‘a “voluntarist, persuasive ecclesiology” will continue to prevail within Anglicanism at a global level, while a “binding canonical ecclesiology” will continue to be primarily located in the provinces and individual dioceses’, making reference to Avis’ ecclesial categories.26 In Driver’s opinion, the attempts made to strengthen the Instruments by further centralising and adding juridical authority are both found in the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant and the GAFCON movement (albeit that in the latter there is desire for alternate instruments

Geoff Treloar, eds., Agendas for Australian Anglicanism: Essays in honour of Bruce Kaye (Hindmarsh: ATF Press, 2007). 21 Frame, A House Divided?, 152-153. 22 Frame, A House Divided?, 136-137. 23 Frame, A House Divided?, 140. 24 Frame, A House Divided?, 141. 25 Driver cites Paul Avis, Beyond the Reformation?: Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition (London: T&T Clark, 2006). 26 Jeffrey Driver, A Polity of Persuasion: Gift and Grief of Anglicanism (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2014), 107. See also Avis, Beyond the Reformation?: Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition, 172. 13 such as the GAFCON Primates Council).27 Driver argues for a ‘polity of persuasion’ in which theological disputes are allowed the necessary time to develop and for the minds of the faithful to be convinced of the theological validity of a change in its polity.28 As such he stresses the need for a diachronic approach towards consensus fidelium.29 Driver advocates for a polity that seeks to persuade rather than attempt to coerce. This means creating a ‘bounded space’, as well as a ‘chronological space’, in which debate and tension can exist and lead to the mutual benefit of all rather than the unravelling of ecclesial bonds.30 To address the challenges he discerns, Driver provides a critique of the particular Trinitarian theology he believes underpins the of 2004.31

Another prominent Australian Anglican theologian who has identified the challenges facing the Australian episcopate is Stephen Pickard.32 Bringing his own episcopal experiences to bear, Pickard advocates for a collaborative approach to ministry within the whole church.33 This involves a shift away from a ‘autocratic’ form of episcopacy. Cyprian receives four references, and each occurrence alludes to a ‘hardening’ of ministry that occurs within Cyprian’s theology and the rise of

27 Jeffrey Driver, "The Anglican Communion: Towards an Anglican Future in a 'Polity of Persuasion'", in Facing the Future: Bishops imagine a Different Church, ed. Andrew Curnow and Stephen Hale (Brunswick East: Acorn Press, 2009), 165-166. 28 ‘A polity of persuasion requires an episcopate much more “imbedded” in the day-to-day life of the people of God. If decisions are to be reach or directions set through conversation, dialogue and even conflict in koinonia then ongoing relational engagement is a clear necessity. However, such a shift in emphasis does not imply the abandoning of episcopal leadership or authority; rather that it be excised differently, and perhaps in a way that more closely follows Christ’s example of being “among” rather than over, and then “as one who serves” (Luke 22:27)’. – Driver, A Polity of Persuasion: Gift and Grief of Anglicanism, 127. 29 Driver, A Polity of Persuasion: Gift and Grief of Anglicanism, 47-48, 107. 30 Driver, A Polity of Persuasion: Gift and Grief of Anglicanism, 100-103. 31 In this area Driver builds on the theological reflections of Pickard. See Stephen Pickard, Seeking the Church: An Introduction to Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, 2012). 32 For examples of Pickard’s works see: Stephen Pickard, "Theology as Power: Traditions and Challenges for Australian Anglicans", in Agendas for Australian Anglicanism: Essays in honour of Bruce Kaye, ed. Tom Frame and Geoff Treloar (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2006); Stephen Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate: Management and the Diocese in an Age of Mission", in "Wonderfully and Confessedly Strange": Australian Essays in Anglican Ecclesiology, ed. Bruce Kaye, Sarah Macneil, and Heather Thomson (Hindmarsh: ATF Press, 2006); Stephen Pickard, "Many Verandahs, Same House? Ecclesiological Challenges for Australian Anglicanism," Journal of Anglican Studies 4, no. 2 (2006); Stephen Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Stephen Pickard, "The Bishop and Anglican Identity: Signposts for Episcopal Character", in Christ and Culture: Communion after Lambeth, ed. Martyn Percy, Mark Chapman, Ian Markham, and Barney Hawkins, Canterbury Studies in Anglicanism (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010); Stephen Pickard, In-Between God: Theology, Community and Discipleship (Hindmarsh: ATF Theology, 2011). 33 Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry. 14

‘diocesanism’.34 Pickard’s treatment of Cyprian is significant and will be explored in the next section. ii. Reading the Church Fathers Today

In order to address the above challenges, this thesis sets out to answer whether engaging with the Early Church Fathers is a worthwhile activity for contemporary Anglicans. Can prominent writers from the earliest centuries of the Church’s history be brought into conversation with contemporary challenges? The working hypothesis of this thesis is that they can and that such a dialogue would be beneficial.

For an Anglican priest and scholar to appeal to the Fathers when considering ecclesiology is hardly a new phenomenon. As this thesis will show, Anglican clergy and theologians have appealed to Patristic works for ecclesiological justification for centuries. This thesis sits comfortably within that tradition. Andrew McGowan once wrote that there are few ‘key moments and changes’ in the history of Anglicanism that have taken place without significant reference to the Fathers ‘or to the practice of an ancient and ostensibly undivided church’.35 McGowan writes: Both the theology of the Fathers… and certain aspects of the practice of the ancient church often play a role in quests for Anglican identity. These patristic sources are ‘fixed stars’ for Anglicanism, not so much as immovable pointers to unquestionable or universal truth… but as basic elements of a common canopy of belief, prayer, and practice under which the far-flung participants in Anglican history live and work.36 The Caroline Divines and Tractarians appealed to the Fathers to build an Anglican ecclesiology that was in harmony with the theology of the leading writers of the early Church.

As such, this thesis sets out to engage the writings of one writer from the middle of the third century: Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, bishop of Carthage in the mid third century A.D. (commonly known as Saint Cyprian of Carthage). Cyprian was one of the

34 Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 82, 126-127, 179 & 195. Additional references to Cyprian are also made within the context of Michael Ramsay’s treatment of Cyprian’s ecclesiology. See Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 72-73. 35 Andrew McGowan, "Anglicanism and the Fathers", in The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies, ed. Mark Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke, and Martyn Percy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 109. 36 McGowan, "Anglicanism and the Fathers", 108. 15 earliest Christian writers to write specifically on ecclesiology, as in his treatise De ecclesiae catholicae unitate (‘The Unity of the ’, henceforth De Unitate).37 As a proponent of catholicity, the historic episcopate, dispersed authority, synodical government, provincial autonomy and the unifying nature of episcopacy, Cyprian’s letters and treatises are an invaluable resource for theologians and historians into discovering what the early Church in North Africa was like. Due to his wider correspondence with bishops and clergy throughout the at the time, Cyprian also provides clues to what constituted Christian polity more generally in the third century. This thesis will explore whether research into Cyprian’s works and how his ideas have been received within Anglicanism in the past. Building on this, it will engage in a dialogue between his ideas and modern challenges. The aim is to examine whether Cyprian remains an adequate interlocutor for contemporary polity or should perhaps be dispensed with.

There is no great body of literature entitled ‘Cyprian and Australian Anglicanism’. No author has ever directly studied Cyprian with the intention of bringing his theology to bear on the Anglican Church of Australia and its future as this thesis will do.38 Nonetheless, this study still builds on the works of others as its starting point.

Mark Chapman is one Anglican scholar who has explored the idea of Cyprian’s usefulness for modern Anglicans. In an article published 1996 entitled ‘Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation’, Chapman examines the reception of Cyprian within Anglicanism over the last five hundred years.39 Chapman’s study of the reception of Cyprian takes a largely thematic approach and draws on the works of John

37 Cyprian of Carthage, “The writings of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage”, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, vol. V, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: W.M.B. Eerdmans, 1975). This collection contains the epistles and treatises of Cyprian and his contemporaries hereafter quoted. All letters within the Cyprianic corpus will be abbreviated as Epistle, with the numbering of those letters as given by Wallis. All treatises will be referred to by their names. All letters addressed to Cyprian within the corpus will be addressed by the sender followed by the epistle numbering. This collection also contains the Vita of Pontius the and the letters to Cyprian, such as from Firmillian and others. These letters are referenced with the author’s name and the numbering given by Wallis. As stated from, henceforth, Cyprian’s treatise De ecclesiae catholicae unitate is referred to as De Unitate. His treatise on the Lapsed is referred to as De Lapsis. His treatise on the Lord’s Prayer is referred to as De dominica oratione. 38 If such a publication exists, it has remained thoroughly hidden from this author’s efforts to find it over several years. 39 Later published in an extended form in 2007 – see: Mark Chapman, "Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation", in Bishops, Saints and Politics: Anglican Studies, ed. Mark Chapman (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 33-51. 16

Jewell, Richard Hooker, William Laud, , Edward Benson, and . At the end of this study, Chapman concludes: It might thus be said that Cyprian’s ecclesiology as developed in Anglicanism – whatever its inelegance and inherent instability – is perhaps a better starting point for an ecclesiology than any conceivable alternative.40 While Chapman’s essay is excellent, it is relatively brief. What Chapman does in brief, this thesis seeks to examine more extensively. Chapman’s article also focuses on the reception of Cyprian generally over the last few centuries. The focus of this thesis is the applicability of Cyprian within the Australian context and principally around episcopacy. Chapman’s essay is nonetheless a landmark essay within this field and almost one of a kind. Chapman’s essay issues a challenge for Anglicans to take up the opportunity of engaging in Cyprian’s work and recognising the value Cyprian’s theology has had on Anglican writers in the past. This thesis takes up the challenge of Chapman’s article to explore more directly, and extensively, how Cyprian might be brought into conversation with modern Anglican polity.41

There are other writers who disagree about the usefulness of Cyprian for the present. One Australian writer is Allen Brent.42 Brent is a Patristic scholar who has sought to engage with the Fathers and offer those reflections to shape the contemporary church. Brent argues for what he terms ‘cultural episcopacy’ in contrast to ‘territorial episcopacy’. Brent has constructed his understanding of ‘cultural episcopacy’ through a study of .43 In Brent’s opinion, a ‘cultural approach’ means that a bishop has oversight over a specific cultural group rather than over a particular geographic area. Brent believes that this precedent should allow for those who object to the of women to be given alternate episcopal oversight.44 Under this model, those who take an ideological stance against the should be

40 Chapman, "Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation", 51. 41 I am indebted to Mark Chapman for personally assisting with the research of this thesis particularly in its early stages. 42 Brent was also an Anglican priest in Australia until recently. 43 Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the origin of Episcopacy (London: T&T Clark, 2007). 44 Allen Brent, Cultural Episcopacy and Ecumenism: Representative ministry in Church History from the age of Ignatius of Antioch to the Reformation, with special reference to contemporary ecumenism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), 208-210. 17 considered as having a separate cultural identity separate from the wider body of a diocese/province.45

Subsequently, Brent has seriously questioned the appropriateness of Cyprian’s theology for the modern church. While in Cultural Episcopacy and Ecumenism (1992) Brent ascribed the territorial model of episcopacy as a legacy of the , after further research Brent has attributed this to Cyprian’s legacy.46 Brent has published on Cyprian specifically in Cyprian and Roman Carthage (2011). Brent’s detailed scholarship in this book carries the themes of his ongoing intellectual project. Brent argues that Cyprian’s conception of the episcopacy was fundamentally a new innovation in the historical ecclesiology of the Church.47 This innovative ecclesiology, Brent argues, is not only influenced by Cyprian’s background in Roman law and jurisprudence but also founded upon pagan conceptions of unity and division, pagan understandings of authority within sanctified geographic spaces and pagan eschatology.48 Brent builds on Alexander Beck49 and Andreas Hoffman’s50 respective research into the Roman juridical influence upon Cyprian’s understanding of ordination, by extending the possible influence of Roman social ordering upon Cyprian’s conception of the episcopal office.51

Brent’s conclusions have been questioned in the light of more recent scholarship. John-Paul Lotz and James McPherson have respectively questioned Brent’s use of Ignatius and his definition of ‘cultural episcopacy’.52 McPherson writes: Brent’s study has been valuable and imaginative… but I reluctantly conclude that the proposal to provide a separate episcopate (whether territorial or “cultural”) for those opposed to the ordination of women , on the sole

45 A model similar to Brent’s has been allowed within the Church of England with the so-called ‘Flying Bishops’ although, to date, it has not taken up by the Australian church. This pattern of alternative oversight in the Church of England and Brent’s research into the area occurred almost simultaneously during the 1990s. 46 Brent, Cultural Episcopacy and Ecumenism. 47 Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 291. 48 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 329. 49 Alexander Beck, Römisches Recht bei und Cyprian: Eine Studie zur frühen Kirchenrechtsgeschichte Schriften Der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft. Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse (Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer, 1930). 50 Andreas Hoffman, Kirchliche Strukturen und römisches Recht bei Cyprian von Karthago (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schö ningh, 2000). 51 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 54. 52 John-Paul Lotz, Ignatius and Concord: The Background and Use of the Language of Concord in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 53-58; James McPherson, "Anglican Episcopacy in Australia: Reflections on Theory and Practice", in Episcopacy: Views from the Antipodes, ed. Alan Cadwallader (North Adelaide: Anglican Board of Christian Education, 1994), 82-84. 18

ground of their opposition, is more an institutional legitimisation of schism than an effective means of containing dissentients within one fold.53 An arguable miscalculation within Brent’s portrayal of Cyprian is that there is no evidence of anyone at any time objecting to Cyprian’s theological treatises as novel or innovative. Even in the arguments with Stephen of , which Brent believes were essentially an ecclesiological argument between Cyprian’s innovative ecclesiology and Stephen’s traditional ecclesiology, there is no evidence of Stephen rebuking Cyprian’s claims as innovative or essentially pagan. The tone of Brent’s Cyprian and Roman Carthage is also questionable, as the author depicts Cyprian as a conniving autocrat seeking to usurp power from the lesser orders and monopolise them in the role of the bishop.54 While this thesis also does not accept all of Brent’s conclusions, Brent’s research is nonetheless an important example of contemporary scholarship that seeks to bring Patristic authors into conversation with contemporary models of episcopacy. Given that Brent’s conclusions have been questioned by further scholarship, it warrants that a fresh examination of Cyprian’s ecclesiology is justified.

Stephen Pickard is another Australian Anglican who has questioned Cyprian’s usefulness for the Australian Church. Commenting on the ‘travails of the episcopate’ in Australia, Stephen Pickard identifies a ‘systemic failure’ that exists in modern dioceses and the need to ‘re-place’ bishops within the life of the church.55 This extends the thought of an article published by Pickard and Jeffrey Driver in 1996.56 Pickard succinctly expresses some of the frustrations felt by the contemporary Australian episcopate. To make his point, Pickard argues against the Cyprianic legacy within Anglican ecclesiology. Pickard points out that the diocesan system, that Cyprian is argued to have provided the theological justification for, can ‘easily become an “external administrative office”’.57 The definition of ‘local’ becomes so loose that bishops are removed from the lives of those they are meant to serve. Pickard writes that it is Cyprianic ‘diocesanism’ that Australian Anglicans need to overcome in favour of an older Ignatian ecclesiology in which the bishop is ‘placed’ in greater proximity to those they are meant to serve. Pickard references Brent’s notion of ‘cultural episcopacy’ in

53 McPherson, "Anglican Episcopacy in Australia: Reflections on Theory and Practice", 84. 54 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 258. 55 Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 127-155. 56 Pickard and Driver, "Replacing Bishops", 23-28. 57 Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 144. 19 support of this argument.58 The image presented is of a eucharistic gathering in which the Christian community is gathered around the one table with the one bishop. I share Pickard’s concern about a ‘dislocated’ episcopate and the secularising of church leadership. But what are the sources for Pickard’s concerns about Cyprian?

Within this important article, Pickard cites Brent’s research and also cites an article by John Erickson.59 Erickson’s portrayal of Cyprian acknowledges two sources (both Orthodox theologians)—Nicolaus Afansaiev and Kallistos Ware. However, Erickson differs from Ware’s conclusions. Ware’s reflections in ‘Bishops – But what Kind?’ published in 1982, presents three patristic models of episcopacy from Ignatius of Antioch, Ireneaus of Lyon and Cyprian.60 Ware’s categories highlight ‘the bishop as eucharistic celebrant’ (Ignatius),61 ‘the bishop as apostolic witness’ (Irenaeus),62 and ‘the bishop in ’ (Cyprian).63 Erickson employs the same categories but sees them as competitive not complimentary.64 Therefore, Erickson primarily draws on the conclusions of Asanfaiev. Asanfaiev argued that Cyprian provided the justifying logic for papal supremacy as Roman Catholic authors had claimed.65 Asanfaiev argued against papal supremacy but did not dispute the Roman Catholic interpretations on Cyprian’s work.66 Erickson argues that all Christian churches need to return to the oldest form, the Ignatian approach.67 Erickson makes the claim that this will lead churches away from the bureaucratic innovations of Cyprian. It should be noted that Erickson refers to no primary texts in this article. Erickson portrays the three patristic models (Ignatian, Ireanaean and Cyprianic) as competitive categories. This differs significantly from

58 Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 131. Pickard’s article predates Brent’s more extensive research into Cyprian. 59 John H. Erickson, "Episkopé and Episcopacy: Orthodox Perspectives", in Episkopé and Episcopacy and the Quest for Visible Unity: Two Consultations, ed. Peter C. Bouteneff and Alan D. Falconer (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1999). Pickard cites Erickson: Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 144 & 146. 60 Kallistos Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", in Bishops, But What Kind?, ed. Peter Moore (London: SPCK, 1982), 1-24. 61 Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", 2-11. 62 Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", 11-14. 63 Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", 14-19. 64 Erickson (himself Orthodox) argues that the Orthodox churches have favoured an Ignatian approach (unsurprisingly the oldest, and for Erickson, the most worth imitating) as centre of the Eucharistic approach, Protestants an Irenaean approach of the bishop as teacher, and Roman Catholics favouring the Cyprianic approach of the bishops as alter Petrus. 65 Nicholaus Afanasiev and John Meyendorff, The Primacy of Peter, trans. Katharine Farrer, 2nd ed. (London: Faith Press, 1973). 66 A recent rebuttal to Afanasiev’s thesis is provided by Benjamin Safranski: Benjamin Safranski, St. Cyprian of Carthage and the College of Bishops (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018). 67 Conveniently for Erickson, this is the tradition which Erickson claims the Orthodox churches already embody. 20

Kallistos Ware who sees them as complimentary.68 Ware argues that the emphases within Cyprian’s writings about episcopacy build upon the particular emphases in Ignatius’ and Irenaeus’ writings about episcopacy.69 Erickson builds primarily on Afansaiev, whose research is contested. Erickson’s portrayal, as such, runs contrary to Ware. Pickard’s later portrayal of Ignatius and Cyprian builds on long history of contested Patristic scholarship and his portrayal of Cyprian is based on Erickson’s deficient portrayal. Perhaps then, Cyprian might still have something to offer an Australian context?

George Harper is neither Anglican nor Australian. However, an article published by him in 2008 entitled ‘Breaking with Cyprian’s Paradigm’ encapsulates other criticisms directed at Cyprian’s ecclesiology.70 Harper draws on a cast of Protestant authors from Richard Baxter and John Owen to Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. He also quotes from G.C. Berkouwer, Robert Weber and Michael Jinkins. Harper writes that all of these are historic examples of theologians who have broken from ‘Cyprian’s paradigm’. Harper’s argument does not seek to rehabilitate Cyprian for a contemporary evangelical audience but to argue completely against Cyprian’s sense of episcopacy and church unity. Harper recognises in Cyprian, a desire for the visible Church to be united in Christ. Instead Harper proposes, paraphrasing Mao Zedong, ‘Let a thousand or eleven thousand or thirty-three thousand denominations contend!’.71 Harper’s argument is entirely polemic—he has no hesitancy in recalling an event in which he warned a student who advocated for church unity in a class that ‘he might end up a Roman Catholic’.72 Harper is suspicious of proposals that a ‘reunited Church’ might contain episcopacy as this would be entirely unacceptable to evangelicals. In Harper’s opinion, the inclusion of episcopacy would be self-defeating as, he contends, it would only lead to evangelical Christians walking away from any ecumenical proposals of a reunited Church. Harper’s argument is for increased ‘pluriformity’ within Christianity, so long as those denominations embrace an ‘orthodox theological traditions’ (presumably an orthodoxy defined by Harper’s own evangelicalism).73 Harper argues that ‘church unity’

68 Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", 20. 69 Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", 16. 70 George W. Harper, "Breaking with Cyprian's Paradigm: Evangelicals, Ecclesiological Apathy, and Changing Conceptions of Church Unity," Evangelical Review of Theology 32, no. 4 (2008). 71 Harper, "Breaking with Cyprian's Paradigm", 322. 72 Harper, "Breaking with Cyprian's Paradigm", 307. 73 Harper, "Breaking with Cyprian's Paradigm", 322. 21 is ‘unattainable and even its pursuit [is] unhealthy’.74 This article presents the antithesis of Cyprian’s theology. While Harper is not a leading scholar within the field, his article is evidence of a call for the contemporary Church to abandon Cyprian’s theology.

This thesis is not the only recent study on Anglican ecclesiology to consider using the Fathers. Chapman’s positive use of Cyprian has already been noted. Justin Lewis- Anthony reflects on the pastoral advice of Gregory the Great within his reflections on patterns of managerialism within episcopacy.75 David Tustin also uses Gregory the Great (and Bernard of Clairvaux) within his guide to episcopal ministry for the Church of England.76 Andrew Shanks briefly examines Gregory of Nazianzus in his exploration of challenges facing the Anglican episcopate.77 Shanks explores the life of Gregory, principally his autobiographical poem De Vita Sua, as a model for an anti-ambitious apolitical episcopate. Andrew McGowan is another prominent scholar who has brought contemporary issues facing Australian Anglicans into dialogues with his Patristic scholarship.78 iii. The Bishop of Carthage

In order to build the argument of this thesis, and before exploring Cyprian’s theology in the first chapter, it is important to establish who Cyprian was and his context. Cyprian’s theology of the episcopate may only be gleaned from his correspondence and treatises. It is therefore necessary to approach this topic through investigation of his life and episcopal ministry. Caecilius Cyprianus (anglicised as ‘Cyprian’), who seems also to have gone by the cognomen Thascius, was the bishop of Carthage in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis (in northern Africa, within modern day Tunisia and Libya) in the middle of the third century. There is no extant evidence of Cyprian’s date or place of birth. The hagiography provided by the deacon Pontius begins Cyprian’s vita with his conversion to Christianity.79 It is impossible to determine conclusively at what age Cyprian was converted, ordained or martyred. The few details of his life prior to conversion suggest that Cyprian was born into a pagan,

74 Harper, "Breaking with Cyprian's Paradigm", 320. 75 Justin Lewis-Anthony, "St Gregory and Managerialism," Theology 117, no. 3 (2014): 171. 76 Tustin, A Bishop's Ministry: Reflections & Resources for Church Leadership. 77 Shanks, Anglicanism Reimagined, 86-107. 78 Several examples of this are provided in Andrew McGowan, Ancient and Modern: Anglican Essays on the Bible, the Church and the World (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015). 79 Pontius, Vita 2. 22 wealthy North African family. His high-standing in the pagan Carthaginian community endured until his death, even though after his conversion he seems to have completely turned his back on all aspects of pagan culture. He probably held senatorial rank within Roman society and was a highly skilled teacher of rhetoric. Through interaction with the Carthaginian Christian priest Caecilianus (whose name Cyprian later adopted), Cyprian converted to Christianity and was soon after ordained.80

In approximately 248, Bishop Donatus of Carthage died and Cyprian was elected, with the overwhelming support of the Carthaginian laity, in his place. His tenure as bishop is marked by a series of crises that engulfed the Christian Church around the Mediterranean. In 250, the Decian Persecution began, which saw large numbers of Christians throughout the Roman Empire suffer torture or death, or lapse in their faith. Cyprian withdrew into a self-imposed exile, which he believed to be divinely warranted but which was clearly questioned by Christians in Carthage and Rome. Throughout the two years he was in exile, Cyprian administered the Carthaginian church at a distance with the aid of newly ordained and remaining Carthaginian clergy as well as clergy from other places who had fled to Carthage. A significant amount of Cyprian’s extant correspondence dates from this period.

Although Cyprian urged for patience until an episcopal synod could decide on the matter of the lapsed, a group of five clergy who had opposed Cyprian’s election, led by Felicissimus, broke away from the main church. This laxist community named their own bishop and declared the right to forgive the lapsed without penitence by virtue of the intercession of the martyrs who had died during the persecution. In Rome, however, another schism was also occurring. At the outbreak of the persecution the bishop of Rome, Fabian, was immediately targeted and killed. Roman Christians subsequently

80 For further summative biographies of Cyprian’s life see: J. Patout Burns, Cyprian the Bishop (London: Routledge, 2002), 1-11; Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries, trans. John Austin Baker (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1969), 265- 292; Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: from Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 145-160; François Decret, Early Christianity in North Africa, trans. Edward Smither (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2009), 69-100; Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 2: The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1986), 340-343; Éric Rebillard, "The West (2): North Africa", in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 307-309; G.S. Murdoch Walker, The Churchmanship of St Cyprian, Ecumenical Studies in History, (London: Lutterworth, 1968), 7-18. For more extensive biographies see: Peter Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church (London: Chapman, 1974); Michael Sage, Cyprian (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1975). 23 decided to wait until the persecution abated before electing another bishop, and so the Roman clergy administered the city together. The prominent theologian and priest Novatian seems to have been not only the spokesperson for the Roman community but also the heir-apparent. Once the persecution ceased, Cornelius was elected and consecrated as bishop. It seems Cornelius and Novatian held different views on how to treat the lapsed. Novatian believed that the lapsed could not be absolved and re- admitted into the church. Novatian had himself declared the real bishop of Rome by a number of bishops outside the city and set about creating his own rigorist communion of churches, including the appointment of a Novatianist bishop for Carthage.

At the end of the persecution, once Cyprian had returned to Carthage, the North African bishops met to decide together how to administer appropriate penitential discipline to the lapsed who sought re-entry into the Christian community. It was decided to chart a middle course between the laxist and rigorist positions. The lapsed were able to re-join the Christian community but those who wished to were obliged to undertake penance as evidence of their contrition. After sending two bishops to investigate the matter, the North Africans agreed that Cornelius was the sole legitimate bishop of Rome and no other. Between the Decian and Valerian persecution, Cyprian continued to exercise what might be considered now as the role of a ‘metropolitan’ for the regions of Proconsularis and Numidia. Episcopal synods continued to be summoned to address subsequent controversies.

Fresh tensions arose during the episcopate of Stephen in Rome over the issue of re-baptism, which is to possibly obscure the theological nature of the argument. Cyprian continued to uphold the decision of North African episcopal synod under the guidance of the then bishop of Carthage, Agrippinus, of accepting candidates from heretical or schismatic groups by baptising them. This was not understood as re-baptising because it was believed that heretical/schismatic baptism was not sacramentally valid. As such, a convert needed to be legitimately baptised in order to be joined to Christ’s true church. Conversely, Stephen believed that this was in fact to re-baptise and upheld what he believed to be an older Roman tradition of receiving candidates from heretical/schismatic by laying hands on them. Stephen demanded that the whole church adopt this practice and declared that all those who refused were out of communion with 24 him and the church of Rome. It appears that this argument remained at an impasse at the time of Stephen’s, and subsequently Cyprian’s, martyrdom.

In 257, expectation of a new persecution lead to an amnesty for all those who had lapsed during the Decian persecution to embolden them to face the new threat. The Valerian persecution seems to have systematically targeted leaders within the Church. In August 257, Cyprian was arrested and exiled to Curubis. After a massacre of Christians at Utica in August 258, the proconsul summoned Cyprian. However, not wishing to be martyred without his flock to witness it, Cyprian escaped back to his villa in Carthage at the same time that the proconsul also returned to the city. He was subsequently arrested and tried, while a crowd of Carthaginian Christians worshipping and holding vigil outside the place where he was held. On 14 September 258, Bishop Cyprian was taken in procession to his place of execution. His body was then interred in a cemetery by the Via Mappaliensis. were later built over the place of execution and Cyprian’s grave. He is remembered within both Eastern and Western traditions as a saint and martyr. Maurice Wiles once wrote:

It has been said, and all too often repeated, that Cyprian was no great theologian. Well, it all depends on what you understand by a ‘theologian’. Of course he is no Augustine nor Origen nor, for that matter, a Philo. He did not write a vast number of tomes, and rarely did he let his speculations run away with him. He wrote no long disquisitions on the Trinity, or on faith and morals, let alone the primacy of the . ‘No theologian’, but some compensation is allowed him by the addition that he was a man of practical accomplishments, a leader who could persuade, a man true to his Christian principles and courageous to martyrdom itself.81

While not receiving the same level of attention as other Patristic authors like or the Cappadocians in recent years, there remains a considerable body of literature dedicated to Cyprian. A significant amount of research has been undertaken in recent decades particularly investigating Cyprian’s ecclesiology. A sample of this literature is sufficient to prove its extent. Allen Brent has explored the impact of the Roman civil and public legal systems on Cyprian’s conception of episcopal

81 Maurice Bévenot, "Sacerdos as understood by Cyprian," Journal of Theological Studies 30, no. 2 (1979): 413. 25 jurisdiction and authority.82 Michael Sage’s research blends secular and ecclesial history together to provide a more complete picture of Cyprian’s intellectual framework and the world of the mid third century.83 Although they differ in their opinions, Geoffrey and Francis Sullivan share a particular focus on Cyprian’s understanding of and relationship with the Roman see.84 Brian Arnold and Christopher Hall have both explored Cyprian’s legacy through a contemporary evangelical lens.85 J. Patout Burns Jr.’s research has highlighted the eschatological lens that informs Cyprian’s response to disciplinary issues and social cohesion within the local and wider church.86 With Robin Jensen, Burns has also published a comprehensive study of Christianity in Roman Africa across the time of Early Church.87 Michael Fahey and Nienke Vos have concentrated on Cyprian’s interpretation of Scripture, with Fahey providing a comprehensive analysis of every instance of biblical citation within the Cyprianic corpus.88 Erik Walters has recently explored the conception of unitas in the Classical and Patristic periods, with a particular emphasis on Cyprian’s thought and usage.89 Brian Stewart has explored the exegetical paradigm of Cyprian’s use of the Levitical priesthood and its impact on his ecclesiology.90 Benjamin Safranski’s research into Cyprian’s views on episcopal collegiality has built on the works of Boudeianu, Meyendorff and Nichols. Safranski argues against Afanasiev’s thesis that Cyprian validated Roman primacy. Safranski and Stewart have both questioned Brent’s conclusions concerning the pagan influences on Cyprian’s ecclesiology. Richard Seagraves has provided a lexical study of Cyprian’s ecclesiology, with particular focus on the clergy.91 Seagraves’ research is of particular use for allowing Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy to be thematically categorised

82 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage. 83 Sage, Cyprian. 84 Geoffrey Dunn, Cyprian and the Bishops of Rome: Questions of in the Early Church (Strathfield: St Pauls, 2007); Francis Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York: Newman Press, 2001). 85 Brian Arnold, Cyprian of Carthage: His Life & Impact (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2017); Christopher Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2002). 86 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop. 87 J. Patout Burns and Robin M. Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2015). 88 Michael Fahey, Cyprian and the Bible: a Study in Third Century Exegesis (Tubingen: Mohr, 1971). 89 Erik Thaddeus Walters, 'Unitas' in Latin Antiquity: Four Centuries of Continuity (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011). 90 Bryan Stewart, Priests of My People: Levitical Paradigms for Early Christian Ministers (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). 91 Richard Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina: A Lexical Study of the Clergy in the Cyprianic Correspondence (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1993). 26 and will feature as part of the first chapter. Although diverse in their themes, research into Cyprian’s theology in the last few decades has not been lacking.

Significant research has also been undertaken into how the pattern of governance, now known as monepiscopal or monarchical episcopacy, arose and developed during the early Church. Alistair Stewart defines monepiskopos as ‘an episkopos exercising leadership over several Christian communities with subordinate ministers in those communities’.92 While not directly related to Cyprian, Stewart’s monograph The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities (2014) is worthy of note. Stewart deliberately examines the development of monepiscopacy up to the time of Cyprian in the mid third century. Stewart is critical of anachronistic approaches to the Patristics that read modern ecclesiology structures and trends into the ancient past. Rather, the ancient past should be allowed to inform the present through a rigorous scholarly approach. This text will likely have a profound impact on ecclesiological and patristic studies for decades to come. This thesis accepts the evidence and arguments provided by Stewart in this book, although it acknowledges that Cyprian himself may not have agreed with all of Stewart’s conclusions. As will be demonstrated in the next chapter, Cyprian’s understanding of church history appears to be monolithic. He assumes that the way the church was structured in the mid third century was the way it had always been. Cyprian makes no acknowledgement that episcopacy had evolved over time. Cyprian inherited this system of ecclesial governance from his predecessors, which seems to have become the status quo throughout the Church by the mid third century.93 As such, Cyprian’s theology emerges not to create a new system of ecclesial governance but to reflect theologically on the patterns that were already widespread.

92 Stewart acknowledges that significant scholarly debate continues about how best to define the system of monepiscopacy in the early Church. See Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 3n11. 93 Cyprian’s writings are the reason why scholars, despite all the theories that exist for how the primitive Church was organised, draw consensus that by the mid third century monepiscopacy was the predominant system of governance throughout the Church. 27 i.v. Thesis Overview

How will this thesis explore the proposed hypothesis that Cyprian is of value to the contemporary episcopate? The approach will primarily be a historical study in order to establish how Anglican episcopacy in Australia has come to be what it is today.

In order to examine Cyprian’s potential value for the modern episcopate, the first chapter of this thesis will examine Cyprian’s theology itself. It will examine his general theological framework and then explore his understanding of episcopal ministry.

The second chapter will explore how Anglican bishops and theologians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries looked to Cyprian to bolster their own understanding of episcopacy. This formative period within Anglican history is foundational to understanding how episcopacy is understood within the modern Anglican era. Three case studies will be presented from the writings of John Jewell, Richard Hooker, and William Laud. Their writings provide key examples of how Cyprian was perceived during this period. These three examples reveal how Anglicans have appealed to Cyprian and his ecclesiology as foundational for their own. As the English episcopate adapted to the reforms within the church, also leading those reforms at times, Anglican bishops were confident that their pattern of episcopacy was the same as that of Cyprian and the patristics. However, this chapter will also explore the extent to which Anglican forms of polity may be accurately labelled as Cyprianic. It is necessary to explore how episcopacy develops within this period to understand the ideological framework that was present as the English Church came to Australian shores.

The third chapter will examine how the nascent Anglican episcopate adapted to the Australian context in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In doing so, it examines how Australian Anglicanism came to be what it is in the present. The scope of this chapter studies the Australian church between 1788 (the date of White Colonisation) to 1962 (the adoption of the national constitution). This chapter will present four key moments within that history as pivotal for understanding how the Australian episcopate came to be what it is today: 1) the establishment of the Australian episcopate with William Grant Broughton; 2) the introduction of multiple Anglican bishops within Australia and the Pacific; 3) the rise of synodical governance and the withdrawal of crown appointments; and 4) the development of the national constitution and the 28 solidifying of partisanship. While Cyprian is largely absent from this history, the structures that evolved within the Australian church nevertheless came to have a Cyprianic semblance.

The fourth chapter examines the contemporary episcopate in Australia and seeks to introduce Cyprian as a dialogue partner. Like their historical forbears, contemporary bishops face the challenge of living out their episcopacy within everchanging societies. Four challenges that the contemporary episcopate is responding to in Australia will be addressed: 1) the current size and scale of dioceses; 2) managerial models of episcopacy; 3) how the church is responding to issues of child abuse and professionalism; and 4) the divisions around doctrine and polity in the Australian church, both internally and externally. Each of these will be followed with an imaginative exercise to demonstrate how Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy is relevant now and into the future. It will be argued that Cyprian’s theology does have something to offer in each of these areas, and potentially more, if Anglican episcopacy is to remain to true to its historic ideals.

Finally, with arguments and evidence presented, the conclusion will argue that a better examination of Cyprian is of continued value for bishops in the twenty-first century. It will also point towards avenues for future research. v. A Personal Note

Gary Bouma once quipped: ‘It has been said that the church is the only army which “shoots its wounded officers as a matter of routine policy”’.94 Any investigation into the nature of episcopacy in the Anglican tradition will be a sensitive issue for those currently within that office. No one likes to be placed under a magnifying glass. It must be stated from the outset that this thesis is not an attack, covert or otherwise, on episcopacy or those within episcopal ministry in Australia or elsewhere. On the contrary, it is very genuinely and sincerely offered to those within episcopal roles to aid their ministry within the Church. As has already been stated, there has been an expressed frustration within the episcopal college (as well as from the clergy and laity) concerning the authority and role of bishops within the contemporary church. This

94 Bouma, "On Being Bishop", 59 fn. 10. 29 thesis is presented to encourage those within the episcopal office and to promote better theological understanding so that all might flourish.

Nevertheless, I approach this task with my own personal biases. I am a ‘cradle Anglican’ from a white, educated, middle-class background. I am also a priest (and a deacon) within the Anglican Church of Australia who has been shaped by the tradition on the east coast of Australia. I have served in ordained ministry for around a decade, both in Australia and abroad. As such, I bring an ‘insiders’ perspective to this study. However, I am not a bishop and, as such, I do not approach this study as one who has experienced the pressures, hardships or blessings of that office. While this thesis has benefited from conversations with many bishops, some retired and some in ‘active’ ministry, it is not written from the perspective of one who shared in that ministry. As such, this thesis is also written from the perspective of an ‘outsider’ to episcopal ministry.

Where it has been possible, references have been rendered in gender-neutral terminology. This has not been possible on every occasion, and it hoped that the reader will not take offence. At the outset it should also be noted that there are comparatively few female scholars referenced in this thesis. Cyprianic scholarship and the history of Anglicanism have been unfortunately dominated by men. It is hoped that more women will embrace these disciplines in the future and so create a richer academic field.

In regard to terminology used in this thesis, when referring to ‘the Australian church’, this thesis is referring to the Anglican Church of Australia and not all Christian denominations. When referring to the ‘Cyprianic corpus’, this thesis is referring to the body of extant literature that is written by (and written to) Cyprian of Carthage in the mid-third century including letters, treatises and records of councils held under his leadership. 30

Chapter One

Cyprian of Carthage’s Theology of the Episcopate

1.1. Introduction

This chapter assembles Cyprian of Carthage’s theology of the episcopate focusing on a close study of Cyprian’s own writings. The first section of this chapter identifies Cyprian’s wider ecclesiological framework with particular reference to episcopacy. The second section subsequently explores how Cyprian understood the role of bishops. In short, the first section primarily explores theology and the second section the practical expression of that theology.

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy as it is presented within the corpus. This vision allows for episcopacy to be adapted to context and circumstances while maintaining common theological principles. Thus, while the episcopate may change over time, bishops in every age can point to the core theological principles Cyprian believed were vital to episcopacy and know themselves to be fulfilling (or not fulfilling) those same principles.

The Cyprianic corpus is made up of sixty-five letters by Cyprian himself, sixteen letters written to Cyprian, thirteen treatises, accounts of the synods in which Cyprian participated, the Vita by the deacon Pontius and the Acta Proconsularis which details Cyprian’s martyrdom.1 Cyprian, like Tertullian, is one of the first prominent Christian authors to write in Latin and not Greek.2 In order to describe the role of the episcopate succinctly, the second section will use the linguistic categories deployed by Richard

1 Throughout the last millennium, it seems that two dominant versions of Cyprian’s texts have existed. The controversy has mainly surrounded alternate versions of the treatise De ecclesiae catholicae unitate (‘The Unity of the Catholic Church’). There are differences to the text within the fourth, fifth and nineteenth chapters. One group of manuscripts contain the so-called interpolated version and another which does not contain it. The Pamèle text of 1568, the Rigault text of 1648 (both from Antwerp) and the Prudentius Maran text (which finished the work of Stephanus Baluzius) of 1726 in Paris all contained the interpolation. Meanwhile, the Oxford text, by Fell and Pearson, in 1682 and the Vienna text, by Wilhelm August Ritter von Hartel, in 1868 did not contain the interpolation. Although significant research, such as that of Bévenot, has been undertaken during the twentieth century to identify which of the manuscripts is the original and which is either a revision by the author or a later forgery. For further information see Walters, 'Unitas' in Latin Antiquity, 28-29. 2 Due to the restrictions upon the word count of this thesis, while the original intention was to render all quoted texts in their original Latin form it was considered prudent to predominantly use English translations within this chapter. 31

Seagraves in his own research. These categories are pastor, doctor, iudex and sacerdos – four of the titles used for bishops in the Cyprianic corpus.

1.2. Cyprian’s Ecclesiology

1.2.1. The Community of Christ

Cyprian’s ecclesiology names Jesus Christ as the ontological foundation of the Christian Church—the catholica, or ‘’. The historic church begins at a single point and continues to receive its life from that singularity: the living Christ himself. As the community that Christ first called to himself and has cultivated across time and space, the catholica has both a synchronic and diachronic nature. The community of the church is the community of Christ. Any group that breaks off from that community ceases to be united with Christ.

The Christological centrality of Cyprian’s ecclesiology is demonstrated in his treatise on the unity of the church. Cyprian writes: ‘Whoever has separated from the Church, and is joined with an adulteress, is separated from the promise of the Church: whoever leaves the Church of Christ is separated from the promise of Christ’.3 Another example of this is provided in epistle XXXIX: There is one God, and Christ is one, and there is one Church, and one chair founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord. Another cannot be constituted nor a new priesthood be made, except the one altar and the one priesthood. Whosoever gathereth elsewhere, scattereth. Whatsoever is appointed by human madness, so that the divine disposition is violated, is adulterous, is impious, is sacrilegious.4

Cyprian’s ecclesiology incorporates a particular soteriological logic that shapes his theology of orders, sacraments and unity. The Church is the extension of Christ and within the community lies salvation given from God. To break from this community, in Cyprian’s conception, is to break from Christ, his will and the salvation offered. Cyprian has a firm understanding of the teleological destiny of the Church and this eschatological vision strengthens his understanding of ecclesiology. Not even dying as a martyr can save those who dissociate themselves from the catholica. Cyprian writes:

3 Cyprian, De Unitate 6.4. 4 Cyprian, Epistle XXXIX.5.2. 32

He cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church; he cannot attain unto the kingdom who forsakes that which shall reign there. Christ gave us peace; He bade us be in agreement, and of one mind. He charged the bonds of love and charity to be kept uncorrupted and inviolate; he cannot show himself a martyr who has not maintained brotherly love.5 God desires unity, and no one—in Cyprian’s ecclesiology—can claim to be faithful to God while breaking from God’s own community. It is from this reasoning that Cyprian states: ‘He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother’.6 There is no excuse in Cyprian for anyone to ever walk away from the Church. This is the theological explanation Cyprian gives for the social cohesion of the whole Church, both on a local level (diocesan) and globally. There is also no dichotomy between the visible/Earthly and invisible/Heavenly communions present within Cyprian’s writings. No one could be a Christian without being part of God’s Church— those on earth were united with those in heaven. Cyprian’s writings attest to the ‘communion of saints’ and that the Church contained both those Christians alive on Earth as well as those who had died in faith and were now with Christ in Heaven.

Cyprian argues that heretics and schismatics have staked their legitimacy on a misinterpretation of Matthew 18:20: ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’. In De Unitate, Cyprian offers a repair of this misinterpretation. He writes: Nor let any deceive themselves by a futile interpretation… Corrupters and false interpreters of the quote the last words, and lay aside the former one… as they themselves are separated from the Church, so they cut off the substance of one section. For the Lord, when he would urge unanimity and peace upon His disciples, said: “I say to you, that if two of you shall agree upon earth touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be given you by my Father which is in heaven. For wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them;” showing that the most is given not to the multitude but to the unanimity of those that pray. “If” He says, “two of you agree on earth”; He placed agreement first; He has made the concord of peace a prerequisite; He taught that we should agree firmly and faithfully. But how

5 Cyprian, De Unitate 14.2-3. 6 Cyprian, De Unitate 6.7. 33

can he agree with anyone who does not agree with the body of the Church itself, and with the universal brotherhood? How can two or three be assembled together in Christ’s name, who, it is evident, are separated from Christ and from His Gospel? For we have not withdrawn from them, but they from us; and since and schisms have arisen subsequently, from their establishment for themselves diverse places of worship, they have forsaken the Head and Source of the truth... He does not divide men from the Church, seeing that He Himself ordained and made the Church; but rebuking the faithless for their discord, and commending peace by His word to the faithful, He shows that He is rather with two or three who pray with one mind, than with a great many who differ, and that more can be obtained by the concordant prayer of a few, than by the discordant supplication of many.7 How, Cyprian argues, could anyone claim to follow Christ by walking away from the Church, in the name of following scriptural truth when Christ desires unity within the one Church He has created? Cyprian writes: ‘Do they deem that they have Christ with them when they are collected together, who are gathered together outside the Church of Christ?’8

Cyprian consistently argues that bishops, although elected by the local church and consecrated by other bishops, were ultimately appointed by God himself. The people’s suffrage was only the way in which God’s will manifested itself. This, in Cyprian’s view, carried further implications. To reject one’s local bishop was not only to divorce oneself from the local Christian community who had elected them but also to reject God who had appointed them. Those who broke with Church and the bishops who governed it were, ipso facto, divorced from the power of salvation that the Church channelled. Burns and Jensen write that bishops were to exercise the direct authority of Christ between his Ascension and Parousia within the Cyprianic corpus.9 In Cyprian’s ecclesiology, bishops were vice-regents of Christ on Earth and the direct historical successors of Christ’s Apostles. In epistle LXVIII, Cyprian writes that it is ‘God’s majesty

7 Cyprian, De Unitate 12. 8 Cyprian, De Unitate 13.5. 9 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 378. 34 who ordains priest’ and ‘by his decree and word, and by his presence’ Christ ‘both rules prelates themselves, and rules the Church by prelates’.10

As such, bishops were directly and solely responsible to God alone, before whom they would be judged. A bishop’s life is inseparable from the life of the Church they serve. The sufferings and joys of individual Christians become the sufferings and joys of the bishop that serves them. As Cyprian states, ‘For the glory of the Church is the glory of the bishop’.11 The duties of the office of bishop flow out of the authority that Cyprian perceives as being from Christ himself. These duties must be performed faithfully and humbly by those who govern Christ’s spouse and body, as it is God who empowers them to do so. Cyprian concludes: That we, with the rest of our colleagues, may steadily and firmly administer this office, and keep it in the concordant unanimity of the Catholic Church, the divine condescension will accomplish; so that the Lord who condescends to elect and appoint for himself priests in His Church, may protect them also when elected and appointed by His good will and help, inspiring them to govern, and supplying both vigour for restraining the contumacy of the wicked, and gentleness for cherishing the penitence of the lapsed.12 This passage, Decret argues, contains the quintessential vision of Cyprian’s understanding of episcopal authority.13 For Cyprian, bishops are intertwined with the divine life and it is from God that their authority flows.

The deep theological foundations of Cyprian’s ecclesiology can be also be seen in his appropriation of Tertullian’s theology. While he is considered the father of Latin theology in the West (if only for his influence on Cyprian and then in turn Augustine), Tertullian’s legacy was overshadowed by Montanism in his later years. This may be why Cyprian never names Tertullian in any of his works.14 However, Cyprian’s tacit use of Tertullian may have been deliberate to offer a repair of Tertullian’s theological legacy. An example of this can be witnessed in Cyprian’s application of Tertullian’s Trinitarian theology into ecclesiology. In Cyprian’s treatise on church unity, the metaphor of the one episcopate spread across the world like rays of light from one sun in chapter five is

10 Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.9.1. 11 Cyprian, Epistle VI.1.5. 12 Cyprian, Epistle XLIV.4.2. 13 Decret, Early Christianity in North Africa, 78. 14 Bévenot, "Sacerdos as understood by Cyprian", 424. 35 taken, without citing its origin, from Tertullian. In Apologeticus pro Christianis, Tertullian had written: Even when the ray is shot from the sun, it is still part of the parent mass; the sun will still be in the ray, because it is a ray of the sun-there is no division of substance, but merely an extension. Thus Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, as light of light is kindled. The material matrix remains entire and unimpaired, though you derive from it any number of shoots possessed of its qualities; so, too, that which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one.15 Re-appropriating this image for his ecclesiological purpose, Cyprian subsequently wrote: The episcopate is one, the parts of which are held together by the individual bishops. The Church is one which with increasing fecundity extend far and wide into the multitude, just as the rays of the sun are many but the light is one… Take away a ray of light from the body of the sun, its unity does not take on any division of its light… Thus too the Church bathed in the light of the Lord projects its rays over the whole world, yet there is one light which is diffused everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. She extends her branches over the whole earth in fruitful abundance; she extends her richly flowing streams far and wide; yet her head is one, and her source is one, and she is the one mother copious in the results of her fruitfulness.16 The nature of the Trinity is united and so God’s Church is also united, through the episcopate that is spread across the world but of the same ‘light’. In Tertullian’s thesis the Church is united by the apostolic tradition.17 In Cyprian, the Church is united

15 Tertullian, Apologeticus pro Christianis XXI: Tertullian of Carthage, “The Apology”, trans. S. Thewall, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, vol. III, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: W.M.B. Eerdmans, 1976), 34. 16 Cyprian, De Unitate 5.3-8. 17 ‘We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications’. Tertullian, Apologeticus pro Christiani XXXIX. See also Walters, 'Unitas' in Latin Antiquity, 66. Tertullian also writes: ‘It remains, then, that we demonstrate whether this doctrine of ours, of which we have now given the rule, has its origin in the tradition of the Apostles, and whether all other doctrines do not ipso facto proceed from falsehood. We hold communion with the apostolic churches because our doctrine is in no respect different from theirs. This is our witness of truth’. Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum 21.6-7: Tertullian of Carthage, “The Prescription against Heretics”, trans. Peter Holmes, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, vol. III, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: W.M.B. Eerdmans, 1976), 252-253. 36 through the bishops responsible for maintaining the apostolic tradition. Ecclesial unity is grounded conceptually in Tertullian, whereas in Cyprian’s ecclesiology it is relational. Walters argues that Cyprian’s theology of the episcopate is essentially a form of Trinitarian theology applied ecclesiologically.18

1.2.2. The Apostolic Succession

From the Christological foundation of the Church, Cyprian builds his understanding of apostolic succession within episcopacy. For Cyprian, Christ chose the Apostles to govern the Church in His stead. This theological foundation is rooted in Cyprian’s interpretation of Matthew 16:13-19, often called the Petrine text: Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets’. He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’. And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.19 For Cyprian, this is the historic singularity at which the Church began. Christ gives to Peter, and then all the other Apostles, ‘the keys to the kingdom’ with the authority to ‘bind and loose’. Christ gave this authority and power to the Apostles, which they subsequently passed on to their successors, who in turn passed it on to their successors. Daniélou writes: The corpus or “society” formed by Christian believers is… characterised by… three features – faith, discipline, hope. But it also has a hierarchical structure, for the preservation of these things is entrusted to those who preside over the assembly, who are the successors of the Apostles and to whom Christ has

18 Walters, 'Unitas' in Latin Antiquity, 192. 19 Matthew 16:13-19 NRSV. 37

committed the Church… The bishops, Cyprian stresses, are the successors of the Apostles and derive the lawfulness of their office from this succession.20 In Cyprian’s view, this apostolic succession is the transference of ‘auctoritas et potestas’ from one generation to the next which is ultimately from Christ himself.21

Cyprian, like Irenaeus of Lyon and Tertullian, maintained that bishops stood in a line of succession that could be traced to the Apostles. By maintaining the apostolic tradition, the bishops maintained orthodoxy within the Church and guarded that orthodoxy from . As guardians of orthodoxy, bishops were also charged with persuading those who had gone beyond the boundaries of the Church’s orthodoxy to return.22 In epistle XLI, Cyprian writes to Cornelius that both bishops ‘maintain as much as we can the unity delivered by the Lord, and through His Apostles to us their successors’.23 In epistle LXVI, writing to Stephen of Rome, Cyprian writes that apostolic succession also means that the bishops ‘who by vicarious ordination succeed to the Apostles’ also have a vicarious role to Christ. He justifies this by citing Luke 10:16.24 This is not to divinise bishops. Rather, bishops were to be confident (and humble) that they were Christ’s chosen representatives. As Christ’s representatives their responsibility is to care for Christ’s flock (ecclesia) and maintain His teachings (disciplina).

In Cyprian’s understanding the empowering of Peter and the Apostles by Christ and in turn the Apostles handing this responsibility and privilege to their successors legitimised the authority of the leaders of the early Church. They, and they alone, possessed the authority to absolve and bless. This, for Cyprian, was no grab for divine power but a heavy responsibility associated with a divine judgement. Bishops who were too lenient or too harsh in their administration of penitential discipline faced possible condemnation. Bishops were the normal ministers of the sacraments within the

20 Jean Daniélou, The Origins of Latin Christianity, trans. David Smith and John Austin Baker (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), 432-433. 21 Seagraves writes: ‘Auctoritas in Cyprian is a broader and more comprehensive concept than it is in Tertullian, who does not consider that Church officials have any form of potestas, but only a certain disciplinary auctoritas. This is explained by the fact that, according to Tertullian, bishops did not inherit the potestas of the Apostles, and in Cyprian’s view the opposite was true’. – Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 225. 22 Cyprian, Epistle XLI.3.4. 23 Cyprian, Epistle XLI.3.4. 24 Lk 10:16 NSRV: ‘Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me’. 38 community. Other ordained members performed these duties only in their bishop’s absence. It can be assumed that there were multiple Christian communities in Carthage, over which the single bishop of Carthage presided, and clergy served each of these groups when the bishop was not physically present. It was a bishop’s prerogative to ordain, even though Cyprian preferred to discuss all appointments with the clergy and laity before laying on hands.25

Controversy arose during the Decian persecution concerning the authority of bishops and those who had ‘confessed’ (that is, those who had admitted they were Christians and refused to make the imperial sacrifices). A tradition with obscure origins had taken hold within the North African church that these confessors automatically gained a place amongst the clergy by right of their confession. This confessional status seems to have been on par with that of a presbyter and allowed them, apparently, to administer the sacraments. It also allowed them to pronounce absolution to those who had lapsed (those who had not confessed and performed the imperial sacraments). Some confessors gave certificates of absolution from their prison cells to the lapsed. Suspicion arose that some of these certificates may also have been forgeries. The legitimisation of this authority was also Christological: as they were about to become martyrs, and soon to be in Christ’s immediate presence, they would ask Christ’s forgiveness directly after their martyrdom. Cyprian’s writings show that this was a sensitive topic: he was careful not to malign those who had been killed on the grounds of faith. Nevertheless, Cyprian rejected their claim as he maintained that Christ had given the ‘power of the keys’ to the Apostles and they in turn had entrusted that gift to their successors: the bishops. While the martyrs might have an intercessory role at the final Judgement, in the interim Christ had entrusted this judicial role to the bishops. Only those that the bishops ordained could perform a sacramental ministry within the Church (that is, their local presbyters) and only as an extension of the bishop’s own ministry. Authority within the church could not be arbitrarily assumed by anyone—only to those whom the community had discerned for that ministry and correctly ordained.

Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy is further demonstrated around issues of the election and recognition of new bishops. Adhering to particular processes was key

25 Knowledge of this is gained primarily from instances where Cyprian, while in exile, has broken his normal practice and writes to the Carthaginian church to explain his actions. See epistles XXXII, XXXIII, and XXXIV. 39 in conferring legitimacy as well as the auctoritas et potestas of the episcopal office. However, these processes were not codified until the council of Nicaea. The office of episcopacy was a life-time appointment during this period. An only became vacant once an incumbent had died or lapsed.26 Cyprian firmly believed that only one legitimate bishop could exist in any one locus. For example, Cornelius and Novatian could not both be the bishop of Rome at the same time, and Cyprian had no conception of suffragan or assistant bishops. Once an episcopal see became vacant, candidates were considered to fill the see. It is uncertain what the exact procedure was, but it seems that a candidate was determined by majority vote. Whether the laity actually voted on equal terms with the clergy or had the power to assent or dissent to a candidate presented to them by the clergy is also uncertain. The episcopal ordinand was then consecrated by at least three other bishops.

Brent sees within these processes a mirroring of Roman patterns of legal jurisdiction and hierarchy. Brent writes: The view of Church Order with the bishop as magistrate superintending a penitential system and determining right doctrine in agreement with all other valid bishops throughout the world reflected Roman jurisprudential principals of legitimate authority exercised within a sacred boundary spatially and geographically defined.27 Brent clarifies the importance of spatial boundaries in Roman law as follows: Political power, as imperium, was exercised within a spatially defined area that was made sacred, and controlled by divine law that required due consultation in terms of the ius augurium. To violate such space was not only treason but sacrilege.28 Brent argues that the importance of geographical locus and each bishop’s rights and authority within that locus can be attributed to this influence from Roman jurisprudence. Brent writes:

26 The efficacy of orders once a bishop/priest/deacon lapsed would be a central issue during the Donatist controversy in North Africa over a century later. The theological crises Cyprian addressed are frequently confused with the Donatist controversy due to their apparent similarity. Close investigation, however, reveals that the theological issues debated are essentially very different. How Cyprian’s ecclesiology was appropriated by both the Donatists and Caecilianists is a project worthy of further study but one that cannot be adequately addressed within the confines of this thesis. 27 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 1. 28 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 57. 40

The Roman ideology of the exercise of political power in law and in political thought had a particular focus in Roman Carthage: the exercise of legitimate political power was within a territorial space made sacred by due religious ritual. Cyprian’s view of Church Order reflects this general background of Roman constitutional law with its concept of sacred space defining religiously as well as politically the magistrate’s sphere of influence.29 While Brent’s claims should be taken into consideration, Cyprian at no point states that he is adopting prevailing legal patterns from his context into his ecclesiology. Theologically, Cyprian is never credited with innovation by either his allies or opponents, even when he found new ways to speak about old ideas. If Cyprian did adopt such legal patterns into his ecclesiology, the reader may instead see a contextualising of his ministry. As such, the episcopate continued within the prevailing models of authority at the time without necessarily abandoning its theological legitimacy. Cyprian’s ecclesiology may have strengthened the patterns of church governance around him. There is, however, insufficient evidence to conclude that he created them ex nihilo and that the entire contemporary episcopate suddenly copied his ideas and instantly restructured their local communities.

Cyprian’s understanding of episcopal legitimacy is demonstrated in his theological defence against pseudo-episcopates that were established during his tenure. Cyprian’s defence of Cornelius maintains that as Cornelius had been duly elected and consecrated as the bishop of Rome, prior to Novatian, Novatian could not subsequently also claim to be the bishop of Rome. Novatian’s leadership amongst the Roman presbyters during the Decian persecution appears to be evident and he had reputation as a scholar. Cornelius was of humbler stock and not widely known beyond the city—a good man but not a great theologian. Yet it was Cornelius and not Novatian who had been elected by the majority of the Roman church and had been legitimately consecrated by several Italian bishops. The cathedra Petri was therefore legitimately occupied and two people could not sit in the same chair. Novatian’s rigorist theology caused him to break with Cornelius, but this was irrelevant for Cyprian and his contemporaries, who held that Novatian did not succeed anyone and therefore could not claim apostolic succession. There could only be one bishop for each locus (in this

29 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 24. 41 case Rome). The competing bishops caused a rift within the Christian community, exactly as Cyprian had feared.

Episcopal legitimacy was less about authority within a particular geographic area as authority within a particular community. No medieval conception of a cure of souls for every person within particular diocesan or parochial boundaries exists in Cyprian’s writings. Novatian had claimed to be the leader within a community where a legitimate leader was already present. He also claimed to have a superior theology and had broken from the apostolic community. Furthermore, he established ‘new bishops’ across the Empire that cohered with his own rigorist stance. This schism could not be tolerated. These pseudo-episcopates were as much a challenge to Cyprian’s legitimacy as Cornelius’ or any other bishop. As such, Cyprian’s defence of Cornelius reflects the defence of his own authority in Carthage. In his view, neither Novatian, Fortunatus (pseudo-bishop for the laxist party in Carthage), Maximus (pseudo-bishop for the rigorist party in Carthage) nor anyone like them could be understood as legitimate.30 Only legitimate bishops shared in the apostolic ministry that had been sustained over time. As Christ’s representatives, it was the responsibility of legitimate bishops to care for Christ’s flock (ecclesia) and maintain His teachings (disciplina). Only legitimate bishops could administer the sacraments that extended the grace of God and truly cause adherents to become part of the salvific community. As such, pseudo-episcopates were a soteriological challenge to integrity of the catholica.

1.2.3. The Cathedra Petri

A key idea within Cyprian’s ecclesiology is the cathedra Petri: the chair or of Peter. How the Christian community (or communities) gathered for worship during Cyprian’s time is unclear. Though, if the architecture of later church buildings in the fourth century reflected patterns of worship from before the time of Constantine, then bishops physically occupied a privileged place within the worship space. Within later architecture, a bishop’s cathedra was located in the main , in the centre and slightly elevated, surrounded by the synthronon where the other clergy were seated.31 As such, bishops were located in the centre of the community surrounded by their clergy and the wider Christian community. This liturgical symbolism reflected their ecclesiology. The

30 Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 82. 31 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 432. 42 majority of those present would have stood while the bishop preached from their seat. Ignatius of Antioch’s image, which Cyprian inherited, of the bishop at the centre of the liturgy was physically embodied in ecclesial architecture.32

Discussion of this element within Cyprian’s ecclesiology has dominated modern Cyprianic scholarship for the last century. Key to this conversation is how Cyprian conceives of the cathedra Petri in relation to the church in Rome. How Cyprian conceives of the authority of Rome in relation to the rest of the catholica is key to how he understands the auctoritas et potestas of all bishops. Two manuscript traditions of Cyprian’s treatise De ecclesiae catholica [sic] unitate (‘The Unity of the Catholic Church’, henceforth cited as De Unitate) lie at the heart of the debate: the Received Text and the Primacy Text.33 The main variances lie in chapters four and five of this treatise which revolve around an exegesis of Matthew 16:13-19.34 The Primacy Text reads: It is on him [Peter] that He [Christ] builds the Church, and to him entrusts the sheep to feed. And although He assigns a like power to all the Apostles, yet He founded a single Chair, thus establishing by His own authority the source and hallmark of the [Church’s] oneness. No doubt the others were all that Peter was, but a primacy is given to Peter, and it is [thus] made clear that there is but one Church and one Chair. So too, even if they are all shepherds, we are shown but one flock which is to be fed by all the Apostles in common accord. If a man does not hold fast to this oneness of Peter, does he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he deserts the Chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, has he still confidence that he is in the Church? In contrast, the Received Text reads: It is on one man that He builds the Church, and although he assigns a like power to all the Apostles after His resurrection, saying ‘As the Father hath

32 Burns and Jensen also note that the tombs of bishops ‘provide an independent witness to the ranks of clergy and to the high status they enjoyed in the community’. Tomb mosaics also suggest a distinctive dress for clergy – see Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 433-434. 33 Bévenot writes that at least seven families of manuscripts for De catholicae ecclesia [sic] unitate can be identified. Out of these the two dominant variations, the Received Text and the so-called Primacy Text (or Primatus text dubbed by Bévenot as such because the main variation concerns the issue of Peter’s primacy) emerge. See Maurice Bévenot, Tradition of Manuscripts: Study in the Transmission of St. Cyprian's Treatises (London: Greenwood Press, 1979 ), 19. Burns writes: ‘The contrasting versions of these chapters are generally referred to as the Textus Receptus and the Primacy Text, which latter was at one time considered an interpolation into the former but is now recognised as an alternative version deriving from Cyprian himself’. Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 93. 34 There are also variances between the manuscripts in chapter nineteen of the treatise. 43

sent me I also send you… Receive ye the Holy Spirit: if you forgive any man his sins, they shall be forgiven him; if you retain any man’s, they shall be retained, yet in order that the oneness might be unmistakeable, He established by His own authority a source for that oneness having its own origin in one man alone. No doubt the other Apostles were all that Peter was, endowed with equal dignity and power, but the start comes from him alone, in order to show that the Church of Christ is unique… If he resists and withstands the Church, has he still confidence that he is in the Church… Now this oneness we must hold to firmly and insist on – especially we who are bishops and exercise authority in the Church – so as to demonstrate that the episcopal power is one and undivided too. Both manuscripts, however, end this section with the same phrase: ‘The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole’. While in the modern era the phrase ‘the throne of Peter’ has become synonymous with the bishop of Rome (and the authority of the Papacy), modern scholars have debated whether Cyprian himself conceived of the phrase cathedra Petri in the same way.

In epistle LXVI, Cyprian wrote to Stephen of Rome about the controversy around Bishop Marcian of Arles. Marcian had become a Novatianist and those Christians who did not follow him into schism had appealed for a new bishop.35 Cyprian wrote to Stephen requesting that Stephen inform Cyprian and the North African bishops who was to be appointed in Marcian’s place.36 Important questions arise because of this request. Did Stephen have the authority, as bishop of Rome, to appoint bishops for other regions? Did Stephen have special authority within a particular province, made up of the Italian peninsula and Gaul, enabling him to appoint bishops there but not over other provinces such as North Africa? Or, was Cyprian simply asking Stephen to inform him once a legitimate bishop had been elected? This question can only be adequately answered with reference to the entirety of the Cyprianic corpus.

Further to this letter, Cyprian makes direct reference to Rome and the cathedra Petri on two separate occasions in epistles LI and LIV. In epistle LI, Cyprian writes to Bishop Antonian (location unknown) concerning the legitimacy of Cornelius and the

35 Cyprian, Epistle LXVII.3.1-3, 5. 36 Cyprian, Epistle LXVI.5.4: ‘Intimate plainly to us who has been substituted at Arles in the place of Marcian, that we may know to whom to direct our brethren, and to whom we ought to write’. 44 illegitimacy of Novatian. He writes that Cornelius had been made the bishop of Rome: ‘when no one had been made so before him, when the place of Fabian, that is, when the place of Peter and the degree of the sacerdotal throne was vacant’.37 So does that mean the cathedra Petri and the bishop of Rome are synonymous? After the laxist community that had separated from Cyprian’s community in Carthage had appointed a bishop for themselves, representatives from that community travelled to Rome seeking official recognition. Cyprian writes in epistle LIV that these representatives had travelled ‘to the throne of Peter, and to the chief church whence priestly unity takes its source’.38 These particular sentences within these three letters combined with the Primacy variant of De Unitate have been enough to convince many Roman Catholic (and non-Roman Catholic) scholars that Cyprian legitimises papal authority over the church. However, this has been contested.

A wider examination of Cyprian’s usage of cathedra Petri places it within its correct context. In reference to epistle LIV, translator R.E. Wallis writes: The Apostolic See of the West was necessarily all this in the eyes of an unambitious faithful Western co-bishop; but the letter itself proves that it was not the See of one who had any authority over or apart from his co- bishops. Let us not read into his expressions ideas which are an after thought, and which conflict with the life and all the testimony of Cyprian.39 To use the Cyprianic corpus to legitimise Roman supremacy is questionable. The variances in the De Unitate text can only be taken to be substantially theologically different if the reader assumes that cathedra Petri is synonymous with Rome. But this equivocation was a later invention. Instead, the cathedra Petri in Cyprian’s proper context is understood to be located within each legitimate episcopal see throughout the church. Walker writes: A great deal of confusion has been caused by translating the word primatus as “primacy” and assuming that it has the same meaning in Cyprian as it would bear today. From the whole tenor of Cyprian’s writings it is obvious that he meant nothing of the kind.40

37 Cyprian, Epistle LI.8.5. 38 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.14.2. 39 Wallis, ‘Cyprian’, 344n4. 40 Walker, The Churchmanship of St Cyprian, 26. 45

In each legitimate episcopal see, the bishop ‘occupies the place of Peter’ within their own locality. As such, the variant texts do not change the meaning of cathedra Petri in Cyprian’s ecclesiology.

Therefore, if in Cyprian’s ecclesiology every bishop is a considered a ‘little Peter’, it follows that there could be no ‘super locality’ and no ‘super Peter’ as the head of the catholica. Every local Christian community was the area of ministry for a particular bishop who received their authority from Christ through the apostolic succession. All members of the Church are sacramentally bound to Christ and so also with the first disciples of Christ (as well as the disciples in every age and in every place). It was the ‘little Peter’ in each place who presided over the community and was responsible for passing on the apostolic tradition. Walker writes: According to Cyprian, the Petrine position was not perpetuated with reference to the church universal, since only the local congregation has a single head on earth. In the beginning there had been no more than one congregation, with Peter chronologically pre-eminent; as congregations multiplied, each came to possess a Peter in the person of its own bishop; but they remain a spiritually united group of separately independent cells, and there can be no super-church with a “super-Peter” at its head. For Cyprian, the bishop of Rome was a ‘little Peter’ but so too was the bishop of Carthage, as well as the bishop of Jerusalem, the bishop of Alexandria and so on. Each was a successor of the Apostles. No single bishop could demand obedience from all Christians as Stephen sought to do during the controversy over baptism. While Cyprian’s theology concerning baptism and how heretics/schismatics were to be received would not be universally adopted at the time of Nicaea, his theology of the episcopate remained intact. Only in the centuries to come would the equality of all bishops be supplanted and the primacy of Rome rise over the Western church.

1.2.4. The Equality of the Episcopal College

The authority of each and every bishop was considered equal to all others, and together they were to govern the Church as Christ willed. In epistle LI, Cyprian wrote: ‘There is one Church, divided by Christ throughout the whole world into many members, and also one episcopate diffused through a harmonious multitude of many 46 bishops’.41 Additionally, in epistle LXVI, Cyprian wrote: ‘For although we are many shepherds, yet we feed one flock, and ought to collect and cherish all the sheep which Christ by His blood and passion sought for’.42 During the Baptism Controversy, Stephen attempted to force all Christians in every place to follow the practice of Rome concerning the reception of heretics and schismatics. This attempt was justified by Stephen as legitimate on the grounds that he was the Apostle Peter’s successor in Rome. For Stephen, as Peter was considered chief amongst the Apostles, so the bishop of Rome (Peter’s successor) should be chief amongst all bishops. Stephen threatened to excommunicate any who refused to accept his authority and follow the Roman tradition. He was, however, resoundingly rebuked by his peers.43 Firmilian of Caesarea wrote to Cyprian about Stephen: For what strifes and dissensions have you [Stephen] stirred up throughout the world! Moreover, how great sin have you heaped for yourself, when you cut yourself off from so many flocks! For it is yourself that you have cut off. Do not deceive yourself, since he is really the schismatic who has made himself an apostate from the communion of ecclesiastical unity.44 In Cyprian’s view, each bishop is responsible to God alone and so could not be coerced into accepting ideas or positions with which they disagreed.

The equality of bishops meant that unity was not always the same as uniformity. Those who dissented on matters considered adiaphora did not cease to be Christian. True ecclesial consensus could only be attained through persuasion, not coercion. Cyprian was also determined that as much as possible the episcopal college must strive to attain a common mind as much as it was possible. In doing so they might not only ensure common faith and practice but also maintain harmony and peace across the Church. Kallistos Ware notes Cyprian’s emphasis on the rights of minorities within the Church.45 Majority views could not be forced onto a dissenting minority; dissenters, however, could not obstruct the wider consensus or fracture ecclesial unity. Cyprian cites historic precedent for this within epistle LI:

41 Cyprian, Epistle LI.24.4. 42 Cyprian, Epistle LXVI.4.5. 43 Firmilian, Epistle LXXIV.14.1-5. 44 Firmilian, Epistle LXXIV.24.3-6. 45 Ware, "Patterns of Episcopacy in the Early Church and Today: An Orthodox View", 18. 47

And, indeed, among our predecessors, some of the bishops here in our province thought that peace was not to be granted to adulterers, and wholly closed the gate of repentance against adultery. Still they did not withdraw from the assembly of their co-bishops, nor break the unity of the Catholic Church by persistency of their severity or censure; so that, because by some peace was granted to adulterers, he who did not grant it should be separated from the Church. While the bond of concord remains, and the undivided sacrament of the Catholic Church endures, every bishop disposes and directs his own acts, and will have to give an account of his purposes to the Lord.46 On determining the right action in readmitting the lapsed into the church community on a case-by-case basis, a synod of African bishops, including Cyprian, wrote to Cornelius: For, as it has been decreed by all of us – and is equally fair and just – that the case of every one should be heard there where the crime has been committed; and a portion of the flock has been assigned to each individual pastor, which he is to rule and govern, having to give account of his doing to the Lord… unless perchance the authority of the bishops constituted in Africa seems to a few desperate and abandoned men to be too little.47 Again in Epistle LXXI to Stephen, Cyprian writes: But we know that some will not lay aside what they have once imbibed, and do not easily change their purpose; but, keeping fast the bond of peace and concord among their colleagues, retain certain things peculiar to themselves, which have once been adopted among them. In which behalf we neither do violence to, nor impose a law upon, any one, since each prelate has in the administration of the Church the exercise of his will free, as he shall give an account of his conduct to the Lord.48

While Cyprian may have emphasised the equality of bishops within his writings and the possibility of amicable dissent, these need to be seen in balance with moments where equality is superseded and where dissent goes too far. In the case of Marcian of Arles, mentioned above, Cyprian and his colleagues thought it right to intervene because Marcian had joined with Novatian. To support schism was tantamount to participating

46 Cyprian, Epistle LI.21. 47 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.14.4. 48 Cyprian, Epistle LXXI.3.2.-3. 48 in that schism—to support a sinful bishop was to participate in the sin as well. As such, faithful Christians were required to abandon a sinful bishop. This places a tension within Cyprian’s writings: Christians were expected to obey their legitimate bishop who acted alter Christus, but not if that bishop was deemed to have lapsed in their faith, committed an especially grievous sin (such as murder, adultery or idolatry) or participated in heresy or schism.49 Cyprian’s ecclesiology is potentially ripe for abuse. How were bishops to be held accountable for their actions and beliefs if they were answerable to God alone? Did this mean that bishops could simply bully others into submission and behave however they pleased? In epistle LXVII, concerning Bishop Marcian, Cyprian wrote: The body of priests is abundantly large, joined together by the bond of mutual concord, and the link of unity; so that if any one of our college should try to originate heresy, and to lacerate and lay waste Christ’s flock, others may help, and as it were, as useful and merciful shepherds, gather together the Lord’s sheep into the flock. For what if any harbour in the sea shall begin to be mischievous and dangerous to ships, by the breach of its defences; do not the navigators direct their ships to other neighbouring ports where there is a safe and practicable and a secure station?... And this ought now to be the case with us, dearest brother, that we should receive to us with ready and kindly humanity our brethren, who, tossed on the rocks of Marcian, are seeking the secure harbours of the Church.50 This kind of episcopal intervention within the Marcian controversy has presented considerable debate amongst modern scholarship concerning provincial autonomy and primacy. Once again the question can be asked: can individual bishops have jurisdiction over one another or not?

Cyprian attempted to balance the equality of bishops within the church with a standard of faith and behaviour. Cyprian had a high view of episcopal office that was matched by high expectations on those who held it as well. Bishops were to be considered autonomous and equal. At the same time, they were responsible to a

49 Cyprian, Epistle LXVII.3.1: ‘Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin, while communicating with a priest who is a sinner, and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their overseer’. 50 Cyprian, Epistle LXVII.3.1-3, 5. 49 particular ethic of holiness and orthodoxy. Should an autonomous bishop fail in that expectation then they could no longer be recognised as a legitimate bishop. It is not that they were to be removed from officer per se, so much as they had delegitimised themselves. Legitimate bishops were to communicate with one another on a regular basis so as to determine who was considered legitimate and who was not. Mutual recognition within the episcopal college was key to maintaining the church’s structural unity.

Potential illegitimacy was something Cyprian faced personally. Cyprian’s self- imposed exile during the Decian persecution was interpreted by some as being nothing more than a cowardly flight. These may have been the grounds upon which both the laxist and rigorist sought to replace him. Nevertheless, Cyprian maintained that his exile had been the result of divine prompting through dreams, for the safety of his flock. As a high-profile member of the Christian community Cyprian was a target for the imperial authorities. His exile was intended to draw attention away from the community. Cyprian wrote later that he believed that those who fled before being questioned by the Roman authorities could not be charged with having lapsed under pressure. Cyprian firmly believed that bishops who had lapsed during persecution were no longer to be considered legitimate.

For Cyprian, the Church was the locus of salvation in which bishops are tasked with significant responsibility. The moral authority of a bishop to call others to faithfully proclaim Christ and their Christian identity, even in the face of danger, was compromised if they did not do so themselves. Cyprian made this argument from historic precedent in North Africa, as Privatus of Lambesa had been deposed due to embezzlement.51 Marcian of Arles supported Novatian and, in Cyprian’ view, because he sided with the schismatics could no longer be considered legitimate himself.52 Basilides and Martial in Spain lapsed in the persecution and needed to be replaced with legitimate successors.

51 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.10.1. 52 Cyprian, Epistle LXVI. 50

1.2.5. The Unity of the Church

For Cyprian, ecclesial unity is not optional or a splendid ideal to be strived after. It is necessary for salvation. It is this logic that results in most famous statement attributed to Cyprian: ‘Extra ecclesia nulla salus’ (Outside the Church there is no salvation). This maxim is found in Epistle LXXII, where Cyprian was writing to Bishop Jubianus of Mauretania concerning heretical baptism. R.E. Wallis comments that it is ‘One of the Catholic maxims which has been terribly misunderstood and terribly abused’.53 Its context is key to avoiding misunderstanding. Cyprian was writing about those who had broken away from the main body of the Church. As the Church has been founded and empowered by Christ as the sole locus of salvation, those who attempt to start their own churches ‘erect in opposition to the altar of Christ’.54 As such, they lack the salvific potency of the true Church. As such, a baptismal rite outside the catholica was not a real baptism, for ‘the Church alone has the living water, and the power of baptising man’.55 The Holy Spirit only empowered the one true church and those who governed it.56

Cyprian used a variety of metaphors to articulate his ecclesiology. The Church is Christ’s spouse who cannot be joined to another.57 Cyprian often refers to the Church as Mother, the progenitor of salvation out of whose womb Christians are born.58 Drawing on the Song of Songs,59 the Church is an enclosed garden that cannot be broken into and alone contains a fountain of living water that offer eternal life (an allusion to baptism).60 The Church is joined to Christ wholly and inseparably, like mixed with water in the eucharist.61 It is gathered from across the world into one community joined to Christ like the eucharistic host is ‘many grains, collected, and ground, and mixed together into

53 Wallis, ‘Cyprian’, 384n7. 54 Cyprian, Epistle LXIV.3.4. 55 Cyprian, Epistle LXXV.3.1. 56 The particular stance Cyprian and his North African colleagues upheld concerning baptism had been set by an earlier council of North African bishops, presided over by the then bishop of Carthage Agrippinus. Cyprian, Epistle LXX.4.1. 57 Cyprian De Unitate 6.1; Epistles XLVIII.7; LIV.1.2; LXXII.11.4; LXXIII.4.3, 6.3-5, 7.4, 9.1, 11.2; and LXXV.2.2-3; also Firmilian, Epistle LXXIV.14. 58 Cyprian, De Lapsis 2.6, 9.6; Epistles VIII.1, 35; IX.3.2, 4.4; X.2.8; XXXVII.2.1; XL.2.2; XLI.1.3, 3.4; XLII.2; XLIII; LXXII.19.6, 24.3; and LXXIII.7.4. 59 Song of Songs 4:12-15. 60 Cyprian, Epistles LXXIII.11 and LXXV.2; also Firmilian, LXXIV.14-15. 61 Cyprian, Epistle LXII.13.1-2. 51 one mass’ that ‘make one bread’.62 It was prefigured by Noah’s ark, in which only those on board were saved.63 Cyprian also uses the image of Christ’s seamless robe to symbolise the unity of the Church brought about by the unity of the episcopal college. He writes: This sacrament of unity, this bond of a concord inseparably cohering, is set forth where in the Gospel the coat of the Lord Jesus Christ is not at all divided nor cut, but is received as an entire garment, and is possessed as an uninjured and undivided robe by those who cast lots concerning Christ’s garments, who should rather put on Christ. Holy Scripture speaks, saying, “But of the coat, because it was not sewed, but woven from the top throughout, they said one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots whose it shall be”. That coat bore with it a unity that came down from the top, that is, that came from heaven and the Father, which was not to be at all rent by the receiver and the possessor, but without separation we obtain a whole and substantial entireness. He cannot possess the garment of Christ who parts and divided the Church of Christ… Because Christ’s people cannot be rent, His robe, woven and united throughout, is not divided by those who possess it undivided, united, connected, it shows the coherent concord of our people who put on Christ. By the sacrament and sign of His garment, He has declared the unity of the Church.64 In Cyprian’s ecclesiology, the cohesion of the Church is brought about through the cohesion of the episcopate. This cohesion is a sacramental reality given to the catholica by God.

The Church itself has a sacramental quality—the visible, united community on earth is spiritually united to God in heaven. The Church is the sacramentum unitatis (‘sacrament of unity’). The phrase sacramentum unitatis speaks not only of a bond between every Christian but also of oneness with God, here on earth and in the world to

62 Cyprian, Epistle LXII.13.6. See also Epistle LXXV.6: ‘Even the Lord’s sacrifices themselves declare that Christian unanimity is linked together with itself by a firm and inseparable charity, For the when the Lord calls bread, which is combined by the union of many grains, His body, He indicates our people whom He bore as being united; and when He calls the wine, which is pressed from many grapes and clusters and collected together, His blood, He also signifies our flock linked together by the mingling of a united multitude’. 63 Cyprian, De Unitate 6.7; Epistles LXXIII.11 and LXXV.2. See also Firmilian, LXXIV.15. 64 Cyprian, De Unitate 7. 52 come. It joins the angels in heaven to human beings on earth and the Church in the present with the biblical heroes and prophets of the Old Testament.65 The bishops of the Church are charged with maintaining this unity and their legitimacy is contingent on maintaining what God has established. As such, should a bishop deny their faith publicly or privately, fall into heresy, split from the body of the Church or support with anyone who has committed one of the former, they cease to be a legitimate bishop within the catholica. Together, the bishops govern Christ’s Church and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do so. Each is responsible for a particular locus and that locus is connected to all other loci through the local bishop. An organic, spiritual connection is created in the office of the bishop both vertically (the local church to their bishop) and horizontally (the local bishop with all other bishops). The bishops, with the clergy and laity, gather in times of crisis to discern the sensus fidei and maintain harmony through lines of communication with one another. By loving each other, the leaders of the church maintain ‘the bond of peace and concord’ that was established by Christ and which He continues to will for His Church.66

God desires His Church to be wholly united and peaceful, united in common prayer and belief. Bishops, empowered to govern the Church, are responsible for maintaining unity through mutual love. Schism is, therefore, not only scandalous but also sinful in Cyprian’s ecclesiology. Walker writes: ‘Schism, being a sin against charity, is utterly unchristian, and those who separate from the church are beyond the sphere of grace’.67 Henry Chadwick writes that Cyprian ‘marked no distinction between heresy and schism’.68 Chadwick adds that Cyprian ‘was aware that the Church contained both wheat and tares’ but that ‘tares were no sufficient reason for abandoning the Church’.69 In De ecclesiae catholicae unitate, Cyprian begins by stating that all division, heresy and schism that the Church encounters is ontologically satanic.70 External persecutions are not the only danger to the Church but internal division as well. Cyprian writes that Satan ‘invented heresies and schisms so as to undermine the faith, to corrupt the truth, to sunder our unity’.71 Cyprian writes further: ‘He who breaks the peace and concord of

65 Firmillian, Epistle LXXIV.2-3. 66 Cyprian, Epistle LXXI.3.2. 67 Walker, The Churchmanship of St Cyprian, 20. 68 Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society, 159. 69 Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society, 158. 70 Cyprian, De Unitate 1. 71 Cyprian, De Unitate 3.1. 53

Christ does in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth elsewhere than the Church, scatters the Church of Christ’.72

It is this commitment to maintaining unity throughout the Church that the conciliar emphasis within Cyprian’s theology of the episcopate emerges.73 Cyprian’s stretches throughout his writings. It includes not only his episcopal colleagues throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, but also the local clergy and laity under his care. Cyprian repeatedly notes his commitment to consultation and dialogue within the local setting. A bishop’s role was to ensure all had their place in conversations concerning church governance.74 In Epistle V, Cyprian writes: Since from the first commencement of my episcopacy, I made up my mind to do nothing on my own private opinion, without your [the presbyters and ] advice and without the consent of the people.75 As can be seen here, laity and clergy along with the bishops were involved in decision- making processes. Cyprian’s reaction to the problem of the lapsed during Decian persecution was that the matter could not be decided until all the provincial bishops, along with clergy and laity, had met together to discuss and come to a common decision. The problem was not unique to Carthage but the problem ‘not of a few, nor of one church, nor of one province, but of the whole world’.76 What affected all had to be decided by all, so as to maintain harmony across the church in different places. While still in exile Cyprian wrote to the Carthaginian clergy: For this is suitable to the modesty and the discipline, and even the life of all of us, that the chief officers meeting together with the clergy in the presence also of the people who stand fast, to whom themselves, moreover, honour is to be shown for their faith and fear, we may be able to order all things with the religiousness of a common consultation.77

72 Cyprian, De Unitate 6.10. 73 Evidence of Cyprian’s conciliar emphasis can found in Epistles V.1.3, 4.1; XI.3.6; XIV.3.2-3; XXVIII.1.2; XXX.5.3; and LI.4.3-4. 74 Cyprian, Epistle V.1.3. 75 Cyprian, Epistle V.4.1. 76 Cyprian, Epistle XIII.2.2. 77 Cyprian, Epistle XIII.2.3. 54

The consensus fidelium that Cyprian envisaged occurs when all the baptised (both ordained and non-ordained) faithfully and prayerfully meet together to discern God’s will.

Episcopal councils/synods were a regular feature within the life of the North African Church. Cyprian’s ecclesiology occurs ex post facto to this already established conciliar tradition. Evidence exists of episcopal synods meeting before Cyprian’s time to determine the African policy on heretical baptism,78 to depose Bishop Privatus of Lambesa,79 to decide that clergy should not be involved in any secular work,80 and to allow the reconciliation of adulterers.81 During Cyprian’s tenure, the synods appear to have met annually, except during the persecutions, after the celebrations in Spring.82 The number of bishops in attendance varied from thirty-three to eighty-seven. The bishops of Carthage appear to have had held a certain place of honour amongst their colleagues and presided over these councils as primus inter pares. In his opening statement to the bishops (although clergy and laity also seem to be present as well) to the seventh council of Carthage in 256, Cyprian states the following: It remains upon this same manner each of us should bring forward what we think, judging no man, nor rejecting any one from the right of communion, if he should think different from us. For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience, since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. Let us all wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of His Church, and of judging us in our conduct there.83

Cyprian’s eschatology accentuates his episcopal ecclesiology: the bishops are equal because Christ alone is the head of the Church and the eternal judge will judge the

78 Cyprian, Epistle LXX.4.1. 79 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.10.1. 80 Cyprian, Epistle LXV.1.2. 81 Cyprian, Epistle LI.21.1. 82 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 387. 83 ‘The Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian,’ trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, vol. V, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: W.M.B. Eerdmans, 1975), 565. 55 conduct of the temporal judges. Under Cyprian’s oversight, episcopal synods were held to discuss the baptism of infants (252), to allow the reconciliation of the penitent lapsed (253), to respond to an appeal from Spain (254/255), and to determine a North African position during the baptismal controversy with Rome (256).84 For Cyprian, in the act of gathering together, the bishops showed solidarity with one another and their mutual love and respect.

Another key principle within Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy is a bishop being a living symbol of unity. The bishops gathered together the local church in a particular locus and also gathered together the wider church in provincial council. Their mutual recognition of legitimacy was crucial in holding the church together. Through his exegesis of Matthew 16:13-19 Cyprian believes that the Church’s unity is given from Christ and founded on the Petrine office within the episcopate. Within the Cyprianic corpus, the authority of the bishops goes hand-in-hand with his understanding of visible unity of the Church. Cyprian believes that spiritual truth is maintained through ecclesial order, and this order has been given to the Church from Christ. The authority of the bishops binds them together. Cyprian writes: This unity we ought firmly to hold and assert, especially those of us that are bishops who preside in the Church, that we may also prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided… The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole.85 Every bishop shares in the governance of the Church and none is better or more valuable than another. Bishops, ‘as useful and merciful shepherds, gather together the Lord’s sheep into the flock’,86 and are called to care for those whom ‘Christ by His blood and passion sought for’.87 In Epistle LXVIII, Cyprian expresses succinctly his episcopal emphasis for ecclesial polity. He writes: Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if anyone be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain who creep in, not having peace with God's priests (sacerdotes), and think that they communicate

84 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 387. 85 Cyprian, De Unitate 5.1-3. 86 Cyprian, Epistle LXVII.3.1. 87 Cyprian, Epistle LXVI.4.5. 56

secretly with some; while the Church, which is Catholic and one, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the cement of priests (sacerdotes) who cohere with one another.88 Cyprian’s high view of the episcopacy arises out his theology. For Cyprian, these varying factors shape his understanding of the office and authority of the episcopate and, in Cyprian’s view, its necessity to the life of the Church.

1.3. The Role and Responsibilities of Bishops

Now that the overarching themes within Cyprian’s ecclesiology have been established, this next section will explore the role and responsibilities of bishops within Cyprian’s writings. Seagraves summarises Cyprian’s understanding of bishops using four of the titles for bishops used within the Cyprianic corpus: pastor (‘Shepherd’), doctor (‘Teacher’), iudex (‘Judge’) and sacerdos (‘Priest’). Seagraves’ categories will be employed in this section to articulate the various facets of Cyprian’s understanding of the office a bishop.89 In Cyprian’s oeuvre these facets, however, all belong to the one office, episcopus, and should not be considered completely independent of each other.

Other titles are used within the Cyprianic corpus alongside episcopus that include praepositus (‘Commander’ from which the modern English terms ‘Prior’ and ‘Provost’ are derived) and gubernator (‘Pilot’ or ‘Helmsman’, from which the modern English term ‘Governor’ is derived).90 Cyprian refers to his fellow bishops as collega (‘Colleague’), coepiscopus (‘Co-Bishop’) and consacerdos (‘Co-Priest’). Cyprian himself is referred to as ‘Papa Cyprian’—‘Father’ or ‘Pope’—by his colleagues. This would indicate the esteem in which Cyprian was held by most of his contemporaries. Those who wished to insult him used his original family name ‘Thascius’, which Cyprian seems to have abandoned upon his conversion to Christianity.

1.3.1. Bishop as Pastor – ‘Shepherd’

Within the Cyprianic corpus, emphasis is often placed on bishops to be pastores boni—‘good shepherds’—after the example of Christ himself. Cyprian makes direct reference to John 10:16 (‘There will be one flock, one shepherd’) in reference to Christ

88 Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.8.5. 89 Seagraves, Pascentes Cum Disciplina.. 90 This list was obtained from Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 40. Seagraves also notes that principes and pontifex are never used by Cyprian in reference to bishops. 57 and the unity of the Church.91 Seagraves notes that Cyprian’s references to bishops as pastor are drawn from the Hebrew Scripture.92 For a bishop to be a bonus pastor, a bishop had to be intimately involved in the lives and spiritual journeys of those under their care. While distance during his exile did not de-legitimise Cyprian’s office as bishop of Carthage, he understood that it was an anomaly. In Epistle XXV, Cyprian writes of his ‘desire’ to return ‘soon’ to Carthage.93 In Epistle II, the Roman clergy write to the Carthaginian clergy with questions about Cyprian’s ‘withdrawal’ because ‘It devolves upon us who appear to be placed on high, in the place of a shepherd, to keep watch over the flock’.94 The Roman clergy were concerned that Cyprian might not be adequately fulfilling that role if he were physically distant from the Carthaginians. The bishop’s proper place was amongst their local community, not distant from it. As Burns and Jensen write: In the assembly, the bishop presided from his raised chair, cathedra, the symbol of his authority in the community. He represented Christ as priest, pastor, and judge. He was the ordinary minister of the rituals of baptism, the Eucharist, and the reconciliation of sinners; presbyters could perform these services as his delegates. He supervised the clergy of the community, who were chosen by him with the advice of the people. He was responsible for the preaching of the gospel and interpreting the standards of Christian life for the people. Finally, he had general responsibility for the property and finances of the community.95 While some of these duties could be adequately performed at a distance or through delegates, it was far from preferable. Cyprian indicates that is the circumstances of the persecution alone that permitted his protracted absence from the community.96

91 See Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 66; Fahey, Cyprian and the Bible: a Study in Third Century Exegesis, 389-390. 92 Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 66. Seagraves, drawing on Fahey’s extensive research into this area, notes these as Jeremiah 3:15 and Ezekiel 34:3-6, 10, 16. 93 Cyprian, Epistle XXV.2. 94 Cyprian, Epistle II.2. The bishop of Rome had been amongst the first to be martyred at the start of the Decian persecution. As such, it is likely that the Roman Christians viewed bishops who escaped the same fate as questionable. 95 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 375. 96 Cyprian, Epistles IV.2 and XII.1.3. 58

There was a soteriological seriousness with which Cyprian approached his role as pastor.97 He sought to ensure that all those under his care as bishop would be received into God’s Kingdom and receive favourable judgement at the Parousia. A bishop’s role was to ‘tend their flock’ in such a way as to reach this goal. Cyprian’s treatment of the lapsed is an example of this. In Epistle X, Cyprian warned that a hasty absolution of those who had lapsed during the Decian persecution would make the bishops lanii (‘butchers’) of the flock rather than shepherds.98 Cyprian called on his fellow bishops not to be harsh or lenient towards the lapsed (or heretics and schismatics) but to lovingly and faithfully demand full adherence to Christ and his disciplina. Metaphorically, the lapsed were like ill patients in a hospital and the bishops their doctors. To discharge the patient before they were well would not only be damaging to the patient concerned but to others as well (the laxist position). To condemn the patient to remain in interminable quarantine without treatment was also unreasonable (the rigorist position). With the right treatment (confession and penance), the patients might return to health. Cyprian pastorally insisted that all those who were sincerely penitent be re-admitted into the communion of the catholica in due course. The lapsed had denied they were Christians and participated in pagan rituals. Nonetheless, the controversy deepened because this was not a moment’s weakness that was irrevocable. The prolonged persecution had meant that the lapsed also had ample opportunity to recant before public authorities, even if that meant martyrdom. Once the persecution had ended, only sincere penance would be worthy of absolution. Cyprian’s goal was their salvation, not their comfort. In time, Cyprian recommended that all those who were penitent and on the verge of death due to illness may be also be more readily reconciled. In 253, following rumours that a new persecution might begin, the North African bishops recommended that all who had proved penitent should be given

97 Bévenot writes, ‘One might think him to have been an autocratic personality, and there are writers who have accused him of ambition and self-aggrandisement. It is simpler to regard him as one who took his responsibilities seriously, and felt himself chosen to carry on in Carthage what Christ himself had done in Palestine and had commissioned to be done by his Apostles and the bishops ever since…If he was conscious of the dignity thus conferred on him, and was to represent Christ among his people, he must himself “put on” Christ, as he was ever urging them to do’. Bévenot, "Sacerdos as understood by Cyprian", 428. 98 Cyprian, Epistle X.2.2-5: ‘For what dead person would not hasten to be made alive? Who would not be eager to attain to his own salvation? But it is the duty of those placed over them to keep the ordinance, and to instruct those that are either hurrying or ignorant, that those who ought to be shepherds of the sheep may not become their butchers. For to concede those things which tend to destruction is to deceive’. 59 absolution and re-admitted into the communion of the church. The rationale was that this would strengthen them to face the possibility of martyrdom. However, the bishops also decreed that those who denied the faith again should not expect any tolerance in the future.

Pastoral allusions are also found in Epistle LXX, where Cyprian writes that true baptism ‘makes sheep’.99 With reference to his disagreement with Stephen of Rome concerning schismatic and heretical baptism, Cyprian wrote to Bishop Quintus of Mauretania to say that schismatics and heretics have never been part of Christ the true Shepherd’s ‘flock’—the catholica. In Cyprian’s opinion, to receive them as ‘estranged sheep’ back into the one fold was a false analogy.100 Those who had been baptised as heretics and schismatics had never been sheep. As sacramental validity only existed in the catholica through the apostolic succession, heretics and schismatics needed to be validly baptised in order to become true ‘sheep’ of the ‘one flock’.101 In the fourth century, Cyprian’s theology of baptism was considered too narrowly conceived. Instead, Stephen’s position was adopted by the catholica at Nicaea. Nicaea upheld that those who had been baptised in schismatic or heretical sects did not need to be baptised again because the salvific potency of baptism belonged to God. God could act independently of his Church. Whatever may have happened in the decades that followed, Cyprian continued to maintain the tradition he had received within the North African church. An earlier North African council had made this ruling and Cyprian continued to uphold the position as bishop of Carthage. It was his duty as a pastor to uphold the traditions he had received. The irony of Cyprian and Stephen’s confrontation was that they both believed they were upholding tradition. A bishop’s duty as pastor was to guide all Christians towards the Kingdom, through their own example, care and discipline. It is why, in Cyprian’s opinion, a lapsed bishop could no longer exercise oversight: they could not pass on what they themselves had lost. Cyprian’s soteriological desire for all people to be truly saved in Christ is expressed in his pastoral role as a bishop. Baptism had salvific properties—it made someone a disciple of Christ. It is out of this pastoral desire, that Cyprian approaches the issue of baptism with such adamance.

99 Cyprian, Epistle LXX.2. 100 Cyprian, Epistle LXX.2. 101 Cyprian, Epistle LXX.2. 60

Seagraves includes the administrative duties of bishops under the banner of pastor. This placement is important. Administrative duties were not an end in themselves but as part of the bishop’s pastoral role. Managing the church’s resources was to enable its ministry and mission not to perpetuate an institution. Cyprian publicly criticised bishops who disregarded their office in order to concentrate on financial matters.102 Such behaviour was contrary to Cyprian’s conception that those who were ordained were to solely concentrate on their ministry and not to be tied to a world that was passing away. However, the resources of the church (financial, material and human) still had to be efficiently managed so that those resources could be deployed correctly. This was part of the bishop’s responsibility.

Examples of the bishop’s administrative oversight of this can be seen in Epistles IV and XXXV, in which Cyprian directs his clergy to administer to the needs of the poor and widows who had become dependent on the church’s welfare. In Epistle XXXV, Cyprian writes: I request that you will diligently take care of the widows, and of the sick, and of all the poor. Moreover, you may supply the expenses for strangers, if any should be indigent, from my own portion, which I have left with Rogatianus, our fellow-presbyter; which portion, lest it should be all appropriated, I have supplemented by sending to the same by Naricus the acolyte another share, so that the sufferers may be more largely and promptly dealt with.103 This passage proves that Cyprian delegated subordinate officers to assist in the financial management of the local church, who were receiving a stipend along with the bishop.104 In Epistle XXXVI, Cyprian requests similar pastoral attention to be given to the Christians who had been imprisoned during the Decian persecution. Once again writing from exile to the presbyters and deacons in Carthage, Cyprian writes that the clergy are

102 Cyprian, De Lapsis 6.2.1-2, 6: ‘Everyone was desirous of increasing his estate; and, forgetful of what the believers had done before in the times of the Apostles, or always ought to do, they, with the insatiable ardour of covetousness, devoted to increase of their property. Among the priests there was no devotedness of religion; in their ministries no sound faith, in their works no mercy, in their morals no discipline… Not a few bishops who ought to furnish both exhortation and example to others, despising their divine charge, became agents in secular business, forsook their throne, deserted their people, wandered about over foreign provinces, hunted the markets for gainful merchandise, while brethren were starving in the Church’. 103 Cyprian, Epistle XXXV.6-7. 104 Cyprian, Epistle XXXVII.2.1. 61 to be ‘representatives’ of ‘[his] appointed ministry’ to those in prison.105 In this epistle, he makes clear that financial and material aid should not be given to those who have lapsed.106

Cyprian’s role as pastor was not only to use the material resources of the local church to aid those in need but to also ensure the social cohesion of the community. Faithfulness to Christ or unfaithfulness had real consequences. Those who had betrayed their Christian identity would not receive the benefits of ecclesial membership, whether those benefits be spiritual or material.107 Cyprian’s high view of martyrdom included the perception that the martyrs were spiritual exemplars for the whole Christian community. Those who lapsed, on the other hand, were made examples of in a different fashion. Once again, it can be seen that the administration of the community’s resources, including decisions about who would receive financial aid and who would not, served the pastoral role of the bishop.108

1.3.2. Bishop as Doctor – ‘Teacher’

Seagraves has argued that Cyprian was diffident about using the term doctor in referring to himself and others.109 Cyprian’s past as a teacher of rhetoric may have led him to be reluctant to use this word in reference to bishops. Perhaps he was reticent in light of Matthew 23:8. However, it was certainly a title that was used when referring to Cyprian by other writers included in the corpus. The teaching role of a bishop is also an important aspect of Cyprian’s conception of episcopacy. As such, a discussion of bishops as teachers has merit.

Prior to Cyprian’s martyrdom, a group of Numidian bishops address him in a letter as ‘bonus et verus doctor’ (a good and true teacher).110 Through Cyprian’s letters to them, the Numidian bishops received encouragement within their own imprisonment. Cyprian’s episcopal ministry seems to have devoted special attention to the task of encouraging others in their discipleship. The bishops mention Cyprian’s

105 Cyprian, Epistle XXXVI.1.3-5. 106 Cyprian, Epistle XXXVI.2.2. 107 Cyprian, Epistle V.2.2. 108 Cyprian’s writings reveal that financial aid was not restricted to those within the local community. 109 Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 69. 110 Cyprian, Epistle LXXVII.2.1. 62

‘many books’ in which he has laid ‘bare the hidden mysteries’ and so helped them to grow in their faith and helped others to come to faith in Christ.111 The bishops write: You are greater than all men in discourse, in speech more eloquent, in counsel wiser, in patience more simple, in works more abundant, in abstinence more holy, in obedience more humble, and in good deeds more innocent. And you yourself know, beloved, that our eager wish was, that we might see you, our teacher and our lover (doctorem et amatorem), attain to the crown of a great confession.112 Cyprian’s conception of teaching was not only confined to the spoken and written word but also through personal example.

A bishop’s lifestyle and character contributed as much to their auctoritas as much as anything they said or believed. Despite what may arguably be hagiographical gloss, Pontius writes that Cyprian sought to imitate the actions and attitudes of any in scripture who were described as pleasing to God.113 Even before his consecration as a bishop, Cyprian strove towards a high personal ethic. Pontius writes: His house was open to every comer. No widow returned from him with an empty lap no blind man was unguided by him as a companion; none faltering in step was unsupported by him for a staff; none stripped of help by the hand of the mighty was not protected by him as a defender. Such things ought they to do, he was accustomed to say, who desire to please God. And thus running though the examples of all good men, by always imitating those who were better than others he made himself also worthy of imitation.114 For Cyprian, bishops were to be exemplars of Christian discipleship. The teaching role of a bishop was evident not just in what they said or wrote, but also in their actions and behaviours. In all aspects of their lives they were to demonstrate the apostolic tradition. Other Christians (ordained and non-ordained alike) would imitate them and so bishops were called to live in such a way that was worthy of imitation.115 The bishop’s

111 Cyprian, Epistle LXXVII.1.2-3. 112 Cyprian, Epistle LXXVII.1.4-5. 113 Pontius, Vita.3. 114 Pontius, Vita.3. 115 John Laurance writes that the idea in Cyprian’s writings that ‘the imitation of Christ results in his presence’ is based fundamentally on an accepted platonic metaphysics in which ‘through imitation one reality is made present in another’ (emphasis Laurance’s). John Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ: The Leader of the Eucharist in Salvation History according to Cyprian of Carthage (New York: Peter Lang, 1984), 219. Laurance argues that this is ‘The probable reason why Cyprian and other Platonist early 63 responsibility, therefore, is to imitate Christ whole-heartedly regardless of circumstance or situation and so encourage others to do likewise. This is evident in Cyprian’s own martyrdom. Cyprian deliberately sought to return to Carthage so that he could die in full view of the Carthaginian Christians and as a result give them an example of how to die well for the sake of Christ.116

The role of faithfully transmitting the apostolic tradition was key to the teaching role of the episcopate. A symbol of a bishop’s auctoritas was their cathedra (teaching seat). This teaching chair was a contextual adaptation from Greco-Roman academia. Irenaeus of Lyon’s writings emphasised the teaching role of the episcopate as the guardian of orthodoxy. While Cyprian never quoted from Irenaeus’ written works, it is likely that he received Irenaeus’ ideas through Tertullian’s writings. 117 A Christian bishop was the symbol of orthodoxy for the Church. They were chosen by the faithful to teach the faith. Having received the traditio apostolica from their predecessors, bishops were empowered by the Holy Spirit to go on believing and teaching the Christian faith.118 In the person of the bishop, the Christian community placed the expectation and their trust that the traditions of the Church would be faithfully transitioned to current and future generations of Christians.

Bishops were responsible for the theological formation of all Christians before and after baptism. But they did not do so alone. Presbyters also shared in this ministry of teaching.119 There seems to have been some presbyters who taught within the local

Christians so objected to the theatre… “Lest from imitation they should come to be what they imitate”’ – Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 218. Here, Laurance is citing Plato. Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, trans. , 3rd ed., vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), 658. 116 Cyprian, Epistle LXXXII.1.3-6. 117 Bévenot, "Sacerdos as understood by Cyprian", 424. Bévenot writes, ‘Cyprian’s conception of the structure of the Church was based on what Christ had taught and done. So too was Tertullian’s. Both too looked to the Apostles as having been commissioned to teach all nations, and regarded the bishop of their day as having been empowered to do the same through the successive transmissions of such power from one generation to the next. This was no novelty. Tertullian’s whole treatise De praescriptione haereticorum is based on it and he developed it from Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses’ (424). Irenaeus’ conception of episcopacy also contained a connection between a faithful lifestyle and faithful teaching: ‘For they were desirous that these men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, whom also they were leaving behind as their successors, delivering up their own place of government to these men; which men, if they discharged their functions honestly, would be a great boon (to the Church), but if they should fall away, the direst calamity’. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.3.3. 118 James Mackinnon, From Christ to Constantine: the rise and growth of the Early Church (c. A.D. 30 to 337) (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1936), 302. 119 Cyprian, Epistle XXIII.5. 64 churches, along with a specific group who examined potential ordinands.120 Nevertheless, the bishop was the prime teacher. Like all other ministries, all other teachers taught only on their local bishop’s behalf as directed.

Being a good teacher meant being an effective communicator. Excellent communication skills were key for the bishops to fulfilling their responsibilities. Cyprian’s reputation was as a skilled communicator. Communicating well meant communicating in a form that was accessible to the audience. Cyprian’s literary style matched dominant trends within Greco-Roman culture.121 Brent and Hinchliff both argue that the evidence of Cyprian’s skill and training as a rhetor can be seen in his literary compositions.122 Sage writes that the carefully prepared speeches before fellow bishops and his congregation after the Decian persecution in 252 are evidence of Cyprian’s considerable rhetorical skill.123 ‘Well acquainted with Ciceronian diction’, Cyprian’s pre-Christian career as a teacher of rhetoric shaped how he communicated his theology to others.124 In this way, another example of Cyprian’s adapting his ministerial practice to his surrounding culture can be witnessed.

A bishop’s communication skills were necessary not only at a local level but in regard to the wider church as well. So as to maintain order and peace across the Church, the bishops needed to maintain effective lines of communication between each other. Cyprian used clergy as messengers. Bishops could also be sent as delegates to other provinces. With particular prestige as the bishop of Carthage, Cyprian was responsible for maintaining lines of communication within the North African province. The bishop

120 Cyprian, Epistle XXIII.5. In this epistle, Cyprian is writing to inform the clergy in Carthage that he had ordained Saturus as a reader and Optatus as a sub-deacon. Cyprian’s seems to have felt the need to defend his actions to the clergy back in Carthage, because he would have normally have consulted with them all before appointing anyone to a particular position. Cyprian, however, maintains that it is a bishop’s prerogative to ordain individuals or not, and so he has the power to legitimately do so even without their consent. This is clearly though a break with his regular custom. On the subject of teaching, this passage provides further insight as well. Cyprian writes: ‘Know, then, that I have made Saturus a reader, and Optatus, the confessor, a sub-deacon; whom already, by the general advice, we had made next to the clergy, in having entrusted to Saturus on Easter-day, once and again, the reading; and when with the teacher-presbyters (presbyteri doctores) we were carefully trying readers—in appointing Optatus from among the readers to be a teacher of the hearers—examining, first of all, whether all things were found fitting in them, which ought to be found in such as were in preparation for the clerical office’. 121 Quasten, Patrology, 2: The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus, 366. 122 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 23-24; Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 22. 123 Sage, Cyprian, 231. 124 Quasten, Patrology, 2: The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus, 366. 65 of Carthage was also conduit for communication between other provinces.125 Extant writings demonstrate that Cyprian corresponded with bishops, clergy and laity not only across North Africa but Italy, Gaul, Spain and Asia Minor as well.126 While all bishops were considered equal, Cyprian does not seem to have hesitated from encouraging other bishops throughout the Roman Empire in their episcopal duties.

Cyprian’s reputation as a skilled communication and his devotion to teaching was matched by his personal studiousness. In epistle LXXIII, Cyprian states that a good bishop must not only be willing to teach but willing to learn. Writing to Bishop Pompey of Sabrata, Cyprian states: The blessed Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, and warns him that a bishop must not be “litigious, nor contentious, but gentle and teachable”. Now he is teachable who is meek and gentle to the patience of learning. For it behoves a bishop not only to teach, but also to learn; because he also teaches better who daily increases and advances by learning better; which very thing, moreover, the same Apostle Paul teaches, when he admonishes, “that if anything better be revealed to one sitting by, the first should hold his peace”. But there is a brief way for religious and simple minds, both to put away error, and to find and to elicit truth. For if we return to the head and source of divine tradition, human error ceases… And this it behoves the priests of God to do now, if they would keep the divine precepts, that if in any respect the truth have wavered and vacillated, we should return to our original and Lord, and to the evangelical and apostolical tradition; and then may arise the ground of our action, whence has taken rise both our order and our origin.127 The context of this passage reveals that these comments are directed against Stephen in Rome—an example of a bishop who was ill-educated and unwilling to learn in Cyprian’s opinion. While there is no evidence of this in the Cyprianic corpus, fourth century

125 It is unknown whether the prestige of the Carthaginian see was because the church was perhaps first present there historically, the surrounding churches having historically spread out from there, or simply because it was the Roman provincial capital. 126 For Italy, see epistles XXX, XXXVIII, XL-XLII, and XLIV-XLVIII; for Gaul, see epistle XLVIII; for Hispania, see epistle LXVII; and for Asia Minor, see epistle LXXV. While there is no extant correspondence between Cyprian and Christians in Greece, Egypt, the Levant or northern Europe, it cannot be concluded definitively that Cyprian did not also interact with them as well. 127 Cyprian, Epistle LXXIII.10.2-4, 6. 66 bishop of Stridon wrote in his brief biography of Cyprian that he would take time for daily study with particular attention to Tertullian’s works.128

1.3.3. Bishop as Iudex – ‘Judge’

The bishops, as iudices within the Christian community, were responsible for maintaining Christ’s disciplina. They were to do so through teaching and the rituals of the Church, as well as in acting as the community’s disciplinarians. The tensions of leading a voluntarist community are present within Cyprian’s writings. Cyprian maintained that the same standard of behaviour applied to all within the Christian community. There were no rules that applied only to some and not to others. There were no grades of Christian discipleship or systems of privilege. Only this could maintain cohesion within a voluntarist community. Cyprian’s conception of bishops as iudex does not imply that bishops took the place of civil judges. Rather, bishops were responsible for disciplining the disciples of Christ to ensure they would attain salvation. This judicial aspect of episcopacy was primarily spiritual not temporal. Of course, temporal matters might uncover spiritual health.

A bishop’s role as iudex stems from the authority given by God who is the Judge. In Epistles IX, LI, LIV, LV, LIX, LXI, LXIV, and LXVIII, Cyprian describes God/Christ as iudex.129 Cyprian’s conviction is that bishops are the legitimate iudex within the local community because they have been divinely appointed and empowered to do so. Although bishops may act as iudex over their local communities in the place of Christ in the present, bishops will ultimately face judgement from Christ over their performance of this ministry.130 According to Bévenot, Cyprian ‘agrees with… Tertullian… that if the bishop presides, it is not with absolute power but only as an administrator... he is not the master of the household, but only his steward; he is not God, but only his sacerdos’.131 A sense of justice and fortitude are necessary qualities for a bishop within Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy.132 But the bishop could only decide for those in their care while here on earth. Christ alone would ultimately judge and affording

128 Jerome, De Viris Illustribus, 53.3. 129 Cyprian, Epistles IX.2.3, LI.19.5, LIV.1.2, LV.8.2, LIX.2.1, LXI.3.4, LXIV.2.3, and LXVIII.1.2. 130 Cyprian ends his letter to Pupianus with the words: ‘Habes tu litteras meas, et ego tuas. In die judicii ante tribunal Christi utrumque recitabitur (You have my letter, and I have yours. On the day of judgement, before the tribunal of Christ, both will be read)’. See Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.10.7-8. 131 Bévenot, "Sacerdos as understood by Cyprian", 426. 132 Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 72. 67 salvation was his prerogative, and his alone. Cyprian seems to have believed that the persecution had a divine purpose for it purged the Church militant of the uncommitted and separated the wheat from the chaff. Cyprian indicates that to offer absolution to those whom God had driven out of his Church, to those who had not yet ‘demonstrated repentance and a sincere commitment to the standards of Christ’ would provoke divine wrath on those who attempted to absolve them.133 As iudex, bishops were to guide people towards salvation in Christ, through His sacraments in his Church, not cut them off from the means of grace. Burns writes: ‘The divine intention to correct and punish would become Cyprian’s guiding principle in directing the church’s response to the persecution and in deliberating on the readmission of the lapsed’.134

Through their possession of the ‘power of the keys’, only bishops were divinely ordained to administer Christ’s blessing and absolution (in addition to the presbyters whom the bishops ordained to do so). This authority, however, could not be self- applied—bishops could not bless themselves nor absolve themselves. Therefore, in Cyprian’s understanding, a iudex who had perpetuated grievous sins was required to step down from their episcopate. They could then subsequently, as a lay person, be enrolled as a penitent and begin the journey to spiritual health through sincere penance.

Cyprian’s conception of the right of a bishop to act as iudex is directly related to the theological understanding he has of the authority of the episcopate. In Epistle LIV, Cyprian writes: No one, after the divine judgement, after the suffrage of the people, after the consent of the co-bishops, would make himself a judge, not now of the bishop, but of God. No one would rend the Church by a division of the unity of Christ.135 Only the legitimate bishop has the divine authority to act in the place of Christ as iudex over the local community. To defy the evangelical discipline of the legitimate bishop is to break communion with them. True discipline is based only on divine mandate (found in Scripture) and to walk away from the community is to cut ties with God’s Church. In order to be faithful to its nature, the catholica was required to adhere to the standards set within Holy Scripture, which detailed God’s salvific interaction with humanity. The

133 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 148. 134 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 134. 135 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.5.2-3. 68

Scriptures expressed God’s will for how humanity should live. For Cyprian, the scriptures were essentially books of law that mandated how God willed his people to live and aided them to do so. The bishop’s role as iudex was to interpret the biblical mandates and maintain discipline within the community in which they were appointed. A bishop could neither discipline their colleagues or the clergy and laity responsible to their colleagues. A bishop’s jurisdiction was set and to trespass these boundaries was to infringe on the rights of another bishop. To do so would have also been a statement on the legitimacy of that bishop, their faithfulness to Christ and their ability to faithfully administer the church within that place. However, it should be stated that ‘diocesan boundaries’ were an invention of another age. Boundaries had not yet been codified and Cyprian and colleagues possessed no map of jurisdiction. A bishop’s authority and their area of ministry were defined by a sense of place.

Epistle LXVIII further demonstrates Cyprian’s conception of bishops as iudices. In this letter Cyprian responded to criticism by a Carthaginian layman, Florentius Pupianus. Cyprian wrote that Pupianus had assumed authority over his bishop and so set himself up as ‘bishop of a bishop, and judge of a judge’.136 Sarcastic in tone, Cyprian thanked Pupianus for coming to the rescue and setting both God and His bishop straight. Cyprian wrote: Behold now for six years the brotherhood has neither had a bishop nor the people a prelate, nor the flock a pastor, nor the Church a governor, nor Christ a representative, nor God a priest! Pupianus must come to the rescue, and give judgement, and declare the decision of God and Christ accepted, that so great a number of the faithful who have been summoned away, under my rule, may not appear to have departed without hope of salvation and of peace… Condescend for once, and deign to pronounce concerning us, and to establish our episcopate by the authority of your recognition, that God and His Christ may thank you, in that by your means a representative and ruler has been restored as well to their altar as to their people.137 Cyprian wrote that it was lack of respect for bishops, and consequently God who had appointed them, that resulted in schism and heresies.138

136 Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.3.2. 137 Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.5.2-4. 138 Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.5.1. 69

The threat of the laxist schism was that the confessors who had decreed promised absolution created avenues for forgiveness not available to all. A single standard of ethical behaviour no longer applied. Those confessors who declared a general amnesty were exercising an authority that Christ alone possessed.139 The laxists were in danger of ignoring behaviour expectations as so disregarding Christ’s teachings. Cyprian contended that forgiveness could not be offered to the impenitent. It was the bishop’s role to decide, on a case by case basis, the fate of the lapsed albeit that the bishop might do so with consultation with other members of the community (both lay and ordained).140 The rigorists, on the other hand, did not allow for the possibility of forgiveness through sincere contrition. They denied God the power to forgive and efficacy of the Church’s rites.

The efficacy of rituals, whether Christian or non-Christian, is of key importance within the Cyprianic corpus, both in the crisis concerning the lapsed in 252 and in the argument with Stephen over baptism. Religious ritual could either sanctify or contaminate an individual. Baptism made a person a Christian and so a member of the Church. Sacrificing to idols or collaboration with pagan rites, and so denying exclusive faith in Christ, could effectively cut one off from the efficacy of baptism. Only full members of the Church could partake in the eucharist. Catechumens could not, as they were not yet baptised, and the lapsed could not continue to partake in the communion as it would be an insult to the divine call to repentance. Confession and penance exhibited true contrition on the part of the lapsed and absolution from the bishop (or those they delegated) could make one a full member of Christ’s church again. Burns argues that this belief in ritual efficacy, displayed by Cyprian and his colleagues, is ‘characteristic of tightly bounded communities’. 141 For Burns, ‘All rituals were effective: those performed within the Church cleansed and sanctified; those performed in opposition polluted and condemned’.142 The lapsed could no longer partake in the Eucharist not, Cyprian wrote, because they would taint the ritual by their participation or physical contact, but because physical contact could be harmful to them. Burns writes that Cyprian, citing 1 Corinthians 11:27, maintained: ‘The Christian eucharist posed a

139 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 57. 140 Cyprian, Epistle XXVII.3. 141 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 130. 142 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 130. 70 danger to the contaminated, not the impure to the communion!’143 Burns writes that the debates within the Cyprianic corpus over baptism, the eucharist and reconciliation all revolved around deciding what constituted ‘the boundary of the church’ and what social behaviours affected the individual’s status within it.144 Within a voluntarist community, the bishops could not arbitrarily readmit or exclude the lapsed, heretics or schismatics. That would be despotic. The boundary of Christ’s church had been set by divine mandate. The bishops were tasked with discerning how best to ensure that all individuals in their care attained salvation. Nothing less than people’s eternal salvation was believed to be at stake.

In Epistle LIV, Cyprian wrote to Cornelius about the pseudo-bishops Fortunatus and Felicissimus in Carthage. Cyprian wrote that the ‘dignity of the Catholic Church’ and ‘priestly authority and power’ were not to be abandoned in the face of opposition by those outside the Church who ‘wish to judge concerning a prelate in the Church’.145 Should the schismatics have wished to return and undergo the judgement of the legitimate bishops, Cyprian said that he would welcome them for: ‘The Church is neither closed here to any one, nor is the bishop denied to any. Our patience and facility, and humanity are ready for those who come’.146 However, Cyprian would not give way to the threats or demands of the ‘enemies of priests, and rebels against the Catholic Church’.147 As in LXVIII, Cyprian states: For neither have heresies arisen, nor have schisms originated, from any other source than from this, that God’s priest is not obeyed; nor do they consider that there is one person for the time priest in the Church, and for the time judge in the stead of Christ.148

Cyprian’s conception of the disciplinary role of the episcopate were contextually influenced by Roman patterns of legal administration. It is likely that Cyprian’s conception of ius within the Church was influenced by his pre-Christian profession as a rhetor. But Cyprian does not attest to this himself. Any similarities are evidence of Cyprian’s adaptive approach to episcopacy. Cyprian lived out his ministry in way that

143 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 138. 144 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 130. 145 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.18.1. 146 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.16.4, 6-7. 147 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.5.1. 148 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.5.2. 71 was not completely foreign within the culture of the place in which he served. That being said, Cyprian’s conception of bishops as the principal iudex for the local Christian community does not have immediate parallels with the post-Constantinian bishops in North Africa. Cyprian’s writings give no indication of holding court in the way that Augustine of Hippo would describe over a century later.149 By that stage, Christian bishops had been recast as imperial officers at the forefront of respectable imperial society. Bishops were no longer social pariahs living on the fringes of imperial society as in the case of Cyprian. This point is important in understanding Cyprian’s context and also how he would have perceived the legal establishment as a Christian in the mid third century.150 Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy is pre-Constantinian and there is no thought of an ‘established church’ within Cyprian’s texts.

1.3.4. Bishop as Sacerdos – ‘Priest’

Cyprian is the first Latin writer to use sacerdos in correlation with bishops, using the word 122 times throughout his works.151 Next to episcopus itself, sacerdos is the word Cyprian uses most often when referring to those in episcopal office. Although in modern Anglican usage ‘priest’ is often synonymous with ‘presbyter’ (‘elder’), Cyprian aligns priesthood primarily with the episcopate. Maurice Bévenot writes that it would in fact be ‘misleading’ in this case ‘to translate sacerdotes “priests”, when Cyprian means bishops’.152 However, Cyprian also uses sacerdos and consacerdos when intentionally referring to presbyters. Cyprian’s conception was that the presbyters authorised by their bishop shared in the priesthood of their bishop. Cyprian’s understanding of holy orders was that they were cumulative. A bishop was simultaneously a bishop, a presbyter and a deacon. In Epistle LI, in reference to Cornelius’ consecration in Rome, Cyprian wrote that he had been ‘promoted through all the ecclesiastical offices, and having often deserved well of the Lord in divine administrations, he ascended by all the grades of religious service to the lofty summit of the Priesthood’.153 When referring to

149 Decret, Early Christianity in North Africa, 168-169. 150 Cyprian’s conversion would have been scandalous due to his high standing amongst the Carthaginian elite. Nevertheless, his ability to maintain good relations with at least a few is evident in the assistance he received during both periods of exile. Even his execution was a death accorded to Roman gentlemen. 151 Stewart, Priests of My People, 147. 152 Bévenot, "Sacerdos as understood by Cyprian", 414. 153 Cyprian, Epistle LI.8.2. 72 bishops Cyprian also uses anistes, which can also be translated as ‘priest’, although it was primarily used by Cyprian when referring to non-Christian priests.

The local bishop as sacerdos was the principal celebrant within . They were responsible for gathering the Christian community together around the altar to offer a sacrifice of praise and to participate in the sacraments. However, this did not mean that the entire community needed to gather in the one physical space at the same time. Indications of multiple communities gathering for worship at which the bishop may not always be present, particularly during times of persecution, are found within Cyprian’s writings. Where the bishop was not physically present, a presbyter was authorised to undertake their role vicariously. As such, it was the shared duty of both bishops and their presbyters to administer the sacraments. Nevertheless, a presbyter’s ministry was never independent of the ministry of their bishop.

According to Cyprian, the sacramental ministry that bishops performed as sacerdotes conveyed the grace and real presence of Christ. Following an allegorical interpretation of Scripture, John Laurance writes that Cyprian maintained that the real presence of Christ had been realised in Old Testament figures and types.154 As it had been true for the Old Israel so it would be true for the New Israel. The Church made Christ’s presence real in the world through imitating Christ and through the sacraments.155 The sacerdotes were responsible for that ministry. As such, Laurance argues, a bishop according to Cyprian is also a ‘type of the Church’.156 Laurance writes: The Church is essentially a structured reality. By his personally being a type of the holiness of the Church, the bishop presents the Church to itself in order that it be itself. It is the holiness of the Church which acts through its type, the bishop, in dispensing of God. The authority of the sacerdos-bishop is therefore based upon his own personal appropriation of the Church’s holiness, which in turn is found in his representation of the passio of Christ (“gloria”). That the sacerdos possesses such holiness is guaranteed by his legitimate ordination in the Church. In his being a type of the Church, therefore, the sacerdos is a type of Christ.157

154 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 5-7. 155 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 26-29. 156 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 230. 157 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 220-221. 73

In Epistles LXII, sacerdos is explicitly connected to Cyprian’s conception of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Cyprian wrote to bishop Caecilius about the ‘office of our priesthood’158 and that they were ‘priests of God and of Christ’.159 Cyprian wrote further: For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief priest of , and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of Himself [i.e. the Eucharist], certainly that priest (sacerdos) truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ Himself to have offered.160 Laurance argues that the foundation of Cyprian’s sacramental theology is tied to his conception of bishops as sacerdotes. Laurence writes that for Cyprian sacerdos is: ‘A typological word signifying participation in Christ’s passio self-offering. To the degree therefore that one is a “priest”, [a bishop] is also a type of Christ’.161 There is an ontological connection for Cyprian between ‘The imitation of Christ and the presence of Christ’.162 A sacerdos, as such, was called to imitate not only the actions of Christ in the liturgical setting but also imitate Christ’s inner attitudes of obedience, sacrificial prayer and holiness. For Seagraves, ‘Cyprian sees clearly his emphatic duty as bishop to act as sacerdos vice Christi’.163 Laurance writes: The leader of the Eucharist becomes a vehicle for the presence of Christ in the liturgical assembly to the degree that the Church by its faith is able to perceive in his actions, as manifestation of his person, the leadership of Christ the priest in the sacrificial events of his life, death and resurrection.164

For Cyprian, it was the role of the sacerdos to administer the sacraments to the church. Seagraves writes: Cyprian was extraordinarily active in the sacramental and liturgical life of the Christian community at Carthage. He expressly acknowledges his personal duty to

158 Cyprian, Epistle LXII.19. 159 Cyprian, Epistle LXII.18. 160 Cyprian, Epistle LXII.14. 161 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 220. 162 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 3. 163 Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 68. 164 Laurance, 'Priest' as Type of Christ, 230. 74

administer the sacraments among his constituents at Carthage in order to nurture them in the faith and truth of Christianity.165 He highlights Epistle LXIX as a key example: Wherefore we who are with the Lord, and maintain the unity of the Lord, and according to His condescension administer His priesthood (sacerdos) in the Church, ought to repudiate and reject and regard as profane whatever His adversaries and the do; and to those who, coming out of error and wickedness, acknowledge the true faith of the one Church, we should give the truth both of unity and faith, by means of all the sacraments of divine grace.166 Within this passage can be witnessed an expression of sacerdos, a link between sacerdos and ecclesial unity and a link between sacerdos and the ‘sacraments of divine grace’. According to Cyprian, it was the sacerdotes who acted as gatekeepers of the Christian community—it was they, and they alone, who decided who became a member (through baptism), who had access to its rites (the Eucharist), and who could regain membership if it was in peril or invalidated (through confession, the administration of penance and absolution). Cyprian describes the life of a sacerdos as one who ‘waits at the altar’ and ‘serves the altar and sacrifices’.167 Bishops acted in these ways as sacerdotes because it was Christ who authorised them to do so, just as Christ empowered the sacraments through their ministry. According to Bryan Stewart, ‘The Christian bishop is a priest, according to Cyprian, not only because he presides over the Eucharistic sacrifice, but because he offers and celebrates all of divine sacrifices and rites entailed in Christian liturgical worship’.168 Further to this, Stewart writes: The Christian sacrificia include the church’s prayers, petitions, and godly living… Christian bishops are priests not simply in the celebration of the sacrificium (singular) of the Eucharist, but in their entire liturgical leadership over the multitude of sacrificia (plural) of prayers and supplications in worship.169

165 Seagraves, Pascentes cum Disciplina, 258-259. 166 Cyprian, Epistle LXIX.3.7. 167 Stewart, Priests of My People, 174. 168 Stewart, Priests of My People, 154. 169 Stewart, Priests of My People, 153. 75

Cyprian draws a Christian connection between the Jewish priesthood of the Old Testament era and the sacerdos of the catholica. Benson writes: For [Cyprian] the bishop is the sacrificing priest. Christ was Himself the Ordainer of the Jewish priesthood. The priests of that line were “our predecessors”. The Jewish priesthood at last became “a name and shade”, on the day when it crucified Christ. Its reality passed on to the Christian bishop; each congregation (diocese) is “the congregation of Israel”; the election of the bishop in their presence is made in accordance with the Law of ; the lapsed or sinful bishop is prohibited by the Mosaic statute against uncleanness; his communicants are tainted by his sin. The presbyterate is the Levitic tribe, exempt from worldly office, debarred from worldly callings, living on the offerings of the people, as their predecessors on the tithes, devoted day and night to sacrifice and prayer. So precise is the application, that the people are to rise at their coming in pursuance of the Levitic direction… To maintain the same faith and worship and yet invade the office of the rightful bishop is identically the sin of Korah. For the Laws about the High Priest are not merely applicable to the bishops; they were ultimately intended for them, and now they apply to them alone.170 For Cyprian, the Christian bishops were the new priesthood for the new Israel and a continuation of the Levitical priesthood that was now relocated in Christ. As such, anything prescribed within the scriptures for the Levitical priesthood applied equally to Christian bishops.

Prayer is the principal duty of those ordained in the Church. As such, sacerdotes should no longer undertake any worldly activities and so receive a stipend to release them from normal work. The example Cyprian gave was in regard to the clergy acting as executors of wills, which were marked by a series of cultural expectations and legal duties.171 This exclusion from worldly duties reflected the Levitical priesthood. In Epistle LXV, Cyprian wrote ‘Every one honoured by the divine priesthood, and ordained in the clerical service ought to serve only the altar and sacrifices, and to have leisure for

170 Edward Benson, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work (New York: Macmillan 1897), 33-34. 171 Cyprian, Epistle LXV.1.2. 76 prayers and supplications’.172 Prayer is vital to the life of every bishop and it is the duty of the sacerdotes to unite the Church in common prayer.

Cyprian’s understanding of sacerdotes and prayer is tied to his emphasis on church unity.173 This in turn stems from his soteriological lens on ecclesiology. Such prayer imitates the life of prayer displayed by Christ and is in accordance with Christ’s teachings. Uniting in common prayer displays the harmony Christ intended for the Church. An example of this is given in Epistle VII: Let each one of us pray God not for himself only, but for all the brethren even as the Lord has taught us to pray, when He bids to each one, not private prayer, but enjoined them, when they prayed, to pray for all in common prayer and concordant supplication. If the Lord shall behold us humble and peaceable; if He shall see us joined one with another… He will maintain us safe from the disturbances of the enemy. Discipline hath preceded; pardon also shall follow.174 Again, in his treatise on the Lord’s Prayer, Cyprian wrote: Before all things, the Teacher of peace and the Master of unity would not have prayer to be made singly and individually, as for one who prays to pray for himself alone. For we say not “My Father, which are in heaven”… Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one. The God of peace and the Teacher of concord, who taught unity, willed that one should thus pray for all, even as He Himself bore us all in one.175 The bishops were responsible for maintaining the unity given to the Church by Christ. Through mutual love and respect, the episcopal college maintained cohesion and joined in common prayer and mutual encouragement of each other.

1.4. Conclusion

This chapter has presented Cyprian’s ecclesiology of the episcopate as found in his own writings. Cyprian’s conception allows for an adaptive approach to Christian

172 Cyprian, Epistle LXV.1.2. 173 Cyprian, Epistle LXIX.3.7. 174 Cyprian, Epistle VII.7.9-10. 175 Cyprian, De dominica oratione 8.1-3. 77 ministry in which key theological markers are maintained within an environment where the episcopate is permitted to adapt to its context and changing circumstances.

For Cyprian, God empowers bishops both ontologically and functionally—they are empowered to be bishops and to perform that ministry. The auctoritas flows from God and power and responsibility are intertwined within Cyprian’s theology. Bishops share in the apostolic ministry that has been sustained over time. All bishops are equal to one another and so can organise the life of the Church within the community they preside. Cyprian’s ministry shows bishops gathering together across particular regions to decide upon united approaches to issues without enforcing uniformity. These principles of apostolic succession, episcopal equality and provincial autonomy have been emblematic of Cyprian’s ecclesiology.

There are further markers of Cyprian’s understanding of the episcopate that are also relevant for contemporary reflection. The pastoral role of the bishop is in nurturing Christ’s disciples and organising the church’s resources (financial, material and human) to advance God’s Kingdom. The teaching role of the bishop is as the principal communicator of the local church and in the faithful transmission of the traditio apostolica. The judicial role of the bishop is to act as the disciplinarian of the local church and maintain a common ethical standard across the church. The priestly role of the bishop is to lead the worship of the church, perform the sacramental ministry as they act in the place of Christ, and to promote the unity of the church. These responsibilities mean that the heart of Cyprian’s conception of episcopacy is relational, discerning, accountable, and loving. These four aspects will be explored in reflection with contemporary issues in Chapter Four. In order to build to that point it is important to establish how Cyprian’s ideas have been received within Anglican ecclesiology since the sixteenth century. The next chapter will explore precisely that. 78

Chapter Two

The appeal to Cyprian during the Anglican Reformation

2.1. Introduction

The theological foundations of nascent Anglicanism were laid in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This theology and polity would in time be carried by British Christians around the world, including to Australia, and become the Anglican Communion as it is known today. How episcopacy came to be understood in this period is crucial. In order to discover how Anglicans understand episcopacy in the present it is necessary to examine this formative period in the church’s history.

The aim of this chapter is to explore how Anglican bishops and theologians during the appealed to Cyprian’s ecclesiology to strengthen and defend their own understanding of episcopacy. As such, this chapter will begin by exploring the ecclesiological changes that occurred during the period from the Statute in Restraint of Appeals in 1533 to the Act of Uniformity in 1662 with particular reference to episcopacy. It will then investigate the uses of Cyprian’s theology in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Three notable authors selected by Mark Chapman in his preliminary research on Cyprian’s legacy for Anglicans have been chosen as case studies: Bishop John Jewell, the Reverend Richard Hooker and Archbishop William Laud.1 This chapter examines these three writers in greater depth than Chapman, drawing on primary sources to investigate their appropriation of Cyprian’s ecclesiology. Each writer appealed to Cyprian to expound their own views of episcopacy, and the chapter addresses several questions. How did they appeal to Cyprian? Did they appeal to Cyprian superficially or did they try to replicate his theology? Did they believe Cyprian was appropriate for an ecclesial polity that attempted to be both Catholic and Reformed? Did they believe that Cyprian would recognise his theology in the Church of England or was he the preserve of other Christian groups?

1 Chapman, "Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation", 36-45. 79

2.2. Trends in English Episcopacy – 1533 to 1662

Henry VIII’s reformation did not result in major changes for episcopacy within the Church of England.2 The three-fold order remained intact, a diocese was still the area of ministry of bishop, the continued to house their cathedras and the bishops believed they remained in an apostolic succession.3 In liturgy they remained the chief celebrants and the clergy were still accountable to them. They continued to meet in and hold ecclesiastical courts.4 The continued as of All England. By far the major change to episcopacy in this period was the replacement of Papal authority over the approval of episcopal appointments with the supreme authority of the Crown. All of the bishops were placed under the authority of the Crown with no appeal beyond its domain. 5 The Crown now received the revenues of vacant dioceses.

From 1533 the English episcopate evolved with the wider changes. None of the bishops stepped down from their positions during Henry VIII’s reign to protest against reform; only one resisted and was punished for it.6 While some conservative bishops tried to block efforts, these reforms were ultimately enacted by Parliament. The dissolution of the monasteries led to the establishment of six new dioceses that were endowed (at a reduced rate) with funds confiscated from the former monasteries.7 Although some ex-monks became bishops, the episcopal bench would not see any called from monastic orders for centuries. The foundations were remodelled (particularly the new cathedrals which had formerly been monastic foundations) and

2 Beatrice Hamilton Thompson, "The Post-Reformation Episcopate in England: i) From the Reformation to the Restoration", in The Apostolic Ministry: Essays on the History and Doctrine of Episcopacy, ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962), 392. 3 Avis, "Anglican Ecclesiology", 247. 4 Paul Valliere, Conciliarism: A History of Decision-Making in the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 163-165. 5 Ethan Shagan, "The Emergence of the Church of England, c.1520-1553", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume 1: Reformation and Identity, c.1520-1662, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 6 See further: George W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2005), 101-125; Susan Doran and Christopher Durston, Princes, Pastors and People: The Church and Religion in England 1529-1689 (London: Routledge, 1991), 125; Eamon Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 133-150; Jonathan Michael Gray, Oaths and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 119-125; Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2017), 223. 7 , Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough and Westminster (which was reabsorbed into the in 1550). , A History of the Church in England (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1953), 176. 80 the Crown took control over appointments to deaneries and 70 other posts.8 Nevertheless, bishops remained in control of licencing for all other appointments. It was the bishops alone who were responsible for the act of ordination, although they could be directed by the Crown as to who they would ordain. No new bishops could be consecrated without royal assent. Another significant change for the episcopate was the ability to marry, although many bishops remained celibate.9

Further changes occurred under Edward VI. The process of cathedral chapters appointing (which were then approved by the Crown) bishops was abolished and the Crown given complete control over episcopal appointments.10 Less emphasis was placed on the sacrificial priesthood and refreshed emphasis placed on bishops as teachers and pastors. This was a reaction against the pluralism and absenteeism that had become rife during the medieval period. Bishop John Ponet suggested that bishops should be retitled as ‘superintendents’.11 While this suggestion continued to have supporters over the next century it was never officially adopted. There was also an effort to reduce the wealth and political influence of the English episcopate.12 An example of the ideals of an Edwardian bishop can be seen in the writings of Archbishop of York.13 As doctrinal divisions deepened, several bishops actively opposed the reforms and were deprived of their sees.14

The role of bishops within the civil government waxed and waned during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bishops sat in the House of Lords and were often commissioned as diplomats and ambassadors.15 Many clergy also served as civil

8 Andrew Foster, "Bishops, Church, and State, c.1530-1646", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume I: Reformation and Identity, c.1520-1662, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 86- 87; Stanford Lehmberg, The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society 1485-1603 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 67-100. 9 There were only four married Archbishops of Canterbury between 1529 and 1662. See Marcus Harmes, Bishops and Power in Early Modern England (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 9. 10 Barrett Beer, "Episcopacy and Reform in Mid-Tudor England," Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 23, no. 2 (1991): 236. 11 John Ponet, An apologie fully aunsvveringe by Scriptures and aunceant doctors, a blasphemose book gatherid by D. Steph. Gardiner, of late Lord Chauncelar, D. Smyth of Oxford, Pighius, and other papists, as by ther books appeareth and of late set furth vnder the name of Thomas Martin Doctor of the Ciuile lawes (as of himself he saieth) against the godly mariadge of priests Wherin dyuers other matters which the papists defend be so confutid, that in Martyns ouerthrow they may see there own impudency and confusion (Strasbourg: Heirs of W. Kö pfel, 1556), 3. 12 Foster, "Bishops, Church, and State, c.1530-1646", 91. 13 Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, Reformation Studies (London: Hambledon Press, 1982), 323-352. 14 Bishops Bonner, Day, Gardiner, Heath and Tunstall. See Doran and Durston, Princes, Pastors and People, 127-128. 15 Foster, "Bishops, Church, and State, c.1530-1646", 85-86. 81 servants. Bishops had houses in London to be in close contact to the royal court. Bishops served the Crown as Chancellor, Lord Chamberlain, Lord High Almoner, and Keeper of the Privy Seal during Henry VIII’s reign.16 Edward VI and Mary I were both served by Chancellors in episcopal orders, although broke from this pattern. Elizabeth did not have particularly strong views on episcopacy.17 She expected loyalty and obedience from her bishops. The pastoral emphasis on episcopacy was taken as an opportunity to remove the bishops from civil roles.18 It was also an opportunity for the Crown to remove property and revenues from the episcopate, which either came into possession of the Crown or lay courtiers. Later, in the 1640s, trying to reclaim what had been taken contributed to the hostility towards Laud and his colleagues.19 By Laud’s time bishops had once again returned to places of prominence throughout the government. However, this was greatly reduced upon the Restoration (for example, no bishop has served as Chancellor since).

The imparity of holy orders was a matter of ongoing debate throughout this period. Although largely hidden from the eyes of history, the debates that occurred amongst the English Reformers during their exile is highly significant for a history of episcopacy in this period. Some thought episcopacy was a relic of the medieval church and led to ‘’.20 The expatriate reformers split into two camps: the first favoured episcopacy and the second did not.21 Jewell was amongst those who did. Essentially, it was their interpretation of history that differed. One group, which included John Knox, looked to the interpretation of Scripture and the Fathers offered by John Calvin and desired for the church in England to be modelled on the Calvinists in Geneva.22 Calvin’s interpretation saw bishops and presbyters as equal, and therefore advocated for a

16 Foster, "Bishops, Church, and State, c.1530-1646", 85-86. 17 Two detailed studies of the episcopate during the Elizabethan era have been provided by the late Brett Usher: see Brett Usher, William Cecil and Episcopacy, 1559–1577 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Brett Usher, Lord Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016). See also Peter Marshall, "Settlement Patterns: Church of England, 1553-1603", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume I: Reformation and Identity, c.1520-1662, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 45-61. 18 Foster, "Bishops, Church, and State, c.1530-1646", 91. 19 Foster, "Bishops, Church, and State, c.1530-1646", 89. 20 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation (London: Allen Lane, 2003), 383. 21 Issues that divided them included the appropriateness of continued use of the . 22 John Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 12-13. See also Marshall Mason Knappen, Tudor Puritanism: A Chapter in the History of Idealism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 118. 82

Presbyterian model.23 On the other hand, Jewell and his companions looked to the Fathers as championing the three-fold order and believed the church should retain episcopacy as it had received it. Episcopacy was not the problem within Roman Catholicism—it was abuses of power and doctrine. Following Mary I’s reign, members of the two groups returned to England and both parties were continually at odds over the next century. No Elizabethan settlement satisfied the ‘Puritans’. A century later, James Ussher’s proposal for a ‘reduced episcopacy’, in which episcopal authority would be checked by synodical governance, was also rejected.24 The victors of the disestablished the episcopate in place of a Presbyterian model. Despite some attempts for a ‘reduced episcopacy’, the Restoration would see the episcopate restored with the Crown as it had been before the war.25

A wave of social changes affected the Church in the British Isles throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The bishops who did not resign (or were not deprived or executed) adapted their practices to their new context. Some appealed to ancient precedents to confirm that the bishops of the still catholic yet reformed Church of England were as valid as their predecessors. Non-conformists, both Roman Catholic and Puritan, maintained their opposition and sectarian cracks deepened over generations. As an Anglican identity began to emerge that was distinct from the united Western Church before and the new Roman Catholicism of Trent, episcopal polity remained a key feature of that identity.26 The Anglican bishops believed they had shrugged off the excesses of their predecessors and the Church of England was better for it. During the Commonwealth period, some of the bishops chose to accept the Puritan reforms and take the place of beneficed ministers.27 The Restoration ensured that with the revival of episcopacy, the returned bishops would remain tied to royal authority.

23 Marcus Harmes, "Calvin and the English Episcopate, 1580-1610," Anglican and Episcopal History 81, no. 1 (2012): 22-46. 24 Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century Essays (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1987), 151. 25 Kenneth Fincham and , "Episcopalian Identity, 1640-1662", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume I: Reformation and Identity, c.1520-1662, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 476-481. 26 Avis, "Anglican Ecclesiology", 257-258. 27 Fincham and Taylor, "Episcopalian Identity, 1640-1662", 463-464. 83

Throughout this period, bishops remained part of an elite class within English society. While some bishops were loved for their care and devotion, others were attacked in the streets for their wealth and pomposity.28 Those who approached their office tyrannically only deepened hostility towards all bishops. While compared to their medieval predecessors, the wealth and influence of the episcopate in England and was greatly reduced (and in Scotland it practically disappeared for a time), bishops remained wealthy and influential nonetheless. As Kenneth Kirk once wrote, ‘English bishops… have been in turn feudal barons, Tudor civil servants, Whig landed proprietors, [and] Victorian parliamentarians’.29 Still, figures such as Jewell, Hooker and Laud during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries defended their practice of episcopacy as consistent with the ancient Church. The extent to which that might be true will be explored in the subsequent sections.

2.3. The Reception of Cyprian

The sixteenth century English reformers inherited the scholarly consensus on Cyprian from the medieval period. Prior to the fourteenth century, Patristic texts were primarily approached as offering models of piety, exemplified by the Devotio moderna movement.30 New scholarly approaches in the fifteenth century, such as those of the humanist movement with its clarion call ‘ad fontes’, created new interest in studying the Greek and Latin Fathers. The printing press allowed new volumes of collected works to become more widely available to clergy and academics across Europe. Cyprian’s collected works were published in 1471 in Rome (reprinted in Venice in 1471 and 1483), in 1477 in Memmingen and Deventer, and in 1500 in Paris.31

In the sixteenth century, editions of Cyprian’s complete works were compiled in 1512, by Rembolt in Paris; in 1521 by Erasmus in Basel (another edition was published

28 Harmes, Bishops and Power in Early Modern England, 1. 29 Kenneth Kirk, ed., The Apostolic Ministry: Essays on the History and Doctrine of Episcopacy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946), 47. 30 Irena Backus, "The Fathers and the Reformation", in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics, ed. Ken Parry (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 428. 31 John Chapman, "Cyprian of Carthage", in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4, ed. Charles Herbermann, Edward Pace, Condé Pallen, Thomas Shahan, and John Wynne (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), 589. For further information on the production of Patristic texts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see: Jean-Louis Quantin, "The Fathers in 17th Century Anglican Theology", in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 987-1008; Mark Vessey, "English Translations of the Latin Fathers, 1517-1611", in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 775-835. 84 in Cologne in 1544); in 1548, by Rigault in Paris; in 1563 by Manutius in Rome; in 1564 by Morel in Paris; and in 1568 by Pamelius in Antwerp.32 Emphasis was placed on providing texts accurate to the originals.33 England was a marketing focus for continental publishers during the sixteenth century and the appeal to the Fathers became increasingly common among English scholars.34 William Haaugaard writes: They [the English Reformers] knew the fathers as digested by those theologians who studied the writings and extracted and applied passages as they deemed best for the time and the occasion. Throughout the sixteenth century, English theologians and scholars depended on the continent for texts, and personal relations with continental colleagues repeatedly encouraged their patristic explorations. Continental printers included England as a regular part of their market.35 While also published in Latin, Cyprian is one of only ten Latin Fathers whose works were translated into English in the sixteenth century.36

As movements for reform gained pace in different parts of the continent and in the British Isles, some patristic publications developed a sectarian bias.37 Walker writes that ‘considerable excitement’ developed in 1563 against the backdrop of the .38 Until this point, all previously published versions of Cyprian’s work had used the Received Text for De Unitate as discussed in Chapter 1. This includes the editio

32 See Graeme Wilber Clarke, "Introduction", in The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage: Translated and Annoted by G.W. Clarke, Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation (New York: Newman Press, 1984), 47; Chapman, "Cyprian of Carthage", 589. 33 ‘By the mid-sixteenth century… all patristic editions, whatever their confessional slant and language, were marked by a concern to achieve the greatest possible degree of textual accuracy’. Backus, "The Fathers and the Reformation", 432-433. 34 ‘The books with the Italian reformers Bernadino Ochino and Peter Martyr purchased at English expense when they came in response to Cranmer’s invitation in 1547 included the works of Augustine, Cyprian, and Epiphanius for Martyr and unspecified titles worth three times the cost of Martyr’s for Ochino’. William Haaugaard, "Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England," Sixteenth Century Journal X, no. 3 (1979): 50. 35 Haaugaard, "Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England", 49. 36 Vessey, "English Translations of the Latin Fathers, 1517-1611", 833. Haaugaard writes: ‘By 1600, any Englishman without a firm command of Latin, to say nothing of Greek, had little direct access to the church fathers apart from the early histories’. Haaugaard, "Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England", 50 fn. 42. 37 See further Backus, "The Fathers and the Reformation", 432. 38 ‘A minor scandal lay behind the appearance of this edition, because the expert scholar Latino Latini refused to let his name be associated with it and believed the Textus Receptus to be alone authentic. But later catholic editions were based on PT, while protestants on the whole maintained that it was spurious, citing the TR version as it appeared in Gratian’s Decretem and demonstrating Cyprian’s opposition to papalism from his letters’. Walker, The Churchmanship of St Cyprian, 70. 85 princeps published in Rome in 1471.39 However, Roman publisher Manutius, by direction of the Council, used the Primacy Text in his edition of De Unitate in 1563.40 Walker writes: A minor scandal lay behind the appearance of this edition, because the expert scholar Latino Latini refused to let his name be associated with it and believed the [Received Text] to be alone authentic. But later Catholic editions were based on [the Primacy Text], while Protestants on the whole maintained that it was spurious, citing the [Received Text] version as it appeared in Gratian’s Decretem and demonstrating Cyprian’s opposition to papalism from his letters. From this point on, Roman Catholics and Anglicans would base their appeals to Cyprian on different versions of the texts. Tension grew as to who could rightfully claim the Fathers in support of their respective ecclesiological positions. This created refreshed interest in the Fathers as scholars and clergy vied to claim authentic reception of the theology of the Early Church.41

2.4. Appropriating Cyprian’s ecclesiology – Jewell, Hooker and Laud 2.4.1. John Jewell (1522-1571)

John Jewell was born in 1522. In his early life, he aspired to the career of an Oxford academic. He became a prominent member of the reform movement within the Church of England during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. After returning from exile after the reign of Mary I, he was appointed by Elizabeth I to be the in 1560. He remained the bishop of that diocese until his death in 1571. Jewell is remembered as being one of the intellectual leaders during the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign.42

The key documents for exploration are the Apology of the Church of England (henceforth Apologia) and Jewell’s subsequent commentary on that treatise, Defence of

39 Walker, The Churchmanship of St Cyprian, 70. 40 Walker, The Churchmanship of St Cyprian, 70. 41 Haaugaard, "Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England", 38. 42 All dates and details of Jewell’s life are sourced from the following. See Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England, 8-14; Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 1-114, 203-225; Wyndham Mason Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 3-110; Scott Wenig, Straightening the Altars: The Ecclesiastical Vision and Pastoral Achievements of the Progressive Bishops under Elizabeth I, 1559-1579 (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 138-153. 86 the Apology of the Church of the Church of England. In 1562, William Cecil commissioned Bishop Jewell to write an apologetic treatise that would outline the theological convictions of the Church of England under Elizabeth I’s reign.43 While other authors may have been involved in the drafting of the text, Jewell was the primary author of this treatise.44 The purpose of the Apologia was to provide a statement on the theology of the Established Church, and in so doing demonstrate that that faith was still that of the ancient catholic Church of the first 600 hundred years.45

Looming in the background of the Apologia was the Council of Trent (1545- 1563). In 1559, within a sermon preached before the Queen at St Paul’s Cross, Jewell challenged the Romanists to prove twenty-seven doctrinal points from either the Bible or Patristic sources.46 Significantly, Jewell defined the ‘Patristic era’ as curtailed to the first 600 years of Church history. His opponents objected. Henry Cole, a Roman priest, wrote against Jewell’s theology including his definition of the Patristic era.47 Thomas Harding also became a chief opponent of Jewell’s in what can only be described as a pamphlet war.48 In response to the Apologia, Harding published his own counter- apology. Jewell then responded with a longer defence of his work. Within these polemical writings, how these two men reflect their respective traditions and interpreted the Fathers is important to understanding how they perceived their respective ecclesiological foundations.49

Jewell argued for a Patristic basis for ecclesiology without hinging his defence on their authority alone. The aim of the Apologia was to articulate a defence by those leading the Established Church that could stand against Roman criticism. Jewell wrote:

43 This claim is based on a letter from Cecil to Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador in Paris: ‘I have caused an apology to be wrytten but not prynted in the name of the whole clergy’. The National Archives, Kew State Papers 70/26, fol. 59v (cited in Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England, 45. 44 See Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England, 51-55. 45 Arthur Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans: the Limits of Orthodoxy (Leominster: Gracewing, 2001), 43. 46 John Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), I:20-1. 47 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:20-1. 48 Both Jewell and Harding had studied under Peter Martyr in Oxford, albeit that Harding was five years Jewell’s senior. 49 Haaugaard, "Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England", 52. 87

Throughout the whole discourse of this Apology, in the defence of the catholic truth of our religion, next unto God’s holy word, have used no proof or authority so much as the expositions and judgements of the holy fathers.50 Booty, Middleton and Southgate all agree that Jewell used the Fathers and accepted their authority—so long as their views matched his own.51 If their interpretation of Scripture and doctrine matched that of the Reformers then they were to be praised and obeyed. If they did not, as in the case of Cyprian’s sacerdotalism, then their ideas were either bypassed or discredited. Jewell did not treat the Fathers as infallible, but instead as sources to be engaged with critically. The shortcomings in Jewell’s own writings are on occasions where the Fathers are cited uncritically. Cyprian is often cited along with other Patristic authors in a proof-text fashion, without any examination of a quotation’s context. Both Jewell and his opponents had a tendency to pile up a large number of acontextual quotations aimed at supporting their theological positions. However, Jewell does show greater acumen on occasions where he believed his opponents themselves had quoted acontextually and subsequently incorrectly.

Cyprian features significantly in Jewell’s Apology. In the second section, where Jewell gives a list of the Church of England’s theological beliefs, Cyprian is cited twice in the section on ecclesiology and orders of ministry. In II.6, Jewell wrote: [We believe] that there be divers degrees of ministers in the church; whereof some be deacons, some priests, some bishops; to whom is committed the office to instruct the people, and the whole charge and setting forth of religion.52 The Apology goes further to state that no one person ‘may have the whole superiority in this universal state’.53 Jewell wrote: All the Apostles, as Cyprian saith, were of like power among themselves, and the rest were the same that Peter was… And, as Cyprian saith, “there is but one bishoprick, and that a piece thereof is perfitly and wholly holden of every particular bishop”.54

50 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:225. 51 See Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England, 130-137; Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 45; Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority, 179-181. 52 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:59. 53 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:59. 54 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:59-60. 88

Jewell simultaneously embraced Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy and directed it against the centralised Papal governance of the Roman church.55 Cyprian’s works are important for Jewell in defending a legitimate model of episcopacy for the Established Church that was distinguishable from Rome.

Jewell demonstrates a confidence in Cyprian’s ecclesiology when citing him to defend the Anglican position against Papal Supremacy. Both Jewell and Harding cite Cyprian in opposition to one another’s respective arguments, which is evidence of the divergent claims on Cyprian’s legacy as well as the divergent texts being used.56 Harding had written: ‘St Cyprian, declaring the contempt of the high priest Christ’s vicar in earth to be cause of schisms and heresies,’ followed by a quote from Epistle LIV.5.2.57 In this epistle, Cyprian states that heresies and schisms arise because the sacerdos is not obeyed. There is no indication in the text that this reference is to the bishop of Rome exclusively. In his marginal notes, Jewell correctly observed that ‘St Cyprian speaketh these words of every several bishop, not only of the bishop of Rome’.58 Jewell examined the whole context and content of Epistle LIV to address Harding’s argument. Jewell began by stating that Cyprian ‘never gave unto Cornelius any such ambitious title, but only calleth him by the name of brother’, and as such Cyprian addresses Cornelius as an equal not as a superior.59 Jewell criticised Harding’s logic that because Cyprian states that the fraternitas universa should obey unus sacerdos that this refers to the Papacy. Jewell wrote: Harding seemeth to ground his error upon the mistaking of these words of St Cyprian unus sacerdos, and fraternitas universa; that is, “one bishop,” and “the whole brotherhood”. For whereas St Cyprian saith, “There must be one bishop in a church”; he imagineth there must be one bishop to rule over the whole universal church. And whereas again St Cyprian saith, “The whole brotherhood must obey one bishop”; he [Harding] gathereth that all christian people throughout the whole world, which he truly calleth “the whole

55 As an example of the fierce polemic against Rome that Jewell displays in his writings, in this section of the Apology Jewell goes on to write that the Pope, in claiming universal jurisdiction, is the ‘king of pride; that he is Lucifer, which preferreth himself before his brethren; that he hath forsaken the faith, and is the forerunner of ’. Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:60. 56 See Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:347. 57 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:347. 58 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:347. 59 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:347. 89

brotherhood”, must be obedient unto one universal bishop. And thus he buildeth one error upon another. But mistaking of the doctor maketh no sufficient proof. It may soon appear St Cyprian meant that, for the avoiding of schisms and divisions, there ought to be only one bishop within one diocese, and no one bishop to rule over all the world.60 In reference to Harding’s citation of Epistle LIV, Jewell also wrote: He [Cyprian] writeth generally of the authority of all bishops, and not only of the authority of the bishop of Rome. … Now therefore to draw that thing by violence to only one bishop, that is generally spoken of all bishops, it is a guileful fetch to mislead the reader, and no simple or plain dealing.61 Jewell explored Cyprian’s ecclesiology of episcopacy and proposed that a close examination of the texts revealed the opposite of Harding’s conclusions. As the context of Epistle LIV is the Novatianist schism, Jewell’s interpretation of this letter is more accurate than Harding’s interpretation. Jewell noted that Cyprian makes similar references to himself in Epistle LVIII to Florentius Pupianus—that schism occurs when legitimate bishops and their authority are treated with contempt.62

A further example of Jewell’s use of Cyprian in relation to primacy is in his defence of the Church of England’s position in response to the 1570 , Regnans in Excelsis. Issued by Pius V, it declared Elizabeth I to be a heretic and that the people of England no longer should swear allegiance to her. The Bull affirmed the Roman position of papal supremacy over all Christians. In A View of a Seditious Bull sent into England, Jewell set about discrediting the contents of the Bull. The issue of papal primacy and the equality of episcopal ministry were key arguments. Once again, Cyprian was referenced to support Jewell’s views. Jewell quotes from the Received Text version of De Unitate to argue that all bishops are equal to one another and no one bishop has jurisdiction over all, observing: Cyprian saith, Parem tribuit apostolic [sic] omnibus auctoritatem… hoc utique errant [sic] ceteri apostolic quod fuit Petrus, pari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis: “The Lord gave unto his Apostles like power: the rest of the

60 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:348. 61 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:348. 62 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:350; citing Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.5.1. 90

apostle were even the same that Peter was, endued with like fellowship both of honour and of power.63 If all bishops are within a line of succession from the Apostles and heirs of their office, then all bishops are alike and equal. No one bishop has a supremacy over all others, even if that bishop claims to be Peter’s successor in Rome, because ‘all the Apostles were as Peter was’. According to Jewell, ‘The pope maketh Peter a rock, the other Apostles small pebble-stones to be built upon him’.64 Jewell argued that neither the Christian Scriptures nor the Fathers stated that the bishop of Rome should have jurisdiction over the whole Church. Jewell wrote: “The whole church (saith pope Pius) is committed to the pope alone, by the commandment and word of God”. What apostle or evangelist ever wrote so? Where did Christ at any time speak of the pope, or of Peter’s successor, or of the Bishop of Rome? What ancient council, what old doctor, what father… ever said that the whole church was committed to the pope alone?65 Papal primacy over the whole of the Church was therefore not divinely mandated and the Church of England had not deviated from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church by withdrawing from papal jurisdiction. To the contrary, for Jewell and the English Reformers it was the Papacy that had usurped power over the Christian Church and deviated from the pattern of the Church’s life in its first few centuries. The bishop of Rome had no authority to excommunicate Elizabeth or to undermine her reign.

Jewell affirmed Cyprian’s ecclesiology that it was the nature of the episcopal office to govern the church and maintain its unity. As Booty noted, Jewell ‘recognised the necessity of leadership to maintain the Church in unity and free from schism, but he limited such leadership in terms of its scope to each nation-state’.66 Episcopacy was seen as essential for maintaining orthodoxy and faithfulness within the Church. Jewell also argued against any claims of ecclesial infallibility made by his opponents. The Apologia states: For neither is the church of God such as it may not be dusked with some spot, or asketh not sometime reparation… If there be no peril that harm may come

63 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, IV:1136; citing Cyprian, De Unitate 4. 64 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, IV:1136. 65 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, IV:1136. 66 Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England, 189. 91

to the church, what need is there to retain to no purpose the names of bishops, as is now commonly used among them? For if there be no sheep that may stray, why be they called shepherds? If there be no city, that may be betrayed, why be they called watchmen? If there be nothing that may run to ruin, why be they called pillars?67 It was the disciplinary role of bishops to act as ‘shepherds’ so as to guide their ‘flock’ towards salvation in Christ.

Jewell echoes the conciliar pattern of the North African church and references Cyprian directly on this point. Jewell wrote: In old time, when the Church of God (if ye will compare it to their church) was very well governed, both elders and deacons, as saith Cyprian, and certain also of the common people, were called thereunto and made acquainted with ecclesiastical matters.68 Jewell’s ideal for conciliarism in England was a model in which bishops, priests, deacons and the laity would have a say in the decision-making processes of church governance. Through parliament and convocation the English church was echoing the conciliar nature of the early Church. Cyprian is held up as a model bishop who was an effective shepherd to his flock through his care and attention shown by his consultative practice within his diocese and his conciliar attitude towards the wider church. Through imitating individuals such as Cyprian, Christians could discern the sensus fidei and therefore uphold the apostolic tradition.69

The role of bishops as maintainers of church unity is less commonly discussed in Jewell’s works, but it is not entirely absent. An example of Cyprian’s ecclesiology can be seen in Jewell’s writings against Harding, specifically against papal supremacy: God hath other ways and means [i.e. other than papal governance] whereby he hath ever governed his church. St Cyprian saith: Ideo plures sunt in ecclesia sacerdotes, ut, uno haeresim faciente, ceteri subveniant: “Therefore there be

67 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:79. 68 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:94. 69 Paul Valliere writes the conciliarism evident in Jewell’s works is evidence of a wider decline of conciliarism in the English Reformation. While Jewell, on the one hand, ‘saw the English Church as practicing a healthy conciliarism’ through ‘the reforms approved by Parliament and Convocation in 1559’, he also expresses as scepticism towards conciliar authority. Ecclesiastical councils could and had erred. Only the first four councils met with much approval from Jewell. See Valliere, Conciliarism, 168-171. 92

many bishops in the church, that, one running into heresy, the rest may help”. And again: “The church is preserved in unity by the consent of bishops agreeing in one”. And to this end, St Hierome saith, as is before alleged: Noverini [sic] episcopi… se debere in commune ecclesia [sic] regere: “Let bishops understand that they ought to rule the church as all in one”.70 Harmonious episcopal governance and ecclesial unity, according to this statement by Jewell, are the: ‘means whereby (God) hath ever governed his church’.71 While Jewell may quote Cyprian affirmatively in this regard, Cyprianic notions of the interdependence of the episcopate or the kind of mutual love or respect that bishops should express towards one another are notably absent from his writings.

Another example of Jewell’s use of Cyprian on the subject of church unity is the final Patristic reference made within the Apologia: [We do not] eschew concord and peace, but to have peace with man we will not be at war with God... For if it should so be, as they seek to have it, that Christ should be commanded to keep silence, that the truth of the gospel should be betrayed, that horrible errors should be cloked, that Christian men’s eyes should be bleared, that they might be suffered to conspire openly against God; this were not a peace, but a most ungodly covenant of servitude… Wherefore, if the pope will have us reconciled to him, his duty is first to be reconciled to God. “For from thence,” saith Cyprian, “spring schisms and sects, because men seek not the head,72 and have not their recourse to the fountain of the scriptures, and keep not the rules given by the heavenly Teacher”. “For”, saith he, “that is not peace but war; neither is he joined unto the church, which is severed from the gospel”.73 Jewell’s understanding of the link between doctrinal truth and ecclesial unity is not presented as being two mutual exclusive categories (as if the Christians could choose either truth or unity). Rather, for Jewell there can be no true unity without true doctrine, and vice versa. The first quotation (from De Unitate) establishes a Christocentric ecclesiology as the basis for both unity and doctrinal truth within the

70 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:383. 71 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, I:383. 72 That is, Christ. 73 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:107. Without reference to context or wider theological argument, Jewell references De Unitate and De Lapsis respectively. 93

Church.74 The second quotation (from De Lapsis) challenges any false dichotomy presented between unity and truth.75 Once again, Jewell is confident that the doctrinal basis of the Church of England was in harmony with the Fathers of the Church— including Cyprian.

Through an exploration of Bishop Jewell’s extant work, his vision of an ideal episcopacy for the reformed Church of England emerges. Jewell presents his ideal of an Anglican bishop for the Elizabethan era that had emerged from out of the apparent darkness of the medieval period. In 1559, prior to his consecration as bishop, Jewell wrote to Josiah Simler of the changes that had occured within the English episcopate and the ideals Jewell aspired to himself. Simler had written to Jewell expressing his hope that the English bishops would be ‘consecrated without any superstitious and offensive ceremonies’, which Jewell interpreted as meaning ‘without oil, without chrism, without the tonsure’.76 Jewell wrote that was the case and that the ‘oily, shaven, portly hypocrites’ had been ‘sent back to Rome from whence we first imported them. For we require our bishops to be pastors, labourers, and watchmen’.77 Jewell also wrote that to aspire more closely to an apostolic and patristic model of episcopacy, bishops (as well as other clergy) should be poor, humble and lacking the superfluity and extragavance of medieval prelates.78 Lack of wealth would help bishops to better perform their office and increase their moral authority.79

Another example of Jewell’s ideal of episcopacy is given within the Apologia, in which an alleged portrayal of the lifestyle of the Roman is contrasted with an envisaged apostolic lifestyle attributed to St Peter.80 Jewell questioned how the Roman pontiff could call himself the ‘successor of Peter’ if the Pope’s lifestyle was incomparable with the Apostle Peter. Cyprian and other Patristics writers were used by Jewell as part of his polemic against Rome. They represented a broader authority that was independent of Roman supremacy. From this section, eight points can be discerned to

74 See Cyprian, De Lapsis 16.2. 75 See Cyprian, De Unitate 3.6. 76 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, IV:1221. 77 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, IV:1221. 78 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, IV:1221. 79 ‘The wealth of the bishops is now diminished and reduced to a reasonable amount, to the end, believed from that royal pomp and courtly bustle, they may with greater ease and diligence employ their leisure in attending to the flock of Christ’. Jewell, Works, IV:1221. 80 Jewell, The Works of John Jewell, III:104. 94 summarise Jewell’s ideal of episcopacy. A bishop: 1) is an evangelist and teacher; 2) is a pastor who is personally engaged with those they are called to serve; 3) places others before themselves; 4) engages others with the Scriptures in the vernacular and conduct liturgy in the vernacular; 5) interacts with other bishops as equals; 6) is humble and not carried away by pomp, ceremony or pleasure seeking; 7) is concerned primarily with spiritual matters and not temporal governance; and (characteristic of the Elizabeth settlement) 8) subjects themself to the civil authorities. Although the above eight points do not entirely match the summary of Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy from the previous chapter, Jewell was confident that his understanding of ecclesiology was in harmony with the Fathers. Jewell believed Cyprian and the Fathers would recognise their own ecclesiology in the Church of England as it was emerging in the Elizabethan period.

2.4.2. Richard Hooker (1554-1600)

Richard Hooker was born in in 1554.81 As an adult, Hooker attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford, under the patronage of Bishop Jewell. Hooker became a fellow of the college in 1577. In 1581, he left Oxford for the parish of Drayton- Beauchamp before he was appointed Master of the Temple in London in 1584. Hooker’s time as Master brought him into the midst of the central theological conflicts of his day between Archbishop Whitgift, who chose Hooker for the position, and the puritan dissidents Walter Travers, already lecturer at the Temple, and Thomas Cartwright. In 1594, Hooker was appointed to the living at Bishopsbourne in , roughly three miles from . He died there in November 1600.82

Richard Hooker’s Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity (henceforth Lawes) remains a landmark of Anglican ecclesiology.83 The Lawes are a meticulous defence of Elizabethan ecclesial polity as it had come to be established in the wake of the Henrician and Edwardian reforms and during Elizabeth’s reign. The eight volumes of the Lawes do not propose a new ecclesiological framework for the Church of England but rather seek to

81 Philip Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates 1999), 1. 82 Secor’s biography of Hooker has been relied on for the details of Hooker’s life in this section. For further biographical details see: Lee Gibbs, "Life of Hooker", in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1-26; Charles Miller, Richard Hooker and the Vision of God: Exploring the Origins of 'Anglicanism' (Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 2013), 16-26. 83 Richard Hooker, The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill, 7 volumes, (volumes 1-5, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977-90; volume 6, Binghamton: Belknap Press, 1993; volume 7, Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998). 95 theologically justify what had already been established. In contrast to Jewell’s ecclesiology, which emerges primarily out of his polemic against the Roman Catholic Church, Hooker’s expression of ecclesiology is articulated primarily against the early Non-Conformist movement. This movement believed that the work of reform remained unfinished in the Church of England. Hooker sought to correct this through a catholic yet reformed vision of ecclesiology.84 Books I-V were published during Hooker’s life, and books VI-VIII were published posthumously during the Restoration period.

Hooker’s Lawes reflect the Elizabethan ideology that all temporal and spiritual authority within England rested in the monarchy.85 Within England, parliament acted as a kind of lay synod with the processes of clerical Convocation adjoined to it, but all decisions rested with the monarch. It was in the monarch’s authority to appoint bishops, who acted as officers of the Crown and dispensed the religious duties appointed to them under the law and license of the monarch. Episcopacy was not independent of the monarchy but to be considered part of the monarch’s spiritual authority over their realm. Although the monarch was not responsible for ‘making bishops’ but only for appointing them to their sees, as the rite of ordination remained the preserve of the apostolic succession, new bishops could only be consecrated with the permission of the monarch.

Book VII of the Lawes directly addresses the theme of episcopacy. In chapters three to sixteen, Hooker supplied his theology for the authority that bishops possess. In chapters seventeen to twenty-four, Hooker concentrated on the ‘honours’ that should be given to bishops, such as lands, titles and income. This second section also contained critiques of particular episcopal behaviours. Hooker’s aim was to rebut any claims that the Elizabeth episcopate differed significantly from their ancient predecessors. Hooker wrote:

84 William Harrison, "The Church", in A Companion to Richard Hooker ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 326. 85 ‘Like Luther and Melanchthon, the English Reformers held that power of jurisdiction (as opposed to the power of order or sacramental power) derived from the prince not the pope or the apostolic succession. If the bishops’ power of jurisdiction was held from his sovereign, it became unnecessary to attempt to bolster that authority by recourse of the indispensability of episcopal ordination for a valid ministry and valid sacraments. The weight that Anglican Reformers laid on the concept of the godly prince weakened the role of the episcopate in the doctrine of Christian ministry’. Paul Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), 115. 96

For whatsoever we bring Antiquity by way of defence in this cause of Bishops, it is cast off as impertinent matter, all is wiped away with an odd kind of shifting Answer, “That the Bishops which now are, be not like unto them which were”... A Question of late hath grown, whether Ecclesiastical Regiment by Bishops be lawful in the Church of Christ or no… There is no remedy but to shew, that to be a Bishop is now the self same thing which it hath been; that one definition agreeth fully and truly as well to those elder.86 Hooker argued that while the context, appearance and particular duties might have changed, episcopacy in the sixteenth century was still essentially the same as that of the Fathers. On those grounds Hooker appealed to Patristic texts to show that episcopacy within the Established Church was still based on a pattern from antiquity.

Hooker provided a concise summary of his vision of episcopacy in light of his Patristic exegesis within the Lawes. He wrote: A Bishops function must be defined by that wherein his Chiefty consisteth. A Bishop is a Minister of God, unto whom with permanent continuance, there is given not only power of administering the Word and Sacraments, which power other Presbyters have; but also a further power to ordain Ecclesiastical persons, and a power of Chiefty in Government over Presbyters as well as Lay men, a power to be by way of jurisdiction a Pastor even to Pastors themselves. So that this Office, as he is a Presbyter or Pastor, consisteth in those things which are common unto him with other Pastors, as in ministering the Word and Sacraments: But those things incident unto his Office, which do properly make him a Bishop, cannot be common unto him with other Pastors.87 From this example, it can be shown that Hooker defines the role of the episcopate in four key areas: 1) ‘Chiefty in government’; 2) ‘Power of administering the Word and Sacraments’ (which they share with Presbyters); 3) ‘Power to ordain Ecclesiastical persons’; and 4) to be a Pastor to other Pastors. The bishops should be supported in their ministry if they were expected to carry the burdens of their office. This office by its nature is also to help carry the burdens of others. For Hooker this was not to be

86 Richard Hooker, The Folger Library edition of the works of Richard Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), VII.2.1; III:149.141-133. 87 Hooker, Lawes, VII.2.3; III:152.118-130. 97 achieved only though encouragement and prayer, but also through material and financial support. Further in this particular section, Hooker wrote that the ‘regiment’ of individual bishops was placed within one of two categories: either they were ‘at large’ or ‘with restraint… contained within some definite, local compass, beyond which compass their jurisdiction reacheth not’.88 That is, a bishop’s area of ministry ‘with restraint’ was their diocese and their diocese alone. ‘At large’ refers to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York whose jurisdiction was over a province. However, particular ‘churches’ were to be confined to national boundaries. The Archbishops had no jurisdiction beyond England, nor in Hooker’s opinion did any foreign bishops have jurisdiction within England. Hooker appealed to Patristic sources, such as Cyprian, to support this vision of episcopacy.

While the Church has the right to determine its polity over time, Hooker argued that there were historical precedents that could be reasonably considered to be better forms of polity than others. For instance, on the debates as to whether bishops should continue to be named ‘bishops’ or ‘superintendents’, Hooker concluded that the function would remain the same. Hooker calls his readers not to get caught up in debates over names.89 Continuing to name these officers ‘bishops’ contained a statement that these offers performed the same ministry as their ancient predecessors.

Hooker argues that the Church has the right to decide upon polity and to determine the functions of the orders of ministry. notes: Throughout the Lawes, Hooker assumes that communities of reasoning beings have the right to determine the shape of their political life; and indeed, because of our fallen state, they have duty to find an effective form of executive power for the restraint of vice.90 In order to create order within a society, certain persons were to be entrusted with the authority to govern others for the wellbeing of all.91 As such Hooker argued: ‘From hence have grown those different degrees of Magistrates or publique persons, even Ecclesiastical or Civil’.92 Referencing the Patristic period, Hooker argued that it was

88 Hooker, Lawes, VII.2.3; III:152.130-135. 89 Hooker, Lawes, VII.2.2; III.151.154-152.159. 90 Rowan Williams, Anglican Identities (Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 51. Emphasis Williams’. 91 Hooker, Lawes, VII.2.3; III:152.159-117. 92 Hooker, Lawes, VII.2.3; III:152.116-117. 98 those who were ‘of great learning in the Laws both Civil and of the Church’ and ‘the wisest’ that were most likely to be bishops.93 In Hooker’s mind, it is essential for bishops to be legally, as well as theologically, trained for the good governance of the Church. Hooker wrote: Yea a hard and a toilsome thing it is, for a Bishop to know the things that belong unto a Bishop. A right good man may be a very unfit Magistrate. And for discharge of a Bishop’s office, to be well minded is not enough, no not to be well learned also. Skill to instruct is a thing necessary, skill to govern much more necessary in a Bishop. It is not safe for the Church of Christ, when Bishops learn what belongeth unto Government, as Empericks learn physick by killing of the sick.94 Hooker’s idea of a bishop, fitting with the legal framework of the Lawes, is a religious magistrate.95 The role of bishop is to act as an officer of the crown with the task of maintaining the divine order of civilisation and act as an arbitrator of justice and harmony within the Church. Episcopacy fitted within Hooker’s overall theological system for a Christian society. Within that theological system, Hooker did not regard episcopacy as essential to the being, esse, of the Church. But he did consider it to be for the bene esse—wellbeing—of the Church.96 Episcopacy was not essential to Christianity but it was the best form of polity.

Hooker expresses mixed views as to whether episcopacy was instituted by Christ himself during the Incarnation or by the Apostles at a later date. Though for Hooker, regardless of the historical origins of episcopacy, it was God’s will for the Church to be so ordered. Daniel Graves notes: ‘Hooker believed that no structure of church governance was immutable, although certain forms were better than others. In particular, the episcopacy, if not divinely ordained, existed at least by divine approbation’.97 Hooker wrote approvingly of Cyprian’s maxim Ecclesia est in Episcopo: ‘It was the general received persuasion of the ancient Christian world, that Ecclesia est in Episcopo, that the outward being of a Church consisteth in the having of a Bishop’.98

93 Hooker, Lawes, VII.24.25; III:293.232-234. 94 Hooker, Lawes, VII.24.25; III:293.224-231. 95 Hooker, Lawes, VII.2.3; III:152.159-119. 96 Miller, Richard Hooker and the Vision of God, 247. 97 Daniel Graves, "Iure Divino? Four Views on the Authority of the Episcopacy in Richard Hooker," Anglican and Episcopal History 81, no. 1 (2012): 47. 98 Hooker, Lawes, VII.5.2; III:160.129-131. 99

However, because no form of polity is essential to the nature of the Church (neither belonging to a particular form of polity essential to one’s salvation), Hooker argued that episcopacy could be dispensed with if necessary.99 Hooker did not wish to unchurch the Continental Reformers by insisting on an episcopal polity or on a particular understanding of the apostolic succession. Yet Hooker certainly does not regard all forms of polity as equally good or beneficial for the life of the Church, otherwise there would be little point for the pro-episcopal arguments throughout the Lawes. Graves writes: While Hooker recognises non-episcopal orders and did not “unchurch” the reformed churches of the Continent, he must have looked at them with considerable sadness and that the abolition of the episcopacy had been in spite of God’s plan, not part of it. As such, Hooker would have seen non- episcopal churches as slightly deficient.100 Hooker writes: A thousand five hundred years and upward the Church of Christ hath now continued under the sacred of Regiment of Bishops. Neither for so long hath Christianity been ever planted in any Kingdom throughout the world but with this kind of government alone, which to have been ordained of God, I am for mine own part even as resolutely perswaded, as that any other kind of Government in the world whatsoever is of God. In this realm of England, before Normans, yea before Saxons, there being Christians, the chief Pastors of their souls were Bishops.101 Immediately prior to this, Hooker cites Cyprian’s writing that it is Christ alone ‘that doth appoint and protect Bishops’.102 Hooker also references Cyprian to rebut Puritans who think that in opposing episcopacy they are being faithful to God, instead claiming that they have been ‘beguiled’ by Satan.103

99 According to Avis, ‘The English Reformers did not regard episcopacy as essential to the life of the Church for the simple reason that they held with all the Reformers that the Church is constituted by the gospel expressed in word and sacrament: while these are necessary to salvation, any particular form of polity is not’. Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers, 116. 100 Graves, "Iure Divino?", 9. 101 Hooker, Lawes, VII.1.4; III:147.114-123. 102 Hooker, Lawes, VII.1.3; 147.113. 103 Hooker, Lawes, VII.1.3; 147:148-114. 100

As has been demonstrated, Cyprian features heavily within Hooker’s Lawes. Cyprian is the first patristic source that Hooker references to build his theology of episcopal authority.104 In Book VII, Hooker references Cyprian at 1.4, 4.1, 4.4, 5.2, 6.7, 6.8, 7.1, 8.3, 8.11, 12.1, 13.1, 13.5, 14.4, and 16.6-8 along with other references to Cyprian’s contemporaries and events during his time as bishop. Despite the familiarity with Cyprian’s works, Hooker’s use of Cyprian is not foolproof. In Book II, Hooker first cites Cyprian’s work to critique the acontextual use of him by Thomas Cartwright.105 Cartwright had cited Cyprian in support of the view that polity was to be determined by Scripture alone. Hooker quotes Cartwright’s Cyprianic quotation as: ‘The christian religion shall finde, that out of this scripture, rules of all doctrines have sproong, and that from hence doth spring and hether doth returne whatsoever the Ecclesiasticall discipline doth conteine’.106 Hooker then places Cyprian’s words back in their wider, original context with an extended quote and argues that Cyprian is writing of ‘that one principall commaundement of love’.107 However, the underlying problem of this passage in Hooker is that the quotation is not actually by Cyprian in the first place but Arnold of Bonneval in the twelfth century.108 The manuscript falsely attributed to Cyprian’s authorship De baptism Christi et manifestatione Trinitatis was included in the sixteenth and seventeenth century editions of Cyprian’s complete works. Nevertheless, this should not detract from the fact that both Hooker and Cartwright believe they are justifying their own arguments with the support of Cyprian, albeit from a spurious source.

Hooker cites Cyprian to support the view that the Apostles were the first bishops in Church history and appointed by Christ to be so, noting that ‘The first Bishops in the Church of Christ were his blessed Apostles… St. Cyprian speaking generally of them all doth call them Bishops’.109 Here, Hooker references Epistle LXIV.3.1, in which Cyprian writes to Rogatian concerning the respect owed to bishops by the lower clergy (in this particular instance, a rebellious deacon):

104 Hooker, Lawes, VII.1.3; III:147.112. 105 Hooker, Lawes, II.5.4; 1:160.169-161.168. 106 Hooker, Lawes, II.5.4; 1:160.169-112. 107 Hooker, Lawes, II.5.4; 1:160.115. 108 W. Speed Hill, ed., The Folger Library Edition of the Words of Richard Hooker: Introductions; Commentary, and Books I-IV, vol. VI Part 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), 531. 109 Hooker, Lawes, VII.4.1; III:155.117-122. 101

Deacons ought to remember that the Lord chose Apostles, that is, bishops and overseers; while the Apostles appointed for themselves deacons after the ascent of the Lord into heaven as ministers of their episcopacy and of the Church.110 On this evidence, it would seem that Hooker supports the view that not only were the Apostles the first bishops but also that Christ had appointed them to be so. Christ not only sent them out to spread the good news but also committed the governance of the Church to them. Hooker therefore argues, fitting with their Greek titles, that the ministry of the Apostles can be regarded as both apostolic and episcopal.111 Drawing on Epistle LXVIII,112 Hooker cited Cyprian’s description of bishops as: ‘Praepositos qui Apostolis vicaria ordinatione succedunt (Chief rulers who by vicarious ordination succeed to the Apostles)’.113

Hooker’s view of episcopacy defended the jure divino authority of bishops. An example of this can be seen in chapter sixteen of Book VII: In the writings of the ancient Fathers, there is not any thing with more serious asseveration inculcated, then that it is God which maketh Bishops, that their Authority hath Divine allowance, that the Bishop is the Priest of God, that he Judge in Christs stead, that according to Gods own Law, the whole Christian Fraternity standeth bound to obey him. Of this there was not in the Christian World of old any about or controversie made, it was a thing universally every where agreed upon. What should move men to judge that now so unlawful and naught, which then was so reverendly esteemed? Surely no other cause but this, men were in those times meek, lowly, tractable, willing to live in dutiful aw and subjection unto the Pastors of their souls: Now we imagine our selves so able every man to teach and direct all others, that none of us can brook it to have Superiors; and for a mask to hid our pride, we pretend falsely the Law of Christ, as if we did seek the extension of his will, when in truth we labour for the meer satisfaction of our own against his.114

110 Cyprian, Epistle LXIV.3.1. 111 Hooker, Lawes, VII.4.1; III:155.122-127. 112 Cyprian, Epistle LXVIII.4.4. 113 Hooker, Lawes, VII.4.3; III:158.159-110. 114 Hooker, Lawes, VII.16.19; III.249.225-250.212. 102

Bishops held their authority from God, as Cyprian had taught. However, that was not a licence for to abuse power. Hooker decried bishops who learnt what it was to be a bishop in manner comparative to doctors who learn medicine through killing their patients.115 Even so, to expect their leaders to be perfect just because their authority came from God was fraught. Hooker wrote: As for us over whom Christ hath placed them to be the chiefest Guides and Pastors over our souls, our common fault is, that we look for much more in our Governors then a tolerable sufficiency can yield, and bear much less, then Humanity and Reason to require we should. Too much perfection over rigorously exacted in them, cannot but breed in us perpetual discontentment, and on both parts cause all things to be unpleasant.116 To expect perfection in the episcopate could only lead to disappointment. Nevertheless, an expectation of exemplary moral conduct remained. The authority given to the episcopate was divine but it was to be exercised responsibly.

Chapters twelve and thirteen of Book VII focus on Cyprian’s experience and theology of episcopacy. Hooker outlines and critiques the Puritan conception of Cyprian’s episcopacy: A Bishop, they say, such as Cyprian doth speak of, had onely a Church or Congregation, such as the Ministers and Pastors with us, which are appointed unto several Towns. Every Bishop in Cyprians time was Pastor of one onely Congregation, assembled in one place, to be taught of one man.117 Hooker asks what evidence the Puritan cause has offered for this apparent Cyprianic ecclesiology.118 Hooker then sets about to show the variety of clergy that Cyprian had assisting him in Carthage, which is proof for Hooker that Cyprian was not the sole minister in Carthage.119 Cyprian as the bishop was supported in his ministry by other ordained persons, over whom Cyprian had oversight. Hooker saw this as evidence in Cyprian’s writings that bishops were not equal to all other clergy in Carthage, and that a distinction of order had been made. As such, Hooker argued that Cyprian could not be called on to defend a presbyterian form of polity.

115 Hooker, Lawes, VII.24.25; III:293.224-231. 116 Hooker, Lawes, VII.24.16; III:301.302-308. 117 Hooker, Lawes, VII.13.12; III:213.230-214.215. 118 Hooker, Lawes, VII.13.12; III:214.215-221. 119 Hooker, Lawes, VII.13.12; III:214.219-215.223. 103

Writing on the imparity of holy orders, Hooker cited Cyprian’s Epistle XXXII.120 Cyprian indicates in this letter that while it was his personal policy to consult the clergy and laity before ordaining any candidate, it was ultimately his prerogative as the bishop. As such, Aurelius had been ordained as a reader by Cyprian while still in exile and Cyprian wrote afterwards to inform the church in Carthage of his action. If the decision to ordain is ultimately within a bishop’s prerogative then they cannot be said to have equal powers with that of presbyters. Therefore, if there was imparity between Cyprian and his clergy then Hooker’s opponents could not claim that there was no imparity in the early Church.

Building on this argument, Hooker also saw a Patristic precedent for an adaptive approach to ecclesiology. While there were general norms within Church practice (such as Cyprian’s norm to always consult before ordaining), the ancient Christians considered themselves capable of changing or breaking from the norm if the circumstances called for it (for instance, Cyprian considered Aurelius worthy and had the right to ordain him if he so chose).121 If the early Church in Africa had the power to create norms and divert from them when it believed necessary, then the Church of England had the right to do the same.122 The patterns of church polity exhibited within Patristic sources were not immutable laws to be copied acontextually.123 As such, the English episcopate could adapt the social and ecclesiastical reforms within the realm without destroying the same sense of episcopacy that had been modelled by the Fathers, including Cyprian.

In summary, Hooker cites Cyprian on a variety of subjects regarding the office and nature of episcopacy. Like Jewell, Hooker was not creating a new ecclesiological proposal for the Church of England but providing a theological framework for the already established Church. Hooker’s Lawes supply a theological framework for a Christian society under God who empowers both Crown and Episcopate. Church and State are entwined within this system and so bishops are as much officers of the state as they are spiritual authorities independent of it. Hooker’s vision provides a cohesive vision, but it is one that requires all members of a society to be part of an Established

120 Hooker, Lawes, VII.14.14; III:220.215. 121 Hooker, Lawes, VII.14.14; III:220.215. 122 Hooker, Lawes, VII.14.14; III:220.215. 123 Hooker, Lawes, VII.14.3; III:220.4-12. 104 church. This vision does not allow for pluralism. There should only be one church to provide a cohesive social fabric. Bishops were guardians of the faith and the unity of the Church (and therefore social cohesion under the monarchy). Episcopacy was the ancient polity of the church, exhibited by all orthodox expressions of Christians until the Continental Reformation. Those reformed Churches that lacked episcopacy were now flawed, although not invalid. The Romanists continued their episcopal polity but their theology was flawed. Hooker expresses a reluctance to ‘unchurch’ his opponents. The kind of episcopacy presented by Cyprian was for the wellbeing of the Church, even if it was not necessarily essential for salvation. Cyprian supported an imparity of orders and iure divino of the episcopate founded on the apostolic succession. Cyprian showed that the catholic faith was not dependent on Roman authority. Like Jewell, Hooker could use Cyprian’s theology against Roman claims. However, unlike Jewell, Hooker is reluctant to ‘unchurch’ the continental Roman Catholics. Roman bishops were still valid bishops, even if their theology was questionable. Although this legitimacy did not provide automatic jurisdiction within the England. That legitimacy was based on the divinely appointed monarch.

Hooker’s appeal to antiquity and use of the early Church Father, according to Louma, ‘represents a real advance in patristic scholarship’.124 Louma notes that Hooker uses the Fathers ‘consistently and critically’ and understands their importance as ‘revered, but… revered as part of a continuing consensus’.125 Cyprian’s theology is included within Hooker’s own theological magnum opus amongst a catena of other Patristic authors. Like Jewell, Hooker’s reliance on Cyprian is as an ancient authority who bolstered Anglican claims against non-conformists. Hooker engages with the Fathers more critically than Jewell but nevertheless uses these authors to reinforce his vision of episcopacy and the Royal Supremacy. Hooker’s use of Cyprian may have been better than his opponents, but Hooker’s ecclesiology was not an exact match of Cyprian’s ecclesiology.

124 John Louma, "Who owns the Fathers? Hooker and Cartwright on the Authority of the Primitive Church," Sixteenth Century Journal VIII, no. 3 (1977): 59. 125 Louma, "Who owns the Fathers?", 59. 105

2.4.3. William Laud (1573-1645)

William Laud was born in Berkshire in 1573 was ordained in 1601. In 1608, Laud became a Doctor of Divinity, defending a thesis that episcopacy is a distinct order, separate and superior to priests/presbyters, and that only a bishop had the authority to ordain.126 This caused considerable controversy, as it brought into question the validity of Protestant ministry on the Continent. In 1621, Laud was consecrated as the , and in 1626 he was translated to Bath and Wells. In 1628, Charles I appointed him as the , and in 1633 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud was elected the Chancellor of Oxford University in 1630, a position he held concurrently in London and Canterbury. In 1641, having sided with the king during the Civil War, Laud was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. After four years in prison, Laud was executed by the Long Parliament for treason at the age of 71. Laud is the last Archbishop of Canterbury to have been executed for his religious and political beliefs in the history of the Church of England.127

A figure of controversy, Laud’s views on episcopacy are important for this thesis, as he is another significant figure from this period who appealed to Cyprian within his ecclesiology.128 Laud’s ecclesiology would itself be appealed to during the Restoration period. Peter Heylyn entitled his biography of Laud Cyprianus Anglicus – ‘The English Cyprian’. In this biography, Laud’s life is presented as analogous to Cyprian’s in so much as they were both ‘archbishops’, both faced opposition from schismatics, and both were beheaded for their beliefs. Heylyn recorded that Laud made reference to Cyprian’s martyrdom in his final speech prior to his execution.129 Laud is depicted by Heylyn as a contemporary Cyprianic-type striving for order and unity within the Church. Modern

126 Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 151. 127 For further biographical details see: Edward Christopher Eugene Bourne, The Anglicanism of William Laud (London: SPCK, 1947); Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London: Routledge 1987); Hugh Ross Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud: 1573-1647, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1962). 128 William Laud, The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D., sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 volumes (vol. 1-2 ed. William Scott; vol. 3-7 ed. James Bliss; Parker Society editions, Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1849-50). 129 Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus anglicus: or, The history of the life and death, of the most reverend and renowned prelate William by divine providence, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Metropolitan, chancellor of the Universities of Oxon. and , and one of the Lords of the Privy Council to His late Most Sacred Majesty King Charles the First, second Monarch of Great Britain: Containing also the ecclesiastical history of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from his first rising till his death (London, 1671), 498. 106 biographies, however, are far less hagiographical. Unlike Cyprian, there was little public affection for this martyred archbishop.

The model of episcopacy found in Laud, and his later followers, was based upon an appeal to the Fathers. For Laud, the Fathers were necessary for an accurate interpretation of the Scriptures.130 Laud argued that episcopacy has been instituted by Christ himself when He chose (‘ordained’) the twelve Apostle from amongst the seventy disciples.131 Laud wrote: ‘Episcopacy is an ancient, holy and divine institution’.132 It was not simply ‘human device to avoid schism’ through accountability to a single leader.133

Laud argued for the disparity of holy orders – that is, that bishops were not super presbyters with jurisdiction over other presbyters but were a distinct order of ministry. Bishops and presbyters were distinct ontologically not merely functionally. This is made clear within his writings against the Puritan movement in the mid-seventeenth century. In his opinion, episcopacy was a separate order from presbyters instituted by Christ (iure divino), not a human distinction made between different forms of ministry by the one order (iure positivo).134 Laud explains this with reference to , archpresbyters, and archbishops. All these may be superior to other clergy by degree in the undertaking of their ministry, but none of them are ordained into a new order.135 Archbishops oversee other bishops because of their jurisdiction, but they are nevertheless diocesan bishops.136 Laud wrote that being a bishop was not a ‘title of honour’ nor was it ‘the same calling with a priest’.137 Laud pointed towards an ontological difference between a bishop and the other orders. He gives the particular example of the power to excommunicate which is a ‘power’ unique to episcopacy and not shared with other clergy.138

For Laud, the office of a bishop meant that incumbents must not only study and preach but also strive to maintain justice and discipline,139 have ‘the care of

130 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II, 336-386. 131 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:172. 132 Laud, Letter CLXXVII, The Works of William Laud, VI/2, 573. 133 Laud, The Works of William Laud VI/1:171-73. 134 Laud, Letter CLXXVII, The Works of William Laud, VI/2, 573. 135 Laud, Letter CLXXVIII, The Works of William Laud, VI/2, 577. 136 Laud, Letter CLXXVIII, The Works of William Laud, VI/2, 577. 137 Laud, Letter CLXXVII, The Works of William Laud, VI/2, 575. 138 Laud, Letter CLXXVII, The Works of William Laud, VI/2, 573. 139 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:193. 107 government’,140 and be a ‘shepherd’.141 On the pastoral nature of the episcopate, Laud wrote: For a shepherd must guide, govern, and defend his sheep in the pasture as well as drive them to it. And he must see that their pasture be not tainted too, or else they will not thrive upon it. And then he mabe answerable for the rot that falls among them.142 This definition of episcopacy was made in reply to a speech by William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Seal, in 1641.143 Lord Saye had said that preaching (and studying in order to preach) should be the sole activity of the episcopate and was a sufficient task in and of itself to require all of a bishop’s time.144 As such, they could not seek or obtain any other offices of state without it being to the detriment of their preaching ministry. Laud agreed with Saye’s statement that bishops ‘are called unto a special work’ but disagreed with Saye’s definition of the nature of that ‘special work’.145 Laud stated that the idea that the role of episcopate was to split their time between their study and the was a severely short-sighted view of episcopacy and that Saye’s use of Scriptural references on this argument had been misinterpreted.146

Laud conceded that a bishop should not ‘meddle’ to the extent that they neglect their pastoral responsibilities.147 However, if the monarch requested a member of the clergy to perform a certain task or accept a particular office there was nothing illegal about such an action. Laud believed these duties could be performed by bishops without neglecting their spiritual duties.148 Laud argued that he did not know of ‘any designs of State which are made worse by religion; or any counsels of Princes hurt by being communicated with bishops’.149 The civic responsibilities of of Milan and Augustine of Hippo are referenced as patristic precedents for his reasoning.150 Laud argued that there was biblical precedent that bishops could be involved in civil

140 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:193. 141 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:194. 142 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:194. 143 This treatise was written while Laud was imprisoned in the Tower. 144 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:189-90. 145 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:179. 146 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:183-96. 147 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:181 148 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:177. 149 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:200. 150 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:178. 108 administration when called upon by their monarch to do so.151 Laud agreed with Lord Saye that bishops should not ‘seek office’, for seeking power over others was contrary to the ordained calling to serve. A bishop may ‘lawfully meddle with some temporal affairs, (always provided that he entangle not himself with them)’.152

Laud argued that the ecclesiology of the early Church offered a distinct vision of episcopal ministry. Laud wrote: The Church being as large as the world, Christ thought it fitter to govern it aristocratically – by divers, rather than be one viceroy. And I believe this true; for all the time of the first three hundred years, and somewhat better, it was governed aristocratically, if we will impartially consider, how the bishops of those times carried the whole business of admitting any new consecrated bishops or others to, or rejecting them from, their communion.153 Laud used Cyprian to validate expressions of autonomous episcopal authority by seventeenth century bishops. This can be seen later within the same text: The ancient canons and fathers of the Church seem to me plain for this, for the Council of Antioch submits ecclesiastical causes to the bishops. And what was done amiss by a bishop, was corrigible by a synod of bishops, but this with the metropolitan. And in case these did not agree, the metropolitan might call in other bishops out of the neighbouring provinces. And if things settled not this way, a General Council, under the Scripture, and directed by it, was the highest remedy. And S. Cyprian, even to Pope Cornelius himself, says plainly, that “to every bishop is ascribed a portion of the flock for him to govern”. And so not all committed to one. In all this the government of the Church seems plainly aristocratical.154

151 Laud references the Levitical code regarding the obligations of the Jewish people to adhere to the judgements of the priests, in a similar fashion to Cyprian’s use of the Levitical code. See Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:150-171. 152 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/1:181. Laud argued that speaking in parliament or giving advice to the monarch might in itself be a form of preaching if Christian principles and virtues were thereby proclaimed through it. Bishops (or other clergy) speaking in parliament might ensure that the decisions of parliament were aligned to Scripture and the laws of the state were in harmony with the teachings of the Church. Laud concluded that the episcopal mandate to preach the gospel could be achieved through civil involvement. 153 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:222. 154 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:224. 109

Laud argued that Cyprian’s ecclesiology provided ancient precedent against both Papal governance and the polity of the non-conformists. Key to understanding Laud’s use of Cyprian is that he believed it validated ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’. Laud’s own expression of episcopal authority—whether that was liturgical reforms or use of the Court of Star Chamber—was built upon an ecclesiological precedent he interpreted from the Fathers.

Ideas of episcopal autonomy in Cyprian’s writings went against Roman supremacy. This is demonstrated in writings against .155 Published in 1624, True Relations of Sundry Conferences between certain Protestant doctors, and a Jesuit called Mr Fisher address several issues relating to Roman supremacy and infallibility. Cyprian is the first historical writer debated in the Conference over the issue of papal authority. 156 Evidently, both Laud and Fisher believed that Cyprian provided grounds for their respective arguments regarding papal authority. Fisher is quoted as having paraphrased the words of Cyprian to Cornelius in Epistle LIV: ‘That the Romans are such, as to whom perfidia cannot have access’, as a historic precedent for asserting the infallibility of the Roman pontiff since the time of the early Church.157 Laud countered Fisher’s argument by providing a detailed analysis of the context out which the letter was written.158 Schismatics from Carthage had attempted to attain recognition from Cornelius and so support their legitimacy. Cornelius refused and wrote to Cyprian for an explanation. Cyprian in return had written that these schismatics had failed to realise that the audience they sought was from ‘Romans whose faith was praised in the preaching of the apostle, to whom faithlessness could have no access’.159 Cornelius had refused to see the schismatics and therefore ‘faithlessness had no access’. To claim that this sentence in Cyprian was an assertion to was to wildly misrepresent Cyprian’s views and the letter itself. Laud wrote: S. Cyprian had no meaning to assert the unerring infallibility of either Pope or Church of Rome. For this is more than manifest by contestation which after

155 An alias for John Percy, who at that time was employed by the household of the Duke of Buckingham. 156 Chapman writes that ‘the Conference begins and ends with a lengthy exposition of St Cyprian’. This is only partly true, as there is a large summative section that follows on from the final discussion of Cyprian, in which Augustine of Hippo, Irenaeus of Lyon and Vincent of Lérins are discussed. Chapman’s comment, however, highlights the importance of Cyprian within this text. See Laud, The Works of William Laud, II.413-429; Chapman, "Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation", 37. 157 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:5. 158 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:5-8. 159 Cyprian, Epistle LIV.14.2. 110

happened between S. Cyprian and Pope Stephen, about the rebaptisation of those that were baptised by heretics… I hope this is plain enough to show, that S. Cyprian had no great opinion of Roman infallibility: or if he had it when he writ to Cornelius, certainly he had changed it when he wrote against Stephen. But I think there was no change; and that, when he wrote to Cornelius, it was rhetoric, and no more.160 In addition to this point, within this section of the Conference, Laud commented on the baptism controversy between Cyprian and Stephen. Laud argued that because Pope Stephen had been determined to be right by the wider Church, did not ipso facto mean that Cyprian’s opinion on Roman infallibility had altered.161 Cyprian’s personal opposition, along with wider opposition, to Stephen was proof that Cyprian and his contemporaries believed that the Roman bishop was capable of doctrinal error.

Another example of how Laud used Cyprian to counter claims for a Roman supremacy is demonstrated in his discussion of Epistle XLIV. Laud concentrated on Cyprian’s phrase in this letter, ‘the root and matrix of the Catholic Church’.162 Again, the Romanists had claimed that Cyprian, in writing to Cornelius, was referring exclusively to the Roman church. Laud immediately clarified that Cyprian ‘names not Rome’ but that this was reference made in the margins of the 1530 Basel edition of Cyprian’s texts.163 In 251, while Cyprian had been visiting Adrumetum, the Adrumetine clergy had defied protocol and written directly to the Roman clergy concerning the Novatianist schism in Rome. Not only had they bypassed their own bishop, Polycarp, but also Cornelius as the bishop of Rome. As seen in the first chapter of this thesis, the episcopate was viewed as the conduit for communication between different parts of the church. Good communication between the bishops and respect for their office was crucial for church unity. Cornelius seems to have believed Cyprian was behind the actions of the Adrumetine clergy and demanded an explanation.164 Was Cyprian implying that Cornelius was not the actual bishop of Rome? Cyprian wrote in return that he upheld Cornelius’ legitimacy and was telling others to do the same. As such, Cyprian

160 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:8. 161 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:8-9. This theory supposes that Cyprian had believed in papal infallibility before his falling out with Stephen and so revised his opinion. This theory accounted for the textual variations of De Unitate. 162 Cyprian, Epistle XLIV.3.2. 163 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:404 fn. s. 164 Cyprian, Epistle XLIV.1-2. 111 wrote ‘We have exhorted them to acknowledge and hold the root and matrix of the Catholic Church’.165 Additionally, Laud noted epistle LXI, where again Cyprian wrote to Cornelius, complaining that Caldonius and Fortunatus had strived to: ‘Bring the members of the divided body into the unity of the Catholic Church’.166 Nonetheless, these schismatics ‘rejected the bosom and the embrace of [their] root and Mother’.167 Therefore, Laud concluded that the Romanists had misinterpreted the text for the ‘root and matrix’ was not the bishop of Rome but the entire Church. The Catholic Church is more than just Rome. Laud wrote: Lastly, besides this out of S. Cyprian, to prove his own meaning – and sure he is the best interpreter of himself, —and other assisting proofs, it is most evident that in the prime and principle sense, the Catholic Church and her unity is the “head, root, or matrix” of Rome, and all other particular churches, and not Rome, or any other particular, the head, root, or matrix of it.168 It is this understanding of ecclesial universals and particulars that is the basis of Laud’s understanding of provincial autonomy and the authority of church councils.169

Laud equates Cyprian’s ecclesiology as the iure divino structure of the pre- Constantinian Church. Cyprian is named specifically as giving witness to the ‘original’ form of episcopacy to which later developments might be compared. Laud contended that the temporal power of the Papacy grew over the medieval period. However, temporal power was not to be equated with spiritual power. Laud argued that the Papacy had increased its influence of the Western Church ‘under the emperors, after they became Christian’.170 But, Laud insisted, this temporal influence is not iure divino. Therefore, the whole Church should not considered itself as subject to Rome.171

Laud argued that the imperial adoption of Christianity by Constantine ensured ‘better order’ for the Church and protected it from persecution. This Erastian form of polity, where the Church was harmonious with the Crown, was beneficial for both parties. Episcopal polity was universally accepted within the Constantinian church as ‘it

165 Cyprian, Epistle XLIV.3.2. 166 Cyprian, Epistle XLI.1.1; see also Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:407. 167 Cyprian, Epistle XLI.1.2; see also Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:408. 168 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:410. 169 Chapman writes that Laud’s arguments for provincial autonomy rest on ‘the Platonic conception of universals and particulars’. Chapman, "Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation", 38. 170 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:185-6. 171 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:186. 112 had not been to that time contradicted by any’.172 Nonetheless, episcopacy changed under Imperial governance and the foundations for Papal supremacy were laid. Laud wrote: It was thought fit, therefore – though as S. Cyprian speaks, episcopatus unus est, “the calling of a bishop be one and the same,” that yet among bishops there should be certain subordination and subjection. The empire, therefore, being cast into several divisions, which they then called dioceses, every diocese contained several provinces, every province several bishoprics. The chief of a diocese, in that larger sense, was called ἔξαρχος, and sometimes a patriarch; the chief of a province, a metropolitan. Next, the bishops in their several dioceses, as we now use that word. Among these there was effectual subjection, respectively ground upon and positive law, in their several quarters; but over them none at all: all the difference there was but honorary, not authoritative. If the ambition of some particular persons did attempt now and then to break these bounds, it is no marvel; for no calling sanctify all that have it.173 Laud’s translation of episcopatus unus est as ‘the calling of a bishop be one and the same’ is, of course, a mistranslation of ‘the episcopate is one’ from De Unitate. It appears that Laud appropriated Cyprian to fit with his argument of the disparity of orders in this passage. However, Laud’s sense of a distinct change during the Constantinian era from episcopal equality to a hierarchy of patriarchs, archbishops, bishops and other clergy in different parts of the Church, remains in line with Cyprian’s view of episcopacy.

For Laud, the provincial autonomy of the English Church could be based upon historic precedent found in Cyprian’s writings. Laud seems to have regarded the archbishopric of Canterbury as a ‘patriarchate’ equal to that of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch or any other—including Carthage. Laud’s conception of Cyprian was that he was not the bishop of Carthage but the archbishop of Carthage, equal in order and prestige to Rome. In his speech on the scaffold, Laud specifically referred to Cyprian as an archbishop.174 Episcopal equality was the equality of patriarchs and archbishops. Laud saw the deference paid to Cyprian by North African councils of the period, the fact

172 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:194-196. 173 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:194-196. 174 Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 498. 113 that these councils were held in Carthage (suggesting they were summoned by Cyprian) and the equality expressed between Cyprian and Cornelius of Rome as evidence of this view. Laud argued that while the concept of an archbishop may belong to a later period it could justifiably be used to describe the nature of Cyprian’s office as subsequent bishops of Carthage in the imperial period would be titled as archbishops.175 The nature of Cyprian’s office was superior iure postivo to the North African episcopate.

Cyprian’s jurisdiction was contained to North Africa. Here lies Laud’s specific appeal to Cyprian on the matter of provincial autonomy: if the archbishop of Carthage was equal to the archbishop of Rome, then he as the archbishop of Canterbury was equal to the pope. As such, the pope had no jurisdictional rights over Canterbury or the English clergy. All English clergy were accountable to the historic see of Canterbury, which Laud argued had been founded as a patriarchate.176 Patriarchs, archbishops and bishops may all have belonged to the same order, but in Laud’s opinion all English bishops were accountable to the see of Canterbury.177

Laud appealed to Cyprian as a historical figure who was dedicated to conciliar practice within an autonomous province. For Laud, however, Cyprian could also be used as a historic precedent that bishops and the councils they presided over could err.178 Cyprian’s stance on the baptism of heretics was upheld by provincial councils and then later condemned by a general church council. Chapman writes: For Laud, the example of Cyprian is used to show that the authority of councils derives from the practical need to settle disputes, and since Cyprian himself was proved wrong by subsequent church history, this showed that all such authority was ad hoc and provisional, and most importantly always deferred to Scripture.179 As such, the Church of England had a right to determine its own life without oversight from beyond its borders. For Laud, the Church of England was more faithful to the Fathers than Roman Catholicism and so had the better claim to true catholicity. Laud wrote:

175 William Laud, The Private Devotions of Dr. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr, ed. Frederic Faber (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1838), 225. 176 Laud, The Works of William Laud, VI/2:190. 177 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:196. 178 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:270. 179 Chapman, "Cyprianus Anglicus: St Cyprian in Anglican Interpretation", 39-40. 114

I am infallibly assured of my , the tradition of the Church inducing, and the Scriptures confirming it. And I believe both Scripture and Creed, in the same uncorrupted sense which the primitive Church believed them; and am sure that I do so believe them, because I cross not in my belief anything delivered by the primitive Church. And this, again, I am sure of, because I take the belief of the primitive Church, as it is expressed and delivered by the Councils and ancient Fathers of those times.180 While the Church of England was not to be considered infallible, if the church were to continue to base its life on historic figures like Cyprian then it would prove superior to Rome. As the English Church was autonomous from the control of any outside bishop or patriarch, it had responsibility to govern its own pattern of life and ministry.181

On the subject of church unity, Laud again references Cyprian. In a sermon preached at the opening of Charles I’s third parliament in 1628, Laud endeavoured to demonstrate the importance of ecclesial unity for the national church. Ephesians 4:3 is the basis of the sermon and nineteen references are made to various patristic sources: Augustine (five),182 Basil (one),183 Chrysostom (four),184 Gregory (one),185 Hilary (one),186 Ignatius (one),187 Isidore (one),188 Jerome (four)189 and Theophylact (one).190 As can be seen, Cyprian is never cited in this sermon on unity. Nevertheless, there are definite echoes of Cyprian’s ecclesiology within the text. An example of this follows: “Keep unity”. Why, but what needs that? Will not “unity keep” itself? It is true, “unity” is very apt to hand together. It proceeds from charity, which is the glue of the Spirit, not severed without violence. Yea, but for all this, it needs “keeping”. In the Church it needs “keeping”; and therefore the prophets and governors of the Church are called custodies [sic], “keepers”, “watchmen”, and “overseers”. And they must watch as well over her peace, as her truth. And

180 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:367. 181 Laud, The Works of William Laud, II:168. 182 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:160, 162, 164, 170, 172. 183 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:164. 184 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:160, 168, 170, 179. 185 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:163. 186 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:164. 187 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:177. 188 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:166. 189 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:157, 166, 174-5. 190 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:164. 115

yet there are so many that scatter the tares of schism and heresy, that her “unity” is not “kept”.191 In this passage alone, Laud used the same language of Cyprian (both referencing scripture) that the unity of the Church ‘proceeds from charity… is the glue of the Spirit’ and that bishops are charged with maintaining the unity of the Church. Further in this sermon, Laud used the Cyprianic metaphor of the ‘coat of Christ’ as a metaphor for the Church’s unity which some seek to ‘rent’.192

Laud’s ecclesiological legacy proved more controversial than Jewell or Hooker. Laud used Cyprian to defend his ecclesiastical authority over the Church. Laud’s desire for ecclesial conformity was borne out of his determination not to compromise theological rigour for political expediency. However, Laud was immensely unpopular. The idea that his views on episcopacy had widespread appeal are hagiographical. Bishops like were willing to negotiate with the Non-Conformists and move away from the episcopal model that Laud championed. His authoritarian approach dissuaded the English populace of his views and did not endear them towards episcopal polity. Those describing themselves as ‘Laudians’, such as and Peter Heylyn, would come to see Laud as the ‘English Cyprian’, dying as martyr for trying to maintain order and unity within the Church in the face of schism. Others portrayed him as an ecclesiastical tyrant. While Laud’s reputation at the time was scandalous, Jewell, Hooker and Laud were all held in esteem in later periods. In the nineteenth century, there was a deliberate effort by Tractarians to emphasise the importance of the ‘Laudian’ party for an Anglican understanding of Episcopacy. This in turn was reacted against by more liberal or evangelical clergy.

2.5. Conclusion

It has been demonstrated that the Anglican establishment felt confident that they were preserving the episcopate that had adapted its practice but had not abandoned core theological principals. Once again, an adaptive approach to episcopacy stemming from Cyprian’s writings is evident. The nascent Anglican theologians and bishops were confident that their reformed polity had precedent in the Fathers. This was theological justification after the fact, for the Anglican episcopate of the sixteenth and seventeenth

191 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:167. 192 Laud, The Works of William Laud, I:168. 116 century was not completely aligned with a Cyprianic ecclesiology as it is presented in Cyprian’s own writings. Allen Brent’s assertion that the sixteenth century Church of England sought to re-establish Cyprianic ecclesiology de nouo is evidently unfounded.193 Henry VIII and his bishops did not sit down with the Cyprianic corpus and decide to reform the English Church on that basis. Nonetheless, writers like Jewell, Hooker and Laud found utility in appealing to Cyprian’s writings to justify the polity of the Church of England as it had become. All three used Cyprian within their definition of episcopacy pointing towards the catholic inheritance of the Church of England as the episcopate was reformed of alleged medieval excesses.

Each of the three authors used as case studies in this chapter used Cyprian in different ways, even if their conclusions were reasonably similar. Cyprian proved useful as an ancient resource who provided a vision of episcopacy that was independent of Rome. All three agreed that Cyprian’s writings clearly advocated for episcopal equality and provincial autonomy. In Laud’s writings this took the distinctive form of archepiscopal equality. The three writers agreed that the episcopate received its authority from God and that the English Church had maintained the apostolic succession. This succession was defined as the transmission of authority by the laying on of hands down the centuries. Apostolic succession was also tied with the faithful transmission of the apostolic tradition.

While some of the structural markers of Cyprian’s ecclesiology are evident within Anglican writers of this period, there was no direct appeal to Cyprian on how bishops should actually exercise their ministry. While all three advocated for unity within the Church, Cyprian’s conception of love and the unity of the Church is absent. New emphasis was placed on the pastoral and teaching roles of the episcopate. In contrast, the priestly nature of episcopacy was less emphasised. Bishops continued to have an administrative role within their dioceses but significant parts of that role were usually handled by intermediaries such as archdeacons. The disciplinary role of the episcopate remained intact. Cyprian’s conception of episcopacy could have been more broadly appealed to than just how the Church of England and the wider Church might be structured. His writings would also have helped bishops understand the nature of

193 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 329. 117 their office and how to live out that ministry. This deficiency would continue in the ongoing reception of Cyprian’s ideas over centuries.

There were problems in the reception of Cyprian’s ecclesiology. Patristic sources were often used sporadically or as proof-texts to add theological backing to a preconceived argument.194 The bishops could not be said to have been ‘answerable to God alone’—they were answerable to the monarchy and employed as agents of the Crown’s authority. Bishops were still understood to be symbols of unity, but without the theme of love and mutual respect that is found in Cyprian’s writings. Bishops may not have continued the pluralism or absenteeism of the previous era, but they were still largely absent from the daily interactions of most of the people charged to their care just like their medieval predecessors. The Anglican hierarchy pushed away from notions of a reduced episcopacy in which episcopacy would be reduced to a parochial size. This often resulted in an opposite extreme in which the episcopate was continually distant and an elite stratum of management. The conciliatory model found in Cyprian was also received but to varying effects. Cyprian’s writings were used to defend the Church of England’s ability to call its own councils under the authority of their prince. While a reduced convocation continued to meet, Ussher’s proposals for a blend of episcopal leadership with synodical governance were rejected. A closer study of Cyprian’s writings would allow for these errors to be corrected.

Studying the entire period of 1533 to 1662 is necessary to comprehend the beginnings of a distinctively Anglican understanding of episcopacy. This was a slow evolution that was buffeted by various ideological winds. At no point could it be considered ‘settled’ during this period. However, the bishops carried on. In each generation those on the episcopal bench sought to live out their episcopal ministry in the context. Theologians like Jewell, Hooker and Laud thought Patristic sources would offer them ancient principals for a faithful exercise of that ministry. These significant and influential Anglican writers believed that Cyprian’s ecclesiology supported their own and that their ecclesiology could legitimately be traced back to his ideas. They believed that Cyprian offered a vision of episcopacy that could be adhered to as the bishops adapted their ministry within their context.

194 Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 96. 118

Now that is that been firmly demonstrated that Cyprian is a Patristic writer that Anglicans have appealed to in the past, the next chapter will explore how the Anglican church in Australia came to be what it is today. 119

Chapter Three

The development of the Anglican Episcopate in Australia

3.1. Introduction

On the surface, the Anglican Church of Australia appears to contain some of the Cyprianic ecclesiological markers that have been explored so far: a high degree of diocesan autonomy, a general equality amongst its diocesan bishops, an emphasis on synodical governance, diversity within its united structure and a belief that it has the ability to manage its own affairs and to maintain links with other churches, including other Anglican provinces.

How did these Cyprianic ‘markers’ develop? Was a Cyprianic vision proposed by one or more the early bishops that resulted in the structures of the Australian Church as they are today? Did the new Australian episcopate adapt to the context they found themselves in? If it did, in what ways? How did the new Australian Anglicans express their understanding of the role and authority of a bishop within the Australian setting?

To investigate these questions, this chapter will explore seven key moments within Australian Anglican church history from 1788 (the date of White Colonisation) to 1962 (the adoption of a constitution for the Anglican Church of Australia): 1) the ministry of Bishop Broughton; 2) the changing dynamics of episcopacy as multiple dioceses were established; 3) the rise of synodical governance in the Australian context; 4) the legal cases that led to the withdrawal of Crown appointments in the colonies; 5) the development of the Lambeth Conferences and global identity for bishops as part of a worldwide Anglican Communion; 6) the continuing problems as to the legal basis of episcopal ministry in Australia; and 7) the eventual agreement of a national constitution for an autonomous Anglican church in Australia. Each of these has had a profound impact upon how bishops perform their ministry and understand their own office and authority in Australia and provides crucial background for understanding the challenges faced by the Australian Anglican episcopate today.

3.2. Ministry under the Diocese of Calcutta

The church first came to Australia’s shores with the first European explorers and then with the British settlement of the east coast. With that settlement were not only lay 120

Christians (largely either prisoners or their gaolers) but also ordained chaplains. Between 1788 and 1820, twelve chaplains were appointed to the British colonies on the Australian mainland along with two to Van Diemen’s Land. These were paid for by the crown along with land grants for their maintenance and the building of churches.1 The chaplains were crown appointments and were directly responsible to the governor until 1800.2 All were trained and ordained in England and then appointed to the Antipodes under the licence of the Bishop of London.3 In 1800, a senior chaplain was appointed and all other chaplains reported to the Governor of New South Wales through him.4 While these early Australian chaplains are most often associated with penal chaplaincy, Michael Gladwin notes that chaplains were also appointed to ‘the military, bishops, orphanages, orphan schools, quarantine stations, hospitals, dispensaries, Magdalen hospitals, asylums, emigrants (on ships and in cities), private incorporated companies and even cemeteries’.5 A diversified ministry took place within the Australian territories during this period and all of it through state and independently funded enterprises. In 1813, the Diocese of Calcutta was created with Thomas Middleton as the inaugural bishop. The territory covered by the diocese not only covered the area around Calcutta itself on the Indian subcontinent, but all British territories east of Calcutta as well.

The jurisdiction of the Bishop of London in the colony changed after 1824 with the arrival of Thomas Hobbes Scott as the first of New South Wales. All of Australia and New Zealand constituted a single archdeaconry within the Diocese of Calcutta. The relationship between Australia and India was tenuous because of the enormous distance. Whatever Cyprianic precedent there may be for ruling at a distance when necessary, the authority of the Bishops of Calcutta over the Australian colonies was nominal at best. During this period, no bishop visited the Australian mainland or Tasmania.6

1 Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire c.1700-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 224. 2 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 37. 3 ‘Prior to 1784, clergy had been appointed by the bishop of London and remained under his spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction (by custom ever since an early bishop of London had been a member of the Virginia Company of London)’. Michael Gladwin, Anglican Clergy in Australia 1788-1850: Building a British World (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), 19. 4 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 37. 5 Gladwin, Anglican Clergy in Australia 1788-1850, 22-23. 6 The first four bishops of Calcutta all served relatively short periods and all died in office. The writings of Herber (the second bishop of Calcutta) note that he was planning an Australian visitation. See 121

The letters patent that established Scott as Archdeacon gave him complete authority to appoint clergy within the colony and control of church property and clerical stipends.7 Fitting with the time, the archdeacon had his own ecclesiastical court and all schools in the colony were also responsible to him. Within the colonial establishment, Scott was legally the third-ranking official in the colony (after the Governor and Lieutenant Governor) and sat ex officio on the executive and legislative councils of the colony. As such, the Archdeacon of Australia, by legal requirement, was at the heart of the colonial government along with the governor.8 Being paid with crown monies and with executive and legislative authority, this was the closest that the Anglican church in Australia ever came to formal establishment within its history. This did not last long. The newly established newspapers in the colony were highly critical of the privileges of the English ancien regime and Archdeacon Scott was the subject of public scrutiny by his opponents. He clashed politically with Governor Darling and, as he was not a ‘party man’, he did not align with the views of many of the evangelical clergy in the colony. Scott’s experience of ministry in the colony made him miserable and after four years, he returned to parish ministry in England. William Grant Broughton was appointed as Scott’s successor.9

3.3. William Grant Broughton – the first and last Bishop of Australia

As the new Archdeacon of Australia, William Broughton arrived in Australia with his family in 1829. Broughton was a conservative High Churchman with ties to the Hackney Phalanx, who had been appointed to the colony through his connection to the Duke of Wellington. He and his family were instantly a central part of the Sydney establishment. The local battery fired a military salute on his arrival into Sydney harbour. As archdeacon, and later bishop, Broughton was an ex officio member of the executive council and legislative council of New South Wales. He was the Visitor for all schools, and all records for baptisms, marriages and funerals ran through his office

F.T. Whitington, William Grant Broughton, Bishop of Australia: With Some Account of the Earliest Australian Clergy (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1936), 16. 7 Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire c.1700-1850, 228. 8 Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire c.1700-1850, 228. 9 Whitington, William Grant Broughton, Bishop of Australia, 17. 122

(regardless of religious affiliation). The local press reported ‘Where he preached, whom he married, when he was ill, where he dined, and how he fell out of his carriage’.10

Broughton’s privileged status would alter significantly during his time in the colonies, especially through his falling out with Governor Richard Bourke. Governor Bourke was an Irish Whig liberal. Repeated conflicts saw Broughton’s loss of influence and exclusion from government committees until Bourke was replaced by George Gipps in 1837, who Broughton had known at school. While Broughton’s position was reinstated the damage had already been done.

An issue that Broughton and Bourke did agree on was the impracticality of Anglican clergy in the Pacific colonies operating under the Diocese of Calcutta.11 The territorial expanse of Broughton’s ministry was enormous, with small communities separated by vast distances. In a letter to a friend, he described his ministry as the equivalent to (when compared with Europe) having one church in St Alban’s England, another in Constantinople and another in Denmark.12 Broughton returned to England in 1834 to advocate for the creation of an autonomous diocese for Australia. Broughton approached societies such as SPG and SPCK to apply pressure to the government to resolve the Australian problem. Funds were raised through these missionary societies, as well as through personal friends of Broughton’s, such as Edward Coleridge, for ministry in the colony.

The political landscape in Britain created difficulties for Broughton during his stay in 1834-35. In 1835, the Diocese of Madras was created out the Diocese of Calcutta.13 While this may have benefited ministry in India, Calcutta still included the whole of the Western Pacific region. Over a year passed, as Tory and Whig governments rose and fell in quick succession, before the parliament agreed to create the Australian bishopric. After much negotiation in regard to what authority a bishop would have in the colony, Broughton accepted the offer to be the first bishop of Australia.14

10 George Peter Shaw, Patriarch and Patriot - William Grant Broughton 1788-1853: Colonial Statesman and Ecclesiastic (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 1978), 19. 11 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 38. 12 Quoted in Edward Symonds, The Story of the Australian Church, Colonial Church Histories, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1898), 38. 13 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 38. 14 See further Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 93-98. 123

These discussions are evidence that primary authority lay with the Crown and not clerical authorities in establishing episcopal ministry in Australia. Letters Patent from the Crown gave the bishops their designated authority and established all new dioceses. Broughton’s Letters Patent, dated 18 June 1836, proclaimed: Whereas the doctrine and discipline of the United Church of England and Ireland are possessed and observed by a considerable part of our loving subjects in New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and , and these are deprived of some of the offices prescribed by the liturgy and usages of the Church aforesaid, by reason that there is not a bishop residing or exercising jurisdiction within the same: We have determined… to erect these our colonies into a bishop's see or diocese, to be called the Bishopric of Australia, of which William Grant Broughton is appointed first bishop, who together with his successors shall be subject and subordinate to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury.15 After a small service for his consecration as a bishop at chapel in February 1836, Broughton returned to Sydney where he was enthroned at St James’ Sydney on 5 June 1836.

The state funding of churches and clergy became a key issue between Bourke and Broughton.16 In line with the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 that had been passed by the British Parliament, the New South Wales Church Act of 1836 allocated colonial funding to churches and clergy determined by the approximate percentage of denominational adherents in the colony.17 This included Roman Catholic and Presbyterian congregations and clergy, as well as those of the Church of England. Anglicans still received the lion’s share of the expenditure (84% of all the allocated funding) but it was now recognised that they no longer had an exclusive monopoly.18 Broughton protested.

15 Cited from Symonds, The Story of the Australian Church, 40-41. 16 ‘A member of the Irish gentry, [Bourke’s] experiences in Ireland alerted him to the dangers of imposing the Anglican faith on an unwilling community. Liberal and tolerant in outlook, he shared the views of those who wanted all churches to be treated equally. Such an attitude quickly placed him at odds with Broughton’. Brian Fletcher, "The Anglican Ascendancy 1788-1835", in Anglicanism in Australia: A History, ed. Bruce Kaye, Tom Frame, Colin Holden and Geoff Treloar (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 17. 17 The Church Act passed on 29 July 1836. 18 Church of England: £11,542, Roman Catholics: £1,500, and Presbyterians: £600. See Kaye, The Rise and Fall of English Christendom, 242. 124

Bruce Kaye writes that Broughton is an important case study in considering ecclesiastical responses to ‘a plural society’ and ‘an ecclesiastically non-confessional state’.19 Further to this, Kaye also writes: ‘[Broughton] believed in the church-state relationship and the Royal Supremacy and saw the Church of England as the instrument for the maintenance of true Christianity’.20 Broughton’s refusal to adapt was based on his theological principles. To agree with Bourke’s stance was tantamount to ascribing theological legitimacy to Roman Catholics and non-conformists. Broughton believed his duty was to correct theological error and not to compromise. For Broughton, the Act was incongruent with the Oath of Supremacy that both he and the Governor had sworn. For Broughton, to allocate funding to non-conformists was cutting the ties between government and the Established Church and so tantamount to denying the Royal Supremacy. Broughton’s complaints were futile. The Imperial Government had moved on. Anglicans would still receive funding, but they would not be the sole recipients. The Act was intended to show the colony’s religious neutrality, but it was another cut across the ties that bound together the English Church and the English State, ruling out the vision of Hooker and Laud.

For Broughton, the bishop was the centre for all ministry within a diocese. All those who lived within his jurisdiction fell under his responsibility. This included not only Anglicans but non-conformists as well. When John Polding was appointed by the Vatican as the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, with the agreement of the British Government, Broughton was incensed.21 He complained to the colonial office: The representation which I feel is my duty to submit to your Lordship is, that in the case of the civil powers should even tacitly, admit the exercise of the papal authority in erecting and conferring ecclesiastical dignities within the dominions of Her Majesty, this would be an admission, sufficiently direct on the part of the Government, that a foreign prelate has that ecclesiastical and spiritual authority and jurisdiction within this realm, which it is directly affirmed by our oath that he neither has by right, nor ought to have in fact.22

19 Bruce Kaye, "Broughton and the Demise of the Royal Supremacy," Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 81, no. 1 (1995): 39. 20 Kaye, "Broughton and the Demise of the Royal Supremacy", 44. 21 Kaye, "Broughton and the Demise of the Royal Supremacy", 47. 22 Letter from Broughton to Lord Stanley, 27 March 1843, cited in Kaye, "Broughton and the Demise of the Royal Supremacy", 46. 125

The words of his own protest to the Roman Catholic church summarise Broughton’s view of the validity of his episcopacy over and against Rome: We, William Grant, by Divine permission Bishop and Pastor of Australia, do Protest publicly and explicitly on behalf of ourselves and our successors Bishops of Australia, and on behalf of the clergy and all the faithful of the same Church and Diocese, and also on behalf of William by Divine providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Metropolitan, and his successors, that the Bishop of Rome has not any right or authority according to the laws of God, and the canonical Order of the Church, to institute any episcopal or archiepiscopal See or Sees within the limits of the Diocese of Australia and aforesaid. And We do hereby publicly, explicitly and deliberately protest against, dissent from, and contradict, any and every act of episcopal or metropolitan authority done or to be done, at any time, or by any person whatever, by virtue of any right or title derived from any assumed jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre- eminence or authority of the said Bishop of Rome enabling him to institute any episcopal See or Sees within the Diocese and Province hereinbefore named.23

As the Anglican bishop in an English colony, Broughton believed that this gave him the sole right to assume that he, and he alone, was the rightful bishop of Sydney. Broughton based his claims theologically wider than just the Royal Supremacy. His authority as bishop came from his canonical consecration and apostolic succession, not his letters patent alone. Broughton’s argument was that just as Rome, Carthage, Alexandria and Constantinople had developed as metropolitical sees, each responsible for a particular geographical area and the people living therein, in the ancient church, so

23 William Grant Broughton, A letter to the Right Reverend Nicholas Wiseman by the Bishop of Sydney, Metropolitan of Australia, together with the Bishop's Protest, March 25th, 1843, and the resolutions of the special meeting of the standing committee of Sydney Diocesan Committee of the societies for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts held of the 15th Day of March, 1851 (London: F. & J. Rivington, 1852), 38. One of the more interesting features of this letter to Cardinal Wiseman, the Archbishop of Westminster, is that he addressed Wiseman as ‘a fellow bishop’ while simultaneously arguing that the Roman Catholic Church had no right to establish any see within the territory of Australia. 126

Broughton was now the metropolitan of Australia.24 Therefore, in Broughton’s opinion, Rome’s appointment of Polding undermined authentic catholic order. Kaye concludes that Broughton eventually lost heart in the whole matter and ‘reconciled himself to the fact that the government, neither local nor home, any longer believed in their own oath of allegiance’.25 Broughton refused to adapt or compromise to the burgeoning pluralism within the colonies, and at home in England. While he may have stood firm on his principles, Broughton’s legacy was tarnished by accusations of ‘episcopal tyranny’ and a deeply engrained sectarianism.

As the bonds of the Royal Supremacy and the hopes of establishment in Australia faded, Broughton sought a new haven to preserve his conception of episcopal authority. As a High Churchman, Broughton already had ties to the burgeoning Tractarian movement. With the waning of an Erastian polity for colonies, Broughton relied more and more upon Tractarian appeals to apostolic succession and the spiritual autonomy of episcopacy from the government. Both Shaw and Kaye see Broughton’s trip to the New Zealand colony before its official recognition as a prime example of Broughton’s recognition of a spiritual authority of episcopacy that went beyond the Royal Supremacy.26 In December 1838, Broughton sailed to the Bay of Islands where an Anglican mission had been established. The mission was not yet under the protection of the Empire and so beyond Broughton’s jurisdiction. Nonetheless, as Bishop of Australia, he believed it was not beyond his spiritual authority.27 During his short stay, he baptised, confirmed, ordained and consecrated two cemeteries—all episcopal tasks fitting with his apostolic ministry.28 Broughton himself said of his visit: I come among you without other commission or authority than that which, being first lodged in the Apostles, is derived in succession from them unto everyone rightly and canonically consecrated to the episcopal charge. Whatsoever directive functions I may exercise here are traced to no other origin than this; and your acceptance of me in that character is an unconstrained purely spiritual act. In this I rejoice, as it may have the effect of

24 Broughton, A letter to the Right Reverend Nicholas Wiseman by the Bishop of Sydney, Metropolitan of Australia, together with the Bishop's Protest, 22. 25 Kaye, "Broughton and the Demise of the Royal Supremacy", 47. 26 Kaye, The Rise and Fall of English Christendom, 250-253. 27 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 127-128. 28 Kaye, The Rise and Fall of English Christendom, 251-252. 127

rending more apparent the true apostolic foundation, constitution and character of this blessed Church of England, to which we all belong.29 Broughon’s visit was perfectly timed as negotiations about British sovereignty began just after his return to Sydney. Broughton’s conception of episcopal orders as more than prescribed to the authority delegated him by the Crown are seen here in both word and action.30

Other examples of Broughton’s conception of his ecclesial authority can be seen in his treatment of Church Missionary Society funded Lutheran in the Lake Macquarie area;31 a charge given to a meeting of the clergy in 1841;32 and his discipline of Thomas Makinson and Robert Sconce, Tractarians who converted to Roman Catholicism.33 A fuller example can be demonstrated in his discipline of Peter Beamish and Francis Thomas Cusack Russell. In 1849, the two men, both deacons with Evangelical leanings, publicly denounced Broughton as a ‘tyrant’ and a ‘romanist at heart’.34 As will be explored in the next section, Broughton by this time had become Bishop of Sydney. Broughton then refused to ordain Russell to the priesthood. Russell took an advertisement in a local paper publicly maligning Broughton and the other Sydney clergy.35 He called upon the laity of the diocese to rise up against them.36 Broughton suspended Russell. Russell took Broughton to court for this disciplinary action, on the grounds of conducting an illegal court, and lost. The scandal did not end in Sydney, for Russell subsequently approached Bishop Perry in Melbourne for employment in that diocese. Perry attempted to mediate between Broughton and Russell, but failed. Without consulting Broughton, and being attracted to Russell’s evangelical fervour, Perry offered Russell a position in Melbourne. This occurred just four months before the 1850 bishops’ conference. Perhaps it was this incident that evoked in Broughton’s mind Cyprian’s letter to Rogatian (in which Cyprian chastises a

29 William Grant Broughton, New Zealand Reply (1839), cited in Kaye, The Rise and Fall of English Christendom, 252. 30 Kaye, The Rise and Fall of English Christendom, 252-253. 31 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 44-45. 32 William Grant Broughton, "A charge delivered to the clergy of New South Wales in the Diocese of Australia at the visitation held in the church of St James, Sydney, on Wednesday, October the 6th, 1841", (Sydney: James Tegg, George Street, 1841), 11-12. 33 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 210. 34 The Trollope-esque drama is narrated by Shaw in his biography of Broughton. See Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 221-231. See also Gladwin, Anglican Clergy in Australia 1788-1850, 188. 35 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 225. 36 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 225. 128 deacon), leading him to introduce the subject of clergy discipline to the 1850 Conference. Perry’s acceptance of Russell was a continuing source of contention between the bishops of Sydney and Melbourne until Broughton’s death. This example demonstrates that Broughton maintained disciplinary authority over his clergy under the law, but that authority was limited to his diocese. No centralised legal authority was at Broughton’s disposal to prevent Russell from serving under Perry.

These examples demonstrate Broughton’s changing conception of episcopal authority during his time as bishop of Australia, and subsequently bishop of Sydney. Preservation of the Royal Supremacy was in conflict with the Tractarian idea that a bishop’s spiritual authority was based not primarily on law but on apostolic succession through ordination. This conflict set the tone for the next century of the development of the Australian Anglican episcopate. As new bishops brought fresh conceptions of episcopal ministry it also resulted in competing visions of what bishops should do and should be. Rowan Strong writes that a ‘a new paradigm of engagement’ between the Church of England and the British Empire was created in the early 1840s.37 Strong summarises the old paradigm that had prevailed in the eighteenth century as ‘mutually beneficial partnership’ in which the British government understood its ‘duty to uphold the Church of England exclusively, because it was the purest and divinely appointed embodiment of the most truthful form of Christianity’.38 During the early nineteenth century this paradigm came to an end. The ‘new Anglican paradigm’ promoted ‘the need for more autonomous action and an episcopal identity by the Church of England in the colonies and elsewhere’.39 The two paradigms existed alongside each other for some time as the former waned. The bishops who entered into ministry during this era were forced to adapt to the changing paradigm of ministry within Anglican thought. Broughton’s thought and ministry is a prime example of these changing paradigms. Broughton who had been firmly established in the old paradigm as a young high churchman, but had adapted his own ecclesiological thought to the new paradigm as an aged bishop. This change in thought becomes evident after the introduction of multiple bishops to the Pacific region.

37 Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire c.1700-1850, 220. 38 Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire c.1700-1850, 220. 39 Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire c.1700-1850, 220. 129

3.4. Multiple Bishops for the Pacific

The ecclesial landscape underwent a significant shift only a few years after Broughton’s appointment as Bishop of Australia. The expansion of white settlement across the Australian continent called for a new approach. First, a bishop for Tasmania was appointed in 1842.40 Far from Sydney, the local governor in Hobart expressed his own desire for a bishop to administer the chaplains to the convicts, their officers and families. The Diocese of Tasmania was distinguished from the Australian continent and Francis Russell Nixon was consecrated as the first bishop of Tasmania. That same year, the Diocese of New Zealand was created and George Selwyn appointed as its first bishop.41 So in 1842, the number of Anglican bishops in Australasia went from one to three.

The introduction of multiple bishops across Australasia changed the dynamics of ecclesial authority within the colonies. In 1842, the dioceses were separated by sea and were considered equal to one another. In Australia, Broughton and Nixon were separated by a considerable distance, one on the mainland of Australia and the other on the island of Tasmania. Then in 1847 the number of bishops went from three to six. The Diocese of Australia was re-structured and four dioceses were created out of the one. Broughton was appointed as the first bishop of Sydney, and also as metropolitan of the Province of Australia.42 Nixon and Selwyn’s letters patent were re-issued to state that their sees would be placed under the metropolitical jurisdiction of Sydney.43 Melbourne, Newcastle and Adelaide were chosen to be the cathedral ‘cities’ for the new dioceses. The Diocese of Cape Town in was created in the same year.44 The organ responsible for their creation was the Colonial Office (albeit with significant input from the Archbishop of Canterbury).45

40 Ross Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872: A Constitutional Study of the Church of England in Australia (London: SPCK, 1962), 114. 41 During this period, the story of the church in New Zealand is intertwined with Australia’s. As two distinct nations emerged so also the two churches became distinct. As such, the story of the church in New Zealand and its own episcopal developments, will not play a large part in this thesis. 42 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 39. 43 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 42. 44 Paul Robertson, Proclaiming 'Unsearchable Riches': Newcastle and the minority Evangelical Anglicans, 1788-1900 (Leominster: Gracewing, 1996), 67. 45 Robertson, Proclaiming 'Unsearchable Riches', 68. 130

The concurrent creation of the four dioceses is a significant point, as there was a deliberate attempt for a diverse expression of churchmanship across the bishops for these dioceses. Growing partisanship was re-shaping the Church of England. Missionary societies, establishment notables, colonial secretaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London all played their part in the machinations that went on to determine who would be placed where and what manner of bishop they would likely be.46 First, , a definite Evangelical, was offered Melbourne.47 Then Robert Gray, a Tractarian, agreed to go to Cape Town and Adelaide was offered to , another definite Tractarian. Newcastle was offered to who, although he would later prove to have some Tractarian sympathies, was considered a moderate High Churchman. The virtues of ‘moderation’ were stressed to Tyrrell at the time of his appointment.48 A balance of churchmanship was achieved through these appointments. Broughton’s successor, , himself an evangelical, aligned with the trend.49

The Church of England was large enough to accommodate a breadth of churchmanship in each diocese. In contrast, the distance between dioceses in Australia meant that the attempt to achieve a breadth of appointments would have unforeseen consequences. Diversity between the different dioceses was not matched by a diversity within each diocese. The ability to choose and licence their own clergy meant that bishops could appoint clergy who matched their own thought and style. As such, bishops were (and still are) able to influence and even change the churchmanship of their dioceses. While each bishop would be able to point to clergy and parishes in their dioceses who were exceptions to this, most dioceses in Australia would go on to be made up of a majority that was broadly either Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic. This highlights the influence of the episcopate in shaping the Australian church into what it has become.

In 1849, Broughton decided to call all of the bishops of Australasia together. The Roman Catholic archbishop had already called his bishops together for a similar

46 An excellent study of the ecclesial politicking during this period is found in Robertson, Proclaiming 'Unsearchable Riches', 67-79. 47 Robertson, Proclaiming 'Unsearchable Riches', 70-72. 48 Robertson, Proclaiming 'Unsearchable Riches', 74. 49 Broughton deliberately tried to ensure that he would be succeeded by Robert Allwood, a High Churchman. However, Allwood declined all offers to become a bishop. 131 meeting in 1845.50 Then in 1849 Broughton became severely ill and subsequently his wife died, while Bishop Perry raised concerns about the legality of such a meeting: were the bishops able to meet together in such a way if the Sovereign had not convened such a meeting?51 After a discussion with Perry as to how the meeting would be constituted all the bishops finally travelled to Sydney in 1850.52

The Bishops’ Conference had to face the questions of the legal position and identity of the emerging Australian church as it was and as it should become. The first item on the agenda was whether the meeting was to be called a ‘synod’. The use of the word ‘synod’ conjured the dual ideas of ancient church councils and of the royal prerogative to call such councils that was established during the English Reformation. Perry raised his concerns. Broughton was quick to establish that the meeting had no binding legal authority, but also argued that the bishops had a spiritual authority that was distinct from the authority they received from the Crown. Furthermore, as Broughton quipped, whether or not the meeting was legal it was unlikely that Westminster would dispatch a warship to arrest the colonial bishops for usurping the crown’s prerogative.53 The growing distance between the colonial church and the British government is evident in this remark and evidence of Broughton’s own shift in thinking.

Broughton’s letters patent had made him the metropolitan of Australia: was the intention that Broughton should consider himself an equal of other metropolitical bishops (like the Archbishop of Canterbury) and that the church in Australia should be independent and self-governing? Broughton argued that this was the case, not only because of his letters patent but also on account of his experiences with Archbishop Howley of Canterbury. Broughton expressed his hope that the bishops in Australasia would meet for a ‘synod’. Broughton wished to counter Roman claims that Anglican bishops were only functionaries of the parliament and had no independent spiritual authority.54

50 Bruce Kaye, "The Strange Birth of Anglican Synods in Australia and the 1850 Bishop's Conference," Journal of Religious History 27, no. 2 (2003): 179-180. 51 Similar questions were later raised in reference to the first Lambeth Conference. 52 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 231. 53 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 235. 54 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 234. 132

For Perry, the Crown and Parliament were the tools for maintaining the doctrine and order. Perry insisted that the ties of the church in Australia should always remain with Canterbury and not considered independent of that line of authority. 55 Short mediated between Broughton and Perry and after a night of examining relevant legal documentation, ‘the bishops decided finally that they were simply meeting’.56 The minutes of the meeting bear witness: We, the undersigned Metropolitan and bishops of the Province of Australasia, in consequence of doubts existing how far we are inhibited by the Queen’s Supremacy from exercising the powers of an Ecclesiastical Synod, resolve not to exercise such powers on the present occasion.57 The bishops could express their opinions on any matter raised but these would have no binding authority beyond the meeting (although a moral authority was implied).58

While the bishops may have reached a consensus amongst themselves, the exact extent of the authority of the Australian episcopate remained unanswered by Westminster. The colonial bishops were still part of the Church of England. Shaw notes that without the approval of the imperial parliament, the exiting bishops could not expand their own ministries, let alone subdivide their dioceses and create new bishops.59 However, the colonial governments and the church authorities were moving further and further away from each other. It would be another generation before debate on these questions on episcopal authority and ecclesial independence came to a climax.

The foundations of synodical governance in Australia were laid during the conference in 1850. The place of the laity in the governance of the Church was enhanced in a new way. Instead of the Crown, the Australian laity would become directly involved in the course of ministry within their local area and have a place

55 Kaye, "The Strange Birth of Anglican Synods in Australia and the 1850 Bishop's Conference", 184. 56 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 235. 57 Minutes of proceedings at a meeting of the metropolitan and suffragan bishops of the Province of Australasia: held at Sydney from October 1st to November 1st, A. D. 1850 (Sydney: Kemp and Fairfax, 1850), 5. 58 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 234. 59 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 236. 133 in the election of bishops and the appointment of clergy.60 These trends matched the democratic trends throughout the Western world in the nineteenth century.61 During the 1850 conference, the role that the laity would play in future governance was discussed. The bishops would not rule alone. While a ‘synod’ was defined within the minutes to mean a gathering of the bishops with representatives of the clergy, a ‘convention’ should gather together bishops, clergy and lay representatives.62 These ideas would evolve over the remainder of the century.

On the issue of primacy, Broughton’s view was that, as the metropolitan of Australia, he was equal to the Archbishop of Canterbury. In ecclesial affairs, a court under his authority should be the highest level of appeal. Conversely, Perry argued that clergy and bishops in Australia should be able to appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is another example of Perry’s insistence that the ties to Britain should be maintained to hold the colonial bishops accountable. In regard to Cyprianic ideas that all bishops are equal to another, Broughton’s view seems to be similar to that of Laud— that all metropolitan bishops, like Canterbury and Rome, are equal. If there was any Cyprianic sense to Perry’s thought it might have been that all the Australian bishops were equal to each other. There is no evidence, however, that Perry had much regard to Cyprian or patristic ideas of episcopacy whatsoever. What does seem to be clear was that Broughton’s colleagues had a problem with being held accountable to him. Authority should be dispersed amongst the bishops without a centralised mechanism.

Particularly significant for this thesis is that during this Conference, when discussing clerical discipline, Broughton presented those gathered with his own translation of Cyprian’s letter to Rogatian.63 The letter concerns an altercation between a bishop (Rogatian) and an unnamed deacon and Cyprian’s subsequent advice to Bishop Rogatian on the matter.64 Within the letter Cyprian chastises the actions of an unnamed deacon. Broughton’s discipline of Russell may have evoked Broughton’s appeal to this

60 Keith Rayner, "The Idea of a National Church in Australian Anglicanism", in Agendas for Australian Anglicanism: Essays in honour of Bruce Kaye, ed. Tom Frame and Geoffrey Treloar (Adelaide: ATF Press 2006), 35. 61 Kaye, "The Strange Birth of Anglican Synods in Australia and the 1850 Bishop's Conference", 179. 62 Minutes of proceedings at a meeting of the metropolitan and suffragan bishops of the Province of Australasia, 7-8. 63 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 238. 64 See Cyprian, Epistle LXIV – this particular ‘Letter to Rogatian’ is not to be confused with Epistle VI, which is addressed to Rogatian the Presbyter. 134 specific letter. Perry had appointed Russell to Melbourne only four months before the Conference began. The tension between the two men was still there and Broughton’s Patristic appeal did not meet with Perry’s support. Broughton’s episcopal colleagues did not warm to the idea of what they saw as ‘episcopal arbitrariness’.65 If clergy discipline lay only in the hands of their bishop, their was a potential for those disciplinary methods to be abused. The minutes of the meeting bear out their decision to make diocesan synods ‘the Court of trial’ for deacons and priests, while ‘the Bishops of the Province should be the court of trial for a bishop’.66 The centrality of the episcopal office would be retained while allowing checks and balances for the clergy and laity. Bishops would still be responsible for disciplining their clergy but the bishops would be equally accountable for how they disciplined others. Broughton’s action was a deliberate attempt to lead the Anglican bishops in Australia to reflect upon patristic theology and conform their own contemporary practices and structures to it. But his patristic model was rejected.

The presence of multiple bishops in the Pacific had changed the dynamics of episcopal authority. The Bishops’ Conference of 1850 is a prime example of these new dynamics. Broughton did not achieve a consensus from his new colleagues as to what the emerging Australian church should aspire to become. There was also no agreement that the Anglican presence in Australia should in any way be independent from the Church of England at that time. The different bishops had different conceptions of episcopal ministry and that became expressed in their individual dioceses. While their differences had achieved a diversity of churchmanship across the new dioceses, there was no single ecclesial vision. That the new dioceses developed differences in theological outlook would become obstacles for church unity rather than mutually enriching each diocese.

3.5. The Rise of Synodical Governance

The 1850 Conference had raised important issues as to what episcopal authority meant within the Australian (and New Zealand) context. Unlike bishops in the Church of England, the Australian bishops could not frame their episcopal ministry as members of an Established church. In the absence of a parliament to

65 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 238. 66 Shaw, Patriach and Patriot, 238. 135 order the Church’s life in the colony, the bishops agreed that they would have to fall upon ancient precedent and look to synodical governance.

Their contemporary, Robert Gray, the first bishop of Cape Town, summarised the motives behind the rise of Anglican synodical governance: It is a sense of the lawlessness, i.e. the absence of all positive law in the Colonial Churches, that has led so many bishops of the Church in Australia and New Zealand and Canada and Africa and else where to call into active life the dormant power and authority of Synods. Without Synods, bishops must be the nominal autocrats of the Church; they must, by their sole authority, enact laws, or give up the reins of discipline, and allow anarchy to prevail. They must act as best they can amid emergencies, and without those constitutional aids and checks which the existence of Synods brings along with them ; and the Church, under such a system, must be weak and lifeless in the extreme.67

The respective bishops returned to their dioceses to implement the episcopal consensus that the colonial church should develop a form of synodical governance to manage their local affairs. The rise of diocesan constitutions was arguably more the product of legal concerns about property ownership and trusts than a revival of Conciliarism. The effect, though, was the same. Border writes: Perhaps the greatest advance… was not the limitation of the powers of the episcopate, nor the establishing of a satisfactory status for the clergy, but the reintroduction into church government of a fundamental principle of the English Church, that the laity may have both a right and a duty to take part in the regulation of matters ecclesiastical as of matters civil. The credit for this goes to the first colonial bishops, especially those in Australia.68 The bishops, however, found themselves within a new dynamic of ecclesial power. Along with this, the lack of conformity amongst how these new synods were to be established and operate would lay the groundwork for future legislative division.

67 Cited in Henrietta Louisa Lear, Life of Robert Gray: Bishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of Africa, ed. Charles Gray (London: Rivingtons, 1876), 499-500. 68 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 209. 136

While Broughton hoped that synodical governance would be established throughout the colonies, exhibited a reticence on the level of lay and clergy involvement in diocesan decisions. Unlike the other diocesan bishops, Broughton did not seek to consult with lay people within Sydney over how a possible synod should be composed. Broughton’s reluctance to involve the laity in decision-making brought almost instant rebuke. At a meeting with his clergy to discuss synodical governance in March 1852, 41 lay people arrived uninvited.69 On his part, Broughton thought it unwise to let decision making processes in the church fall upon what he deemed to be a largely theologically illiterate populace. As synodical governance was established across the colonies, the bishops were ‘Forced to accept greater levels of lay participation than initially proposed’.70 Before such a Sydney synod could be gathered, Broughton set sail for England, dogged by criticism, to seek imperial legislation to resolve the ambiguities about church polity in the colonies. Broughton died in England in 1853 still waiting for action from the British parliament. His death came shortly before a meeting with bishops from around the Empire in England, whose recommendations about life in the colonial churches would be submitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury.71 Due to Broughton’s death, this conference was never held. Had he lived, this convention could have been a significant moment in Anglican Church history.

While Broughton’s departure slowed the process in New South Wales, the other bishops proceeded to develop synodical governance and diocesan constitutions. Two varying models for creating synodical governance on a diocesan level developed: the consensual compact of Adelaide and the legislative enactment of Melbourne.72 The Victorian Church Act became the model for all other church constitutions in Australia after 1854, regardless ‘of the legal basis on which they were founded, that is, whether by ‘“legislative enactment” or by “consensual compact”’.73 The Tasmanian constitution is a key example of this.74 With regard to episcopacy, the rise of synodical governance

69 Kaye, "The Strange Birth of Anglican Synods in Australia and the 1850 Bishop's Conference", 187. 70 Patricia Curthoys, "State Support for Churches 1836-1860", in Anglicanism in Australia: A History, ed. Bruce Kaye, Tom Frame, Colin Holden, and Geoff Treloar (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 44. 71 The bishops of Montreal, Toronto, Antigua, Cape Town and Newfoundland, were to meet in conference with Broughton representing the Australian colonies in 1853. Whitington, William Grant Broughton, Bishop of Australia, 268. 72 See Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 199-227. 73 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 210. 74 Curthoys, "State Support for Churches 1836-1860", 45. 137 amongst the Australian colonies brought about a new dynamic in Anglicanism between bishops and those they served. Because there was no unified approach, each diocese would develop its own governing document and its own form of synodical governance. The powers and responsibilities of the bishops were defined differently in each.

3.6. The Withdrawal of the Crown

Anglican bishops in the colonies continued to understand that their authority was based on their Letters Patent. Until the 1860s, it was believed that this established their legal authority should they be required to enforce it. Despite of all that had happened since the inception of the church in Australia, the Establishment mentality was firmly fixed. As Border shows, however, three legal disputes between 1861 and 1865 unravelled the authority the bishops had assumed they possessed. One of these cases was in Australia, and the other two abroad: King vs Barker in Sydney in 1861, Long vs Gray in South Africa in 1863, and the legal disputes surrounding the notorious Colenso affair, also in South Africa, in 1865.75

George King had been appointed by Broughton as the incumbent of St Andrew’s Sydney, which became the diocesan cathedral.76 In 1858, Bishop Barker appointed William Macquarie Cowper to the position of of the cathedral, while King remained the incumbent.77 Although their duties were distinct, King doubted the appropriateness of the appointment and the relations between King and Barker gradually grew worse. In 1860, the issue came to a head when Barker informed King that he would not be required to participate in an ordination service to be held at St Andrew’s.78 King, in turn, refused to allow his bishop to use St Andrew’s and locked the bishop out (the ordination was then held elsewhere).79 As a result, Barker sought to discipline King on the grounds of canonical disobedience. King refused to participate in the disciplinary processes. King sought an injunction against Barker from the Supreme Court.80 To the surprise of the bishops, Chief Justice John Dickinson and Justice Edward Wise found in favour of King. While Bishop Barker may have acted in a manner legally appropriate for a bishop of the

75 Border’s research has heavily influenced this section – see Border, Church and State in Australia 1788- 1872, 259-270. 76 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 260. 77 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 260. 78 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 260-261. 79 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 261. 80 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 261. 138

Established Church in England to discipline their clergy in England, Wise ruled that the same laws were not applicable in the colonies. Quintessentially, Dickinson ruled that ecclesiastical law was not part of British common law and, therefore, had not translated to the British colonies.81 Although the Diocese of Sydney was recognised by colonial law and the bishop had been appointed by Letters Patent, the bishop did not have the rights and privileges under colonial law as a bishop of the established church in England. Wise writes in his verdict: [Barker] though appointed by the British monarch, and ordained and consecrated by an English primate and metropolitan, is not a bishop of the Church establishment of England, but a bishop over Christian persons and congregations in this portion of the Queen’s dominions, who hold the same opinions on doctrine, ritual, and Church government, as are entertained in England and Ireland by the members of the United Church as there by law established. He is a bishop, moreover, here over those only who voluntarily submit to his jurisdiction.82 Dickinson made reference to the advice of Bishop Perry on the matter. Dickinson ruled that bishops in the colony, in spite of whatever their Letters Patent said or did not say, did not have the right to convene an ecclesiastical court to discipline their clergy.83 As such, the clergy were not bound to participate in the proceedings of or submit to the judgement of such a court. The British monarch, Wise went on, did not have the legal authority via Letters Patent to introduce positive ecclesiastical laws into a colony under her rule.84 Such ecclesiastical laws could be introduced but only through appropriate legislation. The legal ruling was unambiguous: the Church of England was not established in the colony and the Anglican bishops did not possess the same legal standing as their English counterparts.85 So, if the Letters Patent did not grant the bishop’s legal authority to discipline their clergy according to English ecclesiastical law, what authority did the

81 Ex parte The Rev. George King, New South Wales Supreme Court (Sydney, 9 February 1861), 1307; http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWLeggeSC/1861/1.html, accessed on 20 December 2019. 82 Ex parte The Rev. George King, 1311. 83 Ex parte The Rev. George King, 1335-36. 84 Ex parte The Rev. George King, 1311-12. 85 ‘[We] must bear in mind that in such a colony there is no established church, and that the ministers of religion in communion with the Church of England, with the Church of Scotland, and with the Church of Rome, in the absence of any imperial or colonial legislation on the subject, are all upon an equal footing’. Ex parte The Rev. George King, 1319. 139 bishops’ possess? While the monarch could establish a bishopric and appoint a bishop for that position, once in situ the Letters Patent no longer had any legal force within a colony possessing self-government. The court ruled that a particular bishop’s authority was purely based on a voluntary recognition of that authority by an individual.

The second legal case occurred in South Africa. Bishop Gray of Cape Town had first summoned a synod of the diocese in 1856. William Long, who was the of Mowbray, received a summons in 1860 to attend the next planned synod that year and arrange lay delegates. Long publicly refused to attend on the grounds that the Synod was illegal and declared ‘that all who had taken part in the Synod of 1856… had seceded from the English Church’.86 Gray wrote to Long personally. Long subsequently published Gray’s letter in a local Cape Town newspaper. After a second letter, Long attended a meeting with Gray who subsequently charged Long with ‘contumacious disobedience to the lawful requirement of his Bishop, accompanied with efforts to stir up general strife’ and suspended Long from clerical duties.87 Long ignored the suspension. Gray summoned Long to another meeting but Long refused to attend. Consequently, Gray removed Long’s clerical licence and appointed a temporary incumbent in Long’s place. Long then moved to litigation with the Supreme Court in South Africa. In court, Long’s legal defence claimed that Gray had no legal authority over Long. Gray stated that his case lay upon his authority based on his Letters Patent, the nature of his episcopacy and ‘on the ground of personal contract entered into between Mr. Long and myself’.88 Gray argued: If it were contended that Mr. Long is not a Priest of the Church of England, and I not a Bishop of that same Church, but that we are simply a Priest and Bishop, then I maintain that he is either a Priest of this particular Diocesan Church, and is bound by the regulations which its governing body shall enact, or else that he is a Priest of that Catholic Church, of which we and the Church of England alike form a part, and is subject to such of its laws as are binding upon every portion of it.89 Border summarises the significance of the case as follows:

86 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 266. 87 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 266. 88 Lear, Life of Robert Gray, 479. 89 Lear, Life of Robert Gray, 480. (Quoting the Cape Argus newspaper of Thursday, March 14th, 1861). 140

This was a vitally important case because it set out to determine whether the bishops of South Africa, and indeed all the colonial bishops, had any jurisdiction at all over a clergyman – be he disobedient, heretical, or criminal – who held a licence or was in some way appointed by them to definite incumbency within their various sees.90 The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Gray. As the judgment was not unanimous amongst those on the bench, Long appealed to the Privy Council. The Privy Council ruled that Gray had acted accordingly with his Letters Patent but that the Letters Patent could not convey a coercive jurisdiction within a colony with its own independent legislature. The Privy Council ruled that the Letters Patent had overreached and the bishops did not actually have the kind of legal authority that had come to believe they had.91 For Gray, the matter remained not just about points of law but a spiritual issue: what was the authority of bishops to maintain the church and teach the faith, if they could discipline recalcitrant clergy who they themselves had licence?

The third case in 1864 also involved Bishop Gray. Gray had petitioned and raised money for his own diocese to be split into three. In 1852, the single Diocese of Cape Town became the dioceses of Cape Town, Grahamstown and Natal. Gray, who continued as the bishop of Cape Town, became the metropolitan over these three dioceses. John Colenso was appointed as the first bishop of Natal. After a few years Colenso’s views on polygamy and his liberal interpretation of scripture so shocked Gray that Gray sought to depose and excommunicate Colenso. Using the new synodical structure in South Africa, Gray tried Colenso for heresy in 1863. On the grounds that Gray had no jurisdiction over him as bishop, Colenso appealed to the British courts and won.92 Subsequently, Colenso appealed to the Privy Council with a separate case for the payment of salary from the Colonial Bishoprics Fund who had withheld payments from 1864, in accordance with

90 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 267. 91 Border notes that the kind of synodical governance Gray was trying to introduce in South Africa (like in the Australian colonies) was not yet present in England. As such, Long was being punished for not attending a synod that many in England questioned the basic appropriateness and legality of. For them, synodical governance went against the Royal Supremacy. Border, Church and State in Australia 1788- 1872, 268. 92 Kevin Ward describes the farcical scenes that followed. In response to the decision of the Privy Council, the Church of South Africa set up another diocese, Maritzburg, in place of Natal (which Gray remained the bishop of until the end of his life in 1883). The rival dioceses claimed the same cathedral and public shouting matches ensued between the dean and bishops trying to make use of the building. See Kevin Ward, A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 140. 141

Gray’s deposition of Colenso.93 The Privy Council handed down its decision in 1866 and once again ruled that the letters patent possessed by the colonial bishops, while enabling the creation of diocese and appointment of a , did not have ‘any effect or operation in a Colony, or settlement, which is possessed of an independent legislature’.94 As a result of this ruling, the Crown ceased to issue letters patent for the appointment of bishops in the colonies, thereby ending the only current means for such appointments in several colonies.

The withdrawal of the Crown meant that the colonial dioceses in Australia had to establish a new pattern of life together. They could no longer appeal to the or the British Parliament to intervene or make decisions for them. Patterns of synodical governance had been established in each diocese by the 1860s. The 1860 Convocation for Canterbury had also recommended synodical governance for Anglicans around the world.95 Would a national synod for all the Australian dioceses be able to establish a workable pattern for an autonomous church?

In 1868, St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney was consecrated and bishops from all the Australian colonies took the opportunity to gather for a conference.96 Proposals were made for a ‘General Synod’, which would include all the bishops and representatives from all the Australian dioceses. Following overall approval, the first general synod met in 1872. The first two days were spent agreeing on a constitution for the general synod.97 Bishop Tyrrell proposed a centralised system in which a general synod could make decisions for all dioceses.98 Evangelicals, who were a minority at this stage amongst their Anglo-Catholic brothers and sisters, feared a centralised system would progressively extinguish their traditions. At this stage, there was also no ‘Australian identity’ let alone a nation. The delegates were Victorians, Queenslanders, and so on. How would a united Australian church have jurisdiction across dioceses in each colony if the legal apparatus was different within each context? Tyrrell’s proposals

93 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 268. 94 Quoted in Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 268. 95 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 259. 96 Brian Dickey, "Secular Advance and Diocesan Response 1861-1900", in Anglicanism in Australia: A History, ed. Bruce Kaye, Tom Frame, Colin Holden, and Geoff Treloar (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 57. 97 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 272. 98 Dickey, "Secular Advance and Diocesan Response 1861-1900", 58; Adolphus Peter Elkin, The : A History of the Diocese of Newcastle, N.S.W., Australia (Glebe: Australian Medical Publishing, 1955), 286. 142 were rejected. This first meeting of the General Synod agreed to a regular pattern for meetings and that future bishops for each diocese should be elected.99 The relationship between the Australian dioceses and the Church of England was defined and it was agreed that the General Synod could act as an ecclesial tribunal. What was proposed was essentially a federation of the different dioceses around Australia.100

Between 1872 and 1902, the General Synod met every five years and continued to create an administrative structure for the Australian church, including the creation of a Primate.101 In all their decisions the autonomy of each diocese remained key: any decision made by the General Synod had to be agreed to by a diocese for it to have any effect in that diocese. Later, in his charge to the General Synod in 1910, Archbishop John Wright said: The Constitution of [the 1872] General Synod was practically that of a federation of independent dioceses… no determination of General Synod is binding on any diocese until has accepted it.102 Agreement was reached on how bishops should be elected and consecrated. Allowance for the appointment of assistant bishops was also agreed upon. In 1897, the General Synod agreed that the bishop of Sydney would be the metropolitan of New South Wales and would be styled ‘archbishop’.103 Diocesan competitiveness is exhibited in the fact that the dioceses of Melbourne and soon titled their diocesan bishops as ‘archbishops’ from 1905.

The paradigm shift that occurred within Anglican ecclesiology during the late nineteenth century cannot be understated. The recreation of the bishop-in-synod was key the expression of episcopacy in Australia, and increasingly throughout the Anglican Communion. The Crown remained the Supreme Governor of the Church of England but had no authority over the daughter churches of that Established Church. Colonial bishops were no longer Crown appointments, nor could bishops secure their position on the

99 Dickey, "Secular Advance and Diocesan Response 1861-1900", 57. 100 John Wright, Charge delivered by the Most Reverend John Charles Wright D.D., Archbishop of Sydney, Primate, at the General Synod of the Dioceses of Australia and Tasmania, held in Sydney, October 11th, 1910, (Sydney, 1910), 5. 101 Fletcher, The Place of Anglicanism in Australia, 2. 102 John Wright, Charge delivered by the Most Reverend John Charles Wright D.D., Archbishop of Sydney, Primate, at the General Synod of the Dioceses of Australia and Tasmania, held in Sydney, October 11th, 1910, (Sydney, 1910), 5. 103 Fletcher, The Place of Anglicanism in Australia, 3; Stephen Judd and Kenneth Cable, Sydney Anglicans: A History of the Diocese (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1987), 159. 143 political and financial apparatus of the state. While bishops remained part of the fabric of British society (albeit within gradually decreasing social influence), should those same British bishops be appointed to (or, now, elected to) comparable positions within British colonies, their fundamental relation to the local government and status within local society was now radically different. Bishops in the colonies were leaders of voluntary organisations and had to adapt their ministry accordingly.

3.7. The First Lambeth Conferences

Despite the spread of English Christianity throughout the world, largely connected with expansion of the British Empire, there was no concept as yet of a union of Anglican churches across the world. Avis and Podmore write that the term ‘Anglican Communion’ was likely first used in 1847.104 As Anglican dioceses continued to proliferate across the globe, both within the British Empire and the United States of America, questions of authority and identity arose. As conceptions of synodical governance developed across the globe, including provincial and national as well as diocesan synods, calls for a synod of all Anglican bishops also developed. How should the bishops of these dioceses understand their relation to one another? What authority if any did (or should) they possess to meet together and make decisions on doctrine, polity and liturgy?

By 1867, there were 84 Anglican dioceses outside of Britain.105 Bishops, primarily from Canada and the United States of America, called on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, to organise a meeting which Anglican bishops from around the world could attend. The Colenso Affair had highlighted the need for Anglican bishops separated by great distance to be able to gather to consult with one another and to decide upon a common course of action. Within the Church of England, the legality of such a meeting was questioned (on the same grounds that Perry had questioned the Australian Bishops’ Conference in 1850).106 The and several other British bishops refused to attend the meeting on those grounds.107 Nonetheless, 76

104 Paul Avis, "Anglican Conciliarism: The Lambeth Conference as an Instrument of Communion", in The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies, ed. Mark Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke, and Martyn Percy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 52; Podmore, Aspects of Anglican Identity, 36. 105 Platten, Augustine's Legacy, 66. 106 Stephen Neill, Anglicanism (London: Mowbrays, 1958), 361. 107 Valliere, Conciliarism, 189. 144 bishops from the Church of England and beyond met at Lambeth Palace during September 1867.108

The difference in context between the colonial bishops and the bishops of the Established church remained. The Conference was carefully orchestrated by Longley not to be seen as a ‘Council’. As Avis notes, ‘Longley specifically described the gathering as an expression of “communion”’.109 The meeting was consultative, not declaratory. It was not intended to decide upon matters of doctrine that would be announced to the world. Calls to distribute the minutes of the minute were denied. The bishops agreed upon thirteen ‘resolutions’, but Longley avoided any pronouncements that could be interpreted as doctrinal or legally binding.110 Within England, such pronouncements were the prerogative of the Crown and the Parliament. The first resolution affirmed an ‘Anglican Communion’ and of connection between the bishops across the world that should be maintained by good communication.111 The last resolution affirmed a desire for similar meetings to take place in the future.112

Theological debates had still occurred during the Conference, particularly with respect to the Diocese of Natal.113 While Longley did not allow any formal condemnation of Colenso, the seventh resolution affirmed the desire of the majority that a new bishop should be consecrated for Natal.114 The first Lambeth Conference fuelled a fresh awareness of episcopal ministry throughout the nascent Anglican Communion. Subsequent conferences would go on to determine what the links between the constituent churches and dioceses was.

The second conference met in 1878. The questions of the legality of the meetings had been resolved and led to more bishops agreeing to attend with a hundred gathering in the grounds of Lambeth Palace.115 This time there were no formal resolutions, only

108 Frame, Anglicans in Australia, 175. 109 Paul Avis, "The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference", in The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose, ed. Paul Avis and Benjamin Guyer (London: T&T Clark, 2017), 28. See also Benjamin Guyer, ""This Unprecedented Step": The Royal Supremacy and the 1867 Lambeth Conference", in The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose, ed. Paul Avis and Benjamin Guyer (London: T&T Clark, 2017), 74-75. 110 Valliere, Conciliarism, 191; Ward, A History of Global Anglicanism, 297. 111 , ed., The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888: With the Official Reports and Resolutions, together with Sermons preached at the Conferences (London: SPCK, 1889), 97-98. 112 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 101. 113 Avis, "The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference", 28-29. 114 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 99. 115 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 26. 145 the acceptance of ‘recommendations’ from several committees that had been organised in the wake of the 1867 Conference.116 These recommendations were subsequently published in an to be distributed throughout the Communion.

The 1878 recommendations refer at several points to matters concerning episcopacy. The first recommendation stated that the actions of each and ‘every national or particular Church, and of each ecclesiastical province (or diocese not included in a province)’ should be respected by all others and ‘by their individual members’.117 Once a diocese had been formed no other bishop or clergyman should exercise any ministry within the area of that diocese without the consent of the diocesan bishop.118 No clergyman should be accepted for ministry within another province or diocese without the letters testimonial of the bishop of the diocese from which they had come.119 It was recommended that where missionaries from different particular churches were working in the same place (the given examples are China, Japan and Western Africa) that bishops should be responsible for only their own clergy. It was also recommended that in countries not ‘under English or American rule’, Anglicans should not seek to ‘establish dioceses with strictly defined territorial limits’.120 Here the definition of episcopal ministry went beyond conceptions of territorial borders. Furthermore: ‘[Anglican/Episcopalian] Bishops in the same country should take care not to interfere in any manner with the congregations or converts of each other’.121 It was recommended that wherever an Anglican mission had already been set up, no alternative ministry or episcopal see should be established in the future.

The third conference was held in 1888 and was attended by 147 bishops. Formal resolutions were agreed upon and again published in an encyclical. Notable amongst these resolutions was the adoption of what is now known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.122 Originally formulated by American bishop William Reed Huntingdon as a vision for a Pan-Protestant Episcopal Church in America, the four points of the

116 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 164-187. 117 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 166-167. 118 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 167. 119 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 167. 120 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 175. 121 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 175-176. 122 Mark Chapman, "William Reed Huntingdon, American Catholicity and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral", in The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose, ed. Paul Avis and Benjamin Guyer (London: T&T Clark, 2017), 94. 146

‘quadrilateral’ (slightly modified from Huntingdon’s version in A Church-Idea (1870)) set out a common basis for Christian identity: A) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as "containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith. B) The Apostles' Creed, as the baptismal symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith. C) The two sacraments ordained by Christ himself—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord— ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution, and of the elements ordained by him. D) 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.123 The General Convention of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America had formerly agreed upon this quadrilateral when it met in Chicago in 1886 (hence the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral). Episcopacy was acknowledged as fundamental to Anglican identity throughout the globe. It entailed an ‘historic’ element but was also to be ‘locally adapted’ contextually. Other resolutions during the 1888 Conference also encouraged the need to work for church unity with Christians of other denominations.124

Subsequent Lambeth Conferences developed a pattern of meeting every ten years (with some delays during the 1910s, 1930s and 1940s due the First and Second World Wars). They established new mechanisms that would continue to bind this new conception of an Anglican Communion together. The Lambeth Conferences and communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury became key markers for membership.125 In 1978, meetings of the Primates of the Communion became another ‘Instrument of Communion’.126 A consultative body for member churches of the Communion developed over several decades.127 The Anglican Consultative Council

123 Davidson, The Lambeth Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1888, 280-281. 124 Dewi Morgan, The Bishops come to Lambeth (London: Mowbrays, 1957), 88. 125 Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism, 61-62; Avis, "The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference", 48. 126 Valliere, Conciliarism, 200. 127 See Colin Podmore, "The Development of the Instruments of Communion", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume IV: Global Western Anglicanism, c.1910-present, ed. Jeremy Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 274-299. 147 reached its current form in 1968 as an advisory committee comprised of representatives from around the Communion including bishops, clergy and laity.

It should be noted that markers of Anglican identity mostly revolve around bishops or the interaction of bishops with each other. It was envisaged that these Instruments of Communion would connect Anglicans from around the world and cultivate a common Anglican identity across different contexts. For Australian Anglicans at the end of the nineteenth century, even though there were bodies that existed that transcended particular contexts, pressing questions as to the relationship between Anglicans in Australia and the Church of England still remained.

3.8. Legal Problems Continue

The extent to which the Australian dioceses were bound to obey English ecclesial law remained an open question following the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901. The 1872 constitution of the General Synod, while providing for some common guidelines, was in no way the constitution of an independent church. Anglicans in Australia understood themselves to be exactly what their name described – the Church of England and Ireland in Australia. The bishops spoke of not only a spiritual nexus binding the Australian and British Anglicans together (their unity visible in a common liturgy and an expressed common faith) but also of a legal nexus as well.128

In 1896, the first attempt to increase the legislative and administrative powers of the General Synod was made by the bishops of Grafton-Armidale, Tasmania, and Brisbane, supported by the Dean of Newcastle.129 Their resolution to create a committee to explore options failed, but the ‘autonomy movement’ was only beginning. Answers from each diocese, as to their opinion on greater legislative powers for a national synod were sought. Ballarat, Gippsland, Melbourne and Sydney were opposed. Adelaide, Brisbane, Newcastle, , Rockhampton and Tasmania were in favour. According to Border, much of the opposition to an autonomous Australia church did not concern episcopacy but fears of a reconstruction of Anglican identity and doctrine by a national synod through revisions to the 1662 prayer book.130

128 Dickey, "Secular Advance and Diocesan Response 1861-1900", 58. 129 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 274. 130 Some of this fear was felt by conservative evangelical Anglicans who, being in a minority, feared their traditions would be threatened by the majority of Anglo-Catholics and liberal evangelicals in Australia. These fears would grow over the twentieth century. 148

Despite the several attempts to show Anglicans in Australia that their legal status was different from that of England, doubt and denial continued as to what the legal basis of the Australian dioceses actually was. The issue arose at the General Synod in 1905. In response, the Bishop of Grafton-Armidale moved the following motion: That the three Archbishops and the Bishop of Perth be a committee to consider what is the legal nexus of the various dioceses of Australia and Tasmania with the Church of England in England; and to obtain legal opinion in the Commonwealth and in England; to consult with the Archbishop of Canterbury; and to report to the various bishops in the various dioceses of Australia and Tasmania.131 With regards to episcopacy, the legal nexus issues are highly significant as the whole question potentially undermined their authority: did bishops have the authority to shape, structure and guide their dioceses as independent office holders, or were they bound to act in accordance the canon laws of the English Church?

The legal opinions sought following the general synod motion were published in 1911-12 (submissions from two English lawyers and two Australian lawyers had been sought). The submission to the lawyers contained a summary of the ebbs and flows of Anglican church history along with ten questions, as well as two specific questions from the Archbishop of Melbourne. Question three might be viewed as summative of the whole legal quandary contained in the document: To what extent does the Law of the Church of England bind the Bishops, Clergy and Laity and persons holding property in trust for Church of England purposes or similar purposes in Australia and Tasmania.132 Once again, the legal view was that the letters patent could not provide any ‘coercive jurisdiction’ within Australia. This could only be granted from within the colonies, now the federation, itself. The opinions also said that the lawyers believed the decisions of the legal cases in South Africa (explored above), did have a weight upon the legal standing of the church in Australia. Further to that, not only were the bishops and their diocese obliged to obey English ecclesial laws, and the decisions of the English courts, they were also bound to obey the decisions of the Australian courts.

131 Quoted in Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 274. 132 Cited in Robbie A. Giles, The Constitutional History of the Australian Church (London: Skeffington & Son, 1929), 162. 149

The bishops and the rest of the Australian church were stuck in a legal bind. The legal opinion concluded that the Anglican dioceses in Australia, despite the apparatus of the General Synod, did not constitute an autonomous church that was ‘in communion’ with the Church of England, but was instead a part of the Church of England. The bishops were obliged to obey laws of England that they had no power to change.133 These laws could not be enforced in Australia. As such, discipline within the Australian dioceses was a voluntary measure—a person would have to agree to be disciplined by a tribunal. Bishop of Perth proclaimed that the Australian church ‘was essentially a slave of the English Church’.134

One of the central issues at play during this time was liturgical revision. As such, the legal opinion was sought as to whether the Australian bishops possessed ius liturgicum. This went to the core of whether diocesan bishops were truly autonomous or not. The ‘Nexus Opinions’ defined the role of episcopacy as without ius liturgicum. The legal advice was that as property was held in trust for ‘Church of England purposes’, the Australian bishops, clergy and laity were required to conform with whatever was legal within the Church of England. Any deviations or reforms of the liturgy or deviations for disciplinary practice would be in breach of the purposes for which the buildings were held and could subsequently be forfeited. The legal advice was that bishops in the Church of England had never possessed ius liturgicum.

The bishops had always been bound to conform to the Book of Common Prayer as it had been agreed upon and sealed by law. The role of a bishop was to ensure that the content of liturgy and the performance of the rubrics conformed with the law. As such, the provisions in the 1872 Act of Uniformity Amendment Act were deemed to be out of step with the laws of the Church of England. Should a bishop seek to ‘approve of special and additional services not provided by the Book of Common Prayer’ as the Act allowed, those bishops would be acting contrary to English law. Bishops in Australia could only maintain the status quo. For anyone of any particular conservative learning, the bind was advantageous. The Australian church could not change, it could only conform. So long as the Church of England itself remained the same, of course. However, the ‘Nexus

133 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 277. 134 P.J. Boyce, "The First Archbishop: Charles Owen Leaver Riley", in The Four Bishops and their Sees: Perth, Western Australia 1857-1957, ed. Fred Alexander (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1957), 94. 150

Opinions’ were just legal opinions. It would be almost three decades before they were publicly tested.

A culture of mistrust had developed between the dioceses and grew into a kind of diocesan tribalism. While bishops may have been respected within the own diocese, bishops of neighbouring dioceses (which likely had a different expression of churchmanship) were often treated with contempt. As the 1920s developed, Davis writes, conservatives could no longer assume that the British Parliament would never sanction a revision of the prayer book.135 While the Parliament did not assent to the revised 1928 prayer book, it still had the power to do so and under the legal nexus at the time Australian Anglicans would be bound to follow suit. Davis also notes that had the 1928 prayer book in England succeeded in passing through the British parliament, provisions for liturgical dress that had been specifically banned in Sydney would have been permissible.136

In 1942, Arnold Wylde, Bishop of Bathurst, distributed a new communion service booklet within his diocese, based on the proposed 1928 prayer book.137 These booklets with red covers (which is why this became known as the ‘Red Book’ case) were met with mixed reviews. In 1944, several lawyers connected to high positions in the Sydney diocese began legal proceedings against Bishop Wylde on the grounds of heresy and breach of trust.138 Wylde initially agreed to withdraw his permission for the booklet. Then in a sermon in December 1943, Wylde preached: A bishop may feel the need to guide his clergy in relation to variations from the workable law. To do this he must use his spiritual authority, which he inherently possesses as a bishop of the Church of God.139 The case began in the New South Wales Equity Court (and the charge of heresy eventually withdrawn) and the judgement, including costs, was made against Bishop Wylde.140 An appeal was made to the High Court but the appeal was dismissed. Twenty

135 John Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution (Canberra: Acorn Press, 1993), 60. 136 Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 60. 137 Fletcher, The Place of Anglicanism in Australia, 161; Tom Frame, "Local Differences, Social and National Identity 1930-1966", in Anglicanism in Australia: A History, ed. Bruce Kaye, Tom Frame, Colin Holden, and Geoff Treloar (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 118-119. 138 Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 113. 139 Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 112. 140 Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 117-119. 151 parishes were placed under an injunction not to use the ‘Red Book’. However, many other parishes continued to use it.

Now the Australian church had tested the full measure of the ‘nexus opinions’.141 A bishop, acting under the spiritual authority he believed was contained in his episcopal office, had been penalised for exercising it. Not only had a bishop been found guilty, but it had been fellow Anglicans from another diocese who had brought the charges. Evangelicals from Sydney had used the power of the secular courts to punish Anglo- Catholics in the neighbouring Diocese of Bathurst. One of the high court judges noted the lack of ‘love’ that had been witnessed in the case.142 There was a groundswell for national autonomy following the Red Book case.

3.9. A National Church

There was a deliberate effort to ensure that an autonomous national church would include all the existing Australian dioceses. Trying to ensure that outcome was difficult. Davis writes: Throughout the many decades of debates and discussions over the organisation of the Australian Church, those advocating change were attempting to achieve that change for and with the whole church. It presumed all part of the Church in Australia would be included, with no geographic part (diocese or province) and no party or ideological grouping (conservative evangelicals or anglo-catholics) left out.143 As such, all conceptions for a constitution for an autonomous national church were also trying to achieve national unity in face of increasing diocesan tribalism. Adherents in each diocese were increasingly suspicious of extra-diocesan bodies that could have coercive power within a national framework. Some feared such a body, such as an extra-diocesan court, might cause a schism if it ruled in favour of one party over another. Others objected that a national body could undermine the authority of diocesan bishops. Archdeacon James Norman of Rockhampton wrote: Whereas the traditional guardians of the faith of the Church were the bishops assisted by learned theologians chosen by themselves, the Constitution

141 Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 121. 142 Ruth Teale, "The "Red Book" Case," Journal of Religious History 12, no. 1 (1982): 77. 143 Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 57. 152

substituted for them a Tribunal on which there was a majority of lay lawyers.144 Norman’s complaint was that instead of bishops, within their role as teachers and upholders of the traditions and orthodoxy of the church, they would be subject not only to a national constitution but to the legal opinions of the laity. In Norman’s opinion, this was contrary to traditional catholic order—bishops were the appointed leaders of their flock, not the laity. As more and more concessions were made to appease these varying factions (the debates had created strange bedfellows), the potential constitution weakened in its effect to order the church at a national level. It was this ‘diocesanism’ that would come to shape the national constitution.

The visit of an outside force changed everything in 1950. At the meeting of the General Synod that year, Archbishop of Canterbury visited and sat in on the sessions. Fisher was adamant that the Australians should not be relying on Britain anymore for their legal foundations and encouraged autonomy.145 Fisher also added in a speech to the synod that ‘Fear must be replaced by trust’.146 He also noted during his visit the level of distrust towards bishops in Australia, despite the fact that he himself had been very warmly received.147 A draft constitution was written by Fisher on his return journey to Britain (he claimed ‘chiefly done for my own amusement’)148 and became a base document which the Australian committee revised.

Despite Fisher’s words that trust needed to replace fear, partisan tribalism and private agendas meant that draft constitutions went back and forth over the next decade. Moreover, a new generation of conservative evangelicals stemming from Sydney’s Moore College were wary of plans for a national Church. This new generation (led by figures such as David Broughton Knox and ) also recognised that they needed to become independent from the Church of England which could no longer, in the opinion of Knox, ‘be relied upon to remain as protestant as [the Archbishop of Sydney] thought it

144 James Norman, John Oliver North (Melbourne: General Board of Religious Education of the Church of England in Australia, 1947), 168. Cited in Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 67. 145 These events should be read in the context of the post-War and post-colonial mood within Britain that sought to unburden itself of the old imperial mantle. 146 Edward Carpenter, Archbishop Fisher: His Life and Times (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1991), 488. 147 Stated in a letter from Geoffrey Fisher to John McKie (13 April 1951), cited in Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 137. 148 Geoffrey Fisher, ‘Suggestions relating to a Constitution of the Church in Australia’, 1, cited in Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 135. 153 should, or as Sydney would wish’.149 Opposition to a constitution not only came from conservative evangelicals (mostly) in Sydney but also conservative Anglo-Catholics across the country. The aim of a national constitution was to include all the dioceses of Australia without exception. The problem was that some of those dioceses had grown so far apart ideologically that trying to make provisions that would please all parties lead to a weakened constitution that was weighted heavily in favour of the metropolitan dioceses. Donald Robinson stated: ‘We only remain united by maintaining two denominations in one organisation and allowing members of both to call themselves Anglican’.150

In 1955, the General Synod reviewed a draft constitution that had been drawn up by a committee in the wake of Fisher’s recommendations. Following its general approval, during the 1956 to 1961 period, the twenty-five Australian dioceses considered the draft.151 Despite vocal opposition from minority groups, all dioceses approved the draft. Parliamentary legislation was presented in all states and in the Commonwealth to recognise the ‘Church of England in Australia and Tasmania’ (the name of the church not being changed until 1981 to ‘The Anglican Church of Australia’).

In 1962, the General Synod met under its new constitution. The Australian church was now autonomous from the Church of England, and could now consider itself an equal church in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. While a spiritual nexus remained, the legal nexus was finally resolved. The Australian church had its own authority to order its own affairs completely.

3.10. The Contemporary Structure of the Anglican Church of Australia

An episcopal polity is at the core of the Australian constitution (that is, the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia). The Fundamental Declarations at the beginning of the Constitution state that the episcopacy and the three-fold order of ministry are unalterable features of the Australian church.152 Sections 7 to 14 of the

149 From an interview with Broughton Knox in May 1986, quoted in Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 141. 150 Quoted in Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 149. 151 The Diocese of Adelaide, nearly four years after the other dioceses, approved the draft in 1961. 152 Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, The Constitution, Canons, and Rules of the Anglican Church of Australia 2010, 9th ed. (Sydney: Broughton Publishing, 2011), §3. The Constitution within this volume will be abbreviated as The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia from this point. 154 constitution deal solely with episcopal matters. The polity of the Anglican Church of Australia as expressed in the national Constitution is formed around dioceses. The statement contained in the Constitution based this on ancient precedent: A diocese shall in accordance with the historic custom of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church continue to be the unit of organisation of this Church and shall be the see of a bishop.153 Each diocese is considered autonomous and financially independent. These dioceses cover particular geographic areas across the Australian continent and Tasmania, and each diocese is led by a bishop.154 The ‘local church’ is defined as a diocese within Anglican polity. As such, all ministry within a diocese is linked to its diocesan bishop. The bishops are elected by their dioceses (although the method of election varies from diocese to diocese) and must be considered ‘canonically fit’ in order to be consecrated. Bishops may remain bishops until the age of retirement determined by the synod of their diocese. All the Australians bishops meet together annually, with the location of the meeting moving around the country.

The dioceses are organised into provinces, mostly along state boundaries. Tasmania remains extra-provincial. The General Synod is entitled to confer the title of ‘archbishop’ on a diocesan bishop and each province of the national church has a metropolitan. The Primate chairs the General Synod and is a spokesperson for the national church. Neither the Primate or the General Synod have coercive powers over or within each diocese. Any canon approved by the General Synod must be approved by each particular diocese in order for it to take effect. The diocesan bishops have the right ex officio to sit as their own ‘house’ in the General Synod. Assistant bishops do not. Any assistant bishops present at the General Synod needs to be elected as members of the house of clergy in order to participate. As such, there is an equality amongst diocesan bishops present within the Australian church but not an equality amongst all those consecrated to that order.

As had been debated for decades, an appellate tribunal was formed at a national level. This was envisaged not only to be a court of appeal following a diocesan tribunal, but should a bishop or diocese be believed to have acted in a manner contrary to the

153 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §7 154 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §7 155 agreed upon constitution, the appellate tribunal could be called upon to make a ruling.155 This extra-diocesan body is composed of three diocesan bishops and four laity (all four of which are required to be lawyers or judges).156 The president and deputy of the tribunal are required to be lay members. The tribunal’s role is to act as a court of appeal for matters relating to church discipline and to give opinions on the interpretation of the constitution itself.157 As such, bishops are obliged to adhere to the recommendations of the appellate tribunal. This would become highly significant in relation to the ordination of women, as will be seen in the next chapter.

The diocesan bishops of the five metropolitan dioceses are styled as ‘archbishops’, with particular responsibility for their respective provinces.158 Diocesan bishops all swear canonical obedience to their metropolitan in all things ‘lawful and honest’. There is a metropolitan for each of the five provinces that make up the national church (New South

Wales, , Queensland, Western Australia and ).159 The metropolitans have the right to preside at the consecration of a new bishop within their province, along with a minimum of two other bishops in attendance to lay hands on the candidate.

There is a primate over the national church, who can be elected from amongst any of the diocesans.160 The primate is elected for a period of six years (they can subsequently be re-elected for a second three year term). This primate, however, does not have any coercive power over the national church (that is, the primate is not a pope). The primate is a primus inter pares—‘first among equals’—with the responsibility of chairing the General Synod and to act as a spokesperson for the national church. The bishops may be called together by the Primate to meet together for conference (although decisions that might be made during these conferences do not have any force or legislative basis). This

155 Border, Church and State in Australia 1788-1872, 284. 156 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §57.1; Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 177. 157 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §63.1. 158 The Constitution sets out that any diocesan bishop may be styled as an ‘archbishop’ upon the two-third agreement of the General Synod. The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia, §8. 159 The dioceses are allocated into the provinces as follows—New South Wales: Armidale, Bathurst, Canberra-Goulburn, Grafton, Newcastle, Sydney, and the Riverina; Queensland: Brisbane, North Queensland, the and Rockhampton; South Australia: Adelaide, the Murray, and Willochra; Victoria: Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland, Melbourne, and Wangaratta; and Western Australia: Bunbury, Perth, and North West Australia. The Diocese of Tasmania is considered extra-provincial. 160 The workload and responsibilities of a primate means that it usually a metropolitan who is chosen (as they have the resources (for instance, assistant bishops) to supplement their duties within their own diocese). 156 means that neither individually nor corporately do the bishops have the authority to make decisions for the church (at least in a legislative sense): this power rests with the General and diocesan synods. The primate attends the Primates’ Meetings of the Anglican Communion and all bishops are invited to the Lambeth Conference (usually taking place every ten years).

3.11. Conclusion

This chapter has explored the development of episcopacy in Australia between the time of white colonisation to the acceptance of national constitution for the Australian Anglican church. Through looking at key moments within that history, the aim has been to explore how the Anglican bishops in Australia understood their office and authority. This chapter has also explored how those conceptions as well as the lived experience of episcopacy have changed over time. As it developed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Australian church developed characteristics that might be attributable to Cyprian’s theology: a high degree of diocesan autonomy, a general equality amongst its diocesan bishops, an emphasis on synodical governance, diversity within its united structure and a belief that it has the ability to manage its own affairs and to maintain links with other churches, including other Anglican provinces.

Yet any parallels with Cyprian’s ecclesiology are coincidental. In spite of the Cyprianic semblance, these ‘markers’ have developed from far less prosaic motives than any desire to replicate Cyprian’s ecclesiology. The early establishment of episcopacy on the Australian mainland and in Tasmania occurred during a time of paradigmatic shift within the British Empire. This shift in thinking was not due to an appeal to the Fathers. It is all but impossible that any Australian Anglican ever sat down with a copy of Cyprian’s opus in one hand while attempting to write a national constitution with the other. The structures of the Australian church are mainly attributable to pragmatic responses to crises such as the withdrawal of Crown authority, or the solidifying of partisanship within dioceses and increasing suspicion between them.

Episcopal ministry during the English Reformation period became linked with the authority of the Crown, but it was also recognised as its own distinct spiritual authority. These dual characteristics became a source of tension within the early Australian Anglican church as the authority of the Crown withdrew and notions of an Established 157

Church within Australia disappeared. The early Australian bishops were forced to adapt their own ministries to the demands of this new context. The Bishops’ Conference in 1850 had the opportunity to allow Patristic thinking to guide their approach to episcopacy in Australia. However, they chose not to do so because most of the bishops were still wedded to the Reformation model of the Royal Supremacy. The fruit of this thinking is exhibited in Perry’s use of Parliament to establish a constitution for the Melbourne Diocese. Due to the distance between diocesan centres in Australia and the distance from Lambeth and Westminster, both physically and increasingly constitutionally, a high degree of tribal diocesanism developed. This emphasis on the form and rights of individual dioceses became fundamental to Australian Anglicanism. This was unlike England, where national identity was critical for the Church of England. A loose national identity for Australian Anglicans has been placed under strain through continuing doctrinal divisions within the church.

The Australian church increasingly exhibited the structural qualities of Cyprian’s ecclesiology. Yet it lacked the heart of Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy. Cyprian’s ecclesiology, a pre-Christendom model of church, has become closer to what Australian Anglicanism now has in a post-Christendom world, rather than the unity of the Church through the Royal Supremacy expressed during the English Reformation. This gives an opportunity not to proclaim a triumph of Tractarian thought in the Australian church— far from it—but to return to Cyprian in analysing how the Australian episcopate might lead the wider church to a healthier and more apostolic way of being the Body of Christ than was the case for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This will be addressed in the next chapter. 158

Chapter Four

Reconceiving Episcopacy for Australian Anglicans

4.1. Introduction

This thesis has so far examined the nature of episcopacy as Cyprian of Carthage expressed it in the mid third century and how Anglican bishops have faced the challenges of adapting the nature of their office to their historical context. In this chapter, we will explore how episcopacy could be reconceived using Cyprian as a conversation partner. The chapter begins with an exploration of the theology in modern Australian Anglican ordinals. The lived experience of episcopacy is then weighed against that theology. As has been witnessed in the preceding chapters, Anglican views on episcopacy have often been re-shaped during times when the authority and office of the episcopate has been placed under strain and scrutiny. Four current challenges facing the episcopate in the Australian context offer such an opportunity: size and structure of dioceses, issues of diocesan management, responding to abuse and the nature of church unity.

The previous chapter demonstrated that, even in the absence of a conscious focus on Cyprian, the structures of the Anglican church have nonetheless come surprisingly close to the ecclesiological paradigm found within the Cyprianic corpus. This chapter therefore argues that a better understanding of Cyprian’s ecclesiology could enhance and complete those structures within Australia that already mirror some of his ideas.

4.2. The Ordinal – An Australian Theology of the Episcopate

An analysis of modern Australian ordinals is the best place to understand the theology of holy orders that the Australian church propagates. Charles Sherlock writes: The Ordinal is a keystone in the Church’s self-understanding. Whenever someone is ordained, on public display is the meaning and significance of the ministries of the gospel which Christ entrusts to the Church.1 Australian Anglicans inherited the rites for ordaining bishops, priests and deacons from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP). This prayer book and its ‘Form and Manner of

1 Charles Sherlock, Australian Anglicans Worship: Performing APBA (Mulgrave: Broughton Publishing, 2020), 398. 159

Making Ordaining and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests and Deacons’ was enshrined within the 1962 constitution as fundamental to and polity.2 Liturgical revisions to the Ordinal occurred first in the 1978 An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB), and then in the 1995 A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA). The language of episcopacy conveyed in the modern ordinals retains traditional conceptions of episcopal orders while expressing this in modern language.

The changes made in the AAPB were mostly a modernisation of the language of BCP. The language within AAPB ordinal referring to bishops is entirely masculine—in addition to exclusively using male pronouns, the bishop-elect is also referred to as ‘this godly and learned man’ and ‘brother’.3 In contrast, the language of APBA was gender- neutral, achieved by use of plural pronouns, which left open the future possibility that the candidate could be female.4 Another note of contrast in the language used between the two ordinals is that the 1978 ordinal is for the ‘Consecration of a Bishop’ while the 1995 ordinal is for the ‘Ordination of a Bishop’. This maintains a level of consistency with the other two rites—the ‘Ordination of Deacons’ and the ‘Ordination of Priests (also called Presbyters)’. While the title may have changed, the content of the rite retains the use of ‘consecrating’ terminology throughout. There is no explanation given in APBA for the title change, although notes within the 1995 Ordinal express that ‘The language used has sought to move away from the conservative style of the [1978] Ordinal’.5 As the rest of the 1995 rite retains language of ‘consecrating’, the title change is cosmetic.

Gary Bouma writes that, compared to other ordination rites for bishops elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, the model of episcopacy presented in the 1662 and 1978 prayerbooks is ‘negative, demanding sacrifice of self and rigid discipline of others in a domineering mode of leadership’.6 He compares these three rites with that of Episcopal Church of the United States of America and the Anglican Church of Aotearoa

2 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §4. 3 Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, An Australian Prayer Book: For Use Together with the Book of Common Prayer, 1662 (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1978), 616- 621. 4 Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, A Prayer Book for Australia: For Use Together with the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and an Australian Prayer Book (1978) (Alexandria: Broughton Books, 1995), 802. 5 A Prayer Book for Australia, 781. 6 Bouma, "On Being Bishop", 52. 160

New Zealand. Within the equivalent exhortations, Bouma writes, a more ‘positive’ model is presented in which the candidates are asked to ‘build up the church, care for the clergy, nurture all, promote the kingdom of God, be an enabling partner in the ministry of the church’.7 The 1995 ordinal may be seen as a mixture of both. The bishop- elect is asked if they trust that they ‘are called by God to the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God’. The bishop-elect is not to be an ‘Anglican bishop’ but a ‘bishop in the Church of God’.

The rite points towards the conservative nature of episcopacy: bishops are to conserve the orthodoxy of the church as it has been received (from both the Scripture and the Anglican formularies) and to ensure the faithful transmission of that faith to others. A bishop is thus understood to be a guardian of the Church’s faith, unity and discipline. Distinctive to the consecration of a bishop is the reading of the Oaths and Declarations during the rite. Bishops must state that they firmly believe ‘the Catholic Faith’ and ‘give assent to the doctrine of the Anglican Church of Australia as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons’.8 The episcopal candidate swears to be bound by the Constitution and by the ‘canons, statutes, ordinances and rules’ of their diocese and the General Synod.9 Within ‘The Presentation’ and ‘Examination’, bishops are questioned about and charged to uphold the Christian faith and make a series of promises as to how they will discharge their ministry.10 These promises are the bedrock upon which bishops are meant to build their ministry.

The 1995 ordinal focusses on the action of God in empowering bishops for their ministry. Before the laying of hands, the given prayer recognises that it is God who empowers Christians for their ministry.11 With the ‘Liturgical principles underlying the services’ section of the 1995 Ordinal, the first point states that ‘The distinctiveness of each Order is clearly expressed, each being understood in the context of the whole people of God, in the light of the unique ministry of Christ’.12 Before the laying on of hands, a hymn invoking the Holy Spirit (usually a translated version of the Veni Creator

7 Bouma, "On Being Bishop", 52. 8 A Prayer Book for Australia, 800. 9 A Prayer Book for Australia, 800-801. 10 A Prayer Book for Australia, 800-804. 11 A Prayer Book for Australia, 805. 12 A Prayer Book for Australia, 781. 161

Spiritus) is sung.13 The presiding archbishop lays their hands on the candidate’s head, along with at least two other bishops, and prays. There is a key difference between the 1662 and 1995 prayerbook, in that the consecrating prayer in the former addresses the bishop being ordained and the latter addresses God.14 In consecrating the new bishop, physical connection is believed to be important within traditional ordination rites. This act is stated in the New Testament and also has precedent within the Old Testament scriptures.15 All bishops present are instructed to lay their hands on the head of a candidate. The presiding archbishop then prays: Fill these your servants, merciful God, with grace and power, that they may always be ready to proclaim the good news of salvation. Fill their hearts with love of you and your people, that they may feed and tend the flock of Christ. Give them humility, and defend them from all evil, that they may exercise without reproach the office of bishop, using its authority to heal, and not to hurt, to build up, and not destroy. Accept our prayer through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit belong glory and honour, worship and praise, now and for ever.16 The theology of the ordination rite express that it is God who ordains and God who empowers the candidate for ministry within God’s church. Bishops receive their office and authority from God. God is thanked for the gifts that God bestows on the Church for ministry and then is called upon to consecrate the candidate. God is the author of a bishop’s authority.

The above prayer states that it is God who empowers bishops for their ministry, but they are empowered to do so in a particular way. Bishops are not empowered to do as they want regardless of consequence. The prayer states that they are empowered to be humble, to use their authority to heal, to build up the Church and to love.17 The

13 A Prayer Book for Australia, 804. 14 In the 1662 prayer book, the consecrating prayer is: ‘Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a Bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Ghost, Amen. And remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is given thee, by this imposition of our hands: for God hath not given us the spirit of fear: but of power, and love, and soberness’. Where as in the 1995 ordinal, the consecrating prayer is: ‘Send down the Holy Spirit upon your servant NN, whom we set apart by the laying on of our hands, for the office and work of a bishop in your church’. 15 Numbers 8:10, Numbers 27:16-23, and Deuteronomy 34:9; Acts 6:1-6, Acts 13:1-3, 1 Timothy 4:14, 2 Timothy 1:6, and 1 Timothy 5:22. 16 A Prayer Book for Australia, 805 17 A Prayer Book for Australia, 805. 162

‘Exhortation and Examination’ also makes this clear within the rite. There are particular ideals and behaviours that episcopal candidates promise to uphold. Bishops are to be ‘faithful in prayer’ and ‘diligent in the study of the holy Scriptures’ in order that they may ‘teach and encourage’.18 They are to ‘proclaim the gospel to all’ and to ‘lead’ those ‘in [their] care’ to ‘make disciples of all nations’.19 They are called to ‘live modesty, in justice and godliness’ so that they be exemplars of the Christian life.20 They are to ‘administer with mercy the disciple of this Church’.21 They are to ‘maintain and promote quietness, peace and love’ and ‘strive to build up the body of Christ in unity, truth and love’.22 They are to ordain and commission others for ministry and ‘encourage those committed to [their] care to fulfil their ministry’.23 They are also to ‘show compassion to the poor’, ‘be gentle with the abused’ and ‘defend those who have no helper’.24 The ordination rite is clear that episcopal ministry is to be performed according to these principles. There is no sense that ordination changes the character of an episcopal candidate. As such, candidates should be chosen on pre-existing qualities. The ordination rite does make clear though that it is God who empowers and to whom bishops are accountable for their actions and behaviour. It is as much as how bishops perform their ministry as what they do.

4.3. The Lived Experience of Episcopacy

While the Ordinal may express a theology of episcopacy, what is the relation between this theological ideal and the lived experience of episcopacy? Stephen Pickard addresses this concern in his own reflections on the contemporary role of episcopacy: Consulting a bishop’s daily, weekly, monthly and yearly diary… would tell the story of remarkable business, crowded days, few spare moments, rapid and constant travel between engagements, little space, time and peace for critical reflection, let alone writing, and immersion in a host of ecclesiastical and secular appointments. [But] what is the relationship between the diary and the vow?... This is not only a practical issue of organising time: it is also an

18 A Prayer Book for Australia, 803. 19 A Prayer Book for Australia, 803. 20 A Prayer Book for Australia, 803. 21 A Prayer Book for Australia, 803. 22 A Prayer Book for Australia, 804. 23 A Prayer Book for Australia, 804. 24 A Prayer Book for Australia, 804. 163

issue of priorities and more particularly orientation of life. What does it mean any longer for a bishop to ‘see over’ the people of God? Is it possible? Do the consecration vows make any sense practically? Is it a hit and miss approach to “solemn vows”? How do the vows made before God and the people inform the shape and dynamic of episcopal life? My hunch is that the vows are good, the intentions are honourable and true, but the appropriation and embodiment of the vows in a form of episcopal life is seriously at risk if not compromised.25 Pickard asks a significant question: ‘What is the relationship between the diary and the vow?’26 Pickard’s comments on the relation between the ideals expressed within a bishop’s consecration vows and the lived reality of episcopacy are poignant.

Another Australian Anglican to highlight the challenges facing the Australian episcopate is former Primate, Archbishop Philip Aspinall. In his outgoing Primatial address to the General Synod in 2015, Aspinall used the opportunity to address key challenges.27 He said: Every Primate and every General Synod in the life of this Anglican Church of Australia wrestles in one way or another with the unity and diversity of the Church and with its very dispersed authority structure.28 In this speech, Aspinall noted that underlying theological issues were the root of the problems he saw at a structural level. Aspinall recognised that ‘the multiple roles and expectations of bishops’ are a key issue facing Australian Anglicans.29 He also recognised that the dispersed nature of authority presented challenges. Aspinall said: While the name Anglican Church of Australia implies a unified concept, we are in fact 23 dioceses each with a high degree of autonomy. The one Church is arranged in such a way that the political control rests with the dioceses and parishes rather than with the General Synod.30

25 Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 171-172. 26 Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 172. 27 Philip Aspinall, “President’s Address to the 16th General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia” (Presidential address at the 16th General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia at St Peter’s College, Adelaide, 30 June 2014), https://www.abmission.org/data/News/2014_New_Primate_Au/ 2014_General_Synod_Presidents_Address_-_full_text.pdf, accessed on 21 August 2014. 28 Aspinall, "President's Address", 2. 29 Aspinall, "President's Address", 16. 30 Aspinall, "President's Address", 13. 164

Aspinall also stated that ‘Local autonomy has trumped catholicity’.31 Neither the General Synod nor the national constitution have been able to resolve the current tensions or bring about a unified ecclesiology.

Within this speech, Aspinall posed the following question: ‘How do we [the Australian church] cohere in the face of diversity and difference and with very weak national offices and instruments?’32 The diversity within the Australian church, Aspinall writes, has deep historical roots and that essentially ‘We are dealing with a spiritual issue’.33 The national church has been ‘Plagued by lack of trust, suspicion and party spirit’ for decades that have resulted in the theological, particularly ecclesiological, divergences that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century.34 As such, the Constitution of the Australian church, rather than being a conduit for unity within the church, has ‘politically and legally entrenched’ the guarded diocesanism that had been growing since the mid nineteenth century.35 Aspinall also notes that the problems he perceives within the Australian church are also shared by the wider Anglican Communion.36 Mutual recognition is key to moving forward positively whether that is at a diocesan, national or international level.

With the theology of the Ordinal as well as Pickard and Aspinall’s insights in mind, how might episcopacy and the structures of the Anglican Church of Australia adapt and flourish in the face of the challenges they face? This thesis now turns to four principal areas where Cyprian’s ecclesiology around bishops is able to model an adaptive approach to episcopacy that at the same time maintains certain core ecclesiological values.

31 Aspinall, "President's Address", 19. Aspinall writes, ‘Over time increasing diversity has diminished and weakened our internal sense of coherence and belonging together. It has also hindered the way we present ourselves to the wider community and frankly baffled some who observe the Anglican Church from outside. Such bewilderment contributes to lack of understanding, undermines identity and trust and so inhibits effectiveness in mission. We are now reaping the consequences as the wider community holds up a mirror in which we see ourselves’ (18). 32 Aspinall, "President's Address", 2. 33 Aspinall, "President's Address", 21. 34 Aspinall, "President's Address", 21. 35 Aspinall, "President's Address", 21. 36 Aspinall, "President's Address", 19. 165

4.4. A Distant Episcopate

This section investigates the challenges around the size and scale of dioceses within the Australian context and the responses to these challenges.37 This section presents a series of problems that are all related to geography. Statistics relating to the church and episcopate are presented followed by an exploration into assistant bishops, ‘Cultural episcopacy’, alternative episcopal oversight, and church planting across diocesan borders. This will be followed by a response to these challenges from Cyprian’s ecclesiology.

Bruce Kaye highlights that one of the challenges for the Australian church lies around urban density across the Australian landscape. He notes that One of the most important challenges facing Australian Anglicanism, particularly in the large metropolitan areas, is the recovery of an episcopate which directly ministers to the church community. We have in our metropolitan cities such large dioceses that the diocesan archbishops find themselves expected to be something more like chief executive officers of large corporations rather than people who have an episcopal ministry to a community of people… The present institutional arrangements actually frustrate episcopacy… It is not just the bishop who suffers in the present arrangements, it is also the ecclesial life of the community.38 Kaye identifies that the challenges concerning the office and authority of bishops impact upon all members within an episcopal polity. Therefore, a flourishing episcopate would also lead to the flourishing of all who are served and guided by that office. As such, addressing the challenges of geography are key.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Anglicans in Australia followed the structural pattern of their Mother Church and a diocesan structure was carved out of the Australian landscape. Each diocese would be led by a bishop and every bishop would have various clergy to assist them in ministry. The laity played an increasing role in the decision-making processes of the diocese through synods, largely replacing the

37 In The Tyranny of Distance, an Australian classic that has been continuously in print since 1967, Geoffrey Blainey describes how distance and isolation have been central to Australia's history and in shaping its national identity, and will continue to form its future. See: Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, Revised ed. (Sydney: Macmillan, 2001). 38 Kaye, Reinventing Anglicanism, 259. 166 function of the Crown and Parliament as these withdrew from involvement with the Australian church. Fiduciary trusts enabled the establishment of schools and parishes and corresponding trustees within every diocese were responsible for managing these assets. All Anglican parishes and other agencies within the set geographic boundaries are understood as either accountable or at least linked to their diocesan bishop. As such, bishops became responsible for parish churches, schools and mission agencies that were often spread over enormous distances, which require them to travel long distances in order to be present. Advances in technology have eased methods of both travel and communication, but the huge distances remain. The result was that in many dioceses bishops and their diocesan staff are often concentrated in urban locations. Even in metropolitan dioceses, the bishops, cathedrals and diocesan offices are located within the central business district of the city. The idea of a bishop ‘touring’ their diocese, a feature of past centuries, is a concept that is not lost on Australian Anglicans. Except for the communities located in the vicinity of the cathedral or bishop’s residence, there is rarely close proximity between a diocesan bishop and most the people they are called to lead, serve and care for across their diocese.

Reviewing some of the statistics associated with the Anglican Church of Australia indicates the scale of current challenges in regard to the size of the Australian dioceses. The Anglican Church of Australia covers the entire island continent as well as Tasmania and smaller island territories (such as Lord Howe and Christmas Islands). This means it covers an area of approximately 5,028,521 square kilometres, even if most of the population stretches around the coastline. The Australian population currently stands around 25,649,985.39 In 2016, 3.1 million people identified themselves on the census as Anglican, although this figure does not equate with regular participation in worship.40 There are currently 23 autonomous dioceses within the Australian church and so 23 diocesan bishops (5 of which are styled as ‘archbishops’). At the time of writing, there are a further 23 bishops in episcopal ministry (predominantly as assistant bishops in the metropolitical dioceses).41 This equates to around one Anglican bishop for every

39 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘National, state and territory population (March 2020),’ ABS. cat. no. 3101.0 (Canberra, 2020), https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and- territory-population/mar-2020, accessed September 10, 2020. 40 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘2016 Census QuickStats,’ https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/ census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/036, accessed September 20, 2020. 41 This figure was calculated using the total number of bishops who are stated to be in active ministry from diocesan websites throughout Australia. 167

600,000 Australians. If only the number of those who identify as Anglicans were to be calculated within this equation, there would be one bishop for approximately every 67,391 people who define themselves as Anglicans, although the bishops are not ‘evenly spread’ across the population.42

Further statistics on episcopal ministry also indicate currents trends. There are currently another 10 bishops who are currently not in ‘episcopal’ roles, instead serving as vicars/rectors of parishes, heads of agencies and so on. In its history so far, there have been 335 Anglican bishops serving in Australia, of whom 135 are alive today. 46 are currently in active episcopal roles. 59 of living Anglican bishops in Australia are retired. The average age of the episcopate is 58 years. Unlike their colonial predecessors, most contemporary Australian bishops are Australian-born. Just like their predecessors, most contemporary Australian bishops continue to be white, heterosexual, middle-class, tertiary-educated males.43

In 2010, the standing committee of the General Synod established a taskforce to examine the viability and structures of the Anglican Church of Australia. This taskforce handed down its report to the 2014 General Synod. This report collated data on the 23 dioceses and highlighted key areas that it recommended the Australian church address. The size and scale of current diocesan structures was highlighted as a concern. The report states: Amongst our 23 dioceses, those based on capital cities (federal and state) and some of our large regional cites are facing challenges associated with population growth. Some dioceses are facing a mixture of circumstances with population growth in some parts of the diocese and decline in others. Some dioceses are facing the prospect of solely population decline. However, the challenges facing dioceses are not just about size of population, but are more complex and deeper than issues of people, money and resources, and have to

42 I am indebted to Melbourne-based researcher Colin Reilly for personally sharing the statistical data contained within this paragraph. Statistics compiled by Reilly dating to 2015 can be viewed in Colin Reilly, A Little Compendium of Australian Anglican Diocesan Statistics: Numbers from the Ecclesia Anglicana Australis Database (Melbourne: The Bishop Perry Institute for Ministry and Mission, 2017). 43 I am indebted to Melbourne-based researcher Colin Reilly for personally sharing the statistical data contained within this paragraph. Statistics compiled by Reilly dating to 2015 can be accessed via: Reilly, A Little Compendium of Australian Anglican Diocesan Statistics. 168

do with a myriad of issues involving the changing nature of Australian society.44 Building on this claim, the reports notes: In Australia we have the paradox in trying to pursue [the] goal of mission with dioceses being, in many cases, too large or too small to be effective. Being too small means that there is just not enough critical mass in either resources or people to effectively pursue the mission of the church… By being too large it means that the fast growth of urbanisation, particularly in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, is at a level that far exceeds diocesan resources to keep pace.45 In the Australian context, it is most likely that a bishop will either be faced with a huge geographic area that is sparsely populated, or a relatively smaller geographic area that is densely populated. Bishops in the former case spend a large quantity of their time travelling to diffuse population centres, while the latter are faced with a population too big for any one person to serve. Australia’s largest Anglican diocese, the Diocese of North West Australia, covers an area of over 2,000,000 square kilometres. This Diocese is divided into 18 parishes, and the entire population within that area is approximately 150,000 persons. By comparison, the Diocese of Sydney covers an area of around 13,000 square kilometres in which over 5,600,000 people live, served by over 400 parishes, schools and agencies.

The problem of size has not only created frustration for the workload of bishops, it has also led to the amalgamation of dioceses. Three dioceses have been folded into others within the last century: Carpentaria, Kalgoorlie and St Arnaud.46 The Diocese of St Arnaud covered a significant part of western Victoria. Founded in 1926 out of the Diocese of Ballarat, it was merged with Bendigo in 1977. The Diocese of Kalgoorlie, founded in 1914, was located in the south-east of Western Australia. Formerly part of the Perth diocese, it was reabsorbed into that same diocese in 1973. The Diocese of Carpentaria was located in Queensland and merged with Diocese of North Queensland in 1996. All of these rural dioceses faced the reality of the population shift over the

44 The Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, Report of the Viability and Structures Task Force: & other materials impinging on the Small Groups Discussion Program - The Sixteenth General Synod (Sydney: The Anglican Church of Australia Trust Corporation, 2014), 8. 45 Australia, Report of the Viability and Structures Task Force, 19-20. 46 Australia, Report of the Viability and Structures Task Force, 19. 169 twentieth century to the major metropolitan centres and away from the bush. Regional dioceses in the twenty-first century continue to face these same challenges. Overextended resources place significant strain on ministry. Without significant growth, this leads to a recession of effectiveness and eventual collapse. The report of the standing committee of General Synod on Structures and Viability in 2014 reached a similar conclusion: The Anglican Church of Australia is at a crossroad. For over 30 years it has been slowly declining and the time has come for a revolution if it is to be a strong and sustainable church for the future. As we approach the middle of the second decade of the twenty-fist century, there are 23 dioceses in the Church and of that number, nearly all are experiencing significant challenges about their future. It may not be economic or resources issues, but it may be rapid urban growth and the inability of the parish system to keep pace.47

Due to the current size of dioceses it is unreasonable to expect that one bishop is capable of doing the entirety of their ministry alone. Without significant changes to the structure and size of the Australian dioceses or the conception of the distinctive role of a diocesan bishop, a sole bishop for a metropolitan diocese will end up distant from most of the people whom they are called to serve and care for. A sole bishop in a large rural diocese will be distant for most of the time. The metropolitan diocesan is distant because of the number of people they are constantly attempting to serve. The rural diocesan is distant because of actual physical distance. Because of the current structures, diocesan bishops cannot fulfill the responsibility of a bishop ‘to know and be known’ as set out in the Ordinal. A bishop cannot serve as a ‘good example to all’ if that example cannot be witnessed.

There have been various attempts to address these problems over the last century. The proliferation of assistant bishops across the Australian church has been one such response. It is recognised that face-to-face episcopal ministry (whether it be confirmation services, crisis management, decision making, and so on) needs to take place frequently within gathered Anglican communities. Assistant bishops allow for episcopal ministry to be performed in the absence of a diocesan. In 1895, at the same service in Melbourne, John Francis Stretch became the first co-adjutor bishop for

47 Australia, Report of the Viability and Structures Task Force, 5. 170

Brisbane and Henry Cooper became the first for Ballarat.48 Within the Constitution, the ‘Assistant Bishops’ Canon, 1966’ regulates how bishops are to be appointed and consecrated within the Anglican Church of Australia. Only those dioceses that can afford to have someone within the role (such as the larger, wealthier metropolitan dioceses) have access to such ministries.

Further questions arise as to the authority and role assistant bishops have within a diocese. Some assistant bishops are given portfolios of responsibilities while others are given responsibility for a geographic area within a diocese. Like clergy they perform these ministries with delegated authority from their diocesan bishop. An assistant bishop with an autonomous role would not an ‘assistant’ but could be rendered as a ‘pseudo-diocesan’. One of the benefits of allowing for assistant bishops is that it enables the current diocesan bishops to train others in episcopal ministry while they are in situ. As such, assistant bishops can hopefully be trained well and potentially chosen for diocesan positions either in the diocese where they reside or elsewhere, although this presumes that diocesan bishops will guide and teach their assistants how to ‘be’ diocesans. On the other hand, if assistant bishops are chosen because of their personal capability to administer a portfolio within a wider team, are those same individuals being trained for sole leadership of a team? The required skills would seem to be different. It may be that some assistant bishops are fit for wider leadership roles within the Church, while others are better suited for vicarious responsibilities.

Another response to the vastness of the Australia continent has been the creation of episcopal ministries that run parallel to geographical diocesan structures. The National Aboriginal Bishop is an example of this. Arthur Malcolm was the first Aboriginal person to be made an Anglican bishop in 1985 and served as a bishop to the Aboriginal peoples of northern Queensland and the Torres Strait Islanders until 2000.49 Malcolm was licenced as an assistant bishop within the Diocese of North Queensland for this ministry. Chris McLeod currently serves as the National Aboriginal Bishop, but is based in South Australia (serving the current Primate as an assistant bishop within the Diocese of Adelaide).50 This ministry has a particular focus on developing ministry

48 The Queenslander (09/11/1895), 903. 49 Clyde Wood, "Episcopacy and Indigenous Australians", in Episcopacy: Views from the Antipodes, ed. Alan Cadwallader (Adelaide: Anglican Board of Christian Education, 1994), 137. 50 ‘Bishop Chris McLeod,’ Adelaide Anglicans (2019), https://adelaideanglicans.com/who-we- are/leadership/bishop-chris/, accessed on September 15, 2020. 171 amongst those of Indigenous descent and an advocate amongst the Australian bishops on issues effecting the Indigenous communities. This important ministry should not detract from the necessity of all bishops to embrace cultural sensitivity within their own ministries. It would be disappointing if the only Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander bishop in the Australian church at any given time was the National Aboriginal Bishop.

The Bishop to the Defence Forces is a similar example. In 1985, the Defence Force Ministry Canon was passed by the General Synod (subsequently amended in 2001). The canon gives power to the Australian Primate, with ‘the approval of a majority of the Metropolitans and of the Defence Force Board’, to appoint a bishop to the Australian Defence Forces.51 The canon stipulates that the Defence Force bishop is directly accountable to the Primate and: Shall be responsible to the Primate for episcopal oversight of the chaplains serving in the Defence Force and of the ministrations of the church among men and women of the Defence Force and their families.52 In practical terms, this means that a defence force chaplain living and working at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Williamtown, NSW (for instance), is primarily responsible not to the local diocesan bishop (in this case the Bishop of Newcastle), but to the Bishop of the Defence Forces. Both the National Aboriginal Bishop and the Bishop of the Defence Forces have ministries that are not founded upon traditional diocesan frameworks. Their ‘diocese’ is a specific network of people and not based on geographic boundaries as such (although their episcopal jurisdiction does not stretch to peoples beyond Australian territory).

The term ‘diocesanism’ advocates for a particular geographic landscape to be partitioned into particular areas. Each area is then overseen by a particular bishop and the diocese is further divided into a number of parishes (diocesan agencies such as schools or charities may encompass the area of several parishes). In the premodern period, where transport and communication were not as easy, cheap or fast as they are today and populations did not greatly move around, geographic identity was accepted. With advances in technology and social networks that can now be maintained across great distances, do geographic boundaries still make any sense? Do Anglican adherents

51 Defence Force Ministry Canon (1985, as amended 2001), §2A.1. 52 Defence Force Ministry Canon (1985, as amended 2001), §3. 172 in Australia pay any real attention to which parish they ‘belong to’? If the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’, then it might be further asked what the point of a ‘diocese’ really is? Within current diocesan models, bishops invariably function more like occasional visitors than leaders of each Anglican community within their care.53 How many parishioners would readily recognise their bishop, let alone the authority of their bishop?

The idea of defining ‘dioceses’ as a network of people instead of a geographic area would seem closer to a relational identity for episcopacy. It would also seem closer to the ideas of ‘cultural episcopacy’ espoused by Allen Brent that was explored during the Introduction to this thesis. Brent’s ‘cultural episcopacy’ might be deemed as another response to the problems addressed in this section. But a closer look at the possibilities of ‘cultural episcopacy’ uncovers potential shortcomings. Instead of Christians being responsible to a bishop based on geographic boundaries (a legacy Brent attributes to Cyprian), people belonging to the same cultural group should be linked to a particular bishop who is the centre of their own cultural community (Ignatius). Brent writes: In Ignatius we can glimpse another model of episcopal government that is not wedded to a defined geographical domain… In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries we have created under the missionary imperative new, cultural forms of episcopacy not tied to territories. We have cultural bishops for indigenous peoples… Here the bishop, with presbyters and deacons, wear the images of their cultures in process of redemption and over whom they preside as guarantors of their distinctive liturgies and forms of spirituality. Such a new form of culturally based ministry is furthermore struggling to be born in the present crisis in the Anglican Communion over issues of sexuality. In this crisis, a territorially based episcopate is failing to secure the unity of the church… Any constructive way out of this dilemma will be in terms of recognising the bishop of a group with a theologically distinct culture as having the right to superintend the expression of the faith of that culture.54 In this model, a bishop is not cura animarum for all those within a particular geographic area but only to those with a specific cultural identity. Brent argues that his approach ‘cultural episcopacy’ allows for the theological justification of ministries like the National

53 Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 150. 54 Brent, Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the origin of Episcopacy, 161-162. 173

Aboriginal bishop—a bishop whose ministry is focused on those of a particular cultural group. Brent further argues that this principle should be extended to other ‘cultural groups’, such as people who object to the ordination of women.55 This ‘culture’ is not based on ethnicity but on a theological stance. Rather than unchangeable factors (such as episcopal leadership based on a given place), this form of cultural episcopacy is based on personal preferences.56 It would allow people to choose another bishop if they disagreed with any given bishop. On the one hand, this would seem to provide an opportunity for a bishop relate directly to their community. However, the bishop would in fact only be connected with a portion of the community. Any idea of discipline would also be obsolete.

In the late twentieth century, the idea of ‘alternative episcopal oversight’ (AEO) became a new feature within some of the Anglican churches across the communion. Alternative episcopal oversight is the practice of providing episcopal ministry to an individual or group with the diocese of another bishop. The concept of the AEO was largely sparked by the ordination of women to the priesthood and then episcopate.57 The idea arose that those who could not accept the ordination of women or the ministry of those bishops who would ordain women, that they should continue to receive episcopal ministry but only from a specified bishop who was also against women’s ordination. As such within a diocese or province, the dioceses would continue to have their normal diocesan bishop but those dissenting congregations would have either a suffragan/assistant bishop appointed to oversee them separately. A theology of ‘taint’ arose (reminiscent of the Donatist controversy). These alternative bishops would not have the ‘taint’ of ordaining women (thereby delegitimising their sacramental ministry in the eyes of this group). In 1993, the Church of England created ‘provincial episcopal visitors’ (PEV)—the so-called ‘flying bishops’. These bishops have ‘sees’ that are superimposed across the English dioceses. Parishes that declare their opposition to women’s ordination may pass particular resolutions to opt-in to this system. Almost twenty years later, in 2014 another PEV (the ) was established to oversee conservative evangelical congregations that teach a complementarian (male

55 Brent, Cultural Episcopacy and Ecumenism, 208-210. 56 A model similar to Brent’s has been allowed within the Church of England with the so-called ‘Flying Bishops’ although, to date, it has not taken up by the Australian church. This pattern of alternative oversight in the Church of England and Brent’s research into the area occurred almost simultaneously during the 1990s. 57 See further Monica Furlong, ed., Act of Synod - Act of Folly? (London: SCM Press, 1998). 174 headship) theology. Prior to 2014, all the PEV bishops had been conservative Anglo- Catholics. Alternative episcopal oversight was rejected in Australia, despite the calls for it by some. Attempted legislation during the 2001 General Synod was withdrawn after protracted debate. Similar legislation providing PEV failed in 2004 by a small margin.58 Although the National Aboriginal Bishop and the Bishop of the Defence Force in practice exercise a kind of AEO within Australia, AEO on the basis of theological convictions about women in ministry has been deemed an inappropriate expression of episcopacy within the Australian church.

The idea of a geographic boundary to define episcopal jurisdiction was an idea based on recognition and respect. A bishop in one diocese was responsible for the ministry and mission of the church in that place. That bishop recognised that other bishops would be doing the same in other places. The idea that a bishop would exercise authority within the same area of another legitimate bishop was a declaration that they did not trust that bishop or believe their ministry to be legitimate.

The significance of diocesan borders has been highlighted by the church planting that has occurred across diocesan boundaries over the last few decades. Usually, these ‘plants’ have branded themselves as independent, albeit with ideological ties to other dioceses. While the ties to diocesan bishops of the sending dioceses may be obscured, there has been little action to stop the plants from happening. This is of crucial concern because the fundamental idea of these plants has not been to bolster already existing parishes but to create alternative communities. By effectively declaring the theology or practices of existing parishes or dioceses to be illegitimate, these church plants have effectively created schismatic Anglican communities. These plants invariably have a different style of worship and doctrinal emphasis than the parish that already exists. They are also independent from accountability to the local bishop.59 This problem has become increasingly common not only in Australia but across the Anglican Communion. As Muriel Porter notes, ‘Naturally, these church plants have caused tension with the dioceses and bishops concerned, who are disturbed by this “missionary” spread into

58 Muriel Porter, Women in Purple: Women Bishops in Australia (Mulgrave: John Garratt Publishing, 2008), 43-44. 59 If any episcopal ministry exists then it is given by a bishop from another diocese (in some places this other diocese may even be on a different continent). 175 their territory’.60 The problem with these church plants is not that they undermine the authority of the legitimate bishop, but that their very existence questions the legitimacy of said bishop.

In 2005, the Diocese of Sydney passed the Affiliated Churches Ordinance.61 The purpose of this ordinance was to allow non-Anglican churches to be officially affiliated with the Diocese of Sydney. The Ordinance states that: The [Sydney] Synod or the Standing Committee may by resolution declare a non-Anglican church or a group of non-Anglican churches to be affiliated with this Church in this Diocese only if it is satisfied that the profession of faith of the non-Anglican church or group of non-Anglican churches is Bible-based.62 This ordinance has been used 12 times to affiliate ‘non-Anglican’ churches that exist within the boundaries of the dioceses of Brisbane, Canberra and Goulburn, Gippsland, Grafton, Newcastle, North Queensland, and Wangaratta. This affiliation allows for the recognition of faith and orders as well as the potential transfer of ordained ministry. In July 2017, the Bishop of Newcastle submitted a case to the Appellate Tribunal questioning the constitutional validity of this ordinance. In summary, the appellants asked, ‘Is the act of affiliation, attachment or connecting of a non-Anglican church with a diocese in circumstance where that non-Anglican church is located with the jurisdiction of another diocese prohibited by the Constitution?’63 The response of the Appellate Tribunal was that the ordinance was not unconstitutional. The determinations hold that the ordinance in question could not cause non-Anglican churches to become ‘in communion’ with the Anglican Church of Australia. These non-Anglican churches remained non-Anglican. This, however, raises serious questions as to what constitutes being ‘affiliated’ and being ‘in communion’ is for Australian Anglicans.

Church planting across diocesan boundaries and appeals to alternative episcopal oversight are both the products of ignoring the traditional understanding of geographic

60 Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 4. 61 Affiliated Churches Ordinance 2005 (amended 2014) (Anglican Diocese of Sydney, 2014), https://www.sds.asn.au/sites/default/files/ords/adminord/O73-0099.pdf?doc_id=NTE2NDU=, accessed on 15 September 2020. 62 Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Affiliated Churches Ordinance 2005 §4. 63 Primate’s Reference re Affiliated Churches Ordinance 2005 of the Diocese of Sydney – Opinion of the Appellate Tribunal, unpublished document, https://anglican.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ 1538-Affiliated-Churches-Ordinance-Reference-Opinion-26-November-2018-signed.pdf, accessed on 15 September 2020. 176 episcopal jurisdiction. Christians in one place who do not believe the faith and witness of another group of Christians as theologically orthodox take it upon themselves to provide that faithful witness in the same area at the same time. It is a failure by some Anglican Christians to recognise each other as fellow Christians, and we shall return to this point later within this chapter. Geographic jurisdiction is based on a system of mutual trust and recognition. When that trust evaporates, and fellow Anglican Christians can no longer fundamentally recognise each other as Christians, those traditional boundaries disappear.

The above examples raise the importance of issues around size, viability and geographic boundaries within the Australian church. There have been various responses to these concerns. These problems remain so because Australian Anglicans continue to retain the classical definition of episcopacy and of diocesan ministry. So could a ‘classical author’ such as Cyprian provide insight that could help the modern episcopate address these problems?

4.5. Cyprian’s Response – the Relational Bishop

The autonomy of each diocese and the equality of diocesan bishops within the Australian church has high resonances with Cyprian’s ecclesiology. The ‘one bishop, one church’ mentality has been characteristic of Anglican polity for centuries—following the legacy of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Coptic churches). The Lambeth Conferences in both 1920 and 1930 affirmed ‘this ancient Catholic principle that the fundamental unity of Church organisation is the territorial Diocese under the jurisdiction of one bishop’.64

Developing in the wake of the Novatianist scandal, Cyprian’s understanding of ‘one bishop, one diocese’ is formulated out of desire not to see the Church wrenched by competing claims of authority. Over time, Cyprian’s theology became a justifying principle that the new Christian empire would be divided into ‘dioceses’ (imperial terminology applied in the 4th century and not earlier) and each diocese would have a bishop. There is an anachronistic tendency to read these later developments into Cyprian’s works. In turn, Cyprian’s theology provided the basis for the later ecclesial infighting over jurisdiction and dominance. This perception of Cyprian’s legacy might

64 Quoted in Episcopal Ministry: The Report of the Archbishops' Group on the Episcopate (London: Church House Publishing, 1990), 121. 177 seriously limit his effectiveness in contemporary discussions on ecclesiology that aimed at harmony and equality within the church. The first chapter of this thesis has laid out Cyprian’s theology as it is present in his writings, and not how it might be perceived by others.

The thought of different bishops existing to cater to different groups within the same place is the antithesis of Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy.65 The idea of alternative episcopal ministry or ‘cultural episcopacy’ as Brent defines it goes against the heart of Cyprianic ecclesiology. If ‘dioceses’ were organised into social networks who would determine who was part of each network? If it was matter for the individual Christian to decide, then how would that individual be held accountable for what they believed and how they behaved? If confronted, could not that individual simply choose another bishop to ‘belong to’? Even if a single diocesan bishop was replaced by some form of shared episkope (say an authoritative committee), the same problems exist. In a consumeristic culture there is a danger that an individual could simply ‘shop for a bishop’ or form of authority that suited them. Any idea of being changed by the gospel or accountability would disappear.

Another concern would be that bishops could simply market themselves or their ideas to potential constituents. In Cyprianic terms, the church would be arrayed with laxists and rigorists competing against each other for followers. This is exactly the nightmare scenario that Cyprian faced in the wake of the Decian persecution. The result was church planting as rigorists and laxists sought to win more people to their way of thinking. While territorial boundaries do not need to be understood as God-given or sacred, their existence is based on a community of trust. Territorial boundaries work if those on either side of the boundary recognise the validity of each other and trust one another. Without trust and mutual recognition, the boundaries disappear and episcopal legitimacy threatened.

Twenty-first century bishops would do well to learn from the kind of unifying practices advocated by Cyprian and his colleagues in building trust between each other. Meeting together regularly with authority to discuss important issues in a safe environment—an environment that allows for a diversity within the church’s unity— will help to build levels of trust between bishops and across dioceses. If that were

65 Which is the likely cause of Allen Brent’s opposition to Cyprian’s theology and legacy. 178 achieved, organising the area of ministry of a bishop on geographical parameters would be less complicated.

In regard to the response to the challenges of the size of Australian dioceses by using assistant bishops, Cyprian’s writings offer a nuanced approach. Within Cyprian’s writings there is no concept of an assistant bishop—there was one bishop for each place. A Cyprianic approach would seriously question the theological legitimacy of assistant bishops. Significantly, Cyprian’s writings suggest that while he was in exile from Carthage, two bishops were in exile in Carthage.66 Cyprian seems to have had no reservations in allowing them to engage in ministry to the Carthaginian Christians, although that ministry is not defined. Therefore, while ‘assistant bishops’ do not exist in Cyprian’s writings, the idea that a bishop might exercise ministry in another bishop’s absence, deputising for them, is not without precedent. A potential response to the idea of assistant bishops based on Cyprian’s writings relates more to the underlying justification for their existence: the current scale diocesan ministry is too large for diocesan bishops therefore another bishop is necessary.

Cyprian’s own experience of doing episcopal ministry at a distance during his time in exile might seem to legitimise current structures in which bishops are often distant and remote. Cyprian’s time in exile proved controversial.67 During this time, Cyprian acted through intermediaries and believed that his office as bishop of Carthage remained fully intact in spite of being at a distance.68 It could be argued that this gives a patristic precedent and justification for episcopal absenteeism that became rife within the medieval period. After all, if a diocese is functioning well in the diocesan bishop’s absence, what is the need for them to be physically present at all? As such, the size of dioceses (whether large in terms of population or geographical area) might be seen to be justifiable under Cyprian’s ecclesiology. No matter how large the diocese, the bishop is still the bishop.

Cyprian does not actually give us a blueprint for diocesan polity in his writings. While Cyprian believed that his legitimacy as bishop was unquestionable during his exile, he recognised the practical abnormality of his situation. He continually states his

66 Cyprian, Epistles XXXVII and XXXVIII. 67 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 3-4; Decret, Early Christianity in North Africa, 50. 68 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 374. 179 eagerness to return from exile to be physically present amongst the Christian community in Carthage, because that is where a bishop should be.69 Cyprian understands that the bishop is the locus of local church. This is similar to the eucharistic theology expressed by Ignatius, which sees the bishop at the centre of the eucharistic community—gathering all the people of God around the altar. Cyprian’s desire to return to be with the Carthaginian community can be read in a similar vein and draws out the sacerdotal understanding of episcopacy that Cyprian maintains throughout his writings.

Stephen Pickard has raised significant concerns over the legacy of Cyprian in relation to diocesanism within the Australian context. A better reading of Cyprian’s work enhances Pickard’s argument in relation to the need to ‘re-place’ bishops within the modern church. This definition of ‘replace’ is ‘to restore to a previous place or position, to put back again in a place’.70 Driver and Pickard write: The “monarchical” image of episcopacy in the Anglican church has been heightened by centuries of establishment, with bishops in England appointed by the crown, taking a place in secular government and accruing the trappings of some privilege.71 While a ‘monarch’ can rule from a distance, a ‘relational’ sense of episcopacy is dependent on the quality of the interactions with those who make up the Christian community. Driver and Pickard advocate for a ‘relational’ or ‘natural’ episcopacy defined by ‘place’, ‘identified in terms of the quality of social interactions and the potential for enriched communal life and society’.72 They write further: The natural features of the environment and geography, the natural reach and mobility of the inhabitants and their sense of the place they occupy would be some of the criteria important in recognising and designating a natural place within which episcopal ministry could be exercised in its personal, pastoral and teaching dimensions.73

69 Cyprian, Epistles V.4, IX.4, XI.3, XXXIII.5 and XXXIV. 70 Jeffrey Driver and Stephen Pickard, "'Re-placing' Bishops: an Ecumenical and Trinitarian Approach to Episcopacy," St Mark's Review 169 (1997): 24. 71 Driver and Pickard, "'Re-placing' Bishops: an Ecumenical and Trinitarian Approach to Episcopacy", 26. 72 Driver and Pickard, "'Re-placing' Bishops: an Ecumenical and Trinitarian Approach to Episcopacy", 27. 73 Driver and Pickard, "'Re-placing' Bishops: an Ecumenical and Trinitarian Approach to Episcopacy", 28. 180

This emphasis on a sense of ‘place’ instead of ‘space’ would lead to a reduction in the size of dioceses. This thesis contends that Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy was relational, although that legacy has been skewed overtime. One way of allowing a sense of ‘place’ into our ecclesiology is in redefining the scope and size of dioceses. This sense of ‘place’ also questions what is the ‘place’, or the role, of a bishop within the Christian community. A bishop is not only a pastor pastorum—‘Shepherd of the Shepherds’—but is pastor of all within their area of ministry. Is the ‘place’ to be far away, like Cyprian in exile, or in close proximity to others who make up the local Christian community? This thesis contends that the ‘place’ of a bishop is not far removed, only visiting occasionally or primarily as an office worker. The place of a bishop is amongst the people of God and inspiring discipleship. This fulfils the Ordinal’s call for a bishop to ‘know and be known’. The proper place of a bishop is regular interaction with the clergy and laity and joining with them in worship and prayer. It is in teaching and preaching and the provision of sacramental ministry. When this is left primarily to priests and deacons, it undermines the nature of the episcopal order.

For Cyprian, bishops are not just the ‘order that orders’ but from where all the fulness of the ministry of the living Christ flows through in the local setting. The size of dioceses should fit the reasonable expectations of the capacity of bishops. If a diocese is deemed too big for just one bishop, then it is the diocese that should change, not the nature of episcopacy. Our structures should fit our theology, rather than our theology being reformatted to suit our structures. Cyprian is our model for practical adaptation of episcopal ministry within its context, but this never undermines the core values Cyprian places on episcopacy. This thesis firmly advocates to contemporary bishops the virtues of arguments like Driver’s and Pickard’s for bishops to be ‘re-placed’ within their dioceses. This would alleviate much of the frustration felt by bishops as well as those they serve.

A solution to the episcopal problems surrounding distance and population within Australia could be the creation of more dioceses. If all dioceses were confined to one bishop who was served by a maximum of 30 clergy this would create an immediate change to dynamics of ministry within Australia. A diocese could consist of 20-30 parishes, chaplaincies or missionary endeavours such as fresh expressions. Each 181 diocese would have smaller synods, or alternatively could have greater representation from different diocesan bodies. Dioceses could be based on the lines of current urban archdeaconries (or regional episcopates overseen by assistant bishops) which are often of an equivalent size. Kaye reaches a similar conclusion: If episcopal responsibilities were limited to no more than the equivalent community of thirty-five parishes and were directly related to a network of institutional arrangements including parishes, schools, welfare agencies and others, it would be more likely that genuine episcopacy would be possible for those who inhabit these institutional arrangements.74 Not only would bishops be able to spend regular quality time with their clergy, they would also be able to spend much more time with all the parishes and agencies that made up their dioceses. The ‘people in the pews’ would have regular access to their bishop. Bishops would no longer fly in and out of congregational life once a year or so. This infrequency has created a culture in which most Anglicans hardly know and are hardly known by the bishops who are meant to serve them and to whom they are meant to be spiritually accountable. When a bishop visits only occasionally (or only in the event of major change or crisis) their presence is readily perceived as the meddling of an outsider rather than as the leader who is intertwined with their lives. Smaller dioceses would break down this visitation mentality and parishes/agencies might come to see their leaders as leaders. If the creation of more dioceses, and therefore diocesan bishops, were to happen the decision would be made through legislation by the General Synod. In turn, the representational formulas that guide the composition of the General Synod sessions could also be re-modelled.

This thesis is certainly not the first time that a reduction of the size of dioceses has been proposed. As noted in Chapter Two, Archbishop Ussher’s attempts to do a similar exercise in the 17th century were rejected. More recently, David Ford and Stephen Pickard have also argued for this.75 Pickard discusses the report of the Archbishop’s Group on the Episcopate in 1990 for the Church of England. The report observed that while the idea may be ‘attractive theologically’, it was feared that it

74 Kaye, Reinventing Anglicanism, 259. 75 Unpublished paper presented by David Ford as part of the Anglican-Lutheran Consultation on Episcopacy in 1987. See Anglican-Lutheran Consultation, Episcope in relation to the Mission of the Church today (Geneva: Anglican Consultative Council and the Lutheran World Federation, 1988), 151. Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 133 fn 121; Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 182. 182

‘would create too great an additional administrative load and, in some respects, make the Church’s mission less effective’.76 According to the report, ‘“Theological purity” would be purchased at the expense of various practical disadvantages’.77 Pickard writes that these ‘practical disadvantages’ (namely, ‘fear of greater administrative load, disjunction with prevailing economic and social orderings of society, and the impact on mission’) may not actually hold up to close scrutiny.78

Dioceses do not need to be self-contained financial units with their own exclusive ‘workforce’. This is not the definition of a diocese in Anglican ecclesiology. Instead, diocesan administration could be handled at a provincial level. A number of dioceses could use one central administrative office that could handle payroll, human resourcing, legal affairs, building maintenance and planning, professional standards, and so on. This central administrative office could be located within a metropolitan hub and utilised by all. Dioceses could also share financial resources between them, so that wealthier areas could potentially support poorer areas. Cyprian’s writings give evidence of the flow of money between bishops in need.79 There is also a quasi precedent for shared administration, as the Dioceses of Adelaide, Brisbane, and Canberra and Goulburn have combined diocesan administration with that of diocesan based welfare agencies such as Anglicare.80 In 2004, the dioceses of Bathurst, Canberra and Goulburn, and the Riverina also entered in a ‘covenant’ relationship to work together on professional standards, vocational training and developing ministry in rural area.81 If the idea of sharing resources across dioceses is already possible between dioceses as they are currently structured, a re-structured church retains the same possibilities.

The reduction of the size and scale of dioceses that this thesis argues for, matched by similar calls by Pickard, Driver and Kaye, would lead to bishops who were more relational. Diocesan bishops would not be distant figures but at the centre of congregational life. Individual parishes and agencies would have greater opportunity to understand their interconnected place within the diocese as they regularly encountered the one who calls the dioceses together around God’s table. Bishops would be key

76 Episcopal Ministry, 192 §429. 77 Episcopal Ministry, 193 §432. 78 Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 182. 79 Cyprian, Epistles LXXVI-LXXIX. 80 Australia, Report of the Viability and Structures Task Force, 21. 81 Australia, Report of the Viability and Structures Task Force, 38. 183 theological advocates for this new approach to episcopacy. While this thesis is not arguing for Presbyterian or Congregationalist ecclesiology, in which there would be a bishop in every parish and so on, this thesis does take seriously the historic complaints against Anglican models of episcopacy. As such, a different approach to episcopacy where bishops were more relational could become beneficial to ecumenical dialogue.

4.6. Managing Dioceses

This section explores the impact of managerial model of leadership upon the episcopate. The balance between the responsibilities of efficient administration and sacramental ministry is highlighted. The dangers of ‘secularising’ episcopacy into a function within the church or a step on a career ladder are addressed. The benefits of adapting episcopacy to best modern practice is highlighted and this is followed by a Cyprianic response to these attitudes.

Bishops are held responsible for the good management and effective administration of dioceses. As such, it is unsurprising that dominant cultural models of leadership are looked to give some shape to how bishops perform that task. Due to this, many contemporary bishops are criticised for becoming managers of the Church. Martyn Percy writes: Bishops, together with the churches and communities they serve, are too often held captive by models of leadership (e.g., managers, therapists) drawn from contemporary culture rather than Scripture. The church needs bishops who can be theologians, and contextualize the Word of God, so congregations can be begin to reflect theologically on their lives and work today. Many bishops and ministers today do not share this vision. They see themselves as missional target-setters, motivational practitioners and middle-managers, presiding over a dysfunctional organization that needs reform. The history and tradition of the church does not recognize this vision for episcopacy, and it should refuse it.82

82 Martyn Percy, “The Reformation 500 years on: do we need 95 New Theses for the 21st Century?”, Archbishop Cranmer (2 January 2017), §37. http://archbishopcranmer.com/reformation-500-years-95- new-theses-21st-century, accessed on 7 January, 2017. This view is perhaps not entirely accurate as the Green Report uses the word ‘God’ 159 times throughout the document. 184

Within the Australian context, Scott Cowdell has also identified the challenges facing the Australian church in regard to managerialism.83 Both examples encapsulate some of the frustration surrounding the modern episcopate.

‘Managerialism’, in relation to ecclesiology, can be defined as a ‘Belief in or reliance on the use of professional managers in administering or planning an activity’.84 The rise of managerialism since the nineteenth century can be linked to the management structures that became common in industry and business out of the industrial revolution. Justin Lewis-Anthony writes: Complex Industrial Organisations (CIO) required complex negotiations between the allocation of resources and the assessment of profit. Those who led the negotiations and made the decisions, the manager, became the centre and summit of the organisation. … Because the CIO became the source of great wealth in the West during the twentieth century, it was thought that the structure of the CIO, management as the means of balancing resources and allocating profits, was the cause of their success… The assumption grew that business management could be and should be applied to other areas of human endeavour. This assumption, the universal applicability of business administration, is what we might call “managerialism’’.85 The idea of a bishop as ‘manager’ is one that is primarily functional not ontological. The perception is that for dioceses to be administratively and financially sound, bishops should model their own ministry on that of commercial or industrial chief executive officer. As explored in the last section, the fact that bishops often receive stipends modelled on industrial and commercial rates aids in this perception. The fact that bishops are often understood under Australian law to act as chief executive officers or heads of agency also fuels this model.

The administrative responsibilities of a bishop are often predefined upon taking office. The modern Australian dioceses oversee a portfolio of property, trusts, and cash flow budgets worth many millions of dollars. Bishops are often included within the

83 Scott Cowdell, God's Next Big Thing: Discovering the Future Church (Mulgrave: John Garratt Publishing, 2004), 199-211. 84 Oxford English dictionary, ‘Managerialism’, accessed via: https://www.lexico.com/definition/managerialism, accessed on 2 September 2020. 85 Lewis-Anthony, "St Gregory and Managerialism", 171. 185 governance structures of the different agencies that may be part of their diocese (such as schools and aged care facilities). Within their own diocese, they are responsible for clergy and lay workers who operate in many different contexts (parishes, chaplaincies, academia) and may have direct or indirect control depending on their employment arrangement (for instance, a parish priest will likely have a different relationship of accountability to their bishop than a school chaplain). Bishops are also obliged to act in accordance with Australian law as well as diocesan canons and ordinances. Breaking those laws may not only have legal/disciplinary consequences, but scrutiny of their actions can also now be launched on unprecedented mass scale by the 24-hour news media. As such, it has become common for bishops to cautiously approach their responsibilities through professional management structures.

Administrative awareness is increasingly sought after within candidates for episcopacy, sometimes at the expense of other competencies (such as theological scholarship, gifted preaching abilities or exceptional pastoral skills). Lay human resources managers, occupational health and safety officers and business managers are now common across Australian dioceses. Responsibilities and obligations are carefully demarcated and it is common for bishops and/or assistant bishops to be given a portfolio of responsibilities within this structure. Most bishops today do not need to set up these professional structures but enter into them upon becoming a bishop.

There are several proponents and detractors of a managerial style of episcopacy to date.86 Percy argues, ‘We appear to live in an age in which all bishops must now fit the “executive mission-minded-middle-manager” paradigm’.87 Percy complains that due to a lack of ‘theological depth’ or feeling as if they have little ‘significance to offer’ surrounding society, bishops in many places around the Anglican Communion have become little ‘more than regional managers of organisations (dioceses) struggling with money and resources, as well as being purveyors of spiritual sentiments that rarely impact outside the church’.88 For Percy, ‘The reality is that most Anglican bishops are

86 See Scott Cowdell, "Mimesis and Ministry," St Mark's Review 32 (2016); Gillian R. Evans and Martyn Percy, eds., Managing the Church?: Order and Organisation in a Secular Age (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); Malcolm Grundy, Leadership and Oversight: New Models for Episcopal Leadership (London: Mowbray, 2011); Lewis-Anthony, "St Gregory and Managerialism"; John Milbank, "Stale Expressions of Church: The Management-Shaped Church," Studies in Christian Ethics 21, no. 1 (2008); Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism; Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry. 87 Percy, “Are these the leaders we really want?”. 88 Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism, 16. 186 becoming managers, not leaders; and mired in the pastoralia, processes and proclivities that muzzle them’.89 Fears around a ‘managerial style’ of episcopacy are often expressed as a secularising of episcopacy. Bishops become just like any other corporate manager—the driving ethos becomes the self-perpetuation of the organisation. Figures become more important than people, and the competitive ethos stereotypical of the corporate world replaces any sense of spirituality or pastoral care within the structures of the church. Human resource managers are called in to oversee the clergy and the laity become little more than statistics. Parishes become assessed on their ability to produce (their production being increasingly large congregations and high levels of tithing) and strategic thinking overlooks personal discipleship.

Within this managerial model, ordained ministry may become viewed as a career, rather than a vocation. As well as promoting pride and ambition, becoming a bishop becomes a career ‘achievement’—a particular rung within the corporate ladder with a level of income equivalent to similar ranking positions within commerce and industry. A careerist attitude may create an unhealthy sense of competition amongst the clergy and the danger that any and all should expect to become a bishop at a certain point in their career. This assumption is unhealthy and fallacious. A statistical analysis shows that the odds of becoming a bishop are small. For example in 2015, there were 2441 active clergy across Australia and 23 diocesan bishops.90 Therefore, there was one diocesan bishop for every 106 members of the clergy.

A careerist attitude also diminishes episcopacy and threatens to remove any spiritual virtue from the position. Potential bishops should be regarded as people of prayer, great teachers and models of humility and love. This is diminished if the role of bishop is based primarily on administrative skill. The kind of bishops adherents can expect is also jeopardised if bishops are chosen on their acceptability to the largest amount of ‘constituents’ within any diocese. Is a bishop capable of being prophetic within such an environment?

One of the further dangers is the increasing separation that could be created between diocesan bishops and their clergy and laity through the insertion of middle management positions. Assistant bishops and archdeacons can become an institutional

89 Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism, 16. 90 Reilly, A Little Compendium of Australian Anglican Diocesan Statistics, 18. 187 buffer. Rather than create efficiency within large dioceses, the danger is that intermediaries effectively replace diocesan bishops. Instead of attending to the sacramental, pastoral and teaching roles that are integral to episcopacy, the CEO diocesan can become cut off from the very people they are meant to serve. Percy writes: Ironically, the growth in numbers of diocesan staff and church administration, including senior staff with executive functions that are designed to release senior clergy for pastoral, theological and liturgical work, has only served to increase the amount of time bishops now seem to spend in management and committees, and not in public leadership.91 Percy further laments that ‘Bishops and churches have become organisationally absorbed by their own processes’.92

Trends within the managerial style of episcopacy in Australia have parallels within their British counterparts. In 2014, a report entitled ‘Talent Management for Future Leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans: A New Approach’ was produced by a steering group chaired by Lord Stephen Green (referred to as the ‘Green Report’).93 This in turn was turned into a policy document from the Faith and Order Commission of the Church England entitled ‘Senior Church Leadership: A Resource for Reflection’.94 The Green Report advocates for intentional training of particular clergy who are recognised as having leadership potential. Candidates for preferment would then be drawn from this group. Percy argues that policy documents such as the Green Report lack an adequate theological basis but are instead ‘devoted to faddish designs and management theories’.95 Percy argues that the lack of theological reflection upon common leadership trends is the fault of the episcopate. His complaint is that bishops are too focused on the administrative and financial upkeep of their dioceses and not on pastoral care or Christian formation. Percy writes:

91 Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism, 16. 92 Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism, 16. 93 Talent Management for Future Leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans: A New Approach – Report of the Lord Green Steering Group (2014), http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/uploads/TalentManagement.pdf. 94 The Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England, Senior Church Leadership: A Resource for Reflection’ (2015), ‘https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017- 10/senior_church_leadership_faoc.pdf. 95 Martyn Percy, “Are these the leaders we really want?”, Church Times (12 December 2014), https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/12-december/comment/opinion/are-these-the-leaders- that-we-really-want, accessed on 15 December 2014. 188

Congregations should not expect their bishops to have MBA’s. But congregations do have every right to expect at least two things from their bishops: outstanding theological teaching, as well as deep, compassionate pastoral care. It is not too much to ask.96 There are, of course, important differences between the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Australia in the twenty-first century. The Green Report is premised upon the system of Crown appointments in the Church of England, which is absent in Australia. The emphasis it lays as to what gifts and skills it considers necessary for episcopacy (or senior clerical positions) within the church is significant. It will likely determine a particular flavour of episcopacy within Britain for at least a generation. Seeking to correct the inadequacies of a managerial-style model, Percy offers a theological repair of documents such as the Green Report and in so doing articulates a different vision of episcopacy: The primary calling for our bishops is to mediate the wisdom and compassion of God: to be truly good teachers and pastors, after the example of Christ himself, no less. Being a bishop is not an ecclesiastical “job”. It is, rather, an “occupation”. Bishops are to be occupied with God (for which they need theology and spirituality); and then to be occupied with what they think might preoccupy God’s heart and mind – the cares and concerns Christ has for our broken world and its needy people (and so engage in pastoral care). Thus occupied, a bishop might then be said to be doing the ‘job’ the church believed and discerned that they were actually called to do.97

Is the rise of managerialism necessarily the enemy of Christian ministry? While Percy’s criticism guards against an unhealthy incorporation of managerial models, a healthy model is possible. Effective business practices can aid the Church in its mission and ministry if they are implemented wisely. Responsible leadership seeks to use resources efficiently and with particular goals in mind. The alternative (using resources inefficiently and without any direction or objective) is not desirable. Therefore, if particular models of business practice can aid Christian ministry then it should be welcomed. If a secular mentality is subsequently applied (for example, if the underlying premise was that the purpose of episcopacy is to protect a diocese’s bottom-line and

96 Percy, “The Reformation 500 years on: do we need 95 New Theses for the 21st Century?”, §12. 97 Percy, “The Reformation 500 years on: do we need 95 New Theses for the 21st Century?”, §95. 189 perpetuate its cashflow) then a theological error is evident. It is not, per se, the fault of the business terminology applied. Pickard offers a helpful approach to managerial practice within the Church: There may be nothing wrong with the incorporation of management models into the life of a busy diocese and world. The bishop as CEO of the diocese may be resisted in theory but inevitable in practice. Few would deny that in our present environment, where the Church is big business, Church leaders should avail themselves of the best management wisdom from the corporate sector.98 Pickard also writes: Re-evaluation of structures, communication networks, development of strategic plans and mission statements, change management, use of management consultants – for the ostensible purpose of releasing the people of God for mission in the world – are all things to which bishops and their councils have become accustomed. Indeed, it would be irresponsible of the church and it bishops not to encourage the above; for how can the church be generous giver of its life to the world for which Christ died, if it can’t manage the resources (including its people!) of its household.99 Effective church leadership and the management of a diocese’s resources are the responsibility of the episcopate. Therefore in order to incorporate modern cultural trends within episcopal leadership in the twenty-first century, contemporary bishops must wisely adapt their practices without abandoning good theology.

4.7. Cyprian’s response – the Discerning Bishop

Cyprian can be seen as an exemplar of an adaptive episcopate. Cyprian may well have incorporated parts of his Roman culture into the life of the church into order for the church to function well as the Carthaginian Christians at the time perceived it. So too are contemporary bishops incorporating what they believe to be best practice into the church. Cyprian’s contribution, far from anything else, may at least provide some encouragement that the episcopate can adapt and the church will not necessarily collapse or the gospel message fade away. It may be concluded that it is perfectly

98 Pickard, Theological Foundations for Collaborative Ministry, 173. 99 Pickard, "Travail of the Episcopate", 136. 190 reasonable for a contemporary bishop to take the best of contemporary management practices to benefit the good ordering of the church.

Cyprian’s writings clearly reflect the administrative duties required of his own ministry in the mid-third century.100 Cyprian’s conception of a bishop as pastor included its administrative role—effective administration enables the health of the church and for the flourishing of its mission and ministry. Many of his extant writings are themselves the very product of that administration. Administrative duties included the appointment and deployment of clergy and the administration of church funds (particularly with regard to care and assistance for the vulnerable).101 He was responsible as bishop for communication within those under his care and other bishops throughout the Mediterranean.102 As the Bishop of Carthage, it appears Cyprian also carried an administrative load for the province, was responsible for the organisation of provincial meetings and for the promulgation of church policy within the province and to the wider church. If his biographer Pontius is to be believed, and Cyprian truly did give his entire estate to the church (and presumably he was not unique in this), then the church at the time had at least some property and funds that needed to be managed carefully and responsibly.103 Cyprian’s continued administration over the Carthaginian church during his exile is one of chief reasons there is so much literature available for researchers today. Cyprian instructs his clergy how to administer funds in his absence and provision for care.104 As head of the church in Carthage and chiefly responsible for the ministry thereabouts, Cyprian seems to have understood it to be completely within his role as the bishop to be involved in how common fund was to be used within and beyond the Christian community.

The task of administration has always been key to episcopacy.105 In every age, bishops have faced the task of ordering their dioceses and have drawn on what is considered best practice within their context to do so. This has had positive and

100 See Cyprian, Epistles II, V, XII, XIV, XXXIV, XXXIX, LXII, LXXVII, LXXVIII and LXXIX. 101 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 375. 102 For evidence of communication to Italy, see epistles XXX, XXXVIII, XL-XLII, and XLIV-XLVIII; for Gaul, see epistle XLVIII; for Hispania, see epistle LXVII; and for Asia Minor, see epistle LXXV. While there is no extant correspondence between Cyprian and Christians in Greece, Egypt, the Levant or northern Europe, it does not conclude definitively that Cyprian did not interact with bishops in those places as well. 103 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 13. 104 For examples of this practice see: Cyprian, Epistles XXXV and XXXVII. 105 This feature is drawn out with particular skill in the research of Alistair Stewart. See: Stewart, The Original Bishops 191 negative effects. Cyprian, as we have seen, is accused of introducing elements of the Roman legal system into his ecclesiology. Bishops following the conversion of Constantine became officers within the imperial order. Medieval bishops with their palaces and retinues, usually drawn from the nobility, usually appeared and acted more like princes than paupers. The bishops following the English Reformation became crown appointments within the Established Church. In every age, Christian bishops have reflected the predominant styles of authority that are considered acceptable within their context. Even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as was seen in the previous chapter, bishops faced increasing pressure to adapt democratic norms into the structures of their diocese. As such, twenty-first century bishops drawing upon managerial styles of leadership is another contextual expression of church leadership.

While administrative duties were clearly part of Cyprian’s conception of episcopacy, bishops were not solely administrators. As well as effectively managing the resources of a diocese, a bishop is also a pastor, a teacher, a judge, and a priest. Contemporary bishops must attend all of these aspects of their office. To see them primarily as managers is theologically incorrect. If a bishop’s administrative load outweighs their sacramental and pastoral ministry, then they are not fulfilling the fulness of their office.106 Bishops must take a critical approach to their ministries and achieve a balance between administrative and pastoral responsibilities.107

Cyprian not only points towards an adaptive model of episcopacy but also to the limits of adaptation. While Cyprian may have introduced ideas and structures that were borrowed from the prevailing Roman culture, he did not endorse all aspects of that culture.108 Allen Brent’s assertion that Cyprian simply copied non-Christian Roman ideologies wholesale into his ecclesiology is difficult to reconcile with Cyprian’s own writings that vehemently criticise Roman culture.109 Bishops who encouraged their congregations to offer pagan sacrifices during the Decian persecution were apostate.

106 An analysis of the ‘managerial ethos’ and its effects upon the Church has been provided by John Milbank. See: Milbank, "Stale Expressions of Church", 119-120. 107 ‘A lot of “leadership” material – publications, conferences, seminars and courses – plays into forms of Christian community that have a pragmatic and functional understanding of ministry and ordination, rather than one that is ontological or sacramental. The inflated rhetoric of leadership that we find in these circles tends to borrow wholesale and largely uncritically from modern management and self-realisation techniques, as though mere “leadership” were the answer to all our problems’. Avis, Becoming a Bishop, 61-62. 108 Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 33. 109 Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, 329. 192

One could argue that these bishops were simply adopting the socially accepted practices of their culture. Yet Cyprian and his colleagues condemned these bishops as having denied Christ and become excommunicate from his Church. Cyprian’s writings show that he upheld an earlier decision by an African council not to allow clergy to as act executors of estates. Such activities involved an array of social expectations that required a significant amount of time to undertake. Cyprian justified this decision in that the duty of the clergy was primarily to ‘the altar’ and to prayer.110

Cultural appropriation must be measured against sound theological reasoning. This thesis argues that Cyprian’s approach to episcopacy is one that considers how bishops can adapt to the context they find themselves in while also maintaining certain core principles. For contemporary Anglicans, the best question may not be ‘How can the church absorb the best business or managerial practices to function well in the twenty- first century’ but rather ‘What is it we really want our bishops to be, based on the theological values we hold?’

4.8. A Changing Episcopate in Response to Abuse Scandals

This section highlights the significant impact that the responses to abuse scandals over the last 30 years have had on Anglican episcopacy in Australia. It begins with an analysis of the systemic abuse and the legislative responses. This section will then move to a Cyprianic response to this and the need for bishops to be discerning.

The impact of the response to allegations of child sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the church has had an incredible impact upon the episcopate in recent decades. Since the 1980s, hundreds of allegations have been brought forward to authorities. Many of these cases were devastatingly mishandled by bishops and senior clergy throughout the church. Instead of caring for victims or punishing abusers, church leaders have been found to have denied claims or covered them in the name of protecting the reputation of the institution. Victims were often bullied or ignored by their bishops, in whom they had placed their trust and expected action. The response to these abuses was a culture of ‘mates protecting mates’, along with an atmosphere of silence over discussing abuse. Accused clergy were often re-appointed to new positions by their bishops (or moved to another diocese). Organised networks of protection have

110 Stewart, Priests of My People, 174. 193 been exposed. Paedophile rings that included clergy and licensed lay workers have been exposed. Much of this exposure came to the surface of public consciousness as reports of abuse were increasingly given media attention.

Overwhelming public shock and disgust resulted in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (henceforth referred to as ‘the Royal Commission’) that was established by the Australian federal government in 2013. It ran until 2017 and its findings were officially handed down in the December of that year. By this time, the scandals had already come to light and the Australian bishops were squarely in the spotlight. Bishops who once mishandled abuse allegations because of fears of public scandal and disgrace for their dioceses have found that disgrace was only postponed. Two bishops have been deposed from holy orders (one accused of child sexual abuse, and the other for mishandling allegations of abuse). Several bishops have (prematurely) retired in the wake of the Commission hearings. The pressures placed on diocesan bishops (as they were deemed ‘head of agency’ under the law and responsible for responding to the Commission’s requests) have taken an immense toll.

The Royal Commission highlighted the need for transparency and heightened accountability within Christian churches (as well as other institutions, religious and non-religious alike). Within its report of final recommendations, in the first of its recommendations addressed directly at the Anglican Church of Australia, the Royal Commissioners stated that: The Anglican Church of Australia should adopt a uniform episcopal standards framework that ensures that bishops and former bishops are accountable to an appropriate authority or body in relation to their response to complaints of child sexual abuse.111 It also recommended that: The Anglican Church of Australia should develop and each diocese should implement mandatory national standards to ensure that all people in religious or pastoral ministry (bishops, clergy, religious and lay personnel): a) undertake mandatory, regular professional development, compulsory components being professional responsibility and boundaries, ethics in

111 Peter McClellan and Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report Recommendations: Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Sydney: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017), 50 §16.51. 194

ministry and child safety; b) undertake mandatory professional/pastoral supervision; c) undergo regular performance appraisals.112 The findings of the Royal Commission have emphasised the need for bishops and their dioceses to adopt best practices within for the wellbeing of all. This has to be achieved diocese by diocese: as the commissioners recognised, there is no central agency that could impose a standard of compliance upon the national church.

In his Primatial Address to the 2015 General Synod, Archbishop Aspinall noted that the structural difficulties within the Australian church had been highlighted by the Royal Commission.113 One of the main difficulties expressed by the commissioners was that it was unable to liaise with a central national authority with the power to speak for all and that could also ensure policies are enforced at a local level.114 The highly autonomous nature of each Australian diocese was placed firmly under the spotlight. As Aspinall observed, ‘While we refer to ourselves as “The Anglican Church of Australia” and there is widespread perception in the community of the Anglican Church as a unified, coherent entity, the reality is quite different’.115 Aspinall also stated: ‘The Primate is not the CEO of the Anglican Church of Australia and cannot direct any bishop, priest, deacon or lay person, employee or volunteer outside his or her own diocese’,116 and that: The General Synod cannot pass legislation and impose it on a diocese. Any canon passed by the General Synod that affects the order and good government (or the trust property) of the Church within a diocese, must be adopted by the synod of that diocese before it takes effect in that diocese. Nor are resolutions of the General Synod binding on a diocese.117 A widespread sufficient lack of understanding regarding the ecclesiology of the Australian church, Aspinall notes, is current both within and outside the church.118 Disciplinary action is complicated and neither quickly nor easily enforced. Aspinall identified this as a key pressure upon the Australian episcopate.

112 McClellan, Final Report Recommendations, 50 §16.55. 113 Aspinall, "President's Address", 3-8. 114 Aspinall, "President's Address", 14. 115 Aspinall, "President's Address", 2. 116 Aspinall, "President's Address", 2. 117 Aspinall, "President's Address", 14. 118 Aspinall, "President's Address", 2. 195

Similarly, in March 2017, during the public hearings of the Royal Commission, Case 52 focused on an ‘Inquiry into the Anglican Church Authorities in Australia’. The first panel consisting of theologians and bishops were asked to answer questions relating to the structures of the Australia church to assist the commissioners in understanding the nature of the institution. These questions were aimed at determining the viability of legislation being brought to pass in the church that would cohere with the Commission’s eventual recommendations. All the panellists agreed that the current nature of the institution would make it very difficult for complete agreement to be reached and uniform policies to be made across the different dioceses even on an issue as important as child protection. This was not to say that they felt Anglicans were in disagreement on the issues itself (that is, child protection or paedophilia) but that the internal politicking of factions in the General Synod would inevitably lead to conflict. However, some panellists asserted their belief that in the face of such an important issue it was arguable that this could lead to an overhaul of the entire system.119

The effect of the recommendations of the Commission, not just on the Church but across Australian society, continue to change the relationship between bishops and their clergy (and other diocesan staff). In 2012, the Victorian County Court ruled that a priest was deemed to be a ‘worker’ for the purposes of the Victorian workers compensation legislation.120 As a result, clergy were entitled to lodge claims for compensation. This ruling had implications for the relationship between those who are ordained and the places were they serve. In 2012, federal legislation was passed in Australia creating a national regulatory framework for all Australian charities and not- for-profits, which included churches of all denominations.121 This placed new requirements on reporting for the dioceses, and their constituent parishes, within the Anglican church.

119 See transcript: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Public Hearing - Case Study 52 (Day 260) (Sydney: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017), https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/ sites/default/files/file- list/Case%20Study%2052%20%20Transcript%20%20Institutional% 20review %20of%20Anglican%20Church %20authorities%20-%20Day%20260%20- %2017032017.pdf. 120 See Kenneth McDermid v Anglican Trusts Corporation for the Diocese of Gippsland and McIntyre (2012) (VCC 1406, O’Neill CCJ). 121 See Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Act 2012 (Canberra: Office of Parliamentary Counsel, 2012), https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2014C00015, accessed on 15 September 2020. 196

Responses in Victoria serve as an example. All non-government organisations were to ‘be incorporated and adequately insured where it funds them or provide them with tax exemptions and/or other entitlements’.122 In Victoria, this resulted in the creation of the Melbourne Anglican Diocesan Corporation, which now serves as the ‘employer’ of all diocesan clergy and staff (including the bishops). While lay staff have always been considered to be ‘employed’, bishops and their clergy have traditionally understood themselves to have been released from the realm of employment in order to undertake their ministry. For this they usually receive some form of ‘living’ or stipend. This conception changes if bishops and clergy are instead understood to be ‘employees’ of their diocese. This also reinterprets what a ‘diocese’ is. Instead of the area of ministry of bishop, and those assisting them, a diocese becomes a superstructure for employment.

A culture shift has occurred within dioceses across Australia since the 1990s in response to the abuse scandals.123 For a new generation of bishops, responding to victims and finding compensation has been an ongoing challenge. Redeveloping training programs for clergy and laity alike to including child protection training as well as new methods to screen potential volunteers and staff have been enacted throughout the country. Professional standard bodies have also been established throughout the country to respond to claims of abuse and manage safeguarding requirements. This has largely all happened on a diocesan level. The dispersed nature of authority under the 1962 Constitution means that any canons passed by the General Synod have no effect within an individual diocese until adopted by that diocese. As such, in regard to safeguarding procedures, no uniform national policy is necessarily possible unless each and every diocese were to adopt exactly the same legislation without any changes. Even within dioceses, Anglican agencies associated with the diocesan structure may be independent bodies and not subject to the canons of the church. Alongside new levels of accountability on their own ministries, bishops have had to wade through the legalities of their context to introduce new methods of training, screening and discipline.

122 Family and Community Development Committee, Betrayal of Trust: Inquiry into the handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Non-Government Organisations, Vol. 2 (Melbourne: Victorian Government Printer, 2013), Recommendation 26.1, https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/file_uploads/Inquiry_into_ Handling_of_ Abuse_Volume_2 _FINAL_web_y78t3Wpb.pdf, accessed on 15 September 2020. 123 Muriel Porter, The New Scapegoats: The Clergy Victims of the Anglican Church Sexual Abuse Crisis (Northcote: Morning Star Publications, 2017), 17. 197

Legislative changes within the Australian church have created a new culture of professionalism and accountability. The code of conduct known as ‘Faithfulness in Service’ was agreed upon and promulgated by the General Synod in 2004.124 This code applies to all ‘church workers’ within the Anglican Church of Australia, including its bishops. While it is not the place of this thesis to demonstrate further, this code has proved controversial (particularly over its ‘expectations’ around sexuality). The creation of ecclesial legislation to respond to child abuse and create better processes was slowed by the desire of some conservatives to use this legislation to define a national stance (and doctrine) in regard to sexuality. This delayed and frustrated the processes of adoption.

In 2007, the General Synod passed the Episcopal Standards Canon and Special Tribunal Canon. These canons allowed for the creation of the Episcopal Standards Commission and the Episcopal Standards Board. These bodies were established to investigate and decide upon the fitness of bishops to hold office. Examinable conduct in the canon is defined as ‘any conduct or omission wherever or whenever occurring the subject of information which, if established, might call into question the fitness of a Bishop to hold office or to be or remain in Holy Orders’.125 The definition very carefully excludes any conduct in relation to ‘faith, ritual or ceremonial’.126 Not all dioceses approved this canon.

In 2010, the Episcopal Ministry Task Force was created by the standing committee of the General Synod to determine a standard that could be agreed upon by all. In 2014, the Model Episcopal Standards Ordinance was passed by the General Synod with a call for all dioceses to adopt it. This model ordinance was to create within each diocese an Episcopal Standards Committee, an Episcopal Standards Board and an Episcopal Standards Review Board. However, two years later only 11 out of 23 dioceses had adopted this model.127 Then, in 2017, the Episcopal Standards (Child Protection) Canon was passed by the General Synod. Based on the 2007 canon, examinable conduct

124 ‘Faithfulness in Service’ has been amended six times since 2004 – 2005, 2006, twice in 2011 (April and November), 2016 and 2019. 125 Episcopal Standards Canon (2007) §1.2. 126 Episcopal Standards Canon (2007) §1.2. 127 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, “Anglican Church of Australia – Episcopal Standards Legislation by Diocese (2017)”, https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/ sites/default/files/ANG.0403.001.0001.pdf, accessed on 15 September, 2020. 198 was limited to include child abuse, failure to abide by professional standards processes and failure to comply with Australian laws in the reporting of child abuse. This measure is applicable not only to bishops actively serving in church roles but also to retired bishops. While cultural change cannot be legislated, these measures will affect the future expectations and methods of accountability on the episcopate.

Anglican episcopal ministry within Australia has changed over the last few decades. Bishops, as well as the clergy, are now deemed to be mandatory reporters (legally obliged to report suspected abusive behaviour towards children) and are responsible for making sure that all ‘church workers’ are correctly screened, trained and held accountable for their conduct. Bishops can no longer assume to have the goodwill of the public and have been further marginalised from the social status and esteem that clergy once had within Australia. A bishop who offers their voice in the public arena on any given issue is just as likely to be publicly mocked as listened to. Within the internal networks of dioceses, relationships between bishops and their clergy and the laity have also changed. Muriel Porter writes: There is no forgiveness for erring clergy, let alone bishops, any more. The damage to the church’s reputation from the child sexual abuse scandals has hardened hearts in all directions. Many clergy feel the bishops have become their enemies, always suspicious of them, fearful they will blight the church’s now precarious reputation. Where once bishops found it hard to believe that clergy could be capable of sexual abuse, it seems that now they almost expect them not only to be capable of it but also highly likely to be committing it!128 The disciplinary nature of episcopacy has been highlighted by the abuse scandals. The result of this has meant that bishops have had to re-address professional boundaries and ‘chains of command’ that exist within dioceses and the various agencies and parishes that constitute them. While this may be deemed right practice, it has also created a culture of professional distance between bishops and the clergy and laity. While this distance may be appropriate, it exacerbates the difficulties already expressed in this chapter. As such, bishops must balance professional boundaries for their own wellbeing and to maintain appropriate disciplinary procedures while also fulfilling their responsibilities to love, care and inspire. This balance is achievable but challenging.

128 Porter, The New Scapegoats, 11. 199

4.9. Cyprian’s response – The Accountable Bishop

At their consecration bishops, are told ‘Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, and not a wolf’.129 Sadly, the opposite has proved true in several instances. Many bishops have failed to love and protect the children of God. Not only have some bishops been accused of abusing children and the vulnerable, some have also ignored or covered up instances of abuse. Authentic episcopacy is misrepresented by these counter-examples. Child abuse scandals over the last thirty years or so have affected Christian churches of nearly all denominations across the world, not only in Australia. The Church never should have relied on an unquestioning presumption of trustworthiness, and instead should have had strong cultures of mutual accountability and transparency instilled from theological training onwards. Bishops need to be held accountable in their administration of justice and be models of authentic Christian discipleship. Cyprian stressed that all bishops are first and foremost accountable to God. Their disciplinary role is one that holds the people of God accountable to God’s call and commandments. This was held in tension (sometimes inconsistently) with the accountability of bishops to the church was as whole and their episcopal colleagues. Systems of accountability are crucial to the cohesion of the church. Cyprian’s idea of the role of a bishop as judge or disciplinarian fits this vision of an accountable bishop.

Cyprian’s understanding of the authority that a bishop holds coincides with an expectation of a particular Christian ethic.130 Bishops are not understood to be autocrats with a licence to behave or believe whatever they wish at any given time and place. Rather, bishops are called to be exemplars of Christian discipleship so that they may inspire and encourage others to do likewise.131 Within Cyprian’s ecclesiology, power is never to be separated from responsibility. Contemporary bishops would discover a degree of encouragement in regard to the need for an agreed upon standard of behaviour and lines of accountability within Cyprian’s oeuvre.

Cyprian’s approach to ecclesial discipline is borne out in writings in the wake of the Decian persecution. In his own time, Cyprian created a theological stance that stood

129 A Prayer Book for Australia, 806. 130 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 327. 131 Cyprian, Epistle III.1. 200 at a midpoint between the theologies of the laxist and rigorist schismatics. Those who had lapsed would not be pardoned without penance, as if the offence was inconsequential. Cyprian did not believe, however, that they were unforgivable and barred from the Church forever as the rigorists had pronounced.132 The lapsed must admit their guilt and show their sincerity through penance.133 This was a behavioural standard that applied to all and this standard would create cohesion throughout the community. All Christians would know what behaviour was expected of them and the consequences of betraying that standard.134 The approach Cyprian takes to the lapsed, dealing with them on a case by case basis and waiting for this to occur once the persecution had past when it could be done properly and with care, reveals an approach that reflects modern best practice. Within Cyprian’s writings, we see both the call to holiness and the practice of grace.

Before going further, it should be noted that Cyprian’s writings in the light of the abuse scandals should not be cherry picked for answers. Cyprian’s ideological maxim that a bishop is accountable to God alone would seem to be an unhelpful, bordering on callous, aphorism within the current climate. Even if the statement were held to be true (that a bishop is ultimately accountable to God alone), it would not necessarily imply that bishops are not also to be held accountable to the laws of the places in which they serve. Episcopacy only functions as part of the living purpose of the Church which is the signpost of the Kingdom and the bearer of salvation to the world. As Rowan Williams writes, the episcopate and the authority of the office do not have an independent power over the Church.135 Such a power would invalidate the episcopate as part of the Church. Only God has authority over the Body.

The episcopate, therefore, is necessarily part of the Body not superior to it. While Cyprian’s writings may not give credence to the latter, misinterpretations of his ecclesiology may give rise to that conclusion. The episcopate is charged with the governance of God’s Church, empowered by God to do so. But it remains accountable to God and to the Church as a whole. The discrepancies in Cyprian’s ecclesiology in regard

132 Cyprian, De Lapsis 36. 133 Cyprian, De Lapsis 29-30. 134 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 148. 135 Rowan Williams, "Authority and the Bishop in the Church", in Their Lord and Ours: Approaches to Authority, Community and the Unity of the Church, ed. Mark Santer (London: SPCK, 1982), 110. 201 to episcopal accountability leave the question open as to whether Cyprian believed that the episcopate was accountable only to God, to the whole Church or to particular ecclesial officers. The discrepancy has meant that Cyprian’s ecclesiology has been able to be claimed by a variety of Christian groupings with varying stances on the episcopate.

While Cyprian may refer to bishops as ‘judges’, and Christian bishops after the conversion of Constantine often acted as judges within the civil matrix, Cyprian’s writings do not presume that bishop would be part of civil law enforcement. Acting as the disciplinarian of his Christian community, Cyprian had no authority to punish those in error with civil means (such as with prison or fines). Cyprian understood his authority as a disciplinarian to be exclusively moral and spiritual. As such, Cyprian could depose his clergy and excommunicate.136 Possessing ‘the power of the keys’, Cyprian believed bishops were responsible for using whatever means available to them to seek the salvation of those under their care. Excommunication was not punitive but medicinal. Communicating improperly could cause spiritual damage.137

Cyprian’s writings show very clearly that some bishops and clergy may become unfit for ministry. Such behaviour may mean that they must be removed from office.138 A commonly accepted standard of behaviour is needed for the cohesion of church communities. Without a common standard, varying standards of acceptable behaviour become established in which there may be one rule for the rulers and another for the ruled. Cyprian is also very clear that a bishop could remove or depose any office holders reportable to them.139 The importance of licencing has become apparent within contemporary professional standards frameworks. Bishops do not have their own courts like their medieval counterparts. The ability for someone to exercise a sanctioned ministry within the church, dependent on receiving explicit permission from a bishop, has become one of the few jurisdictional powers that Australian bishops have been seen to have.

In regard to the disciplining of bishops, a theological conundrum becomes evident in Cyprian’s writings. Cyprian maintained that all bishops were equal and

136 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 326-328. 137 Cyprian, Epistle LVI.4. 138 Examples for this can be found in Epistles LXVI and LXVII. 139 Cyprian, Epistles II and III. 202 therefore there could be no bishop with supreme authority over all other bishops.140 However, if a bishop became unworthy of their office who was responsible for disciplining that bishop? This conundrum does not get resolved within Cyprian’s writings and there is a cognitive dissonance within his writings on this matter. Cyprian clearly believed that something had to be done. The holiness of the church was not purely the responsibility of the bishops but belonged to the entire body of Christ, with Cyprian writing: ‘It becomes us all to watch for the body of the whole Church, whose members are scattered through every various province’.141 Cyprian’s understanding of episcopacy is often teased out in explorations of what should be done with apostate or schismatic bishops.142 The ease and frequency of communication between bishops concerning disciplinary matters (for instance, who was to be considered in communion and who was not) during Cyprian’s time are practices that contemporary bishops should be encouraged to follow. This communication reveals a level of trust between the bishops of Cyprian’s era and the need for a mechanism of accountability.

In Cyprian’s time, a bishop once consecrated served as bishop for the remainder of their lives. Retirement was out of the question. To turn away from the ordained life would likely have been considered apostasy. As we have seen, those who became bishops understood that they became leaders of an illegal organisation and their life expectancy was likely short. Modern bishops living in Western cultures might approach their ministry differently if they lived under similar circumstances. A bishop could be removed from their office prior to their death if the circumstances warranted it. Burns and Jensen note that the removal of a bishop was similar to their election: ‘by the judgment of a council of their colleagues, rejection by the people, and withdrawal of recognition by other bishops’.143 Cyprian’s writings give examples of bishops who were deposed. Letters XXIX and LIV tell of Privatus, the bishop of Lambesa, being deposed from his office.144

As it was the responsibility of the bishops (and their clergy) to shepherd the people of God towards salvation, a bishop who denied Christ and sacrificed to the

140 ‘‘The Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian’ in Wallis, ‘Cyprian’, 565. 141 Cyprian, Epistle XXIX.4.1. 142 Cyprian, Epistles XXIX, LIV, LXIII and LXVI. 143 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 377. 144 Cyprian, Epistles XXIX.4 and LIV.10. 203 imperial cult could not continue in their position as a leader.145 As a bishop was the highest spiritual authority under God within their own see, and the power of the keys to bless and absolve could not be exercised on one’s own self, if a lapsed bishop was to do penance they must do so as a layman.146 They must subject themselves to a new bishop who would guide their penance and potentially absolve them. They could not continue to be bishop any longer. Cyprian also maintained that anyone who participated in the ministry of a lapsed bishop was also participating in their sin.147 The sacraments performed by these bishops were no longer valid and so jeopardise the salvation of those who followed them.148 Modern receptions of Cyprian’s theology must take these elements into account.

If contemporary bishops are to gain any wisdom from Cyprian in regard to contemporary disciplinary procedures, Cyprian’s legacy on these matters must be noted. The position on baptism maintained by Stephen of Rome was sanctioned at the Council of Nicaea, not the African tradition maintained by Cyprian.149 The holiness of presiding clergy that was perceived to be necessary for the efficacy of the sacraments became hotly contested in the 4th and 5th centuries in North Africa. Both the Donatist schism as well as the Catholic response traced their theologies to the writings of Cyprian who was beloved by both groups. The Donatists pointed to passages in Cyprian’s work about the necessity for sinful clergy to be deposed (their charge against the Caecilianists was that they were apostates).150 The Catholics pointed towards passages about the need to maintain the church’s unity. Augustine’s nuanced reception of Cyprian’s theology was aimed against the Donatists.151 He argued that as the efficacy of the sacraments came solely from God, then worthiness of the bishop or priest officiating was irrelevant to its efficacy.152 Augustine also argued that holy orders

145 Cyprian, Epistle LXVII.6. 146 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 377. 147 Cyprian, De Lapsis 6-7. See also Epistles LXVI.3 and LXVII.3. 148 Cyprian, Epistles LXVI.3 and LXVII.3. 149 Benson, Cyprian, 520. 150 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 401-402; Decret, Early Christianity in North Africa, 140- 141. 151 See Matthew Alan Gaumer, "Dealing with the Donatist Church: Augustine of Hippo's Nuanced Claim to the Authority of Cyprian of Carthage", in Cyprian of Carthage: Studies in His Life, Language and Thought, ed. Henk Bakker, Paul van Geest, and Hans van Loon (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 181-201. 152 Burns and Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa, 424-428. 204 should be considered indelible.153 This became the accepted theology throughout the church and this position is maintained within the 39 articles of the Church of England in 1662.154 While the trajectories of his theology have been debated over centuries and his legacy controversial, Cyprian’s understanding of the need for bishops and clergy to be exemplars of the Christian life is undisputed.

4.10. Episcopacy in the Light of Difference and Unity

This section examines how the Australian episcopate is responding to issues of doctrinal difference and church unity. Debates over the ordination of women, human sexuality and interpretations of scripture have affected relations between bishops across the Anglican Communion. At their most basic level these debates are around what it is to be considered authoritative within Anglicanism. The debates over the ordination of women serve as a case study for this analysis. While the issue of the ordination and consecration of women was not in itself a debate over episcopacy, this issue brought to the fore what Anglicans believed about episcopacy.

The debates around the ordination of women to the priesthood in the second half of the twentieth century were bitter and divisive. In 1985, the Appellate Tribunal ruled that the ordination of women to any of the three holy orders: ‘Was not inconsistent with anything in the church’s constitution’.155 In 1986, the General Synod decided that women could be ordained to the order of deacons, but not priests or bishops.156 In 1989, canonical fitness for the episcopate was defined as: ‘a) the person has attained at least 30 years of age; b) the person has been baptised; and c) the person is in priests’ orders’.157 In that same year, the Appellate Tribunal ruled that the women could be

153 Augustine of Hippo, “Against the Letter of Parmenian”, trans J.R. King, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. IV, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Edinburgh, UK and Grand Rapids, MI: T&T Clark and Eerdmans, 1997), II.13.28. 154 Article XXVI: ‘The Articles of Religion Agreed upon by the Archbishops, Bishops, and the whole clergy of the Provinces of Canterbury and York, London, 1562,’ A Prayer Book for Australia: For Use Together with the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and an Australian Prayer Book (1978) (Alexandria: Broughton Books, 1995), 831. 155 Porter, Women in Purple: Women Bishops in Australia, 13. 156 Ian Breward, "Anglicanism in Australia and New Zealand", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume IV: Global Western Anglicanism, c.1910-present, ed. Jeremy Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 350; David Hilliard, "Pluralism and New Alignment in Society and Church, 1967 to the Present", in Anglicanism in Australia: A History, ed. Bruce Kaye, Tom Frame, Colin Holden, and Geoff Treloar (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 135. 157 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §74.1 ‘Canonical Fitness’. These changes came into effect in 1995. 205 ordained to the priesthood if General Synod passed a clarifying canon to that effect. In 1992, the General Synod passed such a canon and women were quickly ordained in many dioceses. That ‘clarification canon’, however, would only come into effect in the dioceses that adopted it. The dioceses of Sydney, North West Australia, Armidale and the Murray have not adopted such a canon and so ordination to the priesthood for women in those dioceses is not possible.158 In the other 19 dioceses, however, ordination for both women and men is possible.159

In 2001 and 2004, attempts at passing further ‘clarification canons’ for women to become bishops failed to receive the needed two-thirds majority in all three houses.160 An appeal was made to the Appellate Tribunal on the grounds of ‘canonical fitness’—as the definition used the word ‘person’, did ‘person’ mean both men and women?161 By a narrow margin, the Appellate Tribunal ruled that there was nothing to prevent a woman from becoming a bishop in the Australian Church under the definition of canonical fitness as was presented in the Constitution. In short, women were ‘persons’. In 2008, became the first woman to be consecrated as a bishop within the Australian Church.162 She was made an assistant bishop within the Diocese of Perth. Barbara Darling soon followed as the next female bishop (once again as an assistant) in the Diocese of Melbourne. Dr Sarah Macneil became the first female diocesan bishop in 2014 for the Diocese of Grafton. Goldsworthy (who had gone on to be the first female

158 The Diocese of the Murray has also not passed the relevant canon to allow women to be ordained to the diaconate either. 159 I am indebted to Charles Sherlock for his personal notes on the history of women’s ordination in Australia for this section. I am also grateful to Muriel Porter for anecdotal histories and advice. 160 The vote in favour in 2004 was 62.5% over all – 73% in the , 59% of the clergy and 63% of the laity. Porter, Women in Purple: Women Bishops in Australia, 15-16. 161 The exact question to the Appellate Tribunal is as follows: ‘Given that: 1. the opinion of the majority of the Appellate Tribunal, expressed in its 1991 opinion, was, that it was the constraint imposed by section 71(2) of the Constitution that then prevented the ordination of a woman as a priest or the consecration of a woman as a bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia; 2. in the case of the ordination of a woman as a priest, such constraint has been removed in a diocese which has adopted by ordinance the Law of the Church of England Clarification Canon 1992; and 3. the definition of "canonical fitness" as it relates to a person elected bishop contained in section 74(1) of the Constitution was amended to its present form with effect from 5 June 1995; is there anything in the Constitution which would now prevent—1. the consecration of a woman in priests' orders as a bishop in this church in a diocese which by ordinance has adopted the Law of the Church of England Clarification Canon 1992; or 2. the installation of a woman so consecrated as a bishop of such a diocese?’. Cited in Porter, Women in Purple: Women Bishops in Australia, 51. 162 Goldsworthy was amongst the first to be ordained to the priesthood in the Australian church in 1992. 206 diocesan bishop for the Diocese of Gippsland in 2014/15)163 became the first female Archbishop (of Perth) in 2018.

The debates around the inclusion of women into the episcopate focusses how Australian Anglicans understand episcopacy. The results show that there is not one understanding of episcopacy across the Australian church. For some, only men can be bishops. For many others, both women and men can be ordained to every order of ministry. The debates around the inclusion of women into the episcopate show that there is a persistent theological strain within the Australian context around ‘male headship’.164 The inclusion of women to the episcopate, though, has not ultimately changed the nature of episcopacy in the Australian setting beyond the fact that women can now be bishops. It would be difficult to argue that there is a uniquely female way of being a bishop (or for that matter that there is a uniquely male way of being a bishop). Both men and women possess the same office and authority. The rejection of alternative episcopal oversight in Australia means that there are not male alternatives to female bishops. A bishop is a bishop regardless of gender. As not all dioceses allow for women to be bishops, the Australian church contains divided opinions about in what it means to be a bishop.

The doctrinal differences over this issue have led to what is effectively an impaired communion within the Australian church. Female bishops are not recognised across the whole church. This means, as a consequence, that not all Australian bishops are recognised by all the rest. Just as there is a question between different Christian denominations over the validity of holy orders, now there are internal divisions within Anglicanism itself. At consecration services held in Sydney, invited female bishops are instructed not to lay hands on the candidates (lest they jeopardise the rite) and to dress liturgically as deacons. Their episcopal and priestly orders are denied by their hosts and this is made clear in the ritual.165 The reality of this is far more theologically significant than a mere squabble. For bishops not to recognise the validity of each other’s orders impairs the internal communion of the church. Does this mean that female bishops

163 Goldsworthy was elected to be bishop of Gippsland in December 2014 and then enthroned as the diocesan in March 2015. 164 Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 20. 165 Lu Piper, “Sydney MOW AGM 2015 President’s Report” (2015), Movement for the Ordination of Women, https://mowatch.com.au/conferences/mow-agm-2015-presidents-report/, accessed on 7 December 2020. 207 should not have been appointed in the first place so as to avoid national division? No. The recognition and respect they are owed as the legitimately elected and properly consecrated bishops within their dioceses should be without question. All Anglicans should respect the office of a bishop even if they cannot personally recognise the officeholder. For female bishops never to be consecrated simply because some refuse to accept their legitimacy would hold the entire church hostage to this view point.

Equal in impact on the Anglican Communion as the ordination and consecration of women are the ongoing debates about sexuality. There is, arguably, an important statement about episcopacy being made within these debates. For decades, bishops around the Communion have debated these issues with each other. For good or ill, it has been widely accepted by Anglican adherents that episcopal forums (such as the Lambeth Conference) are an appropriate place for such debates to take place. Anglicans accept that it is the role of their bishops to engage in theological discourse. Many, if not most, Anglicans expect their bishop to have a particular view on issues concerning human sexuality. No bishop today could reasonably expect not to be questioned on this matter at some point. Furthermore, the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 on sexuality was a statement written by bishops for bishops and agreed to by five hundred and twenty- six bishops from around the Communion.166 It is important to note that seventy bishops at the Conference also voted against the resolution and spoke out against it.167 Regardless of whether one agrees with the resolution or not, the fact that it was a resolution of the majority of bishops present had an enormous impact on Anglicans throughout the world, and particularly the gay and lesbian Anglicans to whom the resolution was directed. Many Anglicans felt affirmed and many felt betrayed. Whatever it is that bishops say or believe, Anglican adherents are inclined to believe it matters.

There is also a link within these debates over sexuality to episcopacy because of the manner in which bishops are perceived by adherents. Bishops represent the Church. The selection of episcopal candidates is evidence in itself of what a church/diocese believes about itself and what it desires within its leadership. Modern candidates face the pressure of being assessed on their personal approach to any number of social and theological issues at the time of their selection. If they are in the majority of those

166 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 79. 167 Forty-five bishops abstained. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 79. 208 making the decision, modernists get modernists and conservatives elect conservatives. Few dioceses choose bishops who are greatly at odds with the majority view. This also affects the style of leadership that may be sought out. Dioceses who seek a manager will invariably get a good administrator. Those seeking a healing pastoral carer will also likely choose a candidate who they believe fits that description. As such, the selection of a bishop who is in a same-sex relationship says something about what that diocese believes and what it accepts. Their selection also reveals what those responsible for the selection wish to be advocated in the future. The response to Bishop Gene Robinson’s consecration and election in the United States in 2003 by bishops elsewhere in the Communion is an example of this. Bishop Robinson was elected not only because he was deemed to be fit for the office by his Diocese but also because it made a statement about what the people of that diocese believed.168 The bishop was a model for those beliefs and behaviours. Other bishops who stood for contrary beliefs and behaviours elsewhere in the Communion, therefore, took it as their moral obligation to protest. The symbolic authority of bishops remains thoroughly intact even if the communion between various bishops is fraying.

Anglicans face challenges as to how being ‘in communion’ is defined and how adherents cohere with one another when they disagree. Within the Anglican Communion, communicant membership is defined through the See of Canterbury. Partner churches are partners not because they are ‘in communion’ with each other but, because they are all in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is a process of mutual recognition. Just as member churches must declare their desire to be communion with the Church of England, so too must the Archbishop of Canterbury recognise who is in communion with the See. It is not enough for a group to state that they are in communion with Canterbury to be considered part of the Anglican Communion. The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia states that it is in communion with the Church of England in England. This recognition from the Australia side is qualified: This Church will remain and be in communion with the Church of England in England and with churches in communion therewith so long as communion is

168 Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 58-59; Radner and Turner, The Fate of Communion, 21. 209

consistent with the Fundamental Declarations contained in this Constitution.169 In the context of the growing divisions, a covenantal approach to unity within the Communion was proposed in the 2000s following the Windsor Report.170 This Covenant was eventually adopted by only seven of the forty-one member churches/provinces— this did not include either the Australian church or the Church of England—and has since lapsed.171

The emergence of the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) and the related Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) in 2008 has had profound effects on the dynamics of the Anglican Communion. 172 At the Lambeth Conference in 1998, conservative Anglicans across the Americas, Africa and Asia organised themselves to block what they saw to be unbiblical and unsound innovations within particular member churches.173 The ordination of women and the acceptance of openly same-sex attracted persons as clergy became the target issues. Organised mainly from dissident groups within the older member churches, homosexual practice was denounced by a vote of 389-190 as incompatible with Scripture.174

The subsequent decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada to bless same-sex unions in 2001 and then the consecration of Gene Robinson in the United States was an opportunity for those seeking a schism.175 Several provinces declared that would no longer be ‘in communion’ with the pre-existing Anglican churches in North America. This simultaneously lead to a significant number of conservative Anglicans officially leaving the Anglican Church of Canada and the

169 The Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia §6. 170 Mark Chapman, "Introduction: What's Going on in Anglicanism?", in The Anglican Covenant: Unity and Diversity in the Anglican Communion, ed. Mark Chapman (London: Mowbray, 2008), 21-22; Valliere, Conciliarism, 200-207. 171 Anglican Communion Office, ‘The Anglican Communion Covenant: what the churches have done so far,’ Anglican Communion Website (2020), https://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/39753/provincial- reception-of-the-anglican-covenant-for-acc-rev.pdf, accessed on 7 December 2020. 172 Peter Herriot, Warfare and Waves: Calvinists and Charismatics in the Church of England (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2017), 76-79; Paula Nesbitt, "Doctrine", in The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies, ed. Mark Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke, and Martyn Percy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 395- 396; Muriel Porter, A New Exile?: The Future of Anglicanism (Eugene: Wipf & Stock 2015), 48-50; Sachs, Homosexuality and the crisis of Anglicanism 244-245. 173 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 71-101. 174 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 77. 175 Chapman, "Introduction: What's Going on in Anglicanism?", 19; Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 151-154; Sachs, Homosexuality and the crisis of Anglicanism 1. 210

Episcopal Church of the United States to form their own churches with episcopal backing from other Anglican provinces throughout the world.176

Church planting has become more and more frequent with certain provinces seeking to plant new congregations within the territory of other member churches.177 Conservative bishops were called upon to boycott the 2008 Lambeth Conference and instead join likeminded bishops for a conference in Jerusalem that same year.178 At this conference, a fourteen-point doctrinal confession was agreed upon as a basis for an alternative network of Anglican bishops.179 GAFCON and FCA grew around this conference. This parallel network (consisting of Anglican bishops as well as breakaway conservative groups) would aim to redefine the Anglican Communion from the inside out. Unlike schismatic movements in the church’s history, instead of breaking away to form a new denomination, this group openly seeks to remove what it believes to be theological dissidents until only GAFCON members remain.180 In late 2014, the Lambeth Conference that was due to be held in 2018 was postponed due to the state of relations within the Communion.181 Due to the coronavirus pandemic, that conference has now been delayed until 2022.182 By that time there will not have been a Lambeth Conference in fourteen years, the longest period since the 1948 Lambeth Conference.

As stated, following years of tension and doctrinal divisions, a group of conservative Episcopalians broke away from the Episcopal Church of United States of America (ECUSA) and the Anglican Church of Canada and formed what they named the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and the Anglican Network in Canada

176 Radner and Turner, The Fate of Communion, 3. 177 Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 64-65; Porter, A New Exile?: The Future of Anglicanism, 25-26. 178 Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 61. 179 “The Complete Jerusalem Statement 2008”, GAFCON (22 June 2008), https://www.gafcon.org/ resources/the-complete-jerusalem-statement-2008, accessed on 7 December 2020. 180 Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 63. 181 Muriel Porter and Madeleine Davis, “Welby: Anglicans are a family that goes out in the garden and shouts”, Church Times (15 August 2015), https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/15- august/news/world/welby-anglicans-are-a-family-that-goes-out-in-the-garden-and-shouts, accessed on 7 December 2020. 182 “Dates for the Lambeth Conference announced”, Lambeth Conference, https://www.lambethconference.org/2022-announcement/rescheduling-the-lambeth-conference-to- 2022/, accessed on 7 December, 2020; Ed Thornton, “Lambeth Conference postponed until 2021”, Church Times (23 March 2020), https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/27-march/news/world/lambeth -conference-postponed-until-2021, accessed on 7 December 2020. 211

(ANiC).183 This grew out of earlier movements like the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA).184 Legal battles have been fought across both countries over church property and trust monies.185 ECUSA has become characterised with a liberal theology and ACNA with a conservative theology.186 ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada remain in communion with Canterbury. The ACNA is recognised as a schismatic movement and not as a member province of the Communion. This status is complicated by the fact that some likeminded churches in Communion with Canterbury now understand themselves to be in communion with ACNA and not ECUSA and Canada.

The involvement of bishops from churches in communion with Canterbury in the consecration of bishops for breakaway churches raising questions regarding Anglican episcopacy. This issue has been significant for the Australian church in recent years. On 30 June 2017, Andy Lines was consecrated as a bishop and became the inaugural missionary bishop to Europe for Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Two Australian Anglican diocesan bishops were involved in the consecration service—the Archbishop of Sydney, , and the Bishop of Tasmania, Richard Condie.187 The then-Primate, Archbishop of Melbourne, advised these bishops against taking part.188 Freier writes: The consecration of Lines and the participation of our colleagues raises significant questions how the close fellowship, co-operation and collegiality

183 Percy, The Future Shapes of Anglicanism, 57; William Sachs, "Sexuality and Anglicanism", in The Oxford History of Anglicanism - Volume IV: Global Western Anglicanism, c.1910-present, ed. Jeremy Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 112-113. 184 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 66-67. 185 Maria Baer, “Anglican Property Wins Don’t Put an End to Legal Disputes”, Christianity Today (10 July, 2020), https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/july/south-carolina-texas-anglican-church- property-episcopal-dio.html, accessed on 7 December, 2020; Kirk Petersen, “Protracted Diocesan Lawsuits”, Living Church (28 August, 2017), https://livingchurch.org/2017/08/28/protracted-diocesan- lawsuits/, accessed on 7 December, 2020. For an example of a settled case see: The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, et. al. Petitioners v. The Episcopal Church, et. al. Respondents, Supreme Court of Texas (5 December 2019), https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1446580/180438.pdf, accessed on 7 December, 2020. 186 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 32. 187 See: Philip Freier, “Letter to the Australian Bishops - 3 July 2017”, Melbourne Archbishop, 3 July 2017, http://www.melbournearchbishop.org.au/2017/07/03/letter-to-australias-bishops/, accessed on 7 July 2017. See also: Mark Brolly, “Primate regrets Australian bishops' participation in US consecration”, The Melbourne Anglican (3 July 2017), http://tma.melbourneanglican.org.au/news/primate-regrets- australian-bishops-participation/030717, accessed on 22 September 2020; Kanishka Raffel, “FCA Australia commends Archbishop Davies and Bishop Condie for their involvement in the consecration of Andy Lines”, GAFCON (12 July 2017), https://www.gafcon.org/news/fca-australia-commends- archbishop-davies-and-bishop-condie-for-their-involvement-in-the, accessed on 22 September 2020. 188 Freier, “Letter to the Australian Bishops - 3 July 2017”. 212

of the Communion to which I referred above is affected and, just as importantly, how individuals and member dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia should conduct themselves to live out in accordance with the Constitution the mandated model of a Church in communion with other churches of the Anglican Communion so long as communion is consistent with the Fundamental Declarations contained in the Constitution. On 8 June 2017, the Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a member of the Anglican Communion, voted on same sex marriage. That day the ACNA announced their decision to proceed with the consecration of Canon Andy Lines ‘to serve clergy and congregations who are outside other Anglican structures in Europe, providing an opportunity for ordination and oversight from a perspective of Biblical orthodoxy’. Neither the Archbishop of Canterbury (who has responsibility for Europe) nor the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church has given their concurrence to the consecration or the proposed Episcopal ministry. Whilst I appreciate the courtesy of my Episcopal colleagues in seeking my advice, I regret very much that they have decided to act contrary to it. The consecration in the ACNA is not on any view an act in communion with the Anglican Communion and its member churches, particularly the Provinces of the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church and existing jurisdictions in Europe. Whilst any individual and any diocese may form a view as to whether continued communion is consistent with the Fundamental Declarations, it is for the General Synod of our Church alone to determine such a question.189 Freier goes on to question whether the actions of Davies and Condie breach the canons of the Council of Nicaea as well as the national constitution.190 Submissions have been

189 Freier, “Letter to the Australian Bishops - 3 July 2017”. 190 ‘Our Consecration of Bishops Canon 1966 mandates the permissible manner of consecration of bishops. It binds all of us as bishops in the Church. It provides expressly for the circumstances of a bishop consecrated to serve in Australia being consecrated in a Church in communion with the Anglican Church of Australia in accordance with s6 of the Constitution and stipulates the manner of that consecration. It does not appear to provide expressly as to the current circumstances. That canon has been said to express the spirit of what was enacted in the canons adopted by the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), canons 6, 15 and 16. Canon 6 provides – ‘And this is to be universally understood, that if anyone be made bishop without the consent of the Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop’. The ‘Metropolitan’ referred to is that of the jurisdiction where the bishop is to minister. The presumed intent of the canon was to avoid ‘great disturbance and discords’ (c 15). Of course these canons of themselves do not apply as canonical law in Australia. Upon the understanding I have outlined above of the nature of our national Church and its constituent dioceses bound together as they are by the National 213 made to the Appellate Tribunal over the actions of Davies and Condie as to whether they may be considered unconstitutional.191 This is a significant step as the two diocesan bishops involved could potentially be subject to disciplinary action under the 1962 Offences Canon for wilfully contravening the constitution.192

Although he was writing on the challenges facing Australian Anglicanism with reference to internal unity, Bruce Kaye’s definition of ‘unity’ uncovers the seriousness of these events for all Anglicans: What unity actually means is the degree to which we genuinely recognise Christ in each other, and the degree to which we are able to collaborate with each other on the basis of that recognition.193 As discussed above, alternative episcopal oversight, church planting and particular provinces ceasing to officially be ‘in communion’ with one another occurs when particular Anglicans no longer ‘recognise Christ in each other’ and cannot ‘collaborate with each other on the basis of that recognition’. Some Anglican bishops have expressed that they cannot accept the validity of other bishops, who also self-identify as authentically Anglican.194 Some refer to themselves as senior pastors, while others are content to be referred to as ‘reverend father in God’. Some bishops have little control at a parochial level while, at the other extreme, the authority of others is seemingly limitless as to what they can do within their diocese (or outside it). Some claim to be in

Constitution, I have deep concerns that the participation by our Episcopal colleagues in the consecration of Canon Lines, with or without the support of their respective dioceses, is contrary to the spirit of the canons of the Council of Nicaea and, most importantly, outside of the authority of our National Constitution. It may also be outside the authority of the Consecration of Bishops Canon, 1966 of the Anglican Church of Australia’. Freier, “Letter to the Australian Bishops - 3 July 2017”. 191 Andrew Curnow, Kaye Goldsworthy, Bill Ray and John Stead, Circular Letter to the Appellate Tribunal 28/08/2017, https://www.scribd.com/document/357706191/Cir-Ltr-Appellate-Tribunal-ACNA-2017- 08-28, accessed on 7 December 2020. 192 Offences Canon 1962 (amended 1981, 1992, 1998, and 2007) §2.5. 193 Kaye, A Church without Walls, 214. 194 ‘Despite what has been written and said by GAFCON and others, the cause of the problem is not conflict over the full acceptance of homosexuals and their relationships, or even the ordination of women, or the interpretation of Scripture, or the source of authority in the church. These are truly not that much unlike literally hundreds of such conflicts in the history of the church – indeed from its very beginning at Pentecost. The problem arises in the present conflict when the dissidents declare as invalid the ministration of bishops whom they believe to be immoral. That is the crux of the problem – everything else involves only personal variances in the interpretation of Scripture or personal preferences and prejudices. These latter issues merely mean that some Anglicans think other Anglicans are in moral error… But there is nothing new about this situation. It has existed within the Christian church ever since the beginning. What is central to the problem is the resurgence of a Donatist idea that any personal immorality invalidates bishops’ ministries – that is, when some people judge some bishops to be immoral, they repudiate the ministry of those bishops. If that did not happen today, there would be no threats of schism’. Green, Beating the Bounds, 58. 214

Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, while others do not. This shows the lack of a shared understanding not only of what makes for authentic Anglican identity but also what it authentically means to be a bishop within the Anglican tradition.

For Australian Anglicans, continuing along their current trajectory doctrinal divisions and the breakdown of trust will lead to further problems in the future. A representative majority may begin to impose its agenda on the wider church (the very thing the 1962 constitution went to great pains to avoid, mostly for the benefit of the Diocese of Sydney).195 It is also likely that the choosing of a national primate will become impossible if a majority of the bishops cannot reach a consensus. Can the dioceses be held together simply by the national superannuation fund? The Australian church is dangerously heading towards an ecclesial divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.

Bishops at their consecration are called to ‘Guard [the] faith, unity and discipline [of] Christ’s Church’.196 They promise to ‘Build up the body of Christ in unity, truth and love’.197 Bishops are symbols of unity within the church and are charged with maintaining that unity. Paul Avis writes: The bishop is both a guardian of the faith and a focus of unity. These two aspects of the bishop’s calling may sometimes be in tension as the bishop feels pulled in one way by personal theological conviction and in another way by the demands of unity. But it seems to me that the bishop should bear witness to the truth of the faith as she/he see it by teaching and synodical involvement, working for unity in truth. The context of a bishop’s ministry is not only the local church (diocese) but also the universal Church, and this theological truth is intensified by modern electronic communications. A bishop cannot fulfil his or her apostolic ministry of gospel truth by electing to become a focus of disunity.198 Avis’s point is that bishops may at times feel torn between the promises to guard the church’s unity and guard its faith.

195 Davis’ history of the development of the constitution details the ebb and flow of the debates that lead to the 1962 constitution. For the developments in the 1950s and 60s see Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution, 131-179. See also Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism, 46-47. 196 A Prayer Book for Australia, 802. 197 A Prayer Book for Australia, 804. 198 Avis, Becoming a Bishop, 93. 215

Bishops have a role in uniting their dioceses. No bishop in Anglican polity is tasked with uniting the entire church. holds an alternative position to Avis, believing that bishops cannot fulfill their role by becoming ‘A focus of disunity’.199 Selby argues that desire for bishops to be unifiers within the church is based on a pastoral perception that is ‘Grounded in a vision of Christ as the one who broke down dividing walls and established peace’.200 He writes that the desire for unity is ‘Capable of exploitation under the impulse of tribal self-defence’.201 Selby criticises an approach that seeks unity at all costs, because doing so fudges significant theological concerns or extinguishes legitimate dissent. Selby questions whether true unity within the church is achieved by excluding others. His concern is that bishops may need to be figures of disunity if their personal stance is greater inclusion in opposition to a majority wishing to exclude a minority. Bishops, in Selby’s opinion, can become ‘tribal leaders’ within the Church.202

Avis and Selby hold differing interpretations of the symbolic authority of bishops. When doctrinal differences are present, bishops need to point towards a deeper theological repair than either unity at all costs or perpetual disunity. For his part, Avis moves towards this conclusion: We can settle for a cheap kind of communion with our fellow Anglicans, a fellowship of those like ourselves, those with whom we can rub along comfortably; this is to seek what we may call ‘the communion of congeniality’. It costs us little and merely reinforces our prejudices. Cheap communion is communion without the cross and without paying the price of love. But there is also a costly form of communion, which is the fellowship of those who are different. To maintain and celebrate communion with those who are different to ourselves within the Anglican Communion, some of whose views we may find difficult to stomach, is painful. It takes enormous effort and is only made possible by grace.203 Avis’ point that ‘cheap communion is communion without the cross and without paying the price of love’ is worthy to explored further. As was stated in Chapter Two, the

199 Avis, Becoming a Bishop, 93. 200 Peter Selby, Belonging: Challenge to a Tribal Church (London: SPCK, 1991), 59. 201 Selby, Belonging, 60. 202 Selby, Belonging, 59-63. 203 Paul Avis, The Vocation of Anglicanism (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 36. 216 symbolic importance of unity and its link to the figure of the bishop is an essential point of Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy. It is perhaps on this issue around division within (and beyond) the churches of the Anglican Communion that Cyprian has perhaps the most profound contribution to make for the contemporary episcopate. That contribution revolves around how Cyprian understands bishops, church unity, and love.

4.11. Cyprian’s response – The Loving Bishop

This section demonstrates the connection between love and unity of the episcopate in Cyprian’s writings. Peter Hinchliff argues that there is a running connection in Cyprian’s corpus between the ecclesiology he champions and a theology of love: ‘There is a hidden theme running all the way through De Unitate which holds it all together’.204 While Cyprian does not explicitly write that love is essential to ecclesiology, Hinchliff notes that the scriptural references Cyprian cites come out of passages where the necessity to love is the context.205 There is an intertwining connection between concord, unity and love within the Cyprianic corpus so that none should be read without taking the other two in mind. Hinchliff draws on Letters XLIV.4, LXVI.3-5, and LXXII.26 within the Cyprianic corpus as examples of the high importance Cyprian places on peaceful relations amongst his fellow bishops. Along with De Unitate, Hinchliff uses these to build his thesis to show that the importance of love is essential to Cyprian’s ecclesiology.206

204 Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 115. 205 ‘Cyprian begins by saying that the Christians are to defeat the subtler temptations of the devil by holding Christ’s commands. He quotes John 15:4, “If you do what I command you, I call you no longer servants but friends.” Christ’s command in that context is, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Cyprian does not quote these words, but the implication is there. Similarly, Christ’s promise to Peter, the sign of unity, is also set in the context of the question, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?” though again Cyprian does not explicitly quote this part of the passage. Nevertheless, when he goes on to speak of the unity of the church and the bishop’s duty to maintain it, the framework within which his argument is set is one of the duty to love’. Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 115. 206 Cyprian, Epistle XLIV.4: ‘That we, with the rest of our colleagues, may steadily and firmly administer this office, and keep it in the concordant unanimity of the Catholic Church, the divine condescension will accomplish.’; Cyprian, Epistle LXVI.3: ‘For, for that reason, dearest brother, the body of priests is abundantly large, joined together by the bond of mutual concord, and the link of unity.’; LVIII.26: ‘We, as far as in us lies, do not contend on behalf of heretics with our colleagues and fellow-bishops, with whom we maintain a divine concord and the peace of the Lord; especially since the apostle says, “If any man, however, is thought to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of God.” Charity of spirit, the honour of our college, the bond of faith, and priestly concord, are maintained by us with patience and gentleness.’ 217

Unity requires that Christians love their fellow Christians (and bishops love their fellow bishops). There is no defence, in Cyprian’s theory, for a Christian to ever walk away from the Church. The Church is not a separate entity from Christians. It is the faithful baptised who constitute the body of Christ. In leaving the catholic fold a schismatic abandons the rest of Christ’s body and, indeed, Christ himself. The two, in Cyprian’s thought, could not be divided. He often quotes Ephesians 4:4-5—‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all’.207 There was only one Church, although its members were stretched across the known world. Neither heretics nor schismatics could found another legitimate body. Christ had founded the one and only Church and charged the apostles to watch over (episkope) it. Their successors were the only legitimate source of authority and were chosen by the will of God through the local members of the body of Christ. To reject the bishop’s authority was to disregard God’s authority. To reject the bishop, the centralising figure of the Christian community, was to reject the whole body of Christians in that place who had elected him and whom he cared for. This extended the boundaries of Ignatius’ maxim to do nothing without the bishop for that was to do the devil’s work. Bishops from different places also needed to work together for the mission of the gospel. If they did not then this would tear at the fabric (Cyprian’s own metaphor) of Church life and result in unfaithfulness to Christ’s will for his Church be one and whole. ‘Bearing with one another in love’, as Ephesians 4:3 puts it, was key to good governance within the Church. Division meant that Christians had stopped loving one another. Hinchliff writes: ‘Cyprian is desperately afraid that Christian love has become lukewarm’.208

In De Unitate, the necessity to love is linked with salvation. Writing about schismatics and heretics who claim to die as martyrs of the Church, Cyprian believes that they cannot be viewed as true martyrs because they have separated themselves from the rest of the Body of Christ. Cyprian writes that: (The schismatic/heretical martyr) will not be able to arrive in the kingdom who deserted her who is to rule. Christ gave us peace; He ordered us to be in agreement and of one mind; He commanded us to keep the bonds of love

207 Ephesians 4:4-5 NRSV. 208 Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 116. 218

and charity uncorrupted and inviolate. He cannot display himself a martyr who has not maintained fraternal charity.209 Linking the necessity to love with unity, Cyprian writes: Discord cannot come to the kingdom of heaven; to the rewards of Christ who said: “This is my commandment that you love one another, even as I have loved you.” He will not be able to attain it who has violated the love of Christ by perfidious dissension. He who does not have charity does not have God. The words of the blessed Apostle John are: “God,” he says, “is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him.”210 Oneness/unity within the Church was based on God’s oneness/unity. Just as unity was essential to God’s nature, so too was love. Church unity is itself a sacrament of God—a sign of God’s inner nature and grace. Cyprian also believed love and unity to be united concepts within Christ’s own teaching. As another example of his frequent proof texting approach to scripture, Cyprian cites Christ’s teaching on the Commandments to support his claim. Cyprian writes: The Lord in the Gospel, when he was directing the way of our hope and faith, in a brief summary said: “The Lord thy God is one Lord,” and “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength. This is the first, and the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.” He taught at the same time unity and love by the authority of His teaching; He included all the prophets and the law in two commandments. But what unity does he preserve, what love does he guard or consider, who mad with the fury of discord splits the Church, destroys the faith, disturbs the peace, dissipates charity, profanes the sacrament?211 For Christians to love one another was not simply good governance for maintaining social cohesion and cooperation between church groups—for Cyprian, it was to be considered a divine mandate. Going further, when proof texting 2 Timothy 3:2, Cyprian writes that the enemies of the Church are ‘lovers of self’, ‘haughty’ and ‘lovers of

209 Cyprian, De Unitate, 14. 210 Cyprian, De Unitate 14. 211 Cyprian, De Unitate 15. Emphasis mine. 219 pleasure rather than God’.212 The difference between true Christians and schismatics/heretics in De Unitate is determined by what they love.

Through their mutual love, bishops hold the Church together. If they were to cease loving one another, then they would be unfaithful to God’s command and the Church would tear apart. The bishops (and all Christians), who share in the governance of the Church, are to rather imitate the Holy Spirit whom they legitimately possess (as opposed to the schismatics/heretics who claim to have the grace of the Holy Spirit but do not). In De Unitate, Cyprian writes: The Holy Spirit came in a dove. It is a simple and happy animal, not bitter with gall, not cruel with its bites, not violent with lacerating claws; it loves the hospitalities of men; when they give birth they bring forth their offspring together; when they go and come they cling together; they spend their lives in mutual intercourse; they recognize the concord of peace by the kiss of the beak; they fulfil the law of unanimity in all things. This is the simplicity which ought to be known in the Church; this the charity to be attained, that the love of the brethren imitate the doves, that their gentleness and tenderness equal that of the lambs and the sheep. What is the savagery of wolves doing in the breast of a Christian, and the madness of dogs and the lethal poison of snakes and the bloody cruelties of beasts? Congratulations are due, when such as these are separated from the Church, lest they prey upon the doves and sheep with their cruel and venomous contagion. Bitterness cannot cling and join with sweetness, darkness with light, rains with clear weather, fighting with peace, sterility with fecundity, drought with running waters, storm with calm. Let no one think that the good can depart from the Church; the wind does not ravage the wheat, nor does the storm overturn the tree strongly and solidly rooted; the light straws are tossed about by the tempest; the feeble trees are thrown down by the onrush of the whirlwind. The Apostle Paul execrates and strikes at these, when he says: “They have gone forth from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.”213

212 Cyprian, De Unitate 16. 213 Cyprian, De Unitate 9. 220

In the conflict with Stephen, Bishop Firmilian also noted the importance of love to the unity of the Church. Firmilian, writing to Cyprian against Stephen, wrote that Stephen, by threatening to excommunicate all who differ from the Roman tradition concerning baptism, has ‘cut himself off from the unity of love’.214 Stephen, through trying to assert his will over the other bishops, had not kept ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’.215 Instead, Firmilian wrote: ‘For while you [Stephen] think that all may be excommunicated by you; you have excommunicated yourself alone from all’.216 Stephen showed neither love nor humility, and as such broke away from the rest of the bishops.

Hinchliff is not the only theologian to note Cyprian’s insistence on love. Burns also believes that love is an important theme within Cyprian’s theory of the episcopate. Burns writes that the ‘mutual love of the bishops’ acted as ‘the glue which bound together the universal church’.217 Burns notes epistles LXVI.8.3., LXVIII.3.2. and LXXII.26.2. as evidence for this, and also suggests that this idea may have been drawn from Tertullian.218 Writing in the nineteenth century, Adolf von Harnack also comments in the footnotes of his History of Dogma on the key place that love makes within Cyprian’s ecclesiology. He goes as far as to assert that it is the most significant part of Cyprian’s theory. Although it is laced with an anti-Catholic polemic, Harnack writes: That is a fundamental idea and in fact the outstanding feature of the treatise ‘De Unitate’. The heretics and schismatics lack love, whereas the unity of the Church is the product of love, this being the main Christian virtue. That is the ideal thought on which Cyprian builds his theory. (see also epp. 45.1: 55.24: 69.1 and elsewhere), and not quite wrongly, in so far as his purpose was to gather and preserve, and not scatter. The reader may also recall the early Christian notion that Christendom should be a band of brethren ruled by love. But his love ceases to have any application to the case of those who are disobedient to the authority of the bishop and to Christians of the sterner sort. The appeal which Catholicism makes to love, even at the present day, in order to justify its secularised and tyrannical Church, turns in the mouth of

214 Cyprian, Letter LXXV.25. Emphasis mine. 215 Cyprian, Letter LXXV.25. 216 Cyprian, Letter LXXV.24. 217 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 157. 218 Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 229n66. 221

hierarchical politicians into hypocrisy, of which one would like to acquit a man of Cyprian’s stamp.219 Harnack notes that in Cyprian’s thought, union within the Church is only brought about by love. As a characteristic of the truth it bears, Harnack writes, unity in the Church is ‘is only brought about by love’.220 Love and unity are intertwined.

In Cyprian’s framework, through episcopal ministry the whole Church can be united and act together in harmony. This harmony is brought about by effective communication, the maintenance of disciplinary procedures, and a willingness to respect the episcopal ministry of others in knowledge that all are responsible primarily to Christ. Hinchliff writes: ‘De Unitate is not… really a book about pope and bishops. It is a book about the need to love’.221 Through striving to love one another, the harmony of the bishops becomes a bonding agent within the social networks of the Church. The principles of synodical governance and the equality of episcopate stem from Cyprian’s insistence that the bishop is the primary agent of mission and the presiding centre in the sacramental life of the congregations committed to their care through God’s will (via the people’s suffrage). By loving the Christians who entrust them to lead the local Church and loving their fellow bishops throughout different parts of the world, bishops maintain the commands of Christ and imitate him in their ministry. Cyprian bases his claim that Church unity is not maintained through compromising orthodoxy, a by- product of political manoeuvring or ecclesial coercion via a domineering hierarchy. It is instead based upon a theological understanding of the necessity to love within the pattern of Christian discipleship.

There was no centralising, bureaucratic administration holding the Church together. Neither was there a code of canon law agreed upon throughout the Church that could somehow unite the church in a legal framework. Neither of these would develop until after Cyprian’s time. There was only the will of the bishops to stay united that kept them united. No top down hierarchy existed to manage discipline and order. No pledge of allegiance before any single figure was required. No list of theological points that all members must sign up to in order to be considered orthodox was created.

219 Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 2, trans. Neil Buchanan from the 3rd German ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1896), 86n4. 220 Harnack, History of Dogma, 86. 221 Hinchliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, 116. 222

No officially mandated canon of scripture force them. Rather, it was the bishops’ will to love each other, to stand united to each other even when there was theological disagreement or divergent practises (at least in matters considered adiaphora), that maintained the unity and catholicity of the Church. It was their ultimate commitment to Christ and the acknowledgment of each other as his disciples that maintained the social cohesion of the Christian communities across the empire and outside of it.

Twenty-first century bishops would do well to learn from the kind of unifying practices advocated by Cyprian and his colleagues in building trust between each other. Meeting together regularly with authority to discuss important issues in a safe environment will help to build levels of trust between bishops and across dioceses. But more than that, contemporary bishops need to be sincerely challenged: do you love those committed to your care? Do you love your fellow bishops? The first question is undoubtedly asked more frequently than the second.

4.12. Conclusion

This chapter began by exploring the modern Ordinals for how the Anglican Church of Australia has expressed its theology of episcopacy. The theology and promises expressed at a bishop’s consecration encapsulate the expectations on their ministry. The lived experience of that ministry is often very different, as exemplified in four key challenges facing the contemporary episcopate in Australia: 1) the size and viability of dioceses; 2) managerial models; 3) responses to abuse scandals; and 4) doctrinal and ethical division within and between dioceses.

Through engaging directly with Cyprian’s theology, a response was developed for each of these issues relating to episcopacy. This Cyprianic response is summed up in four ways of rethinking episcopacy for the contemporary Australian Anglican context: the bishop who is relational, adaptive, discerning and loving. Each of these four behaviours responds to contemporary challenges by drawing on both Cyprian’s patristic theology and on the modern Ordinal.

Relational Bishops understand that they must ‘know and be known’ by those charged to their care and to be ‘a good example to all’. This will likely mean a change in the size of diocesan structures. Discerning Bishops understand that to effectively exercise their ministry they must adapt to their context so that they may be ‘faithful 223 stewards of God’s mysteries’ within each place and in every generation. Good theology is not sacrificed to pure pragmatism, but the best forms of adaptation will ensure that the best of modern practice is in harmony with core theological values. Accountable Bishops understand that to adequately ‘watch over, protect and serve the people of God’ they must ensure proper ethical standards and disciplinary practices are maintained so that they may use their ‘authority to heal and not hurt’. Their discernment will mean they prove to be ‘shepherds not wolves’ to Christ’s flock. Loving Bishops understand that to truly ‘guard [the] faith, unity and discipline’ of the church of God, bishops must love another and exhibit that love to all. For this, Anglicans pray that all bishops may be clothed ‘with… the Holy Spirit, so that in all they do and say they may be examples of love’. 224

Conclusion

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.1

5.1. A Cyprianic Theology of Episcopacy for Australians and Beyond

Christians must study the past if they are to understand how their ancestors in the faith lived and prayed. Christianity is an inherently historical religion that looks back to a fixed point in history namely the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to guide its ongoing life. Christians have also looked to the earliest period of the Church’s history following the Resurrection, and particularly to the prominent leaders within that period, to inform its own contemporary practice over centuries. There are dangers in an ill-informed reception of historical ideas. There is equal danger in a shallow desire to simply copy the past; after all, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’.2 The study of the early Church Fathers has left some to justify the exclusion of women from ordained ministry and vilification of social minorities. When read well, however, those earliest Christian writers provide us with a vast treasure whose riches can be accessed in every age. That study can augment contemporary faith and order and deepen our ties with that communion of saints that continues to grow down the ages.

This thesis aimed to investigate if a Patristic author, Cyprian of Carthage, could be fruitfully brought into dialogue with contemporary challenges facing the Anglican Church of Australia. That thought experiment has worked. Cyprian’s ecclesiology as presented in his own writings offers fruitful pathways for present and future generations. This thesis has demonstrated that Cyprian’s theology has been both used and abused (as well as ignored) by Anglicans in the past. Nonetheless, it has also demonstrated that theological mistakes can be corrected. It would be wrong for anyone to think both that the third century represented a golden age or that it could be reconstructed prorsus sicut fuit today. It has been the primary contention of this thesis

1 James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Pantheon, 2011), 42. 2 Leslie Poles Hartley, The Go-Between (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953), prologue. 225 that Cyprian’s writings still have something vital to say to Anglicans today and, by extension, to all Christians.

Cyprian’s vision of episcopacy provides an adaptive approach that retains core episcopal principles. Anglican theologians in the past have looked to Cyprian to provide them with exactly this kind of vision. As such, bishops in every age and place can be confident that episcopacy can evolve within its context while retaining the integrity of the office. Cyprian’s theology enables bishops to embrace their ministry to the Church of God, to remain true to apostolic tradition, and to face the challenges of their particular context, including in meeting contemporary Anglican challenges.

In Chapter One, Cyprian’s ecclesiology was explored with a particular focus on how his understanding of episcopacy was framed. The first section demonstrated the overall theological framework from the theocentric foundation of the Church, Cyprian’s understanding of an apostolic succession and the Petrine office within every episcopate. On this is built his understanding of the equality of the episcopal college and the unity of the catholica. From this theological basis, Cyprian’s conception of episcopacy was examined. Four principal titles for bishops—pastor, doctor, iudex, and sacerdos—were used to analyse Cyprian’s thought. From this analysis, core theological markers are seen to be active within Cyprian’s conception of episcopacy. Cyprian’s adapted his practice of episcopacy contextually while maintaining the theological principles core to episcopacy as he understood it.

Chapter Two focused on the reception and appropriation of Cyprian’s theology during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the Church of England, the formative period for Anglican theology and polity. The writings of John Jewell, Richard Hooker and William Laud were chosen as case studies to examine how they used Cyprian’s writings in their own. Although doing so in differing ways, all three looked to Cyprian as an antecedent to the polity of the Church of England. Cyprian was appealed to confidentially, and Anglicans believed that they were re-establishing an ancient model of episcopacy in contrast to medieval excesses. The appeal to Cyprian was shaped to fit with the Royal Supremacy. Bishops became accustomed to understanding their role as bearers of a senior public office conferred by the Crown—an idea that is completely foreign to patristic authors before Constantine. As such, Cyprian’s legacy during this formative period for Anglican episcopacy was mixed. 226

Chapter Three moved from the British Isles to Australia and explored the development of episcopacy within the nascent Anglican Church in Australia over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Key ‘moments’ during this period highlight the adaptation of episcopacy to the new context—the ministry of Bishop Broughton, the introduction of multiple Anglican bishops in the Pacific, the end to Crown appointments in Australia, the introduction of synodical governance, the start of the Lambeth Conferences and global identity for Anglicanism, and the development of national constitution for an autonomous national church. Although the polity of the Anglican Church of Australia is the product of contextual pragmatism and diocesan tribalism, not patristic ecclesiological patterns, the picture that emerged is surprisingly consonant with Cyprian’s ideal of autonomous dioceses where a bishop is the locus of ministry within that region.

Having established Cyprian’s theology, its historic reception by Anglicans and the development of the Anglican Church of Australia, Chapter Four addressed contemporary challenges facing the episcopate. As Anglican episcopacy in Australia already shares some features with Cyprian’s ecclesiology, Cyprian’s writings were brought into conversation to address four areas in which Cyprian’s conception of bishops is relevant. The challenges of the size and scale of diocesan ministry, managerial patterns of leadership, professional responses to abusive behaviour, and doctrinal difference and unity within the church were all explored.

The thesis has thereby demonstrated that a closer reading of Cyprian’s theology is beneficial for modern bishops. The thesis has presented a Cyprianiac theology of the contemporary Australian Anglican episcopate that encourages bishops to be relational, discerning, accountable, and loving. Through this approach, the lived experience of episcopal ministry may better resemble the theology of episcopacy already expressed in Anglican Ordinals.

5.2. Future Avenues for Research

Future avenues of research relevant to this study could explore how the four attributes of episcopal ministry that Cyprian inspires—relational, discerning, accountable and loving—would be manifested in the ministries of Australian bishops. Further research could also include studies of other Patristic authors such as Augustine of Hippo or Gregory the Great and their influence on Anglican theology and polity. We 227 need not only to mine the deep recesses of Patristic thought but also trace how those ideas have been received over time.

There is more to be written on Cyprian’s conception of love and unity within the field of Patristics. Despite research on the idea of unitas in Cyprian’s work by several theologians that have been noted in this thesis, Cyprian’s conception of caritas and its links to unity are fairly limited. If, as this thesis has argued, value is seen in Cyprian’s idea that love binds the episcopate together (and so also the church), then further research into this idea would be beneficial to both the church and academia. This would also enhance our understanding of Cyprian’s theology more broadly. As the purpose of this thesis was to explore Anglican polity, this was not the arena for such a detailed exploration.

The changing nature of episcopacy within the twenty-first century contains other opportunities for further research. The effects particularly of the Royal Commission and Professional Standards have highlighted the destructive culture that lay around ‘mates protecting mates’ and dangerous ideas around clerical sanctity. The nature of ‘clericalism’ within Anglicanism and what it means to be ordained are pressing theological issues that need to be addressed. This could be achieved through a detailed analysis of how different Anglican theologians have expressed their understanding of ordination over time. While there was a wave of interest in defending the validity of Anglican orders in the early twentieth century in the wake of Apostolicae curae and there are any number of different books addressing the nature of what it is to be a deacon, priest or bishop, there are few that address what ordination is. What change occurs at ordination—what does ordination actually do—and is there a general Anglican understanding of ordination? My sense is that there is no longer a shared understanding, and that this lack of consensus is shaping ministry in different trajectories across Australia and the wider Communion.

5.3. Ancient Bishops for a Modern Church

While Cyprian’s theology is useful, it does not provide a panacea for all the challenges facing Anglicans today. Cyprian is not perfect—nor are our bishops today. Cyprian’s writings do not contain a blueprint for ministry. Mostly letters and polemical treatises, his works contain insights as to what this third-century bishop believed and how he lived. They do not contain a model that could simply be superimposed on the 228 church today. Instead, Cyprian’s writings open themselves up to be studied by those who wish to know how Christians in one era faced very real threats and challenges to their existence—both physically and theologically. Cyprian adapted his own practice of episcopacy to the challenges he faced, based on the theological principles he believed were core to that ministry. This approach can provide hope and insight for Anglican Christians in the present and into the future. This thesis argues that Cyprian has continued relevance for Anglican Christians, particularly those who are bishops, and can provide an adaptive model of episcopacy that is true to certain core episcopal ideals. Cyprian’s theological legacy, this thesis concludes, is a guarantor of an ‘historic episcopate, locally adapted’ (the fourth point of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral).

While Cyprian does not offer an ecclesiological blueprint that could be superimposed on the contemporary church, he does offer something else. We find reflected in the Cyprianic corpus the ecclesial structure as it already existed in the middle of the third century. Cyprian does not argue for this particular structure. Cyprian argues for unity. He argues for love. He argues for good discipline and right order. We might say that Cyprian does not argue for a particular structure but for the wellbeing of that particular structure. At the same time, in the Cyprianic corpus there is an awareness of the consequences of that polity breaking down. Cyprian provides an approach to episcopacy that adapts contextually but adheres to theological markers to maintain the integrity of the office.

Amongst the challenges facing contemporary bishops are a combination of pressures concerning the very theological substance of their office and the value of it for the church, both at present and moving into the future. Varying expectations and different models of leadership are placed before contemporary bishops. There is also the added expectation that they will naturally and perpetually make the right decisions lest they be publicly harangued for wrong ones. Gary Bouma writes: Each bishop is faced with deciding how to be bishop: how lightly to wear the pomp, how heavily to wield the power, how to balance between the myriad of images of the bishop provided by those who have gone before, from irenic prince to harsh tyrant, from absolute divine right monarch to consultative overseer, from person of prayer to chief executive officer.3

3 Bouma, "On Being Bishop", 45. 229

Reading the theological reflections of their ancient predecessors can inspire bishops today. Writers like Cyprian provide insight from the past as to how episcopacy can be conceived and how episcopal ministry can be performed well.

The use of Cyprian’s writings should be studied in light of the way those texts have been received over time. Some of Cyprian’s theological stances were rejected at later times. Others were upheld. Within his writings we see a call for bishops to be relational, adaptive, discerning and loving. We see an ecclesiological vision that points to equality amongst bishops and maintains unity regardless of theological consensus or disagreement. This is possible because for Cyprian the Church is God’s. The ministries, authority and unity of the Church all come from God. It is to God that bishops are ultimately accountable and it is God to whom they can look for comfort and strength.

Paul Avis writes that a ‘good-enough bishop is a precious gift of God’s to God’s church’.4 Avis’ comment is written as a form of episcopal apologetics. The sentiment is that bishops can have a crucial role in shaping the life of the Church around them. Equally, there can be little doubt as to the truth behind Avis’ comments about the negative effect a ‘bad bishop’ can have on a diocese and even the wider Church.5 But what if the Church were to go beyond Avis’ sentiment and aspire for bishops to be more than ‘good-enough’? Could not the argument be made that if a ‘good-enough’ bishop can have a pivotal role in creating a healthier Church, then what about a genuinely good, even great, bishop?

So what does a ‘great bishop’ look like? How would we know it when we saw it? Looking to Cyprian, a great bishop is relational, adaptive, discerning and loving. A great bishop nurtures the disciples of Christ placed under their care through their own example and teaching. A great bishop respects the ministries of their peers and works towards unity. A great bishop is model of the Christian life and is prepared to lay down their life for the Church. A great bishop loves their fellow bishops, just as they love the clergy and laity, just as Christ loves. By that, all will know that those bishops are Christ’s bishops.

Bishops are instruments for the furtherance of the gospel. They are called to imitate the pattern of Christ’s ministry in love and service. Their responsibility for the

4 Avis, Becoming a Bishop, 13. 5 Avis, Becoming a Bishop, 13. 230 governance of the church is provided by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit. They must rely on God’s strength and imitate his Passion. Cyprian, as bishop and martyr, provides an ancient example for modern bishops to follow. His writings can inspire a new generation within the episcopate to work towards unity and mutual trust.

One of the major challenges that arises from Cyprian’s writings to contemporary bishops is the stress on love and unity. Do bishops really love their fellow bishops? Do bishops really love those charged to their care? If, in Cyprian’s opinion, love really does help to mould the Church together, could not the fracturing of the contemporary Church be seen as a failure to love? The angst and frustration directed by Anglicans towards each other may be seen as arising out of a deep love for the other. However, apathy and contempt do not arise from love.

The desire of this thesis was to provide a model that might assist contemporary bishops throughout the world today. It was not to simply scrutinise and objectify those who are called to lead in the Church. There will always been examples of good and bad bishops in the Church—those who prove to be good shepherds, and those who prove to be wolves. Cyprian of Carthage was an advocate for faithfulness, love and unity during his lifetime and was upheld as a saint and a martyr in death. He may not have been perfect, but this thesis has shown that he provides for the present a model of a bishop who is not ‘good enough’ but great.

231

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